A Tangent

Okay, so I was reading bradhicks, and read his Kirkwood story. It's interesting stuff, of course, but what really caught my attention was not the fascinating historical and political analysis, but this introductory factual claim:

Ever play Sim City 2000 or any of its sequels? Then you may have run into a game rule that must have seemed frustrating and arbitrary to you ... but it turns out that it isn't. As documented by Joel Garreau in his far under-rated, absolutely essential 1991 book Edge City: Life on the New Frontier, this particular rule is something that was discovered empirically, when inexpensive computerized spreadsheets first started changing urban planning from its roots in art, architecture, and the humanities into what it is today: namely a science, a branch of economics. Cities all over the country were computerizing their budgets and their expenditures, and making some of this data available to the public. This gave commercial real estate developers, and politicians, and university professors a universe of raw data from which to make statistical correlations. And one of the first and still most important discoveries they made was this: residential costs money, commercial makes money, industrial breaks even.

Having played and failed at Sim City 2000, all I can say is: son of a bleep!

Online Residuals

I would take a moment here to congratulate the Hollywood writers on a successful strike. Their cause was worthy, and I applaud the studios for acceding to the bulk of their demands.

That is all. Thank you.

(My opinions of the remaining Presidential candidates are still incomplete - sorry, roaminrob...)