Celebrating One Year of creating this zine in OpenOffice
Labor Day weekend was officially Too Darn Hot. It got up to 108o in Pasadena (Fahrenheit...smidge over 42c for those who use that). Two weeks later, it's down to more reasonable temps (75o to 85o), but that was still a heck of a way to end the summer. Throw in a quick week of 50o-60o temps - with heavy rains one day - before bumping back up to the high 80's and you have September in Southern California...
Meanwhile at work, construction's finally started on our new Library building. Actually, that "finally" probably needs more emphasis than a simple italicization - some bolding and multiple underlining probably should be used as well.
Why? Well, one of the first projects I did when I started work at Rio was a sort of "flowchart" showing what all we needed in a new Library. This was in 1992 during the then current round of "we're going to be building a new Library" talk that was going around campus...
...by 1994, all that talk was dead.Flash forward to 2000 and - once again - Library construction talk is in the air. Administration bangs together a proposal for a new Library (while carefully not asking the Library staff for any input on the project...this will cause problems later, of course) and come up with a rough budget. This rough budget will be used to create a bond measure.
2002 and we try to get the bond measure passed...and it fails because somehow we've managed to tick off the Teamsters who think we're going to use it to buy the land (then planted in strawberries) across the street for our construction, and they fight it. They fought it quite well. Then they turned the "strawberry fields" into warehouses...
2004 and it's time for bond measure, take two. This time it passes, and we actually get the twenty-six million we asked for to build the Library. You'll note the problem immediately, though: Twenty-six million was the rough budget created in 2000. Building prices - especially with the construction boom going on - had gone up in California. A lot. So, even before we've hired someone to design the building...we're looking for things to cut.
2005 comes and so does our architectural firm. They start working on the plans, in theory getting input on what to do from Library (and other) staff. Some major flaws in the building (at least, from our standpoint) however are retained all throughout the design process (the big atrium that will let sound up from the noisy first floor to the supposedly quiet Library floor. The poor location design for the security gate and main staircase which means it can be bypassed by anyone willing to climb up a three foot wall next to the stairs. The fact that there is no way to have open access to offices that might/will be open when the Library is closed without also allowing access to the entire Library) but at least we make them realize that, hey, it might be nice if in case of an elevator failure, students in wheel chairs don't have to go completely around the building to get to the (then) one wheelchair ramp.
But - due to budget problems - we start losing things. The number of study rooms drops by two-thirds. The proposed "coffee shop" for students drops by three-thirds. A sort of deck-area that we were going to get off of the main staff rooms gets downgraded (in a weird way) to a roof garden...that interestingly no one will be allowed to go onto. Supposedly carpeted floors start showing up on the plans as bare concrete. And our exterior book drop with interior (staff) access...loses its interior (staff) access...and then it's entire existence.
Late 2006 and they begin to demolish a building that's in the middle of the new Library site (the former student center - I have the vid on YouTube). Whilst this is going on, big arguments erupt over saving a large oak tree sitting next to the building. The "talks" get very heated over this...in spite of the fact that one of the tree people brought in to look at it found it in such poor shape that he said - basically - "whatever you do, don't let anyone stand under this..."
Early December of 2006 and Putnam Center - and the tree - are finally gone and the colleges puts on a big "Ground Breaking" program on. This in spite of the fact that they say they won't even pick the contractors until February or March.February and March go by - no contractors chosen yet.
So does May, June and July.
Finally, in August, actual construction begins on the site. Oh, it's mostly digging things up for now, but it is at least something. And during this time, two more oak and a flock of palm trees at the site just vanish, with nary a comment from anybody...September and it looks like they're digging the foundations. Supposedly they will be done in late 2008...but I've already noticed the construction notices for the college saying that there will be "disruptions" until Spring of 2009, which is a backhanded way of saying they expect schedule slippages...
So, basically, in 2009 we'll be getting a new Library building where the designers mostly ignored the actual Library staff, based the building on rough ideas from an administration that not only totally ignored the actual Library staff, but didn't feel it needed to research very heavily into what the Library already was, and using a budget that's seven, eight years out of date (and can't be increased).
Administration keeps talking about how "striking" the building will be and how it will be a "cornerstone" of all the new changes for the campus, while all we can do is hope that once it's finished, we can somehow bend it into what we actually need...
...oh, and did I mentioned that the contractors they hired are the same ones they had to sue a few years ago to get them to properly fix the roof of the Science Building? It leaked...
And people wonder why government projects always go over budget...
*SIGH* This was supposed to be just a paragraph or two on the new Library building. Sorry I went off on a rant instead. It doesn't help that - due to all the construction - parking here on campus is a complete mess...and probably will be for the next five or six years. I mean, it is normally messy, but losing chunks of lot for construction and blocking of whole roads for months/years at a time has made that mess complete.
