I am up at the ungodly hour of 4 a.m. for an early flight to NYC. Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is showing a distinctly un-catlke interest in walnuts:
Hili: Are there walnuts with meat inside?
A: I’m afraid there aren’t.
Hili: Can’t they be genetically modified?
In Polish:
Hili: Czy są takie orzechy z mięsem w środku?
Ja: Obawiam się, że nie ma.
Hili: A czy nie można ich genetycznie zmodyfikować?
ahem – ‘un-ceiling cat-ly’ hour! 😉
PS Give my regards to Broadway…!
Urrggghhh … 4am… Silly o’clock …
Yeah, I know the “red eye shuttle” all too well. Horrible invention.
When I’ve got the option, I try to get the transport secretary at work to organise me onto an overnight train down to the Great Wen (London ; it’s not a polite name ; how many Cobbett families can there be?) which will get me there in time for a leisurely breakfast and a 09:00 meeting.
I know that the USian rail system isn’t exactly set up for passengers any more, but if people don’t ask for services, they’re certainly not going to be provided.
And checking around, there is apparently such a service, thought it takes a more roundabout route and takes 20 hours. That’s obviously not intended for the business market. Oh well, wasteful planes and automobiles then.
California is working on it
http://www.hsr.ca.gov/
“HSR”? High Speed Rail?
Yes.
Thing is, it doesn’t need “high speed” rail in a lot of cases. Flying to a meeting in London takes 0.5+ 1.0+ 0.5+ 1.5+ 1.0+ 0.5+ 0.5 ~= 5.5 hours (tube to office + airport to city on tube + baggage collection + flight + security + check-in + taxi/ lift from home), and with flights not allowed to start before 06:00, I’m never going to make any meeting earlier than 11:30. That’s with a 04:00 start as ProfCC was suffering, Which means going to bed several hours earlier than normal the evening before.
Taking an evening flight and hoteling in London is going to add a couple of hundred quid to the bill (actually, I stay with family ; more comfortable).
Taking the train, with a bed not a recliner chair, costs almost the same as the flight, and gets me into the city centre for breakfast time after a comfortable night. There’s also power for the laptop and WiFi too on most of the route. So I can be productive in the evening.
I’m sure that high speed rail is going would be great if you don’t have internal borders to worry about. But once you add in passport checks etc at borders, then the advantage of going “high speed” starts to erode, rapidly. Within the country … it needs to be able to beat the car (50-55mph) and be more convenient than flying. both of which it already manages.
(The driving speed limit is 70mph, and routine motorway speeds 80mph ; once you’re off the motorway, you’re lucky to maintain 55mph because of lorries. Add in a few piss & petrol stops and you’re down to 50-55mph. That’s if you’ve got a co-driver, otherwise it drops further as you get beyond 5 hours behind the wheel. The required breaks for lorry drivers are wise for other drivers too, and journey planning should allow for appropriate rest breaks.)
In Arizona, we’re contemplating a passenger rail line to connect Phoenix (capital, largest city, in the middle of the state) with Tucson (second-largest city, not far from the Mexican border, about an hundred miles / two hundred kilometers away, depending on which parts of town you’re going to and from). It would likely be faster than driving, but not necessarily by much…even though its cruising speed would be about half again as fast as on the freeway. There’d be a couple stops in suburbs, and the most likely route would be less direct. Plus, there’s the time to get to and from the station.
But the carrying capacity of the train would be far superior to that of the roads, and it would (theoretically) be much more reliable and consistent…it’s not uncommon for there to be bad traffic delays on the roadway such that it can take twice as long to make the trip.
That is, the train would typically be about as fast as driving in ideal conditions, and basically never be less than ideal even when driving is a mess.
b&
The relative predictability of the downside is one of the major advantages of managed transport in general over the free-for-all on the roads.
