Sundays were meant for drinking

...and who better to drink with than theater and movie master, culture critic extraordinaire Orson Welles:

So go ahead and pass the Paul Masson or, if you're in our neck of the woods -- Andre. Thanks to my friend Tug of About-Today for sharing the link to NYMag with this gem of a video.

Dividing America

Geography? Been there, done that. Culture?That's what brought us the Civil War. Economics, yeah it's been done... Politics? We've heard the Red State Blue State spiel.

But how about a meta division?

Via Richard Florida we find a new way to divide America into 7 distinct regions based purely on the social networking of Facebook. From such exotic names as Socalistan to the more mundane Greater Texas Pete Werden has analyzed 210 million Public Facebook Profiles. From the habits of facebook users and mapping their connections we can learn about the folks. Per Werden:

Some of these clusters are intuitive, like the old south, but there's some surprises too, like Missouri, Louisiana and Arkansas having closer ties to Texas than Georgia. To make sense of the patterns I'm seeing, I've marked and labeled the clusters, and added some notes about the properties they have in common.

Thus you get the map, and the descriptions of these clusters. From the available information it looks like a meta description that combines not only geographic and sociologic taxonomies but some freakanomics. Take for example "Dixie":

Probably the least surprising of the groupings, the Old South is known for its strong and shared culture, and the pattern of ties I see backs that up. Like Stayathomia, Dixie towns tend to have links mostly to other nearby cities rather than spanning the country. Atlanta is definitely the hub of the network, showing up in the top 5 list of almost every town in the region. Southern Florida is an exception to the cluster, with a lot of connections to the East Coast, presumably sun-seeking refugees.

God is almost always in the top spot on the fan pages, and for some reasonAshley shows up as a popular name here, but almost nowhere else in the country.

If it sounds familiar, it probably should -- this nearly neatly explains, and to my estimation definitely gives meat to why Nate Silver's formulae for vote predictions were so accurate. It's a fuller picture. Let's take a look at South Carolina from Fan Page Analytics:

Profile for South Carolina

Friends

o North Carolina
o Georgia
o Florida
o DC
o New York
o Texas
o Tennessee
o Virginia
o California
o Pennsylvania

Likes

o God
o Starbucks
o I need a vacati...
o Chick-fil-A
o Freeze Pops
o Dislike Button
o Michael Jackson
o Charleston, SC
o The Beach
o I believe in God

Names

o Michael
o Jennifer
o David
o Chris
o John
o Ashley
o Jessica
o James
o Amanda
o Lisa

and Columbia, SC?

Profile for Columbia, SC

Friends

o Charleston, SC
o Greenville, SC
o Charlotte, NC
o Atlanta, GA
o Florence, SC
o Augusta, GA
o Washington, DC
o Myrtle Beach, SC
o New York, NY
o Raleigh / Durha...

Likes

o God
o Starbucks
o Chick-fil-A
o Michael Jackson
o Freeze Pops
o Dislike Button
o I need a vacati...
o Taraji P. Henson
o R.I.P Michael J...
o I believe in God

Names

o Michael
o Chris
o John
o Jennifer
o David
o Ashley
o Jessica
o James
o Amanda
o Jason