It's Official: Georgia is (Almost) the Worst

I like being able to drive at NASCAR-like speeds in my adopted state of Georgia, but overall I have little respect for my roadmates. I don't have to be on the road for long before I see swerving, wrong speeds (too slow/too fast for conditions), running red lights, stopping at flashing yellows, no headlights in the rain, not using turn signals...whatever signs of incompetence you can imagine, you get to see them every day on Atlanta's roads.

Now there's confirmation: it's not just my perception that drivers here are incompetent. GMAC Insurance has administered something called the National Drivers Test in all 50 states and DC. The test is designed to measure knowledge of basic driving laws, and Georgia ranks 47 out of 51. Only California, Hawaii, New Jersey, and New York score lower.

The state where I grew up and took driver's ed, Oregon, ties for 8th place, and that seems about right.

You can read more about the test results and see how your own state scored here.

And if you like, you can take the National Drivers Test, yourself, here.

I took the test. My score? 95%...and the one question they say I got wrong, I know is correct in some states. So I'll take a gentleman's 100%.

My Home State, Where Whales Explode

Tomorrow, I'm headed for Oregon to visit Mom and my sister. Somehow, that ties in to the following video, which dates from 1970. It's news coverage of the famous exploding whale incident, and if you can watch this without laughing, please ask your relatives to bury you, because you're already dead . . . and possibly as stinky as this whale:



This was big news (pun intended). Previously unbeknownst to me, Wikipedia has its own Exploding Whale page, there's a web site called theexplodingwhale.com, and a Google search for exploding whale oregon yields 28,000 results.

Godless Georgia

Even though based on seven-year-old data, the above map is enlightening. Among other things, it tells me that the Bible Belt runs north and south through the middle of the country, not (as we commonly think) east and west through the southern/southeastern reaches.

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The state where I now live, Georgia, is not as religious as it's reputed to be, though my home state of Oregon lives up to its billing as the least-churched part of the country.

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All the Mormons make it pretty easy to figure out where Utah is. And notice that Southern California is more churchgoing than Northern - thanks to the Catholic Hispanics?

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I'd love to see similar maps done separately just for Catholics, Jews, mainline Protestants, and Evangelicals. (Atheists would be good, too, Hemant, but until you start your own "churches," you're too hard to count.) - Update: there are some additional maps available here.

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Anyone like to add any sage observations?