I don't know if Schwartz made a good move with the sighing below . . . but I like his style. Kyle Vanden Bosch just announced on 104.5 here in Nashville that he has signed a 4 year deal with the Detroit Lions. He said that Jim Schwartz called him at 11:00 and said that he was outside the gate of the neighborhood and that they talked until about 2 Apparently the coach texted Kyle a message at 11:00 (the minute he was allowed to make free agent contact) saying he could be anywhere in the US right now but he is choosing to see him face to face to get him to come to his team.
It is clean and beautiful - if you go a long way upstream from Portland. But more seriously, it's not like no one is talking about it, or doing anything about it. We are spending zillions to put in the two "big pipes", there are superfund cleanups going on, etc. barfo
Well, I think you were saying it matters from a business perspective. I'm saying if you (and by extension, other business people) aren't going to do anything differently because of it, then I find it hard to see how it matters. Interesting, perhaps. Important, no. Y'know, I could cobble together some random statistics and put Portland at the top of the list for happiest places to live. It would be easy, and every bit as valid as the BusinessWeek article you find so compelling, which is to say not very valid at all. It's not that I don't give a shit. It's that I don't accept their criteria as definitive. barfo
Oregon it flat out is the best place to live that I have experienced. There are numerous reasons. The seasons, the summers, the mountains, the ocean, lakes, rivers, forests... we have places we can go where it is always sunny... skiing... we have a decent sized city... high tech... low tech... and the people... (though depressed I guess)... are still some of the nicest in the country. And to cap it all off... we have... The Blazers. If you look back at the overall mix of people and the quality of the posts through the various forum migrations... you can see the same trend as I see in Portland. There are great posters here... no doubt about it... but the negative voices tend to drown out many attempts at discussion. It is like political talk shows... whine whine whine... no answers.... just finger pointing and looking for the next target to blame our woes on.
That is just so wrong on so many levels. Your criteria is if business people don't do anything differently when hearing news, than the news doesn't matter. That is just wrong logic. Also, have you thought about businesses that might not move here because of the business environment. To think that if it doesn't make a business move then it doesn't matter is something I hope the gov't doesn't practice. Go ahead write the article, post it and see how many people read your article vs. business week. Barfo, I know you think highly of yourself and lowly of business week, but the reality is you have no where near the credibilty of business week. To think that you can write an article with an already decided conclusion (then add the stats) and think it will be as credible as a newsweek article (whose writer probably has no ties to Oregon) . . . that is silly.
Yes, I did think about that, and I don't believe any company is going to not move here because of the suicide rate. That is silly indeed, but of course it isn't anything like what I actually said. What I said was that my article would be just as valid. I didn't say it would be as widely read or that others would consider it as credible as that BusinessWeek article. You are confusing popularity with truth. I'm not sure why you think I think badly of BusinessWeek. I don't think that particular article, which is basically fluff, has an accurate or useful way to rank cities, but I haven't said word one about the magazine itself. barfo
most of the people espousing the natural beauty, lakes, skiiing, etc...well..that's great and all but most of the oregonians don't probably take advantage. they stay at home...many of the houses, especially on the eastside of town are old and dilapidated and gloomy. there is also a lot of white trash in Portland. Portland is great...if you're a yuppie or hipster with coin. But most of Portland is likely working class and its probably pretty miserable if you're not making money and just living life.
You could pretty much replace "Portland" with any other American city and your mad lib would still work. Go on. Try it. However the natural beauty, lakes, skiiing, beaches, mountains etc... are a bonus that Oregon/Portland has most of the country does not.
probably more prevalent in Portland. Different degrees of dismay perhaps? maybe Portland is "too real" for people. not much of a "high society" in town really for the unwashed masses to idolize?
That's it . . . it's all about the sucide rate. Just keep telling yourself the article says because Ptd has a high sucide rate, people are not happy . . . and you think I'm not reading things correctly. When you say that you can pull together random facts and write an article to support an opposite conclusion that would be just as valid as the article in business week, then say you never said anything bad about business week . . . that is saying something bad about business week. If I (and many others) thought their writers come to conclusions and then come up with random facts to justify their conclusions, we would not bother reading business week. So you thinking you can write an article that will be just as vaild is silly to me given that you already have your conclusion before any facts and you have a clear bias. Am I reading you correctly now?
It is very clear that suicide is one of the factors with the heaviest weighting in their rankings: Yes, I have criticized this article. However, I don't blame BusinessWeek for publishing it. I blame you for taking it seriously. I did not accuse them of that. I do not have any reason to believe the author is biased against Portland. No, not really. I'm saying the happiness of a city, or lack thereof, is not defined by the handful of factors the author chose. The individual statistics he used - suicide rate, unemployment, etc - are by themselves perfectly reasonable statistics. It is claiming that the combination of those particular statistical measures defines the happiness of a city that I have a problem with. Let's put it this way. Would you agree that lots of recreational activities might make people, in general, happier than a lack thereof? Would you agree that Portland has lots of such activities, as opposed to say, Kansas City? Yet recreational activities were not included in the ranking. Therefore... it is possible that the ranking isn't completely accurate? Here's another thing. One of the major factors in the article is the amount of anti-depressants taken by the population. Yet, isn't the effect of anti-depressants to make a person less depressed? So if we are all on anti-depressants, doesn't it follow that we aren't depressed? Seems to me we should get a positive, not a negative score for that. It's the cities with untreated depressed people - the cities where they don't take anti-depressants - that should get the bad scores. barfo
just to play devil's advocate, can you imagine how high our suicide rate would be if we DIDN'T have these activities?
Well, perhaps recreational activities cause people to be suicidal. Maybe the rate would be lower if we didn't. barfo
