The eastern US gaps on the Verizon map correspond with population gaps, so I don't see what the problem is. A good example in the Verizon map is northern Maine. Most of that area is underpopulated and privately owned by paper/logging companies. You can't even drive there without authorization, and the roads you do drive in are mostly dirt tracks dominating by logging trucks.
For northern New York, the main gap looks like the Adirondack area, again pretty underpopulated. Likewise for the NH and VT gaps. So you can't assume that all of the eastern US is part of the Megalopolis. There is some space left!
On the Acela ("high" speed train that runs up and down the Northeast Corridor), they have a quiet car. I was traveling back from Philly and just after New York some guy enters the car blathering on his cell. Approximately 2 seconds later he was forced into a different car (there are doors between cars). So we have this in the US as well.
That still doesn't substantiate your size argument. If it's per person then you can define it by where people live--and by that reckoning Canada is a 150-km-wide strip from the US border---a much smaller landmass indeed. In fact, I'm pretty sure that Inhabited Canada is similar in area to Germany, or France at most.
The best thing to do would be to move the series forward into post-Voyager time and start fresh. And by fresh I mean "totally different outlook". Just like TOS, TNG, and DS9 represented a lot of the values and goings-on of the 60s and then 80s/90s, a fitting show now in the Star Trek universe would ditch the "ship show" concept and move into something totally different. And thus, a great idea would be a show following people in Starfleet Intelligence. The advantages of this are:
More sinister, DS9-like environment (much more believable)
Taps into the national psyche right now
Hello? Run-ins with rogue Section 31-ers? Perfect!
Also, this may be off the wall, but I would love to see more of Earth in the late 2300s. Maybe set it in New York, or London, or anywhere other than San Francisco or Paris for a change!
At work (a pharma company) today my department (QA) was told we were going to help with Good Promotional Practices for the next year. People have to remember that half the reason that these ads are so oblique lies with government regulations, which make ads both good (ethically) and bad (annoying to watch).
I'm just saying the Inner Core. That makes Boston the size of Indianapolis, Philadelphia, (still smaller than) Jacksonville, Chicago. It doesn't include the whole metro area.
National capital doesn't mean anything either. What about Canberra? Or Brasilia? I would argue that Boston is more international than those.
Boston doesn't have delusions of being a big city. It IS a big city. The metropolitan area is one of the largest in the country, at 5 million and change. AKA, the same size as Madrid. The only reason that it has a small population is that it's a small city in area like Miami or Seattle. If it had the area of most major American cities (say, everything inside 128), it would have at least a million. Boston is at least a gamma world city. So yeah, maybe it's no New York, but it's no Indianapolis either.
The one question I have is how long did it take for someone to recognize the Mooninites. I think the best part of all this is that there was one of these in Sullivan Square near 93. When you drive into Boston on 93 from the north, almost directly above Sullivan Square, there is (or was as of 2 weeks ago) a GIANT, LIT UP billboard of Ignignokt with the phrase "[adult swim]" prominently displayed. Did anyone think to look up and say "Hey, that's the same.... What the..." I mean, out of all the police, ATF, or whoever scrounging around the city, there must have been, if not any fans of the show, at least someone that SAW the billboard. Either that or my fate in the government or the billboard industry is seriously misplaced.
I love when people bring up RTP. RTP is the tech gulag of America. CARY = Containment Area for Relocated Yankees.
I've never heard anyone up here in Boston that was happy when they heard they were being shipped down there. California, maybe, but RTP? Slow down. Work on not having everything shut down after 1" of snow first.
Hey, we got that whole theocracy out our systems after 1690. Kansas, on the other hand, has a way to go.
Romney will certainly never win any elections here again; the only reason he won in the first place is because the alternative (Shannon O'Brien) was even more unpalatable. Plus this state has a tradition of Republican governors, since Weld wasn't that bad, and Jane Swift and Celucci were essentially useless. Romney, on the other hand, is useless AND annoyingly loud. And a huge embarassment to Massachusetts.
