Life is a game

First think I must do is apologize for the word "pubic" which should have been "public" in yesterdays blog.  I believe that could be the 1st word I have ever gotten wrong.  Of course if you have not seen Hunger Games or the Divergent trailers the entire joke would not make any sense ANYWAY!
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Speaking of Columbus and why I'm bullish for growth in my community while many are not.  The argument is that we have not grown in 100 years why start now.

One of the problems has been Sun Prairie. People want to live in rural America which for years was Sun Prairie - just outside of Madison.  But, as Sun Prairie slowly merges with Madison the NEXT town is Columbus.

On facebook here is what one person wrote.

Sun Prairie use to be a nice small town now it sucks since Madison people are coming into it. More traffic and morons. This was the reason I moved away from Madison. I live in the country near the new stores and if houses are going up, we are moving.

We are just far enough away so there is be no merging for MANY years with Sun Prairie! BUT, we will start to get people that would have moved to SP now coming to Columbus.

And that is why we need SMART growth, not just growth for the sake of growth!  I don't want to be like Sun Prairie and many people in Columbus LIKE being a small town as I do.  

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Very interesting CDA meeting last night.  Remember when you were in high school and you would walk into the room and see the projector or a TV in front of the room and the day just got a little brighter?

Same thing when you walk into the Council Chambers and see Jason the City Engineer.

The whole 16/60 reconstruction is picking up steam and the corridor will be cement which helps in making other decisions.  We will have $166,000 in grant money plus any funds the city wants to invest which I HOPE will come about.  We don't get to re-due a street scape too often in a lifetime.  

HOWEVER - all of a sudden the DOT says we need plans by late June!   WHAT THE WHAT?  Sure, it's a 8.5 million dollar project and BAM, all of a sudden we need decisions NOW!

I say make the 73/63 (Park Ave/James Street) intersection into a big round-a-bout.  Sure we might have to take out Sharrows and level The Whitney Hotel built in 1858 and probably the Sargent block (1866) and the Corner Drug Store the oldest building in Columbus but that is falling down anyway.

HEY - if we can get more cars and semi's going through the middle of Columbus it's always a good thing and those buildings are old anyway.  We can replace them with prefab aluminum buildings at a quarter the cost and even make huge multi story parking lots! 

 BTW -  speaking of The Corner Drug Store a 1853 Vernacular Italianate which was continually occupied from 1865 to 2002 and is made of soft red brick and had an oyster bar in the basement.

Yes - oyster bar.  You see Oysters were big in Columbus, HUGE actually.  They came from the so called Crawfish River which was chock full of Oysters . . . . until they built that dam which pretty much ruined the water because all the chemicals from up stream stop at the dam and are now in the Mill Pond unable to filter south.

ANYWAY - here is my idea for that building with the bulging side.  Why not put an old style historic mural on the side of the building.  I bet the owner would be OK with that if it did not cost him anything.  It hides the bulge by putting focus on something else! 

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Life is a game if you think about it. The key is to win whatever you do isn't it?   When I sent my tape into Survivor it was not because I wanted to suffer and sleep in dirt. It was because I wanted to win the game and under stood non-cooperative games.

Survivor and Big Brother are probably the most ingenious games ever played. Seriously.  Big Brother especially.  People you poo poo Big Brother don't understand this is the greatest chess game ever played*** and it all has to do with Game Theory! The study of mathematical models of conflict and cooperation between intelligent rational decision-makers.   Big Brother and to a lesser extent Survivor.

*** (Chess is NOTHING like Survivor  . . . unless you are playing some new version of Chess where there are sixteen players, none of them actually have their pieces on the table, all players move whenever they feel like it, at regular intervals players are forced to checkmate someone but at any given time there's at least one player you aren't allowed to checkmate, and players are allowed to make agreements behind each other's backs.)

But Game Theory is used in business all the time.   Look at what CVS Pharmacy's did when they decided to not sell cigarettes. It's GREAT game play.  Many people are talking about how much money they will lose (about $2 billion a year in cig sales) and does the amount of good will really make up for this?

No - HOWEVER, it totally screws over Walgreens and Rite Aid their competitors.

CVS takes about a 1% hit in overall sales but they paralyze Walgreens and Rite Aid who now can't do ANYTHING!  it was a brilliant move.   If either one of them wants to follow CVS they will NOT get the big positive press bump and they give the other pharmacy ALL the cig sales.  They both get a small spike in sales but there is pressure to dump cig sales.  

So CVS has moved to be the "different" chain store, the one that gets recognition.    Walgreens and Rite Aid could collude and BOTH stop cig sales because there is pressure but then lose brand power.

Sorry - I just love watching how things play out like this.

OH - back to Survivor which