Japanese Maglev Train Hits 500kph 419
An anonymous reader writes Japan has now put 100 passengers on a Maglev train doing over 500kph. That's well over twice as fast as the fastest U.S. train can manage, and that only manages 240kph on small sections of its route. The Japanese Shinkansen is now running over 7 times times as fast as the average U.S. express passenger train. 500kph is moving towards the average speed of an airliner. Add the convenience of no boarding issues, and city-centre to city-centre travel, and the case for trains as mass-transport begins to look stronger.
Please wait here. (Score:5, Funny)
Japan has now put 100 passengers on a Maglev train doing over 500kph.
Were they volunteers?
Re:Please wait here. (Score:5, Interesting)
You think the Japanese drove individual cars to the station? That's actually rather funny... Everyone driving their own car everywhere they go is not the culture in Japan (nor would it be even remotely practical with their population density in their major centres)
I'll agree that the train was likely quite safe though.
Re:Please wait here. (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed they probably take a train to go to the train station :-)
Re:Please wait here. (Score:5, Interesting)
The station is actually quite remote. I went there and rode this train at 500kph a couple of years ago (they recently opened a new part of the track, doubling it's length, but you have been able to ride it for years) and it's out in the mountains. You can drive there but by far the best way is to get the train to a near-by town and then take the bus or a taxi to the station.
It's an incredible machine. So smooth and quiet, and faster than you can ever imagine going. Sure, aircraft travel faster, but only when they are 10,000 metres off the ground, so the experience of doing over 500kph with scenery wizzing past at eye level is quite unique.
They intend to start operation at 550 kph but then raise it up to around 900 kph over time. Much of the track is built in very long tunnels under mountains to make the route more direct and to prevent noise pollution. The current trains are limited to 320 kph because of the noise they make when exiting tunnels, even though they are capable of at least 360 kph.
Re: (Score:3)
The current trains are limited to 320 kph because of the noise they make when exiting tunnels, even though they are capable of at least 360 kph.
Do you mean to say that the noise they make while exiting tunnels is greater than if they were simply traveling at that speed across open ground? And if so, it seems like they could build some sort of train silencer that would reflect the sound upward or something.
Re: (Score:3)
Aha... so they made sure to select lucky people only. I understand. It's a good idea for a trial run :)
how much does that cost to build? (Score:5, Interesting)
how much does that cost to build?
U.S. express passenger train run over old rails / rail lines.
Re: (Score:2)
Better than cars (Score:4, Insightful)
> But, I ask, what is the point of a slow passenger train for commuting?
Two points--
(1) it reduces traffic congestion
(2) it still may be faster than driving.
If everyone who tooks trains into NY drove, we wouldn't have needed a large hadron collider. The Cross Bronx would have collapsed into a black hole.
The problem at this point is building trains, not that trains don't make sense. It's politically sensitive to expropriate property.
Re: (Score:3)
For commutes they're high density, a double train set is 500 passengers in one go. At least here in Europe trains are often the way for the suburbs to reach the inner city public transport (bus/tram/subway). As for long distance travel I'd favor trains over bus any day of the week. A train lets you get up and walk. The toilet is not extremely cramped. There's a cafeteria section where you can get some food and snacks. Sleeping cabins too, which can be a rather nice compared to flying in with a very, very e
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
According to wikipedia about $80bn (9 trillion yen). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C5%AB%C5%8D_Shinkansen
Re:how much does that cost to build? (Score:5, Interesting)
> money is not an issue when transportation of people is the matter.
How do you come to that nonsensical conclusion?
http://calwatchdog.com/2012/07... [calwatchdog.com], I think we all remember the bridges to nowhere 10 years back, etc.
Re: (Score:2)
It sure is when you're trying to get a project built.
Re: (Score:2)
yeah, it's called "public investment", each person pays a little bit so that everyone can use the thing, think "public roads"
$62,000 per person, $156,000 per family (Score:4, Informative)
> it's called "public investment", each person pays a little bit so that everyone can use the thing, think "public roads"
Just at the federal level alone (think just the interstate highways), along with any taxes you're paying, we're incurring $10,000 per person of debt each year. If there are 3 people in your family, that's $30,000 per year your family will have to pay back sooner or later. Right now, we owe $62,000 each ($156,000 per family) .
Is that "each person pays a little" or "each person pays a lot"?
Re:$62,000 per person, $156,000 per family (Score:5, Insightful)
Just at the federal level alone (think just the interstate highways), along with any taxes you're paying, we're incurring $10,000 per person of debt each year.
