Densities

100 square meters is 1076 square feet, a decent apartment size. Say 50% of land is buildings, that'd be 5000 apartments. At 20 stories for ubiquitous high-rises, 100,000 units. At 2 people per average unit, and converting units (other meaning), that's 500,000 people per square mile. !!! Think of all the people -- and by extension, shops and businesses -- in walking (well, walking+elevator) distance.

At that rate, you could fit the US population into 60% of Los Angeles. At the lower more environment friendly densities of the solar envelopes, we'd sprawl throughout southern or coastal California, if you can call twice the density of Manhattan a sprawl.

http://www.densityatlas.org/ was linked to by the solar envelope article, though I haven't explored it.

City Data has neighborhood data, like so, though I haven't found anyway to browse. Google finds, though, so there must be a way.

Achievement unlocked! New songs!

Well, not new by me, and two actually college-old in my life. But singing them at song circle, or at all, was new! "The Werewolf's Lament" from memory, "Dragons in the Deep" and "Merlin" from text. Merlin was the hardest tune of the bunch, but I think I did okay. Every third line wants to go off somewhere crazy, and I varied whether I let it go up or down, partly for semantic variety and partly because down was easier.

Someone else sang a version of Galadriel's Lament, from the MSU Tolkien Fellowship Songbook, so I did my version yet again for tune contrast.

I realized on the way home I'd completely forgotten I could do "Caretakers", from memory even! I'd been looking at I.R.A.Q. before Galadriel became mor salient. Oh well, something new for next time and Kate, and hopefully I can master some of the harder old/new songs off Snow Magic and Time Winds Tavern as well.


Unrelatedly, I realized the off-peak commuter rail only lets you board or exit at one door. There were a bunch of us bunched up at Porter; this seemed to defeat part of the efficiency advantage of a train, i.e. parallel boarding. The conductor said "what, you want someone to jump the train?"


I sponsored someone for a charity walk thingy. First time I've done that, vs. giving directly. Well, I gave her money for the charity, rather than sponsoring X miles, so I guess I still haven't. Not like I care a whit whether she actually walks 20 miles for hunger. But it was fun to expose her to Nobody's Moggy Lands and watch someone else's mind gets blown. And I don't think she even had the full background.