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The Brainiest Cities in the United States

money.cnn.com — If you equate education with intelligence, then the smartest city in the US is Seattle - 52.7% of its residents age 25 or older have completed a bachelor's degree or higher. Many brainy people have flocked to the Seattle area to work in what's called the "knowledge economy." San Francisco us 2nd, a center for high-tech and financial services.

Who dugg this? Made popular Sep 4, 2006

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  • ajamer, on 10/12/2007, -3/+23#25 New Orleans - 31.4%

    sure did them a lot of good
  • mrASSMAN, on 10/12/2007, -3/+18Don't blame Jeb for the stupidity of your fellow residents.. ;)
  • tekmonkey, on 10/12/2007, -2/+14This is an extremely poor method of ranking the country's smartest cities. Just because a person holds a bachelor's degree doesn't mean they're smart by any means, and there are many, many smart people who haven''t earned a degree (Hey, Bill Gates technically didn't graduate, did he?).
  • theblackgecko, on 10/12/2007, -1/+13The over 250,000 disqualifies the college towns where the smart people live.
  • Saintlink, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11Was that before or after the FEMA people got in town? I call funny business on those numbers. Oakland California? That place is a crime hellhole. Seriously, I doubt these numbers.
  • mrASSMAN, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11I love irony.

    I would just like to mention that very and vary are two VERY different things!
  • Chompy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10I just moved to Las Vegas about a year ago, and without even reading the article I can tell you one city that did *not* make that list.
  • Chompy, on 10/12/2007, -9/+18"and I bet they all voted for John Kerry"

    Well.. yeah. If you voted for Bush you've already disqualified yourself.
  • Chompy, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10Your english teacher might have covered explanation points with you but she still needs to go over sentence structure, capitalization, spelling, and punctuation.
  • armbar, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10It's no surprise that brain-dead Dallas isn't on that list. Buncha lazy morons live around these parts.
  • Justice101, on 10/12/2007, -4/+10Does college equate to intelligence the answer is no. While college may allow for the advancement of education just because you are taught something doesn't' mean you have learned it. They are two VARY different things! (by the way to grammar Nazis I called my English teacher on her use of multiple exclamation points and got shot down, it is apparently grammatically correct even if it makes you look like a jackass)
  • Kajico, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Austin both a party city and intelligent? Talk about Zen, I can't wait till I get back.
  • sithmat, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6I'm guessing Washington, D.C. is the LEAST brainiest city.
  • IMustBeEmo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6"If you equate education with intelligence"
    Education does not equal intelligence.
  • wistar, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6I think the joke has met with varying success.
  • mrASSMAN, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8Or maybe it's because Bushland didn't even make the list..
  • KnightMareInc, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5ouch philly is full of retards
  • savindwales, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I love how people get all up in arms when someone uses educational attainment as a measure of intelligence. You never hear this ***** with any other metric. If someone can run a mile in 3.5 minutes, asshats don't come up and say that they're just as fast, or that a fast mile doesn't make a person fast.

    People don't mind statements like that, but if you talk about intelligence, every mouth-breather on the ***** planet has to pipe up that they're smart, too. Suck it, ass clowns. You dropped out of college because you played too many video games, or you didn't go because you didn't think you could cut it. It doesn't matter why, what matters is that someone else has something you don't. So, shut the ***** up and accept the fact that the world is going to judge you based on a piece of paper and some numbers.

    I'm glad my city came in second. Go south!
  • Justice101, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7@ Mr. ASSMAN

    I'm glad someone got my joke ;)
  • Wolfbeta, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5"San Francisco us 2nd"
    Obviously you're from neither ;).
  • gharding, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Before I moved to NYC, it wasn't even on the list.
    *Brain flex*
  • Durinthal, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5I'm surprised that there's an Ohio city on there at all.. that it's Columbus makes slightly more sense.
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7Isn't Seatle the #1 city for runaways and black tar heroine users too? You guys are getting all kinds of records.
  • redwire, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Exactly what I was going to say but to be fair the first line of the story does nod its head to this. "If you equate education with intelligence..."
  • thehans, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6I think Seattle proves the notion that ignorance is bliss. Not only is it the smartest city but it also has the highest suicide rate. Damn those happy red states!
  • mrASSMAN, on 10/12/2007, -8/+12Seattle rules. No wonder we're all liberals.

    I would also like to mention that a survey I submitted to digg 72 days ago came to the same conclusion: http://digg.com/general_sciences/America%E2%80%99s_Smartest_Cities
  • stmiller, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Raleigh NC? Interesting. Though Raleigh is still very much a pro-Bush pro-war place. Everyone in NC freaked out when the lottery just passed this year. NC has never had a lottery; it's a very conservative state.
  • blankartist, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Don't confuse intelligence with shrewdness (both Donald and Bill) either.
  • bjorkbjorkbjork, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I have many friends in Oakland, so I know the town pretty well.

