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Category: Weirdness
Posted on: June 19, 2007 11:00 AM, by PZ Myers
Here's some fun with demographics — it's a treasure map! Actually, it's a map of where the excess single men (in blue) and excess single women (in red) are located.
That east-west split is strange, I wonder what the explanation might be?
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Comments
It's a grade school dance. They single boys and girls all feel awkward and have each separated to a single side of the gym.
Texas is trying to summon the courage to make the first move but so far is just standing in the middle of the gym looking like an idiot.
Posted by: King Aardvark | June 19, 2007 11:07 AM
Would be interesting to see if there are any local correlations with lifestyle parameters like education, occupation and sexual orientation...
Posted by: iGollum | June 19, 2007 11:08 AM
Great. There's a big blue dot smack dab on top of my hometown of Austin.
Posted by: Martin Wagner | June 19, 2007 11:10 AM
Okay, I'll say it. I'd rather be in Philadelphia.
Posted by: Roy | June 19, 2007 11:12 AM
Surely the result of "Go West, young man"?
Posted by: Daniel R | June 19, 2007 11:16 AM
.... I don't care what the explanation is, I've got my bags packed, all I need now is an airline ticket - by the way what sort of weather do they have in Philadelphia ?
Posted by: synthesist | June 19, 2007 11:17 AM
Well, I can account for two of the big red dots (Memphis and New Orleans). Look at the demographics, and look at imprisonment rates. Net effect- lots of single women, because a lot of the corresponding single men are in jail and presumably not counted.
As for all the blue in California, I have no idea- maybe differential migration of disproportionately male tech workers?
Posted by: MJ Memphis | June 19, 2007 11:17 AM
Probably because the men move west to enjoy the outdoor recreation, while women just want to stay inside and powder their noses and buy shoes or whatever it is they do.
Posted by: Rey Fox | June 19, 2007 11:19 AM
Unfortunately, I'm already in one of the cities with the greatest excess of single women (Chicago). I say "unfortunately" as this just ends up reflecting badly on me when you consider my success so far. Why couldn't my incompetence be masked by the masculinity of LA?
Posted by: Infophile | June 19, 2007 11:20 AM
The Mississippi River vwas designed by God to keep us apart to prevent fornicatin'
Posted by: Teresa | June 19, 2007 11:21 AM
No wonder i can't meet anyone! I've gotta get the fuck outta Houston.
Posted by: Brian W. | June 19, 2007 11:22 AM
Prevailing winds. The prevailing winds blow (very roughly) southwest-to-northeast. Women, being on average slightly lighter than men, tend to be swept further downwind.
This, incidentally, is why the few remaining women in the western and southwestern states tend to be very large. Their lighter, more aerodynamic sisters are long gone.
Posted by: ajay | June 19, 2007 11:23 AM
I imagine San Francisco, CA is pretty easy to account for if you think about it for a second.
Posted by: Jessica Guilford | June 19, 2007 11:24 AM
I think my presence in Boston is making women swear off men forever.
That has to be it.
I mean, correlation equals causation, right?
Posted by: Blake Stacey, OM | June 19, 2007 11:25 AM
I wonder how many of the red dots in Florida are over 80.
Posted by: Owen | June 19, 2007 11:38 AM
Maybe a lot of women who wsih to make carreers think the best place to do so is in the east near new ork and the like. The male dominance in the west might be because of the ironically seen was of los angeles. (Hot, lots of bikinis). The small male bump (no pun intended) in florida probably are old guys who's wives have died.
Maybe a corresponing birth rate statictic would shed further light on the situation.
Posted by: Dutch Vigilante | June 19, 2007 11:39 AM
Posted by: Reginald Selkirk | June 19, 2007 11:40 AM
Age related? Women outlive men by quite a big margin, so the norm should be to have more women in towns with old-ish populations. But the east/west divide is still a bit puzzling.
Posted by: Coragyps | June 19, 2007 11:41 AM
Uh, am I the only one noticing that by and large the big blue dots are in cities with exceptionally large gay male populations? seattle, san francisco, LA, houston...
hmmmm. Perhaps demographers need to think more carefully about how they define "single".
Posted by: Todd O. | June 19, 2007 11:42 AM
Great. There's a big blue dot smack dab on top of my hometown of Austin
Hm, tonight's my last night near Austin on a research trip. Perhaps I need to go into town and hit the bars...
(married! kidding dear, if you see this)
Posted by: Carlie | June 19, 2007 11:46 AM
I notice Utah pretty well marries off their folks... surprise surprise.
