One Rincon Hill

"The ring of fire is being especially active" It's not being any more active than it ever has been. There are many facts in the form of reports on yearly earthquakes, what's your proof though?

The drifting of the poles actually has nothing to do with the magnetic poles whatsoever. The theory of polar drift was debunked by the fact that it was the ground that was moving because of tectonic activity, not the poles themselves.

Why do we need to explain everything? This is not a new occurrence, but people don't even care to see if it has even happened before and instead just fear monger over something that they know nothing about. (AP) WASHINGTON (AP) - First, the blackbirds fell out of the sky on New Year's Eve in Arkansas. In recent days, wildlife have mysteriously died in big numbers: 2 million fish in the Chesapeake Bay, 150 tons of red tilapia in Vietnam, 40,000 crabs in Britain and other places across the world. Blogs connected the deadly dots, joking about the "aflockalypse" while others saw real signs of something sinister, either biblical or environmental. The reality, say biologists, is that these mass die-offs happen all the time and usually are unrelated. Federal records show they happen on average every other day somewhere in North America. Usually, we don't notice them and don't try to link them to each other. "They generally fly under the radar," said ornithologist John Wiens, chief scientist at the California research institution PRBO Conservation Science. Since the 1970s, the U.S. Geological Survey's National Wildlife Health Center in Wisconsin has tracked mass deaths among birds, fish and other critters, said wildlife disease specialist LeAnn White. At times the sky and the streams just turn deadly. Sometimes it's disease, sometimes pollution. Other times it's just a mystery. In the past eight months, the USGS has logged 95 mass wildlife die-offs in North America and that's probably a dramatic undercount, White said. The list includes 900 some turkey vultures that seemed to drown and starve in the Florida Keys, 4,300 ducks killed by parasites in Minnesota, 1,500 salamanders done in by a virus in Idaho, 2,000 bats that died of rabies in Texas, and the still mysterious death of 2,750 sea birds in California. On average, 163 such events are reported to the federal government each year, according to USGS records. And there have been much larger die-offs than the 3,000 blackbirds in Arkansas. Twice in the summer of 1996, more than 100,000 ducks died of botulism in Canada. "Depending on the species, these things don't even get reported," White said. Weather - cold and wet weather like in Arkansas New Year's Eve when the birds fell out of the sky - is often associated with mass bird deaths, ornithologists say. Pollution, parasites and disease also cause mass deaths. Some are even blaming fireworks for the blackbird deaths. So what's happening this time? Blame technology, says famed Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson. With the Internet, cell phones and worldwide communications, people are noticing events, connecting the dots more. "This instant and global communication, it's just a human instinct to read mystery and portents of dangers and wondrous things in events that are unusual," Wilson told The Associated Press on Thursday. "Not to worry, these are not portents that the world is about to come to an end." Wilson and the others say instant communications - especially when people can whip out smart phones to take pictures of critter carcasses and then post them on the Internet - is giving a skewed view of what is happening in the environment. The irony is that mass die-offs - usually of animals with large populations - are getting the attention while a larger but slower mass extinction of thousands of species because of human activity is ignored, Wilson said. ___ AP Researcher Julie Reed Bell contributed to this report. ___ Online: USGS: http://www.nwhc.usgs.gov/mortality_events/ongoing.jsp http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/01/06/ap/tech/main7220470.shtml

Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia.

The game looks for the shortest route, not the quickest route. It's a glitch in the overall design of the game, and unless you make it impossible for Sims to get to their destinations without having to take a freeway, they aren't going to.

This city has been great to read through...I love seeing the worst parts instead of just the best. You make it work so well. Here's to a new beginning for Moraine!

Will it be on the STEX soon?

It depends on how fast your system is. The game just takes a lot longer to load with more plugins, so there's really no limit. I bet some people here have terrabytes in their plugins folder.

What do you mean? I can do a lot of damage? I think I put it on medium.

I'm having residents that somehow can never find jobs when they are plentiful in the area have their houses instantly dilapidate after building, but not only that, they don't even show the no job zot. Instead it'll just instantly put up that it was abandoned due to commute time. I think I only have the NAM installed for transportation mods, I had the no abandonment mod installed before but I recently deleted it, thought that might have been the cause of the problem. I find this very strange, along with the fact that it's making my auto ordinance mod not work very well and nothing is building either residential or commercial in a pretty big city.

Replies wwetom1 Thanks! I've turned them off for future updates. nathanthemayor Thanks! Norby(ToG) Thank you! I hate to give away a dirty little secret so early, but I actually just used the auto settings in Lightroom, and changed the levels to where they looked good, like I do with my photography. kakado_to_save Thanks for the honest input. What don't you like about them? QUICK TEASER Some new buildings are going up along the Parkside District. I have some ideas for the next update, so I'll let you decide which to do. 1) Building a public transportation system 2) The Port Of Bretton 3) Where is Bretton 4) The revitalization of downtown Thanks for visiting!

Welcome to Bretton, a city that I have recently made and love so much (while also hating it at the same time) that I would like it to live in in the Simtropolis universe in a City Journal. I think I tried a City Journal once before, but since I had not mastered the art of Photoshop, it failed miserably. This one will only fail due to my own inadequacies. Anyways, this is one city in a very unique region. An area surrounded by a large and beautiful bay, and at the same time surrounded by mountains. These mountains make for an excellent design challenge for the cities designers, some of which originally wanted the city's downtown to be built in the current day Whitney Park (which you will see later). Instead, they settled on the original founding place at the head of the Penninsula that separates the Grizzly Slough from the Bretton River. Starting up many years ago as a secondary city to neighboring Stinson, a beautiful city between two large mountains, in more recent years Bretton has tied its population. With the Intraco center being the cities first high rise building, it did not take very long for the surrounding area to be rezoned in accordance with new height restrictions to help reduce the ever extending sprawl down the Cherry Valley. This caused a giant building boom along a once single story business district. This has lead to an enormous building boom in the entire area surrounding the city, and because of this large expansion, a brand new port has been created in the Grizzly Slough, along with a new city grid outside of the Peninsula that reaches the beaches of the ocean. Now if you will give me lots of comments (even generic!), I will post my next update...which will include the new seawall of downtown, created because from a high amount of erosion along the banks of the Bretton River, along with the brand new port. But for now I will leave you off with a photo of the area around Whitney Park, and stay tuned for an explanation of the parks existence!

sf.curbed.com/archives/2008/07/09/golden_gate_bridge_barrier_renderings_revealed.php Wait I thought it was only going to be the net sticking out of the side. There's no way in hell I'm going to let them ruin the railings which were one of the main parts of the original design. Oh never mind, that article is from 2008. I think they settled on the net idea. Posts combined; please use edit button to add a thought. --Liv

sf.curbed.com/archives/2008/07/09/golden_gate_bridge_barrier_renderings_revealed.php Wait I thought it was only going to be the net sticking out of the side. There's no way in hell I'm going to let them ruin the railings which were one of the main parts of the original design. Oh never mind, that article is from 2008. I think they settled on the net idea. Posts combined; please use edit button to add a thought. --Liv