Sins of preference around the country

Too much time on their hands? Professional geographers who want to stand out in a crowd? A fancy party trick? I won't try to answer those questions, only say that their efforts have mapped sinfulness across the country. They figured out how to quantify the Seven Deadly Sins within a population and colored the map by county accordingly. In case you don't remember those sins they are (with the method of quantifying it):

* Greed -- compare average income with number of residents below the poverty line.
* Envy -- thefts per capita.
* Wrath -- violent crimes per capita.
* Lust -- sexually transmitted diseases per capita.
* Gluttony -- fast food restaurants per capita.
* Sloth -- compare expenditures in entertainment and recreation with unemployment rate.
* Pride -- the combination of all the above.

The data is mapped two ways. The first shows the value of a sin with more sinful counties in darker colors. The second shows average counties in pale yellow, higher than average in red and below average in blue. The map for Pride (the combination) shows a red swath from eastern Texas, across the South, to New York City, another swath across California, and blotches in Washington state, southern Michigan, and around Kansas City (among others). There is also a blue swath covering most of West Virginia, Kentucky, Illinois (outside of Chicago), Iowa, Nebraska, half of Kansas and South Dakota, and all of North Dakota.

Most gay blogs show the map for Lust, noting the bright red blotch covering the South.