Posted by: Tatarize | June 19, 2007 11:46 AM
Or get gay marriage legalized to take care of this artifact...
Posted by: gwangung | June 19, 2007 11:47 AM
One of the "excess women" dots in NC is at a large military base. Perhaps the study didn't count their boyfriends who were on the base or had been shipped over seas.
Posted by: Reed A. Cartwright | June 19, 2007 11:50 AM
Gayness shouldn't be an explanation. If there are a large number of single gay males in an area, that should also leave large numbers of unattached single females...unless, of course, it's all the gay men leaving the red dots to live in the blue dots. But then you're stuck explaining red New York.
I rather like the aging explanation. I was imagining all the richly browned beautiful girls basking on the Miami beaches, pining away for a manly man or three, but reality may be a bunch of old widows in their apartments pining for their husband of 50 years.
But then...Phoenix? Isn't Phoenix another Mecca for the aged?
Posted by: PZ Myers | June 19, 2007 12:03 PM
HBO apparently already knows this. Notice how Sex and the City (four single women) was set in New York, while Entourage (four single men) was set in Los Angeles?
Posted by: markbt73 | June 19, 2007 12:06 PM
It's a shame that the map shows the number differential rather than by percentage. That could be a simple explanation for many of the larger dots - they represent an unremarkable statistical tendency, in an area with lots of people. The famously male state of Alaska, on the other hand, looks more balanced than it actually is.
Posted by: Jon Eccles | June 19, 2007 12:16 PM
Well the answer is obviously migration, unless there is something in the water. Single men are usually more likely to migrate, and probably mexican immigrants are mostly in the West. Oddly though, female with degrees may well be selectively heading to Eastern cities.
Posted by: reason | June 19, 2007 12:18 PM
The same sort of thing occurred in Africa. Going by the historical record then, clearly the gender divide is caused by the Europeans and English taking the men away to work in the fields, and the Chinese and the Russians taking away the women as harem girls and household slaves.
Only Texas comes out on top. Which is just the way we like it.
Posted by: Foxy | June 19, 2007 12:20 PM
Phoenix and other Arizona towns have sizeable older populations, but the demographic is different. You've got a lot of *active* retirees here who came there for (don't laugh) golfing, baseball (the Cactus and Arizona summer leagues), and other kinds of recreation that tend to appeal to males and (by their participation) promote life extension. Just my two cents....SH
Posted by: Scott Hatfield | June 19, 2007 12:23 PM
The map would be more interesting if they scaled the dots relative to the total local population. Tens of thousands of excess single men in LA isn't necessarily as big a problem as a lower surplus in a smaller city. Looking at relative numbers would make it more obvious that the single men in Austin are screwed. Or not.
(yes, I'm a bitter single male in Austin)
(who got his last girlfriend by convincing her to move here from another state, appropriately enough...)
Posted by: Roy S | June 19, 2007 12:24 PM
Re: East West split
"Culture" vs. Silcon Valley?
Posted by: Renee | June 19, 2007 12:26 PM
I'm going to take a stab:
1) Predominance of women in aging populations, especially on the East Coast, noted by one of the commenters above
2) Relative willingness/propensity of men to relocate for employment (I'm going to get into trouble for this one.)
3) Prevalence of technology and new construction jobs in the larger blue dot cities, most of which seem to be relatively strong economic growth areas compared with the red dot locations.
I haven't seen the original article, but if you expand the map to read the fine print, these numbers appear to be absolute, not relative to population, so I'm not sure how meaningful they really are: 40,000 spare single males is only 0.33% out of a population of 12 million(? more?) in the Los Angeles conurbation.
Posted by: Talapus | June 19, 2007 12:36 PM
I'm surprised there aren't more single men in Alaska. I always thought of it as the holy grail...
Posted by: Dawn O'Day | June 19, 2007 12:36 PM
Well, you know the old saying: "Men are from Nebraska. Women are from Delaware."
Posted by: Julie Stahlhut | June 19, 2007 12:40 PM
Sexually transmitted diseases can have differential effects on the survival of offspring as a function of gender...
Posted by: B. Dewhirst | June 19, 2007 12:50 PM
I think Reason is looking in the right direction along with age disparity.
more construction & gardening much less manufacturing in the west more work for males, many rental houses in my area are filled with single young men leaving the sex life aside who came here to work in mostly the construction industry.
how do the sats. break down with regards to other criteria, age, education, work life, imagration and migration statis. otherwise the stats are kind of a fun opener for humor but not a lot of usefull information, which is the point of the post right.
