Nothing says romantic nostalgia like the idea of riding a train - it's slow, it is serene. I'd do it more often but it takes 21 hours to go from my home in California to Seattle - and the last time I went the power outlets hadn't been updated since about 1975, so you could use an electric shaver but not a laptop.
That means 21 hours of doing nothing, unless you write longhand. Or you carry a manual typewriter and want to annoy the entire car.
So much as I might like to take the California Zephyr to Chicago, it is not practical. Or at least wasn't. Maybe the long-distance electricity issue has been fixed because, after a recent contest, 24 people have been chosen for the Amtrak Residency Program. They each get a long-distance trip where they can do nothing but hopefully be inspired.
The best news about the 24 people they picked out of 16,000 applicants? I haven't heard of a single one of them. That's a big relief when you are in the science media community, and you can put 20 known names into a hat and have a 50 percent chance of naming the winners of every grant, fellowship and award. Heck, one time a clueless New York City blogger created a Pioneers of Science 2.0 article and forgot to include anyone actually involved with Science 2.0. Really, it was all corporate media Science 1.0 people who just happened to be working in New York City and were on the Internet.
They didn't pick unknowns, they are all real writers, so Amtrak knows they are going to get something out of it, and I think it's a nifty gimmick for $50,000 of taxpayer money.
H/T Quartz
