posted by
martyb
on Friday October 13 2017, @04:12PM
from the had-better-stop-driving-when-you-reach-the-ocean dept.
from the had-better-stop-driving-when-you-reach-the-ocean dept.
Three cities in Colorado — a state whose fortunes have been tied to the boom and bust of oil, gas and other commodities — are among the top 10 leading destinations for the nation's best and brightest as old cow and mining towns morph into technology hubs, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Boulder, the small college town located just north of Colorado's capital, is ranked No. 1 nationally in the Bloomberg Brain Concentration Index, which tracks business formation as well as employment and education in the sciences, technology, engineering and mathematics. Fort Collins and Denver follow at No. 4 and No. 10, respectively.
Are the best and brightest taking up skiing, or seeking higher ground amid rising sea levels?
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The Smartest Americans are Heading West
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(Score: 3, Informative) by legont on Friday October 13 2017, @04:32PM (1 child)
East:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34797252 [bbc.com]
West:
https://www.amazon.com/Cadillac-Desert-American-Disappearing-Revised/dp/0140178244 [amazon.com]
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday October 13 2017, @05:51PM
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/13/sports/unc-north-carolina-ncaa.html [nytimes.com]
South:
https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2017-10-13/south-africas-zuma-disappointed-by-court-ruling-over-corruption-charges [usnews.com]
Northeast:
http://norfolkdailynews.com/news/northeast-offers-a-new-way-to-have-a-ball/article_8307fc94-b01d-11e7-821e-6fa4556e5b41.html [norfolkdailynews.com]
Southeast:
http://news.semo.edu/oldest-living-sagamore-queen-returns-as-southeast-homecoming-parade-marshal/ [semo.edu]
Southwest:
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/12/southwest-planning-to-start-service-to-hawaii-next-year.html [cnbc.com]
And last but not least, Northwest:
http://www.meridianstar.com/sports/juco-football-emcc-stunned-by-northwest/article_08f2476c-afcc-11e7-aad1-d7591264af67.html [meridianstar.com]
In addition to this really important information about the other points of the compass you neglected, I have discovered a SoylentNews defect:
" rel="url2html-7561">http://news.semo.edu/oldest-living-sagamore-queen-returns-as-southeast-homecoming-parade-marshal/
versus http://news.semo.edu/oldest-living-sagamore-queen-returns-as-southeast-homecoming-parade-marshal/ [semo.edu]
The former has problems in preview with a " rel="url2html-7561"> appearing before the link (I appended two line breaks right after the HTML link versus the second which has some white space in between). We'll see if it shows when I post.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday October 13 2017, @04:36PM (14 children)
Logic and the scientific method dictate that you must cite research strongly correlating the above to a majority, or at least a plurality, of people of above average intelligence in the nation. Lacking citation(s), the index shows only what it shows; no deeper meaning can be drawn from it.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Friday October 13 2017, @04:54PM (12 children)
What the heck are you talking about? They're not claiming that a majority of smart people nationwide are all moving to 3 towns in Colorado; that's completely ridiculous. They're claiming that of the top-10 places where smart people are moving to, out of all the places where smart people are moving, 3 of those are these towns in CO. I don't see the problem here. Some fraction of smart people are moving somewhere, and it doesn't have to be a majority. And they're not moving to Detroit, Tennessee, Alabama, or Oklahoma.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 13 2017, @05:13PM (9 children)
chatanooga looks pretty nice to me
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday October 13 2017, @05:33PM (8 children)
Ok, realistically there's probably some decent places in every state, and places where smart people might even want to move. But is Chattanooga in or even near the top-10 for destinations right now? I kinda doubt it. It's a small city, and there isn't that much happening there. Also, while they were known for a while for having a great municipal internet service, didn't that get shut down or hobbled by the state government?
Maybe I should have said Mississippi instead of Tennessee in my offhand comment there. TN does have a lot of government research going on at Oak Ridge I think, and the Smoky Mountain park is really beautiful, and Memphis and Nashville are sizable cities. There's also a really cool underground lake a little north of Chattanooga and some huge caverns in the middle of the state. MS really doesn't have much going for it, especially after Katrina wiped out everything along the coast in Gulfport/Biloxi, though the gambling has returned (not something to be too proud of; it's not exactly a productive industry).
