BUCKNACKT'S SORDID TAWDRY BLOG
We should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive & well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate, bier or wein in hand, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WHOO-HOO, WHAT A RIDE!!!!!!"
I moved to Virginia in the Spring of 1986, live in NOVA / Northern Virginia, and due to cultural and political factors can't see myself moving any farther South now or when I retire in about 8 years. I may change my mind if the flow of Yankees and immigration brings a political shift in the politics of the South, but really, I need to live somewhere there is a change of seasons. Of course, depending on how well we address climate change I may have to retire to Canada. I am a lover of maps, this from the +Washington Post .....
When
the U.S. economy slowed during the recession, so did one of the major
demographic shifts of the last several decades. For a brief respite, the
Northeast and Midwest stopped shedding quite so many residents to the
burgeoning Sun Belt. That trend, though — which has big consequences for politics, among other things — has been picking back up. New
census data shows the trend accelerating back to its pre-recession
pace. Florida, which actually lost more domestic movers than it gained
right after the housing bubble burst, picked up about 200,000 net new
movers between 2014 and 2015 (this number includes people who
move between states, not immigration into the United States from
abroad). Illinois, meanwhile, had a net loss of about 105,000 residents,
its largest one-year population leak in the 21st century.
The District of Columbia, perched between the North and South, has been a winner, too.
The
other big gains over the past year were Texas (170,000 new migrants),
Colorado (54,00o), and Arizona and South Carolina (both with more
than 45,000 each). Not a single state in the Northeast or Midwest
gained domestic movers over the last year.
Several
long-term trends dating as far back as the 1960s are behind this larger
pattern. The rise of air conditioning and interstate highways have made
once-sleepy (and sweltering) Southern cities more appealing. And, over
the same time, the decline of industrial jobs in the Midwest and
Northeast have pushed people out. Cheap housing during the boom years
also drove growth in states such as Arizona and Nevada.
For
states like New York, domestic migration losses are offset by new
immigration from abroad. But for many places in the Rust Belt, these
shifts will mean more empty houses and "shrinking cities," and less
political might.
Emily Badger is a reporter for Wonkblog covering urban policy. She was previously a staff writer at The Atlantic Cities.
Darla
makes graphics that tell stories at the intersection of business and
politics (especially when there are maps involved). Before joining the
Post, she worked at the Tampa Bay Times and graduated from the Missouri
School of Journalism.
INTERESTING, and of all the places I'd have no problem saying good-bye to it would be Texas. There is just something about that state. I have family I love there, have been all over the state, but there are a lot of really ignorant people in Texas, a lot of really ignorant laws and policies and there seems to be an underlying simmering of right wing racist fanaticism just waiting to explode. I could see Texas becoming the "christian sharia" center of the Western Hemisphere. Oh well, just my ramblings. Check this out from +Mother Jones .....
Inspired
by the events surrounding the recent Scottish independence referendum, a
new poll reveals an alarming number of Americans think a similar
splintering of the union is a fine idea.
The poll, organized by Reuters, found that 23.9 percent of Americans
would favor their state seceding from the rest of the country.
Residents of the Southwest and the Rockies were the most likely to voice
support, polling at 34 percent and 25 percent respectively. A plurality
of would-be secessionists reported an annual income of $25,000 or less.
A shock to no one, more Republicans than Democrats want to break free.
Among reasons for secession, a disillusionment with Washington,
coupled with a strong hatred for Obamacare ranked high. All this despite
the fact these Americans are in need of healthcare expansion the most
and studies continue to show states that have embraced the Affordable
Care Act have seen the sharpest drop in uninsured rates.
Texas in particular, which has a history of secessionist sentiment
and makes up a large portion of the Southwest, is the one determined
state that might actually have a chance at surviving without the American whole. But let's keep in mind Texas has relied heavily on their much deplored Washington.
Turns out Texas was the state that depended the most on those very
stimulus funds to plug nearly 97% of its shortfall for fiscal 2010,
according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Texas, which
crafts a budget every two years, was facing a $6.6 billion shortfall
for its 2010-2011 fiscal years. It plugged nearly all of that deficit
with $6.4 billion in Recovery Act money, allowing it to leave its $9.1
billion rainy day fund untouched.
"Texas has everything we need. We have the manufacturing, we have the oil, and we don't need them," one Texan still told Reuters.
But don't be too concerned. The same poll found 53.3 percent understand secession is a no good, bad idea.
While most Americans went to the polls on Tuesday with nothing more than the fate of some politicians and a few ballot measures at stake, residents of 11 counties in Colorado got to decide whether or not they want to secede and form their own state. (Majorities in five counties said yes.)
Current Colorado residents aren't the only ones itching to add more
stars to the American flag, even though the process is next to
impossible—after obtaining local approval, a breakaway region must also get the okay from its home state's legislature, and then Congress.
While other parts of the country have their eyes on total independence from the United States, these four regions have a more modest goal: becoming the country's 51st state.
North Colorado
Tired of the liberal bent in Denver, officials in the state's rural
(and redder) northern region got secession on the ballot. A recent state
law that doubled renewable energy requirements for suppliers in rural areas was the "last straw," according to Weld County Commissioner Sean Conway, who told ABC News,
"I think [this is] just one more example of the disconnect happening in
the state of Colorado…it isn't a Democrat or a Republican thing." If
all 11 counties were to secede, the resulting state would have a population of a little more than 350,000—slightly more people than live in Tampa, Florida.
Its largest city would be Greeley, whose mayor recently penned a column
arguing that, despite widespread perceptions to the contrary, it no longer smells like cattle.
