It's official: Madison is the smartest city in the United States. Now those of us living here must decide whether that's a good thing.

A new study by Bizjournals, the online media division of American City Business Journals, ranking the brainpower level of the nation's 100 largest metropolitan areas, listed Madison first, followed in order by Washington, D.C.; San Jose, Calif.; Bridgeport-Stanford, Conn.; and Boston.

The study, released Monday and authored by G. Scott Thomas, demographics editor of Bizjournals, relied on U.S. Census Bureau data.

"The study's objective," Thomas wrote, "was to identify those metros that have the highest levels of collective brainpower."

The study developed a "brainpower index" based on the percentage of a city's population that fits into any of six rungs on an educational ladder, from graduate degree holder to high school dropout.

When I spoke with Thomas Tuesday, he noted that while Washington has a slightly higher percentage than Madison of graduate degrees (22.2 to 17), Madison's high school dropout percentage -- adult residents who dropped out of high school -- is "incredibly low." At 4.3 percent, it is the lowest by far in the survey.

Madison ranks first with a "brainpower index" of 57.80. Milwaukee is 37th with an index of 46.85.

No doubt an announcement will soon be up on the Greater Madison Convention and Visitors Bureau's Web site, trumpeting us as the nation's smartest city. It will join a long list of accolades that over the years have touted Madison as the best city in the country to ride a bike, canoe, walk, be a woman and more. Money magazine once famously called Madison the best place to live, period.

But before we break our arms patting ourselves on the back, it's worth remembering that a number of these surveys are pretty arbitrary and some are ridiculous.

I recall Men's Health magazine, in November 2003, putting Madison first in a survey of 101 cities that were ranked "by how well they keep the male citizenry safe, sane, and well stocked with six-pack abs."

The article began: "You can go an entire day without seeing fat people in Madison."

This ludicrous assertion was followed by an article that made it seem men in Madison do nothing but eat protein shakes and ride bicycles, except when they are shopping for spandex.

The article noted: "The city is indeed a stronghold against Wisconsin's bratwurst/cheesehead reputation, as well as an example for the rest of our overweight nation."

I was so humiliated reading this that I went immediately to the Plaza and ate two cheeseburgers with double Plaza sauce.

When the article came out, I heard from friends around the country wondering if all Madison men were going GQ. My response was along the lines of what country singer Waylon Jennings said when asked if he was going pop. "I couldn't go pop," Waylon replied, "with a mouthful of firecrackers."

Now, with this latest ranking, Madison will be held up as an island of intelligence, and a beacon of brainpower.

I guess it's a good thing, but, for some reason, the image I keep fixing on is of the guy who drove across the country in a Buick with Albert Einstein's brain in the trunk.

Extreme intelligence can be intimidating, if not outright weird. Inevitably, there will be questions: "If you're so smart, why do you have five official city songs?"

It's interesting to note that this year is the 60th anniversary of the first, and still perhaps the most prominent, recognition of Madison as the greatest place in the universe, or at least the country.

The Sept. 6, 1948, issue of Life magazine had a cover story extolling "the good life" in Madison. This was when Life was likely the most popular media outlet in the world. The esteemed photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt spent several weeks in Madison the previous June and nine pages of photos appeared in the issue.

The cover photo showed a smiling young woman holding up her infant son. The woman was Jeanne Parr Noth, a Madison native, and the photo was taken in the back yard of her parents' home on Wanda Place. Under the name Jeanne Parr, she later was a pioneer among women broadcasters, working for CBS News. One of her sons -- not the one on the Life cover -- became a well-known actor, Christopher Noth, who starred in "Sex and the City" and "Law and Order."

A couple of years ago, I tried to track down Jeanne Parr and found her happily retired and splitting time between Maui and Lake Placid -- a nice life. Her memories of Madison are fond but she said something, speaking of the Life article, that indicates we would do well to take all such accolades with a grain of salt.

"The article said I wouldn't live anyplace but Madison," she said. "When the magazine came out, we were already on the East Coast."