Book Review Time:
Is Pluto a planet? : a historical journey through the solar system
by David A. Weintraub
by David A. Weintraub
Back last summer the great "Is Pluto a Planet" debate raged about the halls of astronomy and - surprisingly - about the more normal news as well. It went so far as to have New Mexico pass (or try to, I don't know if it passed) legislation officially declaring Pluto a planet after the IAU "declassified" it. In all, it mostly just highlighted the fact that there is no good scientific definition of a "planet" and that almost everyone just defaults to "I know it when I see it."He takes us on a little historical journey covering the meaning of the word "planet," from back when there were just the seven - and the Sun and the Moon were two of them - to definitions that had to keep changing as man redefined what a planet was and just kept finding more.
Along the way we find we've had a "Ninth Planet" four times now - even though officially we only have eight at this point - and Neptune was the thirteenth. We see a time when what we'd now call "asteroids" were classed as planets - and so were moons.
Nicely, Weintraub himself seems to feel that - by any not horribly convoluted definition - Pluto still classes as a planet...as does Sedna, Ceres, Vesta and a flock of other "Plutinos," cranking the total up to at least twenty-three planets. Since I also have no trouble with double (or triple, or sextuple) digit planet counts, it's kinda nice to have an astronomer agree with me that our apparent dislike of counting to more than nine or ten is just that - as dislike - and not a reason to skew the definition so much just so the number comes out that low.
It's an interesting book and I highly recommend it - and not just 'cause he agrees with me...;)
Anywho, deadline's approaching, so on with the show!
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Divergent Opinions - Comments on P.O.D. 47
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Section One
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Wesley Kawato
ct: Me:
"If I remember correctly, China didn't explode a hydrogen bomb until after 1970." Well, you don't remember correctly then:
The Chinese Hydrogen Bomb - Nuclear Test No. 6
Time: 00:19:07.9 17 June 1967 (GMT)
Location: Lop Nur Test Ground
Test Height and Type: Air drop, 2960 m
Yield: 3.3 Mt
This was China's sixth nuclear test, and its first full scale radiation implosion (Teller-Ulam) weapon test. It was conducted only 32 months after the first atomic test, the shortest elapsed time for any nuclear weapons state. The device contained U-235, lithium-6 deuteride, and U-238. It was detonated at 2960 m over the Lop Nur Test Ground after being dropped from an H-6
From this site, we find that they did another one in 1968 and 1969 and 1970 (probably the one you're thinking of) - all in the 3+ megaton range.
Time: 00:19:07.9 17 June 1967 (GMT)
Location: Lop Nur Test Ground
Test Height and Type: Air drop, 2960 m
Yield: 3.3 Mt
This was China's sixth nuclear test, and its first full scale radiation implosion (Teller-Ulam) weapon test. It was conducted only 32 months after the first atomic test, the shortest elapsed time for any nuclear weapons state. The device contained U-235, lithium-6 deuteride, and U-238. It was detonated at 2960 m over the Lop Nur Test Ground after being dropped from an H-6
From this site, we find that they did another one in 1968 and 1969 and 1970 (probably the one you're thinking of) - all in the 3+ megaton range.
Dale Cozort
Bear Country as romance novel is...interesting. There seems to be a lot more exposition going on than in the "SF" version but, actually, that made clearer a few things that I wondered about in the original!
And - yes - I already voted for it on Gather...;)
And - yes - I already voted for it on Gather...;)
re: Dinosaurs after the Impact:
Hmmm, my "Survivaraptor" scenario is looking a lot more probable now!
Of course, this all still incredibly up in the air. Heck, unless it's changed recently, you can find a bunch of paleontologists who will argue that dinosaurs were almost completely gone by the end of the cretaceous anyway (up to and including "only still surviving in North America") and the Chicxulub just sorta did a mercy killing on the few survivors.
That something as big and vegetarian as hadrosaurs could still be mucking about in New Mexico, less than seventeen, eighteen hundred miles from Chicxulub, kinda throws everybody's K-T extinction theories into the air.
Heck, for the aforementioned "Surviaraptor" scenario, I only dared have some small coelosaur-like critters, clear around the world in Australia as my post-K-T dinos - and here's a bunch of duckbills traipsing around in a chunk of territory I thought for sure would be down to nothing bigger than a lizard!
Cool.
Of course, this all still incredibly up in the air. Heck, unless it's changed recently, you can find a bunch of paleontologists who will argue that dinosaurs were almost completely gone by the end of the cretaceous anyway (up to and including "only still surviving in North America") and the Chicxulub just sorta did a mercy killing on the few survivors.
That something as big and vegetarian as hadrosaurs could still be mucking about in New Mexico, less than seventeen, eighteen hundred miles from Chicxulub, kinda throws everybody's K-T extinction theories into the air.
Heck, for the aforementioned "Surviaraptor" scenario, I only dared have some small coelosaur-like critters, clear around the world in Australia as my post-K-T dinos - and here's a bunch of duckbills traipsing around in a chunk of territory I thought for sure would be down to nothing bigger than a lizard!
Cool.
re: Out of Africa or Not?:
This particular debate has been going on,well, at least all my life - and from what I've read, a good many decades earlier. DNA testing or not, I don't expect it to be resolved any time soon.
Tom Cron
RAEBNC.
