Re: paleonet Paleo Society Memberships

[Una Smith <una@xxxxxxxx>]

Tim Palmer already mentioned Pal Ass membership is up.  Well, I am
an overseas Pal Ass member.  I elected not to take the print copy
of the journal (I can get it online and it costs the society a lot
to mail print copies to me) but I consistently read and enjoy the
Newsletter.  And I have presented at a couple of Pal Ass meetings;
unlike most US professional societies I belong to, Pal Ass holds
its meetings in the winter not during my prime summer field season.

I cannot say why exactly I never joined Pal Soc.  I guess I never
saw a good reason *to* join.  I have never found a paper I need to
read in J. Palaeo (being a paleobotanist, A. J. Botany is more in
my line).  I do often need to read papers in Paleobiology (kudos to
Scott Wing et al), but I can get Paleobiology without joining Pal
Soc...a fact I never noticed until this moment!  Hey, it won't cost
me 69+36=$105 (!) to get a slim quarterly journal.  Only $41.  Hm,
maybe still a little too expensive?  I'll have to think about it.

I was about to write that I have never attended a Pal Soc meeting,
but in fact that is not true!  I did attend the GSA meeting when it
was in Boston one year.  I thought then GSA was too big;  there 
were so many things happening concurrently that time to network or
even hear talks was limited.  And GSA tends also to be expensive,
just because it is so large that it happens at convention centers
with no cheap accomodations within reasonable distance.  This is 
exactly the same problem that Bot Soc America had meeting with the
other AIBS societies (ESA, etc.);  BSA now meets alone and it is 
much smaller and much more useful.  Pal Ass meetings are small and
very intense.  I have found them very worthwhile.

As ever, telling it like I see it,

	Una Smith

Los Alamos National Laboratory, MS K-710, Los Alamos, NM  87545