Alberta -- part of "The Far West" of future America?

[Darren Dirt]

If there was ever some kind of civil war down south, I can imagine this kind of "re-joining" happening. Kinda accurate, not as full of stereotypes as you might expect.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2013/11/08/which-of-the-11-american-nations-do-you-live-in/



"
Our continent's famed mobility has been reinforcing, not dissolving, regional differences, as people increasingly sort themselves into like-minded communities

Colin Woodard, a reporter at the Portland Press Herald and author of several books, says North America can be broken neatly into 11 separate nation-states, where dominant cultures explain our voting behaviors and attitudes toward everything from social issues to the role of government.


Here's how he breaks down the continent:


Yankeedom: Founded by Puritans, residents in Northeastern states and the industrial Midwest tend to be more comfortable with government regulation. They value education and the common good more than other regions.

New Netherland: The Netherlands was the most sophisticated society in the Western world when New York was founded, Woodard writes, so it's no wonder that the region has been a hub of global commerce. It's also the region most accepting of historically persecuted populations.

The Midlands: Stretching from Quaker territory west through Iowa and into more populated areas of the Midwest, the Midlands are "pluralistic and organized around the middle class." Government intrusion is unwelcome, and ethnic and ideological purity isn't a priority.

Tidewater: The coastal regions in the English colonies of Virginia, North Carolina, Maryland and Delaware tend to respect authority and value tradition. Once the most powerful American nation, it began to decline during Westward expansion.

Greater Appalachia: Extending from West Virginia through the Great Smoky Mountains and into Northwest Texas, the descendants of Irish, English and Scottish settlers value individual liberty. Residents are "intensely suspicious of lowland aristocrats and Yankee social engineers."

Deep South: Dixie still traces its roots to the caste system established by masters who tried to duplicate West Indies-style slave society, Woodard writes. The Old South values states' rights and local control and fights the expansion of federal powers.

El Norte: Southwest Texas and the border region is the oldest, and most linguistically different, nation in the Americas. Hard work and self-sufficiency are prized values.

The Left Coast: A hybrid, Woodard says, of Appalachian independence and Yankee utopianism loosely defined by the Pacific Ocean on one side and coastal mountain ranges like the Cascades and the Sierra Nevadas on the other. The independence and innovation required of early explorers continues to manifest in places like Silicon Valley and the tech companies around Seattle.

The Far West: The Great Plains and the Mountain West were built by industry, made necessary by harsh, sometimes inhospitable climates. Far Westerners are intensely libertarian and deeply distrustful of big institutions, whether they are railroads and monopolies or the federal government.

New France: Former French colonies in and around New Orleans and Quebec tend toward consensus and egalitarian, "among the most liberal on the continent, with unusually tolerant attitudes toward gays and people of all races and a ready acceptance of government involvement in the economy," Woodard writes.

First Nation: The few First Nation peoples left -- Native Americans who never gave up their land to white settlers -- are mainly in the harshly Arctic north of Canada and Alaska. They have sovereignty over their lands, but their population is only around 300,000.


With such sharp regional differences, the idea that the United States would ever reach consensus on any issue having to do with violence seems far-fetched.
"

[Mr. Analog]

Reminds me of an old RIFTS map, curiously the "left" coast looks kinda like the annexation map from Fallout series, in which case we'd need 13 states instead of 11

Anyway, I say we erase all the nations and form Starfleet

[Tom]

Reminds me of an old RIFTS map, curiously the "left" coast looks kinda like the annexation map from Fallout series, in which case we'd need 13 states instead of 11

Anyway, I say we erase all the nations and form Starfleet

Or at least the federation.

[Mr. Analog]

Reminds me of an old RIFTS map, curiously the "left" coast looks kinda like the annexation map from Fallout series, in which case we'd need 13 states instead of 11

Anyway, I say we erase all the nations and form Starfleet

Or at least the federation.

True, hey we're only a few years away from First Contact right? hahah

[Thorin]

Hmm, stumbled across this today:



source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2014/06/11/this-is-the-amazing-design-for-nasas-star-trek-style-space-ship-the-ixs-enterprise/?tid=pm_pop

It's the IXS Enterprise, a rendition of what a warp-drive-powered starship might look like at first.

edit: more info: http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/184143-nasa-unveils-its-futuristic-warp-drive-starship-called-enterprise-of-course

[Tom]

That is damn cool. I didn't realize that the power requirements had fallen so sharply in the past few years.

[Mr. Analog]

ALL POWER TO THE ENGINES!

[Tom]

ALL POWER TO THE ENGINES!

I CAENT GEEVE HER ANY MUAR CAPTAIN.

[Mr. Analog]

ALL POWER TO THE ENGINES!

I CAENT GEEVE HER ANY MUAR CAPTAIN.

I've been watching Star Trek again and I visited James Doohan's wikipedia entry. Did you know that he worked on a sci-fi serial BEFORE Star Trek and he was on the Canadian Howdy Doody with Bill Shatner? The first action he saw in WWII was at Juno beach during the Normandy invasion, he got shot 5 times by a jumpy Canadian sentry with a Bren gun and lost fingers on one hand?

There's a town in Scotland that made Scotty an honorary son because the accent James Doohan used was similar to their local variety

[Tom]

That is actually really cool

[Mr. Analog]

I know right!

There's nothing better than Star Trek and the people behind it