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday October 13 2017, @06:02PM
Be sure to check out "Bubble Gum Alley". The other tourists need some company.
(Score: 3, Offtopic) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday October 13 2017, @06:12PM
Skip Memphis unless you want to live way out around Germantown. It's a shithole in Memphis proper with a way above average chance of you getting robbed, raped, or killed to death. Well, maybe not raped if you fit the male nerd stereotype but it's the twenty-teens so you never know.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday October 13 2017, @07:10PM (5 children)
The Smoky Mountains are OK as a national park, but it's got nothing on the parks in the West. Glacier, Yellowstone, Badlands, Cascades, Olympic, Redwoods, Yosemite, Death Valley, Kings Canyon, Sequoia, Arches, Capitol Reef. All of those have grandeur Smoky Mountains can't touch. You could spend a lifetime hiking those and barely scratch the surface.
The Smokies I suspect attract regional visitors more for Dollywood and the other ancillary attractions like that than for its own sights.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday October 13 2017, @07:54PM (2 children)
The Smoky Mountains are OK as a national park, but it's got nothing on the parks in the West. Glacier, Yellowstone, Badlands, Cascades, Olympic, Redwoods, Yosemite, Death Valley, Kings Canyon, Sequoia, Arches, Capitol Reef.
Sorry, but no. The east coast and west coast simply aren't comparable, it's like comparing apples and oranges. The western parks are great if you want to see amazing rock formations, desert vistas, canyons, geysers, and gigantic coniferous trees. But if you want to see great deciduous hardwood forests, you're not going to find them in the west, they're all in the east. There is a lot more total acreage in the western parks, granted, and probably a lot more overall variety of grandeur (you won't find sequoias anywhere on the east coast, nor anything like the Grand Canyon). But there's a reason the Appalachian Trail is still very popular with hikers.
Compared to other parts of the east coast, the Smokies rank very highly. You're not going to find much grandeur in Alabama or South Carolina, for instance.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday October 13 2017, @08:05PM (1 child)
Don't get me wrong. The Appalachians are nice. They're close. They're lovely in the fall when the leaves turn. They're comforting in the way a good quilt is on a chilly day. There are even a handful of nice vistas. But they don't say to you, Wow, this is nature!
Nowhere in the Appalachians puts you in your proper place as a human being, which is to say, a very, very small thing after all. None of it is raw, majestic, and wild. You can compare those regions, and the Appalachians come up short.
Now, if you keep following their line north across the border into Canada, and get to Cape Bretton Island and Newfoundland (I have no idea if those are part of the same mountain building event, geologically speaking, but they're also natural areas on the east coast), yeah, they're stunning. Those places have that primal quality that grabs you in the gut. Not in the US, though. Not from Maine to Georgia.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 13 2017, @08:28PM
Nowhere in the Appalachians puts you in your proper place as a human being,
which I think means in awe of the beauty/wonder/coolness of the universe.
One of the neater views I've seen including the parks out west is off the back side of Thunderhead on a sunny winter morning as the melt point on the trees was climbing up the valley.
Simply stunning.
That aside, it may be that the thing that puts one in a proper place is not the show, but the attitude one brings to the show?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday October 13 2017, @08:32PM (1 child)
I disagree. I've been to almost all of those places (except Olympic). It's a different sort of beauty and way over-visited at a level few of the others have to deal with (Yosemite and Yellowstone are close). It still has stunning vistas and a flora diversity unmatched by any of the parks you mentioned (due in large part to rainfall, the only park to get more rainfall is Olympic and slightly edging out Redwoods). None of the parks you mention have fall colors like the Smokies do. You won't see anything like rhodadendron [wikipedia.org] thickets (heath plant related to azaleas, see [mastgeneralstore.com] second picture for how big they can get) in the West. They are amazing when in bloom.
In addition, it has Cades Cove, a former village that lies in a flat flat area in the park, is a glimpse into hardcore Appalachian living prior to the widespread use of electricity. Unlike most ghost towns, this one was abandoned due to creation of the park rather than because it was no longer economically viable (though that probably would have come in time) and has since been looked after by the National Park Service. So buildings and some former farm/pasture land are well maintained.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 13 2017, @10:16PM
I agree. The biological diversity of the Smokies in unmatched.
