That's because it runs on the Northeast Corridor, which was profitable even without Acela. But even calling Acela "high speed" is a stretch.
But to my original point, it is highly unlikely that a CA rail line would ever pay off it's construction costs, whereas airports like LAX and SFO are quite financially sustainable. Throw a few more runways their way, and the runways would pay for themselves in a few years. In the article you linked it even says:
It’s certainly what Iñaki Barrón de Angoiti, director of high-speed rail at the International Union of Railways in Paris, means in a much-quoted line from The New York Times. “High-speed rail is good for society and it’s good for the environment, but it’s not a profitable business,” he said, and the Times added: “He reckons that only two routes in the world — between Tokyo and Osaka, and between Paris and Lyon, France — have broken even.”
Of course, the article also points out that the highway system is only profitable because of the fuel tax, so there you go!
OK, so buy offsets or recapture enough carbon to make you happy. Then it will be, what, $2/head extra? Still much lower capital expense than a fixed, experimental, high-speed railway.
A bigger problem with the study is that it is based on a survey of mothers. The study could have instead found: (1) mothers who give their kids soda are for some reason more sensitive to bad behavior, (2) mothers "know" that soda causes bad behavior and so they expect it and report their bias, (3) some third factor affects both soda drinking as well as actual or perceived behavior, (4) almost an infinite number of other things.
I'm glad that someone is examining this, but a study like this can only be used to point science in a direction - it by no means implicates soda as a behavior modifier all by itself, all it found was a correlation in a self-reported survey.
Airplanes don't have to be carbon polluters. You could run them on biofuels or capture the carbon. Carbon offsets are fairly cheap - probably under a buck per passenger per typical flight.
You are right, this thing might become a target, just like airplanes. Or maybe not... it depends how spectacular the failure is. I suspect it won't be very spectacular - a break in the tube would slow the trains immediately and reduce the damage potential. I think it would be like a normal passenger rail disaster... that is to say, bad, but not what terrorists are after.
Not to mention... airplanes. So many billions would probably pay for an extra/improved airport or two. Airplanes don't require any infrastructure in between, and you could link the airports to the city center with regular rail at a fraction of the cost. For that cost, you could even set up some kind of pre-screening on the train that links the city center to the airport so that the train can deliver the passengers on the secure side of the airport.
There's a reason we age and die: because it is better for the species.
If that's true, then the gene pool of people who take advantage of this treatment will lose out to those who do not take advantage of the treatment, and it will cease to be a problem.
When 90% or more of the computers accessing the internet were running Microsoft Windows (and then later almost all running IE), I don't think standards had much to do with web adoption. It was adopted because it was really, really cool. I don't mean it wasn't important at all, but I think standards were just one of many items in the WWW's plus column.
That said, as web-apps become more application-like, the web browser becomes more and more like an unstructured app store. I don't think that web apps will displace native apps so much as the two will converge toward a similar model.
When I was childless, I watched most games on the over-the-air channels. Sometimes they were on cable, in which case I went to the local bar and watched the game. My bar bill for an entire month probably was very similar to my cable bill, but I was actually getting out of the house. Now that I have kids, I barely have time for sports at all, so I watch what comes on over the air and deal with it:)
I've heard both sides of this. One says Morsi was the democratically elected leader and ousting him destroys any chance at democracy. The other side says he was setting himself up as dictator. As usual, the truth is probably sloppier than either side would admit. I do know that the military is still enjoying a lot of popularity, so this is likely to continue. I wish the country well, and I hope they get it all sorted out.
Unfortunately, when you pick "freedom" you give up the ability to declare how others spend their money / heap their praise. Personally, I have a lot more respect for Tesla and Woz - something shared by most technically-inclined people IMHO. But the free market pays a good manager handsomely, and the free press celebrates people who make it big.
While I agree with you, we still must deal with this political reality. The programs need to err on the side of pain to the recipient or they will get flogged and gutted. This is not unique to welfare programs - all government programs have to be transparent and completely above-board, even when doing so hinders the mission. Otherwise, you get these blown-out-of-proportion "scandals" and the mission becomes impossible.
Could you have come up with a more convoluted workflow? You wouldn't let iTunes upgrade unless you were in no particular hurry. Authorized PCs have nothing to do with an unencumbered video, and if your video did have DRM, it isn't going to play on your Android without some kind of similar authorization setup. You want real trouble with passwords? Lose your Google credentials. "Customer support" is... non-existent.
Most people who want to play arbitrary video on iOS would install something like VLC rather than use the built-in player, just like most people on Android would install something like MX Player rather than depend on the gimped built-in player. VLC lets you transfer files over WiFi. My phone is Android, and my tablet is Android. We have an iPod and a few old iPhones that the kids play with. All I can tell you is that the Apple stuff is cleaner, but way too expensive for a toy. I can justify that cost on their laptops, where I'll actually use it for something productive - but I can't be bothered with $600 toys.