Jefferson
Another rural offshoot, Jefferson would combine some of the
northernmost counties of California with some of the southernmost in
Oregon to form a new state dedicated to free markets and limited
government. Officials in two California counties recently voted in favor of the movement, whose website contains quotes from Thomas Jefferson, John F. Kennedy, and Mahatma Gandhi along with a link to The Jeffersonstheme song. The effort isn't particularly new—Jefferson first tried declaring itself a new state back in 1941, though the attack on Pearl Harbor led activists to abandon the cause.
Western Maryland
Nearly 62 percent of Marylanders went for Obama last year, and the state has had only one Republican governor
since Spiro Agnew left office in 1969. For residents of the state's
more conservative counties, then, it's easy to feel disenfranchised from
"the dominant ruling class," as statehood advocate Scott Strzelczyk
puts it. And that's left him looking for a way out: "If you think you
have a long list of grievances and it's been going on for decades, and
you can't get it resolved, ultimately this is what you have to do,"
Strzelczyk told the Washington Post
in September. "Otherwise you are trapped." The so-called Western
Maryland Initiative has never been tested at the ballot, and is still in
the honeymoon phase of secession planning, which includes designing T-shirts and voting on a state flag.
Baja Arizona
Not every potential breakaway state is a conservative redoubt in
waiting. After the Republican-controlled Legislature passed bills allowing police to arrest and detain someone if there's a "reasonable suspicion" that the suspect is an illegal immigrant and eliminating organ transplant coverage for Medicaid recipients, liberals in southern Pima County circulated a petition for statehood. (With nearly 1 million residents, the county—home to Tucson—is still more populous than six existing US states.) Baja drew support from both sides of the aisle, too: The county Republican chair told the Arizona Daily Star that secession would make him a state GOP leader. "I'm all for a promotion," he said.
Mississippi
Republican Chris McDaniel, who is challenging Sen. Thad Cochran and
backed by the Senate Conservatives Fund and the Club for Growth, took
the stage with a historian who says Lincoln was a Marxist.
"One
of my favorite sayings here in West Virginia is 'Thank God for
Mississippi,' because if it wasn't for Mississippi, we'd be fiftieth in
everything."
HERE is a very interesting map and report on which states are tight or loose. Not surprisingly the tight states are overwhelmingly repiglican / tea-bagger country, extremely controlling of their citizens private lives but not of their rich and corporations. The researchers mention religiosity as a causal factor in a state being tight or loose, the more religious a state's population the tighter the state. I believe the actual religious factor in this is the level of religious hypocrisy in tight and loose states. If one considers the lack of social justice in tight states and the actual teaching of the predominant religion in these states then the conclusion is the citizens preach but do not practice their religion. The result? Lower wages, greater income inequality, racism, fear, pollution, fewer workers rights, more environmental and work place disasters, less and lower quality health care and more. Those in loose states may not be (on the surface) great proselytizers but many of the rules and regulations in place in their states reflect the compassion and social justice teachings of their faith, a better way to attract people to their faith rather than the tight state mantra of 'do as I say, not as I do'. From +Mother Jones & +Scientific American .....
It
is obvious to anyone who has traveled around the United States that
cultural assumptions, behaviors, and norms vary widely. We all know, for
instance, that the South is more politically conservative than the
Northeast. And we at least vaguely assume that this is rooted in
different outlooks on life.
But why do these different outlooks exist, and correspond so closely to different regions? In a paper recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (and discussed more here),
psychologists Jesse R. Harrington and Michele J. Gelfand of the
University of Maryland propose a sweeping theory to explain this
phenomenon. Call it the theory of "tightness-looseness": The researchers
show, through analysis of anything from numbers of police per capita to
the availability of booze, that some US states are far more
"tight"—meaning that they "have many strongly enforced rules and little
tolerance for deviance." Others, meanwhile, are more "loose," meaning
that they "have few strongly enforced rules and greater tolerance for
deviance."
The 10 tightest states? Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, Oklahoma,
Tennessee, Texas, Louisiana, Kentucky, South Carolina, and North
Carolina. The 10 loosest, meanwhile, are California, Oregon, Washington,
Nevada, Maine, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Hawaii, New Hampshire, and
Vermont. (Notice a pattern here?)
The 10 tightest states? Mississippi,
Alabama, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Louisiana, Kentucky,
South Carolina, and North Carolina. (Notice a pattern here?)
Harrington and Gelfand measure a state's tightness or looseness based
on indicators such as the legality of corporal punishment in schools,
the general severity of legal sentences, access to alcohol and
availability of civil unions, level of religiosity, and the percent of
the population that is foreign. But really, that's just the beginning of
their analysis. After identifying which states are "tighter" and which
are more "loose," the researchers then trace these different outlooks to
a range of ecological or historical factors in the states' pasts (and
in many cases, lingering into their presents). For as the authors write,
tighter societies generally have had to deal with "a greater number of
ecological and historical threats, including fewer natural resources,
more natural disasters, a greater incidence of territorial threat,
higher population density, and greater pathogen prevalence."
That applies nicely to the United States. The "tight" states, it
turns out, have higher death rates from heat, storms, floods, and
lightning. (Not to mention tornadoes.) They also have higher rates of
death from influenza and pneumonia, and higher rates of HIV and a number
of other diseases. They have higher child and infant mortality. And
then there's external threat: The South, in the Civil War, was defending
its own terrain and its own way of life. Indeed, the researchers show a
very strong correlation between the percentage of slave-owning families
that a state had in the year 1860, and its "tightness" measurement
today.
It makes psychological sense, of course, that regions facing more
threats would be much more inward-looking and tougher on deviants,
because basically, they had to buckle down. They didn't have the luxury
of flowery art, creativity, and substance abuse.