Well, you may think about the interstate highways, and yeah I do that occasionally too, but I more commonly think about bank bailouts or dropping bombs on brown people as places where the money goes.
Re:how much does that cost to build? (Score:5, Funny)
What? People working together to build something they all benefit from instead of everyone trying to rip everyone else off?
THAT'S COMMUNISM!
But is high speed rail a *good* public investment? (Score:4, Insightful)
yeah, it's called "public investment", each person pays a little bit so that everyone can use the thing, think "public roads"
Unfortunately, a real and serious difficulty with high-speed rail is that each person doesn't pay a little bit, they pay a small fortune, while in practice only a relatively small number of people will ever benefit directly from the faster travel times.
It's not a simple thing to consider, because of course others might benefit indirectly.
On the other hand, other others will be worse off. Again, some of this is direct: building the new HS2 high speed line from London up to major cities in the north of England via Birmingham is going to cause a lot of disruption to some people. In some cases, it will wipe out entire small communities, because going around them was deemed too expensive. It's all fun and games until it's your family home or established place of business that gets a Compulsory Purchase Order.
And again, there will be indirect negative consequences as well. For example, building HS2 might actually harm our local economy here in Cambridge, because to some extent there is only finite investment capital to go around, and by not being near the new line, our area becomes a less attractive place to make some of those investments.
But the biggest elephant in the room is the opportunity cost. These kinds of projects commit almost unimaginable amounts of public money -- money collected from a whole generation of taxpayers over several years -- to one single project with limited benefits. You can't just consider high speed rail in isolation. You have to also consider the benefits you don't now receive from, say, upgrading existing rail infrastructure or expanding the road network, both of which potentially reduce journey times significantly for a lot more people and increase freight capacity. And of course taxpayers' money also gets spent in areas outside of transport, like running hospitals and educating kids, where there are always considerable pressures and plenty of ways more money could help. You could even do something crazy like not taking that hard-earned money from taxpayers in the first place and instead letting them spend it on things they valued, thus boosting the economy in whatever areas those happen to be.
Basically, high speed rail sounds great until you check the details, but it is far from being a clear win economically, environmentally or politically when you actually look at the details. Time will tell whether the HS2 project in the UK lives up to the hype, but "it's public investment" is a long way from a robust argument in this particular case. And just about everything here goes double for the very high speed technologies we're talking about in this article.
Re: (Score:3)
yeah, it's called "public investment", each person pays a little bit so that everyone can use the thing, think "public roads"
Unfortunately, a real and serious difficulty with high-speed rail is that each person doesn't pay a little bit, they pay a small fortune, while in practice only a relatively small number of people will ever benefit directly from the faster travel times.
And you can say that about road and motorway building too. Living in rural Wales I don't get any direct benefit from new motorways or road widenings in, say the Midlands; nor do most people living in Newcastle or Scotland for that matter. I could even do a reductio ad absurdum of your argument by extending it to say that even if I do use a 3-lane motorway, I get no benefit from the two lanes I am not using. Building HS2 is like having more lanes of motorway.
Whether there is really any benefit in bu
Re: (Score:3)
Living in rural Wales I don't get any direct benefit from new motorways or road widenings in, say the Midlands; nor do most people living in Newcastle or Scotland for that matter.
That is true, but there is a much higher chance that you will benefit indirectly from improved transport infrastructure that helps anything you buy get moved to your local area so you can buy it. HS2 isn't, as far as I know, currently expected to carry much if any freight itself, and arguments that it will free up significant room on the existing railway network for freight by shifting long-distance services have been criticised for various reasons.
Usually, when these things are built, people just start travelling longer distances
That is certainly true as a local effect and up to a certai
Re: (Score:3)
There might be relatively small numbers of those, but then they interact with others who benefit, and then others interact with those who also benefit, etc. etc. Pretending there's some arbitrary number of separations before it ceases to matter, it's not really helping the discussion. That's not how benefits such as these work.
You can keep your sooth-saying, too, as that's also entirely not helpful to the discussion. Living in continental Europe, your comments about "general reduction in flexibility" and
510kph is airliner speed? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:510kph is airliner speed? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
In Japan maybe, but in the US? The security show sure adds a lot of time.
Re: (Score:2)
The security show sure adds a lot of time.
Maybe. It seems security usually takes around ten minutes when I get on a plane these days. Of course, other airports might be different, but being groped (or gently fondled) is the worst part of security.
