But one thing that will not be high-speed is the proposed American bullet trains. Notice from the map today that the one thing the separate lines have in common is that they don't go anywhere. Look closely at how the lines are not interconnected. Even the Florida line isn't connected to the northern tourist path.Beyond that, nothing exciting occurred in the world today. Even Bingo was average, mind you, there is still the odd new face in the crowd and that never happened before on Saturdays. I spent most of the day in the computer store taking it easy. The reason is everyone around me is catching that H1N1 virus while I seem to have only a mild cold. What if I’m a carrier? Worse, what if I start cooking up theories because I have too much time on my hands?
If I do, it is because I am broke again. That, and the fact I’m not getting much enthusiastic help around this place. Moral support seems to be confined to Pudding-Tat, who responded instantly to the apple cider treatment and is nice and slim again. And these are the high points of my day. I stopped in to see the Karaoke show, even sang though not my best effort. There was a “spritely” lass on the premises, but she totally ignored me. Maybe the premises wasn’t the only thing she was on. Whoops, that’s another theory.
Quick, talk about the weather. It is dang cold for the season. That follows two record cold months, and the electric bill is $45 higher per month than normal, of which I attribute only $27 to the extra population. Like Seattle, the higher humidity really chills your bones, sometimes to the point it seems impossible to truly warm up. I’ve had no heater in the car for years, it just isn’t needed much. But I also know that people who don’t make home and car as comfortable as possible never seem to get anything done either.
Sparing the time to read the newspaper, I see the state spent $142 million to create 200 jobs “some of which” pay between $14 and $18 per hour. Hell, the state governor has that many grandchildren. The jobs are located up in Tallahassee (which is 1/3 of the distance to California from here. Look it up.) The same page reported that the cruise lines layed off 145 people.
Not only that, I read the label on my Pringles can. If you thought those chips contained potatoes and salt, take a look yourself. Depending on how you interpret the list, there are something like 31 ingredients. Some I recognize but that does not mean I now think cottonseed oil is edible. And exactly what is rosemary extract? Nap time.
Here are some items I found interesting for today’s trivia. Did you know people, both men and women, speak an average of 16,000 words per day? I’m probably no exception, but I am curious more about vocabulary than word count. I like to think that by this blog, the 1,000 words I write daily are deducted from the total.
Recently, some people were able to factor a 232 digit number. This relates back to the code-breaking I wrote up a month or so back. It gets included here because I can appreciate the effort required where most people could care less. Hell, there’s that many digits on their phone bill. The point is the factoring, or finding least common denominators, in our wonderful computer age, can still be stumped by what is, in the realm of things, a relatively small number.
I also read an article about America’s pending entry into the high-speed train business. Sure enough, my predictions of short-sighted political interference are being borne out. Instead of a nationwide network to replace the wasteful and cumbersome systems in place, those idiots are thinking of four or five separate and unconnected hubs in California, Texas, Florida and one centered on Chicago. Worse, none of the trains will surpass the magic 300 mph for any real distance.
The equipment will be incompatible. You think these people would have learned a lesson about standardization from other countries, although I concede that those places only have one such rail line each. This is not the time to be setting up four different operations. The [same article noted that] last time a successful automobile company started up was Jeep, and that was back in 1941. Further, the projections show that the focus is to replace commuter lines rather than to set up a national transportation network that works better than airlines and interstates. Trust the politicians to screw the whole thing up.
On the engineering side, did you ever wonder why the high-speed trains have such sharp, pointy front ends? I thought streamlining, being that they have to push air out of their way. The reality is that the air can compress into a shock wave that will actually create a sonic boom as the train enters a tunnel. I never knew that.
