Beer myopia

If you type "top ten" or "world's most popular" into a search engine on any topic, the first results you usually get are from WikiAnswers and Yahoo! Answers. Some of them are quite amusing. Most seem to be written by teenagers in between doing their homework online and are invariably US-centric, such as a list of the world's most popular spectator sports that includes volleyball and hockey but omits cricket.

USA Today is not a open forum website nor I presume is it written by teenagers after they get home from school. It's a mass circulation newspaper that sells a couple of million copies in the US and internationally every day. They've just published a list of the 10 best beer cities in the world.

Five of the ten are in North America and the other five are all places that American tourists are likely to go. So Denver's on the list but not Bamberg, Düsseldorf or Cologne. I'm not even sure they deserve any credit for recommending the Augustinerkeller beer garden rather than the Hofbräuhaus in Munich as the latter tourist trap is very useful in keeping the coach party hordes away from one of the most idyllic places to drink beer imaginable.