The Typical American's Health

Jennifer, our Typical American, is a non-smoker but does like a wee drink every now and then.

More of the Typical American's Health

Jennifer, our Typical American, proves to be fairly good at making healthy choices in terms of oral health, seat belts, and pap tests.

Americans Die of Different Things at Different Ages

Most Americans will live into old age and finally die of heart disease.  Jennifer, our Typical American, will likely live into her mid-70s.  Americans die of different things at different ages.  So, if a child dies in the US before the age of one, the leading cause of death is a birth defect.  From the age of 1 until we hit the age of 44, motor vehicle accidents and other unintentional injuries are the leading killers.  From 45 to 64, it's cancer.  And after age 65 heart disease rises to become the #1 killer of Americans.

The Typical American's Death

Something's gonna get ya.  In the case of Jennifer, our Typical American, it will be heart disease.  Heart disease is the leading killer among Americans followed by cancer, respiratory disease, stroke, and unintentional injuries.  The CDC's WISQARS database provides these statistics.

The Typical Human's Genetics

Photo Credit: farmspeedracer via Compfight cc

In our vast and diverse species of more than 7 billion people, most of us have black hair and brown eyes like the doll on the right.  In terms of blood type, O positive is the most common among our kind.

Photo Credit: Yennie ~ need more dolly time..:( via Compfight cc

This doll on the left represents one of the rarest types of human beings in terms of hair and eye color.  Red hair is the rarest color among humans. To have red hair a person must inherit the recessive gene for red hair from both parents.

Likewise, green eyes are the rarest.

In terms of blood types, the rarest of the 4 primary blood types is AB negative.

The Typical American's Voting Practices

Jennifer, our Typical American, is now likely a registered independent.

What If: The Missouri and Crittenden Compromises

One of the more fascinating theories in modern physics is the concept of the multiverse where each decision made creates multiple universes. So, in one universe you chose strawberry ice cream today. In another you chose chocolate. In another you chose vanilla. It opens the door to wondering what if such-and-such has happened differently in another universe.


My partner is taking an American history class this semester and on a long car trip we read American history to each other. Of interest to me was the Missouri Compromise. For the past 15 years I have lived two blocks from the former home of Henry Clay, the early 19th century Kentucky master politician who guided the passage of the Missouri Compromise through Congress. I was intrigued about the geopolitical implications of this law if it had continued into later American history.


For those of you -like myself- a little hazy about the Missouri Compromise, it was a law passed in 1820 to keep the peace between the Southern and Northern states. Forty-four years after the Declaration of Independence, the North and South were quickly becoming very different Americas. Both regions economies were primarily based on agriculture, but the North was rapidly industrializing and desired a stronger Federal government that would invest tax dollars in industrial and transportation infrastructure and place higher tariffs on foreign imports. Slavery was also largely illegal in the North. The South on the other hand was politically ran by the plantation-based, export-oriented planters making up 1% of the South's population. While most Southerners were small farmers of modest means, racism, pride, and political manipulation by the very wealthy still led the white male Southern voter to support the slave economies pushed by the wealthy planters. In the South industrialization was far less advanced. Instead the Southern planters exported much of their cotton, indigo, sugar, and tobacco crops overseas to Great Britain and other European buyers. They then bought manufactured goods -and tea- from the British and other Europeans. Thus, Southerners developed a taste for sweet tea and a distaste for tariffs on foreign imports which raised their costs. Southern planters and their local allies opposed a strong Federal government which was suspected of wanting to abolish slavery.


The number of Southern Slave states and Northern Free states were about even by the early 1800s. A crisis ensued when Missouri and Maine applied for statehood. Slavery already existed in Missouri but there was a move to ban slavery in the Louisiana Purchase. After various political tussling, Henry Clay was able to broker and pass the Missouri Compromise that banned slavery in the former Louisiana Purchase north of 36 degrees 30 minutes of latitude (Missouri's southern boundary) except for Missouri. So, Missouri was admitted as a slave state and Maine as a free state. By 1837 there were an even 13 free states in the North and 13 slave states in the South. This uneasy peace lasted until 1854 when the Nebraska-Kansas Act replaced the Missouri Compromise with a system to let Nebraska and Kansas vote individually on whether to be a slave or free state.