Posted by: uncle frogy | June 19, 2007 12:50 PM
My hypothesis:
Lots of men go to L.A. to find the Hollywood dream woman.
They don't find her. Or if they do, the marriage doesn't last.
Sensible women, recognizing that all the dumb, vacuous men have migrated to L.A., stay put on the east coast.
Posted by: CalGeorge | June 19, 2007 12:57 PM
I'M WILLING TO BET...
That the reason why more single men are on the west coast is due to job market demands.
There are probably more men who hold applicable degrees to the tech sector and related fields that California would provide that the east coast does not.
Posted by: alfred | June 19, 2007 1:08 PM
Oddly enough, Boston has a reputation in the media for being one of the best cities for single people out there. I'm just not seeing it.
Then again, I'm pretty much undateable anyway, so I don't have much first-hand experience.
Posted by: Brian X | June 19, 2007 1:09 PM
"The Mississippi River vwas designed by God to keep us apart to prevent fornicatin'"
Just like Conway Twitty and Loretta Lynn sang about, right?
Posted by: Mark T. | June 19, 2007 1:10 PM
An age split doesn't make sense. Speaking as a Miami native who lived there most of my life, yeah, there USED to be big senior population on Miami Beach, but they were displaced long ago by a youth/hip/international scene. When I last lived there a few years ago, it was whatever the opposite of a retiree town is. The population is heavily influenced by immigration of (mostly) fairly young Latino families.
If age and spouse die-off were a factor, then the southwest coast of Florida should be heavily red in retirement zones like St. Petersburg, and instead it's blue.
I don't know... it doesn't smell right, especially that huge disproportionate split in Miami.
Posted by: foldedpath | June 19, 2007 1:17 PM
I think that the blue dominance in large western cities has been explained (lots of jobs in male-dominated fields like construction). It's still not clear to me why major urban areas east of the Mississipi should have more single women.
If you squint and look at the smaller population centers you will note that they don't seem to follow the same pattern. For example, here in central Illinois we have two little red dots and two little blue dots. This clearly supports the migration hypothesis (people do tend to migrate to big cities much more than to smaller communities) as an explanation for the urban east/west divide.
Posted by: KevinD | June 19, 2007 1:21 PM
The reason is obvious....
I travel a lot, and mostly on the East Coast.
All these single women are following me around, looking to part me from my wife....
The other guys are simply left behind (as normal)...
;)
Posted by: tony | June 19, 2007 1:26 PM
I'd be interested to know if some of the red dots (at least the one around Boston) correlate with a particular area being a college town, since it's known that there are more women in higher ed than men. I know when I went to Boston College, the f/m ratio was around 55/45, and I don't know if it's changed much, but I doubt that's terribly non-representative.
Posted by: Brian X | June 19, 2007 1:27 PM
The answer to the east west split depends upon who is counted. Census data is not limited to citizens. Large cities and southern border towns are likely showing a blue shift due to immigrant male workers from Latin America. In areas of stable population, the greyer native population will show a red shift due to the greater longevity women enjoy.
Mike
Posted by: mgr | June 19, 2007 1:27 PM
A very detailed explanation of this phenomenon is offered in the February (Valentines Day) issue of National Geographic.
Posted by: Thomas Robey | June 19, 2007 1:35 PM
I think the split is due to the fact that the eastern side of the country breeds faster, a la Idiocracy. The birthrate of females vs males has been increasing over the past few decades, hence a prevalence of females on the east side of the country. I'll stop talkin gay now.
Posted by: wootieff | June 19, 2007 1:38 PM
Hmph. Largest female plurality area. No wonder I'm not meeting anyone. (Even if it is 185K from a population of what? 16 million? I wonder what it is for NYC itself.)
Posted by: MyaR | June 19, 2007 1:43 PM
Maybe the men in the tech centers are simply too geeky to be attractive?
Posted by: Splynn | June 19, 2007 2:08 PM
Obviously, single men and single women are trying to get as far away from each other as they can. Perhaps, if you're single past a certain point in your life, there's a reason for it.
Posted by: RLaing | June 19, 2007 2:13 PM
*cough*
This is my theory:
Men like to sleep late in the morning. The sun rises later in the West.
Q.E.D.
Posted by: Kseniya | June 19, 2007 2:20 PM
A few years ago a magazine had an article on how Brazoria County (near Houston) had one of the largest single male populations in the country. It was because of the prisons - there are a bunch of them surrounding Houston. They said single, not single and available. Also, I don't know how those coming from Mexico affect the demographics, but I suspect they do, for California as well.
