So the opposite of "Brainy and Sexy" is a Conservative Christian? I find that a bit offensive and I'm a Californian and an Agnostic.
The article itself is an undeserved defense of California. I love California and I do believe we have some of the most inventive people in the world but when you add the projected shortfall over the next couple years to our current debt you get a number that's getting close to Google's total market cap.
I don't know how you invent yourself out of a mess like that
(take this with a grain of salt...I'm one of the "earners")
You can't invent yourself out of a system of entitlements that has long since divorced itself from reality.
You have a (comparatively) small group of people making a large portion of the income with a much larger group of people making little to no income and demanding more and more help from the earners to support their philanthropic causes.
What makes it hard to swallow is that we see loads of money being thrown at things like education and helping the homeless but we see no improvement.
I'm all for helping educate people, and lending a hand to the less fortunate, but I expect a return on my investment. When you take this much from me and my return is children who can't read turning into violent criminals and the wonderful view of a homeless man crapping in a doorway on the way to work...I want a refund.
"loads of money being thrown at things like education"?
State funding for the University of California has decreased from 7% of the state of California's general fund in 1970 to 3.2% in 2008. Between 1990 and 2008, inflation-adjusted state support per UC student fell by 40%. As a result, the total inflation-adjusted education expenditure per UC student (including student fees and contributions from UC General Funds) decreased by 19%, while student costs rose by 138%.
That doesn't sound like money's being thrown at education, at least not higher ed.
I'm from the UK and have traveled fairly widely - and I have to say that San Francisco has the highest number of homeless people I've seen anywhere in the developed world. Maybe it's the weather. Anyway, whatever's being done about it, it's either not working, or not enough.
California is certainly at the end of the road here. There's no way around a reform at this point. I think in the next few years it will be interesting to see if we chose well when asking for deep cuts in spending.
Texas is not any better, for the simple reason that Austin is the only place any sane person wants to live, and most of the money is in Houston or Dallas. Austin is full of brainy people distracted by culture and working service jobs just to stay; Houston and Dallas are full of people with an appetite for money and nothing holding them back, not sophistication and not vision either (except visions of themselves driving expensive cars and screwing hot blondes.) Austin will continue to produce a modest amount of innovation, and Houston and Dallas will continue to produce an immodest number of millionaires. It's like having a beautiful pig and an elephant with a great personality and hoping they'll have perfect offspring -- the cities are hundreds of miles apart, the people don't like each other, and the DNA definitely doesn't splice.
I live in the Fort Worth Area, and I've seen things a lot different than you make them out to be...in fact I've lived in Texas my entire life, from the south tip, to where I am now and some in-between, I've been to the major cities and driven all over south-central Texas, and I have to say, I think you're letting personal feelings skew your viewpoint a little.
There is a cultural rivalry between cities maybe, but never has anyone ever shown me disrespect from not being raised or living in their city.
And it's rather offending that you would say Austin is the only place a sane person would want to live, that tells me that your viewpoint of Texas and it's culture is already skewed and bias, it's also a little elitist to suggest that there are not plenty of smart people outside of the Austin clique, does Baylor, or Texas A&M, or Texas Tech, Rice, not count? Is UT the only school that attracts smart people?
The article and the whole thread are based on massive overgeneralizations. The author only makes a couple of concrete observations of California's decline; most of the article is based on the author's conviction that the state's culture and politics won't work in the long run. I'm just getting in on it by comparing Texas cities in the same spirit :-) I certainly know Houston has a leg up on Austin in a few areas, and I have some Aggie friends and colleagues. Nobody looks down on a Rice degree -- quite the opposite. (I went to college out of state, but when I'm in College Station, I'm immediately pegged as a tea-sipper. Meh, I could do worse.)
Dallas, on the other hand, (which is where you live -- who uses the archaic name "Fort Worth" anymore?) is an unholy Sodom of beehive hairdos. Did you know you can get fined for not washing your BMW, or for doing your own yard work? It's true!
