308 – The Pop Vs Soda Map

When on a hot summer’s day you buy a carbonated beverage to quench your thirst, how do you order it? Do you ask for a soda, a pop or something else? That question lay at the basis of an article in the Journal of English Linguistics (Soda or Pop?, #24, 1996) and of a map, showing the regional variation in American English of the names given to that type of drink.

The article was written by Luanne von Schneidemesser, PhD in German linguistics and philology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and senior editor of the Dictionary of American Regional English.  And although there might be weightier issues in life (or even in linguistics) than the preferred terminology for a can of soft drink, there’s nothing trivial about this part of the beverage industry.

“According to an article last year in the Isthmus, Madison’s weekly newspaper, Americans drink so much of the carbonated beverages sold under such brand names as Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Sprite, Mountain Dew, and 7-Up that consumption averages 43 gallons per year for every man, woman, and child in the United States,” Von Schneidemesser begins her article. “The Statistical Abstract of the United States (1994) confirms this: 44.1 gallons per person in 1992, compared to the next most consumed beverages: beer (32.7 gallons), coffee (27.8 gallons), and milk (25.3 gallons).”

It must be that ubiquity of soft drinks that has made this pop vs soda map the single-most submitted map to this blog, sent in by over 100 contributors. The map details the areas where certain usages predominate.

• coke: this generic term for soft drinks predominates throughout the South, New Mexico, central Indiana and in a few other single counties in Nevada, Utah and Wyoming. ‘Coke’ obviously derives from Coca-Cola, the brand-name of the soft drink originally manufactured in Atlanta (which explains its use as a generic term for all soft drinks in the South).
• pop: dominates the Northwest, Great Plains and Midwest. The world ‘pop’ was introduced by Robert Southey, the British Poet Laureate (1774-1843), to whom we also owe the word ‘autobiography’, among others. In 1812, he wrote: A new manufactory of a nectar, between soda-water and ginger-beer, and called pop, because ‘pop goes the cork’ when it is drawn. Even though it was introduced by a Poet Laureate, the term ‘pop’ is considered unsophisticated by some, because it is onomatopaeic.
• soda: prevalent in the Northeast, greater Miami, the area in Missouri and Illinois surrounding St Louis and parts of northern California. ‘Soda’ derives from ‘soda-water’ (also called club soda, carbonated or sparkling water or seltzer). It’s produced by dissolving carbon dioxide gas in plain water, a procedure developed by Joseph Priestly in the latter half of the 18th century. The fizziness of soda-water caused the term ‘soda’ to be associated with later, similarly carbonated soft drinks.
• Other, lesser-used terms include ‘dope’ in the Carolinas and ‘tonic’ in and around Boston, both fading in popularity. Other generic terms for soft drinks outside the US include ‘pop’ (Canada), ‘mineral’ (Ireland), ‘soft drink’ (New Zealand and Australia). The term ‘soft drink’, finally, arose to contrast said beverages with hard (i.e. alcoholic) drinks.

This map was found here at the popvssoda website, dedicated to gathering info on the usage of pop, soda, coke and other variant terms throughout the US.

307 – Higher, Faster, Stronger: the Olympic Medals Map (2004)

It will be some days yet before the Summer Games of the XXIXth Olympiad in Beijing draw to a close, so the medal count is still not complete. Host nation China seems on course to achieve its goal of dominating the medal tables, having built up a strong lead in the number of golds, but is still slightly behind the US in the total number of medals.

This map shows the complete medal count of the previous Summer Olympics in Athens, and is one of several on this page of the New York Times website. The number of medals per country is morphed into a medal map for each of the modern-era Summer Olympics, starting with Athens in 1896.

In Athens in 2004, The US dominated the medal counts in gold, silver and overall categories. Here is an overview of the Top 10 (country; number of gold, silver and bronze medals; total), sorted by total number of medals:

 

1. US (36, 39, 27, 102)
2. Russia (27, 27, 38, 92)
3. China (32, 17, 14, 63)
4. Australia (17, 16, 16, 49)
5. Germany (13, 16, 20, 49)
6. Japan (16, 9, 12, 37)
7. France (11, 9, 13, 33)
8. Italy (10, 11, 11, 32)
9. South Korea (9, 12, 9, 30)
10. Great Britain (9, 9, 12, 30)

 

Host country Greece came in 15th (6, 6, 4, 16) and the bottom of the table was made up of Eritrea, Mongolia, Syria and Trinidad and Tobago, each winning just one bronze medal.

Many thanks to all who sent in this map.