Sadly, such strictness is necessary because people abuse the system. And because of the way the news cycle works, when abuse is exposed, it weakens the whole system as people lose confidence that their tax dollars are doing good.
And I must also point out your claim of biofuel overtaking solar is similarly brain-damaged to an incredible degree.
I made no such claim. Biofuels are already ahead of solar, so it would be weird for me to say that they will "overtake" solar. I agree that solar (even solar panels) will eventually overtake biofuels for electricity generation, but it will be a long time before electricity wins on transportation.
your obsession with biofuel
I have no such obsession. I look up numbers on Google. I don't use biofuel in my car - it is too expensive. My heat is natural gas. I might or might not use biofuel electricity, I have no idea. I do know there is a trash-to-steam plant nearby, so perhaps I do use some. You seem to think that I am advocating biofuels, which I am not.
You moved the bar from plug-in hybrids, which could conceivably be powered by solar, to regular gasoline powered hybrids. I don't think you meant to shift the conversation there. Notice that the luxury cars are the ones with 0-year payback periods, since the battery pack is a small percentage of the price tag of a luxury car - same reason that a Tesla can look so attractive compared to a Mercedes, BMW, or Lexus. Sadly, I'm not in the market for a luxury car. That site lists the payback period for a Malibu for my 8000 miles per year at 16.7 years. A Fusion at 6.9 years. An Insight at 9.3 years. A Civic at 8.4 years. A Sonata at 7.5 years. I have a Camry, which they list at 10.9 years.
The sync can be cancelled, by the way. That's your phone backing itself up so that if you lose it you can be right back where you started without much fuss. MP3s can be loaded on individually if you choose manual mode.
I'd much rather drag a video into iTunes than have to guess which random directory contains videos on a FAT32 drive that pops up on my desktop/My Computer. Yeah, I know you can point MX Player to any directory - but I also know it's a pain in the ass compared to just having everything automatically appear.
Because it screws up the experience a little. Android _almost_ abstracts you from the filesystem, so you have no idea where files are being saved most of the time. Then, once in a great moon, you need to track something down and it just kind of... sucks.
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That's because it runs on the Northeast Corridor, which was profitable even without Acela. But even calling Acela "high speed" is a stretch.
But to my original point, it is highly unlikely that a CA rail line would ever pay off it's construction costs, whereas airports like LAX and SFO are quite financially sustainable. Throw a few more runways their way, and the runways would pay for themselves in a few years. In the article you linked it even says:
Of course, the article also points out that the highway system is only profitable because of the fuel tax, so there you go!
Really? What is your source for this? We don't really have high-speed rail in the US, but our regular-speed rail is subsidized.
Wanna bet on the airport paying for itself, while the rail line never even breaks even operationally, let alone pays for itself?
OK, so buy offsets or recapture enough carbon to make you happy. Then it will be, what, $2/head extra? Still much lower capital expense than a fixed, experimental, high-speed railway.
So is honey, yet health nuts promote that.
A bigger problem with the study is that it is based on a survey of mothers. The study could have instead found: (1) mothers who give their kids soda are for some reason more sensitive to bad behavior, (2) mothers "know" that soda causes bad behavior and so they expect it and report their bias, (3) some third factor affects both soda drinking as well as actual or perceived behavior, (4) almost an infinite number of other things.
I'm glad that someone is examining this, but a study like this can only be used to point science in a direction - it by no means implicates soda as a behavior modifier all by itself, all it found was a correlation in a self-reported survey.
Airplanes don't have to be carbon polluters. You could run them on biofuels or capture the carbon. Carbon offsets are fairly cheap - probably under a buck per passenger per typical flight.
You are right, this thing might become a target, just like airplanes. Or maybe not... it depends how spectacular the failure is. I suspect it won't be very spectacular - a break in the tube would slow the trains immediately and reduce the damage potential. I think it would be like a normal passenger rail disaster... that is to say, bad, but not what terrorists are after.
Not to mention... airplanes. So many billions would probably pay for an extra/improved airport or two. Airplanes don't require any infrastructure in between, and you could link the airports to the city center with regular rail at a fraction of the cost. For that cost, you could even set up some kind of pre-screening on the train that links the city center to the airport so that the train can deliver the passengers on the secure side of the airport.
or a small group of people.
That sounds like an oligarchy.
There's a reason we age and die: because it is better for the species.
If that's true, then the gene pool of people who take advantage of this treatment will lose out to those who do not take advantage of the treatment, and it will cease to be a problem.
When 90% or more of the computers accessing the internet were running Microsoft Windows (and then later almost all running IE), I don't think standards had much to do with web adoption. It was adopted because it was really, really cool. I don't mean it wasn't important at all, but I think standards were just one of many items in the WWW's plus column.
