Lots of brave guesses. “How bust each state is relative to the Fed” is not true – the most bankrupt states are outside the orange zone and run by liberals. “Percentage of Americans who can find America on a map of the world” and “states with the highest number of MBAs per capita” both suggest higher education standards in Arkansas and West Virginia than Colorado or Connecticut, which sounds sort of unlikely.
Why? Partly because it’s true. But also because there is a popular image (Tom Lehrer, Randy Newman, Warren Zevon) of Southern and Appalachian regions as borderline Third World or atavistic. Hence such suggestions as: “Listening to heavy metal = fornicating with the devil / Obama is the anti-christ / Possum fat and lye are two major food groups / Readin’ and writin’ is for cissies and uppity city folk”; “loving big trucks”; “number of folks w/o indoor plumbing”; and, cruelest of all, “percentage of the people in each state who’ve married their cousins”. Note, by the way, that Georgia and the Carolinas do not make it into the orange Jesus/Klansman-shaped region.
By way of balance, we have “It is a map of some of the most gentlemanly, kindest, most hospitable, and soft-spoken people you’ll find anywhere in the world”. Having been to the majority of the 30%+ states – and knowing one very well – I’m inclined to agree (apart from the retard who shot at me with a .22 calibre rifle while I was swimming in a pond in Missouri once). But sadly, civility and charm do not end up in official statistics.
The correct answer is prevalence of obesity among adults. (The proportion of adults who are obese varies from 18.6% in Colorado to 34.4% in Mississippi. In 2009, nine states had obesity rates of 30% or more, compared with none in 2000.) This was spotted by Mr Webb, who wins a lifetime’s supply of Crisco-flavour polyunsaturated Krispy Kreme donuts glazed with extra corn syrup.
I thought it was the illiteracy rate. Governor Clinton was always proud that he had raised his state from 50th to 49th in the US education league. The kids now had pencils rather than having to write with sticks in the mud.
You make a distinction between liberals and conservatives in the US and A.
There is no significant difference between liberal and conservative US presidents when it comes to creating wars, bombing the innocent and proclaiming Americanism, the creed that dare not speak its name.
Clinton was the most bellicose president of the 20th century. But most people don’t know what that means – all over the US and A. Obama continues the trend as the Calvin Klein warmaker – he MIGHT just want peace, he MIGHT just want equality. But he doesn’t. The bombs and bullets fly at night all over Afghanistan and his own special war theatre, Pakistan. And in Guantanamo, the gulag chugs along with show trials.
I lived in Kansas City for 5 years. Ugh, I shudder at the memory. My friends asked why I didn’t have a girlfriend, I said come down and look around. These girls were either the size of refrigerators, Jesus-happy or put HK girls to shame on the materialistic score card.
I am surprised that the maximum figure is only 34.4%. Perhaps I am too used to being amongst relatively svelte HK people, but the last time I was in the US (NY and CA in 2007), nearly every single man and woman looked obese. If you’d told me that at least 70% of the population in those two states were NOT obese, I’d have directed you to the nearest lunatic asylum.
So I call a fake – this map really IS the percentage of people who’ve married their cousins in each state.
Well I jus’ was thankin’ tha’ Wit, Erudtion and the Scintillation of the Syncopation of the Question would lead us to Conclude tha’ ma Answer was Entirely and Spare-Tyre-ly, Correct: theyse all fat about the bust. So there.
If the South wouda won, we’d a had it made