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It has been well documented. "The Exploding Metropolis" by the editors of Fortune magazine goes beyond a "ludicrously long article" and is an entire book dedicated to the whole subject (there are probably online versons which can be previewed or downloaded):

http://www.ucpress.edu/book.ph...

The unfortunate thing was that whenever incredible amounts of money were spent on providing decent high-rise accommodation for the poor (just as much white as black), the residents would take it upon themselves to crowd in as many relatives as possible into one apartment, use wide hallways as playrooms and storage space and yet others would get bored and decide to go elevator surfing and end up breaking those systems. Some even decided to play games by jumping down the waste disposal chutes in the middle of the night. In the UK and USA, we've ended up having to spectacularly demolish such buildings because of these problems.

The physical energy cost of transporting building materials like concrete upwards means that only the wealthy can afford to live in condominium blocks.

"I'm not surprised at all that the Three Mile Island breakdown was ultimately caused by government"

Not at all, it would have been prevented by designing a signal light that showed the actual state of the PORV instead of the presence or absence of current, and not hiding the pressure indicator behind the seven-foot-high instrument panels. And given what I know about how software is designed, a nuclear power plant is the last place you would want one it. From warships going dead-in-the-water, 'Internet' viruses causing blackouts and patients being fried in radiation therapy machines, I rest my case. Small embedded systems with multiple backups and known failure modes is the safest.

According to reports the accident was caused because; while the PORV was still open the signal light available to the operator showed it to be closed, as it only showed the presence or absence of current, not that the valve was actually closed. Therefore it was a non-computer display failure, the 'SEVEN HUNDRED things wrong' occurred as a consequences of operator action not the cause of it.

"The operators might have determined that the valve was open by looking at a pressure indicator for the reactor-coolant drain tank .. But that signal was situated behind the seven-foot-high instrument panels .. and did not do so as they attempted to cope with the flurry of confusing signals they were already"

This, of course, is why we need to keep the poor in their place. If they're living on subsistence, they won't patronize prostitutes.

Brilliant!

** ** **
Prostitution *nearly always* occurs in settings where large inequalities of wealth exist, in cultures where women have few opportunities. The solution here is not to eliminate jobs and lower the standard of living, but rather improve education and investment to raise the standard of living. The problem isn't that some men have too much money; the problem is that some women don't have enough.

For more information read "Pathologies of Power" by Paul Farmer.

If we are so hardwired for calculus why is it that so many ancient Greek mathematicians actually used geometry to solve their hardest problems (See Alexander to Actium) and never really reached a firm understanding of calculus? Much of the work that could have been done easier with calculus was done with painful geometric representations.

Wikipedia says that Archimedes came close, but other (more informed) sources say that he wasn't close and used geometry as everyone else did.

I read a classic example of this in Ishi in Two Worlds, which is a biography of the last Yahi Indian. When this guy first emerged from the wild in 1911, he gave investigators the usual "one, two, many" brushoff. But later, when Ishi was working as a janitor/informant at a museum in San Francisco, they discovered that he had no trouble counting the money he was paid -- in his native language! The difference was that Ishi cared about his money, but not about abstract linguistics.

If you have the chance, look for a book called "The Exploding Metropolis" by William H. Whyte. It was written back in the 1950's when the US cities were first starting to expand, and suburbia hadn't yet formed.

Actually, the South of England is getting to feel rather crowded just now. With the "White Flight" taking place from London, David Blunkett seems to think that the UK can easily absorb 100,000 immigrants/year from third world countries. Meanwhile, none of the Scottish natives can afford a house/apartment in Scotland because of all the retired English refugees fleeing the Home counties.

If you do some research on the many of the other European countries, you will see that there is rural depopulation as all the young single people move into the cities - this is across Europe. Many of them are actually moving into London to escape the high taxation in their own countries; Sweden has a "luxury view tax" which is charged on houses with beautiful scenic view. It was meant to be targeted at luxury homes, but has hit fishermen who owned traditional houses beside lakes. Half the population of Greece now lives in Athens (4.5 million people).

There's a book well-known in the humanities, Visual Thinking by Rudolph Arnheim, arguing that thinking is essentially visual. But most of the people working in cognitive science don't believe this, but instead that thinking is essentially linguistic (even if it's in something different from our public languages, such as Jerry Fodor's Language of Thought - where the most he'll give to visualization is that it can be an "image over a description").

