This is largely due to the availability of talent, state government initiatives, local investor confidence and infrastructure support.
Michael Cedeno, supervising animator for King Nedakh, was astounded at Nimoy's voice talent, stating that he had "so much rich character" in his performance.
On 5 April 1890, the Football League's founder, William McGregor, labelled Sunderland as "the team of all talents" stating that they had "a talented man in every position".
Out on the accidental frontiers of human possibility, the best athletes are produced by a perfect storm of circumstance: rare natural talents; state-of-the-art training; and a deep wash in the murk of psychology, where, perhaps most mysterious of all, ferocious ambition, discipline and capacity for self-sacrifice reside.
But you'll still wonder how they managed to coerce or cajole so much talent into "State by State" (Ecco, $30).
"You've got an economic development problem in Kansas," he says, "so you have these vestiges of talent in states that have no jobs for college graduates".
Despite the link between workforce talent and state economic capacity-building, public higher education has been deprioritized as a state investment priority.
"Our future in West Virginia is to keep our talent in state," he said.
The combination of talent, dedication, state intervention and some dubious training regimes often left Western competitors on the starting blocks.
To have any chance at all of attracting fresh talent, the state education commissioner, Richard Mills, and the schools chancellor, Harold Levy, need to lower the volume and come together around common-sense solutions to this problem.
