Hmmm...

Where Are the Hardest Places to Live in the U.S.?

Annie Lowrey writes in the Times Magazine this week about the troubles of Clay County, Ky., which by several measures is the hardest place in America to live.

The Upshot came to this conclusion by looking at six data points for each county in the United States: education (percentage of residents with at least a bachelor’s degree), median household income, unemployment rate, disability rate, life expectancy and obesity. We then averaged each county’s relative rank in these categories to create an overall ranking.

(We tried to include other factors, including income mobility and measures of environmental quality, but we were not able to find data sets covering all counties in the United States.)

The 10 lowest counties in the country, by this ranking, include a cluster of six in the Appalachian Mountains of eastern Kentucky (Breathitt, Clay, Jackson, Lee, Leslie and Magoffin), along with four others in various parts of the rural South: Humphreys County, Miss.; East Carroll Parish, La.; Jefferson County, Ga.; and Lee County, Ark.

Here in Fayette, we're in a little better state than the rest of the Commonwealth:



In the original article, if you roll over the map, it will bring up a box with the chosen county's statistics.

So today

was a pretty normal day. I went to work, I worked, I came home. Earlier today I decided to take out a special two-month trial subscription to the New York Times on the Kindle, as a way of edifying myself and getting news from places other than my RSS feeds.

And then you know what I did? I had it read to me while I waited for the bus (it was quickly growing too dark to read). :)

Yes, the content is text-to-speech enabled. And it's fun. It's like a slightly robotic not-ever-pausing-yet-still-soothing NPR. It was definitely a different way to experience a newspaper.

And the NY Times is long. My God, I'm only just getting through the arts section, and I listened for a good hour and a half. Now that I'm indoors and around light, I think I'll finish by actually reading. But I must admit, it's easy to navigate from article to article and you can go to various sections as well. After all, tomorrow there will be a whole new edition. I think I'll let it read to me while I work tomorrow (except when I'm transcribing library committee notes; can't really do both at the same time).

Oh, and I returned my first Kindle book with no trouble today. I remember looking at the book, but I although I don't really remember downloading it, I think I meant to get a sample and hit the button to buy it in its entirety instead (it's not really that easy to do, I was just brain dead that day). I was looking for a book on a particular subject, but it wasn't quite what I wanted. Apparently you can write to Amazon within 7 days and they will remove the content from your device and issue a credit to your card. Yay, Amazon!

I also received a 'real' book in the mail from them today, which was really great except that its last 40 pages or so were stuck together. I guess it had gotten wet along the way, although I don't think it was during the shipping. It's a collection of the Narnia books, put together into one volume with hand-coloured original illustrations. I managed to separate the pages with a minimum amount of damage, and didn't know if I wanted to go to all the fuss of returning, but I did contact them and they're shooting another off to me today and I have the other boxed up and return-stickered, ready to be sent back at no charge. It's the only time I've received something defective from them, and they were very attentive. So again, yay, Amazon!

Kind of disturbing

I'd like to think it's coincidence. Actually, three of the seven have died--one contributed to the New York Times piece criticising the war, but died before it was published. That's 43% of the group, though.

2 Soldiers Who Wrote Op-Ed Died in Iraq