Tight states have higher incarcertation and execution rates and "lower circulation of pornographic magazines."
Still not done, Harrington and Gelfand also show that their index of states "tightness" and "looseness" maps nicely on to prior analyses
of the differing personalities of people living in different US states.
Citizens of "tight" states tend to be more "conscientious," prizing
order and structure in their lives. Citizens of "loose" states tend to
be more "open," wanting to try new things and have new experiences.
Other major distinguishing factors between "tight" and "loose" states:
Tight states have higher incarceration rates and higher execution rates.
Tight states have "lower circulation of pornographic magazines."
Tight states have "more charges of employment discrimination per capita."
Tight states produce fewer patents per capita, and have far fewer "fine artists" (including "painters, illustrators, writers").
Most striking of all, the authors found "a negative and linear
relationship between tightness and happiness" among citizens. Put more
simply: People in loose states are happier.
In sum: It's a very interesting theory, and one with quite a scope.
Or as the authors put it: "tightness-looseness can account for the
divergence of substance abuse and discrimination rates between states
such as Hawaii and Ohio, reliably predicts the psychological
differences…between Colorado and Alabama, helps to explain the contrasts
in creativity and social organization between Vermont and North Dakota,
and provides some understanding concerning the dissimilarity in
insularity and resistance toward immigration between Arizona and New
York."
In these days of extreme political dysfunction, America itself is in increasing need of an explanation. Now, maybe, we have one.
Jonathan
Haidt on the psychology of politics, the emotions behind the Tea
Party—and why as a self-described centrist, he thinks a Republican
crackup may be coming.
Credit: ThinkstockE pluribus unum—“Out of many, one”—was the first official
motto of the United States, adopted by the founding fathers and
enshrined in the nation’s Great Seal in 1782. In its statement of unity,
it exemplifies the differences inherent in the United States—a fitting
description for a singular nation defined by innumerable internal
divergence. Yet, few organizing principles exist to explain these
differences, which find their expression in divergent ecologies,
histories, average personality traits, and various state outcomes. Why,
for instance, is the incidence of illicit substance use greater in
states like Hawaii, Alaska, and New Hampshire relative to Mississippi,
Ohio, and Oklahoma, but incidents of discrimination much higher in the
latter than the former? Why do states like Colorado and Connecticut
exhibit traits associated with greater impulsivity and greater
tolerance, while other states, such as Alabama and Kansas, exhibit the
opposite patterns? What might shed light on the difference in
anti-immigrant attitudes between Arizona and New York, states with
similarly large populations of illegal immigrants? In all, what does
this seemingly diverse and wide array of state-level differences have in
common?
Although the United States is often parsed on a red versus blue dichotomy, our lab suggested another framework by which to understand differences amongst the states in a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: states vary in terms of their tightness or looseness,
which captures whether states have strong norms and little tolerance
for deviance (tight) or weak norms and greater tolerance. As anyone who
has traveled widely in the United States can attest, the range of
behavior across states is incredibly diverse. Finding a singing cowboy
playing the guitar in his underwear may indeed be a hard thing to find
outside of New York City, for instance. In this study, we document not
only how states vary in tightness-looseness, but why they vary—in large part based on the ecological and historical differences between the states.
The strategy of examining how cultures vary harkens back as far as Herodotus in his classic, Histories. More recently, Geert Hofstede greatly spurred these efforts with the publication of his book Culture’s Consequences,
detailing the extent to which certain values (for instance,
collectivism versus individualism) are endorsed across nations. More
recently, we have broadened the toolkit even more and begun to study how
cultures vary beyond values. For instance, we showed
that cultures vary in the strength of social norms (i.e., tightness)
across 33 nations and demonstrated that this cultural dimension is
distinct from the various value dimensions proposed by Hofstede and
others (e.g., the GLOBE research project).
Consistent with the idea that cultural differences often arise from
differences in ecological and historical conditions, we found that tight
countries have experienced a wide range of ecological and historical
threats whereas loose countries experienced fewer. The strong norms that
characterize tight nations help humans coordinate their social action
in the face of numerous survival threats. Loose nations can ”afford”
more latitude and permissiveness because they face far fewer natural and
human made threats.
In this study, we wanted to see whether tightness, and its predictors
and outcomes, could be applied to the state level. We reasoned that
while the U.S. is generally a loose culture, we might find that there is
wide variation in tightness across the 50 states. For inspiration, we
drew on Vandello and Cohen’s classic study
which created an index of state level collectivism using archival data
and we created a new index that measures the strength of norms and
punishments across the states. Check out the map
of tightness to diagnose where your state is. Tighter states—those with
stronger rules and greater punishment for deviance—are located
primarily in the South and the Midwest, while looser states are located
in the North East, the West Coast, and some of the Mountain States. We
calculated state tightness with a composite index, compiling multiple
variables. This includes items that reflect the strength of punishments
in states, including the legality of corporal punishment in schools, the
percentage of students hit/punished in schools, the rate of executions
from 1976 to 2011, and the severity of punishment for violating laws, as
well as the degree of permissiveness or deviance tolerance in states,
which includes the ratio of dry to total counties per state and the
legality of same-sex civil unions. The index also captures the strength
of institutions that constrain behavior and enforce moral order in
states, including state-level religiosity and the percentage of the
total state population that is foreign, an indicator of diversity and
cosmopolitanism.