Posted by: Melusine | June 19, 2007 2:30 PM
Single men. Come to DC. You will be adored...
Posted by: meg | June 19, 2007 2:36 PM
I like how many people are chiming in to say "my love life sucks, (despite/because) of what this map shows." And, well, I have to say the same thing. The only dots in New England are red, and the only dot not counting Boston itself is just a few miles north of me, and yet here I am, single.
Posted by: Cyrus | June 19, 2007 2:38 PM
FSM damn it. I guess I have to move back East, just when I was getting to like it out here. This does explain how it's near impossible to get a date out here.
Posted by: Glenn Peters | June 19, 2007 2:40 PM
Easy to explain the excess of men in LA: guys come up from Mexico to work, leaving their family behind. As a New Yorker, I can't imagine any reason for the excess of women in the East generally.
Posted by: Jonathan Lubin | June 19, 2007 2:43 PM
Not as much as it used to be. Phoenix is one of the fastest-growing cities in the country, and Arizona as a whole has a significantly younger population that the rest of the US.
Per the census in 2000, only 11% of the people in Phoenix are over the age of 60, and 49% are between the ages of 25 and 59.
You also have to look at the actual numbers here..the large LA dot represents just 40,000 more men than women.
This is an excellent example of what Edward Tufte calls chartjunk. They're measuring total numbers rather than relative rates.
The LA metro area has a population of approximately 12.9 million; a 40,000 person imbalance means that there's 1.006 males for every female, based on the numbers in the chart. Phoenix has a population of 1.3 million, and the 20,000 male imbalance there comes to 1.063 males for every female, a HIGHER ratio, yet the dot is smaller than LA's.
I have no doubt that the tri-state area's imbalance, though impressively high at 188K more females than males is actually about the same. I'm just too lazy to google the population of that area...
This effect is pretty negligible, any way you look at it.
Posted by: BruceJ | June 19, 2007 3:09 PM
There's a huge red dot right on top of my hometown.
...I know what I'm doing this summer.
Posted by: Brandon | June 19, 2007 3:13 PM
I can vouch for Philly. I've only been here a year and have pretty much met the woman I'm going to marry. Plus before that I would get lots of responses when i would put out a personal ad on craigslist. Had to sift through some psychos but I found my diamond in the rough. Philly girls are awesome too.
Posted by: PAGuy | June 19, 2007 3:27 PM
But, Kseniya, we set our clocks, and thus live our lives, to offset the difference. At best, the sun can be said to rise later in any area that's on the western edge of a time zone. Like Boise. If you travel to northern Idaho, where they live by Pacific time, the sunsets are about an hour earlier by their clocks than they are in Boise. I like it the Boise way. At this time of year, the sunset is still visible at 10 PM.
But you can also get this sort of effect in places like Indiana and even the central panhandle of Florida.
I didn't really think there was much difference in sleeping in patterns between men and women anyway. *shrug*
Posted by: Rey Fox | June 19, 2007 3:31 PM
"I imagine San Francisco, CA is pretty easy to account for if you think about it for a second."
The chart doesn't say whether it defines "single" and "unmarried" as synonymous, which they aren't. I haven't clicked through the link to find out, but let's assume that's what they're doing.
San Francisco attracts unmarried people of all sorts, not just gay men. We have whole neighborhoods full of lesbians, for example. And the area west of Twin Peaks is a vast suburban sea of breeders. This stereotype of SFO is often trotted out by bigots and homophobes, though occasionally by LGBT-friendly types because, well, SFO has a history of being an LGBT-friendly city of which we are justly proud.
I think the theory that explains the big blue dot over the Bay Area is the migration of disproportionately male technology workers. My whole floor is full of testosterone-fueled East Coast men who can't find wives.
Posted by: s9 | June 19, 2007 3:46 PM
Someone should link that map to Expedia to help people plan their holidays. There seems to be enough demand just on this thread.
I don't seem to know any single people at all any more - maybe that's why Canada has apparently ceased to exist?
Posted by: VWXYNot? | June 19, 2007 3:55 PM
BruceJ:
You beat me to it!
Posted by: Blake Stacey, OM | June 19, 2007 3:55 PM
Places like Houston are easy enough to explain -- big oil town, not many women are roughnecks.