Guess Phoenix666 is not much of a biologist. The Smokies in the summer reminds me of the tropics in some ways.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday October 13 2017, @05:52PM
RTFHeadline as well as the name of the index and what that would logically imply.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 14 2017, @02:24AM
There is no indication that they even have an adequate definition of "smart" that really makes sense.
(Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Saturday October 14 2017, @02:20AM
But that would be hard, because we don't even have a good way of measuring intelligence to begin with (despite some people's faith in IQ pseudoscience).
(Score: 3, Funny) by Weasley on Friday October 13 2017, @04:49PM
The smartest Americans looked at the Rockies and said fuck it, I'm stopping here.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 13 2017, @04:56PM (14 children)
If they're headed closer to California, they're not that smart.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 13 2017, @05:19PM
You mean no. 2 and 3 on the list? Not that I give any credence to a business bullshit index.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday October 13 2017, @06:03PM (12 children)
My understanding is that most of them are heading the other way, leaving California. Colorado along with other nearby states (like Oregon, Washington, and Arizona) are dumping grounds for California refugees.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 13 2017, @06:37PM
Run for governor of Colorado on the theme of building a wall to keep the "damned fornians" out, and make CA pay for it.
(Score: 3, Informative) by NewNic on Friday October 13 2017, @06:53PM (7 children)
Like most of your "understanding", you are wrong.
House prices are still rising in the SF Bay Area. Do you think that happens because there is a net migration away?
You really represent the typical "low information voter", don't you.
lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday October 13 2017, @07:53PM (4 children)
Net migration away != no migration away. I don't know what the current emigration rate is, but it was around a million a year last decade.
(Score: 2) by NewNic on Friday October 13 2017, @08:05PM (2 children)
Net migration is the only measure that matters.
People retire and move away and are replaced by younger people. So what?
lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday October 13 2017, @08:52PM (1 child)
Ok. That has nothing to do with the fact that people leave California for other places, including Colorado.
So net migration is not the only measure that matters. Now, you've introduced some supposed age thing which is just as irrelevant since age wasn't one of the factors studied.
My experience has been that in some parts of California, people don't last till retirement age. I worked in California near San Jose for a couple of years and then ended up in Washington state near Portland - little over 30 years old at the time). I returned to go back to graduate school at Davis, CA and left again when I was 40 years old for Denver (though I currently spend most of my time in Yellowstone National Park). Did I "retire" from California?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 13 2017, @11:25PM
Ahem no.2 and 3 on the list?
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Friday October 13 2017, @10:17PM
I don't know what the current emigration rate is, either, but it was -100,000 per week in 2005.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday October 13 2017, @08:35PM
He never said that there was a net migration away from California, just that those particular states were receiving a lot of people who had moved out of CA. It's still quite possible for CA to keep increasing its population despite losing so many people, from both internal growth (birth rate > death rate) and immigration (from both inside and outside the US). Remember, many places in "middle America" are steadily losing population as their young people abandon rural areas and small towns, with many of those surely going to California.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday October 14 2017, @01:00AM
Bay-area home prices are rising due to foreign investment and trust-fund babies. The implosion has already begun, and will reach its totality soon.
And with all the raging wildfires having razed the immediate north, the doctrine of Disaster Capitalism will dictate that property costs will rise even more high thanks to rebuilding at a higher-level luxury than before.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Phoenix666 on Friday October 13 2017, @07:23PM (2 children)
White people have been leaving California for the Pacific Northwest for 30 years. People in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming call it "californication." They have raised hackles among the natives because they tend to be holier-than-thou post-hippies who drove up all the local housing prices. They moved in first to Seattle and Portland, which drove those inhabitants to Bend, Eugene, Tacoma, Spokane, Coeur d'Alene, Boise, Missoula. Successive waves have since reached those aforementioned communities plus smaller ones like Sandpoint, Kalispell, Pendleton, Cody, and Buffalo. Poor bastards.