Oh yeah, but you don't HAVE to live in an HOA. I understand what you were getting at now though, I think I just failed to realize your point.
I don't know about Fort Worth being archaic, it's actually a city that is not part of Dallas, complicated zoning up here, I can't put "Dallas" as my address, since I wouldn't get my mail then.
I will have to concede to your point about the beehive hairdos, but I've seen plenty of that in Austin as well, it all depends on neighborhood....plus downtown DFW is a mecha of status symbols, not sure about the culture in downtown Dallas, I try to avoid it as it's a little too congested for me.
Distracted by whatever they consider as culture. Live music, community agriculture, hipster bars, lifestyle emissions reduction, New Age hippiedom, Christianity, drugs, you name it. There's quite a spectrum, but Austin is a place where people are concerned with living well, helping others live well, and generally working to figure out what "living well" means. That kind of exploration is where most of Austin's restless spirit takes it. Startups are pretty diametrically in opposition to "living well" unless you consider it a spiritual exercise like a monk living in the desert and whipping himself ;-) (Mostly kidding.)
Sometimes I think all these intelligent questers are going to raise a generation of really smart hippie-raised kids who roll their eyes at their idealistic parents and decide to take over the world. Is that what happened in California? Is Austin just one generation behind?
Maybe they are just consumers of culture. Wearing art as tattoos, t-shirts that say 'Keep Austin Weird', painting their houses unconventional colors. None of that seems very creative to me. Its too easy to buy stuff to be act creative than make it.
The problem that has to be solved is instead of everyone in Austin priding themselves at how laid back they are they need to realize they are actually just being lazy. People in California seem more driven.
huge college town though, might have a lot to do with the attitudes and the hippie shops who make money selling to them...now that I think about hippies owning stores, it reminds me of Thundercloud Subs...man I miss that place.
"Belief in a perfectly good being that tortures people forever if they don't believe in it: not brainy."
Playing devil's advocate here (or perhaps the better term is God's advocate), if I understand you correctly you are saying that all beings of higher intelligence and wisdom should conform to your definition of goodness.
Does that seem very brainy? Would you like your dog creating a sense of what is right or wrong and then holding you to account for it? How about an ant? When I take my 3-year old for shots, he definitely views the entire process as decidedly immoral. But he's not seeing it from my viewpoint now, is he?
I believe the notion is that goodness as God understands it is beyond my ability to understand it. The greater good when dealing with a universe is so far beyond a petty 100-year lifespan (or a 10K year civilization) that comparisons are kind of silly. We wouldn't even understand the moral questions, much less the answers
I'm not saying I buy into it, I'm simply pointing out that you're taking a cheap shot at religion.
I believe the best response to this is: all I've got is this brain and I have to use it to make judgments. That's cool, but all it really means is the point is undecidable.
Undecidable? You're kidding right? It's "decidable" all right, by any rational person, just like whether or not the tooth fairy exists is "decidable".
Look, here's religion in a nutshell. Religion:
1. Makes a great many claims about events known to be physically impossible
2. Offers no evidence whatsoever for those claims
3. Is therefore total nonsense until (2) is convincingly rectified
4. Therefore anyone believing it is either brainwashed or stupid or both
So if I told you I was the tooth fairy, would that mean that you were wrong all this time? What if I confided in you that I was God?
I get it. You would subject me to scientific tests and logic to "prove" whether or not I fit into some label that has about as many meanings as there are people who believe in the tooth fairy. Yes, that makes a lot of sense. Since we know exactly what God is we can use the scientific method to disprove a negative.
Of course.
You're purposely cherry-picking your definition of God. That's at the heart of your fallacy -- some belief that there is this one definition of God that somehow you can come to terms with. There isn't. You've got a great argument about the self-inconsistencies of Christianity inside it's own system. That's the best one. Stick to that. Trying to come up with one straw man (or straw God) to discredit or disprove just makes you look intellectually dishonest. In my opinion, of course.