Places like Austin and San Antonio are a little more puzzling, but someone else mentioned the possibility of counting migrant/undocumented workers, and that makes a little sense. Austin's been growing like a tick, meaning lots of construction, meaning lots of jobs for carpenters, masons, landscapers, etc., drawing them from nearby areas. That's probably not enough to account for the discrepancy, though.
Posted by: John Bode | June 19, 2007 4:06 PM
Ok, I have had a bad day but this story's comments made it all go away. I got some good laughs out of this. I especially liked the theory about the prevailing winds. Thanks everyone. Ending the day on a high note.
Posted by: Ken | June 19, 2007 4:07 PM
A friend remarked that the map should be, of course, *pink* and blue.
Posted by: notthedroids | June 19, 2007 4:36 PM
Likely reason for predominant males on the west coast - Millions from Mexico seeking employment - mostly young men
Posted by: Pedro | June 19, 2007 4:50 PM
I was being too flip, probably, in suggesting that gay men are the only reason why the Bay Area would come up skewed to males, and I apologize for that. Though, for chrissakes, it's not like I meant it as though it were a bad thing.
I would be pretty damned surprised if the number of lesbians in the Bay Area were greater than or equal to the number of gay men. Gay men being more common to begin with.
Posted by: Jessica Guilford | June 19, 2007 4:51 PM
Yah San Diego has either retarded or non single girls...As if I had some what a chance to begin with..
Posted by: Mr. Wizard | June 19, 2007 4:56 PM
Rey, your eminently reasonable and brazenly insightful analysis has knocked the wind completely out from under my deliberately inane theory! Whatever shall I do?!?
:-)
Posted by: Kseniya | June 19, 2007 5:03 PM
I could catch heck for saying this, but I think males are much more likely to move long distances for jobs & recreational activities. And migration has been primarily Westward.
The last time I was young and single I was at a very deceptive point on the map; Los Alamos, where the ratio of single men to single women was truly large!
Posted by: bigTom | June 19, 2007 5:09 PM
Well, for starters, you could fetch me a Coke.
Posted by: Rey Fox | June 19, 2007 5:12 PM
I look at where the biggest blue circles are, and where the biggest red circles are, and I conclude that women flee from computer geeks.
Posted by: Evolving Squid | June 19, 2007 5:15 PM
Unmarried means single and fair game to me:-)
Posted by: JImC | June 19, 2007 5:25 PM
Rey! =:D
Posted by: Kseniya | June 19, 2007 5:33 PM
Just another thank you for a couple of very big laughs - and a few smaller chuckles.
Posted by: LC | June 19, 2007 5:49 PM
It doesn't matter that there's a giant blue dot over the Bay Area in CA. Have you seen the single guys here? They're all sporting bowl-cuts and pocket protectors. Ladies, if you like nerdy, horny tech guys then San Jose is the hunting ground for you!
Posted by: Girl in Nerdville | June 19, 2007 6:21 PM
I nominate Comments 1 & 10 for Mollies!
Posted by: Jeb, FCD | June 19, 2007 6:45 PM
I just examined Louisiana more closely. All the "hot spots" are also college towns.
Posted by: Jeb, FCD | June 19, 2007 6:47 PM
The "Duckman" animated series had an episode where the United States was divided in half between the sexes:
"The East, known for its culture, was given to the women. The West, known for its cattle, was given to the men."
Posted by: False Prophet | June 19, 2007 6:54 PM
PZ's classification of single people as "excess" is kind of funny. :) Some of us are actually happily single; I would count as a statistic on a similar sort of map, but that doesn't mean I'm looking to become part of a civilly-recognised pair-bond unit. (That said, where I live, that means opposite-sex marriage, same-sex marriage, and common-law marriage, which encompasses both orientations but doesn't require a license, just a time interval.) But if you're like me and you're with Sartre when he said "Hell is other people," and you're definitely not into having kids, what's the point? :)
Posted by: Interrobang | June 19, 2007 6:59 PM
Didn't somebody once say "Go west young man!"
Sam Clemens or PT Barnum. Census figures have probably
always shown this. I was offered a job in Alaska when I was single. Ugh, too many men, too few women. Santa Barbara was the place I chose to be. In the 70's a gold mine. Little makeup allowed prediction of what she looked like in the morning. I'm sorry if that sounds sexist but I always believed in WYSIWYG. I'm now in Washington state where pasty pale is back in vogue. I love it. I am now (rare in America) color blind as to race or ethnicity. When people complain about the browning of America I say Yahooo!
Posted by: Ken Mareld | June 19, 2007 7:37 PM
There's a lot more pressure on women to stay near their families and not be 'pioneers.'
