So the administration has rolled out its high speed rail plan. Perhaps not suprisingly, it look very similar to the old crappy rail system.
The old and new rail system
The old joke is that trains give you all the discomfort of airline travel, but in six times the time. The rail plan calls for trains to travel 100 miles per hour, so the joke should be revised to four times.
The fact is, trains are a great idea in a country the size of Japan, France or Britain, that you can backpack across in a day. They suck, just a little bit, for travel across a country 3000 miles wide. Why take a high-speed train that gets you from LA to NY in two days when you can fly and be there in 5 hours?
High-speed trains would be a better idea for high traffic commuter corridors. As an example, look closely at the map and you’ll notice you still can’t travel North. There is no connector between Oklahoma and Kansas City, or anywhere in Georgia up through Kentucky, Tennessee and into Indiana.
You can’t get from Albuquerque to Denver, Denver to Phoenix, Phoenix or Albuquerque to Salt Lake City, or any of those cities to anywhere in Texas.
If you are a salesman in the southwest, you can get to Chicago faster than you could run there, that’s true. Chances are most of your travel will still be by air, and flying short distances within your region, though.
It looks to me like someone went to Amtrak and said, “If you could go to all the same places using the same shitty routes, but do it marginally faster, what would that look like?”
Congrats, guys. You batted their answer out of the park.
To be clear, I still hate Vegas. However, the city of alcholics and broken dreams did get a bit of a boost in my eyes this past week. Maybe it was hanging with Star Trek: TNG’s Geordi LaForge (LeVar Burton – @levarburton on Twitter – to you and me) on the Lovesac bus. Maybe it was also meeting James D. Kirk – his real name – on the same bus. Maybe it was dinner next to Alice Cooper at Osetria del Circo, but the very surreal mix of celebs on Firday night made me think a bit better of Sin City.
CES was also better this year.
Don’t get me wrong. The number of booths pimping flash drives still outweighed the number of decent tech offerings about 3 to 1. That ratio is, however, significantly better than the 10 to 1 of last year.
And just in case you think I was joking about the wide variety of shapes and sizes of flash drives on display, the pic to the left is just one booth’s offering. This particular company has a 47 page catalog of options (my favorite is the goofy little sheik on page 13).
If you don’t see what you want (say a banana shaped flash drive to promote a fruit company), just call them, and they’ll crank one out for you. Personally, I think they should do more work with the porn awards that were also going on in Vegas. They could give away little donger shaped drives pre-loaded with clips of the nominees for best threesome and best oral.
As for the rest of the technology, I did find some cool stuff. I’ve shared a couple of the items related to broadband networks and TV via CableTechTalk.com. I really dig the PC Ride (video below). It’s a car shaped CPU that retails at $2,495. I’m not a big fan of the desktop case, so I was pleased to see someone making a different shape. I guess it’s only a matter of time before someone has a 47 page catalog of PC designs, though.
I also really dug the ultra-thin TVs that most of the manufacturers unveiled. Just in case you haven’t heard “Oh my god! It’s so small!” enough in your life, bring one of these home.
Some of the really cool finds I didn’t put up on the cable blog because they aren’t really broadband/connected home specific. For instance, I love little more than the ocean. Any time Mrs. Quip and I vacation, we generally head for a tropic island. While there, I like to snorkel, and often wish I had an underwater camera.
The dive mask to the right has a 5.0 MP digital camera built into the mask (I know, it’s a grainy picture). Push a red button on the top right (your left) to snap a picture.
I’d love to take this with me on my next trip to the Caribbean.
Another cool find (especially for parents with aspiring social media monsters for kids) is Crayola’s kid friendly video camera.
Now your toddlers can film themselves dropping mentos in diet coke and destroying your living room. When they’re done, you can use it to film them washing Diet Coke off the walls.
When the little critters grow up, and tire of tedious housecleaning, they’ll no doubt move on to killing copious amounts of brain cells by vegging out in front of the TV playing video games. By the staggering amount of controllers and promos for it, there’s a good chance Guitar Hero 12 or Rock Band 9 will be the game of the day.
If, however, they decide they’d like to learn to play an actual guitar, you should check out JamVox. JamVox is a software application and a mini-amp. Connect the amp to your PC and an actual guitar, and the software will strip out the guitar track of any song – allowing you to play along with your favorite music. Think of it as Guitar Hero on the extra, extra hard setting. The difference, however, is after your done some chicks will actually be impressed because you can play a real instrument.
I’m sitting at Heathrow waiting for my flight. It’s been an interesting few days in England and I’ve had a really good time. The conference was really interesting for the odd dichotomy that it was – an exploartion of web 2.0 by people firmly entrenched in a 1.0 world.
I find London to be quite nice. The city itself is amazing and the countryside near Windsor (where we were staying for the conference) was beautiful. The campus at Royal Holloway and specifically Founder’s Hall was spectacular. It actually made me think about how much incredible architecture must have been lost in the war.
I found Londoners to be a very warm people, very friendly and engaging. Last night we were invited to attend a live webcast by the Liberal Democratic candidate for Mayor of London. The webcast was unremarkable other than being the first use of UStream by a politician in the UK.
However, Brian Paddick, a former beat cop who rose through the ranks, left the force, then wrote a book exposing corruption in its ranks, was a very inviting guy. I hope he does well in the election. I’ve not met the Tory candidate, but based on my experience with candidates I can say Paddick seems like a genuinely nice guy – something rare in those who want to get elected.
I had a chance to stroll through London on Wednesday and will share lots of pictures when I get home this evening.
I’m disappointed that I did not get a chance to see Windsor castle – especially since we were only two miles away. I’m sure I’ll be back, though and will have to see it then.
