Date: Sun, 07 Oct 2007 16:46:57 -0400 To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net> From: "Mike B." <omni at omniphile.com> Subject: [WSFA] Re: Gaylaxicon gets a hotel Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net> At 10/7/2007 02:38 PM, you wrote: >Mike Bartman wrote: > > > "Convenient to transportation" is very subjective. I, as a driver, > > find urban cons highly inconvenient. There is either no parking > > or expensive parking, there's a lot of traffic to get through, and > > things like one-way streets don't help a bit. > >Motorists can take Metro. Nobody is forced to drive everywhere. Not true. To take Metro one first has to get *to* Metro. Then one has to park...and Metro parking is expensive and limited. This is not a problem on Weekends, but it is Monday-Friday and tends to make Metro unusable without a lot of hassle (like getting up well before dawn to get one of the parking spaces...the lots tend to be full by 7am. Metro is fine if you live in the city, or very near a Metro stop...but both tend to be expensive propositions that involve a lot of lifestyle tradeoffs...and time. > It's >rather ironic when people who boast about how much more convenient >driving is complain about how inconvenient it is whenever the >destination is anywhere that a lot of people go. Concentrating things into small areas almost always makes them less convenient to use. Crowds are only a good thing if you profit from them. For those in the crowds it's very inefficient. >If you want to get to homes, offices, hotels, businesses, restaurants, >museums, churches, convention centers, railroad stations, airports, >hospitals, schools, or shopping centers, driving is terribly >inconvenient. I disagree completely. I'll be heading for Greenbelt shortly, from Rockville. It will probably take about 20 minutes to get there. Using public transportation this trip would take AT LEAST an hour, and more likely 2 hours. When you add in the cargo that I'm hauling the car gets even more convenient and the public transport even less so. Wrestling a Scott lawn spreader onto a bus or Metro train is certainly possible, but putting it into a Jeep Grand Cherokee is trivial. > If you want to get to a random point in the US, driving >is even more inconvenient (since most are nowhere near a road, as >searches for Stephen Fossett's missing plane have discovered). The same is true for walking...you can get to more points, but it will take you considerably longer. Obviously we should all own helicopters, as flying will get you to more places, faster, than any other mode of movement...especially when combined with a little walking if the place happens to be indoors. To get to anywhere within 250 miles of my house, driving is faster than public transport. Pittsburgh for instance, is the same travel time by car and by commercial aircraft...and that's a time check I did BEFORE all the additional delays at the airports, so the radius is probably closer to 300 miles these days. >repeatedly wait in line at the DMV, I haven't waited in line at the DMV except to renew my driver's license (10 minutes total) since I got my Jeep in '97. When I bought the Jeep the dealer took care of the license stuff and since then it's all been done by mail. >have the papers to get the papers, don't mind carrying ID papers >wherever you go, pay for liability insurance, pay extra taxes, are >willing and able to give your full attention to driving whenever >you're traveling, And if you don't do that you are limited to moving around in and between major cities, or spending days or weeks getting to other locations by foot, or relying on those who did to give you a ride. There's a reason why millions of cars are sold every year. Which of us could get to Middleburg, VA quicker? Which of us could get there with 300 lbs of "stuff" first? Which of us could change our plans halfway there and go to Adamstown, MD quicker instead? >and are willing to accept risks of being killed >that are orders of magnitude higher than flying or taking a train. Which is safer depends on a lot of things that the statistics don't mention, or that people who quote statistics leave out because they tend to invalidate their arguments. For instance, the people who want to show that airline travel is safest tend to use "passenger-miles" as their criteria, since most airline flights involve many people and long distances. Look at it in other terms and the numbers aren't so good. Perhaps "trips"? "Deaths per 1000 passengers"? Look at it that way and cars may look safer. When I'm driving I have more control over level of risk. I can drive a large vehicle, or one with extra safety equipment. I know that the driver is not on drugs or drunk. I know how well the vehicle has been maintained. I can take routes that avoid unsafe areas. I can decide that the weather is too big a problem and cancel a trip or reschedule it. With public transport all of these things are in the control of others, and those others often don't do a very good job with the responsibility. > > So long as I can find food of some sort, even a grocery store, ... > >Magicon in Florida was in the middle of nowhere. I had thought I'd be >able to get fresh citrus, what with it being in Florida. But no, the >only onsite food was nasty, and the only offsite food was miles away. Sounds inconvenient not to have driven there... ;-) > > It used to be that clubs had a high percentage of college age, or > > recently college age, members...now most are middle-aged or getting > > close to that. > >Come to PRSFS sometime. You'll be surprised. When and where? > > The Age of Reading may be ending... > >I see plenty of large bookstores, with plenty of books and plenty of >customers, despite the high price of new books these days. I've seen a number of bookstores in my area, a fairly affluent one, close over the last 12 years. Some of them have been part of large chains, not just underfinanced eclectic ones. >Last weekend I went to the National Book Festival on Saturday (at >which I saw several WSFAns), and the used book sale at Arlington >Library on Sunday. Both events were very large and very crowded. And if I went to a buggy-whip manufacturer's convention I'd expect to see a lot of buggy-whip enthusiasts too. Doesn't mean the industry is healthy. What is the trend in books published per year? In number of publishers? Number of people working in the industry? Total revenue for the industry? Average number of books owned per household? Number of people who read for fun? -- Mike B. -- Optimists think this is the best possible world. Pessimists fear they are right.