I'm going to think about this while I take my horse-drawn carriage out to the apothecary.

Nope, still think the NYT is fucking stupid on this one. And that's after my bromide.

I'm putting a carriage return on my keyboard 'cause I miss sending the can of beer flying across the room.

Ah yes, railways - everyone knows how popular Amtrak is. I mean, who wants to hop a quick flight to Chicago when you can spend 24 hours on a train to get there. That's getting your money's worth.

I've got a huge lump in my abdomen. Should I do leeches or one of those new-fangled copper bracelets?

The 8-track player manufacturers had the same kind of lovely epiphany about their futures in 1975.

My eight-track switched tracks in the middle of "Dire Wolf." I was pissed.

Keith Richards pissed into my Victrola, so I had to get one of those futuristic radios.

"To survive, technologies must evolve, much as animal species do in nature."

If I still have and play with my Atari 2600, does that make me a creationist?

@VoxPopuli: Last year I took a train from Seattle to New York that took four days. And it was a fucking blast. You can get upclose with the scenery in a way you never will in car, bus, or (obv) plane. As long as you don't pick one of the consistently nightmare-late routes and don't mind having lunch with bored, befannypacked retirees, it can be an intensely pleasurable experience...just not a time-efficient one, so your point remains.

@Dickdogfood: Sadly, I have not had a good time on a train, but it really depends on who your seat neighbor is (crazies, both ways, in my case) and what kind of scenery (flat Midwest) you have. But I can see your point.

@VoxPopuli: Also since dude added "trucks" to "cars" and "planes," I think he's not just referring to passenger travel. Passenger rail in America has been a subsidized mess for a long time, but freighter rail is pretty profitable these days.

Uhm, you dingdongs, have you heard of Europe? Just because this country can't do rail doesn't mean it's obsolete. You fools would probably take the plane from Paris to London. But, hey, maybe you just love a good squeeze box.

I took the train from San Francisco to Washington DC. It cost more than a grand and took like a week -- but it was one of the best times of my life. Once you get moving, you become like family on those long trips.

@wretched_of_the_mirth: True. When I think of the airport hassle compared to getting on a train, reading a book, maybe drinking some wine, and watching the countryside pass by, I can't for the life of me think why anyone would fly in Europe.

And don't call us dingdongs. Words hurt.

A lot of time is spent dancing up and down on the graves of us old-media types, and very little on how much you rely on our reporting and writing to meet your daily content quotas. We may be the dinosaurs, but you guys are the leeches.

@ragepotato: Cleearly you need to have your humors adjusted.

@AlbanyEd: I'm not qualified to speak on behalf of Gawker, but I can think of few places where people laud good reporting and writing as much as they do here. People here do seem unafraid to tear apart the idea that good work can't appear on a blog, or to point out that old-media often seems willing to cede its historic strength in doing difficult reporting work. I'd also be wiling to bet that the NYT would use a remora analogy rather than a leech one with respect to posts like this.

@HiredGoons: I hadn't thought of that, thanks. It may just be a preponderance of yellow bile.

@ragepotato: willing has two l's you idiot leech

@ragepotato: I was going to assure you that dingdong is the choicest term of the dearest endearment... but instead I went ahead and hired me some goons.

Young man in a carriage, driving like he's mad
With a pair of horses he borrowed from his dad
He cracks his whip so lively just to see the ladies smile
But we know he's only puttin' on thye style...

Glad that songs making a comeback...

Yeah, train travel in Europe is doing well, but because they adapted the old fashioned trains to high-speed to compete with the airlines. And radio got smart and went digital. So when our folks at the Times figure out something new and cool, I'll be the first to enjoy it. But they better get to work.

I don't know why this turned into a conversation about the state of train travel, but here's my two cents: An amtrak train from Providence, R.I. to Baltimore costs twice as much and takes about five times as long than a flight (given, this is on Southwest, and BWI is a major hub for SW), it's pretty obvious which is the better choice.
That being said, taking the Amtrak between the New York and Boston areas is pretty reasonable, way less of a hassle than flying, and I actually find trains much nicer to travel on. Unless there's an old lady bitching on her cell phone about her mother's meds and hospital visits, which then leads into the woeful story of her misdirected children, all at a very audible level (including doctors' names, dosage amounts, etc.). This happened this Friday, and the time before that. Is this a requirement of an Amtrak trip (just like the annoying couple that passive aggressively asks you to move so they can sit together, only to have the Missus start playing a movie on her laptop within five minutes), or do I just bad luck?

people have been muttering about the death of newspapers for some time now, but still these stubborn hidebound relics continue. is it due to the massive installed base, as the NYT claims? doubtful. i think it's because the smart people who find things out and write about them are generally called 'reporters' and until blogs and the like actually start paying for the luxury investigative stuff the big papers still do very, very well most of us are still going to read the paper.

related: people in the art world write about 'the death of painting' approximately every five years, and painting isn't going anywhere fast. ditto film photography, marble sculpture, etc, etc, ad infinitum.

@edisdead: Marble sculpture ad infinitum? You don't say.

@luckyjim: Jim, you might get lucky on the quiet train.

@wretched_of_the_mirth: Train car, that is.

@luckyjim: Get on the Quiet Car. I go by Amtrak to Boston and DC (from NYC) quite a bit and love it. Except coming back from Philly last week where the AC outlets on my side of the train didn't work and there were no other seats and I couldn't use my laptop. But then, i really should go offline other than to sleep occasionally.

...still trying to get my typewriter hooked up to the internet.

I'll take the train, but only if Cary Grant reserves us a sleeper. And picks me up in his roadster to get to the station. No, don't wake me up, please.

@ragepotato: Fair enough, although I do wish you darn kids would get off my lawn. I can think of one upstart site in my town that relies almost completely on reposting links to stories my paper has done. And I enjoy Gawker's takes on ridiculous "trend" stories (especially whilst listening to my fabulous gramophone recording of "Daisy, Daisy/Bicycle Built for Two"). How about a symbiotic-relationship analogy? What's that bird that lives on the back of a rhino?