Chris Howard: America really looks like this - I was looking at the amazing 2012 election maps created by Mark Newman (Department of Physics and Center for the Study of Complex Systems, University of Michigan, http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/2012 ), and although there is a very interesting blended voting map (Most of the country is some shade of purple, a varied blend of Democrat blue and Republican red) what I really wanted was this blended map with a population density overlay. Because what really stands out is how red the nation seems to be when you do not take the voting population into account; when you do so many of those vast red mid-west blocks fade into pale pink and lavender (very low population).
So I created a new map using Mark’s blended voting map based on the actual numbers of votes for each party overlaid with population maps from Texas Tech University and other sources.
Here’s the result—what the American political voting distribution really looks like.
Now THIS is the most accurate map that I’ve seen, and it is fascinating.
It’s a shame ‘purple’ doesn’t suit the simple narrative of left vs right, good vs evil, spy vs spy, electoral college vs the-person-you-voted-for that makes for a dramatic, easy to understand story. Otherwise, we’d see more of this during actual coverage on election night.
Okay… I hate to be the killjoy here, but obviously, this is not a complete puzzle. Both of these pieces still have holes that need to be filled, and knobs that need to fill holes. I don’t know if that’s the right terminology, but… Furthermore, it is a shitty puzzle. There is no real image. How do we even know that these two pieces go together? Someone could have just forced two pieces together.
I mean, in general, this is a pretty harsh, gritty, and realistic portrayal of the pains of love and human relationships. They seem cute and happy on the outside, but they are shit on the inside, when you look past the surface.
AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson:
“You lie awake at night worrying about what is that which will disrupt your business model. Apple iMessage is a classic example. If you’re using iMessage, you’re not using one of our messaging services, right? That’s disruptive to our messaging revenue stream.”
Here’s an idea, instead of laying awake at night waiting for someone to disrupt your business, why not try actually innovating? What a losing mindset.
SMS has been a colossal rip-off forever. That carriers knew this. They knew such a scam couldn’t last forever. Yet they did nothing, sealing their fate.
This also proves that Apple was smart not to tell the carriers about iMessage before they launched it. They would have bitched and moaned and tried to kill it before it ever saw the light of day.
