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Oh I don't really mind the schools being closed, it happens so rarely that it really doesn't matter, and it's always great for the kids. I just get upset at the idea of people not knowing how to drive in light amounts of snow, because it's really easy.
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Jan 31, 2014 01:40
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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PittTheElder posted:I just get upset at the idea of people not knowing how to drive in light amounts of snow, because it's really easy. Well the bar for driving is very low and when you have people from 15 to 90 years old driving a range of cars from new to "falling apart" it's better to assume the worst. Generally it's better to treat the roads according to the least capable. It's the same reason speed limits are a good thing - most people can probably drive much faster but some can't so... I'm from Scandinavia and never had a snow day but every single time there's a light blizzard there's always people that wind up in ditches along the roads because they just keep driving as usual like idiots.
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Jan 31, 2014 01:57
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Here's a map to get a little bit back on track: US Senators by state Red = two Republicans Blue = two Democrats Purple = one of each Green = Independent
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Jan 31, 2014 02:20
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I knew Montana sent two Dems to the Senate because my fiance is all  about it but I did not realize that loving Louisiana and Arkansas of all places had sent one each.
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Jan 31, 2014 03:27
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Mu Cow posted:Map of how much snow it takes to close schools typically. I don't recall ever getting out of school for snow in Alaska.  In my entire high-school life we only ever had school cancelled one day and that was because if was like -50 and the bus drivers refused to drive in the dense ice fog.Here, have an Alaska Native Language map.  
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Jan 31, 2014 03:31
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I love all the Ks and Qs. Makes me wish the Qipchaq Khanate was still a thing.
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Jan 31, 2014 03:39
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PittTheElder posted:I love all the Ks and Qs. Makes me wish the Qipchaq Khanate was still a thing. Depending on how you transliterate, you can get an extra two K's out of that.
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Jan 31, 2014 04:17
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FuzzyBuddha posted:I don't recall ever getting out of school for snow in Alaska. This is really interesting for someone who has no knowledge of alaskan natives.
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Jan 31, 2014 07:45
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Grand Prize Winner posted:Depending on how you transliterate, you can get an extra two K's out of that. I refuse to sacrifice the Qs.
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Jan 31, 2014 08:27
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Frostwerks posted:This is really interesting for someone who has no knowledge of alaskan natives. I wish I knew more about it. But even living in Fairbanks, with its fairly large native population, you rarely hear any of these languages. In fact, I only remembered this map because of a recent article detailing an increase in the number of Alutiiq speakers. But even then, you're talking a language with only double digit numbers of remaining speakers. My wife studied linguistics, and its kinda depressing the number of languages that are dieing out. Edit - Wikipedia says there are ~400 speakers of the Alutiiq language, so I suspect this article was just talking about in the Kodiak area. Still 400 remaining speakers of a language remains depressing. FuzzyBuddha fucked around with this message at 08:56 on Jan 31, 2014 |
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Jan 31, 2014 08:53
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Anosmoman posted:Well the bar for driving is very low and when you have people from 15 to 90 years old driving a range of cars from new to "falling apart" it's better to assume the worst. Generally it's better to treat the roads according to the least capable. It's the same reason speed limits are a good thing - most people can probably drive much faster but some can't so... I have never had a snow day here in Sweden and I have never really heard about any schools closing no matter the weather, we have a law though that every car is required to have snow tires between the 1st December and the 31st of March.
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Jan 31, 2014 09:56
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Grew up in GA, went entirety of K-12 in the Tift County GA public schools. We had 1 instance of snow during school hours and 2 instances of snow ever in my entire K-12 career. In neither case did snow actually stick on the ground. I now live in MN and people here are consistently amazed that 4" of snow paralyzes Atlanta, and then I tell them Atlanta by and large has no plow trucks and no salt trucks and they look at me like I'm from Mars and again I have to explain such things would only be useful every 5-7 years so why the hell would Atlanta have them? EDIT: See also: Legit businesses and homes in MN without air conditioning: Unthinkable in GA. The shittiest shotgun shack you've ever seen in south georgia will have a window AC unit at worst. MN has suburban mcmansions without it. Again, for obvious reasons. chairface fucked around with this message at 13:47 on Jan 31, 2014 |
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Jan 31, 2014 13:45
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Lord Tywin posted:I have never had a snow day here in Sweden and I have never really heard about any schools closing no matter the weather, we have a law though that every car is required to have snow tires between the 1st December and the 31st of March. This sounds dangerously like European-style Socialism..