If you could convincingly demonstrate that you were the tooth fairy, for example by flying into the locked rooms of every little boy and girl in the world overnight looking for teeth, or just by displaying any supernatural ability whatsoever, then of course I'd admit I was wrong all this time. And I wouldn't mind being wrong, either, since I'd be getting the fricking Nobel Prize for turning all scientific knowledge to date upside down in an instant by discovering you.
I have no idea what you mean by "cherry-picking" - I am going straight for the heart of the matter. Religion - all religion really, but Abrahamic in particular - is practically made of supernatural phenomenon. It's all impossible according to everything we know about the universe. No further discussion is required.
I hate to repeat memes but when it comes to religion it's basically "pics or it didn't happen". Until you have some evidence - any evidence - you may as well be arguing that Harry Potter is real.
"If you could convincingly demonstrate that you were the tooth fairy, for example by flying into the locked rooms of every little boy and girl in the world overnight looking for teeth, or just by displaying any supernatural ability whatsoever, then of course I'd admit I was wrong all this time."
But you see you are proving my point. You are providing some definition of the tooth fairy that you then expect me to demonstrate. That's crazy. What if my definition of the tooth fairy is simply a kind father who slips a couple bucks under his kid's pillow on certain occasions?
Do you see what I'm getting at? You're taking some attributes, that some people believe, about some possible entity beyond our understanding. Then you're trying to use logic and science with it. That doesn't seem so smart to me. There is a fine line between stories I make up to tell you and stories I tell you that you have no ability to verify. You might want to read that preceding sentence again. From the outside they look the same. There's no way for you to tell the difference.
The bible, which if I understand it correctly is the basis of Christianity, makes claims which are unambiguously supernatural. Seas being parted, virgin birth, dead rising, pillars of salt, that kind of thing. All of these events are impossible and should be assumed to be fictional unless proven otherwise.
Since you like to play with definitions so much, why don't you define "God" and give me something to shoot at, then? If you define him as a kindly middle aged father who is nice to his kids, then fine, no argument from me, except it doesn't have much to do with the character in the book.
"There is a fine line between stories I make up to tell you and stories I tell you that you have no ability to verify."
No there's not. There is no line at all! If there is no evidence, it didn't happen.
"Then you're trying to use logic and science with it. That doesn't seem so smart to me."
Sorry if I come across as playing with definitions. Words matter, and if you have one meaning and I have another, we're just going to talk past each other.
A Christian, by definition, is one who follows Christ. The "Bible" as I guess you are using the term, is a collection of religious letters put together in the 3rd century out of dozens or hundreds of candidates. Fundamentalists think of the bible as a textbook. So do critics, except they think of it as a flawed textbook. More modern versions of Christianity view that Bible as largely allegorical.
You can certainly be a Christian and not believe in the bible. Good grief, you can be a Christian and not believe in God. You could even be an atheist.
But these are just simple facts that I would take as a starting point for discussion.
The best I can tell, there is a universal core definition of God across religions which is something like "that which we are not able to understand". I can grok this, as throughout history there have been things we do not understand. Perhaps God will be by ex-wife: never could figure her out. So if you asked me for a definition, that's the one I'd give. Not some myth-overloaded product of hundreds of years of religious dogma. God is a belief that we do not know everything. At least to me. I find such a belief a critical part of being a mature intellectual.
You're welcome to take shots at that definition. I'd like to hear your critique. I don't have any answers. The issue of God and all of the sub-issues has been debated for ages. Perhaps there is some new angle everybody else has missed. Who knows?
Well, I am not an expert on religion at all, as you can probably tell. So the new angle is unlikely to come from me. I get frustrated with abstract discussions about religion - to me it comes down to, is it real or not? And the answer, of course, is inevitably "not".
