"Even though I lived in one of Georgia's best places (Athens, I was in the geology faculty at UGA), I never found any redeeming qualities in the Southeast. And I tried, oh I tried. I found the climate and the vegetation oppressive, the landscape depressing, and the culture alien. I finally found two good things about Georgia: Atlanta's airport (the departure lounge only, never liked baggage claim) and Delta. I retired on January 1 of this year and moved to Santa Fe three days later. This place is, for me, as close to perfect as possible (at least among places that I can afford). Everything that I hated about Georgia I love about New Mexico. Yet according to this article New Mexico ranks near the bottom in terms of quality of living."
A highly rated comment on the NYT article "The Best (and Worst) States for Remote Work/A recent study ranked all 50 states and Washington, D.C., to find where working from home was most attractive to workers and employers."
The study in question ranked Georgia first for "living." Factors that counted: The size of houses and housing lots and the presence of swimming pools!
Another comment: "I have lived in several states, and visited virtually all of them. Ranking 'living environment' in New Hampshire as only the 44th best, and Colorado's as 47th, is something of a joke, although I suppose if the most important attribute that the pollster can think of is a private swimming pool, as opposed to, say, a wondrous outdoor environment, that might account for this bizarre finding."
It's a good idea for an article, as many people these days are in a position to relocate and work remotely, but the specific advice is ludicrous. Even if your favorite thing is having a swimming pool taking up your backyard, it doesn't matter who else in the same state has a swimming pool, only that it's warm enough to justify having a swimming pool. You can install a swimming pool! And why would a young person — working remotely — want the largest house and yard? How about a well-designed, easy-to-maintain smaller house?
FROM THE EMAIL: Georgia has its proponents. Joseph says:
Says the Editorial Board of The Washington Post in "The 2020 Census is a clarion call for immigration."
I was just saying that President Biden's plan to vastly increase support for families with children could be justified by the need to inspire Americans to keep having children. Here's what I wrote 3 days ago:
There was some concern expressed yesterday over the "remarkable slackening" in population growth seen in the 2020 census. What will it do to the economy going forward if Americans don't maintain the long human tradition of robust reproduction? I was inclined to say, don't worry about it, less population growth is good for the environment. But if you took the other side of that debate... you'd better worry about women declining the option to undertake childbearing and men and women passing on the potentially fulfilling endeavor of child-rearing. It's terribly expensive!... [Y]ou're going to have to incentivize reproduction a little bit. The old scheme of locking women into childbirth as a consequence of indulging in sex failed long ago, and you sound like a fool talking about it now, especially if you attempt to stand on the foundation of love for babies, when what you are doing is justifying freeing rich folk — people who make over $1 million a year — from paying a 40% capital gains tax. Can't dishearten them in their enthusiasm for investing? What about the young people who are disheartened about having children? Worry about them.
But the WaPo editors have nothing to say about these new children-friendly policies. They just say there's little that can be done to motivate Americans to choose life with children. They go right to immigration:
This nation’s prosperity, pluck, ambition and effervescent character are the products of more than 100 million immigrants who have sought better lives in the United States since its founding.
It's probably true that these children of Americans who are not getting born would probably be dull slackers compared to the plucky, effervescent immigrants.
FROM THE EMAIL: Temujin writes:
"... the moment two women say the author assaulted them — when all that happens, you wonder how the 900-page tome reads in hindsight."
Writes Monica Hesse (in WaPo). She bought the book after the publisher withdrew it. You can still download the Kindle version. [ADDED: You can even buy the hardcover book at that link. Amazon has its stock to ship. But the publisher, Norton, isn't shipping any more books, and it's not doing publicity.]
That takes some of the heat out of the argument that the book has been censored. I stand by my opinion — expressed here — that the book should be sold no matter what the author, Blake Bailey, may have done. The book is not doing any sort of active harm — where we might have a real debate about censorship. It's just the argument that the author is a bad person, and these are only allegations. I would support publishing the book even if Bailey had shot a man on 5th Avenue in broad daylight. Roth is an overwhelmingly important writer, and this was the biographer he authorized, which caused many people to give interviews to Bailey. It's unfair to the Roth to deprive him of the story of himself that he chose Bailey to tell, and it's unfair to keep that story from us.
But we can get the Kindle version. And maybe we're more interested in it now. Monica Hesse got interested — interested in reading the book with "hindsight." I guess that means that all the time she's reading about Roth, she's thinking about how she's hearing the story of this "problematic" man as analyzed by another problematic man. Let's see what Hesse makes out of her assigned task of perceiving the problematic through an extra layer of problematizing:
You find yourself scrolling to a random page and reading a description of Roth’s first marriage: “Maggie’s sinuses were, of course, the least of their problems. Even at the best of times she couldn’t resist interrupting his work on the thinnest of pretexts (‘Could you go out and get half a pound of Parmesan cheese?’).” One could write a whole essay unpacking the premises propping up this sentence. Why is it unreasonable for Philip Roth to be asked to purchase an ingredient for the dinner he is presumably going to eat? Who purchased the rest of the groceries? One assumes it was Maggie. Was her day not “interrupted” when she shopped for and prepared the meal? What is the difference between a “thin pretext” and a valid request, other than whether the asker is Philip Roth or his shrewish, sinus-clogged wife?