Like our international study, our research on the 50 states shows
that some striking similarities in why states vary in the strength of
their social norms: Tight states have more threatening ecological
conditions, including a higher incidence of natural disasters, poorer
environmental health, greater disease prevalence, and fewer natural
resources. Tight states were also found to have greater perceptions of
external threat, reflected in the desire for more national defense
spending and greater rates of military recruitment. This may have a
historical basis, as states with a large amount of slave-owning families
in 1860—those states that were “occupied” by the North and lost the
backbone of their slave-based economy following the Civil War—are
tighter. In all, we argue that ecological and historically based threats
necessitate greater coordinated action to promote collective survival.
One might use this construct to predict, for example, that states that
increasingly have natural disasters, resource threats, or even terrorism
threats might start to become tighter.
This study also helps to explain the vast differences we see in
personality across the United States. Tighter states had a higher
average of conscientiousness—a personality characteristic associated
with lower impulsivity, greater self-control, orderliness, and
conformity—relative to looser states. In contrast, looser states had
greater average openness—a personality characteristic associated with
non-traditional values and beliefs, tolerance toward difference, and
cosmopolitanism. There are many other interesting differences between
tight and loose states. Tight states have greater social organization
(less instability and greater cohesion), better indicators of
self-control (lower alcohol and illicit abuse), and lower rates of
homelessness relative to loose states. However, they also exhibited
higher incarceration rates, greater discrimination, lower creativity,
and lower happiness, as compared to loose states. Tight and loose states
each have their own advantages and disadvantages.
As you might expect, the map of state-level tightness-looseness
approximates the electoral map of the past few decades, with states
voting for conservative, Republican candidates falling on the tighter
side and states voting for the more liberal, Democratic candidates
falling on the looser side. Yet, conservatism and tightness are
distinct, with tightness being a different and broader construct.
Conservatism and liberalism are value systems that take the form of
individual beliefs, while tightness and looseness describe an external
social reality that exists independently of any one individual.
Our study is not without potential criticisms. First, it is important
to note that our results are purely correlational, and accordingly, we
can’t infer causation in the data. We have been using some other
methods, including laboratory experiments and computer modeling, to
strengthen the causal case that tightness is an adaptation to ecological
and historical threats. Second, this study was only done in the context
of the U.S. which is relatively loose, and in effect, allows for a lot
of state variation. It remains to be seen whether other tight countries
(e.g., Japan) have as much variation. S. Finally, we focused on the
state level, but clearly there is also some interesting within-state
variation that could be examined. For example, although Louisiana is a
tight state, New Orleans may be a fairly loose city with a lot of
behavioral flexibility. Likewise, although California is loose, it has
pockets of tight counties. In our case, we were interested in broad,
state level differences rather than specific localities. Other
researchers may be interested in other levels of analysis to explore the
construct.
In conclusion, E pluribus unum is an accurate descriptor of
the United States. Out of many, seemingly disparate variables, it is
important to seek a general, unifying principle to explain their
concordance. We show that tightness may be one such candidate.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)
Jesse Harrington is a doctoral student in the Department of
Psychology at the University of Maryland and National Science Foundation
Graduate Fellow Recipient.
Michele Gelfand is a Professor of
Psychology and Distinguished University Scholar Teacher at the
University of Maryland. Her work can be found at www.gelfand.umd.edu
HERE'S an interesting map of the largest (financially) companies in each state followed by a map and stats of each state's median household income and per capita income. Check out your state, and it is up to you to decide if that company's dominant presence in your state is something to be proud of or not. From the +Washington Post & +Wikipedia .....
(Note: The largest corporations in Alaska, Iowa Kansas have been
updated in the map and data to reflect corrections made by Broadview
Networks and newly updated Hoover’s data.)
A state economy is nothing without the businesses that call it home.
But those businesses are not created equally—bigger businesses naturally
have outsized influence, generating more revenue, paying more taxes and
employing more people.
The map above (larger version) identifies the
largest company by revenue in every state, according to a review of
data maintained by business research firm Hoover’s conducted by
information technology company Broadview Networks,
which provides cloud services. The businesses span quite the range:
They rake in anywhere from $1 billion to $476 billion and represent
various sectors, including energy, banking and retail. Broadview ignored
branches or foreign offices in the review and, for consistency,
excluded subsidiaries or government entities.
Databases differ on which business is the largest in each state,
however. We reviewed the Fortune 1000, as well as a mixture of
sources listed on research source Lexis Nexis, and confirmed many, but
not all, of the companies on Broadview’s list. This may be explained by
differing methodology used by the various sources in identifying a
company’s headquarters or revenue. As such, we’re duplicating
Broadview’s list below largely as is for consistency. Despite
disagreements over methodology, the data offer insight into powerhouse
businesses in each state.
Here’s the data from Broadview Networks, culled from Hoover’s:
State
City
Top company by revenue
Revenue (billions)
Alabama
Birmingham
Regions Bank
$5.89
Alaska*
Juneau
First National Bank Alaska
$2.4
Arizona
Phoenix
Avnet, Inc.
$25.45
Arkansas
Bentonville
Wal-Mart Stores
$476.29
California
San Ramon
Chevron Corporation
$228.84
Colorado
Englewood
Arrow Electronics, Inc.
$21.35
Connecticut
Fairfield
General Electric
$146.04
Delaware
Wilmington
E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Company
$36.14
Florida
Doral
World Fuel Services Corporation
$41.56
Georgia
Atlanta
Home Depot International, Inc.
$85.53
Hawaii
Honolulu
Hawaiian Electric Industries, Inc.
$3.23
Idaho
Boise
Micron Technology, Inc.
$9.07
Illinois
Decatur
Archer Daniels Midland
$89.80
Indiana
Indianapolis
WellPoint
$71.02
Iowa
Cedar Rapids
Transamerica Life Insurance Company
$19.64
Kansas
Wichita
Koch Industries, Inc.
