Monday Trivia, No. 155 [Michael Cain wins!]

Burt Likko

Pseudonymous Portlander. Pursuer of happiness. Bon vivant. Homebrewer. Atheist. Recovering Republican. Recovering Catholic. Recovering divorcé. Editor-in-Chief Emeritus of Ordinary Times. Relapsed Lawyer, admitted to practice law (under his real name) in California and Oregon. There's a Twitter account at @burtlikko, but not used for posting on the general feed anymore. House Likko's Words: Scite Verum. Colite Iusticia. Vivere Con Gaudium.

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18 Responses

  1. Michael Cain says:

    I have a feeling the fact that most of the missing 14 are a contiguous block of interior Mountain West and Great Plains states should be relevant. But not a real clue why.Report

  2. Pinky says:

    Splitting elements between two states – and not necessarily one number split to two. What goes across state lines, but only does so rarely? There’s no way that miles of interstate highway are reported by state, lumping North and South Carolina together. Or only seven states have airports that service more than one state.

    It’s got to be something that includes interstate partnerships, or has federal involvement. Energy production (TVA), military bases, national parks.Report

  3. Mike Schilling says:

    Splitting elements between two states

    Fission reactors.Report

  4. Dan Miller says:

    Does it have something to do with national parks? Maybe “square miles of land that are protected as both a state park and a national park”?Report

  5. Chris says:

    Hmm… Texas, Louisiana, California, Florida… fruit farms per square mile?Report

  6. Burt Likko says:

    Tuesday hint: Texas and Louisiana are WAY out in front. Between them, they account for approximately 3/8 of the total; Texas is nearly three times California and Louisiana about two and a half times California. Louisiana also has the single largest data point assembled in the state-by-state list, again by a pretty considerable margin.Report

  7. Pinky says:

    Interesting. What is Texas a lot of that Oklahoma is almost none of?

    And there are multiple data points per state, it seems. But this is all 2004, so it’s not multiple years. So city or county data? Also, if one data point isn’t enough to bring Louisiana into #1, it’s probably not strictly additive. May be sum of something per capita.

    So maybe the big data point is New Orleans. What does it lead in? I’d think something about alcohol, jazz clubs, political corruption…this was pre-Katrina, so not FEMA funding, but maybe Army Corps of Engineers projects?Report

  8. Michael Cain says:

    Port traffic (ocean/lake/river) by tonnage. Texas and Louisiana handle an enormous amount of sheer tonnage. California not so much tonnage as TX/LA, but lots of value. New York/New Jersey are the most obvious split, but I can think of others. The Great Lakes ports are surprisingly big, as are some inland ports on the Mississippi, Ohio and Missouri.Report

    • This is the correct answer. When I saw that there was such a thing as the “Port of Kansas City” I said “whaaaaaa?” and dug in a bit more. Turns out, there’s lots of inland ports, but they have to be on navigable rivers, and most of the mountain west and even Pacific-draining rivers are not navigable, at least not very far.

      Internationally, it is not surprising at all to find that the PRC is way, way ahead of any other nation in this category; Shanghai alone handles more tonnage than every port in Texas combined.Report