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Herbert,
Could you state at least ONE reason for buying the
Government vs commercial edition?
I am just curious.
Alex.
On Fri, 22 Oct 2004, Herbert Prinz wrote:
> Marc and Fred,
>
> Amazing. You guys must have special connections to Washington! Did you order
> directly from the GPO? Admittedly, my "survey" is four days old. Last
> Monday, the Almanac was not yet in the stores of the agents in Connecticut,
> Rhode Island or Florida. I tried several ones. The commercial edition was
> readily available, but the government edition was "expected to arrive soon",
> without specific deadline. The explanation I got was that there was a
> distribution problem at the GPO. So, I thought I didn't need to poll list
> members individually for my little statistics.
>
> At any rate, almanacs used to come out three years ahead of time. What
> prevents the government from keeping up this practice? For a moment, let's
> forget the small boaters on extended passages and circumnavigations, or
> those who want to plan their next sailing vacation around a solar eclipse. I
> wonder whether the navy uses the almanacs at all. How are they distributed
> at the last moment to all the deployed navy ships?
>
> Of course, it could be that the navy already has their copies and the
> government only blocks distribution to the general public in the interest of
> homeland security. As we all know, terrorists are nowadays the number one
> beneficiaries of almanacs.
>
> Herbert Prinz
>