$115
Kentucky
Louisville
Humana, Inc.
$41.31
Louisiana
Monroe
CenturyLink, Inc.
$18.09
Maine
Scarborough
Hannaford Bros. Co.
$3.98
Maryland
Bethesda
Lockheed Martin Corporation
$45.35
Massachusetts
Boston
Liberty Mutual Holding Company, Inc.
$38.50
Michigan
Detroit
General Motors
$155.42
Minnesota
Wayzata
Cargill, Inc.
$136.65
Mississippi
Laurel
Sanderson Farms, Inc.
$2.68
Missouri
St. Louis
Express Scripts Holding
$104.09
Montana
Billings
Stillwater Mining Company
$1.03
Nebraska
Omaha
Berkshire Hathaway
$182.15
Nevada
Las Vegas
Las Vegas Sands Corp.
$13.76
New Hampshire
Portsmouth
Sprague Resources LP
$4.60
New Jersey
New Brunswick
Johnson & Johnson
$71.31
New Mexico
Albuquerque
Presbyterian Healthcare Services
$2.05
New York
New York
Verizon Communications
$120.55
North Carolina
Charlotte
Bank of America
$101.69
North Dakota
Bismarck
MDU Resources Group, Inc.
$4.46
Ohio
Dublin
Cardinal Health
$101.09
Oklahoma
Oklahoma City
Love’s Travel Stops & Country Stores, Inc.
$26.09
Oregon
Beaverton
Nike, Inc.
$25.31
Pennsylvania
Chesterbrook
AmeriSourceBergen
$87.95
Rhode Island
Woonsocket
CVS Caremark
$126.76
South Carolina
Hartsville
Sonoco Products Company
$4.48
South Dakota
Sioux Falls
Sanford Health
$3.10
Tennessee
Memphis
FedEx Corporation
$44.28
Texas
Irving
Exxon Mobil
$438.25
Utah
Salt Lake City
Huntsman Corporation
$11.07
Vermont
Waterbury
Keurig Green Mountain, Inc.
$4.35
Virginia
McLean
Freddie Mac
$81.22
Washington
Issaquah
CostCo Wholesale
$105.15
West Virginia
Morgantown
West Virginia University Hospitals, Inc.
$42.73
Wisconsin
Milwaukee
Johnson Controls, Inc.
$42.73
Wyoming
Gillette
Cloud Peak Energy, Inc.
$1.39
(Source: Hoover’s, via Broadview Networks) * Note: Broadview’s original list included a government-owned
entity as Alaska’s largest company. First National Bank Alaska is the
state’s largest corporation, according to a review of a compendium of
business data on Lexis Nexis.
Maps seemed to be everywhere in 2013, a trend I like to think we encouraged along with August's 40 maps that explain the world.
Maps can be a remarkably powerful tool for understanding the world and
how it works, but they show only what you ask them to. You might
consider this, then, a collection of maps meant to inspire your inner
map nerd. I've searched far and wide for maps that can reveal and
surprise and inform in ways that the daily headlines might not, with a
careful eye for sourcing and detail. I've included a link for more
information on just about every one. Enjoy. 1. Where the world's people live, by economic status
Data source: Oak Ridge National Laboratory, World Bank. (David Whitmore, John Grimwade / National Geographic)
Those dots represent people: the brighter the dot, the more people.
The color shows their country's average income level: blue is richest
and yellow is poorest. I want to start with this map because it's a
reminder that the world is first and foremost made up of people; to me,
the best maps are primarily about showing us people, not politics or
geography. It's also a way of looking at the divisions in the world
other than by political borders; that's a theme we'll come back to. (One
caveat to this map: it doesn't show economic variations within
countries, just the national averages.) 2. How humans spread across the world
Click to enlarge. (New Scientist)
Human beings first left Africa about 60,000 years ago in a series of
waves that peopled the globe. This map shows where those waves of
migration went and when they occurred (the "40K" over Europe means
humans arrived there about 40,000 years ago). You can see that humans
have the most history in the Middle East, India and of course Africa
itself (the map does not show the much longer history of migration
within Africa). We are relative newcomers to the Americas, one of the
reasons it has not until very recently been as densely populated as
other parts of the world. 3. When the Mongols took over the known world
(Wikimedia commons)
The Mongol conquests are difficult to fathom. Although their most
important technology was the horse, they conquered much of the known
world from China to Europe, a series of wars that killed tens of
millions of people, then a substantial chunk of the world's population.
The Mongols also established what may well have been the largest empire
in history until the British surpassed them six long centuries later.
It's difficult to understate how much we still feel their impact today;
the country we know of today as Iraq has never fully recovered from the 1258 sacking of Baghdad, which until then had been a center of global wealth and knowledge. 4. When Spain and Portugal dominated the world
Click to enlarge. (Wikipedia)
This map shows the Spanish and Portuguese empires at their height.
They didn't hold all of this territory concurrently, but they were most
powerful from 1580 to 1640, when they were politically unified. Portugal
would later pick up more territory in Africa, not shown on the map. We
often forget that Spain controlled big parts of Europe, in Italy and the
Netherlands. In the Middle Ages, Spain and Portugal were so powerful
that they signed a set of treaties literally dividing up the globe
between them. They became so rich so quickly that their trade with the
Ottoman Empire, perhaps the other great imperial power of the time,
filled the Ottoman economy with more gold than it could handle and
plunged it economy into an inflationary crisis so severe that the empire never fully recovered. 5. Major shipping routes in the colonial era
This map shows British, Dutch and Spanish shipping routes from 1750
to 1800. It's been created from newly digitized logbooks of European
ships during this period. (Unfortunately, the French data is not shown.)
