maps and movies

I'm not sure what Beagles is talking about with this dividing line.  I assume he means a line running north to south roughly along I 35 which runs from Minneapolis down to Laredo.  It is population of course, and there is a natural barrier dividing them, to the east the plains which don't get much rain and to the west the rocky mountains.  If you look at the globe that shows up when you launch Google Earth you can see that big brown patch running eastward until it turns green maybe a few hundred miles before the Mississippi River.  I was thinking maybe it was about then that the clouds had gotten far enough away from the rockies to gather some moisture, but I suspect it is more likely that wet air coming up from the Gulf.

I wonder what that light patch up by North Dakota and Montana is,  Could it be some kind of shale mining operation going on all night?

That bright pink stripe running north from Texas on the Trump map is interesting.  Why so broad, why so pink?  I guess maybe it is because of their low population,


I mean something mathematical like the gini index, or those averages we learned in grade school when I speak of economic equality.  I don't think it exists in nature, and certainly capitalism works against any kind of equality.  I don't see complete economic inequality ever happening, and I've said a couple times due to human nature, I don't think it's even desirable, but it seems like an ideal we could work towards like no more terrorism or no more drug addiction.

It's true that some people are happier with less,  We Beaglestonians don't have a lot, but I think we are happy enough with what we have.  If somebody was to offer us a big sack of money I guess we would take it, but if the terms were that we had to break rocks in the hot sun for some extended period, I think we would be inclined to tell Moneybags, never mind.


I've had my eye on Hell or High Water and I have just moved it to the top of my queue.  Saw an odd documentary Saturday night, Finders Keepers.  Some ne'er to well scion of a relatively rich North Carolina family loses his leg in an airplane accident, but has the remains returned to him and has some cockamamie scheme to preserve it by soaking it in embalming fluid in a barbecue smoker which ends up in a storage locker which he doesn't keep up the payments on and it ends up in the hands of some backwoods entrepreneur who wants to charge people a few bucks to see it, and somehow he sees this enterprise as possibly catapulting him into fame and fortune, or fame anyway.It's one of those things where you begin by just laughing at these two hillbillies, but then you see them as American prototypes and even as real people,.  Well sort of.