Robert Gill
There's a video (well, more of
re: The "History-deprived":
an audio, really) on the net where a seventeen year-old girl tries to explain what she knows about WWI. And once you strip all the "umms" and "likes" and such, you discover that WWI was "mainly about slavery and everything," with the North and South (Britain and Germany, I think) battling it out and during the war "there was a whole bunch of democracy and there wasn't any independence between the states"
She makes even your pro-waridiot letter writer sound historically informed...
She makes even your pro-war
ct: Cozort: re: Pre-Columbian Chickens:
You can find a whole flock of articles on this on the web. Here's a typical example.
It should be noted that the more scientifically inclined sites/magazines/etc. tend to head the articles with titles like "Chicken Bones Suggest Polynesians Found Americas Before Columbus" (italics mine) while regular papers go for more of a "Chickens Prove Polynesians crossed Pacific" air - though this isn't a rigid rule in all cases.
One article pointed out that if Polynesians (while exploring) found an already inhabited chunk of land, they tended to turn around and go home - which would explain why there would be so few traces of them (read: None) besides this chicken bone in S. America.
It should be noted that the more scientifically inclined sites/magazines/etc. tend to head the articles with titles like "Chicken Bones Suggest Polynesians Found Americas Before Columbus" (italics mine) while regular papers go for more of a "Chickens Prove Polynesians crossed Pacific" air - though this isn't a rigid rule in all cases.
One article pointed out that if Polynesians (while exploring) found an already inhabited chunk of land, they tended to turn around and go home - which would explain why there would be so few traces of them (read: None) besides this chicken bone in S. America.
ct: Me:
Alweg getting tarred with the "it's only an amusement park brush" as the reason monorails - and Alweg in particular - didn't get taken seriously enough to be actually put in as transit rather than rides is an idea that's been kicking around my head for years - and I have no idea if it's even vaguely reasonable, let alone an actual strong - PODable - event that affected things. I mean, it seems reasonable, but...
Also, quite apart from the "amusement park brush," monorails took another hit from the "futurist brush." Things that get described a lot as "the 'X' of the future" (whether it's car, house, train or whatever) and have nice shiny models made of them in "World Of Tomorrow" exhibits seem to have an almost impossibly hard time actually being built in the real world - even if they are all they say they are.
It seems like being shown as part of the "World of Tomorrow" voids anyone thinking about building it today - at least, anyone practical enough not to go under before the first prototypes get finished.
Monorails had this against them decades before Disney or the Seattle World's Fair made them "only a ride" and that might have proved an impassible barrier even in a Disneyland Monorail-less world.
"...[Man Who Folded Himself] was talking about Robert Kennedy [not JFK]." Well, I read the book over thirty years ago - details are bound to be a bit on the fuzzy side by now...;)
Hey, wait a minute! Acto to this website, he did save JFK too:
Mind you, he wasn't rekilled because of the whole "coke bottle in the past" incident like I had it, but a modest conflation of Kennedy's is reasonable after thirty years...
Also, quite apart from the "amusement park brush," monorails took another hit from the "futurist brush." Things that get described a lot as "the 'X' of the future" (whether it's car, house, train or whatever) and have nice shiny models made of them in "World Of Tomorrow" exhibits seem to have an almost impossibly hard time actually being built in the real world - even if they are all they say they are.
It seems like being shown as part of the "World of Tomorrow" voids anyone thinking about building it today - at least, anyone practical enough not to go under before the first prototypes get finished.
Monorails had this against them decades before Disney or the Seattle World's Fair made them "only a ride" and that might have proved an impassible barrier even in a Disneyland Monorail-less world.
"...[Man Who Folded Himself] was talking about Robert Kennedy [not JFK]." Well, I read the book over thirty years ago - details are bound to be a bit on the fuzzy side by now...;)Hey, wait a minute! Acto to this website, he did save JFK too:
"For a while I was on an anti-assassination kick. I have had the unique pleasure of tapping Lee Harvey Oswald on the shoulder (Yes, I know there were people who had doubts about who did it—but I was there; I know it was Oswald) just before he would have pulled the trigger. Then I blew his head off. (John Wilkes Booth, James Earl Ray, and Sirhan Sirhan were similarly startled. In two cases, though, I had to go back and excise my removal of the assassins. I didn't like the resultant worlds. Some of our heroes serve us better dead than alive.)"
Mind you, he wasn't rekilled because of the whole "coke bottle in the past" incident like I had it, but a modest conflation of Kennedy's is reasonable after thirty years...
A handful of typos ("think" for "thing" being one of the more noticeable ones), but none that actually screw up what I'm trying to say, so that's pretty good.
Mind you, I'm once again far from the clearcut...
Mind you, I'm once again far from the clearcut...
Kurt Sidaway
ct: Me (POD 46): ct: Dale C:
"...well, if he isn't getting enough [iron] from the mines in Alsace, Lorraine & the Saar - he could always commandeer it from Silesia..." Yes - but building a France-wide rail network is still going to cost a lot of iron for the late 18th, early 19th century. What few "railroads" at that time were in the single-digit-miles length - and that would be part of the reason. And it's not just the cost of the raw iron - it's the cost of making it into rails (and/or rail parts).
