In Borazjan we love the satrap (boo boo boo)
Now we all did what we could do
Now '79 doesn't bother me..
Does Tehran now worry you?
Tell the truth.
1: Dude! It's Prison Break in case you're stuck in 1896!
California is France? How wondrously perfect.
And Louisiana, Indonesia. Appropriate in a macabre way.
5 -- Would it help you, Cala, to sing about movin' to Tunisia soon, going to be a dental floss tycoon?
Or something a little more traditional:
I ride an old paint, I lead and old Dan
I'm going to Tunisia to throw a houlihan
Massachusetts as Belgium seems odd to me.
Piffle. The only map that matters.
Russia = New Jersey.
People will probably start asking for per capita comparisons soon, but that misses the point of the map, in a way. What other data would be worth showing this way? Infant mortality maybe.
Even without the dental floss?
Goodnight from 'New Zealand'
And yet, just over 1 in 10 people live below the poverty line, which is already below any reasonable standard of living...
People will probably start asking for per capita comparisons soon
Yup. fourth comment.
Wot's so terrible about wanting to see the same thing per capita?
Canada is bigger than Texas. I guess I have to give them that.
In the new Canadian Texas, schoolchildren learn of the epic battle of one grad student to bring her soulmate into the then-un-internationalized US. "Remember the Calamo!" they say.
shivbunny says Texas is too damn hot and there's no reason anyone should have settled somewhere where the spiders are big enough to eat you and it's a thousand degrees.
The devil Great Satan fools with the best laid plans.
The only good Texan is a Dead Texan.
James McMurtry sings of the settlers of Texas, "wagon must have lost a wheel, or they lacked ambition."
they lacked ambition.
My paternal grandparents taught me this about the settlers of the Great Plains. If you didn't make it all the way west, it was because you lacked the will.
Huh, the McMurtry song is on YouTube; probably not to everyone's taste.
Wot's so terrible about wanting to see the same thing per capita?
Nothing. It's just a mistake to think that the raw data is somehow in error or misleading. The point of the original map was to show how many countries could fit in to the U.S. (so to speak [ATM]), which is an interesting thing to find out. A per capita map wouldn't show that.
26: Weird how McMurtry's able to play his gitter without an amp in the middle of the field. I guess the new Canadian Texas, in addition to UHC, has wireless electricity.
Those wily Canexans.
The best part of that video is how much he obviously hates making a video.
Thanks for the link to the video, ogged. I'd only ever heard Robert Earl Keen's version of that song, which is more melodic and a bit more affectionate than the original. I still like the cover, but the lyrics and the presentation always did seem a bit at odds with one another.
23: thats because the Kranky ones keep starting wars.
HOW the fuck is ohio bigger than NY??
srsly blow my mind.
32: It's not. Brazil's economy is about twice the size of Australia's (with almost 10 times the population).
I think the source of yoyo's puzzlement is that Ohio's economy is larger than New York's.
According to the figures given with the map, that is.
Which seem to be inaccurate, at least for Brazil.
Yeah, thanks for telling Texans about James McMurtry.
As mentioned in comments at Apo's there is some pretty large (understatement) rounding going on.
e.g.
Ohio's GDP is only about 60% of Australia's
Pennsylvania only about 75% the Netherlands
Illinois only about 70% of Mexico, etc.
That's some pretty inaccurate set of comparisons being represented on that map. Even leaving aside absurdities like the one mentioned by teofilo in 34.
New Jersey at approx 50% of Russia, etc.
it's pretty damn stupid.
One wonders what year the map was created in. A lot of the "found via" pages say that the figures accompanying the map now were not the ones used to create it. Certainly the GDP of Russia has varied wildly in the last five or ten years.
And Hong Kong hasn't been a country since it went back to China in 1997, and the Czech Republic didn't split from Slovakia until 1993.
Well, first of all, you'd want to use a consistent set of data, and be more careful about your rounding. But what would really be interesting would be to multiply each countries gdp by some factor that represents the currency difference.
If a less than stellar execution, it's fascinating concept.
"shivbunny says Texas is too damn hot and there's no reason anyone should have settled somewhere where the spiders are big enough to eat you and it's a thousand degrees."
"I believe that, if I held title to Hell and Texas, I would live in Hell and rent out Texas".
re: 42
'Be more careful in rounding' s/b 'not be 100% out'
The consistency with which the map over-represents the GDP of the various US states with respect to their 'partner' countries is pretty suspect.
Still, it's pretty funny to think about all the saber-rattling over the existential threat to our way of life posed by Alabama.
I don't know what's going on with that map. I thought it might be understating foreign GDP by using PPP rates or something. But actually, it just looks like they're consistently about 50% too high on gross state product (which they keep calling GDP which it isn't). I am guessing that they've taken value-added figures and confused them with GSP.
If it was indeed made in the mid '90s, when the dollar was exceptionally strong, that could account for some of the discrepancy.
Okay, having compared the numbers (sources here and here), part of the problem is too clumped a distribution in the US. For instance, about six or seven states fall between Switzerland and the Netherlands, several more fall between Greece and South Africa, etc. It gets difficult to use 50 different countries in short order.
However, California is much closer to Italy (#7) than France (#6).
The clumping is a problem, but the more significant underlying inaccuracy is the State data originally used; it's just way off.
You guys are no fun. How is Alabama like Iran?
51 -- How is Alabama unlike Iran?
46 -- I was thinking about this on my way out of the house this morning. Many years ago, before I lived here, a relatively small group of armed young men from Alabama came trooping through my neighborhood, on their way to DC, hoping to capture the city and impose their values. Fortunately, there were a number of Pennsylvanains camped in my back yard, and the backyards of the adjoining houses. Shots were exchanged, some blood was shed, and the Alabamans withdrew.
...inaccuracy is the State data originally used; it's just way off.
Oops. Their just way off. Or is it 'there' just way off?
Come on Charley, a little rebellion now and then is a good thing.
Are you talking about Early?
Yes, Will. I live very close to the site of Ft. Simmons, and the trench connecting it to Ft. Bayard ran through my yard. Slavery was legal then, of course, but I strongly doubt that the Quaker farmers who owned my little piece of ground had any.
I'm fine with a little rebellion in favor of the Rights of Man. In favor of the rights of men to own other men? Not so much.
And since when has Alabama not been an existential threat to our way of life?
55:
The only ownership level that I am interested in is spelled out in Troxel v. Granville.
"We'll try to stay serene and calm
When Alabama gets the bomb."
