Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 19:47:41 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Keith F. Lynch" <kfl at KeithLynch.net>
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: The October 2004 WSFA Journal is available online
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>

Elspeth Kovar <ekovar at worldnet.att.net> wrote:

> - I like the fact that you're including the calender of upcoming
> events but am interested in why you've chosen to put it on the first
> page or so of the Journal.

No particular reason.  My only hard and fast rules are that later
minutes never come before earlier minutes, and "Upcoming next
month..." always comes last.

It happened to be fourth in the July, August, and September Journals.
I hadn't noticed that coincidence before.  I can see how it might lead
someone to believe it was *always* going to be fourth.

Which article would you have put first?

> - In your article titled WSFA Email Lists you say

> "Colleen Cahill maintains a list of members' email addresses,
> street addresses, and phone numbers, intended for one-on-one
> communication.  This list is not available on the web, but Colleen
> will email it to any WSFA member who wants it.  Please use her list
> only for one-on-one communications.  People who aren't subscribed
> to the chat list presumably don't want messages intended for all
> WSFAns."

> The last is an editorial comment in what appears to be intended as
> a factual article -- and you contradict it earlier in the article.

Colleen confirmed that that was the intention of her list.  I asked
her about it after a couple people complained to me when someone sent
a message to everyone on her list.

Why would anyone not subscribe to the chat list unless they didn't
want messages meant for all WSFAns?  And where did I contradict this?

What's more puzzling to me is why anyone isn't on the urgent
announcements list.  They'd really rather go to the wrong meeting place
than get an email telling them when meeting locations are changed?
If I hadn't been hypersensitized by all the spam, so that I have a
visceral revulsion to the idea of adding anyone to any email list
without their permission, I would have gone ahead and subscribed
everyone to it.  In much the same way as Joe Mayhew emailed everyone
his announcement that Disclave '98 had been cancelled rather than only
emailing people who had signed up for urgent announcements such as that.

> - In the minutes under Capclave '04 you write "Lee said we have sold
> 77 memberships, which puts us ahead of where we were this time last
> year.  [It's not clear whether this is adjusted for the fact that
> Capclave was a month later last year.]"  I'm fairly certain that
> she didn't mean 'on this calender date last year' but 'at this time
> before the convention last year' but I could have misinterpreted her.

It wasn't clear to me which she meant.  If I'd been a little less out
of it, I would have immediately asked.  I should also have asked about
those Capclave '05 fliers to be distributed at this year's WFC -- do
they imply that we will have a hotel and weekend by then?  If not,
what will be on these fliers?

> - An early part of your article about exploring the solar system left me
> mighty confused until I got to the bottom of that section, as it said,

> "TO SUN
> 88 ½ YEARS
> Start now and you would not get there till after 2000 A.D.  Yet
> light gets here from the sun in eight and a third minutes"

> I'll leave it as an exercise to other readers to figure out what
> crucial bit I missed!  It's an excellent article.

Thank you.  I hope it was clear which parts were from the old book,
and which parts I wrote.  I double-checked, and I did introduce the
quote with:

  ... the people who wrote the following, which is still (barely)
  within living memory:

rather than just plunging in.  Perhaps I should have indented the
text, or used a different font.  Two months ago Sam and I worked
on getting the formatting as much like in the book as possible.
Fortunately I kept the pre-fancy-formatting version around just in
case, as it turned out that when Wade printed it last night, a large
chunk was sliced off, and neither of us knew how to fix it.  So I
tossed the fancy-formatted version and spliced the simply-formatted
version back in.  I did make use of Sam's cleaned up version of the
scanned biplanes-invading-space image.  I think it looks tolerable on
the screen, though pretty sad once printed and photocopied.  I wonder
if the original painting still exists, and if so, who has it?  For
all I know, that old book of mine could be the only surviving copy
of that cool stfnal image.

The numbers in that section are all correct.  At "the terrific speed
of two miles a minute" it would indeed take 88 ½ years to reach the
sun.  And if you had started your trip when that book was printed,
you'd be arriving just about now.  Also note that there's no mention
of Pluto.  It hadn't been discovered yet.

> - The This Month In History section is a really neat addition!

Thanks.  Note that I've had that feature in all four of my issues.
I can do it at my leisure, since nothing new is likely to happen in,
say, December 1964 between now and when I print the December 2004
issue.  Unlike some of the other features, where I want to do
everything at the last possible minute so it will be as up to
date as possible.

I'm already looking ahead to the March issue, which will be both the
40th anniversary of The WSFA Journal, and (I think) the 400th issue of
The WSFA Journal.  Any idea what we should do special for that?

> All in all, it's a very good issue, not to mention well written and
> put together.

Thank you.  As always, I made absolutely sure there were absolutely no
typos or grammatical errors, then I ran it by Wade who found several
of each.  I should also give credit to Google, without which
spell-checking names such as Chalmraik, Quiquendone, and Allan
Quatermain would be impossible.

I also used fancy quotes once again.

Here's one for the peanut gallery:  Is our first night winner the First
Citizen of Fanitopia, of Fantopia, or of Fanistan?  Find evidence for
and against each.