The Second Best Colony of Second Best Puppet 177 is a colossal, efficient nation, ruled by Noah with an even hand, and notable for its public floggings, frequent executions, and stringent health and safety legislation. The hard-nosed, humorless, devout population of 6.655 billion Second Best Puppet 177ians are prohibited from doing almost everything except voting, which they do timidly and conservatively.

The large, corrupt government juggles the competing demands of Law & Order, Industry, and Administration. The average income tax rate is 92.6%, and even higher for the wealthy.

The frighteningly efficient Second Best Puppet 177ian economy, worth a remarkable 1,075 trillion cards a year, is fairly diversified and dominated by the Information Technology industry, with significant contributions from Retail, Uranium Mining, and Book Publishing. Black market activity is rampant. State-owned companies are reasonably common. Average income is an impressive 161,628 cards, and distributed extremely evenly, with little difference between the richest and poorest citizens.

Motorbike jousters live young and die fast, takeaway food bought on the weekend now comes with fifty percent more sweat and tears, college-level writing classes are taught by undergraduate editors of the school newspaper, and forecasts predict rains of loose lead and mortar shells for the next six weeks. Crime, especially youth-related, is totally unknown, thanks to the all-pervasive police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. Second Best Puppet 177's national animal is the legendary, which is also the nation's favorite main course.

Second Best Puppet 177 is ranked 284,263^rd in the world and 1,545^th in Two for Most Beautiful Environments, with 4.37 pounds of wildlife per square mile.