Indignation.

So we're all sitting around watching Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader? last night and getting increasingly pissed off as this idiot struggles to answer the simplest questions and Jeff Foxworthy tries to makes us believe that we're just as stupid and worthless because we're getting the questions wrong, too. But because I can not accept someone telling me I'm wrong when I KNOW I'm right, I had to research some of the answers I was completely confident about. What I found was conflicting "facts" from reputable sources. I'm not trying to prove that one answer is more correct than another, only to show that there is ambiguity in what research can reveal to us and certainly in what we are taught in schools, and how unreliable a so-called "authority" can be.

I can say unequivocably that by the fifth grade, I had been taught that a) 80% of the Earth's surface was water, and b) Kodiak bears were the largest bears in the world.

You can say these are trivialities, but it's a matter of principle. I don't like having my intelligence insulted by a snarky game show host and a bunch of unfair questions.

Also, I have about eight hours worth of time on my hands to sit at a desk and hone my ability to convey shrillness through type.

Water

-The Unites States Environmental Protection Agency's website states that "Approximately 80 percent of Earth's surface is covered with water."

-pbs.org and howstuffworks.com tell me that 70% of the Earth's surface is covered in water.

Bears

(I would have gotten this wrong anyway, because the Kodiak is technically a subspecies, but the point is still valid....)

-The Alaska Department of Fish and Game, Division of Wildlife Conservation's Official website claims that Kodiak bears are the largest in the world. The Encyclopaedia Britannica Online's entry on the Kodiak bear states that "It is the largest of living land carnivores."

-Wikipedia says that Kodiak bears and polar bears are "comparable in size."

-pbs.org (again), the BBC, and SeaWorld state that the polar bear is the largest land carnivore.

The Library of Congress clarifies as follows:

"It is a close call, but the polar bear is generally considered the largest bear on Earth. A close second is the brown bear, specifically the Kodiak bear. The Kodiak is a subspecies of the brown bear native to Alaska.
"The consensus among experts is that the polar bear is the largest, but some believe the Kodiak bear to be larger. Part of the dissension comes from the vagueness of the word "largest." The answer really depends on how "largest" is defined - Heaviest? Longest? Largest ever recorded?
The following data, taken from Gary Brown's Great Bear Almanac (New York, 1993), compares the average measurements of the polar and brown bear."

"Polar Bear
Average Weight of Mature Male: 900-1,500 pounds
Heaviest Recorded - 2,210 pounds
Average Length of Mature Male - 8-8.4 feet

Brown Bear
Average Weight of Mature Male: 500-900 pounds
Heaviest Recorded - 2,500+ pounds
Average Length of Mature Male - >7-10 feet"

Am I right? Am I wrong? Who knows. It's not my million dollars on the line. At the very least, they could hire me to help disambiguate their lousy dumb stupid crappy questions. That is all.