306 – The Genetic Map of Europe

Genetically speaking, Finns and Italians are the most atypical Europeans. There is a large degree of overlap between other European ethnicities, but not up to the point where they would be indistinguishable from each other. Which means that forensic scientists now can use DNA to predict the region of origin of otherwise unknown persons (provided they are of European heritage).

These are among the conclusions to be drawn from a genetic map of Europe, produced by the Erasmus University Medical Center in Rotterdam (the Netherlands), published in Current Biology’s August 7 issue. In its Science section, the New York Times devotes an article to the study, and reproduces the genetic map.

The discovery that autosomal (i.e. non-gender-related) aspects of DNA may be used to predict regional European provenance of unkown individuals was made by prof. dr. Manfred Kayser’s team of forensic molecular biologists. In a press release, the Erasmus UMC stated that this might potentially be helpful in resolving so-called ‘cold cases’.

The genetic map of Europe was compiled by comparing DNA samples from 23 populations in Europe (pictured on the right-hand side map).  Those populations were then placed on the ‘genetic’ map according to their similarity, with the vertical axis denoting differences from south to north, and the horizontal one from west to east. The larger the area assigned to a population, the larger the genetic variation within that population.

When compared to the actual map, the populations kinda sorta maintain their relative position to each other. Two observations spring to mind immediately: the fact that most populations overlap so intimately with their neighbours. And that Finland doesn’t. Some other observations:

• The extent of genetic variation is greater north to south than east to west.  This may be a result of the way Europe was colonized by modern humans, i.e. from the south, in three successive waves of migration (45,000 years ago, where before there had only been Neanderthals; 17,000 years ago, after the last Ice Age; and 10,000 years ago, with the advent of farming techniques from the Middle East).
• The isolation of Finnish genetics can be explained by the fact that they were at one time a very small population, preserving its genetic idiosyncrasies as it expanded.
• The relative isolation of Italian genetics is probably due to the Alps, providing a geographic barrier to the free and unhindered flow of population to and from Italy… Although Hannibal, the Celtic and Germanic influence in Italy’s north and of course the expansion of the Roman Empire would seem to contradict this.
• Yugoslav genetic variation is quite large (hence the big pink blob), and overlaps with the Greek, Romanian, Hungarian, Czech and even the Italian ones.
• There is surprisingly little overlap between the northern and southern German populations, each of which has more in common with their other neighbours (Danish/Dutch/Swedish in the northern case, Austrian/Swiss/French in the other one).
• The Polish population is quite eccentric as well, only significantly overlapping with the Czech one (and only minimally with the northern German one).
• The Swiss population is entirely subsumed by the French one, similarly, the Irish population almost doesn’t show any characteristics that would distinguish it from the British one.
• British and Irish insularity probably explains why so much of their genetic area is not shared with their closest European cousins, i.c. the Norwegian/Danish/Dutch cluster.

Many thanks the many people that sent in this map.

305 – Elleore, A Kingdom 12 Minutes Ahead of Copenhagen

(click on map to enlarge)

Out of a total of 443 Danish islands, only 76 are permanently inhabited. Elleore occupies a special place among them: unpeopled for most of the year, and not part of Denmark when it is – that is, if you’re partial to the semi-jocular sovereignty claims of micronations.

Until 1944 Elleore, a small (15,000 m2) island in Roskilde Fjord* shaped like a pregnant boomerang, was known to contemporary Danes – if at all – as the setting for one of Denmark’s early movies: Løvejagten på Elleore (‘Lion Hunt on Elleore’, 1907).

Lions are far from indigenous to any part of Denmark, but placing them on Elleore was prescient, the lion being a standard of regalia. For in 1944, right under the noses of the German occupiers, a group of Copenhagen schoolteachers acquired Elleore for use as a summer retreat, and proclaimed its independence.

A daring parody in wartime, the tongue-in-cheek Kingdom of Elleore survives to this day, having acquired a number of extra quirks along the way, including a ban on the novel Robinson Crusoe, the artificial Interlingua as an official language, and something called Elleore Standard Time, 12 minutes ahead of the clocks in Copenhagen.

Like the sleeping beauty of the fairytale, Elleore remains dormant for most of the year, only waking for Elleuge (‘Elle-week’), when its ‘citizens’ travel to the island** to crown the reigning monarch (currently Leo, the third of that name and the sixth since Erik, who reigned from 1945 to 1949).

The website for the Kingdom of Elleore announces a special treat for its citizens, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Løvejagten: the first ever movie made by the national film company, a 11 minute documentary (fiction or fact, your choice), entitled Kongen & Dronningen vender hjem (‘The King and Queen return home’).