I don't really know about these variants of Christians you mention. I suppose that if there are Christians who know that any supernatural events in the bible are fictional, and do not believe in God but merely try to follow the purported words of Jesus, then that is great - I totally support such people. Anything beyond that, though, is a leap into irrationality, and I suspect the vast majority of Christians fall into the latter category. I have certainly never seen or heard of a Christian who does not believe in God. Perhaps we can term the mere admirers of Jesus' words "Philosophical Christians", and "Christians" can refer to the believers in the supernatural entity.
The best I can tell, there is a universal core definition of God across religions which is something like "that which we are not able to understand"
That seems like a uselessly broad definition and totally at odds with the common definition of the word. If I said to a normal person that I believe in God, he or she is not going to think "Ah, this person believes that there are certain things humanity is not able to understand".
When I say "God" I mean a supernatural entity as depicted in a religious text or tradition. When I want to talk about things we do not yet understand, I say "things we do not yet understand". I understand the anthropological point you are getting at though, and agree that "God did it" has been the refrain of savages throughout the ages when confronted with the incomprehensible. However, it is now 2009, and it's time for us to grow up, IMO.
"Not some myth-overloaded product of hundreds of years of religious dogma."
Look, everyone else is using that definition. You should make up a new word or something because otherwise it's just confusing.
"God is a belief that we do not know everything."
Argh! Is there anyone on the planet who does believe we know everything? Please narrow your definition. Ironically, the only people I ever encounter who think they know everything are the religious.
"I find such a belief a critical part of being a mature intellectual."
I agree, but that's got nothing to do with religion, and it's not a "belief"! You are talking about Philosophy, not Theology.
Well then let's introduce two more terms and see if that helps any. "Religion" is a person's creative answers to questions involving God -- things beyond our ability to understand. That means when you look up into the night sky and say something like "Surely there is another intelligent civilization out there" you're being religious. Same goes for the early Greeks who thought the gods caused the rains. Such creative explanations are a natural part of humanity. We naturally try to affix order and creatively explain that which we do not know. In fact, exploratory science couldn't happen without it. I'm as religious as the next guy -- I have those creative explanations that I chose to incorporate in my life. But I try not to live in that world. And I try to actively understand when I'm being religious.
"Organized Religion" is really what probably gets your goat. You can thank the Catholic Church for that, which in the 3rd century took some religious letters and made them a Bible, hooked up with the largest world government at the time, and eliminated the competition. (I'm not bashing Catholics here. From what I know most seem like good people). As a monopoly, they controlled one version of "creative answers to things we don't know" for many centuries. To a large degree, even after the Reformation, the pieces of belief you see today in Christianity come from this long-lived monopoly.
The interesting thing here is that the tenets of some religion -- the set of creative stories commonly held -- and the actual practice of that religion by participants are two completely different things. So while Catholics, for instance, have this big set of beliefs, it's not unusual to see individual Catholics completely digress. Religion, for as much as people want to make it into a monopoly or a formal system of beliefs, is still actually practices in a very individual and creative way, just like it has been since the dawn of man.
What we're left with is the actual practice of religion is a deeply personal matter, and if you paint with a broad brush you miss the entire point of how religion actually works.
You're basically correct with your argument of "when I say believe in God, they're not going to think I mean X" but at the same time _you_ are the one who is missing the point in your imaginary conversation. If you ask somebody if they believe in God, the very next question from you should be something like "what does that mean to you?" because "believe in God" is nothing the same as "2 + 2 = 4" You're simply asking somebody if they have some belief in some "thing" that is out there beyond their understanding. What you really want to know is whether they conform to some organized religion that has these tenets that you find so despicable.
When you say "everyone else is using that definition", best I can figure you mean that in the western world, as part of your observations in English, the most vocal people use the term "God" as part of some discussion about their organized religious practices. I can buy that. But most people use the word "science" as something guys in white coats do, or the word "politics" to describe cheating weasels lying to each other, or the word "religion" to describe something that happens in a church.
