Gnomeward Bound

There's a Westercon 60 committee meeting today in San Mateo at the convention hotel. I have a job on the committee about which I'll talk more later, so I need to attend. I've missed most of the meetings, thanks to my rather sloppily scheduled trips to Oregon for the same weekends as the committee meetings. (Not deliberately; I just neglected to pencil in the Westercon meetings before making my travel plans.)

Parking at the hotel is not free (although it will be during the convention), so I need to leave a little early so I can park a few blocks away and park. Walking is good, anyway. It's a beautiful clear day, even though it is (by Bay Area standards) frightfully cold.

Let's Just All Crawl Under the Bed and Whinge

This is somewhat old news -- it happened in October, but I was just pointed at it today -- but there was a discussion in anonymousclaire about the environmental impacts of air travel, specifically carbon usage, with a what seemed like a serious suggestion that we should abolish fan funds because it's Evil to travel by airplane. And this includes what sounds to me like suggestions that it would be better if we stopped holding conventions at all, as Travel is Evil. Obviously, Worldcon, as it draws in people from around the world, is Very Evil.

Okay, yes, I'm exaggerating a bit. And there were some very sensible things said by drplokta, such as the carbon impact of a LA-London flight being about GB£19 (about US$37), so why not add that (in things that offset carbon usage) to the cost of such trips. That's not a lot of money, I think.

I'm not about to stop traveling anytime soon. Now I'd be happy to travel more by train (probably a less carbon-consuming way that air or automobile) if it were possible for me to do so, but I'm not going to stay home whinging about how Evil it is to travel.

Silly Me

[Cross-posted to places I can think might be interested. Feel free to redistribute.]

Because westercon was deleted, I decided to create a westercons community for the general discussion of the Westercon, including discussion of specific Westercons as well.