The World Beyond BetterMost > The Culture Tent
In the New Yorker...
Front-Ranger:
An author we know well is mentioned in the article "Little Houses on the Prairie". Wanting to get to know the residents of the San Luis Valley, the author Ted Conover rides around in a truck offering free firewood. "In the valley, as in an Annie Proulx story, freezing to death is an ever-present possibility," the reviewer Kathryn Schulz writes.
I drive through that valley at least once a year (3X this year) and I never found it to be so impoverished. It has the reputation of producing some of the most high-quality protein-rich hay imaginable and fetches a price to match. Also, the review, and, I suspect, the book, doesn't mention any Native Americans of which there are many in that area. I don't think I'll read that book.
Front-Ranger:
--- Quote from: Jeff Wrangler on December 06, 2022, 02:02:12 pm ---... Even that bit about the planes ends up depressing--no way will they work in place of large airliners.
--- End quote ---
The Alia, which is more like a personal jet or Hovercraft, is not meant to replace large airliners. Think of going to a small suburban airport near you, getting on an Alia with eight other passengers, and flying to Provincetown, 300 miles as the crow flies, in less than an hour. The Alia would use $40 worth of stored electricity as opposed to a conventional plane, which would use $1200 in jet fuel, 30 times more. Even though you'd have what amounts to a chartered flight, you'd pay only a fraction. And you wouldn't have to be herded to a hub somewhere, New York, Philly, or Boston, to be aggregated onto an energy guzzling airliner.
serious crayons:
--- Quote from: Front-Ranger on December 06, 2022, 07:28:25 pm ---I drive through that valley at least once a year (3X this year) and I never found it to be so impoverished. It has the reputation of producing some of the most high-quality protein-rich hay imaginable and fetches a price to match. Also, the review, and, I suspect, the book, doesn't mention any Native Americans of which there are many in that area. I don't think I'll read that book.
--- End quote ---
Can't vouch for the book, and the review didn't really spark my interest. But I will say that Ted Conover is a highly regarded immersion journalist. "Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing," about being a prison guard in Sing Sing, is especially prominent (I haven't read it).
I wish Kathryn Schulz had written more on the topic of immersion journalism. It can be interesting and a great method for getting really inside stories but I have mixed feelings about it. I may be the only person in the world who disliked Barbara Ehrenreich's "Nickeled and Dimed." I wasn't impressed by an account of posing as a minimum-wage worker by someone who cooked up the idea over dinner with Harper's editor Lewis Lapham and undoubtedly had a book contract going into it. "Maid," a book by someone who was actually a maid and on welfare, was more valid, IMO.
Jeff Wrangler:
--- Quote from: Front-Ranger on December 06, 2022, 07:47:19 pm ---The Alia, which is more like a personal jet or Hovercraft, is not meant to replace large airliners. Think of going to a small suburban airport near you, getting on an Alia with eight other passengers, and flying to Provincetown, 300 miles as the crow flies, in less than an hour. The Alia would use $40 worth of stored electricity as opposed to a conventional plane, which would use $1200 in jet fuel, 30 times more. Even though you'd have what amounts to a chartered flight, you'd pay only a fraction. And you wouldn't have to be herded to a hub somewhere, New York, Philly, or Boston, to be aggregated onto an energy guzzling airliner.
--- End quote ---
That's all true, but that wasn't my point. The Alia, and similar electric planes, can't replace airliners to move large numbers of people long distances.
You can take a train from here to Boston. The train is already powered by electricity.
Jeff Wrangler:
--- Quote from: Front-Ranger on December 06, 2022, 07:28:25 pm ---An author we know well is mentioned in the article "Little Houses on the Prairie".
--- End quote ---
I laughed when I read that. :)
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