Not to mention rolled wrought iron rails won't be developed until 1823 (at the Bedlington Ironworks), which is a big hold-up. Cast iron rails were used, but obviously production is a lot slower when you have to cast each rail and they were notoriously brittle.
Still, I'd suspect that a rail line at that time would go with the "cast-iron strapped to the top of wood rail" system which saves iron costs (good), but only at the cost of using more wood (bad) or they could go with a totally cast-iron rail, like some of the early lines in Great Britain.
I honestly just can't see the economic benefits of a more generalized rail network in Napoleonic France. Some sort (single-digit-miles) lines connecting mines with mills, yes. A bigger network, no. It would make more sense to put that money into (more) canals at that time.
Mind you, getting the whole rail idea in the heads of the Ecoles pratiques des mines early on could get several of those "short lines" built that didn't get built on OTL (and over more than just France), which could only advance things once cheap (and abundant) rails were available.
Not to mention rolled wrought iron rails won't be developed until 1823 (at the Bedlington Ironworks), which is a big hold-up. Cast iron rails were used, but obviously production is a lot slower when you have to cast each rail and they were notoriously brittle.
Still, I'd suspect that a rail line at that time would go with the "cast-iron strapped to the top of wood rail" system which saves iron costs (good), but only at the cost of using more wood (bad) or they could go with a totally cast-iron rail, like some of the early lines in Great Britain.
I honestly just can't see the economic benefits of a more generalized rail network in Napoleonic France. Some sort (single-digit-miles) lines connecting mines with mills, yes. A bigger network, no. It would make more sense to put that money into (more) canals at that time.
Mind you, getting the whole rail idea in the heads of the Ecoles pratiques des mines early on could get several of those "short lines" built that didn't get built on OTL (and over more than just France), which could only advance things once cheap (and abundant) rails were available.
re: Alweg-LA:
"...of course we would now be asking how green this system is - how is it improving LA's carbon footprint?" Probably remarkably little.
No, scratch that, it would be an improvement over OTL, it just wouldn't be a large one. Cool as it is, I strongly suspect that most of the riders of it would be ones that - on OTL - ride buses. Since buses are already reasonably efficient on a per-person carbon output basis, the additional savings by going electric (especially since most of L.A.'s power comes from coal and natural-gas fired plants3) won't be that big.
And only about 10% of Los Angeles commutes by mass transit of some kind (as compared to 30% for Chicago and 50% for New York). Again - cool as it is - Alweg's probably not going to change that all that much. Especially since unless you're lucky enough to live and work within walking distance of a station, you're still going to end up on at least one bus somewhere during your journey.4
Therefore, if that ATL is lucky, the added speed and coolness of the monorails will encourage a few extra percent of riders out of their cars. Call it kicking it up to 15% mass transit. That will make for a little savings (though less than you'd expect if California has to import the juice for all these monorails from coal-fired plants), but it certainly isn't going to be that big a deal - unless, of course, you're a politician, and you make it a talking point in your "How Good I'm Doing" statements come next election...
Mind you, if California (and the rest of the U.S.) decides to power all these neato monorails by building more nuclear plants than they do on OTL (and this would have to be a very early - and quickly made - decision, given what a bad odor they'll be in in the 70's), then it'll make for a big carbon footprint change - though as a side effect rather than a direct one.
No, scratch that, it would be an improvement over OTL, it just wouldn't be a large one. Cool as it is, I strongly suspect that most of the riders of it would be ones that - on OTL - ride buses. Since buses are already reasonably efficient on a per-person carbon output basis, the additional savings by going electric (especially since most of L.A.'s power comes from coal and natural-gas fired plants3) won't be that big.
And only about 10% of Los Angeles commutes by mass transit of some kind (as compared to 30% for Chicago and 50% for New York). Again - cool as it is - Alweg's probably not going to change that all that much. Especially since unless you're lucky enough to live and work within walking distance of a station, you're still going to end up on at least one bus somewhere during your journey.4
Therefore, if that ATL is lucky, the added speed and coolness of the monorails will encourage a few extra percent of riders out of their cars. Call it kicking it up to 15% mass transit. That will make for a little savings (though less than you'd expect if California has to import the juice for all these monorails from coal-fired plants), but it certainly isn't going to be that big a deal - unless, of course, you're a politician, and you make it a talking point in your "How Good I'm Doing" statements come next election...
Mind you, if California (and the rest of the U.S.) decides to power all these neato monorails by building more nuclear plants than they do on OTL (and this would have to be a very early - and quickly made - decision, given what a bad odor they'll be in in the 70's), then it'll make for a big carbon footprint change - though as a side effect rather than a direct one.
ct: Robert Alley (POD 40):
"...we now have managed to add most of Europe west of the Polish and Turkish lands and south of the Baltic...Does this qualify as Europe-wide?" Maybe not - but it's probably as close as you can get (without invoking ASBs or meteor impacts or massive plagues).
