Common Knowledge -- Writer's Poke #249

On our flight to Zurich, I had some time to kill. Fortunately, most airlines these days come equipped with monitors attached to the back of each seat. And Swiss Air offered us a variety of time-killing options.

I was happy to see that one of the free games available was Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? I always do pretty good at the questions when I'm watching the TV show at home, but once I started playing the game on the plane, I realized just how little I really know.

Swiss Air's version of Millionaire was from the UK, and since I don't know much about soccer or cricket or UK geography or UK pop culture, I had trouble getting past even the first or second question.

In other words, anyone from the UK that happened to be watching me play would undoubtedly have thought that I was one great big dummy.

Knowledge, it seems, has a cultural context. How often we overlook that.

How has your culture informed what you know?

"The only source of knowledge is experience." -- Albert Einstein

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