Do your best now, or we’ll send you to Fargo!

The greatest incentive for employees doesn’t work in the worst of economic times. Promised an all-expenses-paid trip to Hawaii if Just Born, maker of Hot Tamales candy, achieved its annual goals, 20 employees instead found themselves this week in 7-degree Fargo, N.D., covered with 2 feet of snow.

"Fargo is not what you would think is one of the greatest locales in the United States, and technically we didn’t make our year," said Dave Bayha, a manager at Just Born, a Bethlehem, Pa.-based company. "It was somewhat of a punishment."

Hawaii returns as a possible reward next year, with Rapid City, S.D., as the alternative.

Brainiacs in paradise

Hawaii is the 50th state, in more ways than one. More precisely, it’s Honolulu, where 31 percent of residents have a bachelor’s degree or better, placing it No. 50 out of 200 cities. The ranking comes from the 2010 Survey of Smartest Places, published by the business magazine-turned-website Portfolio.com.

Portfolio based its roster of brainy cities on a scoring matrix that gave higher points for higher educational attainment by the population. College towns, not surprisingly, did better.

Top of the heap: Boulder, Colo. Least brainy: Merced, Calif. (That can’t reflect too well on the University of California’s Merced campus, can it?) Download the whole list at portfolio.com/graphics/ BrainiestBastions.pdf.