People use all kinds of crappy terms. That doesn't mean that you get to pick and choose poorly defined terms and then go flailing away at them. It just confuses matters more. If you're going to slam somebody's belief system, don't go throwing a bunch of other people into the mix at the same time.
"Argh! Is there anyone on the planet who does believe we know everything? Please narrow your definition."
That has not been my experience. In another thread under this very article a commenter was making the assumption that modern-day morals can judge whether what some God figure does is right or wrong. I find that incredible, given our progression in what is right and wrong in the western world. It's common to see people act as if modern science understands 99% of everything, when most likely it's nowhere near that percentage. This attitude is taught in schools and, best I can tell, fits the definition of religious instruction. Science is a tentative set of rules that are interconnected and based on abduction, induction, and deduction. It's always tentative, but that part of science is uncomfortable for many, so we creatively explain how it's some sort of natural progression from ignorance to greatness. (In fact, as Kuhn noted, it goes in fits and starts, is highly political, and works from one paradigm to another) People who admire celebrities many times think they actually know all about the person from watching them on TV or reading their works, when in fact the public version of somebody and the private version are very different. Atheists will argue at length about there not being a God when, as demonstrated here, there's simply no way for anybody to know one way or another. Salesmen will think they know everything about what a potential client needs without ever talking to them.
Humans seem very good at thinking they know everything about a subject, whether it's science, religion, social interactions, whatever.
Epistemology -- the study of that which is knowable -- is a topic both for philosophy and religion. I wouldn't go separating the two, because there is and has always been heavy overlap. I'd argue the difference between philosophy and religion is minuscule.
So, if only I had vastly more insight and wisdom, I might approve of torturing ordinary people forever? I find this extremely unlikely. If you're so agnostic about morality that you won't condemn the torture of ordinary people for eternity, I don't see how you can condemn or condone anything, ever.
I don't consider this a cheap shot. This is the profoundly rotten core at the heart of traditional Christianity (and, indeed, Islam).
Look -- I'm not a religious person. But I'm willing to play along, because I understand the arguments. So let's continue for purposes of instruction.
Religion is based around the limitations of human knowledge. The idea is that the Great Spirit, Great Father, or whatever is older and wiser than us (but yet strangely human!) so he understands things we do not. Just as when we were a child we did not understand things, now the Big Dude With The Beard knows things far beyond our kin.
Like a child, you can stamp your feet and complain about his/her/it lack of suitable morality for you all you want, but it really just plays into the entire metaphor, doesn't it?
I can tell you that more liberal Christans view sin as being apart from God, and hell as being simply apart from God forever. Taken this way, it simply means that if you're doing okay with the plan (whatever the plan is) you get to hang out with the big guy. If not, you don't. And that's awful! You really want to hang out with the big guy.
It's the fundamentalists who get into this "lake of fire" bit and such. I imagine "not hanging with the Big Kahuna" doesn't bring in the converts as much as "tearing your eyes out with pain" but I was never much into marketing and sales.
As for me, and you seem to be interested in my morals, I'm perfectly happy not being able to make moral decisions for God. As long as he returns the favor. (grin) I don't think that torturing folks for eternity is moral for me to do, but I try to confine my judgments of morality to myself. I also think that you're arguing with what some bunch of folks "think" some other (probably imaginary) being will do, and that seems really, really silly to me. Better to determine what you think about the idea of God in general -- any kind of God -- before you go lumping the whole kit and kaboodle together and passing your own judgment on it.
"I also think that you're arguing with what some bunch of folks "think" some other (probably imaginary) being will do, and that seems really, really silly to me."
My great hope is that they will come to see that their concept of God is contradictory.
"Better to determine what you think about the idea of God in general"
What I think is that P(God), while low, is much, much higher than P(God and Hell).
My preferred explanation of heaven and hell works for the religious and non-religious. Heaven is eternal union with God. Hell is eternal disconnect from God.
