The Kristof one was my favorite but I haven't read enough of his columns to know if it is true.
JP has long been much funnier than his first book suggested.
"I Smell Moral Rot" is my favorite.
"I Smell Moral Rot"
Anagram: Memorial Trolls
Although I might have gone with "Smells Like Moral Rot."
"I Smell Moral Rot"
Well, that was Douthat's go-to pick-up line at Harvard.
I thought Jedediah Purdy had retired to a life of obscurity after writing that book about how as a 21-year-old Christian he was out of step with modern society, back in 2001 or whenever that was.
He was home schooled, though, until he wasn't.
11: I don't know, even if it's not remote, it might be pretty culturally so if the nearest city is 50+ miles away and that city is Charleston.
11: Having driven that stretch of interstate several times recently, other than being able to get to Charleston and other places accessible by the paved roads somewhat more quickly, it appears to be every bit as rusticated as theoretically more remote places where people who don't live there sometimes like to go for tourism-program-related activities and whatnot.
We could probably debate what would be an appropriate West Virginia rustication index.
This reminds me of the time that Teo told Ogged that only places totally off the grid with less than 5 inhabitants were really remote Navajo country. I may be misremembering that.
(I always surmised that the producers were looking for the hillbilliest place they could find that was within easy commuting distance of a Marriott)
A perhaps overspecific, but undeniably useful, google maps layer.
I always surmised that the producers were looking for the hillbilliest place they could find that was within easy commuting distance of a Marriott
I can confirm this as basically correct.
There are places WITHIN THE CITY LIMITS of Charleston that are about as rural a place as I've ever been. e.g. Lilly Drive
11, et seq.: His parents did graduate work in history and philosophy of science, then decided to fulfill a bucolic fantasy and move to West Virginia. He's not of the gente.
22: No, he was deliberately sheltered -- much like the Buddha, with similar results.
I see him at the bookstore sometimes.
You know what they say, if you meet the Buddha reading...
There oughta be a name for the gap between what you think you know about a Proper Noun and the facts you can easily Google up.
There is a lizard sex satellite floating in space and Russia no longer has it under control.
Ross Douthat.is suitably horrified.
I'm sitting next to two guys talking about graduate school in something related to literature, but I'm almost finished eating so I can move next to normal people soon.
On the OP, I actually like the Krugman: "I discovered politics ten years ago."
22: His parents did graduate work in history and philosophy of science, then decided to fulfill a bucolic fantasy and move to West Virginia. He's not of the gente.
Uh-oh. Isn't that something like what ogged and his wife keep contemplating? Or at least ogged is. But I think it's OK to be not truly (authentically?) of the gente.
In all honesty, at any rate, be that as it may, and so on: I'd never heard of Jedediah Purdy until now. It appears that he has, in the past, been Against Irony. I can now enjoy 30!
40: Squirrel Cage. It's always the Cage.
I kind of feel like I'm a regular at that bar at this point. Good work Hammer.
This reminds me of the time that Teo told Ogged that only places totally off the grid with less than 5 inhabitants were really remote Navajo country. I may be misremembering that.
You are; nowhere in the Navajo country is that remote. For that you have to go to Alaska.
And while I've since granted that ogged does get at least some rural cred for living there, I still maintain that a community with a supermarket and a hospital, from which you can drive 60 miles on paved roads and get to a Walmart and a McDonald's, is not particularly remote by the standards of the rural West (even excluding Alaska).
I'm on knecht's side in not being impressed by the rural street cred of living 10 miles from the interstate in WV, though I guess maybe it depends what sort of exit.
I am nor rural but am really allergic to something in the air now and spent the whole day blinking. I don't think it's a good look for me.
46: My "ugh it feels like there's sand in my eye" allergy turned out to be ocular rosacea. Fun!
Is there a "let me NOT google that for you" site to keep me from looking at the detailed symptoms? Do not want!
Further to 48, I guess I'm going to urgent care after work tomorrow. My mom has rosacea and "family history" is one of the risk factors. With pale skin, itchy burning eyes and blurring vision, I guess I'd better get that checked out. Blech.
Cripe. A remote-off? I suppose the remotest I've been is Hornby Island, off the coast of Vancouver Island in British Columbia. Population just under 1000, but here's the thing: there is one grocery store (simultaneously the liquor store and the hardware store), one gas station. You will indeed meet and see everyone, repeatedly.
It's an island. You have to take two ferries to get to the big island (Vancouver): this takes three or four hours, all told. You could always live on Lasqueti Island, which is off the grid entirely.
I didn't (and don't) actually have any intention of sparking a remote-off, but feel free I guess.
50: Dermatologist put me on minocycline for 3 mos. All symptoms (and spots) gone in like 2 weeks. Thumbs up.
