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Fictional Town "Eureka" To Become Real?
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Mon Oct 27, 2008 02:49 PM
from the next-terrorist-targets dept.
from the next-terrorist-targets dept.
Zarath writes "The fictional town of Eureka (from the TV series by the same name) is going to potentially become a real life town as the University of Queensland, in Australia, plans to build a multibillion-dollar 'brain city' dedicated to science and research. The city, hoping to hold at least 10,000 people, is looking to attract 4,500 of the brightest scientists from around the world to live and work there. The city is planned to be built west of the city of Brisbane, in Queensland. While not funded by the Department of Defense (like the [city of the] TV series), the potential for such a community is very interesting and exciting."
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Submission: Eureka TV series town becomes real life in Oz by Anonymous Coward
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Slashlolcatz (Score:4, Funny)
Fictional Town "Eureka" to Becomes Real?
They forgot to link to the image for this story [icanhascheezburger.com].
We already have one... (Score:5, Insightful)
but we call ours Los Alamos...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I thought, we call it "Silicon Valley" — and it didn't need government sponsorship to come into being...
Re:We already have one... (Score:5, Funny)
I'd be betting on Los Alamos should the two ever go head to head.
Parent
Re:We already have one... (Score:5, Insightful)
Without DARPA taking the initiative with public funds, there would have been no basis for many of the private companies of Silicon Valley. Even the supposedly private companies that developed innovative solutions back at the beginning relied to some extend on government support, as the US recognized the need to stay ahead in the Cold War.
Parent
Re:We already have one... (Score:4, Insightful)
DARPA's money helped some, but it didn't cause the creation of Oracle, Sybase, SGI, HP, or Sun — the companies, which were developing even before Internet.
Also, DARPA stopped funding Internet funding Internet long before the emergence of giants like Google or Cisco in the valley. Much as Statists would like to attribute good things to the State's intervention, they don't have many legs to stand on.
Parent
Re:We already have one... (Score:4, Interesting)
Who said the US government's role was limited to the Internet? None of those companies would have gotten anywhere without some of the advances at Bell Labs, which was kept going by government contracts.
Your choice of terminology suggests that you're a libertarian nutjob. I wish you success in your return to the real world.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
That Government was/is a customer of some of those firms in no way supports the claim, they owe their existence to the it.
Aye-aye-aye! Name-calling — how sad... Given the government's wonderful successes in education, highway upkeep, and pensions — wanting it to also expand into healthcare
Re:We already have one... (Score:5, Insightful)
Aye-aye-aye! Name-calling — how sad... Given the government's wonderful successes in education, highway upkeep, and pensions — wanting it to also expand into healthcare — whose mental faculties are we supposed to question?
Anyone who has an "all-or-nothing" mentality. Anyone who points to a few government successes and concludes the government has a Midas touch for making things work is clearly an idiot. Anyone who points to a few government failures and concludes the government never does anything right is equally idiotic. Sane and rational people look at the specifics of a proposal and decide whether it's a good idea or not, rather than immediately conclude it's a good idea or a bad idea based on whether it involves government or not.
Parent
it's not just that it was a customer (Score:4, Informative)
The first tenant at the famed Stanford Research Park was Varian, and the government was at the time Varian's only customer. Many of the other spin-offs were organized around government-funded research labs, many also at/near Stanford, the most famous of which was probably Engelbart's lab (which invented the mouse).
Parent
But the two cases are not equivalent. (Score:5, Interesting)
B.) You were creating an implied equivalancy between two "equally ridiculous", "equally false" public statements. Which isn't so nice when one of those statements not only isn't equivalently false but was, in fact, used as a key part of a still ongoing and successful campaign to establish and maintain the larger and equally false supposed equivalency between the level of lying and overall fraud between Democrats and Republicans.
After years as a policy guy trying to change behavior through reason I came to the sad conclusion that behavior is, in fact, largely determined not by fact but by perception and that many of the most destructive false perceptions are those spread mostly under the cover of "I'm just joking", which is no different from the frat boy who hits one of the "nerds" in the face, knocking him down, and then claims that the nerd has no legitimate grounds to be angry, let alone fight back. After all, "I was just messing with you".
Sorry, I have no opinion of nor much interest in your intent; I post in response to expected consequences.
