I'd add something personally... the tone of espionage and police is pretty negative... I'd guess that the purpose of the heterotopic area isn't just as an outlet for "creativity" but also agression, suspicion, scapegoats. As long as our soldiers are hunting pirates, they're not bored and looking for people to hunt at home. As long as our diplomats and gallants are concerned with foriegn relations, they're not as occupied by political scheming at home. Same theory with sending Europe's Medeival standing armies down to fight in the crusades to keep them from causing trouble at home.


(disclaimer: I'm just a computer science grad student ;-)... )