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Jan 31, 2014 14:00
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Lord Tywin posted:I have never had a snow day here in Sweden and I have never really heard about any schools closing no matter the weather, we have a law though that every car is required to have snow tires between the 1st December and the 31st of March. Even in some of the blue regions you do not need snow tires for the vast majority of the winters in the region.
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Jan 31, 2014 14:16
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chairface posted:EDIT: See also: Legit businesses and homes in MN without air conditioning: Unthinkable in GA. The shittiest shotgun shack you've ever seen in south georgia will have a window AC unit at worst. MN has suburban mcmansions without it. Again, for obvious reasons. Good point. In the cold regions we should get sun-days when it's abnormally warm. You can't expect us to learn or work if you can't keep the building cool and since we're not used to it we might get sunstroke or sunburnt or dehydrate and die if we go outside. It's a peril. Man we're getting shafted in the north - we get the worst weather and we can't even figure out how to use it to our advantage.
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Jan 31, 2014 15:39
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computer parts posted:Even in some of the blue regions you do not need snow tires for the vast majority of the winters in the region. Wouldn't it be better to have it just in case though? Not in all of the US of course but in those states where it's pretty much guaranteed to snow.
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Jan 31, 2014 15:39
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Anosmoman posted:Good point. In the cold regions we should get sun-days when it's abnormally warm. You can't expect us to learn or work if you can't keep the building cool and since we're not used to it we might get sunstroke or sunburnt or dehydrate and die if we go outside. It's a peril. Man we're getting shafted in the north - we get the worst weather and we can't even figure out how to use it to our advantage. Schools without AC that routinely close for unusually hot days. It's just cheaper and easier to put air conditioning in a building than it is to recover travel infrastructure from snow across a metropolitan area.
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Jan 31, 2014 16:01
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Anosmoman posted:Good point. In the cold regions we should get sun-days when it's abnormally warm. You can't expect us to learn or work if you can't keep the building cool and since we're not used to it we might get sunstroke or sunburnt or dehydrate and die if we go outside. It's a peril. Man we're getting shafted in the north - we get the worst weather and we can't even figure out how to use it to our advantage. As you may or may not have noticed, the hottest part of the year in the United States falls during a period of time when schools are out of session anyway!  Growing up in Lexington, we were far enough north that we'd get snow regularly and its mere presence wouldn't close schools, but far enough south that we would usually miss a few days in any given year anyway; it was never really a big deal because the school year is always scheduled with a bunch of flex days at the end in case they need to be made up. The most notable moment with regard to school closures was when we got hit by a massive ice storm in 2003 that pretty much shut the whole city down for a week because literally everything was covered in ice. My sister actually managed to break her arm in the middle of that and figuring out how to get her medical care was a bit of an adventure. This year they ended up cancelling the entirety of last week not so much because of snow but because the temperature was so low the whole week. I don't think that ever happened the whole time I was in school.
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Jan 31, 2014 16:05
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Lord Tywin posted:Wouldn't it be better to have it just in case though? Not in all of the US of course but in those states where it's pretty much guaranteed to snow. It's not so much about the snow itself but the temperatures. Even if it's just below 5°C or some such winter/snow tires give you an advantage in handling/stop distance when breaking etc. Here in Germany it is required to drive on winter tires when the weather demands it. You get fined when you drive with summer tires while it's snowing, or there's icy weather or whatever. You won't get fined when there's 10° outside in January. Everyone in their right mind uses winter tires from October til March/April though. We get fucktons of snow here near the Alps a couple times a year, but school very rarely closes. Here, have an Alemannic dialects map: 
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Jan 31, 2014 16:58
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kustomkarkommando posted:Here's a map showing Northern Irish elections from 1997 onwards, whats interesting is you can see the UUP (who signed the 1998 peace accord) getting wiped off the map after their Unionist base turned on them: I think it's interesting that the UUP was the biggest party in most western districts in 1997. I assume that's just because the vote was fairly evenly split between Sinn Féin and the SDLP. It's also immediately noticeable that the two more radical parties made massive gains after 1998. What exactly didn't the two sides like about the Good Friday Agreement, respectively? I also noticed that the nationalists obtained pathetically low scores in elections before the 1960's. Presumably there was a lot of voter intimidation and disenfranchisement going on, similar to the Southern US in that period of time. I remember reading something about them having a voting system where only the head of the household had suffrage, which probably benefited the Protestants somehow, and which is also kind of hosed up for a Western country in the mid-20th century. quote:And finally, I would caution against making any broad assumptions about people's political opinions based on their religion. The Northern Irish population is changing demographically and Catholics will soon out-number Protestants but the political impact is arguable, we've only really been able to collect statistics on political opinion openly since 1998 so the data isn't complete but what we do have can be surprising to some people: The best outcome would be for the religious divide or even the status of Northern Ireland to simply stop mattering to most people there, but there is just too much cultural and historical baggage for that to happen. It's good news that at least the Catholics don't seem particularly vengeful. I probably would be, and I wouldn't be thrilled to be part of a state whose army and intelligence services colluded with loyalist murderers on a regular basis. Every time I start looking up the Troubles, I end up spending hours on Wikipedia. It's really intriguing that a conflict like this was possible in a developed Western nation. The hatred ran so deep that even the biggest psychopathic murderers and thugs (such as Lenny Murphy) were given paramilitary funerals, often with politicians attending, if they had framed their crimes as part of the loyalist/nationalist struggle. Regardless of the number of innocent victims, including those of their own side. I find it deeply unsettling. It's a miracle that it never turned into a full-fledged civil war. Phlegmish fucked around with this message at 17:40 on Jan 31, 2014 |
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Jan 31, 2014 17:34
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Phlegmish posted:I think it's interesting that the UUP was the biggest party in most western districts in 1997. I assume that's just because the vote was fairly evenly split between Sinn Féin and the SDLP. It's also immediately noticeable that the two more radical parties made massive gains after 1998. What exactly didn't the two sides like about the Good Friday Agreement, respectively? Except it did, in WW1, which is the reason why the Republic of Ireland is no longer part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (which had to change it's name as a result). And I would argue that the Troubles were indeed a kind of civil war, only that power divide was very asymmetrical. Of course the IRA could not have kept the fight going on for so long if some Irish-Americans had not decided that sponsoring terrorism in the United Kingdom was just fine. And they only really stopped after 9/11 because it was suddenly quite uncool.
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Jan 31, 2014 17:44
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FuzzyBuddha posted:I wish I knew more about it. But even living in Fairbanks, with its fairly large native population, you rarely hear any of these languages. In fact, I only remembered this map because of a recent article detailing an increase in the number of Alutiiq speakers. But even then, you're talking a language with only double digit numbers of remaining speakers. My wife studied linguistics, and its kinda depressing the number of languages that are dieing out. It's a regional thing, for sure though. In my particular community there are a huge number of people who can speak Paiute - even the native girls on the highschool basketball team use it when they don't want anyone else to know who they're gossiping about. It's a completely not dead language with at least this one tribe. But the funny thing is that the tribe is that the numbers of Northern Paiute of relatively small, and outside of this region their language is not completely intelligible by other tribes in the same language group who live very close geographically, such as the Washoe or Shoshone. 
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Jan 31, 2014 18:03
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If you want to talk about ancient divisions showing up in political maps nowadays, it's hard to get much more ancient than the Cretaceous period. I'm sure this page has been posted before in this thread, but it always fascinates me how you can draw a line between an ancient shore in what would become the southern US: and voting results in 2008: 
Lord Hydronium fucked around with this message at 18:17 on Jan 31, 2014 |
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Jan 31, 2014 18:14
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The Principality of Moldova over the last 550 years Note that the principality included the regions of Moldova, Bucovina and Basarabia, and the region of Moldova is today entirely inside Romania, while the separate country of Moldova is actually the region of Basarabia (or just part of it, since it's northern and southern parts were given by the russians to Ukraine).
