Gongol.com Archives: March 2021
March 9, 2021
Should America lead the world in high-speed rail?
(Video) Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg says "I want the US to be leading the world when it comes to access to high-speed rail...especially with the bipartisan appetite for real investments". There's no escaping the fact that America has a historically romantic view of rail travel -- it's a huge part of our identity as a continental nation, and it feels like something that was once great and is now lost. But the very idea of our being a giant, sprawling country is one of the reasons rail has such an uphill climb in America. Italy's high-speed rail network, for example, really came together in the first decade of the 2000s, and it's quite magnificent to ride. But the entirety of Italy would fit roughly between Chicago and Raleigh, NC, and is only about the width of Indiana. In that space live 62 million people. That's in a country just 116,000 square miles in area -- about the size of Arizona, which only has about 7 million people. The population density of places with well-known high-speed rail systems like Italy and Germany and Japan is often almost a factor of ten higher than the density in the United States. That doesn't make high-speed rail impossible, but it does radically affect the economics involved. ■ To remove our romantic blinders and get serious about the question, what we need to ask is "What makes high-speed rail attractive?" Three factors stand out: What we really want is transportation that is high-efficency (and, consequently, low-cost), non-weather-dependent, and reliably scheduled.
Four dozen HuffPost employees laid off via email
What a profoundly unethical way to treat other human beings.
FBI releases video showing DC pipe bomber
Find and prosecute this terrorist and anyone who collaborated with them
Somehow, in light of the Covid-19 shutdown anniversary this week, ads for paper towels and toilet paper sound...odd
A lawyer shares a story about a client who spent 30 years in prison before being released this year. How is he supposed to know how to navigate a digitally-dependent world? There are times when one is reminded that, although we call it "corrections", we don't always make the choices necessary to produce "corrected" fellow citizens who are capable of reintegration with society.
The only thing you need to read about the Royal Family
Patrick Freyne: "They live in high luxury and low autonomy, cosplaying as their ancestors, and are the subject of constant psychosocial projection from people mourning the loss of empire." This writing sizzles. ■ However, events like the "Meghan and Harry" interview offer a reminder that some commentators have nothing productive to add to the public conversation. It's possible to let the event pass without any comment at all -- and yet some commentators cannot help but make fools of themselves by revealing how little they actually think about what they say. Those people (who do not deserve to be named here) can be safely ignored. We really, really need to stop making celebrities out of people who are profoundly emotionally stunted. It's not good for them, and it's terrible for the rest of us.
Incoming winter storm probably won't drop 111" of snow
Computer-based weather models are great, but sometimes they come up with implausible results. There's a reason human beings are still involved.