Parent
Re:We already have one... (Score:5, Informative)
Back in the 1980's, the BBC produced a Horizon documentary, which covered the growth of Silicon Valley. The first company was Fairchild Semiconductor, which then formed many offshoot companies, and that tradition continued until there were hundreds of companies. In many cases, research funding was provided to the universities to solve various problems, which then allowed the students and staff to set up their own companies once the project was finished.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
No, Silicon Valley is where we send all the losers who think that they're geniuses.
Re:We already have one... (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Nah, just corporate welfare in the form of juicy defense contracts. Oh, did you think people just got together one day to build computers for which there was no commercial market from the goodness of their hearts? Oh, and what's this Internet thing all about? How did it start?
Hmmm. I think you're an idiot. Go pave your own highway system to drive on too while you're at it.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
NASA Ames Research Center, Various California State universities, and gigantic piles of federal research money are deeply involved there. Silicon Valley is interesting in that there is a lot of entrepreneurial activity with largely civilian application that exists as well(unlike, say, Los Alamos, which is pretty much military R&D); but it is an OMG triumph of Free
Re:We already have one... (Score:5, Informative)
I thought, we call it "Silicon Valley" — and it didn't need government sponsorship to come into being...
Hmm, I think you're forgetting that if you trace back further Silicon Valley has connections with the Space and Military programs - here [cnet.com] and here [wikipedia.org]. I think I'd conclude that there's a complex set of influences favoring the creation of Silicon Valley.
But, hey, don't let me get in the way of a good "private industry is inherently more efficient" fantasy...
Parent
Re:We already have one... (Score:5, Informative)
Don't forget Huntsville, AL (Cummings Research Park), and it's second in size compared to Triangle Research Park in North Carolina.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:We already have one... (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Birth rate (Score:5, Funny)
A town entirely full of science geeks ?
Well, at least they shouldn't expect a very high birth rate...
Re:Birth rate (Score:5, Funny)
The problem with this city is that it is far too large. The largest that you can build a stable "brain" city is 5,000. After that point, interference from the various doomsday machines under its soil will make its imminent destruction more and more certain.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
But the kids that are born.... I wouldn't want to compete with them to get into a college.
IQ not always additive (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Ahh, we'll have to call that "Mendel's Revenge"
Re:Birth rate (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Birth rate (Score:5, Informative)
Autism rates are up all over North America. Lots of research points to the ridiculous amount of cocktail vaccines that are now given to children. The drugs are approved in isolation but handed out mixed together and no one knows what happens when you combine them.
Research points to no such thing. Anecdotes point to that. And unfortunately, since autism symptoms appear right around the same time that the vaccines are administered, you get a lovely case of post hoc, ergo propter hoc [wikipedia.org]. Spreading out the vaccines is more likely to reduce the correlation by delaying the vaccines past the point where symptoms occur, and creating periods in a child's life where they are vulnerable to diseases that deafen, deform or kill them.
The far more likely hypothesis is better screening (and in some cases, false diagnoses) increasing the observed rate. In many cases, one or both parents have a familial history of autistic symptoms, but the lack of a described and well known disorder during their childhood meant they were never diagnosed. The increased incidence in Silicon Valley is likely linked to this; tech geeks tend to fall on the autistic end of the spectrum, so a whole community of tech geeks marrying tends to increase the odds of autistic children.
Parent
Hmm... good idea... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Hmm... good idea... (Score:5, Funny)
...keep all of our best and brightest in one location. What could possibly go wrong?
When the oil runs out, they'll be kicking the asses of the marauding biker gangs with their soy-powered roadsters?
Parent
Re:Hmm... good idea... (Score:4, Informative)
We already tried it, New Harmony, IN. [wikipedia.org]
They tried it twice. Once a group of 'doers' and no thinkers and again with a group of 'thinkers' and no doers. Both failed.
Parent
welcome to 50 years ago (Score:5, Insightful)
Australia the perfect place (Score:3, Insightful)
Because it is fairly isolated. If it gets blown up, space-time torn, or radiated, there is less chance of contamination to other continents.
Sounds like what the Soviets did (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Sounds like what the Soviets did (Score:4, Interesting)
Western countries didn't have Stalin's paranoia. Stalin moved so many scientists to Akademgorodok (Academic Village) in deep Siberia in order to segregate and more easily control them.
Oh, and they did breed. Some of the smartest young Russians I've met were born and raised in Akademgorodok.
