random notes

Clusterfuck Nation
Comment on Current Events by the Author of "The Long Emergency"
Too Stupid To Survive

California's proposed high-speed rail project by Jon Gertner.
The article began with a description of California's current rail service between the Bay Area and Los Angeles. A commission of nine-year-olds in a place like Germany could run a better system, of course. It's never on schedule. The equipment breaks down incessantly. A substantial leg of the trip requires a transfer to a bus (along with everybody's luggage) with no working toilet. You get the picture: Kazakhstan without the basic competence.
...
The sad truth is it's too late now. But the additional sad truth, at this point, is that Californians (and US public in general) would benefit tremendously from normal rail service on a par with the standards of 1927, when speeds of 100 miles-per-hour were common and the trains ran absolutely on time (and frequently, too) without computers (imagine that !). The tracks are still there, waiting to be fixed. In our current condition of psychotic techno-grandiosity, this is all too hopelessly quaint, not cutting edge enough, pathetically un-"hot." The fact that it is not even considered by the editors of The New York Times, not to mention the governor of California, the President of the United States, and all the agency heads and departmental chiefs and think tank gurus and university engineering professors, is something that will have historians of the future rolling their eyes. But for the moment all it shows is that we are collectively too stupid to survive as an advanced society.

Ironically (if you go for gallows irony) a sidebar in the same issue of The NY Times Sunday Magazine featured the latest architect's wet dream of an airport-of-the-future (p.35). Note to the editors and architects: commercial aviation is toast (we just don't know it yet). We're back in the $70-plus a barrel-of-oil aviation death-zone for airlines.

... the sad truth is that there are imbeciles planet wise ...
... following the moves of today's America ...
... after 20 years of rhetoric of the "superiority" of the US system ...
... they all now think is true ...