Because we're a bunch of neo-luddites bent on world domination, and plan on destroying everything electronic once we achieve our goals! Bwahahahahahaha!

Seriously, it's the least bad of all the options, by a rather significant margin. If you want to just follow around, there are web-based and NNTP archives of the mailing lists, and Sean Burke set up an RSS feed for them. Things are about as open as you can get.