Long Island the 51st State?

More on secession:

Last week, The Daily Show reported on yet another secession movement in the United States: Long Island.



Secession is a big word for these intelligent revolutionaries.

More here, here and here.

A Ballot Buddy System

No, this has nothing to do with same-state marriage... Although these two would make an odd couple...



Randall Lane has an op-ed piece in today's New York Times about how to reform our electoral college system of electing a president, without amending the constitution.

Election theorists talk nobly of moving America’s presidential election to a popular vote, but that would require a Constitutional amendment. Swing states would never pass it, because it would mean giving up their influence. Neither would small states, which have a disproportionate influence in the Electoral College. But if every state apportioned its electoral votes as Maine and Nebraska do — one for each Congressional district, plus two for the overall state winner — millions more voters would suddenly become worthy of the candidates’ attention.

The way to make it happen, says Lane, is to get similar sized "red and blue" states to use the "buddy system" and take the plunge at the same time. That way, there would a less dramatic shift in electoral results. At least perhaps in the early going.

A change such as this would go a long way towards the ideal of truly having every vote counted and every vote courted.

#310

Preserving the Map in the Tent of Tomorrow

The New York Times is reporting today about efforts to preserve a half-acre terrazzo road map of New York State from the 1964-65 World’s Fair. "The map is hidden from public view on the floor of the abandoned, roofless Tent of Tomorrow in the New York State Pavilion, at what is now Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in Queens. The 130-by-166-foot map has cracked and crumbled badly."

From the Tent of Tomorrow website:

The Tent of Tomorrow was the world's largest roadmap. Sponsored by Texaco, this giant facsimile of the Rand McNally map of New York state was composed of large squares of polished Terrazzo. The Map was one of the most popular features of the World's Fair, especially among residents of New York, who"walked the map" looking for their home town. For the 1965 season, many more towns were added to the map at the request of fairgoers who noticed their town missing during the 1964 season.

Here'a photo of how it looked when it was fresh and new:



Here is one of the tiles today still in fairly good condition:



The Queens Museum of Art currently has a exhibit in conjunction with the pilot conservation program. The site includes an interactive locator map.

Inflated Views

From the New York Times, December 8, 2001: On March 29, 1976, a simple, pastel map of New York City appeared on the cover of The New Yorker. Drawn from the perspective of a low-flying bird looking west from Ninth Avenue, you could see the world receding from the city: the Hudson River, New Jersey, Kansas City, then the Pacific Ocean and Japan. It was Saul Steinberg's famous "View of the World from Ninth Avenue," a drawing reproduced and imitated countless times. Every city wanted a version of its own. Steinberg once said that if he had gotten the proper royalties, "I could have retired on this painting." This inflated view of one's own importance is not the first time such a map has been created. Here is another look at New York in relation to the rest of the country, by Daniel K. Wallingford, in 1937; A New Yorker's Idea of the United States of America:

© The Saul Steinberg Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY. Cover reproduced with permission of The New Yorker magazine. All rights reserved. per Sheila Schwartz, Executive Director, The Saul Steinberg Foundation

Not to be outdone, here is a view from California:



As mentioned here before, Texas is in love with its geographic shape. They also like to tell us how everything is bigger in Texas. Below are two postcards from my collection that illustrate that infatuation:





And finally, on this postcard, Alabama, for reasons unclear, have an inflated view of themselves: