The world's most bad-ass Chevy Cavalier

Actually, I think this is the world's only bad-ass Chevy Cavalier.

Walnuts misses the train

I'm going to keep harping on how out-of-touch, and behind-a-few-steps John "Walnuts" McCain is. Don't get it twisted, the "Maverick" is really just a half-senile old bag of bones without an ounce of forward thinking.

Here's a nice smackdown of his record on Amtrak and rail transit. Walnuts thinks we can engineer emissions-free cars sooner and more efficiently than we can improve transportation options. What planet is he from?

Approaching the city

Here's a fantastic blog about public transportation, with a little urban planning and politics thrown in. Very nice....

We're falling behind yet again

If I told you that some country was building a "carbon-neutral" city where people rode in solar-powered personal rapid-transit vehicles, turned waste into energy and recycle its water, where would you think this was?

No, not the U.S., silly. We're way behind! How about, of all places, Abu Dhabi.

Throw McCain under the train

According to this two week-old story about John McCain on the campaign trail, the old coot "travels Amtrak like everyone else."

"Nice to see you, nice to see you," McCain said to workers and passengers who greeted him on the 8 a.m. high-speed Acela Express train.

So while he's enjoying the convenience and service of inter-city train travel, he's also the one who nearly killed funding for improving the system and has positioned himself as a political enemy of Amtrak.

But Hutchison and pro-Amtrak Democrats Max Cleland of Georgia and John Kerry of Massachusetts had to settle for supporting roles Tuesday as McCain offered an unflattering history lesson about Amtrak, which runs two routes that cross Arizona. (Link)

Here's more on McCain's history of being anti-rail. Maybe next time Amtrak employees (or riders, for that matter) see him on the Acela they should remind him where he is.

Take the last train to Fuck You-Ville

My wife and I are planning to spend Christmas up in Philadelphia this year. That means we have to travel from Atlanta all the way up to the land of Cheesesteaks and obsessive sports talk radio. I had the idea that maybe we would take the train up there -- No long security lines, no need to turn off the iPod or put your tray table up. I think train travel is pretty much superior in every way to air travel (with the exception of that whole not-being-able-to-travel-over-water thing).

So I went to amtrak.com and looked up the price of two round-trip tickets from ATL to Philly. The price came to a completely fucking insane $712!

Then I went and looked up airfare. It turns out two round-trip tickets on AirTran Airways would cost $673.48.

Now, I know that Bush and his Republican buddies could give fuck-all about train service, but wow have things gotten bad for Amtrak. They can't even compete on price point basis with the airlines! Has the sheer insanity of this sunk in yet? FLYING IS NOW CHEAPER THAN TRAIN TRAVEL!!!

Yes, the world's least efficient mode of transportation, the one that uses far more fuel and causes far more pollution than any other method (even driving your SUV) is now our prefered way of travelling between cities. Delays caused by too many flights leaving too few runways and Soviet food line-esque security mazes have resulted in so many flight delays that Dubya the Dumber even had to re-route flights through military airspace. (If you read that a Boeing was accidentally shot down this week, remember, this Dubya we're talking about.)

The truth of the matter is Dubya and his criminal buddies (Tom Delay, Jack Abramoff, etc.) have always been in the pockets of the airlines, which spend millions of dollars on lobbying. All Amtrak has to lobby is a few federal bureaucrats who have no sway at all with Republican members of Congress, due to the railroad's perception that it only serves the Boston to Washington corridor. Bush himself keeps trying to kill Amtrak and wants a plan that puts rail transportation in the hands of the states.

So the Republicans are basically saying that inter-city travel, which by the very nature of it must connect different cities and states all across the country, should not be a function of the federal government!

I know there are people who say taxpayers shouldn't have to subsidize rail travel, but the fact is that EVERY mode of transportation is already partially subsidized by federal and state governments -- and highways and airports are the chief beneficiaries of that public money, while rail travel is left to wither on the vine.

Even FEMA refused Amtrak's offer to help evacuate Katrina victims! Think about that for a second. We have a federal government that is so anti-Amtrak that it refused to let flood victims take trains out of New Orleans. Do you really think they're going to change course and start subsidizing train service at the expense of deep-pocketed airlines?