My main problem is in seeing a federalization-bent developing in the 16th century. It's almost totally at odds with all the "centralization" trends going on in the period and - indeed - at odds with the whole idea of an "Empire" back then. I'm not saying it's impossible - not the least reason being my 16th century European historical knowledge is...weak, at best - but I have no idea how you'd pull it off.
My main problem is in seeing a federalization-bent developing in the 16th century. It's almost totally at odds with all the "centralization" trends going on in the period and - indeed - at odds with the whole idea of an "Empire" back then. I'm not saying it's impossible - not the least reason being my 16th century European historical knowledge is...weak, at best - but I have no idea how you'd pull it off.
ct: Mark Ford:
"I know many people who won't eat...anything that has been within 100 miles of garlic, because it's 'foreign stuff and I can't be doing with it." Wow! What an amazingly limited diet they must have. Those items includes almost everything I eat (because garlic goes with almost any food). Heck, I tip some fried garlic into my cup-soups just to kick them up a bit!5
re: Henricus IX:
Nicely done. You've eliminated the CoE, made for a (potentially) earlier Act of Union, changed much of the map for Western Europe - and that's all just in the first fifty years!
Cool.
Cool.
Robert Alley
ct: Dale Cozort: re: No Radar:
"...it does not seem too much of a stretch for Churchill to order a couple gross of smallish blimps [as spotters in a no radar BoB]" No indeed - as blimps were used heavily by the U.S. for similar roles.Mind you, a "couple gross" might be stretching it a bit - as that's more than twice the combined total of U.S. Atlantic and Pacific blimp squadrons at their max. Add in the bunch of (expensive) "automated" ones you propose and this starts adding up to be a really pricey tracking system!
re: Early Nuclear Power:
Given the sheer size of any nuclear device built in the 30's (or at least, the sheer size they'd think any nuclear device would have to be), I wonder if some of the countries involved would begin thinking in terms of really big artillery rather than aircraft or (hear the early 30's laughter now if someone even mentions them) rockets. The pieces would have to be very specialized, but something big enough (and with enough range - important when your shell is atomic!) is well within the range of 1930's tech.
Something like the German's "Dora" could easily launch even the bulkiness that was a "Fat Man." And it helps correct for that "very limited shots before you have to replace the barrel problem" it had too - you only need to fire "very limited shots" when they're in the kiloton range!.
And the U.S. actually made (and tested!) "atomic cannon" after the war (based on the design of the 280mm German K5 Railroad Gun!), so the ideas not totally out there.
Imagine the planning of a "blitzkrieg" where the first shot is a fusillade of ten or twelve "shells" in the kiloton range, hitting the enemy's defenses...then following up with aircraft to hit the shocked survivors and tanks to roll through and take the territory. Oh sure, we know there'd be...negative effects from running your troops through the nicely radioactive debris...but that wouldn't even occur to 1930's military planners (or 1940's or early-50's, for that matter).
And the Navy starts planning for Battleship duels with nukes...and won't that be an interesting planning session!6
Something like the German's "Dora" could easily launch even the bulkiness that was a "Fat Man." And it helps correct for that "very limited shots before you have to replace the barrel problem" it had too - you only need to fire "very limited shots" when they're in the kiloton range!.And the U.S. actually made (and tested!) "atomic cannon" after the war (based on the design of the 280mm German K5 Railroad Gun!), so the ideas not totally out there.
Imagine the planning of a "blitzkrieg" where the first shot is a fusillade of ten or twelve "shells" in the kiloton range, hitting the enemy's defenses...then following up with aircraft to hit the shocked survivors and tanks to roll through and take the territory. Oh sure, we know there'd be...negative effects from running your troops through the nicely radioactive debris...but that wouldn't even occur to 1930's military planners (or 1940's or early-50's, for that matter).
And the Navy starts planning for Battleship duels with nukes...and won't that be an interesting planning session!6
ct: Anthony Docimo: re: "Ascent":
"...though if it turns out that the Soviets made it there [the Moon] alive, that would automatically kick us into second place." Maybe. But as they said (very roughly) in Mouse on the Moon "what matters is not who gets here first, the people who will get the parades will be those who get back first..."7
ct: Me:
"...so it seems reasonable that a wealthy consortium of railroad firms would lobby [to] discourage automobile or aircraft use." Which is something like what I did for Trolleyworld, in giving the railroads in the RoC enough political power to keep down the number of intercity roads.
It occurs to me that railroads could simple co-op air travel so that any that occurred would, well, would be theirs. That would tend to put a restriction on air routes to ones that didn't compete with rail routes they were already running.
In fact, I believe they tried to do this on OTL - but were told they couldn't own airlines by the PUC or something (very fuzzy memory here). I don't know how hard it'd be to change that, but it's at least a place to start.
It occurs to me that railroads could simple co-op air travel so that any that occurred would, well, would be theirs. That would tend to put a restriction on air routes to ones that didn't compete with rail routes they were already running.
In fact, I believe they tried to do this on OTL - but were told they couldn't own airlines by the PUC or something (very fuzzy memory here). I don't know how hard it'd be to change that, but it's at least a place to start.
ct: Robert Gill: re: Sidaway:
"Yes there are quite a few rather prosperous black communities that were suddenly wiped out, particularly in the late 19th & early 20th centuries." Though only one in California, apparently: Allensworth, out in the San Joaquin Valley.
