I wrote this in April but somehow neglected to publish it back them. Please allow me to rectify this situation now.

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I am in a meeting with some two dozen people. We are on a break. While quietly checking my email, I can’t help but overhear a conversation between two of my colleagues standing behind me. I’m not really listening, so the conversation wakens into my conscious slowly. It seems to concern where a person might want to live. One of the people lives in what I believe may be upstate New York, in a rural area not far from a town or city. She says, “It’s the best of both worlds.”

I don’t interrupt the conversation, but what I’m thinking is: “Good as far as it goes, but what about the cold?”

The best of both worlds. As if there were only two of them! How narrow our expectations are. I’m not arguing for a Panglossian “best of all possible worlds” but surely we can do better in our optimization than just two.