A geography lesson?

It’s good to know where you are

The following joke showed up in the electronic version of the faculty newsletter at the community college where I teach:

The teacher of the earth science class was lecturing on map reading.

After explaining about latitude, longitude, degrees and minutes the teacher asked, "Suppose I asked you to meet me for lunch at 23 degrees, 4 minutes north latitude and 45 degrees, 15 minutes east longitude...?"

After a confused silence, a voice volunteered, "I guess you'd be eating alone."

Now, I’m sure the main point of the joke is that the students didn’t grasp the concept of latitude and longitude, and therefore wouldn’t know how to get to the coordinates the teacher specified.

However, I was curious enough to look up the coordinates on a map, and maybe the students were more right than they thought – the location is Hariq, Saudi Arabia, not far from the Rub‛ al Khali desert. It doesn’t appear to be a pleasant place to have lunch.