Having said that, there was a half-hour delay on Monday due to flooding on the tracks. And I got stuck for 3 days in the 2010 December Hellrow snow fiasco (only losing one day to snow in St.Johns later). and a day due to lighting strike on the way back from Benin earlier this year. Transport is a lottery at the best of times.
Yes, but in most situations that cause significant public transportation delays, private vehicles are in just as bad shape if not worse. Indeed, it’s very common for there to be some sort of real snarl on the freeways, but the busses zip right past the traffic at nearly full speed in the diamond lane.
Aside from localized debris on rail tracks or the like, anything that’s going to cause a problem for rail (like flooding) is going to cause even more of a problem for cars…and then the cars are going to be in even worse shape as all the rail passengers try to make it through on the roads….
The Internet has already started to put a bit of a dent in the fundamental problem of too many people trying to go too many places. Though it’s often “nice” to have face-to-face meetings, if you can do it electronically, it becomes very hard to justify the business expense of moving an hundred kilograms of middle manager all over the place for marginal benefit.
It’s starting to pick up. Nearly all office jobs can be done just as well from home with equipment the employee already owns. Why should the company pay for very expensive prime real estate plus all the associated utilities and maintenance and parking and the rest when they can just tell the employee to phone it in?
The turning point will come when employees realize that they’re working for their bosses from the moment they step out their own front door — exactly the same as professionals who bill “portal-to-portal” already know. And the real turning point will come when employees who get in wrecks while commuting start to sue their bosses, the same way they’d sue if a forklift in a warehouse ran them over. That’s the point where employers start taking all responsibility for getting employees to the job site, mostly with mass transit whether publicly or privately owned and operated; the remainder will need commercial driver’s licenses to commute, licenses that actually do have some real meaning. And most not in manufacturing or service won’t commute at all.
b&
It’s already happening. There have been cases, quietly settled, where people who drive home after getting off the helicopter have had crashes, and sued because they were required to work a night shift before S/S/S-ing and getting a mid-morning flight home, then having to drive several hundred miles home because no accommodation expenses would be entertained and … droopy eyelids, crunch.
It’s not just fear of law suits which would be hard to defend. One rig I used to work on lost three senior maintenance staff in one crash. People who were very difficult to replace in general, and whose particular knowledge of that installation was irreplaceable.
Good to hear.
Of course, it’s in conflict with the MBA instinct to starve companies to prosperity. There’s this bizarre notion that, unless it shows a positive balance on the books in no more than three months, it’s something you should avoid spending money on at all costs. Some new hotshot will barge in, wonder why all this money is being “wasted” on employee “perks,” and you’ll be right back where you started.
b&
Sithrak is oiling a special spit for MBAs. It’s not a smooth spit – not that any of them are. Nor is it straight – not that any of them are.
I had to spend several hours yesterday listening to an MBA telling me how to drill holes in the ground. After the site visit – during which he cracked the sump on his Porsche and lost all the oil from his engine – he buggered off and we got on with actually doing productive work.
PS Dunbar (a guid Scottish makar!) thought otherwise of the Great Wen!
“London, thou art of townes A per se.”
http://www.poetry-archive.com/d/in_honour_of_the_city_of_london.html#ZdDRYRqIZWGxRCJc.99
Maybe. Did Dunbar spend his youth in a town which grew 3-fold in 10 years with refugees from London who would do nothing but moan about how excremental “the sticks” are and how wonderful London is? Sort of colours one’s opinion.
London has some good points – museums, interesting science meetings … ummm, any more from your end? That doesn’t make up for the crowding, the stench, the tension, the aggression. I’ll go to London, given a good enough reason – money, an interesting conference – but otherwise, who needs the stress?
No wonder the felions wouldn’t take my potato chips but eat bread.
I always think eating bread itself shows felion’s life are tough.
I’ve always referred to the edible stuff inside the shells of nuts as “nutmeats,” but they’re probably not good for cats to eat and certainly not the same type of meat as mousies.
Walnuts are wonderful…and black walnuts heavenly, even if it is a bit of a challenge to get to the meat….
b&