America's smartest cities are also none too bright.

Mark Twain said there were lies, damned lies, and statistics. Mark Twain was also potentially psychic. Just throwing that out there.

CNN and Yahoo came out with a list of American cities with the highest percentage of citizens with bachelor's degrees. According to this news piece, these places are the "smartest" and "brainiest" places to live.

"Brainiest" is one of those things people say when they don't know what else to call "smart." It conjures images of an amateur sleuth solving murder mysteries--kind of like Angela Lansbury in Murder, She Wrote, except with less osteoporosis and no prune juice.

Does graduating with an undergrad degree actually equal intelligence for a population? Sure, if you completely disregard other facts.

See, look at that:
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It says New York City is the 10th smartest city in America.

Except this other news story from USA Today says NYC is also only one of three major American cities that fails to graduate 40% of its population from high school.

Huh.

My guess? New Yorkers are pretty brainy on how to avoid the truant officer.