Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2007 23:31:56 -0400 (EDT) From: "Keith F. Lynch" <kfl at KeithLynch.net> To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net> Subject: [WSFA] Various replies to Mike Bartman Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net> Mike Bartman wrote: > Without knowing what you mean I can't be sure, but based on what > I've heard at meetings, and know of fans and cons, I'd *guess* that > any inconsistencies are due to out of synch updates, program changes > due to participant limitations, and participant cancelations or > additions. The one I noticed is that Ted White is in the program grid, but not listed as either a program participant or an attendee. I didn't look any further for other inconsistencies. Last year I did; see http://KeithLynch.net/wsfa/list/06/a/19214529.htm >> Most people want to get to a particular place, rather than to >> travel for some particular number of hours or to take some >> particular number of trips. If I want to get from my home to, say, >> the Denver Worldcon, and want to know the safest method, passenger >> miles are the appropriate measure. > If it makes you feel good to look at it that way, fine. I'd be more > interested in what my chances of getting there and back alive are. That *is* what I'm interested in. I'm one passenger for however many miles it is to Denver and back. Hence passenger miles. I'm less interested in my risk per hour, since the number of hours varies enormously -- it takes longer to get to Colorado by bicycle than by jet plane, so knowing that each hour on a jet is, say, twice as likely to kill me as each hour on a bicycle doesn't tell me which is the safer way to get to Denver unless I first convert the numbers to passenger miles. > Mine is not the largest vehicle on the road by a long shot. The bus > you ride in is much larger and gets much lower gas mileage. Lower for the whole vehicle, but a lot higher per passenger. > I am, however, a lot more agile in mine. But I can read on the bus. I couldn't safely read while driving. > I've wondered if polarizing filters on the headlights, and > polarizing filters in the windshields or on the drivers, might > not help that problem. Everyone going north would have vertically polarized headlights and windshields, and everyone going south would have horizontally polarized headlights and windshields? It might work if it were easy to switch when changing direction. But what about people going east or west? And what about cyclists and pedestrians, who don't have windshields? (Maybe people going east could have red headlights and red-tinted windshields, and people going west could have blue headlights and blue-tinted windshields?) > What are meetings like? Who can show up? Who does show up? See http://wsfa.org/journal/j04/8/index.htm#prsfs Not much has changed in the three years since I wrote that, except that PRSFS now has a treasurer -- a cat. Nobody is allowed to attend except SF fans. Several PRSFSans plan to be at Capclave. If I see one of them and you at the same time, I'll introduce you. > If there's no place you can afford, it's not the rent...it's the > lack of revenue. Lack of revenue in a store generally means lower > sales, though it can mean a bad profit margin too. I suspect that commercial rents are way up, just as residential rents are. If a bookstore is doing 50% better than a decade ago, but its rent is 100% higher, that's not the fault of the book business. If present trends continue, the only stores still in business will be trendy little knick-knack and jewelry stores and Starbucks. Anyone who wants to buy a book or a sack of potatoes will be out of luck. Not that they'll have much money left to buy anything after paying their own rent.