It's a different state east of the Cascades
Guess what the highest tax bracket in the other Washington is. Hint: it's lower than $50 thou.
$49,999? No wait. I saw this strategy on The Price is Right: $1?
Did I win the washing machine?
6: Only when using the "Delicates" setting, because I'm a fragile orchid.
I was wondering the other day about the answer to the following question: Which US state contains the greatest range of intra-state cultural difference?
Oregon and Washington are frontrunners, in that the Eastern and Western parts of those states are incredibly different. Eastern and Western PA are pretty different. California has a broad range of places, obviously. But my answer would be New York state: There is the NYC metropolitan area, and then, once you get 100 miles or so from the city, a large part of the state where people have a completely different accent, cultural background, and are just part of an entirely separate cultural geography.
I bet every state contains the full range of cultural differences. Even the little town in Friday Night Lights has it's vegetarian lesbians.
...in somewhat substantial numbers, too. Not just token representatives.
1: Only a partial explanation as over 80% of Washington's population lives west of the Cascades and nearly 3/4 in the Puget Sound area.
NYC alone contains vast cultural differences.
Which US state contains the greatest range of intra-state cultural difference?
The road from Arlington County, Virginia, to Lee County, Virginia, is very long.
I contain multitudes vast cultural differences.
Well, right, there are individuals everywhere. But just because there are latte sipping vegans in South Carolina or evangelicals who wear cowboy hats in Hollywood doesn't mean we can't make useful generalizations about cultural geography. People, in the aggregate, really do speak, think, act, pray etc., in different regions of the US.
Florida has to be in this contest.
13: Yeah, I was going to say Montgomery to Garrett counties in Maryland, but I think Virgina has it beat.
15: Right, this is where I want those detailed OKCupid data/maps.
The spread from left anarchists in Missoula Co. to right anarchists in neighboring Ravalli Co. is wide, if short.
Seattle is mostly a rainy hippie place with good coffee. But the suburbs (Tacoma, Olympia) are mostly military families and semi-conservative suburban types. And the east suburbs are rich, aloof conservative libertarian types. And, yes, east of the Cascades are the rural libertarian conservative types.
One of our three ballot initiatives wants to remove the state sales tax on alcohol. Another wants to reduce the state sales tax overall. Before long, they're going to be wanting the state to give us money when we buy things.
People, in the aggregate, really do speak, think, act, pray etc., in different regions of the US.
I really think this is over-emphasized. Different regions have wildly different extremes, and people with extreme beliefs are very squeaky and dominate disproportionately.
But in general, if you loosely categorized people into With Bush or With The Terrorists, I bet it ranges from 60-40 to 40-60 everywhere.
22: Well, if you what you mean by "With the Terrorists" is voted for Obama, then the range is actually much greater.
22 -- Make it 70-30, and I'm in. My point, argued tiresomely in the other thread, is that unified government lets the 30 where I live use the 70 where you live to stifle innovation AQ the majority.
||
Important Slut-o-ween update.
I am mildly embarrassed to say that I found this through Su//ivan.
|>
Oh dear. I kind of like the one model who has the same look on his face and gesture with every unbelievable costume.
25 is totally hilarious. 26 isn't.
8
I was wondering the other day about the answer to the following question: Which US state contains the greatest range of intra-state cultural difference?
I'm pretty sure we've discussed this, and relatively recently, but I can't find a link to it.
I'd say New York state is worth mentioning even if it's not actually the biggest gradient geographically, or in degrees of political difference, because of how many there are. Rural upstate New York, urban upstate New York, New York City, Long Island and/or Westchester - that's at least four separate cultures there when most states have only two.
same look on his face and gesture with every unbelievable costume.
What I want to see is the look on the Chinese sweatshop workers who have to put these together. They must think Americans are all crazy.
29. Didn't say they were funny, Heebie. More ridiculous that anyone would stock such junk, let alone buy it.
30: I'd say five -- there's two different rural NYs: if you go straight north from the city you're in New England, sort of Western Vermont, but once you head out west it's not New Englandy at all.
Texas is in the running, of course, though it's so damn big and geographically diverse that it's silly that it's one glorious republic state anyway.
The Nemo costume in 26 is flat out crazy. If you're that desperate to have a sexy costume, just go with the French maid already.
35: It gets into appealingly absurd, though. That and the guitar. I'd kind of like a catalog of "Sexy [Noun]" costumes: sexy frying pan! sexy cuttlefish! sexy old-fashioned stationwagon with surfboard strapped to the top! sexy sedimentary rock formation!
That's it! I'll dress as a sexy catalog of absurd sexy costume ideas!
sexy sedimentary rock formation!
Metamorphic makes more sense. At least then you know that, at one time, it was totally hot.
36. It seems "Sexy" means short skirt and cleavage, which is fine if one is a model. On some body types, not teh sexy.
38: THAT KIND OF COMMENT CAN BE VERY HURTFUL.
40: For what it's worth (and this might be a personal quirk), I find riprap very hott.
I don't see what's wrong with the sexy Vader costume. I mean, if you walked into a bondage club and saw that, you'd be all "Awesome! Nerds FTW!". It's all context.
Maybe I should dress as rip-rap some year.
Besides, metamorphism can technically occur through pressure alone. Now, your igneous rocks, hubba hubba.
The state you are most familiar with seems to have the largest range of cultural subcategories just because you've seen them and been obliged to care. For a lifelong West Coaster, New Yorkers are pretty much the same (and I have relatives up and down state; I know they think they're different.)
I find riprap very hott.
Tell it sister. Hip hop is for punks.
43.last: That sounds weird to me. I can see saying that "there are all sorts of different Californians, too -- farm people, and immigrant Angelenos, and urban San Franciscans, and suburban types from every sitcom, you're just not familiar with the different types." And that'd probably be fair.
But saying that there's no real difference between, say, NYC and small towns in the Finger Lakes region?
I'm a lifelong West Coaster (though I've spent a lot of time in NY, both NYC and western) and 43 seems wrong to me. For one thing, people from NYC and people from say, Elmira have completely, radically different accents. I notice the difference much more than, say, between people from LA and Sacramento.
43.1: Good point. I fail.
On the sexy sedimentary rock front, though, someone should dress as "Sexy Dolomite".
46: All those Rochester-type Erie-side folks sound like they're from Chicago.
For one thing, people from NYC and people from say, Elmira have completely, radically different accents.
The janitor/maintenance guy in the building I worked in in grad school (in Ith/aca) totally sounded like a rural Kentuckian to me.
¦¦
Filed under Spanish Nicknames that Really Jump Off the Page for the Uninitiated Native English Speaker: "Kike" (alternate spellings "Kiké" and "Quique") for Enrique.
¦>
50: I've run into that one for real -- I'd been hearing it (pronounced Kee-kay) for a while without thinking about it, and then saw it written and boggled.
51: Wait, I ran into it for real, too. Are you saying your experience is more authentic than mine? Sheesh, New Yorkers...
When it happened to me, it was gritty.
48: 46: All those Rochester-type Erie-side folks sound like they're from Chicago.
On the sexy sedimentary rock front, though, someone should dress as "Sexy Dolomite".
Nah, stick with metamorphic: Cummingtonite. or mineral: Analbite.
52: There's a broken light on Broadway for every ♥ in Virginia.
53 made me smile. More LB humor!
Political notes of the night:
1. Got home to yet more mailers. I'm getting a tsunami this year. (Oddly enough, very little in Sestak v. Toomey, though.) Today's included one from Michigan Gov. Granholm (?!) whom I somehow thought was out of office. She wants me to give money to EMILY'S List so the Republicans don't Win Big. She's apparently fond of capitalization.
2. Several calls on my landline that I haven't bothered to pick up. I'm assuming Provo, UT, has nothing helpful to tell me about the election.
3. The big talking point at present seems to be that X Democrat has been in power for X period of time and WE HAVE LOST JOBS. Yeah, for sure. It's a brutal recession, though I have (knock wood) been fairly buffered from it. But this is really the level of debate? We had a recession while this little House Rep was in power and somehow she's to blame for hundreds of thousands of people being out of work? I could think of a few more likely candidates, myself.
57: The big talk in politics here is that Barry O.'s coming to campaign for Perriello on Friday (local Tea Party counter-protest? of course there's one planned!), and when I say "big talk" I mean most of the people seem worried about the effects of a presidential motorcade on traffic at 5pm on a Friday.
I'm assuming Provo, UT, has nothing helpful to tell me about the election.
Lots of phone work gets outsourced to call centers up here. In that 50 mile stretch from Provo to Salt Lake is BYU, Utah Valley State College, University of Utah, as well as multiple Salt Lake Community College campuses. Loads of accent neutral students who'll work for cheap and many of them are returned LDS missionaries with at least a conversational grasp of a second language.
50: Oh wait, really? Just today I saw that, two doors down, there's a label that says "KIKE" in three-inch letters, and I was like whoa. But I live in a mostly Spanish-speaking neighborhood. Huh!
They must think Americans are all crazy.
You can pretty much assume they already did.
My town has two weird ones.
Good: Allow the board of selectmen to allow three liquor stores instead of 3 beer and wine stores. (previously dry).
Weird: Non-binding resolution on state rep's position to put forward on some Middle East problem. (I don't think that's in my precinct.)
There are real differences between the different parts of NY state, but I don't think they're bigger than the differences between parts of CA. I suspect that there are more mutually-incomprehensible language regions in non-urban CA, for instance. (I may well just not know about the French-speaking regions of NY.)
My sense of the biggity of CA went way way up during a series of basically agricultural tours. There are a lot of ethnically different regions, and they've only been here a hundred years.
Other argument: every wierd group in NY sent settlers to CA, where they are still cranky and different, but there hasn't been time or a resource gradient pulling CA-derived weirdness back into NY. Well, except for artists.
There was a funny TDS bit recently about the vast cultural differences between northern and southern Delaware.
64: As those things go, it is pretty steep. Three counties, Obama vote % north to south: 70, 55, 45.