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.

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.

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

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!

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!

www.ktvu.com/news/24275527/detail.html SAN FRANCISCO -- Plans to build a suicide barrier on the Golden Gate Bridge are moving ahead. A committee of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, signed off on $5 million in federal funding on Wednesday to design the barrier. The full commission is expected to give its approval later in the month. Golden Gate Bridge officials voted overwhelmingly two years ago in favor of hanging a stainless steel net from the sides of the world-famous span in an effort to stop people from jumping to their deaths. The barrier would cost $45 million. Bridge officials are seeking federal, state and private funding for the project. Officials say designing the barrier is expected to take about 18 months. More than 1,300 people have jumped from the span since it opened in 1937. Do the do-gooders who got this passed realize that it's not going to stop people from killing themselves entirely if they build this, but they're just going to do it somewhere else? And this net could severely compromise the structural integrity of the bridge if they do build it.

Welcome to Brentwood. The city was founded in 1824 by Sir Walter Brent, who decreed the city in his own name. Since then, the entire area from Heights Bay to the Rocklin Grade has become a sprawling hub of activity. Unfortunately, due to problems with corrupt designers and city planners, the city was designed with poor planning methods, and is currently a mess in many key areas. My job will be to help fix Brentwood and make it into the shining star of a city that it was originally envisioned as. In hopes for interaction, many planning methods will be considered by those who would like to give input, and the city will begin to form as a product of everyone who contributes to it, well, most of the time. As the new city planner, of course I will have to do a few things on my own. ;-) For the first update, however, we'll get a small glimpse into what the current Brentwood looks like (it's not all bad, after all) As you can see in our first document of the city (taken from an exciting helicopter ride - a must do for anyone!) the money that was supposed to be devoted to the city's waterfront went to the old city planners pockets. Currently, downtown suffers greatly because of it's lack of waterfront and planned port. The rail lines were even built through neighboring Heights, but once they were brought to the bay front, they were left there for years. I hope to change that. There were many ferry terminals recently created in the city to make use of the bay, currently 5,000 commuters take the ferries daily between the various peninsulas. HKResidental Inc. was able to coax the old city management into allowing buildings that are far out of the current zoing height restrictions to be constructed, leading to neighborhoods that look like this. Fortunately, the rest of the one shown is planning to be rezoned into deluxe apartments due to it's lack of historical presence. The cities light rail system may be the only fully functioning transportation system. Currently there are 7 seperate lines that stretch into Heights and beyond. A downtown extension was once planned through the new waterfront of downtown, and hopefully will once again soon be a reality. Oh, and I like night pictures too. A little something that I came up with while experimenting with mosaics (I finally found the tutorial for doing the seperate image ones) is a downtown mosaic from the city hall building on the top left to the near waterfront area on the bottom of the photo. https://i837.photobucket.com/albums/zz294/onerinconhill/pano1.png With a little grease and planning, Brentwood may look like the blossoming city that it was once envisioned as. -- Notes Since I'm using a custom map, regional views won't be available until I open up enough tiles so that it doesn't look funny. I'd love to see a tutorial for creating transportation maps in programs like GIMP or Photoshop (I don't have it, but I can get a 30 day trial if needed). Not all suggestions will be taken, but they are MOST DEFINITELY welcome. Please don't get offended if I don't like what you had in mind, though. I plan to give a custom airport a try, but it's not going to be a definite success. If I don't, just imagine there's an airport there. I've never done a City Journal before, so any other things that are included in them (HINT: Newspapers!) would be a welcome addition if you can teach me how to make them! EDIT: Just noticed that I forgot to turn off the grid. Next time! Drats! Thanks for visiting!

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

The BRENTWOOD region has fallen out of a deep sleep and has now awoken as a very large and growing municipality. Stay tuned to see what I can REALLY do with Sim City 4!

The BRENTWOOD region has fallen out of a deep sleep and has now awoken as a very large and growing municipality. Stay tuned to see what I can REALLY do with Sim City 4!

Although I must say the aesthetic reasons are my own personal reasons for not wanting them to build this, there are also quite a few other arguments that can at least support it. 1) it's ugly - obviously 2) it COULD (depends on the design) compromise the structural integrity of the bridge 3) the bridge district has a large deficit that this could be much better put towards 4) it's not really going to stop suicides 5) it's ugly - oh wait already did that one, was worth mentioning again though!

Although I must say the aesthetic reasons are my own personal reasons for not wanting them to build this, there are also quite a few other arguments that can at least support it. 1) it's ugly - obviously 2) it COULD (depends on the design) compromise the structural integrity of the bridge 3) the bridge district has a large deficit that this could be much better put towards 4) it's not really going to stop suicides 5) it's ugly - oh wait already did that one, was worth mentioning again though!

The net is going to be made of stainless steel, which will add probably thousands of tons of weight to the bridge's deck. If it's not designed correctly, then things like even slight winds could drastically change the way the deck moves, and the extra weight on a 75 year old bridge is not going to do it any good. The original designers did a great job of designing and constructing it, but they never had anything like this in mind when they did design it.

The net is going to be made of stainless steel, which will add probably thousands of tons of weight to the bridge's deck. If it's not designed correctly, then things like even slight winds could drastically change the way the deck moves, and the extra weight on a 75 year old bridge is not going to do it any good. The original designers did a great job of designing and constructing it, but they never had anything like this in mind when they did design it.

www.ktvu.com/news/24275527/detail.html SAN FRANCISCO -- Plans to build a suicide barrier on the Golden Gate Bridge are moving ahead. A committee of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, signed off on $5 million in federal funding on Wednesday to design the barrier. The full commission is expected to give its approval later in the month. Golden Gate Bridge officials voted overwhelmingly two years ago in favor of hanging a stainless steel net from the sides of the world-famous span in an effort to stop people from jumping to their deaths. The barrier would cost $45 million. Bridge officials are seeking federal, state and private funding for the project. Officials say designing the barrier is expected to take about 18 months. More than 1,300 people have jumped from the span since it opened in 1937. Do the do-gooders who got this passed realize that it's not going to stop people from killing themselves entirely if they build this, but they're just going to do it somewhere else? And this net could severely compromise the structural integrity of the bridge if they do build it.

Yep, I just realized that the NAM has been causing my recent game crashes. That sucks that the ferries would cause such a problem, I don't generally use them for general purposes but not being able to at all has really crippled game play more than I thought it would. I hope that you guys can come up with a solution soon!