Otterblog

There’s a great line in Talladega Nights where Ricky Bobby’s Daddy (say that three times fast) tells his son: “If you’re not first, you’re last.”

I think it’s human nature to keep score. And even people who don’t keep score keep score on how much better they are than the rest of us at not keeping score.

We write a lot of stories about how our community stacks up. Today alone, there was a piece on the average incomes in N.C. counties (Forsyth is ahead of many, but behind a lot, too.); SAT scores (up generally); and the spread of obesity across this great land of others (The South is still the buckle on our ever-growing girth belt.)

Numbers mean something. And behind every number is a story, and sometimes the stories appear to contradict each other. A careful reader of all these stories could reasonably say something to the effect in Forsyth County of “Poorer, a little fatter and a little smarter.” Or not. Each of these numbers are aggregates, and at the anecdotal level things can be quite different. Your neighbor, for example, could be rich, thin and stupid. But as with all stories that look at how different groups compare with each other, they help define patterns and suggest ways for policy makers to target resources and programs to improve.

And for those who don’t subscribe to RBD’s philosophy about the importance of being first, there’s this important line from Episode 1: “There’s always a bigger fish.”

Dylan on Dylan: With all the back and forth on our Web site and in our paper about whether Dylan is dead, alive, or somewhere in between, Bob himself speaks in the latest issue of Rolling Stone. Hustler? Reclusive genius? Weary old man? You decide.