The other thing I have to say about the Mississippi personhood ammendment

I've written about this before, but I feel that the story bears repeating. Here is a version of my letter:

The personal side of this to me is that I had a slight to moderate elevated chance of permanent damage or death each time I was pregnant, and the thought that Mississippi lawmakers are set on making it illegal for me to enhance my own chances of living to raise my own children is just terrifying. I suppose I don't expect them to value my life higher than the possibility that some dividing cells could become a life, but the lives of my children seems like an issue that ought to matter even to the most intransigent of mysogynist warriors for the faith. Not to mention that the life they say they are bent on preserving would be harmed greatly by the death of its mother, even if it escaped death or hideous injury on its own.

But abortion was legal and fairly inexpensive in my childbearing years, so I lived, and my children grew up with an intact mother. And they're doing well. Their father died too young, but they did have a full set of parents growing up.*

*This is my own, cross-cultural definition of a full set of parents: a full set of parents being a family of adults dedicated to raising the children together. This definition does not depend on gender, number, or residence. An incomplete set of parents is created by the death or absence of a person who ought, for reasons intrinsic to the family, be present.

Sim City Taxation

So people have been pointing out that Herman Cain's stupid taxation proposal sounds like the default tax structure in Sim City.

Well, yea, but the secret there is -- you can't play a successful city on that. You go bankrupt in a few years, and you never get a chance to build your economy.

There is a sure-fire method to having a successful Sim City. Republicans would hate it (and I believe that is why Sim City Societies was born, but I never played the game despite always being interested in any new Sim City entry, because the enthusiastic walkthrough by the developers looked so heavily ideological and boring). How do you "win" at Sim City?

1. Pause the game as soon as you create your city. Also, turn off disasters.
2. Raise all taxes to -- I forget, but I think 15% is not too high to begin with.
3. Put in a little patch of roads, with a little patch of low-density (to begin with) residential, industrial, and commercial. This is because low-density is cheaper and you don't want to spend a lot until you have some income.
4. Put in a few amenities, including just-enough of basic services.
5. Run the game at medium or high speed. his is because it is very hard to sit there and do nothing, and you want slow and steady growth to start with, so you don't eat up your capital before you start seeing returns.
6.Add zoning in patches so that your sims don't have to travel too far to work or shopping. Increase density gradually. Keep adding amenities.
7. When the sim citizens begin to complain about taxes, give them more services or amenities, being careful not to overspend as you go.
8.When your income is stabilized and substantal, lower taxes in tiny increments, residential first.
9. When better, greener technology becomes available, gradually phase out the old and phase in the new.
10. Stay on top of water, power, and sanitation.
11. Skimp on police services relative to fire, education, utilities, entertainment, and medicine. Don't build police until you have a crime issue, then build them slowly and barely cover the map with them. Don't skimp on fire service, but don't overfund either. Give all services except for police almost as much as they ask for.
12. If you are offered a prison or a military base, turn it down.
13. If you are offered a garbage contract from your neighbor, you probably want to turn it down, no matter which direction it goes. If they send you the garbage the pollution and the landfill use will probably be too much to keep up with. If they take your garbage the cost will probably be too much. But there are exceptions to this.
14. Never underestimate the power of varying the size of civic improvements. A one-square park might do the trick for a particular neighborhood, and a huge stadium might be exactly what your city needs on another occasion.
15. You probably don't want to legalize gambling. But if you need a lot of money, it can be effective. But you should do away with it as soon as you are sure your economy has stabilized in the black for a while.

There you have it. As you can see, Republicans did not write Sim City. At least not Sim City, Sim City 2000, Sim City 3000, or Sim City 4. I should probably check out Sim City Societies some day. I don't think there's going to be another Sim City after that, since it did so badly. I read that people mostly hated it. I wonder, though -- the graphics were kind of cute . . .

A note to the Russians

If you are one of the two or three or four Russians who have lately friended my journal though we appear to have no interests or friends in common, would you mind commenting here or sending me a private message explaining why?

Clearly, the internet is a free country, and there's no harm in friending someone randomly, but it piques my interest and I would loive to know what's up.