civilized ku # 2782-83 ~ camp daze
Tuesday, August 19, 2014 at 10:59AM 
screen hook ~ Rist Camp / Newcomb, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen
great blue heron ~ Rist Camp / Newcomb, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggenHugo's at another hockey camp and the wife and I are at Rist Camp (for 5 weeks). All is right with the world. Or, at least, all is right with our little corner of the world at this point in time.
That written, I read an article in today's NY Times which is a follow up to (or continuation of) a previous article, re: the "easiest" and "hardest"places to live in the good ol' USofA. The determination of easiest v hardest was based on an analysis - using an index of 6 factors including income, education and life expectancy - of every single county in the US. The propose of these surveys is to gather information, re: inequality (haves v haves-nots) in the US - how and where it's trending.
FYI, according to this survey, I live in an "easy" / doing better (than average) county.
Why, you might wonder, am I mentioning it here, on a photo blog? Well, the follow up article was headlined with this ...
In One America, Guns and Diet. In the Other, Cameras and 'Zoolander'.
... followed by this:
In the hardest places to live in the United States, people spend a lot of time thinking about diets and religion. In the easiest places to live, people spend a lot of time thinking about cameras.
This information was gathered by doing a study of web search words/phrases as used by those living in counties on either end of the easiest/hardest index. The differences are interesting, depressing / sad or scary / alarming (take your pick or, as in my case, choose all 3). To wit:
In the hardest places to live ... health problems, weight-loss diets, guns, video games and religion are all common search topics. The dark side of religion is of special interest: Antichrist has the second-highest correlation with the hardest places, and searches containing "hell"and "rapture" also make the top 10.
In the easiest places to live ... the Canon Elph and other digital cameras dominate the top of the correlation list. Apparently, people in places where life is good .... want to record their lives in images.
The article is well worth reading and its conclusion is a damning one for the USofA - For all the ways that the differences here may reflect cultural preferences, however, the main lesson of the analysis is a sobering one. The rise of inequality over the last four decades has created two very different Americas, and life is a lot harder in one of them .... [T]he different subjects that occupy people's thoughts aren't just a window into American life today. They're a window onto future inequality, too.
It seems very apparent to me that many of us are spending our time fiddling (and picturing) while our own particular brand of Rome burns.
Reader Comments (2)
I saw that article earlier this morning and almost fell off my chair when it said "cameras". I would have thought "Netflix", "Video Games" or "Apple iWhatever" would be way ahead of "camera". Who buys cameras anymore? Apparently us happy people!
Mark, John: such an analysis on the German federal states might be similarly sobering. I guess that Mercedes and BMW could be found in the have's group, whereas I doubt that religious topics might be found in any group.
This is especially interesting as many American friends are proud about the strong separation of churches and state in the U.S. and look with mistrust at Germany where our federal tax office collects taxes for the churches, indicating a much stronger connection and higher influence of the churches. Only in real life, there isn't one.