These lines are the contours of empire and of European colonialism,
yes, but they're also the first intimations of the global trade and
transportation system that are still with us today. This was the
flattening of the world, for better and for worse. 6. Actual European discoveries
Click to enlarge. (Bill Rankin/Radical Cartography)
Americans have mostly come around to accept that, despite what our
grade school teachers may have told us, Europeans did not "discover"
America; the original arrivals had done that 15,000 years earlier. But
Europeans did discover lots of land that had never been before seen by
human eyes. You can, embedded in this map, see successive waves of
European exploration: first the Portuguese, then the Spanish, then the
British and much later the Americans. The map's creator, the always-insightful Bill Rankin,
writes, "this map particularly underscores the maritime expertise of
Pacific Islanders. Unlike the islands of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans,
nearly all of the Pacific was settled by the 14th century." 7. How countries compare on economic inequality
Bluer countries have better income equality. Redder countries are more unequal. Data: CGDev, DIIS (Max Fisher / Washington Post)
It's not clear precisely when
the polar ice caps will melt completely. But if and when they do, sea
levels will rise by 216 feet. This map shows what the world would look
like then. Given how many people live near coastlines today, that's not
good. You can see National Geographic's wonderful, full interactive here. 9. Where the world's 30 million slaves live
Share of each country's population that is enslaved. Data source: Walk Free Global Slavery Index. (Max Fisher/Washington Post)
This is not some soft, liberal, by-modern-standards definition of
slavery. This is slavery. There are 30 million people living today as
forced laborers, forced prostitutes, child soldiers, child brides in
forced marriages or other forms of property. There are 60,000 right here in the United States
– yes, really. This map shows the proportion of each country that is
enslaved. It's highest in Mauritania, a shocking four percent, due in
part to social norms tolerating the practice. A little more than one
percent of people in India are enslaved, which translates to 14 million
Indians living as slaves today. You can see the breakdown by numbers of slaves here. 10. Our globalized economy: What it takes to make nutella
Click to enlarge. (OECD)
Put this map alongside No. 5 above, of European colonial-era shipping
routes. This is the end product of today's ultra-globalized economy. A
simple jar of Nutella requires natural resources from four continents,
vast manufacturing facilities in entirely different countries and a
supply and distribution chain that spans the globe. 11. Where populations are growing and shrinking
Blue
countries have growing populations; red countries are shrinking. Purple
are growing slowly or not at all. Data source: United Nations
Population Fund. Click to enlarge. (Max Fisher/Washington Post)
The world is in for some major demographic changes over the next
generation or two. Populations are booming in Africa, growing faster
than ever before, just as they're slowing in Asia and outright shrinking
in Japan and Eastern Europe. What's most interesting about these
population changes is what demographers say they will mean for the
world's political and economic future. For more, read: The amazing, surprising, Africa-driven demographic future of the Earth, in 9 charts. 12. Walls of the world
Source:
"Atlas des migrants en Europe. Géographie critique des politiques
migratoires européenne," Armand Colin. (Nicolas Lambert / MigrEurop)
A French non-governmental organization put together this map of the
world's major physical barriers – its most consequential walls. The red
lines indicate walls and barriers meant to prevent or control
immigration; you see a number of those particularly where there are rich
countries next to poorer countries. The green walls are mostly
political barriers, such as the 1,700-mile-long "Moroccan Wall" dividing
Morocco-occupied Western Sahara, the West Bank separation barrier and
the Korean demilitarized zone. No single map of something this
controversial and sensitive is ever going to satisfy everyone, but it's a
fascinating glimpse into why and where we choose to limit human
movement. 13. The Arctic land grab
(The Economist)
As the polar ice caps melt, it's creating something that the world
hasn't seen in a long time: vast, unclaimed territory. That territory
also happens to include oil and other natural resources, as well as
valuable trade routes. Five countries are competing to claim the new
land: Canada, Russia, Norway, Denmark and the United States. How the
Arctic land-grab resolves is so potentially important that even Canada is getting much more assertive. 14. Who wins Nobel prizes (and who doesn't)
Click to enlarge. (Max Fisher/Washington Post)
It's no secret that Europeans and Americans win most Nobel prizes.
But just how much more is pretty astounding. When I looked into how the
Nobel prizes have broken down over their century-plus history, I was
surprised by the results, which you can see here illustrated in maps and charts.
One of several facts from the data: More than one in every three Nobel
laureates is from the United States. Put another way, the United States
has 4 percent of the world's population and 34 percent of its Nobel
laureates. 15. The 17 countries that could have housing bubbles
The 17 countries identified as having potential housing bubbles. Click to enlarge. (Washington Post)
You probably remember the U.S. housing bubble burst of 2007 (it was
pretty memorable). According to a recent economic estimate, a full 17
countries could face potential housing bubbles today. Alarmingly, that
includes China, the world's second-largest economy. Read more here on the countries at risk and what could happen if they burst. 16. The happiest and least happy countries
Data source: Columbia University's World Happiness Report. Click to enlarge. (Max Fisher/Washington Post)
A recent study conducted by the United Nations and Columbia
University attempted to infer happiness measuring a series of social
metrics and survey results. Some of the results are unsurprising:
wealth, health, political stability and economic equality all appear to
coincide with happiness. But there are some real surprises in the data.
Latin America and the Caribbean are, by this measure, the happiest on
average in the world. Here's why that might be and more lessons from the data. 17. All terror attacks worldwide in 2012
Click to enlarge. (Start GTD)
This study
by the University of Maryland-based National Consortium for the Study
of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism tracked every single terrorist
attack in 2012 (the most recent year for which all data was available).
This should drive home how remarkably safe Americans are from terrorism
today. It drives home who the real victims of terrorism are. And it
reveals some of the global hotspots for terrorist activity and all the
instability and mayhem that can bring. Some readers might be surprised
to see how much terrorism there is, for example, in Nigeria, in Kenya
and most especially in eastern India, where the Maoist "Naxalite"
insurgency has been wreaking havoc for almost 50 years. THE AMERICAS 18. North America's languages, before colonialism
Click to enlarge. Data source: Ives Goddard. (Wikipedia Commons)
This a remarkable reminder of the diversity and cultural richness of
North America before it was so completely transformed by the arrival of
Europeans – to the terrible detriment of the societies that once
proliferated here. It's also a reminder that some of these societies had
spread widely and established themselves deeply, despite the common
American perception today of a mishmash of disparate and unconnected
tribes. 19. Where place names come from in the Americas
Click to enlarge. (Bill Rankin/Radical Cartography)
This map shows the origin language for place names in the Americas.
For example, the word "Texas" comes from the Caddoan language, of the
Caddo people who lived in what is today East Texas. It's a fascinating
lens into the Americas' history, of which Europeans arrived or conquered
where, as well as a legacy of the people who lived here first. Bill
Rankin, the map's creator, has this chestnut: "'Huron' derives from a French slur for the hairy natives (it shares a root with 'hirsute.')" 20. American ancestry by county
Click to enlarge. (U.S. Census Bureau)
This map, which shows the dominant ancestry in each U.S. county, is a
wonderful show of American diversity and a living museum of America's
history of immigration, voluntary as well as forced. There are countless
stories embedded in this map, and not just American stories. Much of
this immigration was driven by far-away wars, economic catastrophes,
famines or other major historical events, most especially the
trans-Atlantic slave trade. In that sense, America's diversity – like
this map showing it – is a global story. 21. What territory Mexican drug cartels control
This infographic shows which Mexican drug cartels control what
territory. It's a staggering indication of how powerful these groups
have become, as well as a glimpse into the vast cartel economy they
collectively run – one in which territory is especially important. AFRICA 22. The empires of Africa, before colonialism
Click to enlarge. (Wikipedia)
This map of indigenous African empires is not exhaustive. It spans
two thousands years from 500 B.C. to 1500 A.D., so these empires were
not concurrent; some existed centuries apart. But it shows that, like
with North America and perhaps even more so, sub-Saharan Africa was rich
with vast and powerful empires long before the Europeans arrived. (One
of the biggest, Ethiopia, was actually unusually and perhaps uniquely
successful in resisting European imperialism.) The Songhai Empire, at
its peak in the 14th century, was a global center of culture and
learning, based in the still-famous mosques of Timbuktu. 23. What Africa might look like if it had never been colonized
Click to enlarge. (Nikolaj Cyon)
Historical counterfactuals aren't much more than informed
speculation, but this one is still awfully interesting. Made by the
Swedish artist Nikolaj Cyon, the map asks what Africa would look like
today if colonialism had never happened. (Africa's present-day borders
were determined largely by colonialism, which continues to create lots
of very big problems.) Cyon drew these boundaries based on a study of
political and tribal units in 1844, the eve of Europe's "scramble for
Africa." He oriented it with south at the top to subvert the traditional
Europe-on-top orientation. You can see it here with north on the top, if that's easier for you to read. 24. The amazingly diverse languages of Africa
Data source: World Language Mapping System/Ethnologue. (Steve Huffman/WorldGeoDatasets)
This is another way of looking at and thinking about Africa's
divisions, without seeing them through the European-imposed colonial
borders that we have today. Each shade is a language; each color is a
group of languages. Yes, there are an awful lot of languages in Africa,
reflecting the continent's deep history and its diversity. You can see
that a number of the borders, such as in Kenya or Cameroon or Nigeria,
overlap big swathes of people who speak entirely different language
families. EUROPE 25. Europe, as mapped by tweets
This shows tweets made in Europe in location and language between
Oct. 23 and Nov. 30, 2012, with each language shown in a different
color. It's no surprise that more populous and richer countries have
more tweets. But what's most interesting is places where languages don't
quite line up with national borders. Look at all those German-language
tweets in the parts of the Poland that once belonged to the German
Empire. Or look at how Belgium seems to disappear, the French- and
Dutch-speakers merging into France and the Netherlands. More on the
findings here; click here for a much larger version that shows the whole world and with the languages labeled. 26. How the Barbarian Invasions reshaped Europe
(Wikimedia commons)
Europe was completely reshaped in the third, fourth and fifth
centuries. The Huns of far-Eastern Europe and Central Asia invaded
Central Europe, destroying the Gothic kingdoms. Germanic tribes
conquered much of Spain and North Africa. And, of course, the Visigoths
of southeastern Europe sacked Rome in 410 A.D. All of this destroyed the
Roman Imperial system, starting the dark ages. But it also sparked mass
migrations throughout Europe that reshaped the continent in ways that
are still with us. 27. When the Vikings spread across Europe
Click to enlarge. (Max Naylor/Wikimedia Commons)
A few hundred years later, the Vikings had their turn. We often
forget just how far they spread. Red, orange and yellow shows areas
under their control. Green shows areas where they frequently raided. The
word "Russia" actually comes from the Rus tribe, who were descendants
of Viking settlers. The "Vikings" who took over Sicily and southern
Italy were actually Normans, Vikings who had conquered parts of Northern
France, settled in, and then later sailed to Italy. Their descendants
also included William the Conqueror. 28. World War II in Europe, day by day
The Cold War taught us to think of Europe in terms of
