by Michael Jiadski

Created on: October 04, 2009

In response to the current forerunner of the "Yes" camp:

I would like to point out several errors in your reasoning. In no particular order, these are: 1) no government would ever put a bubble over an entire city; 2) pig feces are not mutagenic; 3) the plausibility of Homer's shamanic vision is exactly equal to that of Grampa's vision in church; and 4) most significantly, no matter how little you weigh, no matter how powerful the engine in your motorcycle, you can never drive circles around the inside of a hemisphere.

So let's tackle these in order. My first contention is that no government would ever put a dome over an entire city. First, consider history - it's a simpler argument. We famously build walls to separate people, to hide from them, to shun them. We build road blocks to prevent outbreaks, we restrict travel by stopping flights and taking passports, we even quarantine people in their homes. We have never built a dome. Why? Domes are notoriously hard to construct! Even on a much, much smaller scale, they're incredibly expensive. Consider that the 256 meter diameter Georgia Dome cost $214 million to construct, and then scale that project up to encompass a city the size of the fictional Springfield; even if we consider your estimate of Springfield's population of "a few hundred people" accurate, at the US Census' average density for an urban area of 1000 people per square mile, that dome would have an approximate diameter AT LEAST twice that of the Georgia Dome. However, what we see of Springfield's population is in no way indicative of its total numbers. Note that in The Simpsons episode 3F02, "Bart Sells His Soul," Bart checks a map of Springfield and notes that he is on 3rd Street, while his destination is on 157th. Even if the town was a single block wide, that would account for 2.5 square miles of total area. Again, considering the average population density of an urban area in the United States, that would indicate a total population of about 2500. I've run through too much abstract math already to keep going to demonstrate how big that dome would have to be and how much it would cost, but rest assured; it's a lot. So you'll say, "But the government does really expensive, stupid things all the time!" This is true, but the logistics of constructing such a dome are beyond the realm of possibility, even for a runaway military budget. It would take the entire US Armed Forces Corps of Engineers working around the clock for YEARS to build something

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