Ha ha ha. That is rich. That's some really good feminist writing. Bailey is damned by his "thinnest of pretexts." He assumes Maggie just wanted to interrupt Roth, that there couldn't possibly be a legitimate reason for the person cooking dinner to ask the other person in the house to go out and buy a missing ingredient. Bailey seems to think that a person in a house with a Genius at Work must know not even to ask for help with mundane household matters.
Here — if you're going to Amazon to download the Kindle of the Roth bio (or anything else) — why not buy this sign to tack onto your study door and see how it works out with your stuffed-up spouse:
"The characters' stories were nicely, complexly interwoven. I liked it — even when it skewed melodramatic. I liked that you were kept on your toes about which characters to love or hate, to respect or revile."
That's something I blogged in February 2006, after watching the movie "Crash," which had just been nominated for the Best Picture Oscar.
The movie went on to win that Oscar, a fact I'm contemplating this morning because I'm reading "The Oscars always get it wrong. Here are the real best pictures of the past 45 years" (Washington Post). Here's the entry for that year:
Nominees: Brokeback Mountain, Capote, Crash, Good Night and Good Luck, Munich
Best Picture winner: Crash
The actual best picture: Brokeback Mountain
Your tolerance for “Crash” may vary, but let’s face it: It won because it employed a dozen well-liked B-listers, and it was filmed in the neighborhoods where all the academy voters live. A sensitive and groundbreaking film whose catchphrase (“I wish I knew how to quit you”) still haunts, “Brokeback” was robbed.
That's not new writing. It's something WaPo published in 2016 and is now republishing along with new material to cover more recent movies. This republication had to be updated for full disclosure: "We published this fine quarrel in 2016, but they just keep on handing out Oscars to the wrong movies, so we have updated it for your further education."
The word "education" — though facetious — takes the position that opinion is stable and what they said 5 years ago about "Crash" is the same thing they'd say today.
"Additionally, 60% of Republicans incorrectly agree that the election was stolen from Republican Donald Trump."
CNN reports, aggressively inserting the view that the people who were polled are wrong. I believe that's a very unusual way to report an opinion poll, with insistence that the opinion is wrong and apart from any factual reporting that makes it perfectly obvious that the opinion is mistaken.
This displays a desperate fear of the opinion, and I don't think it does much good. The urge to stamp the opinion out will tend to make those who hold it grip more tightly: What are they afraid of? Are they trying to get me to move on, telling me there's nothing to see here?
CNN continues:
What is perfectly clear, however, is that Republicans' lack of faith in our current election infrastructure is a direct result of Trump's historic efforts to undermine the legitimacy of the 2020 results.
It's "perfectly clear" why people have this opinion? This is a news article, reporting a poll, and it's making an absolute assertion about why human beings believe what they do. That doesn't inspire confidence. It makes people suspicious, perhaps paranoid.
FROM THE EMAIL: Cheryl writes:
“Election infrastructure...”
Seems like that word is being softened up to mean anything they want it to mean. Wonder why.
Good catch. I'll boldface the word in the quoted text above. Cheryl's right. There's been a lot of talk lately from Democrats around the word "infrastructure." I was just saying: "It's a propaganda word to the core."
AND: Temujin emails:
Oh, wouldn't you just love to pile into an unmoderated comments section right now? I've abolished the comments section, because the tragedy of the commons was just too damned heart-rending. But I could turn it on for an individual post, just to see what happens. That's an option I've considered and that a few people have mentioned in email. (You can email me here.)
Why not turn it on for this post? Actually, I considered it, because I think there's a lot in the video to talk about, and I'm not personally in the mood to comment about it, other than to have selected that one quote for the post title. And isn't it interesting that the quote expresses appreciation for "good dialogue"?
But if the comments were open, the beginning of the comments section would be filled with comments from people who hadn't watched the video. And there'd be comments saying things that have already been said about "Saturday Night Live" — that's it's never been funny or hasn't been funny since [whenever]. How long would it take before somebody would say something trenchant about the actual substance of the video?
"I think this is a good dialogue...." is a funny line because the referenced dialogue is not good. And yet we cling to the notion that dialogue is good. I love dialogue.
Here ends my monologue.
FROM THE EMAIL: Temujin writes:
I've wondered if you've considered randomly opening up comments at some point for posts only you want to hear comments on. There were one or two in the past couple of days I would have loved to have commented on. But not on this one. You are correct to not open comments on this one. It would be a bloodbath. No one likes a bloodbath in the morning.
Yeah, bloodbath is more of an evening luxury.
"They saunter down the sidewalks and sleep in the streets. Some eat from the hands of humans, and they all eat from the trash.... 'It became like an everyday thing,' said Eugene Notkov, 35, a chef who lets his dog play with the boars that putter around the local parks. 'They’re a part of our city'.... Bumping into one is 'like seeing a squirrel.'...'I wish we could all in Israel learn to live like they live in Haifa,' said Edna Gorney, a poet, ecologist and lecturer at the University of Haifa. 'It’s an example of coexistence — not only between Arabs and Jews, but also between humans and wildlife.'... 'They are controlling the streets now,' said Assaf Schechter, 43, a port worker confronted recently by a boar on his porch. 'It’s a very crazy situation.'... 'At night, I would go out, after a drink, and recycle the beer,' Professor Malkinson said. 'It’s two for the price of one — you fertilize the trees and you try to deter the wild boars... Essentially the conflict is between those who oppose having wild boars in the city and those who don’t... It’s not an ecological problem... It’s a social problem.'"
To comment, email me here.
FROM THE EMAIL: Temujin writes:
संदेश
