Flip this around – consider this as an intelligence test of sorts. Given a choice, would you live where real estate is pricey, where traffic is a pain, and where the pollution levels are greater?

Given a choice, for someone of more average means, spending far less for a decent place to live and raise your kids is a very smart choice.

Actually, according to this boston globe article – http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2006/04/20/bay_state_exodus_2d_only_to_ny/ – more people are leaving Boston, NY, and SF to move to the “dumb” south. I guess only the smart people move to expensive, traffic-riddled cities, while the dumb people are moving to more reasonably priced, better lifestyle areas…

“It was impossible not to notice the difference in average intelligence between Lawrence, the university town, and Liberal, a beef-processing and Walmart town.” I just don’t see how one can make such a judgement passing through. But the author seems to be in need of stimulation – which he is finding in high risk flying — and casting the world in black and white may make the world more interesting to him.

Wish I would have known you were coming to Lawrence, I would have offerend to show you around our little Oasis on the Plains.

When I’ve driven across the USA I’ve noticed the same thing, and yet I just don’t see it here in New Zealand. I do a bit of a random sampling of rural NZ people by the technique of failing to get to where I’m going in a sailplane and landing in a handy paddock. My take on it, for what it’s worth, is that here farmers are small businessmen who each have to be reasonably skilled at everything from accounting to soil science to building a fence to animal husbandry. Many (maybe most by now) have university education. In the USA the family farm is long gone, replaced by huge companies, a few skilled managers, and mostly unskilled and uneducated labour.

It does tend to elicit a reflexive spasm when someone avers that a class that includes you is statistically inferior. But of course, the inflammatory nature of the commentary does not impugn its substantive claim. It’s a pretty weakly supported claim, in any case, and scarcely merits any sort of defensive reaction, although it is interesting and worthy of discussion. I find that my best colleagues are found in remote locations. The ability to retire from the unhealthful urban environment while performing stimulating and rewarding work is reserved for the better minds among us. I do expect that the average intelligence of urban populations will vary with the density of intellectual attractions, and I do expect impoverished areas with moderate to high population density to suffer as well, but lower density and scenic areas tend to attract those with the power to choose their workplace, and small towns tend to attract people who care enough about the welfare of their children to have good success in childrearing.

Internet friends, your general analysis of Lawrence may be true, but your methods are very flawed. It turns out that the visible culture of each town may lead you to the conclusions I’ve read on this blog, but Lawrence is peopled with probably an equal number of intellegently challenged people. Lawrence’s population is just bigger. And there’s a college, which means there are more psuedo-intellectuals sitting in coffeehouses stroking eachothers egos. “Smart towns” populate themselves with just as many dumb people trying to be smart as the genuinely intellegent. Take it from a long time Jayhawk.

mikhail bruttleheimer – You’re pretty good at jumping to conclusions, aren’t you? First, I am not retired. I am now the CTO of an early stage software company in the health care industry which is currently concluding a successful round of fund raising. Second, no one has mentioned menial labor; I am talking about a person who has, on scores of occasions, educated the customer, designed the solution, and run a profitable multi-million dollar project. Hmm, I have just done a search at Google for “mikhail bruttleheimer” and that search produced zero results. I think the time I spent writing this has been wasted talking to a nobody. Go out and accomplish something (I don’t care what city you live in while you are doing it), then come back and we’ll talk.