Discussion: San Antonio

If you have any time at all for something besides nerding it up with mathologists and running on a treadmill, here are two suggestions:

1. eat at Rudy's (there are 3 locations in SA, but they aren't too close to downtown)
2. run the ~10km (blue trail) loop at McAllister Park (not too far from downtown)

In general I hated living in San Antonio but these were certainly bright spots for me. I would have gone nuts without McAllister.

It's pretty hard for me to get out of downtown, so I will probably fail at both of these. :(

I did go for a nice run along the River Walk today, and visited the Alamo too.

It's very cool that you got to see the Alamo. I never have. I would be curious to hear any impressions.

I find the Alamo an illuminating example when comparing wars in the Old World versus those in the New; the Old tend to be of one or two orders of magnitude larger because of the greater population, with the exception of the American Civil War.

US:
Soldiers on both sides at Yorktown, Virginia 1781: 28,000
Soldiers on both sides at the Alamo, Texas 1836: 2,000
Soldiers on both sides at Gettysburg, 1863: 160,000

Europe:
Soldiers on both sides at Battle of Leipzig, 1813: 600,000

Or perhaps put another way, the subset of Napoleon's army named "Pierre" could have single-handedly determined the fate of Texas in the 19th century.

Taken one mindboggling step further: Casualties on both sides at the Somme, 1916: 1,100,000-1,200,000

Yes, we are definitely more awesome this way because we have generally had more living space and more food per capita than Old Worlders. At the same time, we have more of other kinds of problems because we are younger as a society.