From Pleated Jeans, where you’ll find the supporting data (click to enlarge):
You suck
January 30, 2011 • 10:45 am
Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
Kentucky – Ken Ham
Sound like North Dakota is the place to be… their worst shame is their ugly residents so if you are ugly, you’ll fit right in and if you’re beautiful you’ll be pretty successful!
You know the old joke:
What do you call a pretty girl in North Dakota?
A tourist.
Oh, and there’s this one, too:
What do you call a tree in North Dakota?
A telephone pole.
I beg to differ with the brush that North Dakota’s tarred with, and the basis for tarring Ohio. Meanwhile looking at others…
What does “worst abortion” mean (state above NY – sorry my US geography is v hazy!). Oh and Jerry, I’m afraid Spurs are being stuffed 4-0 by Fulham in the Cup… (translation available for this who are hazy about British Soccerball
That’s Delaware, and it’s E of Maryland, not above NY.
You’re correct, your geography is hazy. The state above NY is called Canada. The state with the highest abortion rate is Delaware. 😉
Canada’s a state now? I always suspected it.
They should ship women from Delaware to Vermont! 🙂
Tennessee, corruption? What? I thought Illinois had that pretty well locked. Let’s get those numbers up!
Did I miss something? Since when are “Abortion”, “Porn Usage”, and “Nerdiest State” bad things?
Not to mention “Oldest state”. 🙂
Not to mention bestiality… not really, but is the the best (worst) they could come up with for my state?
Yeah, I think they could have come up with something better (worse).
On the other hand, it does seem to attract the foreign tourists, so maybe not.
I might suggest software.
Highest rate of ‘porn usage’ in Utah?!?! Gotta love that one!
Mormons can’t have many under aged wives anymore so what’s a healthy Mormon man to do?
At least porn saves them from our badness (Louisiana).
Yeah. Most of my family is LDS (Mormon). Those people have got to be the MOST sexually repressed people on the planet. Well, western hemisphere, anyway. Sex is NOT to be enjoyed. ONLY for making babies – that is, fulfilling The Lord’s Wonderful Plan by allowing unborn souls to come to Earth to be tested…
Sex is SO stigmatized in that religion, I’m sure a good portion of that porn usage is married couples who are too embarrassed to do anything fun in the bedroom.
I remember when that study came out showing that Utah had the highest rate of porn usage. Turned out it was based on highest revenue for paid porn sites. The conclusion most drawn about that was ‘it’s because they’re too stupid to find the free porn’.
Well, they need to get “in and out” quickly lest they be caught so maybe a subscription makes sense. Of course, there’s the problem of the credit card bill but I’m guessing a good Mormon man doesn’t let his wife see that.
Going to find a rock to crawl under now.
Sorry to quibble, but in several cases the map uses superlatives to indicate that someplace is “the worst”. Excuse me, but if Michigan has the most binge drinking, or South Carolina has the most mobile homes, wouldn’t that make them “the best” in those respective categories?
Uh, that’s Wisconsin with the binge drinking. We (MI) won for unemployment…
Seems to me that you’d want to go to Oklahoma to get a girlfriend, then head to Arizona.
par-TAY!
Shame is in the eye of the beholder.
There’s a website called Statemaster that allows you to get all sorts of fun facts for the states, which you can then play around with. My favorite fact is that there is an extremely significant positive correlation between the proportion of adults in a state that are obese and the proportion that voted for McCain in 2008.
Some of those categories dont make sense. “Taxes” for example, are just the price we pay for government services. Depending on what services youre getting for your dollar, paying more taxes can be a good thing. Would you rather pay $1000 and get a Chevette, or pay $1500 and get a Mercedes? I’d pay the $1500.
I’m with you on your general point, but having spent time in New Jersey, they’re definitely not getting the Mercedes for their money.
Also “corporate taxes”. Does that mean they’re high, or low? I honestly don’t know without knowing the political leanings of the author.
Have to envy Ohio, New Hampshire, and Utah. (Wow, Washington!) And gee, Iowa sounds tempting for those of us who’d like to live to be “old.”
I also wonder how they measured Maine’s “dumb”-ness quotient. My understanding is that several states in the Deep South consistently bring up the rear, nationally, in educational-achievement stats. I haven’t heard that Maine has similar problems.
As for us Minnesotans, I guess I think there are more significant downsides to living here than the dire tornado threat….
Oh, I see: Maine has the “lowest average SAT score.”
Something tells me that that has more to do with the state’s 92% participation rate than the actual capacity of the populace. If South Carolina got more than two-thirds of its kids to the testing station, methinks the rankings might turn out differently.
Washington had the 4 arrests in 2010 because they actually DO arrest people for it. In places like West Virginia and Kentucky it is considered normal behavior.
Ohio = nerdiest state “based on highest number of library visits per capita (6.9)”?? Duh, that’s where the *free movies* are. And the meth cookbooks, I mean, chemistry texts. Believe me, Ohioans aren’t going to the library for book larnin’.
Ohio public libraries are hangouts for the homeless folks.