We did get a chance to visit The Monkey’s Forehead, a pub in Egham Hill. While it was more sports bar and less pub, it was a good time.
I’ve actually been surprised at how much American culture has extended to the UK. I turned on the TV and looked through the guide. BBC was showing The Office and I was excited thinking I would get to see the original UK version.
When it began, and Steve Carrell appeared on screen, I was surprised that I had come all the way to the UK, and found myself watching the American version of a show that we stole from the UK to begin with.
Anyway…. My flight’s about to board. I’ll post more later. Until then, ta-ta from London.
A friend of mine is currently serving in Baghdad and over the last couple of weeks has been sending out some really interesting notes about life in war-torn Iraq. Given that she is also a woman, and has to deal with the unique weirdness that can create in a Muslim nation (and, frankly, in a military setting), I have found a lot of the stuff she writes to be insightful on several fronts. First, she has to deal with the challenges of being very much in the minority. Second, she spends a lot of time examining the challenges on an emotional level. Finally, she really explores the “stranger-in-a-strange-land” aspects of her time in Baghdad.
I’ve asked for her permission to strip the identifying details and share them with others, as I think they’re a really good read. The notes she sends are almost completely non-partisan, and rarely mention the political implications of the war or make an effort to “cheerlead”. They’re just her thoughts on her current situation, and they’re pretty interesting
I’ve posted the full text after the jump, but thought I’d highlight my favorite part of her most recent dispatch.
The unusual becomes commonplace and the completely bizarre becomes completely acceptable.
Even the interaction between people is different. Social norms do not apply. There is an intense need for human connection that drives relationships between people to form quickly and sometimes in unconventional ways. For example, at lunch the other day, I ran into a fellow passenger from my maiden rhino voyage into the IZ. I had not seen him since the morning of our arrival, but he recognized me and asked to join me at the table. Two hours later I found myself able to recite back the intimate details of his life: Where he has lived in the States over the past fifteen years; the names, ages and pursuits of his two sons; the circumstances of his divorce; and the people he most often calls back home.
A few evenings prior, I was dining with a co-worker when an army captain sat next to us, showed us pictures of his grand-daughter‚Äîhis “reason to get home”‚Äî told us all about his wife and children back in Indiana, gave us a full account of the last twenty years of his life, and shared with us his political affiliation and views on the 2008 primaries. He kept commenting on what a pleasure it was to carry on a normal conversation with two-young women.
There is Romanian special operations captain who I occasionally meet for coffee in the evening, simply because he tells me that I am the only person he speaks with outside the office and how he looks forward to it every day. I don’t know what he does here in Baghdad, but I do know all about his beautiful daughter, the reasons for his divorce, the grueling physical and psychological training he endured to obtain his commission, and the songs currently on his I-pod playlist.
It can take years to build relationships in the real world. Here, it may take only hours.
By Turk on Thursday, September 27, 2007 at 10:59 am
I’ve been hanging out on the Redneck Riviera this week – lovin’ the beach.
One of the benefits of the day job is I get to travel to different states and update our state associations on the latest happenings in Washington. I find it refreshing to get out of DC as often as humanly possible to talk to real people. Granted the conversations are still about politics. Just once it would be nice to spend a week outside DC and never have anyone mention Presidential campaigns, Congress or politics in general.
When you live in DC for longer than a week, you discover two universal truths. First, every conversation you have with a stranger involves the following three questions:
Where are you from? (nobody is from DC)
Where do you work?
What do you do?
If the answers to those questions don’t indicate that the two of you can do anything for each other professionally, the conversation usually ends there.
The other universal truth is that when you leave DC, if you tell anybody that’s where you live, it will immediately begin a conversation about politics. When I’m not traveling for work, I’ve begun to tell strangers that I live in West Virginia and study insect feces for a living. At least I can occasionally have a conversation about something other than the failings of our elected officials.
So anyway, I’ve never been to the Pensacola/Alabama region, and it is actually quite nice. It actually reminds me of my trip to Turks and Caicos. The geography (at least near the beach) is fairly similar. Turks & Caicos didn’t have as many trees, and the houses a half mile inland were not as nice, but the overall feel is very similar.
I could do without the humidity. It was quite muggy the last couple of days, but that’s Florida in summer. You can’t build on swampland and not have humidity. I’ve come to accept that about DC as well.
The two downsides (which I am always looking for in every situation) were the age of the hotel (it was built in the late 70s or early 80s) and my breakfast this morning. The trouble with a hotel knocking on 30, is the lack of modern conveniences – especially if they have not done renovations to the infrastructure. For instance, the hotel had beautiful views of the Gulf, but it had no Internet at all (forget wi-fi, I would have taken a cable) in the rooms. There was free wi-fi in the lobby, but I’d rather not hang out in the lobby. It also had no OnDemand movies, no decent cable, and little in the way of amenities. They really need to do some work.
Breakfast this morning was sort of an oddity. I would not think it was possible to get bad orange juice in Florida. I don’t know why I would assume that, but I did. Village Inn proved me wrong. I had a small drink of the worst orange juice I’ve ever had. I would have asked them to replace it, but I always fear doing that. I assume they’ll either taint it or they’ll give me another glass just as bad. Fool me once, and all…
A psuedo-reformed political hack takes stock of his life, family, community, and living in our nation's capitol. If a good writer writes about what he knows, expect me to cover politics, technology, telecommunications, consumer gadgets, pop culture, the constant struggle that is parenting, the two best kids in the known world, the wife that makes me crazy, the odd moments I get to enjoy my hobbies, and a big goofy mutt named Kobi.
The thoughts expressed here are mine and mine alone and do not represent the views of anyone else. If your offended by anything you read here, then stop reading and don't return. It's not likely to get any better.
