Over the past couple days I've had a chance to reread carefully all the contributions to this long and thought-inspiring thread. Not least impressive is the literary level of these contributions--a lot of it is blamed good writing!! It is evidence that there is some good stuff on the Internet. (And a great tribute to the readership of CN.) Of course you have to dig through a lot of blue mud to find the diamonds. And the mottos still have to be "buyer beware" and "you get what you pay for"--because I've seen a surprising numbers of typos and errors in fact even on the web sites of places like the University of Chicago Oriental Institute and the British Museum. They face the question of how much time (money) to invest in proofreading texts on such a disposable medium as the Internet. One of the recurrent themes of this thread has been the difference between words and images and a computer screen and words and images on paper. It comes down to a sense of permanence: to destroy the words and images on a computer screen all you have to do is move a finger; but if you want to destroy a piece of paper you at least have to go to the kitchen for a match. And have you ever tried to burn a book?--they fight for life. It's wonderful. (This is one of the themes of Terry Pratchett's splendid DiscWorld novel "Going Postal.") So long as people enjoy words and the things they say, there will always be a place for hard copy. And one of the evidences for that affirmation I offer would be this thread. But are there enough people today who like serious amateur astronomy to keep two magazines afloat? A couple writers above mentioned the change in culture in America between the 1960s and today. Around 1970 my senior high school, with a total enrollment of less than 500 students , offered SIX full years of sciences. In the 1990s that same school, with more than twice the enrollment, offered just TWO years. The society as a whole does not encourage its youth to pursue science (or any other intellectual curiosity) with the same enthusiasm and conviction it did several decades ago. I suspect and fear that the troubles with the astronomy magazines reflect a deeper and more sinister problem than just the economics of the publishing industry.
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