Town so nice, they named it twice http://www.newsday.com/news/printedition/newyork/ny-nypoli214790314jun21,0,3206847.story Mumbai disputes ‘rudest city’ tag http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/5103914.stm Good Manners: World of Courtesy: Ranking of 35 Cities http://www.rd.com/content/openContent.do?contentId=27599&pageIndex=2 Emily Post: Etiquette in Society, in Business, in Politics and at Home http://www.bartleby.com/95/ Beginning to Date (1953) [Quick Time, Real Player] http://www.archive.org/details/Beginnin1953 Lists of “best” places, restaurants, haberdasheries, and the like seem to be almost ubiquitous these days, with any number of magazines creating such scientific (and unscientific) studies to determine and analyze such supposedly lofty manners. Of course, measuring the “politeness” of any given city is bound to be a difficult task, but recently Reader’s Digest embarked on a quest to determine just which city is in fact the place where gentility and decorum rule the day. This week, that very august publication released their list of the 35 most polite cities in the world, and although admittedly unscientific, the results were rather surprising to some, and downright upsetting to others. Reader’s Digest sent out a team of reporters to a host of different cities, and performed a number of “experiments” (such as seeing who would hold a door open and such), throughout different parts of the city. After they were finished with their work, they determined that New York, once thought of as a rough-and-tumble, take no prisoners urban jungle, now in fact contains urbanity’s most genteel citizens. Other cities were not so fortunate, and a few residents of Mumbai were upset to learn that their city ranked last in the rankings. The first link leads to a feature from this Wednesday’s Forbes about the results of this recent survey of politeness across the world’s great metropoles. The second link will take users to a piece from Anthony M. DeStefano of Newsday that includes commentary on the poll’s results from such notable New Yorkers as Mayor Michael Bloomberg. The third link leads to a news piece from the BBC that contains reactions from residents of Mumbai upon learning about the polls’ results. The fourth link leads to the actual report created by a team of experts at Reader’s Digest. For those who may need a brush up on their Emily Post, the fifth link leads to…well, the 1922 version of Emily Post’s famed etiquette guide. With chapters titled “Salutations of Courtesy”, “The Debutante”, and “Cards and Visits”, even the most uncouth cad can be transformed. For those souls seeking a bit of nostalgia, the sixth link may be a welcome trip down memory lane. Drawn from the Moving Image collection at archive.org, this educational film created in 1953 provides some very basic and fundamental information on how to enter the often-awkward world of teenage dating. With Studs Terkel taking a turn as a kindly, yet forceful, swimming coach, he delivers dialogue that compares asking a young lady out to taking the first dive off the high board. Certainly such sensible advice will steer teenagers in the right direction.