OK… I’ve gotten over the 2000 election. Really. But THIS is a satisfying little chart.
The relationship between voting Democrat and higher IQ looks pretty clear. Ravens Advanced Progressive Matrices is a long established test of something or other that at least vaguely looks like intelligence. Because it’s visual rather than verbal it’s less susceptible to variations in English language ability.
I’ve spent all of my American life (minus two years in Africa) in states #1, 2, 4 and 14. In that order. Guess I’m heading into dumbth as I get older. [Thanks to MetaFilter for the link]
Postscript: Hmmmm. Perhaps this is too funny to be true. The American Assembler source is now backpedalling about the source of the IQ data. Thanks to an astute and cranky reader for pointing this out.
That was an idea that appealed to me as a kid and it’s what attracted me to listening to short wave radio. I used to imagine myself hanging out in space like the Star Child at the end of 2001, somehow being able to hear all the voices of the world at once. I know now that what I was hearing wasn’t the voices of the world but rather the edited, naturally biased messages of the governments, companies and institutions that owned the stations. Not the voice of “the people”, wherever they are.
I came across an experiment today in Global Consciousness. The idea is to provide a space for anyone to shout out a short message and know that it will be seen within minutes by anyone else on the site. Again, it’s not really the globe talking… only those lucky few with computers, connectivity and leisure time. It’s an interesting idea, though the global shoutouts aren’t that riveting so far.
I wish there were something richer and more visual. In addition to posting short thoughts, I’d like to see how people are feeling each day. Imagine a screen with 50 emotion adjectives (like happy, disgusted, angry, serene). You check off 3 of them and click submit. Now imagine a globe on the screen that shows these emotions as different colors at the exact latitute and longitude of each participant. What would it look like as each day’s news is absorbed? How would the colors change over the course of a year through seasons and holidays, or over the course of an election or a war? That would be fun to watch, even if it still only represents the feelings of the few, the proud, the connected.
That doesn’t exist, so for now I’ll content myself with listening to the world by proxy, filtered through the official media. You can see it all on one page with Newsmap.
Come to think of it, though, that moodglobe site wouldn’t be that hard to do. Would it be interesting enough to others to sustain regular and widespread participation?