The Revival of Train Travel

BULLET TRAINI’m a romantic about certain things, like drive-in movies and train travel. It’s been sad to see the demise of US train travel. We have fallen so far behind Europe and Japan in modern train travel. Amtrak can still get you where you’re going, but it’s painfully slow and surprisingly expensive. I am encouraged by the Obama administration putting some money and thought behind modernizing train travel in this country. Modern trains are cleaner, fast and a more elegant way to travel.

Being a west coaster, I would love to see a fast train running from Seattle to San Diego. Of course we need a cross country route and several east coast runs. Unfortunately this would cost an incredible amount of money and Obama’s proposed 8 billion is barley a drop in the bucket. Maybe a private company should be encouraged to do it but with the costs involved it could take a very long time just to make your money back so maybe a government/private sector partnership. The Infrastructurist website has a great article on how passenger rail could be saved. Whichever, Amtrak is basically broke and is a broken system. I would hate to see train travel go away so I hope against hope someone can spur a great revival in train travel.

Flexible Displays

I love far future tech stuff. Here is something that might not be that far. These kind of flexible displays have so many cool applications. One of theminority-report.0best things about a newspaper or magazine is that you can roll it up and take it with you anywhere. And they are so cheap you can leave them for someone else to read (like a doctors office). I’d love to see flexible displays like this that are so cheap you can just leave them where ever for someone else or pick another one up anywhere. Since all personalization data is stored in the cloud, any device you pickup can be instantly be personalized to you when you login.

Maybe a small flexible display that wraps around your coffee cup and displays the latest news and Tweets. If this technology does take off, the chances of seeing display technology all over will be very high. Think Minority Report.

Some Dude From Cali: Kick Start My Heart

I’m back with a few topics to discuss:

A health update

Michael Jackson memorial comments

The state of political discourse on tv in this country.

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Overeating and Five Dollar Footlongs

funny pictures
Subway is a two faced advertising monster. On the one face they give us Jared, the slimed down, healthy eating role model for the world. Eat healthy, eat Subway. On the other face they are hitting hard on the five dollar footlong campaign. You think Jared got thin by eating footlong sandwiches? I think not. Eat healthy, or not.

It’s not just about less fat and less carb when loosing weight and getting fit. It’s also about portion control. That happens to be one of my biggest challenges so I know all about it. A footlong sandwich is just too much food for one person to eat at a single meal. Now maybe you’re splitting it with someone else or maybe you’re eating half for lunch and half tomorrow. If so, good for you. But Subway certainly doesn’t advertise it that way. Overeating and increased weight are real problems in this country and five dollar footlongs aren’t helping.