Debate Over Plan Bay Area  The Antiplanner’s presentation at
last night’s debate over Plan Bay Area is now available in
PowerPoint or PDF format. You can also download Tom Rubin’s
presentation in PDF format.  The debate was one-sided in the
sense that close to 90 percent of the audience opposed the plan.
One little incident sticks in my mind. During the debate, one of
the plan’s supporters admitted that it was hard to predict the
future, but added, “As Abraham Lincoln said, ‘The best way to
predict the future is to create it.’”  I am a stickler for
sourcing such attributed quotes, and that didn’t sound like
something Lincoln would say. So I pulled out my iPhone and
looked it up. Sure enough, it has been attributed to Lincoln–and
to Peter Drucker, and to some other people. But it seems the
person who actually first said it was computer programmer Alan
Kay in 1971. I hope readers will understand what I mean when I
say that knowing that Kay said it gives it a completely
different meaning than if Lincoln had said