Wednesday, November 07, 2012

DIVIDING UP THE UNITED STATES

For some time, I have been superficially fascinated with the concept of dividing up the United States into smaller, more rationally defined entities.  Hoosierdaddy's comment on a previous post regarding divvying up the Red States and Blue States rekindled my interest in the subject.  So here are some various models for doing this, and some of them are quite amazing!

Here is one based upon the analysis of over 210 million public Facebook profiles regarding connnection networks.  The full article can be found here, but the graphic is very informative.

Finalmap
 
 
 
Here is one based on regions
 
 
 
 
Here is a map based on dialect
 



Here is one of the United States of Canada and Jesusland
 
 
Here's what a Russian professor predicts
 
 
 
An economic commentary map
 
 
And possibly the one that makes the most sense - Electoral Votes - but I do not see an easy geographical resolution to this one
 
Final Map
 
And here is what I think that we should go with - The Nine Nations of North America
 
File:Ninenations.PNG

Garreau's proposal as explained at Wikipedia
 

The Nine Nations
Approximate map of the Nine Nations of North America with each of their capitals

 

 

 

 


21 comments:

Nostradumbass said...

I predict you will get many comments on this excellent post.

Dr S said...

I like your prediction! And thanks for your support.

Sloping Forehead said...

Only two so far. Where's all them comments, Nostra?

DES said...

Remember, Nostra has the 'long view' so we may have to wait a few centuries for the comments to roll in!

Sick Sigma Sez said...

Back in 1963 prayer was banned in public schools, followed in that decade by Great Society programs that subsidized out-of-wedlock child bearing. In 1973 unborn baby murder on demand was legalized. Now we have state after state legalizing ghey marriage. And so it has gone, decade after decade of this country turning its back on the God of the Bible. Now we have reached the tipping point where God has turned his back on America, no longer in the divine view a shining city on a hill, but a moral and intellectual slum not worthy of His patronage.

So are all of us going to sit back and take this effing crap? No way! (h/t Howard Beales) The virtuous and productive among us will find a way to separate ourselves from the insanity of liberalism, destroyer of mind, body, and spirit. We will escape the asylum by kicking the Feds out of our lives and pocketbooks, and I can think of no better start than for virtuous and productive states to tell Obama to stick his Obamacare where the sun don’t shine.

hoosierdaddy said...

SSS - I am not sure whether to put you into the +3 sigma group or the -3 sigma group. Considering that you would appear to be fond of the retrograde, I guess it will have to be -3 :-)

Ava G. said...

The states can obstruct Obamacare enough along the way that it will take years to fully implement, if at all.

Bizzy Brain said...

Loving it here in Stayathomia! Lol! Great name!

Dr S said...

Bizzy - I too love some of the names, Stayathomia in particular. I am a bit disappointed that we live in the Empty Quarter :-(

Sick Sigma Sez said...

I believe Six Sigma refers to the 6th standard deviation. It has something to do with the error rate achieved when the Six Sigma program is successfully implemented. They tried it when I was with the Feds and again while with the State in my current agency. The program quietly went away in both places when they realized the chances of a Six Sigma program being successfully implemented in government were, well, in the six sigma range, which for those not familiar with the number is 99.99967% error free processes or products.

Six Sigma Sez said...

To clarify the 99.99967% statement, that number means 3.4 parts per million defects or less. That 3.4 chances in a million is what the likelihood would be of government successfully implementing six sigma.

Bizzy Brain said...

Regarding the fact that almost seven million fewer whites voted in 2012 than 2008, it appears that the reason Obama won was that many conservatives disliked Romney so much that they preferred to have Obamacare, preferred to have the contraceptive mandate, preferred to have the destruction of the private health insurance industry and of the private medical care industry leading to outright socialized medicine, preferred to have an annual trillion dollar increase in the deficit, preferred to have a president allied with and actively facilitating the spread of jihadist regimes in the Mideast, than to have Romney as president. It appears that the most terrible event in the history of this country, the final destruction of the constitutional American Republic, was brought about by conservatives for whom McCain was conservative enough, but Romney was not conservative enough.

hoosierdaddy said...

Bizzy - deal with it!

DES said...

SSS - to pick a nit. The six sigma is indeed refering to standard deviations, but not to the tail of a normal distribution that is beyond the tail as six ó but rather moving the mean of the distribution to the level of the sixth standard deviation. Not really too much difference since they both give percentages that are very very low. And the 99.9967that you refer to is indeed the correct percentage, with the caveat that the long term errors will be 0.5 sigma less.

And yes, the government won't have any programs like that! :-)

Anon said...

Jesusland - I love it! And look how well it aligns with the electoral map.

Bizzy Brain said...

Hoosier, it WILL be dealt with. Lol! Here’s a scenario I can visualize. Over time, certain states begin to assert, in relatively small and discrete ways, their independence from the federal government, for example, refusing to obey certain federal mandates, and the federal government, fiscally hamstrung by its reckless spending policies and gradually losing legitimacy, loses the authority and will to force those states to obey. As this process gradually progresses, people who want to be free from the United Socialist States of America move to the more independent states, and people who oppose such independence move to the obedient states. Ultimately, over a period of time that we cannot predict, the two nations would be sufficiently geographically separated that actual secession would become a possibility.

Jeremiah Jr. said...

All is lost when you have brainless cyphers voting for tyranny in order to get a few bucks worth of contaceptives for free.

Phil L. said...

No one's going to deal with anything, Biz, until the beta appeasers in the Republican party, like House Speaker Boner (sic), are gotten rid of and replaced with strong and virtuous men of courage and conservatve conviction.

DES said...

Bizzy - that is not a too-far-out scenario. A current example is Colorado and the MJ laws - state conflicts with federal and my guess is the state will virtually ignore the federal. Could be the beginning of such a movement.

Re Republicans - as Lindsey Graham notably said " We're not generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long term." So Lindsy, how's that working out for you?

Bizzy Brain said...

A necessary part of the process is ridding the party of the Lindsey Graham's.

hoosierdaddy said...

Amen to that one Bizzy. The current Republican party bears almost no resemblance of the party of Lincoln or Eisenhouer, or even Nixon for that matter.