Japanese Train Sets A Speed Record Of 581 kph

Azuma writes "Last night, on December 2, a high-speed Japanese train set a new record of 581 kph, breaking its own previous record. The new Maglev high speed had real passengers on board this time. They proved that the distance between Osaka and Tokyo can be covered in one hour's time. However, we wouldn't see real trains for a while now since the cost is prohibitively expensive at this time. However, they expect that the cost would come down over the next 20 years. This seems to be the future of transportation, at least in Japan. Here is a detailed article from The Japan Times."

Comments

361MPH

[sakusha]

for those of us who don't use that artificial metric crap. I mean, really, if God wanted us to use the Metric system, he would have made the distance between the King's nose and his thumb to be exactly one meter.

Re:361MPH

[mattjb0010]

for those of us who don't use that artificial metric crap.

Have you considered a job working for NASA or the JPL?

Re:361MPH

[javiercero]

Too bad god made his penis exactly 1 inch long... a lot of repressed feelings and wars due to massive inferiority complexes could have been avoided if God had been more generous with the King!

But then again, if God did not want us to use the metric system then how come s/he gave us Ten fingers? :) Rather than using the kings shortcommings, other people decided to use"standard" equipment.... unless you are one of them crab people, then you must be restricted to binary counting I guess.....

Yeah it is late and I have been coding 2 days straight....

Re:361MPH

[pubjames]

for those of us who don't use that artificial metric crap.

Yes, for those of us with twelve fingers, imperial measurements are much more natural.

Re:361MPH

[pavon]

Everyone should have 12 fingers! I mean really base ten is such a pain in the ass. People natually work well with common divisions and multiples of things, like half an hour, 1/3 a cup etc. Look at all the natually developed measuremnent units: 360 degrees, 24 hours / day, 60 minutes per hour, 12 inches per foot. All nicely divisable by all sorts of numbers. But ten is divisible by what, 2 and 5. Like that sucks. Think about how cool it would be if all the common fractions had simple decimal notations as well. In base 12: 1/4 = .3, 1/3 = .4 1/2 = .6 etc. None of this infinite repeating digit crap.

Oh, and every time you hear about alien sightings they have 6 fingers on each hand. Is it a coincidence that those base-12 civlilizations are advanced enough to cross the galaxy, while we base-10'ers are still groveling in the dirt? I think not!

Forget metric - it is cumbersome in its ten-ness. And imperial is out of sync with our numbering system. What we need is a base-12 metric system. And it all begins with genetically engineered 12-fingered children! Who's with me?

352.99407 cubits per second.

[zhenlin]

God measured in cubits.

Also, 581 kph = 116.5050712 microparsecs per century.