This is why the terrorists hate us

Sometimes we stumble upon a website that at first seems to be an elaborate practical joke. Then we realize there really are retards who ascribe to the website's sociopathic worldview. This is one of those sites.

Explanation for Minnesota bridge collapse

I stumbled upon this 2005 Onion parody that (creepily) explains why the bridge might have collapsed over Minnesota last week.

The ultimate mixing bowls

Here are some great photos of massive highway interchanges.

A hybrid that isn't so, uh, girly

I've heard hybrids described as "girly" and weak way too many times, but the facts don't necessarily back that up. The Toyota Prius, for instance, is no less sporty than the cars that most of us drive! Despite the image of big trucks rumbling through the mountains, most Americans drive small sedans that are no more macho than the Prius, which is actually quite sporty looking itself.

Now check out the Toyota FT-HS hybrid sportscar. It was unveiled at the 2007 North American International Auto Show and is expected to be priced in the very reasonable mid-$30,000 range:

For a while there I was scared hybrids and "green" cars would be weak, girly little cars with slow engines. But what I'm seeing from Toyota has made me a happy man. Imagine having a car that is much faster than a Porsche, Mercedes AMG and any M series car from BMW and still cost 1/4 the price! Well Toyota plans to sell the FT-HS somewhere in the mid 30k range which, if correct, has me sold as I type this down. The goal of the rear wheel drive(thank god!) hybrid powertrain is to produce 400 horsepower and achieve 0-60 mph in around 4 seconds. This is accomplished with by combining a 3.5-liter V6 and an electric motor in a similar manner to the Lexus GS450h.

Thai woman takes 25-year-long bus ride

Here's a story of a woman from a rural area of southern Thailand who boarded a bus 25 years ago for a shopping trip. Unfortunately the bus was going to Malaysia. So she apparently survived by begging in the streets before a group of students recognized her Thai dialect and were able to return her home.

I once heard a similar story that may possibly be apocryphal, but here it is anyway: According to a friend named Laura who I happened to know while I was a student in France, her father was much older than most parents of kids our age. He was in his 60s or 70s when she was in college. According to Laura, her father had grown up in Baltimore and that one night when he was 19 or so he and his friends went out drinking and ended getting completely soused. Laura's father was the first to pass out, so in the wee hours of the night his friends decided to play a prank on him by stowing him away on a ship docked in the harbor.

Apparently the ship unwittingly sailed away with him onboard and he was taken to France (I think this was in the late 40s or early 50s). Instead of coming back to Baltimore, though, he stayed in Europe and worked odd jobs in France and Italy for the next 30 years without ever contacting his family. She said he eventually came back to the states and married her mother, but that he essentially fell off the face of the earth that night in Baltimore. Even if it's not completely true, it's such a good yarn that it's interesting when other stories like that of the Thai woman surface.

read more | digg story

Like the Rascal Junior on Steroids

Check out the pics of a new electric concept vehicle from Peugeot, called the Dauphin. Apparently it can go 90 mph and recharges by parking it over a docking station.

An Airline Needs Your Help

Apparently Virgin America, a fledgling airline founded by Richard Branson has been blocked from operating U.S. routes because of too high a percentage of foreign ownership. Somehow foreign airlines are what, more likely to allow their planes to be hijacked? Anyway, the airline's CEO (not Branson himself, unfortunately) actually released a viral video asking perk-susceptible travelers to help them fight the good fight.

If Humans Were Better Drivers We Wouldn't Need Robots

The European Union is investing all sorts of money and effort into developing driver-less cars, taxis and trams. Hopefully this will pick up steam in the U.S., too. We're already using pilot-less drones for military and intelligence purposes, so why shouldn't we turn this technology toward civilian uses? The fact remains that humans just don't make very good drivers. We're too dependent on our reflexes and motor skills. Computer logic would actually be far more efficient at piloting small vehicles from point A to point B. Computers don't get drunk. They don't talk on cell phones. They don't feel the need to slow down and look at the fender bender on the other side of the highway. I think these driver-less systems will start popping up within the next 20 years in urban areas. The real leap forward will be when we're able to move from automated public-transit type systems to private automobiles that are integrated into larger transportation networks.