In the future all journalism will consist solely of lists. No sentences. No paragraphs. Just the logical culmination of the insight David Wallechinsky and Amy Wallace (The Book of Lists) had in the 1970s: People love lists. They love rankings. They love fake quantification. Forbes is well along this path (Forbes 400 richest people) also pioneered by U.S. News and Fortune.

So Forbes can now tell us that Columbia is No. 7 (not No. 6!) on the list of America's Top 25 Towns to Live Well (in) for entrepreneurs. The magazine

... evaluated areas of the country with less than 100,000 people. Due to differing regional definitions, we used the label "town" for any city, township, borough or Census-designated place with such populations. Characteristics like the number of museums, parks, bars and restaurants, and cultural institutions per capita were considered, as were factors indicative of a favorable business environment. These include patents, venture capital funding, sole-proprietorships, start-ups and small businesses per capita.

No. 1 was Boulder. Also making it are Silver Spring, Potomac, Germantown and Rockville. Guess the tax-hating Forbes temporarily forgot about Maryland's relatively high personal income taxes, which hit entrepreneurs especially hard since their companies are often S-corps. S-corps pass tax liablity straight to individual shareholders rather than having profits taxed as retained earnings at the lower, corporate rate.