> Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
> >A mall open 24hrs with bright
> >full-spectrum lighting (UV-free so shoppers won't worry about
> >sunburn) could probably even grow real grass and flowers and
> >trees inside.
>
> Does anyone know of anything in our ecology that is dependent on the
> *presence* of UV?
> And what good are mosquitos?
> (For decades we've poked at designing artificial ecologies, and have
> always left out things that turned out to be important.)
Well, the flowers would not be able to fertilize themselves because even if insects get through (piggybacking on customers, for example) they won't be able to find the flowers that have UV coloring on them that insects can see. But this mall isn't meant to be an "ecology" at all. It will be carefully engineered and hand-maintained to give the illusion of an ecology esthetically modified and selected to our personal tastes and without the mess. It exists only for /our/ benefit, after all, not for its own.
-- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lcrocker.html> "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past, are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC