Today’s map is going to seem entirely frivolous and unconnected to scientific skepticism, secularism, and atheism, but that is only because it is indeed unconnected to scientific skepticism, secularism, and atheism. As a feat of data visualization, it’s not even particularly impressive. As a feat of obsessive completism, though, it is really quite something to enumerate 2,621,514 goats, one by one. (To be honest, I can think of much worse things to do with taxpayer money.)
The full map of literally every goat in the United States may be found over at Wonkblog. Go have a look. I’ve excerpted just a small sample below, to illustrate the glory that is the American goat belt:
I’ll get serious again soon, but when the world news is full of depressing headlines, sometimes I just need to relax and think about goats.
This post is dedicated to Justin Vacula, for less-than-obvious reasons.