Started in 1908 it actually began dying off fairly soon as by 1914, water shortages (big time - they'd all overpumped the water supplies) in the San Joaquin left the place with essentially no good water. Not an ideal situation for a farm town. Still, it would have had a better shot at surviving had Colonel Allensworth - the town's founder and leader - not been hit by a car in Monrovia...
...there's probably a POD in that, but the effects are likely to be subtle. It's currently a state historical park. Interestingly enough, if you've got a big enough group, Amtrak will stop at the old station there to let you on/off.
"Yes there are quite a few rather prosperous black communities that were suddenly wiped out, particularly in the late 19th & early 20th centuries." Though only one in California, apparently: Allensworth, out in the San Joaquin Valley.Started in 1908 it actually began dying off fairly soon as by 1914, water shortages (big time - they'd all overpumped the water supplies) in the San Joaquin left the place with essentially no good water. Not an ideal situation for a farm town. Still, it would have had a better shot at surviving had Colonel Allensworth - the town's founder and leader - not been hit by a car in Monrovia...
...there's probably a POD in that, but the effects are likely to be subtle. It's currently a state historical park. Interestingly enough, if you've got a big enough group, Amtrak will stop at the old station there to let you on/off.
ct: Me:
"...reminds me of my sister's cat running around the different doors to our house, trying to find the one that goes out to a place that isn't raining..." Apparently this is a common cat-thing - as Heinlein told a similar story about a cat looking for "the door into summer" in the book of the same name. Mind, the house in question had twelve, thirteen doors, so it was probably a much longer process...
re: Alweg-LA Timeline:
"Is there any significance to the fact that the LA County supervisors approved the Alweg proposal on the same day as JFK's assassination?" Certainly none that I planned! I didn't even realize it until you pointed that out.
The date was chosen more or less by working backwards from the February 5th, 1965 construction start date and forward from the June 1963 Alweg proposal date. I figured five months would be about how long the Board would take to make up their minds and that would give a reasonable sounding two years, two months to design and build the thing. At that point I basically went "November" and then did a sort of "blindfolded pin-sticking" thing to pick a date.
Such is coincidence...Still, having it pointed out to me, I'm going to change it a bit to avoid questions such as this.
With a couple of exceptions, all of the Interstates in the Los Angeles area are up and running before Alweg stacks the first beam. Heck, they build the first line right in the middle of Interstate 10! There is some more interstate construction going on over the years, but I kinda timed things so that it is (almost) all in areas outside of Alweg's construction - at least, at the time.
It might affect some of the feeder and more local freeways a bit - for instance, the 105 certainly isn't going to have a trolley running down it's middle! - but the routes for those were set in stone pretty much back in the 50's and almost all the big construction was over by the early 70's - just when Alweg's beginning its big push. Again, not too much change.
Besides, as I pointed out to Kurt, even if the Alweg is hideously successful by Los Angeles standards, it's still barely going to put much of a dent in car travel in the area. At best, maybe five, ten percent less auto traffic. That still leaves a lot of need for new freeways.
You'll notice that the "build it for free/be paid out of revenues" contract only got made for the original "Backbone" lines. All the other construction was built on a more "pay as you go" system, with Alweg getting country funds both for construction and for operations. From a practical standpoint, the Alweg system will be dependent on county funds to at least make up the shortfalls in revenue - unless they want to price their tickets out of reach (like - apparently - the MTA plans...).
The main problem with public transit is that unlike cars - unless you're very lucky - it doesn't run from your front door to the front doors of every place you end up going to. It also runs on its schedule, not yours. And it almost always requires taking more than one vehicle. And it's not too forgiving if you want to load ten, twelve sacks of groceries into it.
Basically, even the best public transit takes at least twice as long as a car and time is at least as valuable a commodity as money. So as long as people have enough money, they'll (essentially) buy time with it.
Using me as an example: Driving costs me twenty-five cents a mile (and, yes, that's the correct amount - I have graphs. Mind you, this is with a car long paid off - it could be up to double with a new car) and have averaged about thirty-six miles a day this last year (with a big chunk of that caused by vacation trips - which would be hard to do on the MTA...) which makes for a total of about $9 a day or $275 a month. A monthly pass, meanwhile, costs $62. Except that I'd have to buy one for Dee Dee too, so now we're up to $124 - or almost half of what driving the car costs. Still, it sounds okay.
But meanwhile, the shortest trip to work on the bus takes three buses and two-hours, or over four times as long as the car (twenty-five minutes)! Even were I to move so that I only needed a single bus, it would still take twice as long...because that's the nature of a transport system that has to keep stopping and starting every few blocks.