This map, also taken from the Kingdom’s official website, details the island and surrounding waters with terms that appear humourous (e.g. Cape Carneval, the island’s eastern tip) but might prove elusive to non-Danish-speakers.

As my knowledge of Danish is still somewhat shaky and I’m probably unable to pick up double-entendres: can any Danes (or Elleoreans) offer some translations?

 

* i.e. the firth of Roskilde (that much Danish I do know).

** the trip from the mainland takes 17 mts by rowboat.

304 – Holland Warms To France

Global warming is a complex phenomenon – so much so that some scientists still dispute it’s even happening. One indication of this complexity is the fact that its consequences are distributed quite unevenly, sometimes counter to the global trend, in other instances ahead of it.

A recent report by the Royal Dutch Weather Institute KNMI, quoted in the NRC Handelsblad  (dd. 31 July), shows that average temperature in the Netherlands has risen twice as fast as the average global temperature.

As a consequence, average temperatures in some Dutch cities now resemble those of French cities of the previous decade. (No word on how much hotter those have become, though). The cities pair up thus:

• Maastricht = Poitiers
• Utrecht = Lyon
• Flushing (Vlissingen) = Nantes
• Den Helder = Rennes
• Groningen = Paris

Thanks to Nanne Zwagerman for sending in the link to the original newspaper article.

303 – World Government Plan: Aliens to Police USA

The United Nations or similarly sinister institutions aspiring to global dominance play the starring role in quite a few conspiracy theories, the basic premisse of which is that there is a secret plot to abolish the national sovereignty of all the world’s countries and install some sort of world government. One variant of that theory, discussed in #286, shows a world dominated by a small number of states, among which an expanded USA, within the framework of a New World Order.

This secret map here, stencilled for added clandestinity, shows another option: a world where expanded spheres of influence have been replaced by total interdependence, with national armies policing places far away from home. Only in North America are the ‘peacekeeping’ armies clearly labelled:

• Canada would be policed by Mongolian, German and Russian troops.
• The Irish army would be stationed in the Pacific states of the US.
• The Midwest would be patrolled by the Belgian army.
• The Russians would police the South of the US
• Colombian and Venezuelan troops would patrol the Northeast of the US.
• Mongolian troops would be stationed in Mexico.

In turn, US troops would be stationed in Regions 12 (Australia), 32 (Uruguay, Argentina), 55 (Yugoslavia, Greece, Albania, Roumania (sic) and Bulgaria), 58 (Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia), 75 (India, Nepal, Bhutan, Tibet and East Pakistan (now Bangladesh)), and 85 (the Kazakh, Turkmen, Uzbegh, Tadzhik and Kirghiz Soviet Repulblics).

There’s a bit of explanation on how this would work, under the title: WORLD GOVERNMENT PLAN – ALIENS TO POLICE U. S. A.

This map, adopted in 1952 in London by the World Association of Parlementarians for World Government, shows what alien troops would occupy and police the six regions into which the United States and Canada would be divided.

The ruling body or World Parliament would consist only of appointed members. It would reflect population-strengths; so Asia would dominate it.

There would be a World Director, 8 zone directors and 51 regional directors. None of the zone or regional directors would ever serve in their own countries. So an alien (i.e. a non-national, not an actual extraterrestrial, ed.) would command troops stationed in the U.S. and through them enforce World Government Law, and prevent Americans from “sheltering behind national allegiance”.

On the side of the map, a note further explains:

This is the world troop map. Don’t let it scare you. It is presented here to show that the planning has been extensive, and of long-standing, to place the U.S.A. under a world army-police system. By stopping the funding to the United Nations and cancelling the “United Nations Participation Act of 1945 (and amendments) we could literally “pull the plug” on the whole world government apparatus. Public law 87-297 should also be repealed which is the  cause of our bases being closed and our armed forces being merged with the Russian and Chinese armies.

It’s a bit puzzling that a plot so sinister, the planning for which has been so extensive, could be stopped simply by repealing a few laws, and by ending US funding of the UN. Another weakness of the conspiracy theory is that there doesn’t seem to be or ever have been a World Association of Parliamentarians for World Government.

But the Pugwash Movement, mentioned in the first text box, does seem to exist, and does seem to be concerned with worldwide disarmament; their website does not mention the arrest, trial and execution of anyone resisting disarmament. But then they wouldn’t be that stupid, would they?

Thanks to Darko Stanicic (sounds like a real Region 55 name) for sending in this map.