Magnasanti: The Pefect City According to Sim City

I am a fan of Sim City and think it can be a good introduction to city planning.  However, as good as a game it is, it is still a simulation made by people subject to mathematical code.  Case in point: someone has made the "perfect" Sim City, Magnasanti, where no one leaves, there is no pollution, no abandoned buildings, no roads as there are subways everywhere and everyone's work is in walking distance.

"The Perfect City"

Sounds perfect right?  It is perfect if one likes the styles of North Korean urban planning!  Police are everywhere, there is no one moving in or out of the city, and all this has held for a simulated 50,000 years!

The Consumerist has a good short article on the perfect Sim City while Viceland Games an interview with the city's creator.

Map World: China's Response to Google Maps

First France made their own version of Google Maps and then India followed up with their own.  Now, the People's Republic of China (PRC) has made Map World as their rebuttal to Google.  This Google-rival is probably more neogeography-friendly than the others were at their launch with built in support for tools like feature creators, rulers, map pins, etc.

The resolution for the PRC is very good in most cases.  Foreign lands including the those held by the Republic of China (Taiwan) are not as detailed, however.  Oogle Earth has encountered some problems with the 3D support.  User beware: the website is in simplified Chinese characters and it is hosted by the PRC government.

I went map hopping to see if I could find any interesting nationalism built in the program.  At first it was standard: Taiwan shown as a province, Indian-claimed lands shown as Chinese, etc.  But then I looked at Israel (which is a major military partner of the PRC).  The map shows the 1947 UN partition proposal as the borders!  Yes, the PRC does recognize the "State of Palestine" as declared in the late 1980s but no one in decades has argued for the 1947 proposed borders rejected by the Arab states to be the borders for Israel and Palestine.  The last time I saw the 1947 proposed borders for the State of Israel was in a 1970s Soviet atlas.  This is a weirdness I cannot explain.

Is this official PRC policy?  I do not think so...

The Ugly American in The Onion

Note:  I will not embed the video on the blog because it has sophomore-level humor of crude jokes.  Viewer be warned.

 The Onion, the joke newspaper, has an online video discussing the Ugly American.  In "Has Obama Failed To Reduce Hostility Toward Obnoxious Americans Abroad?" pundits debate why American tourists are still viewed negatively around the world.

Behind the joke is the true phenomenon of the Ugly American.  Besides brief experimentation by Nazi Germany, the United States was the first country where the "less cultured and mannered" middle and working classes could afford to travel aboard.  It was therefore Americans who broke the "learned, polite traveler" stereotype.

Nowadays the Ugly Tourist is international.  In Guanajuato, Mexico, for instance, I met an army of "Ugly Germans."  Meanwhile, "Ugly Saudis" are well known in Bahrain and Monaco.

School Raitings for 4th and 8th Grade Math and Reading Scores

This weekend I saw Waiting for Superman and was depressed by it.  The effect cultural decline and failing schools have had on the United States is sad.  What it especially sad for many families is their inability to compare their schools with others and hopefully find a way out, either public or private, for their children.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have teamed up with others to create the Education Nation Scorecard for Schools website.  The website allows one to search for schools across the United States and compare the searched school with other schools, both public and private.  Data is given for the school, other schools in the state, and the United States versus other developed countries.  Reading and math scores for fourth and eighth grade are given as well as graduation rates.

Only 14% of DC eighth graders read at an eighth grade level.  But then again "high preforming" states like Massachusetts are under 50% reading at their grade level.

The results are saddening. The nation's capital, Washington D.C., is a blight on the country.  Only 14% of all eighth graders read at an eighth grade level and only 56% of Washingtonian kids will graduate high school (Nevada is worse with 51% graduating).  Then again, even "high scoring" states are under 50%.

This tool is useful for those looking to move to a new town.  Use this website to scope out the neighborhoods you are interested in moving to and see if your child(ren) will be going to a truly high preforming school.

Sacred Spaces and God In America's Self-Guided Tours

Traditional Christianity's outlook on the cosmos' physical form is quite bleak.  Man's direct relationship with God died with the rest of the world bound to die.  Everything in the world was filled with sin and corruption.  The much difficult to reach Heaven meanwhile remained perfect.  Heaven and Earth would be reunited with both being perfected only at the end of the end of the world.

Traditional understanding held sacred spaces were the only thing that can temporally/partially reunite Heaven and Earth.  These man-made sites were holy of holies where God could be present and sin could be taken away.  Non-Christian sites were similar despite the lack of the Fall and uniquess of redemption geography theology.  For example, mosques brought Muslim communities to God's messages, Celtic forests were the places where the spirits lived, and the Aztec believed the ruins in Mesoamerica were the cities of forgotten God's who needed to be appeased.

Today people go to sacred places for many reasons.  Some go for the traditional reason why others seek another spiritual experience, research the cultural meaning these sites have, or just wish to look at the pretty architecture.

The God In America website has self-guided sacred spaces tours for eight American cities.  Atlana, Boston, Chicago, New Orleans, New York, Portland, Santa Fe, and San Francisco all of tour pages.  The tours have good information on interesting sites in these cities.  I only wish other cities that have a plethora of sacred sites like Washington D.C. had guides.

Bedbug National Registry and City Maps

The Bed Bug Registry is setting itself up as the one stop shop for bedbug spatial information.  Not only is there a national level map which allows one to zoom to any area of the United States and Canada for information but there is also a city page for easy reference.  Current city pages are New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Toronto, and Vancouver.  Finally, there is a hotel page which allows one to see how hotel chains rank with number of bed bug reports.

God In America

American Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and the television program Frontline have released an six-episode mini-series about religion in America's social and political history.  All six episodes can be watched online from God In America's website.

The show does a good job showing how English Puritan Protestantism greatly impacted America.  The Puritans focused on the Old Testament, unique among Christians at the time, and saw themselves as the remnant of the true faith leaving Egypt (England) for the promised land (America).  Seeing America as a blank slate and a "city upon the hill" infused the United States with the belief that religion is critical for the country and America is God's country.

That belief has greatly impacted the country:  Dissenter religions like Methodism which could claim direct contact with God flourished, Americanist religions like Mormonism were born, Manifest Destiny gave the country a conquering spirit over the American Indian nations, and politics and religion have been closely intertwined in issues ranging from education to civil rights to geopolitics.

God In America is long but it is an intimate, person-driven account of how religion has impacted the United States.