Minimum Standard Wage says my hours are now worth $7 (my job says it's more like $22, but I digress...) and taking a bus add an extra three hours (plus) to my four-times a week commute. Three hours times eighteen workdays a month times that seven dollars equals $378! Add in the cost of the bus pass (just mine, not Dee Dee's as well) and suddenly it costs me the equivalent of $440 to take the bus,8 versus that $275 for the car. Since gas prices are only about twelve cents of that twenty-five per mile, gas prices would have to hit nearly $7 before a bus becomes as "cheap" as a car to me!9
And note that I kinda cheated in the bus's favor here by comparing just the bus cost for the commute to work vs the entire month's driving cost for the car - which is another five-hundred miles a month or so. That adds at least another $70-$100 of "bus time" to the costs - plus Dee Dee's bus pass, as much of those miles have both of us in the car - for a total more like $600 a month. Gas prices have to climb over $10 a gallon to match that...
...except that with gas prices over $10 a gallon, MTA bus passes will be more along the lines of of $150 (they've already said they want to raise it first to $75 and then to $140 - and that's with $3 a gallon gas...$150's probably overly conservative), which means gas prices would have to rise another two-bucks a gallon to match bus costs.
This is beginning to look like one of those races where the two competitors get forever closer, but the one behind never passes the one in front.
The date was chosen more or less by working backwards from the February 5th, 1965 construction start date and forward from the June 1963 Alweg proposal date. I figured five months would be about how long the Board would take to make up their minds and that would give a reasonable sounding two years, two months to design and build the thing. At that point I basically went "November" and then did a sort of "blindfolded pin-sticking" thing to pick a date.
Such is coincidence...Still, having it pointed out to me, I'm going to change it a bit to avoid questions such as this.
With a couple of exceptions, all of the Interstates in the Los Angeles area are up and running before Alweg stacks the first beam. Heck, they build the first line right in the middle of Interstate 10! There is some more interstate construction going on over the years, but I kinda timed things so that it is (almost) all in areas outside of Alweg's construction - at least, at the time.
It might affect some of the feeder and more local freeways a bit - for instance, the 105 certainly isn't going to have a trolley running down it's middle! - but the routes for those were set in stone pretty much back in the 50's and almost all the big construction was over by the early 70's - just when Alweg's beginning its big push. Again, not too much change.
Besides, as I pointed out to Kurt, even if the Alweg is hideously successful by Los Angeles standards, it's still barely going to put much of a dent in car travel in the area. At best, maybe five, ten percent less auto traffic. That still leaves a lot of need for new freeways.
You'll notice that the "build it for free/be paid out of revenues" contract only got made for the original "Backbone" lines. All the other construction was built on a more "pay as you go" system, with Alweg getting country funds both for construction and for operations. From a practical standpoint, the Alweg system will be dependent on county funds to at least make up the shortfalls in revenue - unless they want to price their tickets out of reach (like - apparently - the MTA plans...).
The main problem with public transit is that unlike cars - unless you're very lucky - it doesn't run from your front door to the front doors of every place you end up going to. It also runs on its schedule, not yours. And it almost always requires taking more than one vehicle. And it's not too forgiving if you want to load ten, twelve sacks of groceries into it.
Basically, even the best public transit takes at least twice as long as a car and time is at least as valuable a commodity as money. So as long as people have enough money, they'll (essentially) buy time with it.
Using me as an example: Driving costs me twenty-five cents a mile (and, yes, that's the correct amount - I have graphs. Mind you, this is with a car long paid off - it could be up to double with a new car) and have averaged about thirty-six miles a day this last year (with a big chunk of that caused by vacation trips - which would be hard to do on the MTA...) which makes for a total of about $9 a day or $275 a month. A monthly pass, meanwhile, costs $62. Except that I'd have to buy one for Dee Dee too, so now we're up to $124 - or almost half of what driving the car costs. Still, it sounds okay.
But meanwhile, the shortest trip to work on the bus takes three buses and two-hours, or over four times as long as the car (twenty-five minutes)! Even were I to move so that I only needed a single bus, it would still take twice as long...because that's the nature of a transport system that has to keep stopping and starting every few blocks.
Minimum Standard Wage says my hours are now worth $7 (my job says it's more like $22, but I digress...) and taking a bus add an extra three hours (plus) to my four-times a week commute. Three hours times eighteen workdays a month times that seven dollars equals $378! Add in the cost of the bus pass (just mine, not Dee Dee's as well) and suddenly it costs me the equivalent of $440 to take the bus,8 versus that $275 for the car. Since gas prices are only about twelve cents of that twenty-five per mile, gas prices would have to hit nearly $7 before a bus becomes as "cheap" as a car to me!9
And note that I kinda cheated in the bus's favor here by comparing just the bus cost for the commute to work vs the entire month's driving cost for the car - which is another five-hundred miles a month or so. That adds at least another $70-$100 of "bus time" to the costs - plus Dee Dee's bus pass, as much of those miles have both of us in the car - for a total more like $600 a month. Gas prices have to climb over $10 a gallon to match that...
...except that with gas prices over $10 a gallon, MTA bus passes will be more along the lines of of $150 (they've already said they want to raise it first to $75 and then to $140 - and that's with $3 a gallon gas...$150's probably overly conservative), which means gas prices would have to rise another two-bucks a gallon to match bus costs.