Re:510kph is airliner speed? (Score:5, Informative)
Re: 510kph is airliner speed? (Score:4, Informative)
This might have something to do with the fact that the two Hokkaido and Tokyo are on two different islands.
In addition you can fly in Germany from Hamburg to Berlin and Munich. But still most people use the train. For two reasons. Hamburg Berlin is 1.5 hours by train you cannot reach the plane in that time and definitely not fly. Munich req. 6 hours by train so a plane might be faster, but you can jump on a train every hour without planning for a specific hour. You cannot do that with a plane.
Re: (Score:3)
TSA is already involved with ground transportation and is likely to be moreso, especially if speeds and usage increase.
Re: (Score:2)
There's no reason it shouldn't take a similar amount of time to board a plane as a train. Door count is the current major factor possibly along with seating density and requirements to stow luggage securely.
Re: (Score:2)
And by "securely", I mean "not loose in the cabin during turbulence" not "keeping simps happy"
Re: (Score:2)
Not to be "that guy" but I thought airliners cruised about 600ish mph... which is about 1000kph.
I suspect that the reference to "average speed of an airliner" was not intended to mean "average cruising speed of airliners across models" but rather "average speed of a typical airliner over the course of the trip terminal-to-terminal", which would be significantly lower than cruising speed.
So, in other words, typical imprecise writing from submitters and editors. Of course it's also possible they simply don't have a fucking clue what they're talking about, which would also be typical...
Re:510kph is airliner speed? (Score:5, Informative)
777 cruise speed is 900 km/h, but the actual average speed from embarking to debarking - "block speed" - which includes loading, waiting for takeoff clearance, taxiing, takeoff, climbout, a percentage of adverse winds during cruise, waiting for landing clearance, landing, taxiing, and unloading - is a good deal lower.
A block speed of 700 km/h, particularly over routes that are not very long, and match train route lengths, would not be too far off the mark. That's a lot closer to a train with a block speed not far short of 500 km/h, than is a naive comparison of 500 km/h to 1000 km/h.
A train's block speed is also less than its "cruising" speed, but many of the factors that work against airliners are either absent or of reduced magnitude.
510kph is airliner speed? (Score:2)
It's a little bit misleading to be comparing the vehicle's speed: what people really care about is how fast *they* travel, and how comfortable it is.
For short haul distances, once you take into account all the constraints that trains don't have: check-in and dealing with luggage (at both ends), boarding through a single door (or two), limited cabin space, refuelling, taxiing and
Re:510kph is airliner speed? (Score:4, Informative)
These turboprops that are used by regional airlines are indeed that slow (ATR-72 cruise speed is 510 kph, Saab 340's is 467 kph, Bombardier Q200's is 537 kph).
Re: (Score:2)
Well, adding getting through the security theater and grope show, getting in the plane, finally getting the slot for take off and then getting up to the flight level... with everything in reverse again after your flight...
I'm not so sure whether US coast to coast travel wouldn't be faster in such a train. But then people would have to go without the ever pleasant and popular ball groping by some pervert.
Re: (Score:2)
Nice. It's neat that this was uploaded just a few days ago.
Re: (Score:2)
My dog would just love this!
kph? (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
It is nice to pick international system units, however it would be better to do it right. This should be km/h, not kph.
Do you mean units of km/h like TFA uses?
Re: (Score:2)
kph is a very normal abbreviation used in much of the world for kilometres per hour. Nothing unusual at all in seeing it here.
Re: (Score:3)
it's not normal. seems to be used by americans only - it's one way to identify an american :)
km/h - try to remember that.
Re: (Score:3)
I live in Canada, and I see kph all the time. I have also seen it used in places in europe.
KPH (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Kamikazes Per Hour?
Kardashians Per Hour - (the official business model units of E! Entertainment Television)
For those of us in the greater Boston area (Score:3)
Case stronger... (Score:2)
240km/hr? (Score:3)
Sure 500kph is a great achievement, but put it in perspective of what places that are interested in rail travel do, don't compare the speeds to the rail backwater that is North America. Normal trains in Europe do 300kph routinely.
The problem with North American rail travel has never been a technology barrier, it's always been about having any interest in doing better.
Re: (Score:2)
Or more precisely, the problem with North America is that it's a country where most people would never even benefit from having high speed rail.