Ugh, where I live right now is crazy remote, it's over a mile to the nearest grocery store I actually want to shop in.
46: if it is actually allergies, the only thing that fixed my allergies = horribly itchy eyes the one year it was a huge problem for me was using a neti pot (actually given to me by my ENT doc). Of course, an amoeba could eat your brain as a result, but I was miserable enough to find the risk worth taking.
My "ugh it feels like there's sand in my eye" allergy turned out to be ocular rosacea.
That's what they thought I might have when I first went to the cornea specialist last year. Now nobody seems to have a name for it other than "dunno, stop wearing contacts and use these medicated drops twice daily".
54: Google Maps sez .8 miles. Unless you're even pickier than I thought you were.
I spent plenty of time in my childhood summers in places where many people had no phone, no tv, sometimes no plumbing, mostly no heating except through coal fires, few cars. Sometimes these places were in major cities, sometimes near them in densely populated rural areas, sometimes in major tourist resorts. Not remote at all, but pre-internet and cell phones a hell of a lot of the world was like that - lots of people, no grid.
Is "off the grid" the electric grid, the phone system, or the street grid? I guess I've always thought the latter but maybe that's wrong.
Here it usually means the electric grid.
I feel like I'm in a remote place now. The two streets bordering my hotel are currently undergoing some kind of massive construction project, and it looks like walking to the convenience store across the street is basically impossible given that it involves avoiding both giant holes in the road and fast-moving traffic in the part of the road that isn't torn up.
54: Google Maps sez .8 miles. Unless you're even pickier than I thought you were.
.9 miles by foot actually, and 1.2 by car, but I guess so!
Why anyone would choose to live and work in this hellscape when there is a vibrant major city thirty or so miles to the east is beyond me.
"My summer of travel to the boring outskirts of cities I might have otherwise liked, plus one beautiful city currently under protofascist rule."
We told you not to move to Steubenville, Ohio, essear.
I was trying to come up with the right town for an "Essear hates poor people" joke. Alternate joke: why are you on San Nicolas island?
WHERE IS ESSEAR? The clues are:
- terrible place
- 30 miles west of major metropolis
Tuscaloosa? DeKalb? Greencastle, Indiana, Siler City, NC?
DeKalb is significantly more than 30 miles out, but the right idea.
a community with a supermarket and a hospital
And a restaurant now!
But I was wondering whether anyone would guess the beautiful city declining into fascism.
And a restaurant now!
See? A veritable metropolis!
My first two guesses (Stony Brook, Princeton) are a little too far east of their cities.
I suppose you're going to tell me that this location makes Princeton look like a great place. You could also say the same about Stony Brook, but I wouldn't believe you.
70: Anti-Semite!
Oh, I misread which was east of which.
I'd never heard of Jedediah Purdy until now.
Really, paris? He seems right up your alley. At this point I feel confident that you would enjoy reading For Common Things much more than the author himself.
Stony Brook is very comparable to where I am now: almost completely impossible to get around without a car and fighting with traffic. Ick. I really don't like it there, no matter how much one of my friends swears it's a great place to live. Princeton is relatively nice.
paris s/b parsi and I can't even blame autocorrect just these fat sausage fingers
Is it two cities, split by a blue river?
Dude, are you in Naperville? I'll laugh if you are, because it consistently makes "best places to live" lists (uh, despite being a soulless entirely new-build mcburb. Or, it was new-build when I saw it twenty years ago; I haven't been back since.)
Demigods on stilts have their charm, after all.
Ah, I've got it. Naperville is real close but he's a bit northwest of there.
82: yup, that's the beautiful city I had in mind.
83: yeah, but on the outskirts, not near the walkable part. Commuting to the nearby lab the last few days.
It is the worst kind of local shit-don't-stinkism to look down on Naperville and the western suburbs, and I try not to engage in it, but damn, they really are pretty hellscapey.
64, 82, 86 Meet their nominee for ambassador to Italy
It is not difficult to recognize them because they are cowardly and impertinent at the same time. Money is their God, their mother tongue in which they have trusted from time immemorial. Dark circles under their eyes, flabby skin, clammy palms, cold feet, freakish smiles give them away. They can be found everywhere on the earth. They are the agents of Satan
And so on and on at the link.
My mom was born/raised in Naperville (1951) and so, with her childhood home as the point of reference, it was a complete shock for us to watch it metamorphose over the course of 20 years into the second-largest city in Illinois. The western suburbs were in fact an anxiety-triggering hellscape from an early age for me. Generally my family got its two-minute hate on over Hinsdale, though, where my youngest maternal aunt lives (and even she feels it's a bit much).
But can you tell me why it's the worst kind of shit-don't-stinkism?
