The Shadow Knows

San Francisco's Board of Supervisors rejected a permit for an apartment building that would have included 15 below-market units, because on the longest day of the year, it would have cast a shadow over about 18% percent of a nearby park -- for just about 100 minutes.

And if you look at this special map of San Francisco, printed in Forbes, you can see all of the more than 100,000 instances of reported findings of human feces in public since 2001, most likely by some of the city's 7,500 or homeless residents. Because of the concentration of incidents in certain areas, you can see the phenomenon casting some shadows of its own.

Killing below-market housing for folks stuck in one of the most expensive cities in the country -- while folks who can't afford the housing in that city take a dump on the sidewalk. Ah, 21st century, your dream of progress shines bright!