A Theory of Population Density

Right away, I'm guessing you're thinking I'm about to say something snarky about the relative denseness of the local population. Well, fooled you! Because I'm not.

No, today's so-called thought is this: Chicago is the greatest city in the world. (OK, so maybe I haven't been to a lot of cities--Tokyo, Beijing, Vienna, and Lincoln, Nebraska come immediately to mind--so maybe I don't have much of a basis of comparison. But so what--this is my blog, and if you think you can do better, then please, feel free to start a blog on the world's greatest cities. I promise not to take it personally.)

So let's just say that we accept the proposition that Chicago is the greatest city in the world. Why don't more people live here?

Obviously, it's the weather.

Like this morning. That Stud Muffin I Married, who is currently in Pittsburgh, tells me that it's spring there. The trees are blooming, the bird is on the wing, it's warm--the whole bit. Well, it's kind of sort of spring here, too. There is no snow or ice to be seen; daffodils, dogwoods, and forsythia are blooming; robins leap about guzzling down worms. Spring, right? Except that when my kids left for school, they were wearing parkas and mittens. In fact, if I remember correctly, they wore their parkas to school last year on the last day of school. Which is in June.

So I figured it out. Chicago is the greatest city in the world, but IF the whole world knew it, THEN they would all move here. And if that happened, the mass of people would become so great that the world probably tilt, fall off its axis, and go whistling through space ... and we don't want that, now, do we?

Well, neither does the divine Providence who decreed, apparently, that the greatest city in the world should be built upon a flat expanse of prairie on the shores of a lake that allows the Canadian cold front free and unlimited access--and doesn't even ask to see its I.D. Which is so not fair, because when I go to Canada, I have to show an I.D. and say how long I'm planning to stay.

I mean, isn't this why the Republicans opposed NAFTA?

So I guess the down side of all this is this whole Canadian wetback scenario, where the cold front decides to cross the Canadian/U.S. border and stay however long it pleases. Who knows how long it will take before local authorities wake up to the situation and increase border patrols between here and Ontario.

And the upside? Well, at least I don't have to worry about the earth wrenching itself free from its orbit any time soon.