I like how Teraz's remote cred was growing up pre-internet and -cellphone.
Whoa, like actual fascism. I thought you were being a little hyperbolic about Russia or Turkey or some such. I hadn't heard about the Hungary situation at all.
can you tell me why it's the worst kind of shit-don't-stinkism?
Because the people doing the looking down still live in fucking Illinois, where, no matter how old the trees are in your yard, you're still in a place where lots and lots people, in much more fabulous places all over the world, think they "could never live." And the fact is that all the people here on the "north shore" could live there, if they had a little less money, jobs in a different location, and the desire for a house of their own and a decent education for their kids.
If you dweebs learned to like driving more you could be a lot happier.
I feel like the Eliza bot that posts here as Robert Halford just had a little hiccup.
I'm about to see a black cat twice, aren't I?
No, that's totally in character and apropos.
Learn to like commuting in bumper-to-bumper traffic? I guess that's possible with legalized marijuana.
I get in character, but I guess I don't get the comment.
We had this contest previously in the form of How many Whole Foods could you plausibly walk to. I think I won with 4, and the answer has only gone up since then.
Or I should say, had the opposite contest, the non-remote-off.
RH is a big fan of cars, and therefore of auto-oriented suburbs like Naperville.
If we do the remote-off in the form of distance to the nearest Whole Foods (and limit it to the US) I think I win easily.
Ah, in that case, Ned has it: getting around those suburbs has very little to do with driving, and everything to do with sitting in a car.
103: Yes, that the Sifu Counterpoint to the Halford Conjecture.
If I go to the WF website and search for the nearest store it comes up with one in Scotland.
Which couldn't possibly be right, since there are several in Seattle. Apparently all that abuse of their employees doesn't save them enough money to hire decent web programmers.
I don't even know how many I could walk to now. If you're generous with walking, say 3 miles, I think it's about 8.
Good night internet reprobates.. Somebody should really get me out of the bar earlier.
Maybe they're abusing the programmers too.
I'm applying to fellowships in all kinds of different places now, and it's hard to overestimate how much I don't want to be sitting in traffic all the time. But that topic doesn't get discussed much when . Traffic is just like weather, something you get used to. No!
Where I live now, if you commute from the south there is no traffic, if you commute from the west there is city rush hour traffic, if you commute from the east there is constant traffic at all hours because there's a traffic light every 200 feet for eight miles. This information should be known to all.
I've been to Lasqueti! For remote, my brother's friend's family owns an island near there, and it's the closest outpost of civilization.
Here's kind of the opposite of remote, where there is nowhere in the country you don't get full cell phone coverage. Also pretty much everywhere is within 20 miles of a freeway now, or will be w/in a year. My city used to be 7 hours away from the closest big city on winding bandit-ridden roads, and now it's 3 hours away on the freeway. When they finish the high speed rail it will be less than 45 mins away.
If we are going to do the remote-off, I guess I'll have to go with St. George. Hopefully one of these days I'll make it to Little Diomede, though.
In Minas Ned they endure the north road, but they do not ask it for transportation.
83: Mrs Gonerill grew up in Naperville and would gladly nuke it from orbit if given the opportunity.
Traffic is just like weather, something you get used to. No!
I no longer have any conception of how I was able to stand the amount of time I sat in traffic when I lived in LA. Clearly I did it, and at the time it didn't really bother me noticeably on a day-to-day basis, but I have no access to the state of mind that would have allowed that. I can't deal with it at all now.
Anyhow, essear should give ogged and the kids a tour of whatever highly sensitive, dangerous scientific research facilities are near him.
Lasqueti has regular ferry service, and Hornby has an annual festival, for God's sake. If you're going to go with settled communities near Vancouver Island, shouldn't they at least be accessible only by float plane? (eg http://www.ahousaht.ca/////Home.html )
Why anyone would choose to live and work in this hellscape when there is a vibrant major city thirty or so miles to the east is beyond me.
For the schools, typically. Or because that's where your first job was an the vagaries of fate have since made escape impossible. So I hear.
Also, based on the description in 61, I am fairly sure I know which hotel you are staying in, Essear. And yeah, that is the most shitty planned, pain-in-the-ass construction ever. It's looked almost exactly the same since late April.
Ahousaht's wealth comes from its bountiful natural supply of forward slashes.
120: What's really unclear to me is whether they have a good reason for tearing up such a giant stretch of road instead of doing it a little bit at a time.
Preach it. It makes no sense to me.
My sister and her husband have worked in Naperville for 30+ years, but have managed to resist the urge to shorten their commute by moving there.
If all this western burb talk results in a hellscape meetup, let me be the first to suggest North of the Border in Bartlett. Sadly, and despite the name, they don't serve Canadian food.
