Two interesting and unrelated articles in recent New Yorker issues.
The December 12 issue has an article by Ian Frazier, "Hogs Wild," (pp. 71-83) on feral pigs in the United States. When the author looked at a survey map of wild-hog populations nation-wide he noticed that it correlated to red/blue voting maps for the last presidential election.
Afterward, I could not get this strange correspondence out of my mind. I compiled '04 red state-blue state data and matched it with SCWDS hog-population information on the map that year. I found my first impression to be essentially correct. The presence of feral hogs in a state is a strong indicator of its support for Bush in '04. (p. 75)
I don't know what this means but it seemed interesting.
In the January 9 issue there is a brief note in "Talk of the Town" called "The Latte Class." (p. 26-27) Author Ben McGrath profiles the research of Temple University professor Bryant Simon on the cultural and sociological aspects of Starbucks. He has some intriguing observations on how Philadelphia Starbucks customers act differently from those in, say, Singapore and Brooklyn Heights. He is turning his research into a book. It is one I will definitely want to read.
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3 comments:
I think the feral pigs thing was a joke. At least it felt that way to me. Even more to the point, I've seen the maps set side by side and they don't really match up particularly well, so the joke appears to have been some sort of anti-Southern chauvenism. All quite strange though.
Hmmm, they don't usually do jokes in the articles, or at least not ones that go on for a few paragraphs like this thread did. I'm impressed that you have access to the maps!
well, individual authors do a variety of things, some of which work better than others. if this one wasn't joking, then he needs an overhaul of his attitude.
anyway, I can't take credit for doing the map-comparison myself; I think I saw it on a blog somewhere...
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