The root cause of the lack of interest is that our nation's population is so spread out, you can't get rail to move you to your destination faster than a car, no matter how fast the train runs. It's not like densely populated ar
Re: (Score:3)
"most people would never even benefit"
The things about areas of low population density is that MOST PEOPLE ARE NOT THERE.
By population density New Jersey should have the same or better rail/cellular/internet/etc. service than Belgium or Switzerland.
Re:240km/hr? (Score:4, Informative)
Having worked at a DOT the primary stumbling block to high speed rail is the NIMBLY's that have a house that backs up the the rail lines. The secondary issue is wanting to keep stations every town aka every few miles making the effective speed hard to get above 30mph with all the stops.
Re: (Score:2)
magic of airplanes, you don't need to lay tracks and screw up people's property values. something the train nuts can't understand
Yeah. Because everyone wants to live near the airport :)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
which defeats the whole purpose of high speed rail in the first place, especially when we have commuter airports outside the big cities. and you can always take a bus where you need to go from the airport or a cab or whatever. no need to spend $100 billion or more for HSR or some upgraded train system to duplicate existing systems
Re: (Score:3)
...you just have to have the right number of stops. Stopping in every town is stupid. But if the train stopped every hour or so that might well make sense.
This is what the Jingguang [wikipedia.org] does. It's about 2400 km with 14 stops if you go the whole route from Beijing to Guangzhou. 8+ hours station to station makes for a stop about every 40 minutes. Most of the stops are for just long enough to people to get on/off, but every third (or so) stop is a provincial capital, and is generally long enough to step out on the platform and grab a cigarette if you're so inclined. Nice seats, smooth ride, minimal baggage and security hassles, and about 20% cheaper than going by ai
Re: (Score:3)
Normal trains in Europe do 300kph routinely.
If with 'normal' you mean specialized trains running on a limited set of tracks, then yes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H... [wikipedia.org]
They apparently can go 575 km/h if you let them: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H... [wikipedia.org]
What most people would consider 'normal trains' and normal tracks are limited to 200 km/h and usually less than that (130km/h and 160km/h are common speed limits).
Re: (Score:3)
Yes.
Fast trains need well maintained tracks, specially built for the speed, and the curves also have to take that in mind. The advent of cars and later planes have pretty much undermined rail in America in terms of people transport and many lines are only suitable for slow-moving cargo trains, some as low as 10mph.
We're talking track that will bounce up and down out of the ground a good 18 inches into the air. I've seen this often enough with an approaching train in some sections. That track couldn't tak
Re: (Score:2)
True, but of course the reason there is no interest is that it is not liable to be economically viable. The existing high-speed rail in the US is largely in the Northeast corridor because it can make money there. The proposed California high-speed rail (currently only planned to run between about Taft and Pixley) is a make-work project that has no potential for ever recouping the cost. That's the case for the vast majority of the US, there wouldn't be enough traffic and passengers to make it return the cost
Re: (Score:3)
The existing high-speed rail in the US is largely in the Northeast corridor because it can make money there.
Not a single public transportation system in the US or Europe makes money. They all operate at a annual loss of anywhere between 10% (London Underground) and 90% (Austin CMTA): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F... [wikipedia.org]
Only a couple of places in the densest areas in the far east make enough to cover ongoing operating expenses but even they are not close to ever covering the initial cost to build it.
Th
Re:240km/hr? (Score:5, Informative)
Comparing average densities is absolutely and utterly pointless. Noone suggests to build a Lincoln-Cheyenne maglev train. What about looking at dense regions rather? The US North-East megalopolis has a density of 359.6 people/km with over 50 million inhabitants total. More than dense enough for a maglev. Or even just conventional high speed trains.
Re: (Score:2)
Tax them.
Re: (Score:3)
Or maybe, I don't know, we should be comparing routes and population of cities at the route terminii.
For example, Tokyo (pop. 13.4 million) to Osaka (pop. 2.7 million) is 500 km.
New York City (pop. 8.4 million) to DC (pop. 0.6 million) is 364 km. The DC-Baltimore Metroplex is 9.3 million.
If you look at it that way, the disparity is much less. Nobody is suggesting high speed trains to connect every town in the US to every other town, but their complete absence from any routes at all is just third world primi
Only KPH, meh (Score:2)
Nice, but still the wrong answer (Score:2)
As such, the real answer is hyperloop.
Re: (Score:2)
Some mail delivery happens on high speed trains :-).
