{"id":183,"date":"2005-10-19T11:02:14","date_gmt":"2005-10-19T15:02:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/snarl\/2005\/10\/19\/were-on-another-list\/"},"modified":"2005-10-19T11:02:14","modified_gmt":"2005-10-19T15:02:14","slug":"were-on-another-list","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/2005\/10\/19\/were-on-another-list\/","title":{"rendered":"We&#8217;re on Another List"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a name='a3274'><\/a><\/p>\n<p><P>Just this past summer Massachusetts (particularly the metropolitan Boston area) was listed as the most expensive region in the country in which to live. Real estate prices, energy prices and&nbsp;auto&nbsp;insurance prices all played a factor in that designation.<\/P><br \/>\n<P>Yet this week another list came out and placed Massachusetts at the top. This time, however, it&#8217;s for good things. Apparently, Massachusetts is the smartest state in the country. (you can read the full article here: <A href=\"http:\/\/cnn.netscape.cnn.com\/news\/package.jsp?name=fte\/smartstates\/smartstates\">http:\/\/cnn.netscape.cnn.com\/news\/package.jsp?name=fte\/smartstates\/smartstates<\/A>).<\/P><br \/>\n<P>I would have suspected that it was because of all of the colleges and universities here, but this study was actually based on public (grade) school educations. Interesting stuff. We&#8217;re also surrounded by good company with neighboring Connecticut, Vermont and New York also in the top ten (and New Hampshire and Maine in the top fifteen).<\/P><br \/>\n<P>Still it makes me wonder, how smart could we be if we&nbsp;build towns that are protected by 173 year old wooden dams? Is it just me, or is anybody else shocked to realize that most dams in this state are privately owned (and barely inspected)? I mean,&nbsp;how does&nbsp;a single person own something that could essentially wipe out an entire community? What a liability (and, I&#8217;d assume, insurance issue). Wouldn&#8217;t that individual be responsible for the damage? Hell, if you don&#8217;t shovel your sidewalk you can get sued. <\/P><br \/>\n<P>Yet now we have the entire downtown area of Taunton evacuated out of fear that this old dam could break at any minute. It&#8217;s even making national news. Scary stuff.<\/P><br \/>\n<P>At least the water is receding now that the rain has stopped. But with Hurriance Wilma expected to come in this direction on Sunday (after deriorating into just a big wet storm), who knows what we can expect.<\/P><br \/>\n<P>Hopefully we&#8217;re smart enough to come up with a plan.<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Just this past summer Massachusetts (particularly the metropolitan Boston area) was listed as the most expensive region in the country in which to live. Real estate prices, energy prices and&nbsp;auto&nbsp;insurance prices all played a factor in that designation. Yet this week another list came out and placed Massachusetts at the top. This time, however, it&#8217;s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":74,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/74"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}