Various stuff about last night's postings

First, about community resources:

Hans Rancke-Madsen [email removed] writes:
:> Do any of you have any figures about how many [community resources] a
:> community of 24.000 would have?...

and James says:
: I'm not rightly sure how many varied
:shops Corvallis has, but as a college town I can state with some
:authority that when I was in school there there were exactly thirteen
:pizza outlets.

And I'll bet Nogales Mexico (just across the border from Arizona, and about
45,000 last time I looked) has fewer pizza places, fewer educational outlets
(at the university level anyway), and certainly no Mark Cook.  :=)
I think we need to acknowledge that the quantity and quality of community
resources depends a lot on the culture.  The *BEST* university in all of
Europe (west and east) was, until the 1800's or so, Jewish, and in the
midst of Spain, with the inquisistion squashing Christian education all
around it.

==================
Second, Matt Goldman writes:
:
:I'm about to dive in and write a starship building tool for the High
:Guard system.  Before I start, has anyone written such a programme?
:Why code when you can borrow?  Why High Guard and not the latest
:MegaTraveller or NETraveller?  I like the old system, and I still use
:it.

I'm not sure if anyone has written one.  Not sure instantly anyway.
Try contacting [email removed] and get involved with all of us
(who are exceptionally quiet of late) who are supposed to be actually
_interested_ in computers and traveller.  :=)

You could get really brave and design a deck plan mapper....


================
Third, Catie Helm says:
:This is a yes vote on fiction on the TML.
:
:I could tolerate probably up to a piece of fiction a mailing (ie one
:per day), so long as each piece was about half the length of what
:Scott Kellogg typically posts for his 4.5th frontier war stuff....

Me Too!  :=)
I nominate Scott for this year's "best read while relativistically
accelerated" award, and Nick Sylvain for last year's.  Good stuff, too
for the most part.

==========
Finally, George W. Herbert and Steve Higginbotham discuss cramped quarters:

:[subs] exemplify the "moderately cramped" rule.  Surface ships do not
:in general operate under the same 3 full watch system as subs do, at least
:the ones whose crews and officers I've talked with.  Nearly everyone
:keeps relatively normal sleeping hours...

Who are the lucky tars you've talked to?  During my time in the Coast Guard
we often went 4 on 8 off or even port/starbord (6 on 6 off) for weeks while
underway.  One of the main reasons I opted to leave the sea.  The other is
that the sea and I reached an agreement:  I won't go out, and I won't get
sick.  :=)

George, plese send me some references for good naval architecture info.
I'm toying with the notion of building a boat to warm up for the plane
I'm going to build (and I AM going to build one).  Not that they're any
simpler, I know that.  It's just that if a boat sinks on a test flight,
you can pretty much swim to shore. Not so lucky in a plane.

You who are smart GM's might consider this as a seed for an adventure
or two.

- --
Richard Johnson      [email removed]
Qui custodii ipsos custodes?