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Fictional Town "Eureka" To Become Real?
Zarath writes "The fictional town of Eureka (from the TV series by the same name) is going to potentially become a real life town as the University of Queensland, in Australia, plans to build a multibillion-dollar 'brain city' dedicated to science and research. The city, hoping to hold at least 10,000 people, is looking to attract 4,500 of the brightest scientists from around the world to live and work there. The city is planned to be built west of the city of Brisbane, in Queensland. While not funded by the Department of Defense (like the [city of the] TV series), the potential for such a community is very interesting and exciting."
I thought nerds preferred the cold dark of their parents basements or garages, to any kind of socialization? This will be an awkward experiment in itself. I'll bet you that only pseudo-nerds get in and they spend all the grant money on Warcraft gold, and sheep pr0n.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Sounds a bit like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akademgorodok except actually open and international. (also not in Siberia)
Don't forget Huntsville, AL (Cummings Research Park), and it's second in size compared to Triangle Research Park in North Carolina.
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To be fair, while Silicon Valley wasn't exactly a planned community, its history isn't all flowers and anarcho-capitalist free enterprise.
NASA Ames Research Center, Various California State universities, and gigantic piles of federal research money are deeply involved there. Silicon Valley is interesting in that there is a lot of entrepreneurial activity with largely civilian application that exists as well(unlike, say, Los Alamos, which is pretty much military R&D); but it is an OMG triumph of Free Enterprise! in a way not so different than the internet is(n't).
Yeah, you couldn't just artifically make a city in the middle of nowhere and have it grow
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
I thought, we call it "Silicon Valley" — and it didn't need government sponsorship to come into being...
Hmm, I think you're forgetting that if you trace back further Silicon Valley has connections with the Space and Military programs - here and here. I think I'd conclude that there's a complex set of influences favoring the creation of Silicon Valley.
But, hey, don't let me get in the way of a good "private industry is inherently more efficient" fantasy...
We already tried it, New Harmony, IN.
They tried it twice. Once a group of 'doers' and no thinkers and again with a group of 'thinkers' and no doers. Both failed.
Back in the 1980's, the BBC produced a Horizon documentary, which covered the growth of Silicon Valley. The first company was Fairchild Semiconductor, which then formed many offshoot companies, and that tradition continued until there were hundreds of companies. In many cases, research funding was provided to the universities to solve various problems, which then allowed the students and staff to set up their own companies once the project was finished.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
From the nuclear weapons perspective, the knowledge is distributed, but only slightly; a great deal of the infrastructure for the production and maintenance of nuclear weapons lies in a few towns with DOE-funded national laboratories. There isn't a single point of failure exactly, but a great deal of arcane and classified knowledge rests in each spot on specific subjects, such as the design knowledge in Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore. A great deal of the needed nuclear materials are in just a few spots too, such as Oak Ridge (Y-12 describes itself as the "'Fort Knox' for highly enriched uranium"). Obviously, each of these spots have intense security, but if a few of these spots were really hit hard, the US's nuclear program would be crippled for a long period.
Autism rates are up all over North America. Lots of research points to the ridiculous amount of cocktail vaccines that are now given to children. The drugs are approved in isolation but handed out mixed together and no one knows what happens when you combine them.
Research points to no such thing. Anecdotes point to that. And unfortunately, since autism symptoms appear right around the same time that the vaccines are administered, you get a lovely case of post hoc, ergo propter hoc. Spreading out the vaccines is more likely to reduce the correlation by delaying the vaccines past the point where symptoms occur, and creating periods in a child's life where they are vulnerable to diseases that deafen, deform or kill them.
The far more likely hypothesis is better screening (and in some cases, false diagnoses) increasing the observed rate. In many cases, one or both parents have a familial history of autistic symptoms, but the lack of a described and well known disorder during their childhood meant they were never diagnosed. The increased incidence in Silicon Valley is likely linked to this; tech geeks tend to fall on the autistic end of the spectrum, so a whole community of tech geeks marrying tends to increase the odds of autistic children.
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>>> None of those companies would have gotten anywhere without... government contracts.
But remember - most of our inventions go back to Edison Labs. He didn't receive government funds, but instead did it partly for his own enjoyment & partly to earn profit off his creations. Same applies to the other inventors of the day like Tesla or Bell. All of today's inventions ultimately trace back to a period (1800s) when Washington D.C. was little more than swampland & took a non-active role in business.
As for this Eureka Town in Australia, I kinda suspect it won't go anywhere.
I'd prefer to take part in this project: http://www.freestateproject.org/ (New Hampshire)
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
and creating periods in a child's life where they are vulnerable to diseases that deafen, deform or kill them.
This is pure fear mongering nonsense. The MMR vaccine is for diseases that doesn't do any of the above. Measels cause no real effects unless your child is immunocompromized, and has been eliminated in North America since 2002. Mumps causes no long term issues and rubella (german measles) also causes no issues. This is of course for children - there are more side effects if an adult gets these.
This is more about the multi-billion dollar business of dealing prescription drugs than about prevention of any serious illness. And if you do choose to vaccinate, why not just give them one at a time instead of in a drug cocktail? It's not because your child will suddenly die if they dont get immediately immunized as you suggest.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
The first tenant at the famed Stanford Research Park was Varian, and the government was at the time Varian's only customer. Many of the other spin-offs were organized around government-funded research labs, many also at/near Stanford, the most famous of which was probably Engelbart's lab (which invented the mouse).
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Or an example a little closer to the proposed location.