I have always been a fan of Paul Graham's essays on entrepreneurship. His recent essay entitled "How to be Silicon Valley" is a sobering paper that starts off with an interesting question: "Could you reproduce Silicon Valley elsewhere, or it there something unique about it?" He concluded the main reason Silicon Valley is what it is today is due to a sustained partnership between rich people and nerds. He also mentioned that many of today's highly successful companies in Silicon Valley were derived directly or indirectly from one stellar technological breakthrough in the 1950's - William Shockley's invention of the transistor. But the essay isn't written solely about Silicon Valley, it also highlights some of Paul's opinions on why Boston attracts a certain type of people (namely nerds). Having lived in Boston for the past 10 years, I certainly subscribe to Graham's theses about Boston and the people the city attracts.