Re: (Score:2)
500KPH - but what is the average *journey* speed? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
It really is a matter of infrastructure. When I was living in france, I never drove a car. It was not useful. Driving was typically not much faster than taking the train. I could go to my university in 45 minutes while driving took about 35 minutes. But that gave me the opportunity to read in the train and to take a daily walk.
Later I was studying in Grenoble and my parents were living in Paris. To go and see my parents, public transportation (bus+train_tgv+train_city+bus) was taking about 4 hours and a hal
Meanwhile in America.... (Score:5, Interesting)
A train ride from Chicago to Atlanta takes 3 days and goes from Chicago to washington DC and then to atlanta to and costs as much as flying directly there in 2 hours.
One of these is easy ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Add the convenience of no boarding issues, and city-centre to city-centre travel, and the case for trains as mass-transport begins to look stronger.
This one seems REALLY easy to fix. Abolish the TSA, save billions in government expenditure and more billions in lost time and goodwill.
Re: (Score:2)
Sadly, I suspect that what will happen if this becomes real is that the difference in hassle will be eliminated by implementing TSA-like processes for boarding trains.
Re:One of these is easy ... (Score:4, Informative)
Thanksgiving is coming up. If you visit with your extended family, try floating the idea of abolishing the TSA and see what kind of responses you get.
cost (Score:2)
Add the convenience of no boarding issues, and city-centre to city-centre travel, and the case for trains as mass-transport begins to look stronger.
No one is arguing against trains as transportation because they are too slow. The main argument against high-speed rail is cost. In fact, if it were cheaper, we'd have high-speed rail here in California already. Most people don't oppose having it, they oppose paying for it (especially once they find out the ticket price).
Good for the show (Score:2)
but maglevs are generally useless. Old school high speed trains can run so many more routes being compatible with plain old rail lines. That gives you oddities like spending most of the time on the shorter, slower portion of a trip but it works and you don't have to change trains. A decade or two later, the trip's duration gets shaved by another hour or two if more high speed track could be funded and built. Even then, there may be some controversy about the high speed tracks (another project that eats phy
Run faster, dammit! (Score:2)
Japan has now put 100 passengers on a Maglev train doing over 500kph.
Wow! They must be able to run pretty fast to catch it! Look out 2016 Olympics, here comes the Japanese train riders!
Moving towards the speed of an airliner?? (Score:2)
The OP said this:
Airliners routinely cruise at 550 mph, which is nearly 900 kph. So I guess trains are moving towards the speed of an airliner in a strictly technical sense, but in reality, even this one, which is not representative of the norm, is still only just passing 50%, so not even close yet.
The
Wrong comparison (Score:4, Insightful)
What could possess someone to think it's ever valid to compare a maximum to an average?
Compare a maximum to a maximum (500 kph for this Shinkansen vs 241 kph for Acela). Or an average to an average (261 kph for newer Shinkansen vs. 129 kph for Acela). So the difference is only 2:1, and mostly has to do with (1) established rail routes in the U.S. being much, much older so as not conducive to high speed, and (2) travel distances being much greater in the U.S. resulting in air travel being more economical/time-efficient.
Oh yeah? (Score:2)
It's the B & P Tunnel (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
there's no way for the train to derail, considering the design (the thing literally runs in a 3 ft deep ditch)
Re: Is it wrong to wish for it to crash? (Score:3, Funny)
Challenge accepted!
Re: Is it wrong to wish for it to crash? (Score:5, Informative)
"If one of these things crashes at full speed, it is unlikely that anyone survives"
Why do you think this?
Crashes at up to 300kph in Japan and France have resulted in 0 fatalities. The worst "high-speed" crash was Eschede with a 50% fatality rate at "only" 200 kph because it went sideways into a bridge piling after derailing onto both sides of the switch and the bridge collapsed on top of it. As sxpert notes, for that to happen with this track design would require also lifting the train several feet to get it out of its trench before you could get it turned far enough to take out a bridge. The proximate failure at Eschede, where snagging the points resulted in the leading and trailing trucks of a car to leave a switch on separate tracks, is physically impossible with this maglev's track design..
Re: (Score:2)
there's no way for the train to derail, considering the design (the thing literally runs in a 3 ft deep ditch)
Yet by my calculations, the train has enough kinetic energy to lift itself over 3100 feet up into the air. So the depth of any ditch isn't really going to help.
I assume it's "locked" into the track, but at these speeds the entire train could probably disintegrate into confetti if it hit a solid enough obstacle, so it's not impossible for the majority of the mass of train to come off the rails.
Re: (Score:2)
you believe airlines are not heavily subsidized ?