Or perhaps visual and linguistic intelligence both exist in their own right, but some cultures do better at one or the other? If so, we're still a culture built on "In the beginning was the Word." We think we're so visual because of movies and whatever, but compared to the visual immersion of a traditional tribal, forest culture in its heyday we're nowhere with vision. So what does it do if we get a bunch of executives "visualizing"? Does it really make them smarter than if they work out their decisions logically, in language, in the traditional way of our culture? Or is it just a new way of dressing up the yes-men?

Even to the extent that we can importantly visualize, what gives you the clearer, more vital vision, a well crafted book - just words - or a comic? Because, let's face it, what software provides is at best like a cheap comic. And if financial markets are the measure of how bright visualization tools make us ... enough said.

The University of California's edition is fairly recent -- I'd imagine there wasn't much in the 1970s that could shock Californians. I'm guessing this edition is more complete, and I'm asking my public library for a copy of it. Here's hoping it's got fewer ellipses (and more eccentricity).

You know something? I am sick and tired of people claiming that they actually know something about masses of people in other countries. You don't. You don't have the slightest idea how many Americans can locate Iraq on a map. You don't have the slightest idea how many residents of Airstrip One know that Iraq, err, Oceania hasn't always been our enemy, nor do you have the slightest idea how many residents of the United States are polyglots. You know what? Neither do I. People hear a statistic about how many people in this population are ignorant of a fact the poll-taker believes everyone should know, and from this people draw absurd conclusions about the overall ignorance of an entire population!

The irresponsible parroting of statistics is a far more pervasive and detrimental social phenomenon than American ignorance or arrogance.

American's look ignorant overseas because of a simple phenomenon that is certainly not confined to the USA: Ignorant people are loudmouths. Ignorant people believe their prejudices are facts, and they give voice to every damnfool idea that comes into their heads because they do not know that they do not know anything

It would be best if you took a good look at your own attitudes and inflammatory statements before you accuse Americans as a class, as if there were a monolithic "American" opinion or personality.

I'm not proud of of my country's present administration. My overall impression is that George W. Bush may be one of the least intelligent people to hold the Presidency in many years. I understand that the world is nervous about a "cowboy" President backed by an angry population, and so am I. But remember that while this man appears popular in our polls, this is more a result of our collective outrage than an endorsement of the policies of this administration. Remember he was barely elected, and some still dispute that he was elected. In two years there will be another election, and even if he wins, in four more years he will be out.

Will we start another war? Personally, I doubt it. But let me ask you this: Would there be UN inspectors in Iraq right now if the threat had not been built to a very real level? Diplomacy sometimes has a gunboat component. So even here, while I do not personally know what our government intends, an intelligent person may draw a very different conclusion from the facts than you appear to do.

Ignorance and arrogance are clearly not confined to the United States. The fact that America weilds vast military power does, I grant you, make American ignorance and arrogance of greater import. But even here, consider that North Korea is flexing its nuclear muscles again because Pyongyang (Wow! He knows a foreign capital!) has made the reasonable calculation that we cannot build up the interational tolerance nor perhaps the military capability for two engagements a continent apart. Perhaps America is under greater constraints than you realize.

So this jejune attitude of superiority requires some additional reflection, perhaps, on both sides of the ocean.

Please read Terror in the Mind of God.

Particularily the section where a member of the Hamas went looking to blow some people up, found someone not really caught up in the cause (his cousin), and the deed was done inside three days.

I'm sure we'll be seeing biometrics to keep the known (natural selection will get a few stupid ones) baddies off the planes, but I fail to see how it would stop the terrorists from recruiting new talent as required...

We need to regulate the following items from getting on a plane, as they clearly can be used to hijack a plane:

1. Box of kleenex
2. Scotch tape
3. Brown wrapping paper
4. LED Panel with big red numbers
5. (optional) Garage door opener with big red button
6. Human to assemble "bomb" and wave it around in threatening fashion once plane airborne

Regulating above does nothing to solve the root of the problem.

Read Terror in the Mind of God by Mark Juergensmeyer. Especially chapter 6, which covers the Aum Shinrikyo machinations in the Tokyo subway involving nerve gas. They're an offshoot of Japanese Buddhism.

There's a bit in the text on some Hindi militants, too. (Though I've seen some folks argue that Hinduism isn't pantheistic, but rather multifarious ways of approaching the same thingy...)

Perhaps the monotheistic violence takes center stage due to the prevalence of monotheism in the world?