So far Utah's Mormons and the white supremacists in the Idaho panhandle have repelled californication, but it's only a matter of time before they too succumb.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 4, Informative) by crafoo on Saturday October 14 2017, @02:59AM
People mark this funny but it's not. These vermin move into a peaceful, balanced community in the Pacific NW and then begin to implement the same insane, ignorant laws and policies that ruined the last place they lived. They are so completely clueless they do not understand THEY are what is wrong. They are secure in their belief that they know what's best for this new community though. Having tested and proven their ideas are complete ignorant bullshit, they look everywhere else but themselves to place blame. Their idiocy ruined the last place. It ruins the new place. Yet they are bewildered and unable to understand.
Californians, please fuck off to the east coast. No one likes you here.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 14 2017, @05:31AM
they havevestablishedctheir beachhead in Boise. Thats where Micron is HQ, and they have a fab there too. HP/HPE basically moved their Oregon offices to Boise too. So there is your high tech pipeline.
(Score: 5, Funny) by pendorbound on Friday October 13 2017, @04:58PM (7 children)
"Higher"... Yes. I believe that might have something to do with it.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 13 2017, @09:01PM (6 children)
Well, I picked out the Denver/Boulder area as the city I want to move to on that basis. Everybody thinks it's a joke, but think about it.
I'm a libertarian. If the science shows that big government's "facts" about why it needs to keep something illegal, despite how stupid the idea of contraband is in the first place, are bunkum, that's one thing. The voters never listen to science anyway.
Except in Colorado, they did. Then, no only that, in Colorado, voters decided to change their government's mind about it.
And then the change happened.
Make your 420 jokes if you want. And yeah, I like the stuff myself. Saved my life, probably literally.
However, the people of Colorado showed me what a functional government that respects its people's wishes looks like, or else they showed me what people who are capable of intimidating politicians look like.
Either way, their dedication to freedom and liberty put the rest of the nation to shame while the dipshits everywhere else were screaming zombie apocalypse. Now, the rest of the US, at least in blue regions, is sheepishly admitting that perhaps prohibition was silly.
Maybe some states will go one way or the other, but that's politics. I'm more interested in the place where the people told their politicians to go fuck themselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 13 2017, @09:09PM (5 children)
While I generally am amiable to libertarian views (thought I think literal anarchy is the more logically-consistent ideology), compare and contrast your views on Colorado and its government with its recent "high capacity magazine ban", which prompted private businesses like Magpul to pull up roots and move to Wyoming (a State still clinging to Neoprohibition with both fists and at least one clawed foot).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 13 2017, @09:37PM (4 children)
No one is perfect, and his point is that the Gov of Colorado is responsive. Did the people of Colorado want to ban high capacity mags?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 13 2017, @09:44PM (1 child)
Good point - I don't recall reports of "the people" doing a whole lot in that regard. The bans happened as a result of knee-jerk politics from the government's version of Newtown/Sandy Hook, as I recall.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 13 2017, @11:48PM
Those damn knee-jerks been on my ass for 20 years non-stop.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 14 2017, @02:30AM
Being responsive to the majority's calls to take away people's rights is actually a bad thing; that is one of the situations where the government should be entirely unresponsive.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 14 2017, @03:29AM
People shooting back at a maniac killer(s) aren't likely to carry a bunch of extra ammunition. Your gun is useful for self-defense only as long as it has ammunition.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by DECbot on Friday October 13 2017, @05:36PM (2 children)
They're obviously going there to prospect for gold. Sciences, technology, engineering and mathematics fields don't pay enough for mortgages, cars, student loans, cell phones, and food these days.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 13 2017, @07:35PM (1 child)
Close, but no cigar.
They're shooting for those thousands of coal jobs that are sure to show up any day now!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 14 2017, @05:46AM
Coal? in Colorado? Not on the Front Range (Boulder, Ft Collins...). Thats either up in Wyoming (Wind River, Powder River basins) or western Colorado, Utah etc. But the big coal mines are in Wyoming.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 13 2017, @05:54PM
A lot of them are moving to CO from California, so technically they are heading East.
