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Name one bullet train line anywhere in the world that's at least a few years old but still doesn't make a profit.

The Shinkansen trains in Japan which have operated for over three decades. Most of the construction cost was just eaten by the Japanese government and eventually sold for about a third (ignoring inflation) of the original construction costs to a stable of private companies. Googling around, I still see public funds for development for these trains, meaning that they're being subsidized - as I see it, a sure sign that they aren't running a profit on their own.

http://www.mlit.go.jp/jtsb/flash/JA804A_130116-130220.pdf
Scroll down to page 10 where it shows a large diode between the APU battery and the main bus/main battery.

I see that the discussion here is based on a sketchy summary from the originally Japanese press conference. More coherent information is available if you could read Japanese but I know it's too much to ask for...

Here is the latest update of the on-going investigation from the JTSB issued 20 Feb, 2013; this mentions the mis-wiring:

http://www.mlit.go.jp/jtsb/flash/JA804A_130116-130220.pdf

More in-depth information is given at

http://www.aviationwire.jp/archives/16032

According to this article, the mis-wiring was in the original specs/design, and the design had been corrected. The aircraft in question was manufactured in accordance to the earlier specs but no modification was made to comply with the new ones. One can infer that the bug was considered insignificant to compromise the safety of the aircraft. The JTSB currently does not think this mis-wiring was the cause of the battery incident although they will keep looking into it as a potential cause of anomalous voltage readings.

Actually from my admittedly limited experience, FAA and airplane mfgrs are downright obsessive about making connections idiot proof and failsafe. It's pretty difficult to find places in an airplane where it's possible to plug the wrong things together or backwards. FAA has been dealing with Murphy for a very long time. In this case, if that's what happened, then it's one that slipped through the design and development process. FAA will mark this as a design failure and require Boeing to make it impossible to connect wrongly.

Looking at that Japanese powerpoint, it looks like that may be exactly what happened. The battery cells are rectangular with a stud on each side of the top. Not even any prominent markings to indicate polarity, though the two studs seem to be mounted with different colored rivets. You'd think they'd at least have different diameter studs for the positive and negative, and jumpers with holes to match.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Transport_Safety_Board

http://www.mlit.go.jp/jtsb/english.html

Report is in Japanese, so feed the link to your favorite translator. Just now, Google returns "Sorry, we are unable to translate the page you requested." Which'd be fine if they didn't offer the "Translate this page" link, then take a while processing. Boneheads.
http://www.mlit.go.jp/jtsb/flash/JA804A_130116-130220.pdf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Transport_Safety_Board

http://www.mlit.go.jp/jtsb/english.html

Report is in Japanese, so feed the link to your favorite translator. Just now, Google returns "Sorry, we are unable to translate the page you requested." Which'd be fine if they didn't offer the "Translate this page" link, then take a while processing. Boneheads.
http://www.mlit.go.jp/jtsb/flash/JA804A_130116-130220.pdf

A couple of misconceptions. First, Japanese drivers aren't very good. I live next to Matsusaka city in Mie Prefecture, which ranks 13th in the nation for traffic fatalities at 7.8 for every 10,000 people[1]. Compare that to the US national average of about 1.3 per 10,000[2]. This is despite Japan having much lower average speed limits than in the US.

Second, this is only anecdotal, but Japanese kids aren't well behaved. Parents let them walk around freely in restaurants and stores with the excuse of letting them be kids. I've also frequently seen small children riding in the front seat of cars without even a safteybelt on, let alone a child seat - apparently they "don't want to wear them" and that's that ... probably helps contribute to the obscene accident fatality rate, I'd imagine.

Granted, they are more polite and less noisy here, but that doesn't extend as far as you seem to assume.

[1] www.cbr.mlit.go.jp/kisei/kisya/22nendo/110329.pdf [Japanese langauge PDF]
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year

Just did the numbers

Daiichi was 4.7 GW, solar is 1kw/m^2 at peak insolation, average is .25 kw/m^2, so 18.8 kw/m^2.

That's asuming total cover and no clouds or other inefficiencies. In other words multiply land need by the inverse of your efficincy.

Now compare that to the 13,400 km^2 that Japan used for roads in 2007 (source). And I'm sorry, but I couldn't find a reliable number for rooftops.

If the disease is highly infectious, and if they're on the Shinkansen (not the normal Tokyo subway line, for this demonstration), a standing sick person could aerosolize virus-infused particles into a car packed with up to 100 standing people (scroll down to the bottom). The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport posts guidelines to congestion in Tokyo subway cars; according to local sources many trains run at over 200% capacity. Tokyo subway cars are roughly the same size as the average-sized New York subway car (save for the large R143 mega-cars, which while Japanese-designed are not suitable for use in Japan). A narrow-width New York City subway car can fit a hundred people in rush hour; the comparatively smaller Japanese (who also cram more tightly into the cars) can reach 150% that capacity.

Don't know if it'll display properly, but the PDF here looks like they'll be using Windows-based PDAs. Wonder how they got the voice recognition going?