Re: (Score:3)
1/3 of your ticket is paying for the local airports to operate along with the rents they generate and car rental fees. the subsidies are mostly there for out in the boonies airports
Re:stupid germans (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Not only this, with extreme weather events on the rise, flying is going to get more and more difficult.
Asserting it without proof doesn't make it true (sure, it's plausible, I'll grant that) nor does it say whether that increase in difficulty is significant or not.
I haven't heard of trains being stopped by wind, snow, rain, etc..
That's because you haven't heard of it. They aren't going to run trains through a hurricane, for example.
Re: stupid germans (Score:3)
Youre over-generalizing. Japan has a very diverse climate, from subtropical in the south to New-England like winters in the north. Also, the Japanese Shinkansen stops for typhoons, but not wind or rain. For snow you're talking about delays, not stops. Just as long as it takes to clear thr tracks. There's a difference. And while parts of the Great Plains have extreme weather, they also have excellent weather systems already as a result. I don't think there's real need to blame the weather for not developing
Re: (Score:2)
They overtook the French, with their TGV.
Not quite http://upload.wikimedia.org/wi... [wikimedia.org] The TGV network still has more fast (300+ km/h) tracks
Re: (Score:3)
No, they didn't.
There is less space per passenger in a TGV than in an ICE, but the TGV is faster ( http://upload.wikimedia.org/wi... [wikimedia.org] ) and safer ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E... [wikipedia.org] ).
There are many connections (e.g. Stuttgart München) where ICEs average about 100km/h.
Re:stupid germans (Score:5, Interesting)
will the stupid germans pick up their transrapid stuff where they left it now ?
Actually, the cruel joke here is that the German rail drivers have been striking now. Which is an important lesson . . . if a train *can* go that fast . . . it doesn't mean anything if something else prevents it from doing that.
Also, serious info for serious Slashdotters here . . . the Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel, has a PhD in Physics. Can any other country boast a top political leader who has a STEM leader . . . ?
She has a tough job . . . a scientist turned politician! But that is the message here . . . it is not about technology, but politics.
Re:stupid germans (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, serious info for serious Slashdotters here . . . the Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel, has a PhD in Physics. Can any other country boast a top political leader who has a STEM leader . . . ?
Not the leader of our government, but my local MP in the England is one of the very few current ones who has a science-related PhD.
Other MPs have openly mocked him in Parliament at various times for doing things like talking intelligently, raising valid concerns about something, or making arguments based on dumb stuff like facts and evidence.
Whether or not anyone agrees with this MP's political views, it's a pretty poor reflection on the calibre of colleagues he has to "debate" with.
She has a tough job . . . a scientist turned politician! But that is the message here . . . it is not about technology, but politics.
Sad, but apparently true.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:stupid germans (Score:5, Insightful)
Can any other country boast a top political leader who has a STEM leader . . . ?
Sure: China. Practically everyone on the top for the last 5 decades was a STEM person.
Re: (Score:3)
Can any other country boast a top political leader who has a STEM leader . . . ?
Mrs Thatcher had a chemistry degree and before full-time politics she worked in food technology. But the irony was that she came to preside over the destruction of Britain as a leading technical nation. It sems she hated technology.
Psychologically, I have seen this explained as, her having changed careers (science to politics), she was inclined to look back in contempt at her former one. A bit like her having made it into a man's world (as political leadership was back then) she famously looked back i
Re: (Score:2)
"What makes you believe that trains require any less security checks than a plane? Sure, today that might be the case but when you think about it both are equally vulnerable to terrorist attacks"
You can't fly a train into a building. Besides, a terrorist attack on a train won't have the same psychological effect (which is kinda the goal of terrorists)
Re: (Score:2)
I don't think he was saying that the TSA isn't a stupid, wasteful abomination, merely that as soon as rail travel gained any real usage, it would be similarly encumbered as air travel in the US.
Point being that many of the "issues" with air travel are due to bureaucratic nonsense and not issues inherent to the type of travel. Not so long ago, air travel in the US was apparently not so different to getting on a bus. There is a small airport a 5 minute drive from my house. Imagine if things had progressed unf
French Revolutionary Calendar (Score:2)
Those cultures that "have it together" divide the year into 10 "months", the month into 10-day "decades", and measure time with 10-hour days.
Metric makes perfect sense, and it is a mystery as to the holdouts against metric time.
Re: (Score:2)
kph is routinely used in many metric countries. it's not at all unusual to see it.