The prospect of a Western Wastelands meet up pits "Desperate Need for a Drink" against "All the Crushing Deadlines That Drive Me to Drink."
Ahousaht is certainly a western place for a meet-up.
118: True, Lasqueti has regular ferry service; a proper remote-off would have to define "remote", wouldn't it? Is it a function of population density per square mile? A function of accessibility (via road, rail, train or plane)? Or ... what sounds to be the case in discussion here, a question of how many, and what types of, amenities are available within a given distance.
Obviously these things are related, but still: you've got your Hornby Island with its annual festival and explosion of tourist activity in the summers, and relatively dense population, considering, but it takes hours and hours to get there!
Then you've got, say, the top of a mountain in Puerto Rico. (Note to Knecht: I too am liking Google Maps' topographical feature!) I cannot recall the name of the place/mountain in PR at which I spent a few weeks after college graduation, but it was near-ish to Bayamon. At the cabin at the top of the mountain, no water, no electricity: only two residents within half an hour, as far as we knew, one a crazy old man living in a shack in the jungle, the other the widow of a former Senator, who was set up, I tell you what. You had to look out for scorpions in your shoes. Middle of the jungle, banana trees and orange trees and stinging plants. It was delightful and tremendous.
BUT it took only an hour or so to get down off the mountain, at which point, hey, you could visit a grocery store with Kola Champagne! And on the way down the mountain, there were scads of fallen mangoes by the side of the road, along with the occasional roadside shack selling empanadillas, though you were not encouraged to step foot in those places if you were a woman.
In other words, there was a lot of stuff there, so it wasn't that remote.
a proper remote-off would have to define "remote", wouldn't it? Is it a function of population density per square mile? A function of accessibility (via road, rail, train or plane)? Or ... what sounds to be the case in discussion here, a question of how many, and what types of, amenities are available within a given distance.
Yeah, this is really the decision that needs to be made for this kind of thing. I've been thinking of it primarily in terms of accessibility, whereas ogged seems to think of it more in terms of amenities available nearby.
Pretty sure that St George Island in the Pribilofs is going to take the prize here on whatever metric you use. 200 miles off the coast of Alaska.
Yeah, but direct scheduled flights from Anchorage. Not very many, admittedly.
Anyway, I'm perfectly willing to bask in my victory.
Actually it looks like the PenAir flights to St. George stop in St. Paul, which makes sense. When I went there it was on a charter. We did have to stop briefly in Dillingham to refuel.
Had a job, a temporary job that lasted seven months on the western edge of N'perville a few years ago. In a huge lab complex, the one the highway goes right by. Our building had been abandoned as a lab because of cancer clusters; it has since been demolished, I think the only building on the campus that has.
I would leave my house at 6:00, very dark in winter, and be there in just under an hour, from the far north side of Chicago. Coming back in the late afternoon was 1.5 to 2 hours though.
I would walk down into the older part of town down Washington Street. Very little infrastructure for walking between were I was and the older parts. I thought it resembled Northbrook and Deerfield, where I'd worked for the previous 14 years, a lot. Small old town around the railroad tracks, a belt of postwar housing close in, much bigger and drive-only housing, in complexes and gateds, farther out. Teardowns of small houses and replacement by big here and there on the older streets.
I didn't hate it, despite the far-side-of-the-moon disparagement Ogged's referring to among people I mentioned it to. Like I said, it felt familiar to me, from growing up in Ohio and working in the Northern suburbs of Chicago.
Friends of our family moved there sometime late '60s/early '70s. We visited them once. So yeah, a suburb. However, I distinctly recall the father driving us around in his car basically gawking at all the recent and ongoing development. "This was all farms two years ago!"
Meetup in Skidegate?
I don't know, I feel like there are plenty of places in Alaska way more "remote" than the Pribilofs. (I watched the 2004 Democratic Convention from St. Paul -- doesn't cable TV disqualify a place?) Same with BC: Hornby is visible from my parents' house (https://www.flickr.com/photos/charleycarp/358817222/in/set-72157594481952595 -- Hornby is to the left of the tree) which, I think, introduces the critical feature of remoteness, which is that it's relative.
When Cactus Partner and I were looking for homes in the metro area, Naperville made it to the finals on the basis of (1) excellent public schools that are (2) substantially more racially diverse than their peer institutions. Obviously nowhere near city demographics, but the difference between Cactus Baby being the only black child in class and one of a handful. So step off, haters.
Just yesterday I saw a black man in town who seemed to be a resident. I bet that eventually I'll see him again, so that will be twice that I've seen a black resident. No, I've actually solved the diversity problem by considering Jews black, so we might actually be majority minority by now. Take that, Naperville.
138: Yeah, the diversity of Rory ' social circle out here is pretty sweet.