Yeah, well, keep in mind that public libraries are a factor that helps keep a barrier between sanity and the likes of Sarah Palin, and help to buffer vs. class advantage. 106 of the 1,679 public libraries that Andrew Carnegie built in the US, 1889-1919, are in Ohio (Indiana has the most). Nearly half are still operating. Then, they came because they couldn’t just go out and buy their own books and magazines like the landed gentry. Now, in addition to that they come to avail themselves of the internet because they don’t have their own laptops and iPads . Nobel laureates like Edwin Krebs and authors like Ray Bradbury have recorded their gratitude (Krebs, EG (1998) An accidental biochemist. Annual Review of Biochemistry 67:xii-xxxii; Google Bradbury Carnegie).
We are fiercely proud of our Ohio libraries. Here in a deep red republican district we just passed a city wide income tax to expand library services by a landslide margin. Yet we host large Tea Party rallies and a have House Representative that gave up a seat on the Appropriations Committee to chair the Republican Study committee for reasons of social reform -ack!
It’s not just that we’re proud of our libraries in Ohio, it’s that the librarians in Ohio have managed to make their libraries essential to the group of parents who tend to vote Republican in the suburbs and the ex-urbs while simultaneously managing to make their libraries useful for folks living in the urban areas.
Homeschoolers in Ohio, for example, would be lost without free access to public libraries. Even parents who don’t homeschool make pretty extensive use of the libraries with their kids (with older kids they sadly use the library as free babysitting service, but you do what you can). When libraries were up for budget cuts a few years ago at the state level, there was a HUGE protest – and let me tell you if it were just us liberals who were up in arms about it we wouldn’t have gotten very far. But the libraries publicized the hell out of what the cuts would mean for the suburban, urban and rural libraries and those parents started calling Republican representatives and telling them to cut something else.
“Nerdiest state” is really an indicator of “best damn libraries in the country and proud of it”. There are few states I’ve lived in with better public libraries than Ohio. Now if only public transportation in the state were half as good…
I want to say you’re wrong, but yeah, the only people I know that regularly go to a library only get CDs to burn.
Seems to me the worst drivers are the ones causing the most fatal car crashes. Don’t blame us for honking at you because you don’t know how to drive on a rotary.
Worst abortion? is that access to, or most fatal ones?
Abortion rate methinks, see daveau’s comment under #4. Which would officially and perhaps in reality increase with access.
But shutting off access is, uh, “not helping”. (Certainly not against total fatalities.) Makes you wonder about US public (federal?) politics, and when it will enter the third millennium with the rest of us.
Massachusetts drivers, I’m told, are real jerks but California is infested with people who find speed limit signs very confusing. 10% of people think it’s 65 meters per second, 80% of people think it’s 65 kilometers per hour, and the rest of us would just like to fucking get where we’re going, please.
Confusing, yes. First time in US I took my rental to a Californian airport; despite being alert to Californian vehicle density I was going short on time.
Then I found this empty high speed lane… which of course turned out to be the curb, complete with a broken down car.
Just managed to squeeze between the traffic at high speed, and by the time my hearth was under control I could turn into the airport. Made my plane with full 10 minutes to spare, and learning that managing driving in NY city doesn’t prepare you for the traffic of California!
The Four-Corners rule! Porn! Cocaine! Booze! Anti-Social behavior (wtf? That’s my home state, too…)
I’ll take infertility. I little chilly up there, though. But beautiful.
“Heart attack” is the best you can do with West Virginia, my native state?
How about black lung, or, better yet, incest?
I needed a laugh. Thank you very much.
Interesting! All of the descriptors are human-oriented except for MN. People can’t make tornadoes or prevent them. Therefore, MN is a great state to live in except for the tornadoes (and snow, and cold, etc.)
I’m a Minnesotan and I approve this message.
Oh no! My state (Minnesota) is worst at tornadoes!
I apologize from the bottom of my heart for all of the tornadoes. I never intended for any of them to happen .
“BONUS facts: Mississippi ranks last in the most number of categories. These include highest rate of child poverty (31.9 percent), highest rate of infant mortality (10.3 percent) lowest median household income ($35,078), highest teen birth rate (71.9 per 1,000 women aged 15 to 19) and highest overall rate of STDs.”
Makes me glad to live in the good ol’ binge drinking capital of the US.
I’m trying to find a positive spin for my home state of Louisiana’s mastery of gonorrhea.
Here ya go: at least it’s not HIV!
(although I expect that’s not far behind)
Nerdiest is a badge I wear with pride.
(Ohio – based on library usage)
I just finished “The Essential Writings of Henri Poincaré” on loan from a library across state. A statewide library with tax covered shipping costs = too good not to use! But other than that Ohio is a typical ultra religious agricultural red state that basically sucks. :\
being from Missouri I’m upset that it does not read “meth labs”
Our little county of El Paso (Colorado Springs, festering boil of the religious right) used to be the #1 spot for meth labs in the country, way early in the epidemic. Early 90s I think.
Kind-of pissed our state says “cocaine”. Must be Denver/Boulder setting the trend.
Here in central Pennsylvania, the principal pastime, it seems is arson. One town to the south, one guy tried to burn down his Ruby Tuesday franchise four times before the cops thought maybe something sas a bit odd.
Ohio is the nerdiest state? That’s a badge of honor, actually.
And for the commenter up thread who doubts our nerdiness, just look to our ‘Ohio Haz Lerningz’ license plate for confirmation.