East-versus-West, but this map shows that it's more complicated than
that. Most Europeans speak Romance languages (orange countries),
Germanic (pink) or Slavic (green), though there are some interesting
exceptions. 30. People who die trying to immigrate to Europe
Click to enlarge. Data source: UNITED For Intercultural Action (Olivier Clochard/Migrinter)
This shows where and how people die trying to migrate into Europe. In
October, when 300 would-be African immigrants to Europe died when their
boat capsized off the Italian island of Lampedusa, it was seen as a
sign of how dangerous and deadly migration paths into Europe had become. It's a result of wide economic disparity between Africa and Europe as well as European policies to prevent immigration. It's an ugly issue and, as this map shows, it kills many, many people every year. THE MIDDLE EAST 31. The Islamic states of the world, from 1450 to today
(M. Izady/Gulf 2000 Project)
This doesn't show all Muslim-majority countries – southeast Asia and
parts of Africa aren't included – but it does show the history of
political borders and nation-states in most of the Islamic world from
1450 though today. You'll notice themes of invasion and occupation, or
empires rising and falling. 32. The 1916 European treaty to carve up the Middle East
Data source: The Gulf/2000 Project and United Nations ReliefWeb (The Washington Post)
In 1916, French, British and Russian diplomats signed an agreement to
divide up the Ottoman Empire into areas of direct control and "spheres
of influence." It's easy to overstate how big of a role this treaty actually played
in designing modern Middle East borders; in many ways, those divisions
had already organically occurred during Ottoman rule. Still, it did fall
along the Middle East's problematic present-day borders, and you hear
about that a lot today, so here it is. 33. The religious lines dividing today's Middle East
Data source: The Gulf/2000 Project and United Nations ReliefWeb (The Washington Post)
Religious distinctions are deeply important for many of the problems
in today's Middle East, particularly between Sunni and Shia Muslims in
Syria and Iraq. This map shows not just that those divisions cross of
national borders, but that they're all over the place. This is one of
many reasons why these conflicts can be so persistent. 34. How the 1948 Arab-Israeli war helped lead to Israel's borders
(Wikimedia commons)
Lots of maps show Israel's territory from the 1967 Israeli-Arab war
to the present, but I thought I'd show this map from the country's 1947
founding onward. The leftmost map shows, in blue, Israel as established
by United Nations resolution in 1947. Red shows the initial Arab state;
green is the Arab state after the 1949 armistice. The center map shows
the first months of the 1948 Israeli-Arab war and the advance of Arab
armies to retake what they saw as rightful Arab land. The right-most map
shows the advance of Israeli armies in the latter half of that war. At
the end of fighting, Israel occupied much of what is considered Israeli
land today. ASIA 35. Percentage of Indian homes with toilets
Click to enlarge. Data source: Indian census, 2011 (Avinash Celestine / Data Stories)
India's ongoing rise as a new economic powerhouse continues to be an
amazing story. But much of the world's second-most-populous country
still lives in poverty or in otherwise difficult conditions. This map, created from census data
by the designer Avinash Celestine, shows what percentage of families in
each district have a toilet in their homes. As you can see, it's less
than half in huge swathes of the country, a reminder of how far India
still has to go. 36. The languages of China and the surrounding area
Each
shade is a different language; each color is a language group. Click to
enlarge. Larger version linked below. (Steve Huffman / World
GeoDatasets)
This map, for me, is a wonderful way to observe China's very long
history of expansion and consolidation. Remember that each shade is a
different language. Even after thousands of years, Chinese itself
remains remarkably diverse, particularly in the country's dialect-rich
southeast. And there are many entirely different language families:
Mongolian in the north; the Turkic language Uighur in the West and; in
southern Guangxi province, the Zhuang language that's closer to Thai.
This is another of Steve Huffman's amazing creations; see a larger version here. 37. The WWII firebombing of Japan
Click to enlarge.
This map shows each Japanese city that was bombed during World War
II, an American city of equivalent size, and the percentage of the city
estimated destroyed by the bombings. All Americans learn about the two
atomic bombs the U.S. dropped on Japan at the end of the war, and we're
starting to become more aware of the firebombing campaigns that wiped
out much of Germany, including civilians. But we are nowhere near
confronting the U.S. firebombing of Japan, which killed several times as
many people as the atomic bombs and devastated Japan's
wooden-constructed cities. By the time the war ended, 30 percent of the
residents in Japan's largest 60 cities were homeless. 38. Territorial claims in the South China Sea
It's no secret that China claims islands and maritime territory in
the South China Sea that other countries see as theirs. But this map
shows just how assertive China's claim is – Beijing claims everything in
red, a giant scoop of an area way, way beyond Chinese soil. China's
neighbors are very, very conscious of feeling a bit bullied, and this
map shows why. 39. The naval firepower in the Pacific
Click to enlarge. (Cameron Tulk)
The Pacific Ocean, after being set on fire by World War II, is still
heavily militarized. Japan, even though its U.S.-imposed constitution
bans warfare and codifies pacifism, still has a pretty substantial navy.
So does Russia, a legacy of the Cold War. And China's is, of course,
growing substantially. All of this combines with rising nationalism in
East Asia, China's not-misguided fear that the United States is
attempting to contain them and growing concern about China itself. 40. Every airline flight in the world over 24 hours
This map shows every airline flight around the world during a single
24-hour day, looped endlessly. To me, it's the perfect way to end. Even
with no borders, you can still see so much of how the world is shaped.
Where people are connected and now, where they are wealthier and not,
how and where people have made social and economic connections and how
deep they go.