Parent
Re:Sounds like what the Soviets did (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
goodluckwiththat (Score:5, Insightful)
This, being the same Australia that's introducing filtering and censorship to its entire Internet?
Yeah, good luck with that... Oh, and enjoy your forthcoming Dark Age.
Why is this a good idea? (Score:5, Insightful)
I haven't seen the show, so forgive me if the writers have handled my objections in some clever fashion in one of the episodes, but..
I don't see the upside to this, it's easier now than ever before for people to collaborate remotely, negating much of the need for being in the same physical location.
I do see a downside to this, putting all our intellectual eggs in one basket makes a pretty attractive target for terrorists, whether they be Islamic, Luddite, or some other group in the future that isn't particularly keen on progress or reason as a means of dealing with reality.
Location of the city (Score:3, Funny)
Instead of building it west of Brisbane, they should build it east of Brisbane, where they can be free from outside influence.
In Soviet Russia? (Akademgorodok) (Score:4, Informative)
Sounds a bit like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akademgorodok [wikipedia.org] except actually open and international. (also not in Siberia)
Artificial towns fail (Score:5, Interesting)
Towns and cities are located and populated naturally. Towns are near a river or a port or an important crossroads. Or they grew up from nothing over the course of many decades. The people that live there settled there for natural reasons, usually related to jobs and opportunity.
Towns can be created artificially. Almost every attempt to do it is a failure though. Success usually takes HUGE amounts of money and some other factor to draw people to the location. This one claims to have the money, but they probably don't have enough. And it seems to lack any other incentive to draw folks there.
Re:Artificial towns fail (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, you couldn't just artifically make a city [wikipedia.org] in the middle of nowhere and have it grow
Parent
They should make the city underwater... (Score:5, Funny)
...and let scientist do research in any field they want without goverment intervention. What could go wrong?
you won't get a town full of smart people (Score:5, Insightful)
you'll get a town full of people who have a desperate and ego-driven need to be seen as smart
kind of like joining mensa. anyone who needs that sort of attention and reinforcement is not exactly niels bohr
the smart guys in any room are always low key and in the back, not attention whores
Eureka's Castle (Score:3, Funny)
Wait, wasn't this a castle, and not a city? I don't recall those muppets as being exceptionally brilliant. Most scientists don't have magical worldviews, either.
Isn't this what the internet was suppose to do? (Score:3, Insightful)
Los Alamos made sense in the day where even simple telephones were unreliable and getting large amounts of documentation from team to team would take hours if not days and there would be no real accounting for the integrity of them once they got there. But today this kind of thing is sadly out of touch with technology. Not to mention that there is a presumption that a great number of high end scientists will get along under one roof. This is doubtful, at best.
Not entirely true (Score:5, Insightful)
I thought nerds preferred the cold dark of their parents basements or garages, to any kind of socialization?
Not entirely true. Geeks love to be around geeks, and only get awkward in the general population. We nerds are highly gregarious whenever we're in friendly company.
As an example go check out a gaming convention.
BTW, I think this town sounds like a lot of fun. I'm probably not bright/geeky enough to be invited to live there, but it would be cool to visit. I'm betting it would be worth it just for all the little inside jokes you'd see around. I'll bet the graffiti alone would be worth it.
Parent
Re:Eureka (Score:5, Funny)
I thought nerds preferred the cold dark of their parents basements or garages, to any kind of socialization?
Didn't you read the summary? They're "looking to attract 4,500 of the brightest scientists from around the world" for a city that's supposed "to hold at least 10,000 people". So obviously they're accounting for all the parents as well.
Parent
Re:Eureka (Score:5, Interesting)
One resident recalled that "the Hill dwellers were amateur everything: hikers, riders, photographers, ethnographers, mineralogists, musicians, and artists-craftsmen in all assorted fields. Saturday nights they partied and square danced. Sundays they fished or exploited their hobbies."
The parties were frequent and well attended. Resident Jean Bacher recalled that "Saturday nights, the mesa rocked... fenced in as we were, our social life was a pipeline through which we let off steam."
Some of the most brilliant minds of the last century seemed perfectly capable of having fun together and blowing off steam. Maybe this time there will be more LAN parties than square dances, but people will figure out how to get together.
Parent
Re:Eureka (Score:5, Funny)
These are not the actions of normal people.
Parent