(Score: 3, Funny) by crafoo on Friday October 13 2017, @06:48PM
Boulder is awful. Rich and arrogant, and generally full of people quite unpleasant to be around. Do you like watching vegan yuppies smell each others farts? Move to Boulder.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday October 13 2017, @07:00PM (2 children)
I search for Boulder-area software jobs when I was dating a woman who lived there. We broke up - I remain heartbroken - so I didn't move there. But the list I compiled for companies to apply to looked just like this [soggy.jobs].
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 14 2017, @01:16AM (1 child)
Add Google, SAP, and Intel. But thanks for the list.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Sunday October 15 2017, @01:22AM
I have avoided large companies up till now as I'd like to list all their locations. I plan an easy way to copy entries to multiple locations, just by entering the city names in a text box.
So far it's all been hand-coded HTML. But I have found that I can only create 25 listings per hour. Some of the automation I have planned will speed that up quite a lot.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday October 13 2017, @07:04PM (1 child)
Oregon law permits no-cause eviction. This has resulted in many people becoming homeless, while Software Engineers who moved from somewhere else paying twice the evicted person's rent.
San Francisco is even worse.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 13 2017, @11:53PM
FREEDOM! That's the smell of right-to-work that I know and love. The losers can suck it up when I stand-my-ground on their ass. Frreeeedom ain't free! I can only remember 3 word slogans, keep sending them - thx.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by bradley13 on Friday October 13 2017, @07:22PM (5 children)
That's a weird map. I mean, who knew that Beckley, WV (pop 17k) and Altoona, PA (pop 44k) qualified as "metro areas"? I've been in Altoona, and I can assure you that it is neither metropolitan nor any sort of techie nirvana. It's just another small city in the midst of the rust belt.
As for Colorado, it's beautiful, but it's being rapidly destroyed by progs fleeing the results of their own politics. Who knew? If you put prog policies in place, the place becomes unlivable, so you move somewhere else and start all over again.
"Are the best and brightest taking up skiing, or seeking higher ground amid rising sea levels?"
Neither. A better question would be: Who paid Bloomberg to produce this study, and why?
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday October 13 2017, @07:25PM
Real estate interests, of course.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Grishnakh on Friday October 13 2017, @08:38PM
As for Colorado, it's beautiful, but it's being rapidly destroyed by progs fleeing the results of their own politics. Who knew? If you put prog policies in place, the place becomes unlivable, so you move somewhere else and start all over again.
The progressive laws on marijuana in Colorado seem to be creating a boon for the state's economy and tax coffers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 13 2017, @10:20PM (2 children)
Yeah, right! Moving to Kansas in droves, I tell ya! This from someone living in the Colorado of Europe?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 13 2017, @11:58PM (1 child)
Exactly! That's what the mainstream stats won't tell you, people are LOVING Kansas! Everyone except the dirty LIIIEEEEBRILLS are moving there. The top 10 list WON'T TELL YOU THAT NEWS!11!1111111 Or the top 100.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 14 2017, @11:38PM
Well, David and Charles Koch live near Wichita and they are doing fine (lots of investments outside Kansas).
Beyond those cokeheads, it's pretty awful.
Gov. Sam Brownback tried full-bore trickle-down Reganomics and found out that, just as when GHW Bush called it "Voodoo Economics", it's still a myth. [google.com]
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2, Funny) by fustakrakich on Friday October 13 2017, @08:13PM (5 children)
Sure. The grandkids will have ocean front property.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 13 2017, @09:04PM (4 children)
Please link to your predictive model which has a multi-year verified history after publication, and also matches non-manipulated historical temperature data.
Be sure to include data showing sea level rise of greater than one mile so as to put Boulder, Colorodo at the new sea level within 90 years.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 13 2017, @09:39PM (3 children)
Pedantic AC can't take a joke I see.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 13 2017, @09:46PM
So, your one-line post is a joke, and it's the same joke as the one used at the end of the SN summary.
Did I get that right? Or should I use more redundancy?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 13 2017, @09:46PM (1 child)
Nah, leave him be. He just likes stalking the OP
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 13 2017, @10:00PM
Uh oh! Better call 5-0!
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Friday October 13 2017, @08:49PM (1 child)
If you like tea and move to Boulder, you'll have to use cold-water tea bags,
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 14 2017, @01:36AM
Or make normal tea in a pressure cooker, raise the boiling point a bit for the altitude...