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Jan 31, 2014 19:02
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computer parts posted:Here's a map to get a little bit back on track: Is there a map like this with representatives?
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Jan 31, 2014 19:15
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Irradiation posted:Is there a map like this with representatives? Almost every state, with the exception of those with tiny populations like Wyoming and Alaska, have both Republican and Democratic Representatives.
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Jan 31, 2014 19:23
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Mister Adequate posted:I knew Montana sent two Dems to the Senate because my fiance is all This might blow your mind then: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_congressional_delegations_from_Louisiana David Vitter, elected in 2005, was the first Republican Senator from Louisiana since 1883. As recently as 1973 the Louisiana Congressional delegation was 100% Democrats and it was not until 1995 that a majority of the delegation was Republican.
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Jan 31, 2014 19:31
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Irradiation posted:Is there a map like this with representatives? You mean proportion of R/D in a House delegation? That's this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:113th_US_Congress_House.png because the control map is useless outside of "wow America is sure empty and red!" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:113th_US_House.svg
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Jan 31, 2014 20:00
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Lord Hydronium posted:If you want to talk about ancient divisions showing up in political maps nowadays, it's hard to get much more ancient than the Cretaceous period. I'm sure this page has been posted before in this thread, but it always fascinates me how you can draw a line between an ancient shore in what would become the southern US: So I guess that oft-reposted image of Bugs Bunny sawing off Florida was just about returning to one's geological roots after all!
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Jan 31, 2014 20:17
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chairface posted:
That's odd, because Minnesota can get very hot in the summer
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Jan 31, 2014 20:19
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Phlegmish posted:I think it's interesting that the UUP was the biggest party in most western districts in 1997. I assume that's just because the vote was fairly evenly split between Sinn Féin and the SDLP. It's also immediately noticeable that the two more radical parties made massive gains after 1998. What exactly didn't the two sides like about the Good Friday Agreement, respectively? With the Unionist side of things it's a bit complicated. The DUP (who are now the largest Unionist party and also win the award for most right-wing party in the UK in general) opposed the Good Friday Agreement as they believed Sinn Fein should be excluded from politics until the Provisional IRA had decommissioned all of its weapons and officially stood down, the IRA were on an indefinite ceasefire in 1998 which had only been established the previous year following a brief flare up in the conflict as negotiations stalled (this was actually a disaster for in terms of popular support). The Agreement contained a framework for decommissioning that the IRA agreed to and most Unionists were happy enough with this commitment, the DUP failed to mobilize mass opposition to the Agreement. However the process of Decommissioning didn't exactly go smoothly. One of the biggest hurdles post agreement was the issue of Police reform, the RUC were despised by a majority of Catholics and a new police force was to be established with an affirmative action employment scheme to ensure impartiality. SF didn't believe the reforms went far enough and refused to endorse the new police service, some representatives gave interviews saying that if they saw a crime they would not report it to the police which to a lot Unionists came off as an endorsement of the IRA's vigilante policing of Catholic neighbourhoods. At the same time the IRA began dragging their feet over decommissioning as the uncertainty over policing continued, many Unionists began to think the DUP were right and SF were not committed to peace. At the same time the Orange Order had begun to get angry over the Parades Commission, a body set up to oversee the immensely contentious marches that plague Northern Ireland on an annual basis. The Orange Order are a weird institution that has immense political power in NI, pretty much every senior Unionist is an Orangeman and it has a huge amount of influence in the Protestant community. They do not like being told they can't do what they want and began accusing the Commission of being biased, they too began turning against the UUP and siding with the DUP. Eventually it all came to a head in a bizarre crisis called Stormongate that saw SF's office in Stormont, the location of the Northern Ireland Assembly, being raided by the police under allegations that they were operating a spy ring inside Parliament. The UUP withdrew from government in protest but it was already too late, to most Unionists the DUP had been proven right and the UUP had been too hasty in negotiating a peace settlement with SF. The Assembly collapsed and Westminster reinstated direct rule, it would take another 5 years before the Assembly was re-established. Between 2002 and 2007 there was a continuing wave of scandals that the DUP profited from: The Northern Bank Robbery, the murder of Robert McCartney and the IRA pulling out of the decommissioning process shortly before the 2005 elections. SF's rise to power is a matter of debate. The SDLP tried to stay away from identity politics and imagined itself above the Catholic/Protestant issue. The debates of the post-agreement era all revolved around SF and their policies, although the SDLP were the largest Nationalist party they increasingly became the second most important in terms of maintaining the peace. As the the political situation became tenser and tenser the SDLP began to be perceived as powerless, they may have had nice sounding policies and were all thoroughly good people but they couldn't get anything done in the face of increasing Unionist intransigency. Sinn Fein could get things done. The SDLP remained popular with the Catholic middle class but SF's rhetoric and radical economic policies won them support with the marginalised Catholic working class. As their prestige increased the moderate wing (who favored a political settlement) managed to crush the militant factions in 2005 which allowed them to win over several chunks of the Catholic middle class ensuring their dominance of Nationalist politics. The SDLP still have a loyal base in Derry and South Down but they are practically a regional party now a-days. Phlegmish posted:I also noticed that the nationalists obtained pathetically low scores in elections before the 1960's. Presumably there was a lot of voter intimidation and disenfranchisement going on, similar to the Southern US in that period of time. I remember reading something about them having a voting system where only the head of the household had suffrage, which probably benefited the Protestants somehow, and which is also kind of hosed up for a Western country in the mid-20th century. Yeah, the franchise restrictions the UUP brought in after partition are pretty much a text-book example of how to make a discriminatory state without having to pass any laws specifically saying "no votes for you". They rolled back the franchise to what it had been about a decade earlier with even tighter restrictions, only two votes per household (for the householders). So if you had several voting age adults in a house only the official householders could vote, lodgers weren't allowed the vote either. As housing was scarce and many Catholic families lived in a single home this policy instantly froze out lots of people. The distribution of government controlled housing, which in NI was controlled by the local government, was further played by the Unionist controlled councils. They gave preferential treatment to Protestant applicants to gerrymander electoral wards in their favor. On top of this owners of commercial property were also given extra votes depending on the value of their property. I'd have to check some papers but I think the maximum number of votes an individual could amass was 7 which could then be assigned to "special electors". As the majority of commercial property was held by Protestants this further inflated the Unionist franchise. It didn't help that the Nationalist party in NI after partition were confused as hell. They couldn't quite agree on their policy line. Should they refuse to get involved in the day to day running of Northern Ireland or should they accept the reality of partition and work for reform? They couldn't really come to a decision and never really managed to amass much political support. That was a lot of words and I don't have any maps so I'll stop posting now. kustomkarkommando fucked around with this message at 22:16 on Jan 31, 2014 |
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Jan 31, 2014 20:26
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Ammat The Ankh posted:Almost every state, with the exception of those with tiny populations like Wyoming and Alaska, have both Republican and Democratic Representatives. I meant shading with fraction of D/R. ecureuilmatrix posted:You mean proportion of R/D in a House delegation? That's this one: Yes that's it. Thanks.
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Jan 31, 2014 21:37
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Median income by county.
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Jan 31, 2014 21:47
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Well, this is certainly a map someone made. (It seems based on the older "Map of the internet" by xkcd.) (Original size.)
Carbon dioxide fucked around with this message at 22:50 on Jan 31, 2014 |
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Jan 31, 2014 22:48
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That can't be right. ThePirateBay is a peninsula with no obvious bay.
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Feb 1, 2014 00:38
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Where's SA?
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Feb 1, 2014 02:34
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Mycroft Holmes posted:Where's SA?
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Feb 1, 2014 02:53
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That, or it's in the tiny featureless blob labeled "Forum Sites" between 4chan and 9gag. 
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Feb 1, 2014 03:03
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Wasn't there one that had SA? Like maybe the first in the xkcd series? If so were were quickly dropped.
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SurgicalOntologist posted:Wasn't there one that had SA? Like maybe the first in the xkcd series? If so were were quickly dropped. Yeah, they did. The site's traffic's dropped pretty steadily since then, though.
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