These United States of America

Today is the 4th of July. For those of you who haven’t already left for the 4th of July weekend, I thought it would be appropriate to celebrate the USA by looking at it in various ways. This post was prompted by a post today of 22 maps that define America. So (as Harry Shearer would say), let’s take a tour of American… through maps…

• Business Insider has an article with 22 Gorgeous Maps that Define America. These maps include NFL loyalties, how Google autocomplete sees each state, the mean center of population, states labeled with the country that has equal population, and so forth.
• Zip Codes turn 50 years old this week. So here are some zip code maps. The first shows each state labeled with the leading portions of the zip code for that state. The second is a zoomable Google map that shows zip codes as of 2010.
• Perhaps you prefer politics. Here are a few political maps for you.  The first allows you to see how presidential elections went from the first (1789) to the next (2016). The second site provides all sorts of statistical maps for elections from 1840 through 2008. The last looks at electoral college reform, and shows the US divided into 50 states with equal population.
• Perhaps you want some perspective. Here’s a collection of maps that does just that: it overlays the USA with outlines of various countries so that you can see how small we really are.
• Are numbers your thing? Here are 25 interesting US census maps, shows all sorts of stuff, from minority concentrations, changes in population growth, and much more.
• Don’t know what you want? Here’s a Pinterest board of creative US maps. All sorts of interesting stuff here, including the US made of cast iron pans. As we’re talking miscellaneous maps, how about maps of US roadside attractions, a map of what each state is the worst at, or a map where the US states have been given porcine nicknames.
• Language your thing? We close out with a map American English dialects.

Music: Under Fire (NYMF) (Demo Cast): “Follow Me”