Slashdot Mirror
The eastern US gaps on the Verizon map correspond with population gaps, so I don't see what the problem is. A good example in the Verizon map is northern Maine. Most of that area is underpopulated and privately owned by paper/logging companies. You can't even drive there without authorization, and the roads you do drive in are mostly dirt tracks dominating by logging trucks. For northern New York, the main gap looks like the Adirondack area, again pretty underpopulated. Likewise for the NH and VT gaps. So you can't assume that all of the eastern US is part of the Megalopolis. There is some space left!
On the Acela ("high" speed train that runs up and down the Northeast Corridor), they have a quiet car. I was traveling back from Philly and just after New York some guy enters the car blathering on his cell. Approximately 2 seconds later he was forced into a different car (there are doors between cars). So we have this in the US as well.
That still doesn't substantiate your size argument. If it's per person then you can define it by where people live--and by that reckoning Canada is a 150-km-wide strip from the US border---a much smaller landmass indeed. In fact, I'm pretty sure that Inhabited Canada is similar in area to Germany, or France at most.
Farmer Joe Smith should be worried: his crop is at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.
Ummm...not to be too pedantic, but I've never heard of "Windows Vista's". I have heard of Windows Vista, the plural of which is "Vistas".
The best thing to do would be to move the series forward into post-Voyager time and start fresh. And by fresh I mean "totally different outlook". Just like TOS, TNG, and DS9 represented a lot of the values and goings-on of the 60s and then 80s/90s, a fitting show now in the Star Trek universe would ditch the "ship show" concept and move into something totally different. And thus, a great idea would be a show following people in Starfleet Intelligence. The advantages of this are:
Also, this may be off the wall, but I would love to see more of Earth in the late 2300s. Maybe set it in New York, or London, or anywhere other than San Francisco or Paris for a change!
Instead of ads, perhaps people and doctors should refer to the only site you really ever need: http://dailymed.nlm.nih.gov/dailymed/about.cfm.
At work (a pharma company) today my department (QA) was told we were going to help with Good Promotional Practices for the next year. People have to remember that half the reason that these ads are so oblique lies with government regulations, which make ads both good (ethically) and bad (annoying to watch).
I'm just saying the Inner Core. That makes Boston the size of Indianapolis, Philadelphia, (still smaller than) Jacksonville, Chicago. It doesn't include the whole metro area. National capital doesn't mean anything either. What about Canberra? Or Brasilia? I would argue that Boston is more international than those.
Boston doesn't have delusions of being a big city. It IS a big city. The metropolitan area is one of the largest in the country, at 5 million and change. AKA, the same size as Madrid. The only reason that it has a small population is that it's a small city in area like Miami or Seattle. If it had the area of most major American cities (say, everything inside 128), it would have at least a million. Boston is at least a gamma world city. So yeah, maybe it's no New York, but it's no Indianapolis either.
The one question I have is how long did it take for someone to recognize the Mooninites. I think the best part of all this is that there was one of these in Sullivan Square near 93. When you drive into Boston on 93 from the north, almost directly above Sullivan Square, there is (or was as of 2 weeks ago) a GIANT, LIT UP billboard of Ignignokt with the phrase "[adult swim]" prominently displayed. Did anyone think to look up and say "Hey, that's the same.... What the..." I mean, out of all the police, ATF, or whoever scrounging around the city, there must have been, if not any fans of the show, at least someone that SAW the billboard. Either that or my fate in the government or the billboard industry is seriously misplaced.
I love when people bring up RTP. RTP is the tech gulag of America. CARY = Containment Area for Relocated Yankees. I've never heard anyone up here in Boston that was happy when they heard they were being shipped down there. California, maybe, but RTP? Slow down. Work on not having everything shut down after 1" of snow first.
Hey, we got that whole theocracy out our systems after 1690. Kansas, on the other hand, has a way to go.
Romney will certainly never win any elections here again; the only reason he won in the first place is because the alternative (Shannon O'Brien) was even more unpalatable. Plus this state has a tradition of Republican governors, since Weld wasn't that bad, and Jane Swift and Celucci were essentially useless. Romney, on the other hand, is useless AND annoyingly loud. And a huge embarassment to Massachusetts.