That said, as web-apps become more application-like, the web browser becomes more and more like an unstructured app store. I don't think that web apps will displace native apps so much as the two will converge toward a similar model.
or going to venues that screen the game.
When I was childless, I watched most games on the over-the-air channels. Sometimes they were on cable, in which case I went to the local bar and watched the game. My bar bill for an entire month probably was very similar to my cable bill, but I was actually getting out of the house. Now that I have kids, I barely have time for sports at all, so I watch what comes on over the air and deal with it :)
Yes, that is true - I'm unabashedly valuing Woz's attributes (nice guy, gifted engineer) over those of Jobs (dickhead, gifted manager).
I've heard both sides of this. One says Morsi was the democratically elected leader and ousting him destroys any chance at democracy. The other side says he was setting himself up as dictator. As usual, the truth is probably sloppier than either side would admit. I do know that the military is still enjoying a lot of popularity, so this is likely to continue. I wish the country well, and I hope they get it all sorted out.
Unfortunately, when you pick "freedom" you give up the ability to declare how others spend their money / heap their praise. Personally, I have a lot more respect for Tesla and Woz - something shared by most technically-inclined people IMHO. But the free market pays a good manager handsomely, and the free press celebrates people who make it big.
While I agree with you, we still must deal with this political reality. The programs need to err on the side of pain to the recipient or they will get flogged and gutted. This is not unique to welfare programs - all government programs have to be transparent and completely above-board, even when doing so hinders the mission. Otherwise, you get these blown-out-of-proportion "scandals" and the mission becomes impossible.
Could you have come up with a more convoluted workflow? You wouldn't let iTunes upgrade unless you were in no particular hurry. Authorized PCs have nothing to do with an unencumbered video, and if your video did have DRM, it isn't going to play on your Android without some kind of similar authorization setup. You want real trouble with passwords? Lose your Google credentials. "Customer support" is... non-existent.
Most people who want to play arbitrary video on iOS would install something like VLC rather than use the built-in player, just like most people on Android would install something like MX Player rather than depend on the gimped built-in player. VLC lets you transfer files over WiFi. My phone is Android, and my tablet is Android. We have an iPod and a few old iPhones that the kids play with. All I can tell you is that the Apple stuff is cleaner, but way too expensive for a toy. I can justify that cost on their laptops, where I'll actually use it for something productive - but I can't be bothered with $600 toys.
Sadly, such strictness is necessary because people abuse the system. And because of the way the news cycle works, when abuse is exposed, it weakens the whole system as people lose confidence that their tax dollars are doing good.
What do you mean switch? We already have Medicare/Medicaid, and 1/3 of the uninsured go into those programs under Obamacare.
And I must also point out your claim of biofuel overtaking solar is similarly brain-damaged to an incredible degree.
I made no such claim. Biofuels are already ahead of solar, so it would be weird for me to say that they will "overtake" solar. I agree that solar (even solar panels) will eventually overtake biofuels for electricity generation, but it will be a long time before electricity wins on transportation.
your obsession with biofuel
I have no such obsession. I look up numbers on Google. I don't use biofuel in my car - it is too expensive. My heat is natural gas. I might or might not use biofuel electricity, I have no idea. I do know there is a trash-to-steam plant nearby, so perhaps I do use some. You seem to think that I am advocating biofuels, which I am not.
You moved the bar from plug-in hybrids, which could conceivably be powered by solar, to regular gasoline powered hybrids. I don't think you meant to shift the conversation there. Notice that the luxury cars are the ones with 0-year payback periods, since the battery pack is a small percentage of the price tag of a luxury car - same reason that a Tesla can look so attractive compared to a Mercedes, BMW, or Lexus. Sadly, I'm not in the market for a luxury car. That site lists the payback period for a Malibu for my 8000 miles per year at 16.7 years. A Fusion at 6.9 years. An Insight at 9.3 years. A Civic at 8.4 years. A Sonata at 7.5 years. I have a Camry, which they list at 10.9 years.
It's not a computer - it's my toy phone thing.
The sync can be cancelled, by the way. That's your phone backing itself up so that if you lose it you can be right back where you started without much fuss. MP3s can be loaded on individually if you choose manual mode.
I'd much rather drag a video into iTunes than have to guess which random directory contains videos on a FAT32 drive that pops up on my desktop/My Computer. Yeah, I know you can point MX Player to any directory - but I also know it's a pain in the ass compared to just having everything automatically appear.
Because it screws up the experience a little. Android _almost_ abstracts you from the filesystem, so you have no idea where files are being saved most of the time. Then, once in a great moon, you need to track something down and it just kind of... sucks.
Doctors Google. Sorry to disappoint you, but really do you want to rely on someone's memory?