Warned of an approaching blizzard, I make the fundamental error of seeking updates from a live weather map on television.
But there's so much on-screen meteorological data, so many color-coded precipitation charts and animated storm-tracking diagrams, that it's impossible to tell exactly what part of the world the map is supposed to represent.
It could be New England, I guess, if you squint hard enough. Then again, it might also be Tahiti, the Black Forest, or even a live video feed from NASA's Mars Exploration Rover.
Is that really a cold front advancing towards southern Massachusetts, as the weatherman claims, or is he surreptitiously re-using old computer graphics from the typhoon that slammed into Bermuda last week?
The contours of the land mass in question are so obscured by computer generated imagery that it's impossible to tell.
I once accidentally set fire to a fold-up tourist map of San Francisco. Even while still aflame it was easier to read than this live weather map of who knows where.