When Abraham Lincoln's election in 1860 precipitated South Carolina and other Southern states to secede, another Kentucky politician, John Crittenden, offered a new compromise: extend the 36° 30′ Missouri Compromise line all the way to the Pacific. The so-called Crittenden Compromise failed to pass, and the Civil War ensued.


This map asks what could have happened if the Crittenden Compromise had passed and the South then not seceded. Instead, what if the same uneasy peace of the 1820-1854 had become an entrenched system. Without the South's secession to provoke Federal military action, would the horror of slavery been abolished by 2014? Would the system of admitting two states -one slave and one free- to keep the balance have continued? This map explores this scenario and is based on historical facts:


a. In the US of the Missouri and Critten Compromises, slavery is abolished largely north of the 36° 30′ parallel.


b. Without the Civil War to initiate its breakaway from Virginia, the counties that now constitute West Virginia remain part of the Virginia.


c. To even the free and slave state balance, the Dakota Territory and the Oregon Territory are admitted as single states rather than as North Dakota, South Dakota, Oregon, and Washington. And the once larger Deseret dreamed of by Mormon settlers has come into existence as the state of Deseret, the combination of Utah and Nevada. Keep in mind that some of the first white settlers of Nevada were Mormon farmers who established towns such as Las Vegas.


d. California on the other hand has been split into the free North California and slave South California roughly along 36° 30′ but actually along the Kern-Tulare County boundary.


e. Alaska has been admitted as a free state, but Hawaii and its sugar plantations have legalized human bondage.


f. Arizona, New Mexico, and Oklahoma have been admitted as slave states.


g. When the US annexed the former Mexican province of Texas (by then the independent Republic of Texas), the terms of annexation allow Texas to split into 5 states. This has happened to create North, South, East, West, and Central Texas.


h. Finally, even with 5 mini-Texases and other states, the South is still shy 3 states to have parity with the North. History, however, shows that Southern planters advocated annexing or buying Cuba and other Caribbean islands with a long history of slavery and plantation agriculture. In this scenario Cuba is now a state along with Puerto Rico and the combined US and British Virgin Islands.


The result is a nation of 54 states: 27 free states and 27 where the abomination of slavery still remains legal.

Arkansas and the Marriage Map

I'm traveling and away from my mapping software until late June. So I will not be able to update my marriage map for several weeks. Arkansas, however, now joins the states where legal same-sex marriages have taken places.  

The Typical American's Shopping Habits

Where does Jennifer, our Typical American, shop?

The Typical American's Shopping Habits

Today's post is about the shopping habits of Jennifer, our Typical American.

Religious vs. Non-Religious Countries

With 60% of Americans self-identifying as religious in 2012, the United States is among the countries where the majority of people say they are religious.  This phenomenon is nevertheless not global.  In countries as varied as China, Australia, Turkey, and Ireland, the majority of people say they are non-religious.  Such attitudes towards religion vary in many regions.  While all the countries surveyed in South America (minus the blip for French Guiana which shows data for France as a whole) and Africa report religious majorities, in east Asia you find most South Koreans are religious but not their neighbors in China and Japan.  Similar, the Middle East is not uniformly religious.  Both secular Turkey and the former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan have non-religious majorities.  In Scandinavia most Finns are religious, but most Swedes are not.  While most of Germany's neighbors are non-religious, the majority of Germans report they are religious.

The Rise of the Nones

One of the fastest growing religious affiliations in the United States are the un-affiliated.  Sometimes called the Nones for checking off "none" for the question of religion, such people are usually categorized separately from atheists.  The un-affiliated may include a range of people including agnostics and spiritually-oriented people who dislike organized religion.  Non-religious people now make up majorities in Turkey (73%), Vietnam (65%) and Azerbaijan (51%).  Almost a third of Americans (30%) report they are non-religious. Worldwide, almost 1 in 4 people report they are non-religious.

Happy Kentucky Derby Day!