From my experience with my families denomination, they see hell as the temporary disconnect from God followed by a lapse into non-existence. Which is an example of Daniel's point. There are different interpretations, so attacking a specific one, such as the hell fire interpretation, results in a weak argument.
I would sooner choose hell than follow a God that was holding damnation over my head, though I think I would be happier if I was so delusional.
But if it's fleshed out so that the afterlife of the damned is so unpleasant that they would end their existence if they could, it comes to much the same thing.
If it simply means annihilation, then fine. As I've noted, that's not how Jesus put it (according to the gospel authors, anyway). But OK.
"I won't repeat what I said above, but I stand by it. We're not children; we're not so incompetent about ethics."
You take a lot more comfort than I do. If we went back 400 years and had this conversation, you would be just as sure of our moral understandings. So I'm not convinced in the least that if we went forward 400 years that our understanding of morality and ethics will remain the same. Perhaps you are. But I take too much faith in human progress to think we're anywhere near being done.
Yes, instead of allegorical and spiritual stories, the definition of fundamentalists is that they take holy writings just the same as we would a newspaper, or encyclopedia. Lots of stuff in the Bible (even more in the Koran, but I digress) I don't think it does justice to the word "religion" to pick some one stance and attack it -- there are as many micro-versions of religion as there are people probably. Most modern atheists take some form of fundamentalism to use as their straw man. If that makes your boat float, fine. But Christianity has always evolved -- much more than the other religions. It's not a static target, and I bet (based on history) it will continue to evolve for many centuries to come.
It's fairly likely that our civilisation, should it survive, will make great ethical progress and regard many of our views today as absurd. It's extremely unlikely that this progress will include approval of eternal torture.
I believe in God, and I will admit that I don't understand a lot of the reasoning's in the Bible and why certain things happened, it's beyond my comprehension, but I realize that in the text, God wasn't the only one with the ability to affect things. Keep in mind, just like the Good vs. Evil idea, there is God vs. Devil (which in terms of the Bible, is catalyst for tempting us out of paradise).
Now, lets look at the fundamental morals behind the Bible, New Testament of course, because with the New Testament we were given a new law.
- Love one another
- Be a generous, helpful person
- Accept personal responsibility
- Don't have a sense of entitlement
- Honor and cherish your spouse
- Don't mislead or abuse children
- Honor your parents
- Be proactive
- Resist conformity
- Abide by the laws
- Don't be judgmental
- Be kind
- Be compassionate
- Be empathetic
- Don't be obsessed with possessions or wealth
- Work hard
- Ignorance is not an excuse
- People are people, no matter their ethnicity
- Be tolerant
- Don't cheat
- Everything in moderation
I could probably go on if I thought about it more, these are the immediate things that I try to keep in my mind from my studying. Say what you will, but that's a pretty good model for living life. One that I try my best to implement, and constantly fail at, but hey, practice makes habit.
> Love one another - Be a generous, helpful person - Accept personal responsibility - Don't have a sense of entitlement - Honor and cherish your spouse - Don't mislead or abuse children - Honor your parents - Be proactive - Resist conformity - Abide by the laws - Don't be judgmental - Be kind - Be compassionate - Be empathetic - Don't be obsessed with possessions or wealth - Work hard - Ignorance is not an excuse - People are people, no matter their ethnicity - Be tolerant - Don't cheat - Everything in moderation
I don't think gort would have any problem with those morals. What he has a problem with is:
"Love one another - Be a generous, helpful person - Accept personal responsibility, etc., etc.,... because otherwise, you'll burn in hell"
As an agnostic, I find it amusing that someone would demand that god conform to human morality. But it's an understandable viewpoint.
Right, I follow you, that's why I mentioned in the heading that there are things I don't understand. If you think about it though, just like our legal system would hold me accountable for my misdeeds, wouldn't the consequences apply if we broke a law set by a "supreme judge" if you want to call it? In the latter case though, you get off a lot easier for repeated offenses if your heart is right.
