Smarty-pants

Got an e-mail today from the Daily Beast, an online magazine. It recently ranked America’s smartest cities. It focuses on metropolitan areas of more than one million in population. Other criteria included number of residents with at least some college, the number of institutions of higher learning, books sold and voter turnout.

Ranking at the top: RALEIGH-DURHAM SAN FRANCISCO-OAKLAND-SAN JOSE BOSTON MINNEAPOLIS-ST. PAUL DENVER

Toward the bottom: MEMPHIS LOUISVILLE SAN ANTONIO LAS VEGAS FRESNO (CALIF.)

This is the kind of thing that if you live in the top ranking cities you take full credit, but if you live in the lower ranking cities, you can say it’s not you. Everyone else is dumb, but you are the exception. And the list is wrong anyway.

Modesty prevents me from pointing out that I have lived in San Francisco, Minneapolis and St. Paul and plan to visit Raleigh, Durham, Boston and Denver some day.