This is beginning to look like one of those races where the two competitors get forever closer, but the one behind never passes the one in front.
Anthony Docimo
Along with No Reservations and Bizarre Foods I recommend a show found on "ImaginAsian TV" called Extreme Gourmet. For lack of a better description (I mean, apart from its homepage here), it's sorta a cross between Bizarre Foods, Fear Factor and a travelogue10 - and is worth checking out.
re: The end of Gaius Julius Caesar:
Nicely done. I just wish I could believe it would short-circuit the Roman Empire, but it's way too late by the Rubicon. Both because Caesar - failure or no - has shown you can make a lot of lovely money conquering neighboring territories (at least, initially...;)) and by giving the idea to a whole bunch of current and future generals that "oh sure, Caesar failed, but I can do better..."
And it being Rome, sooner or later one will.
And it being Rome, sooner or later one will.
Christopher Nuttall
re: Reality Seeds - What if NASA had actually developed a lunar base?:
If by plan a Lunar Base, well, NASA's been producing plans for such since, well, since there was a NASA. Most would probably work too (if with some tweaking as things got to the "bend tin" stage). Heck, anything done with the "Apollo Applications" plans is practically "off the shelf" - assuming you do this right after the initial Apollo landings (and before all the Saturn 5 and whatnot production lines get closed down and disassembled).
Problem is, to do this - or any lunar base plans - you need a major political shift or political need by the late 60's at latest. Given the sheer costs of this all,11 there's going to have to be a huge perceived need to get these budgets through Congress. This is such a big shift, in fact, that I suspect having a lunar base is one of the more minor and unimportant changes to that timeline we'll see.
Worse, NASA's going to have to (successfully) do what NASA's never managed to do on OTL - and that's reduce costs pretty much on a continual basis. Short of building an "Ark" to allow mankind to survive some oncoming Earth-Based disaster,12 I can't think of a single need - real or imagined - that could keep Congress funding a Moonbase that is maintained at Apollo-level costs per flight/pound/person.
Now it's not impossible that NASA could do that, what with all the new stuff they'd have to build for this lunar base. But, honestly - given NASA's record - this isn't the way to bet.13
I suspect that getting a lunar base - I mean, one that isn't abandoned five or six years later - requires some sort of tech breakthrough that reduces launch costs at least ten-fold. It would help if it increases launch amounts ten-fold too. At that point, some sort of permanent base can be slipped inside NASA's budget without completely changing the whole history of the United States legislative and executive branches for the last forty years...
Problem is, to do this - or any lunar base plans - you need a major political shift or political need by the late 60's at latest. Given the sheer costs of this all,11 there's going to have to be a huge perceived need to get these budgets through Congress. This is such a big shift, in fact, that I suspect having a lunar base is one of the more minor and unimportant changes to that timeline we'll see.
Worse, NASA's going to have to (successfully) do what NASA's never managed to do on OTL - and that's reduce costs pretty much on a continual basis. Short of building an "Ark" to allow mankind to survive some oncoming Earth-Based disaster,12 I can't think of a single need - real or imagined - that could keep Congress funding a Moonbase that is maintained at Apollo-level costs per flight/pound/person.
Now it's not impossible that NASA could do that, what with all the new stuff they'd have to build for this lunar base. But, honestly - given NASA's record - this isn't the way to bet.13
I suspect that getting a lunar base - I mean, one that isn't abandoned five or six years later - requires some sort of tech breakthrough that reduces launch costs at least ten-fold. It would help if it increases launch amounts ten-fold too. At that point, some sort of permanent base can be slipped inside NASA's budget without completely changing the whole history of the United States legislative and executive branches for the last forty years...
re: "Seeds of Hope" part 1:
Nicely done.
Apart from strongly suspecting that "democracy" in Basra will end up being less a shining beacon and more a publicity stunt to keep American support, it seems a logical sequence of events to me.
Osama would probably end up being a statesman/terrorist in the same class as Arafat. Lots of people would like to put a bullet through him for past actions...but any sense of political realism would suggest he was all that stood between even a fragile coalition and a major - and probably spreading - civil war in Saudi Arabia. Unfortunately, this means the coalition - unless it gets luckier than most such things - has a lifespan equal to Osama's...
Apart from strongly suspecting that "democracy" in Basra will end up being less a shining beacon and more a publicity stunt to keep American support, it seems a logical sequence of events to me.
Osama would probably end up being a statesman/terrorist in the same class as Arafat. Lots of people would like to put a bullet through him for past actions...but any sense of political realism would suggest he was all that stood between even a fragile coalition and a major - and probably spreading - civil war in Saudi Arabia. Unfortunately, this means the coalition - unless it gets luckier than most such things - has a lifespan equal to Osama's...
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Besides, by it's very nature, the number of Slave Owners (otherwise known as all the people who would be fighting against Britain) would be vastly outnumbered by the number of slaves (who would fight for Britain - or at least, against the slave owners). British troops would be facing at most a few thousand rebels and be able to call on for support a hundred times as many.
Besides, most of the slave owners would be living back in England at the time. Makes it kinda hard to declare your independence...