    All throughout Oakland, I've observed, you'll find lots of incredibly well-educated people, and when you talk to them you'll figure out that they moved there because of two features of the city: first, there's the liberal, arty, academic culture the city has been infused with by virtue of its proximity to Mills College and UC Berkeley, and second, there's Oakland's affordability relative to many other communities in the area. The reason for its affordability is that its well-deserved reputation for crime keeps the property prices down. This makes it an attractive place to live for people who love being around other brainy, arty people, don't have much money, and aren't concerned about how bad the public schools are. There's a simple reason they're not concerned about the schools: these people generally don't have children for one reason or another. When they do have children (which isn't often), they either stay in Oakland and put them in private schools, or they move to Berkeley.
  • peritonlogon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I'm only guessing, because I didn't see their methodology, (specifically, whether and to what extent they included the surrounding towns and cities) that Boston was skewed downward by not including Cambridge, which is only technically not part of Boston.
  • reddevil3, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Gates is the exception not the rule. I can counter that by saying Donald Trump went to the Wharton School of Business but he is not the rule either.
  • CosmicBratt, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Since when does a bachelor's degree mean you're smart? I know many idiots who have degrees. It's all about money. You should factor into that list also the percentage of people with financial problems who wouldn't be able to afford expensive post secondary education.
  • SimpleC, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3@Saintlink

    Well Oakland is just a couple miles away from U.C. Berkeley.
  • Sukino, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Even tho Gates doesn't have a degree he is still more educated than many people with degrees.
  • ratbear, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Thats right, we are ivory tower academics up here in South Alaska. The ones that aren't are strung out junkies, and damned if we didn't see the sun 4 times this summer!
  • Sukino, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Not intelligent, educated. And even that is questionable when I see how morons get degrees.
  • hodyoaten, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5Not sure what's so smart in living in a city where a fleabag house runs $400,000 and taxes are through the roof.
  • kmg365, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Interesting how this correlated with the 2004 Presidential Election:

    Top 25 Counties

    Kerry: 6,372,888
    Bush: 4,064,870
  • tinygibbles, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2People who live in Seattle have a saying- "Seattle Sucks, Go Away!".
  • jofer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Seems I misspoke on the 50th ranking... I'd always been told that while I was in high school (It was probably true then), but we're somewhat better now... I couldn't find a (freely accessable) overall ranking, but based on seperate rankings of spending, class size, etc. it looks like we're closer to 40th. Not great, but much, much better...

    At any rate, yeah, it's a shame Oak Ridge wasn't considered... It's probably one of the best-educated non-college-towns in the US. Then again, I'm not sure I'd really want to live there... My dad grew up in Oak Ridge, and I guess I've just heard too many horror stories about the way they disposed of various waste products in the 50's and 60's... A lof of it's probably not entirely true, but all the same, I think I'll keep my distance! :)
  • tinygibbles, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2@Saintlink
    Don't F**k with Oakland. Spend some time in the Grand, Piedmont, College, Adams Point or Montclair districts. You might learn something about Oakland you did not know. Yea, they had some really bad crime. That's one reason I moved away to raise a family. Just the other day someone was found bound and burned in Temescal in back of a school. Inequality breeds ghettos. I live in Seattle, and the haves and have-nots are pretty far apart. People forced into ghettos fester a criminal environment.
  • BlackCow, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Smart people are rich?
  • terrya64, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I lived in Seattle till last year, My 55 mile commute only took about 90 minutes.
  • tokyopimp, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Yes because if you are pro-war and pro-bush, that makes you less intelligent!

    A college ***** degree does not equate intelligence, living in a liberal ***** city does not make you intelligent, voting for Kerry over Bush does not make you intelligent, because Kerry was a ***** bag of a candidate as well. Get over yourselves you smug *****.
  • terrya64, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Of the top 17, I have lived in 4 of them. I wonder if my some of my genius rubbed off on the people I met?
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Nice. Unfortunately bachelors degrees might as well be printed on toilet paper. We hire brains, not parrots.
  • redneckblues, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I had no idea we were that bad. :( It's a shame the cutoff is below 250,000 or Oak Ridge might have made the list.
  • 0crabby0, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Huntsville, Alabama would have been on there, except for Population Limit of 250,000.

    Even the janitors and farmers have Graduate Degrees...
  • jmcadams87, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@Saintlink

    Certain parts of Oakland are a crime hellhole, but there are many parts that aren't as bad, it all depends on where you go.
  • tokyopimp, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Wow... making ***** asinine ***** comments, and claiming intelligence. You take the cake, smug anyone?

    How does athletic skill equate to ones intelligence? You're claiming that the 20-30 percent of the population that graduate from a 2 year or 4 year program are automatically more intelligent, because they have a sheet of paper that says degree?

    So there are no good Basketball players in the world besides those who play in the NCAA or NBA? What about musicians, surely someone like me who has been playing and studying music my entire life, I must suck... without a record deal, or even a Grammy.

    Right... a piece of paper might give you a pedestal to judge others on, and surely it may be advantages to get you into the door of some company, so you can further suck dick to the top. But you can have you're paper, I'll keep my humble attitude, and not look down upon people without a ***** piece of paper from some overpiced yuppie/hippiefied liberal ***** off school. Or an entire city, because it didn't make some top 25 list conducted by more jerk offs.

    http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7427067542845351261&q=penn+and+teller+*****
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