Wasn't it just a couple years ago that people here were saying California provided the model for the rest of the country, and that more people should adopt the Silicon Valley startup system?
I think the real issue is differing cultural attitudes toward risk. Californians embrace it, which probably results from the selection bias of having a state where the largest population centers are all centered on an active fault-line. Texans do their best to avoid it.
When times are good, people who take risks flourish, because most risks turn out well. But when times are bad, they get hurt much worse than people who play it safe. That's almost by definition: "good times" are those when most risks pan out, while "bad times" are those when most risks fail miserably. It's not surprising that California is doing worse than Texas now - they took on far more risk during the boom years.
People have short memories. I remember that at the first Startup School, one venture capitalist summed up the history of business in four words: "Boom. Bust. Boom. Bust." I think that was probably the truest thing said at the whole event.
You're overthinking it. Silicon Valley provides good models for building businesses. The state and local governments are masters of burning money and getting nothing from it.
As a taxpayer in California, I cannot track where most of my money goes. I can't ask my representative or either senator where it goes and get a straight answer. (Disclaimer: I still like Boxer.)
It's a little unfair to compare states, though. Texas, for instance, has lots of natural gas resources, oil production and refinement (especially along the gulf coast) among other things.
California gets back only 80% of the tax money it pays to the federal government. That amounts to several 10s of billions of dollars, given the population and wealth of the state.
Put another way, California would not have a deficit right now if it received its fair share of federal taxes.
The article concludes by saying California should adopt Texas's "more welcoming attitude toward Mexico", even while admitting that there is "a “lost generation” of mostly Hispanic Texans with insufficient skills for the demands of the knowledge economy" and "Latinos [in Texas] may justly demand a bigger, more “Californian” state to educate them and provide them with decent health care." I really don't understand why right-libertarians turn their brains off when it comes to race and culture.
The interests of people on this board are exceptionally low beta to general business conditions. People here aren't looking at corporate tax rates and support costs (which is pretty much the entirety of that list).
Until you factor in education level of the populace, better-maintained roads, better electrical grid, better communications grid, and the population density (which makes deliveries cheaper by reducing fuel costs and delivery times).
Also...Chief Executive magazine believed that Carly Fiona was a good executive. It supported the guys at Enron. It lauded the bank executives that played a large role in causing the current global mess. Take anything that mag says with a large ton of salt.
Ok, I love the Bay Area, but better electrical grid? Seriously?
I hope you have it better on the peninsula than we do in Santa Cruz, because here it's roughly equivalent to a 3rd world developing country. In Sweden, I ran my computer for years and never lost anything to a power glitch. Here, I won't even plug in a computer without a ups because MTBF due to power issues is about a week.
Yep. Texas actually has a better grid within the state, but it has a very "it's all mine and I am not going to share" attitude when it comes to commecting to the regional/national grids; it does the bare minimum it can get away with according to federal statute and is effectively it's own little island for the purposes of power. This worked just great for them when a certain groups of assholes in Houston were raping California by rigging the power markets and for as long as their generation capacity exceeded demand, but now that the intra-state supply is falling short of demand this is not looking as good as it once appeared...
Has the author ever spent time in both states? Why California?
A) Proximity to the beach / ocean / in-and-out.
B) If you've ever spent a long weekend in texas you are probably qualified to be a Entomologist. I picked up a car in Dallas two years ago and discovered that June Bugs and Praying Mantises were not just illustrations in national geographic!
C) California girls.
Most of the so-called "worst places to do business" polls are built on financial models, how the !%!@% does that translate!
The article itself is an undeserved defense of California. I love California and I do believe we have some of the most inventive people in the world but when you add the projected shortfall over the next couple years to our current debt you get a number that's getting close to Google's total market cap.
I don't know how you invent yourself out of a mess like that