My east coast family thinks I'm crazy for moving to the pacific northwest. Maybe I should show them this map :)
Posted by: laurelin | June 19, 2007 7:53 PM
Hmmm. I seem to have the opposite problem than most - I get more male attention than I'd like here in Chicago as it is. Maybe I should re-think my plan to move to Seattle...
Posted by: kellbelle1020 | June 19, 2007 8:01 PM
The unofficial Alaskan state motto: The odds are good, but the goods are odd.
Posted by: alaskat | June 19, 2007 8:11 PM
Assuming that the eass/west distinction is significant (statistically) to any reasonable degree, I'd go with the immigration hypothesis. But that's what it is - a hypothesis.
Posted by: Keith Douglas | June 19, 2007 8:12 PM
Ken Mareld:
Horace Greeley. And I'm in a college town with one of the larger blue dots not seen in a major metro area. Great.
Posted by: Bechamel | June 19, 2007 8:21 PM
For the record: Greeley's "west" was upstate New York.
Posted by: Pierce R. Butler | June 19, 2007 8:57 PM
This is all minor.
Qatar
Sex ratio:
at birth: 1.05 male(s)/female
under 15 years: 1.04 male(s)/female
15-64 years: 2.211 male(s)/female
65 years and over: 2.887 male(s)/female
total population: 1.852 male(s)/female (2007 est.)
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/qa.html
And ladies, if you are considering emigrating, please do a little more research.
And if you are in the LA area, and that desperate, check out the California Institute of Technology instead. When I was there, it was 7:1 (One group Halloween costume was 'Snow White and the Caltech Ratio') and probably hasn't improved much. There was a saying among the women there:
The odds are good, but the goods are odd.
Posted by: Viadd | June 19, 2007 9:40 PM
ROFL at the unoficial Alaska state motto. That's hilarious.
I think it's a combination of the effect of women fleeing nerds and men fleeing from Sarah Jessica Parker.
Posted by: Leni | June 19, 2007 9:42 PM
That big dot over Rochester, Minnesota is the Mayo Clinic.
That means that there is a large collection of educated single women with high-income potential just waiting to be found. It's only about 85 miles south of Minneapolis.
I think it is time for a summer road trip!
Posted by: Tony Popple | June 19, 2007 9:58 PM
Posted by: llewelly | June 19, 2007 10:12 PM
"Ladies, if you like nerdy, horny tech guys then San Jose is the hunting ground for you!"
Don't be hatin' the nerdy, horny tech guys-- not that you are, of course, but-- they're often clueful enough to read the instruction manual, and they can usually find a clitoris without having to ask for directions.
Posted by: s9 | June 19, 2007 10:41 PM
Yes, at Caltech we said "the odds are good" etc about the guys (I never knew it had anything to do with Alaska). The ratio is down to 3:1 or better now, but still not great. The guys had another saying though- the odds are bad and the goods are worse. Made us women feel really loved.
Posted by: lawl | June 19, 2007 10:43 PM
I love how Purdue actually caused a blue dot on the map. Oh the abundance of male engineering students, you make us nerdy girls so happy.
Posted by: Jennifurret | June 19, 2007 10:57 PM
Why not try reading the actual National Geographic article for the most valid hypotheses about why this is the case?
The smart money is on the fact that the majority of illegal immigrants are male (and primary breadwinners for families residing in Mexico and beyond) and make their homes in the western states.
Posted by: speedgraphic | June 20, 2007 12:14 AM
That doesn't seem right to me. I've always heard the town in Colorado was named after him in honor for his encouragement of people coming out here, though being from Colorado it's possible we're overstating the importance of our part of the country to someone back east. Still Greeley seems to be a little late to be encouraging people to be moving to upstate New York.
By the way, while trying to find when Greeley said this I discovered that according to wikipedia (for what that's worth) Greeley used the phrase after John Soule originally wrote it in 1851.
Posted by: mcmillan | June 20, 2007 12:55 AM
@ speedgraphic,
ummm, because it's more fun to speculate about the reasons and make up funny explanations? Anyhow, I used to live under the red dot in St. Louis, but I never noticed a plethora of single women. That may be because I was on the lookout for single men though. :)
Posted by: Pymgy Loris | June 20, 2007 12:57 AM
In Wyoming, there's a saying, "Wyoming. Where the men are men, and the sheep are nervous."
Posted by: wheatdogg | June 20, 2007 1:47 AM
Surfers on the west, women in finance on the east.
Posted by: OR | June 20, 2007 1:57 AM