Happy Kentucky Derby, dear readers!  If you don't already know, the Kentucky Derby is among the most viewed televised event in the United States.  It takes place on the 1st Saturday in May.  In Kentucky where I lived for 25 years, Derby is a major marker of the year.  Women traditionally do not wear white until Derby and afterwards.  Wise Kentucky gardeners wait to put out their tomato plants until Derby because invariably there is a cold snap in mid-April.  So, have a ham biscuit, some asparagus, and of course a mint julep to celebrate America's greatest thoroughbred horse race!

The Growing Controversy Around the Death Penalty

  

Other than the tiny island nation of St. Kitts and Nevis, the US is now the only country in the Western Hemisphere that executes its citizens.  This week the death penalty is back in the news after a botched execution in Oklahoma.

In the United States about 58% of Americans say they favor the death penalty according to a 2012 Gallup poll.   The US Supreme Court ruled in the 1976 Gregg v. Georgia case that the death penalty does not violate the 8th Amendment's guarantee that all American's are free from cruel and unusual punishment -as long as the punishment isn't cruel.  Americans may point to Saudi Arabia's beheading of prisoners, Iran's hanging of gay teens, and China's harvesting of executed prisoners' organs as barbaric, but unlike almost all of Europe and the rest of the Americas where the death penalty has been stopped or abolished, Americans still support the death penalty as long as it is nice and peaceful.  It's fine if the government kills a convicted criminal when they give him a final meal, shoot him up with drugs, and the condemned just doesn't wake up from a peaceful slumber.

But now the European manufacturers of the drugs formerly used for lethal injections have cut off America's execution industry.  So states are scrambling to find alternatives whose less than peaceful outcomes are making Americans squeamish.  In January Ohio tried a new lethal injection cocktail to execute Dennis McGuire.  It took him more than 20 minutes to die as he writhed strapped to a bed wheezing and gasping for air in "agony and terror" according to his children who are now suing Ohio for torturing their father to death.

This January Oklahoma also executed Michael Lee Wilson whose final words were that his entire body was on fire -something the supposed drug cocktail used should not have produced.  The cocktail Oklahoma uses is supposed to put a prisoner to sleep before the final drug shuts down the prisoner's heart.  This final drug, however, is known to create an excruciating burning if a person is not unconscious.

This week Oklahoma again botched an execution.  Instead of peacefully falling into eternal sleep to pay for what admittedly were horrific crimes, Clayton Lockett writhed in agony for 40 minutes while one of his veins exploded.  The executioners stopped the execution but then Lockett died of a heart attack.  At least some accounts say his heart literally EXPLODED in his chest.  Unable to find a suitable vein in an arm or leg, the drugs were administered through Lockett's groin.  

Now these botched executions are adding fuel to the debate around the death penalty.  Will public opinion and the American courts continue to support the death penalty if America grows squeamish about the government executing citizens whose lives end in agony?  If convicted of a crime, would you rather be guillotined?  shot?  or writhe in pain for 40 minutes strapped to a gurney?  

If you commit murder in the US, data show you are more likely to be executed if you are male and black.  Is this fair?

Also, where you are convicted of a capital offense in the United States, however, will dictate if a) you will receive the death penalty, b) if it will likely be carried out, and c) how it will be carried out.  Is this fair?

By far you are most likely to be executed in the United States' execution capital per capita:  Oklahoma.  Since 1976 Oklahoma has executed 1 Oklahoman for ever 36,000 residents.  When Danish drug manufacturers cut off selling the drug most commonly used for lethal injection in the US because of its use in executions, Oklahoma and other states shifted to finding other lethal injectables.  The state even went so far as to try to hide what drugs it is using and who is making these drugs.  It is likely more lawsuits and more debate will be forthcoming on this issue.

That Old Time Religion: the Ghana - China Continuum

Based on a 2012 survey asking people if they were religious or not, you can see quite a lot of variation between different countries.  In none of the surveyed countries did <11% of the population say they were religious but China and Japan came close.  Only 14% of the Chinese and 16% of the Japanese identify as religious.  In fact, almost half of the Chinese (47%) and almost a third of the Japanese (31%) identify as atheists.

On the other hand, 90% or more of the population report being religious in Ghana (96%), Nigeria (93%), Armenia (92%), Fiji (92%), and Macedonia (90%).  The US is in the middle of the pack with 60% of Americans reporting they are religious.

The survey found that as per capita income increases, religiosity declines.