The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by fermion:

The person who called the accident in did so from here, at the Blue Mountain Variety Store, corner of US 3 and White Road. That was the first place she saw with lights on where she could make a call.

That's around five miles.

This raises a question in my mind: if I were to inadvertently hit a pedestrian, would I be risking charges if I left the scene to go get help? It seems like that would be a silly way to run things, but then again, the law can be counterintuitive.

My slightly belated attempt, partly inspired by an article I wrote about sonar-based seafloor mapping.

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The boundaries of our maps have grown indeed
Across their parents' blank bedragoned space
Through jungles and cold barren lands they lead
And with their growth our knowledge grows apace
Volcano, mountain, seafloor, lunar plane
They compass airless peak and crushing sea
It seems no barriers to our sight remain
But make no error: boundaries still there be.
A sun burns hot a thousand years away.
The dragons know the trick to travel there
They bask beneath a blue-lit summer's day
Flame-breath tinged by trace gas in alien air
Above seas rent by vast sharp rocks they soar
Awaiting our cartographers once more.

Almost forgot--thank you, Chris, for your detailed explanation of Australian bookselling economics. I had been wondering about that for quite some time.

Carrie #240:

My point was more that a lot of people will probably think to themselves "If they can make a DVD for three dollars, why can't they make an old-fashioned low-tech book for less than twenty?" They will feel ripped off, they will think less of the bookstores, and they may very well buy fewer books because of it. This is only a theory I have, mind you, but I don't think it's implausible. I have certainly seen people making exactly that argument with respect to CDs ("why are CDs so expensive? I can get a DVD for ten dollars that has way more stuff on it.")

I would wager that the readers of Making Light are extremely devoted to books and also reasonably savvy as to the reasons behind the price differences, and so the phenomenon won't affect their book-buying habits all that much. However, there are many people for whom this is not true. Would that it were; I imagine the bookselling industry would simply combust with joy if their entire market consisted of such ardent bibliophiles...

I truly don't get what relevance DVD prices has to book selection, since there are times when the DVD won't do.

They serve to make books look unattractively overpriced by comparison, I think. If I can get Catcher in the Rye in DVD format for one-fifth the price of the book version, it may incline me to think that the booksellers are being unreasonably extortionate. Which is not to say that there aren't very good reasons for the price discrepancy, but they're not transparent to Me The Consumer.

There's some research indicating that people don't like to feel that they're getting a bad deal on something, or being "taken advantage of", to the extent that they'll work against their own apparent self-interest in order to avoid an "unfair" bargain. In this case, since I really want Catcher in the Rye, I'll buy it anyway; but in future I won't go to the bookstore as often because I perceive their books to be overpriced. So the low DVD prices are bad for the book industry in general.

On a less theoretical note, as an American visiting Australia, I genuinely was rather taken aback by the high book prices. Geographical isolation doesn't seem sufficient to explain it.

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