For those of you still hanging your heads in shame over Michael Moore’s outing of Slovenia’s rank among the world’s healthcare systems, here’s some good, or at least better, news. From Reader’s Digest of all places.

The magazine, hardly a member of the far-left ‘Blame America’ liberal media conspiracy, commissioned UCLA economist Matthew E. Kahn to produce a study to rank the world’s greenest, most livable places. The top four –Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden– are regular fixtures in various quality of life surveys, but you don’t have to look too far to find Slovenia, sitting coyly in spot No. 15, between neighbor Italy and France. (Apparently Kahn has never taken a walk in the Ljubljana woods.)

The USA was a lowly 23rd, just behind Latvia (Wow! I bet Michael Moore would have fun with that!), but ahead of Lithuania (24th), the UK (25th), Croatia (28th), Albania (31st) and Costa Rica (34th).

A summary of the study and methodolgy is here, the country ranking (141 deep) is here, and a city/metro area listing (72 in all) is here. At the top of the city list? Stockholm. Been there, lovely place. At the bottom? Beijing. Hmm. Can’t wait for my trip to the Olympics next summer.

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Pregarje, originally uploaded by pirano.