On this last Sunday's "View From Your Window Contest" Andrew Sullivian posted the picture at left.
I looked at this and showed it to my wife, and we both became convinced that it was taken from the Capitol building in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The parking lot is extraordinarily similar, as is the park with the statue in the middle of it. In Baton Rouge that would be a statue of Huey Long. And the buildings are weridly similar too. The one on the left would be the Catholic Presbyterian apartments and the one on the far right one of the new state offices downtown.
So I entered the contest, giving Sullivan all sorts of information about Louisiana's storied history, including a video of Long singing "Every Man a King." Sullivan published my interesting letter today HERE (scroll down to the sixth letter posted under, "A professor writes") including all this Long minutiae about the statue and the capitol building and LSU and a video of the song and even my jab about how Bobby Jindal has continued the worst of the Long legacy with none of the benefits.
Man, how could I confuse Mongolia with Louisiana? Aren't the mountains in the background enough of a giveaway? Other viewers positied: Californian city between San Jose and San Fransisco, Salt Lake City, Luanda, Windoek, Kazakhstan, Erbil, Almaty, and some city in Israel. I think all those places have mountains though, unlike Baton Rouge. I feel bad that I made professors look foolish. Please go to the link and read my letter. It's comicly embarassing, though the video of Long is kind of moving at least. Randy Newman actually does a good cover of that song.
In any case, I am really interested in how Baton Rouge could be so visually similar to Ulaan Baatar. It's not like it's our sister city or anything.
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