"One of the most common discussion points we see around Detroit is comparing it to other cities. Although we believe Detroit stands on its own, it’s natural to try to relate our situation with others.

However, many comparisons are drawn to cities like San Francisco, New York, and Boston – and then we got to thinking."

"This would seem to argue that some old patterns endure, and that’s true. But think of the twists suggested by this new premium on human basics. Suppose you decided that you could get all the face-to-face you needed two days a week. Would that influence where you lived? Would the mountains or the shore start looking good to you? Suppose you decided that you could get all the face-to-face you needed three days a month. Would the Caribbean start looking good to you?"

"At FloatingSheep, we're willing to search for and analyze almost anything that falls within the realm of human experience. Sometimes this is mundane (pizza) and sometimes it is contentious (abortion) but most of the time it falls somewhere in between. Such as, where can I get a drink?"

"Stretching from New York to Minnesota, this belt's defining feature is how near most people are to their friends, implying they don't move far. In most cases outside the largest cities, the most common connections are with immediately neighboring cities, and even New York only has one really long-range link in its top 10. Apart from Los Angeles, all of its strong ties are comparatively local."

'I asked her whether the city government would support large-scale urban agriculture. “City government is irrelevant,” she answered. “Positive change, leaps forward in the evolution of humankind do not start with governments. They start right here in our living rooms and kitchens. We are the leaders we are looking for.”'

"I've seen "feral" used to describe dogs, cats, even goats. But I have wondered if it couldn't also be used to describe certain houses in Detroit. Abandoned houses are really no big deal here. Some estimate that there are as many as 10,000 abandoned structures at any given time, and that seems conservative. But for a few beautiful months during the summer, some of these houses become "feral" in every sense: they disappear behind ivy or the untended shrubs and trees planted generations ago to decorate their yards. The wood that framed the rooms gets crushed by trees rooted still in the earth. The burnt lime, sand, gravel, and plaster slowly erode into dust, encouraged by ivy spreading tentacles in its endless search for more sunlight."

"If Facebook were being used to talk anonymously to a bunch of strangers, as with the early AOL chatrooms, then the adoption of this technology wouldn't show such a strong geographical pattern -- who cares if no one else in your state uses a chatroom, as long as there are enough people in total? This shows how firmly grounded in people's real lives their use of Facebook is; otherwise it would not spread in a more or less person-to-person fashion from its founding location."

"This map, quite simply put, distorts the size of countries proportionate to the ‘distance’ of their writing systems to ASCII code. Countries with a lot of ‘exotic’ characters are biggest, while countries adhering closely to the ‘regular’ western (i.c. English, i.e. Latin) alphabet, are normal-sized. The legend on the left of the map shows some of the diacritical signs and special letters ‘added’ to the ASCII (English) alphabet in other European languages. Each diacritical sign and special letter has a story to tell. Here are just a few of those:..."

[Insert triumphalist Collaborationist pronouncement that I will someday be forced to make sheepish fun of here]

This is more cool than I expected anything to be in 2008.

"Trace a line from where US special forces battle Taliban fighters in the corner of empty desert where the Afghan, Pakistani and Iranian frontiers meet, follow it through the badlands of the Pakistani North West Frontier and on through the bomb-blasted cities of northern Pakistan and down through Delhi, attacked in September, to shell-shocked Mumbai, and one thing becomes clear: this zone has displaced the Middle East as the new central front in the struggle against Islamic militancy. The southern Punjab falls on the line's centre point. There may be doubt over the identity of the attackers, but there is none that Multan and Bahawalpur and villages such as Faridkot are in the Indians' sights."

Somebody was asking about this in a conversation. Ed?

"The people you find in Cambridge are not there by accident. You have to make sacrifices to live there."

You mean all my old Traveller maps are wrong now?

Not what I was expecting to see when I was Googling the Ruby meeting tonight....

Rediscovered for Ron Jeffries, who is driving to Omaha today.