In Appalachia, explosions have leveled the mountain tops into perfect race tracks for Ryan Hensley’s all-terrain vehicle (ATV). At least, that’s how the 14-year-old sees the barren expanses of dirt that stretch for miles atop the hills surrounding his home in the former coal town of Whitesville, West Virginia. “They’re going to blast that one... Read More

Colin Woodard's book, American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America, is currently generating a lot of buzz. This is, in good part, thanks to an article that appeared in Tufts Magazine in which Woodard describes his work. Like David Hackett Fischer's Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America before... Read More

Another map of the American nations: This is where the states stand on Obamacare's expansion of Medicaid. As you can see, it's far from universally embraced. Now let's compare that to this map: And for that matter, this map: Most of the usual suspects. Most prominent among those who reject the Medicaid expansion are those... Read More

In his most recent post, Greg Cochran quipped that since corporal punishment is a quiet issue these days, it likely works. EDIT: That is, it works in keeping kids in line at school, and only that. Needless to say, the map of states with legal corporal punishment in schools follows the Map of the American... Read More

Continuing my on-going series on the regional differences – genetic regional differences – between the different Euro-Americans in the United States and Canada, here I will present a series of maps demonstrating some of the evidence for the existence and significance of these differences, beyond the historical circumstances explored by David Hackett Fischer (DHF) in... Read More

Post updated, 1/14/15. See below! Let me start by once again giving the disclaimer that I am an unapologetic atheist. Of course, I would conclude that being an atheist is the only natural position one can have if one is being a true scientist. Now, that said, I realize that I am only able to... Read More

My previous two posts featured some of the flags – assigned by me – of the various "nations" of North America, as described by Colin Woodard, and as derived from David Hackett Fischer. Inspired by the Bloomberg map of the American nations, where Woodard assigned a flag to each nation, I thought I'd make my... Read More

Emphasis mine: American Nations. (p. 279) What does this

Edit, 3/13/14 8/24/13: Post updated. See below! This started as an e-mail I wrote to a friend to sum up the important events of the Middle Ages for Europe and the Near East. Then I decided that this was blog post worthy, so here it is: a nice, fairly concise summary of the events of... Read More