The Atlantic Wrongly Calls California Largest State

March 21, 2015 - The Atlantic's editorial staff seems to be geographically challenged. The headline of a March 21 article is "The Economics of California's Drought," and has the unfortunate subhead of "What happens when the country's largest state runs low on water?" And there's the problem.

The article's author, Matt Schiavenza, might have meant to call California "the country's most populous state," but that's not what was written. Perhaps he meant to say, "the state with the country's largest population," but he didn't write that either.

Misleading subtitle in The Atlantic Wire

To be fair, headlines are often not written by the author but by an editor. Regardless of who writes them, headlines should not be vague, ambiguous or confusing.

In any case, the subtitle calls California "the country's largest state." Without qualifying that, by specifying population, it is misleading and unclear at best.

California has a lot more people than Texas and Alaska combined. According to the U.S. Census Bureau's 2010 Demographic Profile:

California had a population of 37,253,956 (ranked 1st).

Texas had a population of 25,145,561 (ranked 2nd).

Alaska had a population of 710,231 (ranked 47th).

But although California may have the biggest population of the 50 states, but in terms of geographic size it ranks third, behind Alaska and Texas. The U.S. Census Bureau says that the three largest states in 2008, by total area, were as follows:

Alaska had a total area of 664,988 sq. miles (ranked 1st)
Texas had a total area of 268,597 sq. miles (ranked 2nd)
California;had a total area of 163,694 sq. miles (ranked 3rd)

Alaska is waaaaay bigger than California

California was clearly a distant third in terms of size as recently as 2008. I strongly suspect that the total land areas of have not changed enough to have altered these states' size rankings. And to repeat myself, "largest state" and "largest population" are two very different things.

Of course, Schiavenza was writing about the water crisis in California, not about the size of the state. But he referred to another article with some probably-unintentional irony. "Earlier this month," he wrote, "the title of a Los Angeles Times op-ed published by Jay Famiglietti, senior water scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and a professor at UC Irvine, got right to the point: California would run out of water in a year. This headline—as Famiglietti himself pointed out—isn't exactly accurate."

Irony: Schiavenza's headline "isn't exactly accurate." And Schiavenza should know that LA Times op-ed was not "published by Jay Famiglietti." He wrote it. The LA Times published it.

Also See:
States Ranked by Size and Population ipl.org

Is Rep. Hank Johnson the Dumbest Man in Congress?

Can an island in the middle of the ocean - or anywhere - tip over? Congressman Hank Johnson (D-Georgia) apparently thought so when he was discussing relocation of more military personnel to Guam.

After droning on and on about the physical dimensions of the small Pacific island, Johnson said he was worried that the island might capsize like Barney Frank in a hot tub.

"My fear is that, ah, the whole island will, ah, become so overly populated that it would tip over and ah, and capsize," he said to a top military commander. You can watch him say it at 1:15 in the video here.

Stupid: Hank Johnson

It couldn't have been easy for Admiral Robert Willard, the commander of the U.S. Pacific Command, to maintain a straight face during his completely bizarre grilling by Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) last week. Willard was testifying before the House Armed Services Committee at a hearing concerning his command's FY 2011 budget. Full post at Mother Jones...

Admiral Willard somehow managed to keep a straight face. He responded, "Ah, we don't anticipate that. The Guam population is currently about 175,000."

Manhattan is about the same size as Guam and has about 100 times the population and much more construction. There is no indication that Manhattan is in danger of capsizing. Later, Johnson defended his idiotic remarks by saying that he was just kidding. "Johnson tells 11 Alive News that he used what he thought was a humorous metaphor," reported NBC 11 Atlanta, "'Often, I've been known to use humor as I deliver a message. That's just one of the gifts that I think that I have,' Johnson deadpanned."

If Johnson really was kidding, then his sense of humor is very strange. There he is, in a very serious moment, discussing very serious matters, with the commander of the U.S. Pacific Command -- and he's making jokes? No, no, no.

A normal person would not have done that in the first place, but if they did, they would have quickly chuckled and said something like, "I'm just kidding, I know that Guam couldn't possibly tip over because it's attached to the bottom of the ocean."

Johnson did nothing like that. He gave no indication that he was intentionally saying something that he thought was funny.  To Johnson's credit, though, it was a damned funny performance.

RELATED:
Good News! Guam Will No Longer Tip Over! Fellowship of the Minds (Dec. 2011)
Rep. Hank Johnson Thinks Guam Could Capsize Mother Jones
Rep. Hank Johnson: Guam could 'tip over and capsize' The Hill
Dumb Dems to be Drummed Out American Thinker
What is he doing in Congress? The Augusta Chronicle

BBC: Wisconsin Not Over By Dere

Good catch by blogger "Wilmette," who chides the BBC for its lousy knowledge of North American geography. Note to the BBC: Wisconsin Isn't by Canada On the television ,BBC World is reporting from Washington, DC that the terrible shooting in Crandon, Wisconsin happened "hard up by Canada." BBC, Wisconsin isn't by Canada, in its northern parts it is by Michigan and Minnesota. Pretty big blooper, guys; one you ought to fix.