Missed Connections, ‘Hunger Games’ camp and why the midwest is the smartest region

Everyone, everywhere, read this. It’s an incredible post on Brooklyn’s Missed Connections page on Craigslist. I wish I had written this.

“At ‘Hunger Games’ camp, children want to fight to the ‘death.'” Here’s a kind of fascinating, kind of disturbing article in the Tamba Bay Times. A summer camp hosted a special week session for the “Hunger Games” camp, thinking it would attract kids with its connection to the mega-popular “Hunger Games” trilogy by Suzanne Collins. They were right. However, the camp seemed to think they could take out the violence, instead focusing on team-building. Not so.

I mentioned it here, but if you haven’t read The Washington Post’s take on their own takeover by Jeff Bezos, the titan of Amazon, it’s interesting. It offers a hopeful take on what a digital innovator might bring to an old school industry, and it seems cautiously optimistic about the future of journalism in general. If you ever read broadsheet news or its counterpart online, this is worth a skim.

“20 Calvin professors sign a letter to Congress urging action on climate change” is exactly what it sounds like. This story is already making the rounds in the Calvin community, but I’m proud of it, so here it is again. (Although, honestly, this shouldn’t be a big achievement; it’s what we should be doing). Evangelical Christians stepping up with an often unpopular view here. The actual letter can be read here.

Data on the 100 smartest cities in the United States has been released from Luminosity, an education company behind the Human Cognition Project. Results are based on the cognitive training exercises (testing problem solving, memory, speed, etc.) of, supposedly, three million people. I like the results because 7 of the top 10 cities are in the midwest, and nearly half of the top 100 are from the 12 midwest states. By contrast, there is only one city in Texas, one in California and 6 in New York (the three most populous states). Clearly, the midwest has got it going on intellectually. Amazingly, 10 of the cities were in Wisconsin and 10 were in Pennsylvania (not midwest, but still Big Ten!). Of personal note: Grand Rapids, 79; East Lansing, 103; Kalamazoo, 144. See the full list and methodology here.