Driving from home to my university (which I've never actually done, but I know people who have) is something like 25 hours driving time, not counting rest stops. And that's only like halfway across the country.

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If I drive 19 hours from NC, I get to Houston. That's 19 hours at a likely average of 60 mph (100kmh) roughly.

I used to do it on long breaks in school. Except Houston was just the first stop. Then it was another 10ish hours to where my parents live in NM.

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BTW, when the hell did "cowboy" become a synonym for homicidal tactless maniac? Sheesh.

Maybe when the U.S. media bought into the lie that Bush was a cowboy instead of a cheerleader?

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Philadelphia to Daytona Beach is the longest nonstop road trip I've done. 20 hours, to go straight down I-95 over I guess about 2/3 to 3/4 of the East Coast.

We have a running joke with our friends in Boston where they chastise us for being just down the road, but never coming to see them. (I-90 begins in Boston and ends in Seattle.) Sometimes I'll drive by the spot where I-90 connects to I-5 and wish I could just get on the road and drive to Boston for the hell of it. I think we decided it'd take four days if you didn't stop much.

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All of the above is why the whole world should fit between Boston and New York. If you can't get to it in 4 hours and/or on an interconnected set of train and public transity systems, why bother??

meaning of 'diachronic'

things what change over time. If you study how classrooms have taught Beowulf in the last 150 years, you're doing a diachronic study.

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moonlit, are you bursting into song, then?

No Nutty, I'm pondering people's conceptions of democracy, relative to their age (as in specifically those born 50s & 60s).

Question - 'cos it's 3.15am and I can't be bothered going to my books and you'll all answer so much faster.

What year did African Americans get the vote and what year did women?

sarameg, no I didn't, I assume the article is in the NYT?

Betsy, though I'm sure someone will have answered before me,

diachronic: Of or concerned with phenomena, such as linguistic features, as they change through time.

and less formally too.

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And what, she said plaintively, is the meaning of 'diachronic'?

Happening, or perceived to happen, over a period of time; "synchronic" is simultaneous. In the litcritty world where I learned the terms, narrative is diachronic -- you can't help but start, and go on, and end; visual art is synchronic -- you can see it all at once.

(and, weirdly, I spent a long time searching my mind for those two words the other day and couldn't find them)

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If you can't get to it in 4 hours and/or on an interconnected set of train and public transity systems, why bother??

Because otherwise gardening would be really boring. Microclimates! Macroclimates! Gooooo team!

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What year did African Americans get the vote and what year did women?

I can't remember exact dates, but African Americans were around 1868 and women were around 1920.

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1868? Sorry hit post too fast.

Was it really that early? Wow.

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