[dmckeon]

There seems to be a sharp drop-off line running north/south just west of Mongolia & east of Novosibirsk.

I wonder if that is from a side-scrolling artifact or drag/drop interface in the sampling (wild speculation there) or from an unconscious pruning algorithm, among people who are unaware of Ukraine's proximity to the Black Sea, roughly: "hmmh, Ukraine, medium-to-small country, former Soviet, I'll look further east, oops, there's China, better stop here.

Some more informative maps include languages and hydrocarbon pipelines:

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/73094000/gif/_73094671...

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-02-20/ukraine-situation-e...

[agapos]

"There seems to be a sharp drop-off line running north/south just west of Mongolia & east of Novosibirsk."

That line is too sharp for a 'Hey, that's China!' stop. Besides, it's unlikely that many of them could locate China correctly, due to the generic lack of geological, geographical and topographic studies in US schools.

I think they got an America (as in: continent) centred map, something like this [1], with the small difference of being cut somewhere at the eastern parts of India, instead of the eastern borders of Iran.

[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8b/White_Wo...

[Florin_Andrei]

It's interesting how many wrong clicks are piled up in the general region north of India / east of China. In other words, where any marginally informed person would think is an area of unrest and trouble.

Kazakhstan seems to be an attractor, probably because it's so big.

"Hmmm, so Afghanistan is in that general area, and it's a troubled country, so therefore Ukraine must be thereabouts also."