JWUT

mmmmmmmm... Phoenix?

Salt Lake City?

Not sure what the MAXIMUM might be, but I once managed to coax a medium map to a population of 630,000. It was basically a bunch of skyscrapers, completely surrounded by agricultural cities. I suspect that if you arranged a region where there were four large cities dedicated to agriculture surrounding a well-designed medium city, you could do even better. This city was built along the western river in the default maxisland region, when I had developed the other parts of the region to a population just shy of two million total.

dead thread?

Andisart, your work here is awesome. When the Burj is finished, there are so many projects you could do. There's many radical new towers going up in London and Paris, which desperately need to be BATed by an expert; there's the New WTC in New York, etc, ad nauseam... But for now, you have done an astonishingly high-quality job with the Burj! Keep it up! We're all looking forward to the next updates!

I actually rather like Tour Montparnasse. The curved facade just makes it a bit more unique than the typical international style box. but here's an explanation as to why Parisians were, shall we say, "opposed" to it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tour_Montparnasse#Criticism As for London, I've got to agree with ILL Tonkso. Unique buildings like Swiss Re and Tower 42, and especially the massive Docklands development at Canary Wharf, all have made the city a pioneering center for the contemporary skyscraper. Not to mention the upcoming Leadenhall building and the Bishopsgate tower. Also, a couple of days ago, I ran across this site, a VERY handy reference for the construction status of the tallest proposals around the world: http://www.allaboutskyscrapers.com/proposed_skyscrapers.htm I don't know how often they update it, but it's still worth a look. Honestly, though, my personal favorite of all these huge and radical new designs is simply the renovation and new facade of Tour AXA in Paris. Currently, it looks like this: http://www.blezer.tmfweb.nl/paris2001/ladefense/2ndgen/assur.html But when they're through with it: In other words, a way more elegant tower, IMO. And I'd also like to pose a question: Is the Burj Dubai really very radical in terms of design? Sure it will be the tallest thing ever built by human beings, but If you go to www.burjdubai.com and click the image of the tower to the right, then compare it to the current 10 tallest buildings, you see that shape-wise, it's somewhat similar to the Empire State Building or the Sears Tower, with which it also shares a similar structure and facade style... Actually, IMHO, perhaps the Burj Dubai indeed posesses that simple elegance that Irfox mentioned, which, coupled with its astonishing height, will make it a truly memorable icon of our era, just as the Empire State Building was in its time, and the World Trade Center as well.

Is it safe to say that this is one of, if not THE, most highly anticipated BATs in STEX history? I can't wait to see this tower punctuating the Simtropolis skyline! Please keep up the simply excellent work on your model, Andisart. It is an awesome tribute to the greatest feat of vertical engineering in human history, and the crown jewel of architecture.

Here's a link to the official story, courtesy of MyWay news and the Drudge Report: http://apnews.myway.com/article/20070424/D8ON8OSG0.html Interesting. A planet of about 1.6 times the mass of the Earth, orbiting a red dwarf star about 20 LY away, with a comparable surface temperature range to Earth's own!I suspect we will find many more of these. And hopefully it's only a matter of time before we develop superluminal-speed spacecraft that will allow us to reach them... This is a major milestone in the history of astronomy. This planet bears the closest resemblance to Earth of any body yet discovered, including Mars (a bit colder and smaller) and Venus (much hotter and the same size as Earth). Thoughts?

Hey, kudos to whoever makes the better product, and markets it better. Toyota deserves the success, IMO. I hate to see major corporations like the big three go down, and take their jobs with them, but if they can't compete, they can't compete. that's capitalism for ya'.

The leaders of the former Soviet empire had but one goal, and it was certainly not to spread Marxist ideals. That was the facade they hid behind, while their true objective was to acquire as much pure power as they possibly could. It was (is) no different from the members of The Party in Orwell's "1984." I'm convinced that Putin and his "former" Soviet Communist associates are so diabolically obsessed with achieving this goal, that one of two things happened: either they are destroying a legitimate transition to democracy, or worse yet to contemplate, that the "fall" of the Soviet Union was engineered by conspirators in order to dupe the west into believeing the Cold War threat was gone, and disarming. Then, while not disarming themselves, or by simply "losing track" of some of their arsenal, the USSR could be revived in secret, and slowly, rather through an alarming revolution, and power would be seized again. Russia is fast making itself an enemy of liberty again. The loss of civil liberties, the economic (and certainly future political) alliance with Iran and its psycho president Ahmadinejad, the Stalin-esque "cult of personality" that Putin is trying to develop... They all point to a rather gloomy future for Moscow. (All IMHO, of course!)

Originally posted by: schm0 I don' t think it's unwise to take a scientific position after you've read some books, articles and research on the subject. As long as your opinion isn't based on uncorroborated evidence, that is. As far as the subatomic levels is concerned, our lack of knowledge is due to the fact that this subject is on the fringe of scientific discovery. We don't throw out our conceptions of the atomic level just because we don't understand the level below. Likewise, we don't dismiss gravity as fact when we don't understand the actual process of how these forces are created. Gravity and atomic physics are both quanitfiable and measurable, and backed up by decades and centuries of research. Lastly, the concept of "reality" is a metaphysical and philosophical issue, not a scientific one.quote> I'd just like to clarify my position, here. What I said was that "it is unwise to take a position on a scientific issue and then work to dismiss or discredit the work of those with a different position, just because you happen to hold the more popular position." What I meant was that it's perfectly right to take positions on things, with evidence to back you up, as you said, schmO, but that It isn't right to completely attack your opponent. We certainly can have rational debates about the merits of each position, but what I see happening is that anti-warming and anti-human-influence scientists are being ostracised and dimissed as crackpots, on the payroll of oil companies, while others are claiming that the pro-warming and pro-human influence scientists are just falling in line with what's popular to avoid that sort of rejection, or that they're on the payroll of some political party, or that they get some sort of visceral thrill out of frightening peole with doom and gloom climate predictions! [Takes a breath...] Surely we can agree that such name calling is useless and serves only to discredit the one doing the calling. As for my ramblings on gravity and the subatomic, I did'nt mean to give the impression that I was questioning the validity of those theories (I like that gravity still works, thanks!), but rather, I was using these as examples to demonstrate that we don't fully understand all the processes that make the universe work the way it does, including the climate systems of our own Earth. And yes, perhaps bringing up the subjective nature of "reality" was a silly idea on my part. My point in posting on this forum though, is just to show that while there is much that we do know and understand about this particular issue, it would be folly to presume that there isn't much more yet to discover. In the meantime, it would be wise to maintain an objective stance, along with one's personal convictions.

I understand that theories are considered as fact until proven otherwise, but that is precisely my point. I don't seek to discredit the theory of global warming, per se. I simply believe that, because of the constantly changing nature of scientific understanding, it is unwise to take a position on a scientific issue and then work to dismiss or discredit the work of those with a different position, just because you happen to hold the more popular position. We still don't know exactly what goes on at the deepest subatomic levels, do we? Do we know for certain what actually causes gravitational forces? Do we know, for absolute certainty, that reality is limited to what human beings, being physically limited, can detect with their five senses? Ah ha! we actually do know that there is a lot we don't know yet, possibly that there is more that we don't know than we do! It's going to be a very, very long time before we do know everything, so until then, let's be objective about things, shall we? This of course goes for those who take the less popular position, as well: your opponents just may end up being correct, rather than you! I hope you'll all pardon my unrealistic idealism.