[OFB Cafe] Tech Buzz: Who Deserves the Tech Vote?

[Derek Broughton]

On August 26, 2008 17:50:53 Fred A. Miller wrote:
> Fred Smith wrote:
> > On Tue, Aug 26, 2008 at 12:32 PM, Timothy Butler <tbutler at ofb.biz> wrote:
> >> On Aug 26, 2008, at 10:34 AM, Fred Smith wrote:
> >>> You have to be pretty desperate to live in a shithole like the
> >>> Midwest.
> >>
> >>        Do elaborate on that eloquent statement about my region, Fred.
> >
> > There's a reason that home prices and cost of living are so low, and
> > yet relatively no one lives there.  It's not because people are just
> > not aware of the wonderful culture of the midwest, or the great jobs
> > or the wonderful things to do there, it's that none of those things
> > exist.
>
> That is not only wrong, it's ignorant.

No, it's a normal reaction for a 'coaster.  I feel much the same way (even 
though I know they _do_ have culture, if not jobs - home of the St. Louis 
blues! [not the hockey team]).  My people are from the prairies, and I've had 
great times there, but I couldn't _live_ there.  When you've lived by the 
ocean, you can't be happy anywhere else.

Tolkien wrote something in the /Lord of the Rings/ that I'm too lazy to look 
up, about Elves, having heard the cry of the gulls, being unable to rest 
again in their inland forests.  I've always thought he was tapping into 
something very primal.  Of course he did that before 100+ acre uncovered 
land-fills, that have brought gulls into every part of North America, and 
probably England.  In my English childhood, I don't ever remember gulls until 
I lived on the coast.
-- 
derek