Fly me to the moon...or maybe just take a train to Birmingham instead
The UK government has been planning a new high-speed rail network known as HS2, the first phase of which will connect London to Birmingham (the UK's second city).
I was shocked to discover that the planned timetable for this initial phase spans nine years (2017–2026). The surprise is because the distance for the London to Birmingham route is only 119 miles. Less surprising — but sadly more predictable — is the recent news that the planned costs for the first part of this project are now projected to be 30% above the initial budget (up to £21.4 billion, ~$32.1 US billion).
This seems a lot of money to connect two cities that are not so far apart. I'm sure that this budget has to cover lots of other things besides the actual construction (e.g. purchasing land). But even setting the cost aside, will it really take almost a decade to construct the line? This is the best-case scenario of course, and pessimists among us no doubt imagine that there will almost certainly be delays (assuming the project is not derailed — metaphorically, not literally — by opposition campaigns).
We are not talking about building a railway line across mountainous terrain or having to circumvent huge lakes. However, any route built in the UK does have to face the twin forces of nature that are leaves on the line and the wrong type of snow.
How did things get so bad? After all, we are the country that introduced the first public passenger railway (1825), the world's first intercity railway (1830), and we also have the world's oldest continuously working public railway (since 1758). We used to be good at building railways!
So just to summarize the costs, timetable, and distance of this rail route:
- $32.1 billion
- 9 years
- 119 miles
If we convert this into a cost-per-year-per-mile, we get a figure of $29,971,989. How does this compare to some other public transportation projects? Well, the new Eastern span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge will hopefully open this year. It is running over time and budget, and still keeps running into problems. How does this project compare to the UK's HS2 line?
- $6.3 billion
- 11 years
- 2.2 miles
Cost-per-year-per-mile: $260,330,579 (almost an order of magnitude worse than HS2).
One final comparison. Between 1969 and 1972, the Apollo program put 12 men on the moon. This is, as you might imagine, much harder to work out the total cost of this massive project. There are some estimates that try to allow for inflation, and these put the final bill of the Apollo program between $153 and $422 billion. Let's go with the upper limit of this estimate. That gives us:
- $422 billion
- 13 years
- 239,000 miles
Cost-per-year-per-mile: $135,822 (a bargain!).
Of course these very fickle calculations make no effort to factor in how many people make use of these routes. The Apollo missions only took a grand total of 24 people to the moon (and of course not all of them got there), whereas the Bay Bridge carries 280,000 vehicles a day. However, I still can't get past the fact — and again this assumes that the project won't overrun at all — that the 1st phase of HS2 will see an average of just over 1 mile of the route completed per month of the nine year construction phase. British Rail — the former nationalized rail company that ran the UK's railways — once had a series of TV adverts that ended with the proclamation "We're getting there". A modern day update to this slogan might be "We're getting there...slowly".
Frustrating web design #1: AT&T
Earlier today I was trying to see whether the pre-paid phone plan that my inlaws are using during their visit here would allow them to send texts to the UK. A quick trip to a page on AT&T's website almost, but not quite, revealed the necessary information.
The box highlighed in red says Text to Mexico, Canada & 100 countries. In order to find out what those other 100 countries are, I tried mousing over the question mark symbol. This short video shows what happened next:
That's lovely AT&T, make me have to copy a URL by hand and type it in. Because the web is much more efficient that way.
Heinz tomato ketchup...not as nature intended?
I just noticed that on the back of our bottle of organic Heinz tomato ketchup is a slogan that reads:
Just as nature intended...
This raises two issues:
- Do Heinz really think that nature "intended" for tomatoes to be smushed together with vinegar, sugar, and various flavorings?
- Does this imply that Heinz's regular — i.e. non-organic — ketchup is not as nature intended? Perhaps the best selling ketchup variety in the world was an unintentional accident, and is secretly loathed by Mother Nature as the black sheep of the processed-tomato-products family?
A quiz about Davis
Reposted from my older blog that is about to disappear.
The following is a quiz about Davis that I made for a party where we said goodbye to some close friends who are leaving Davis after living here for the last six years. I think 12 was the highest score out of 20. If you use the internet, then you are cheating! Answers are included at the bottom of the post.
Scroll down to see the answers.
The Answers
All answers were taken from http://daviswiki.org so I make no claims as to their actual veracity (c) Andy Jones
2) Which of these roads does not exist on campus:
4) Prior to prohibition, the Women’s Christian Temperance Union of Davis tried banning the sale of alcohol within a 3 mile radius of campus. This was to prevent the ‘corruption’ of young farming students. They succeeded in getting the state legislature to enact this ban in 1911. When was this ban finally lifted:
5) In 1994 a woman was found guilty of violating Davis’ infamous noise ordinance. What activity was she doing that caused her neighbor resort to calling the police?
6) The name ‘Davis’ wasn’t the first name for our town. It became known as Davis in 1907…what was it known as before that?
8) In 2007, a customer was accidentally overcharged for the Pita that they had bought at Pita Pit. How much was the customers credit card charged with?
9) On 21st July this year, a woman robbed a bank in Davis. However, she then ran into a problem when she tried making her getaway. What happened?
10) In 1984 the Davis City Council declared the city to be a what?
11) After the toad tunnel was built what problem affected the toads that tried using it?
12) The Davis Police Department produce and distribute trading cards featuring what?
13) Picture round. What is the name of this sculpture which can be found on the UC Davis campus
14) Every March 1st, Davis Farmer’s market observes what important day?
15) What is the Social Sciences and Humanities Building on the UC Davis campus better known as?
16) David Pyles, is a post-doc in the UC Davis Biometeorology program but how is he better known?
17) In 1870, what was the approximate population of Davis?
18) In July 2003 what was found in a dumpster at Slatter’s Court Mobile Home Park on Olive Drive?
19) Which country keeps it’s diplomatic mission to the California State Government of California based in Davis?
20) In 2006, someone erected an April Fool’s Day sign in Davis that proclaimed that *what* was coming to Davis soon?
The Littlest Birds Sing the Prettiest Songs — or do they?
According to this video testimony from musical performers The Be Good Tanyas, ‘the littlest birds sing the prettiest songs’. If we take their claim at face value, one might presuppose that ‘size of bird’ and ‘prettiness of song’ might be connected in some form of linear relationship where smaller birds sing prettier songs:
However, as they fail to clarify the nature of the relationship between ‘size of bird’ and ‘prettiness of song’ one could postulate that the following examples also satisfy their description:
Thus we feel that — in the absence of supporting data — their observation that smaller sized avians produce more pleasing vocalizations, should not be regarded as a relationship which necessarily suggests that larger-sized birds sing notably less pretty songs.
Regardless of whether there is a relationship between these two metrics, we might still expect to find supporting evidence for the notion that diminutive avians produce trillings, warblings, and other chirruping-like sounds that are of a fetching nature.
One might therefore assume that the songs of Hummingbirds should be among the prettiest of all bird songs. However, according to the Hummingbird-themed site World of Hummingbirds:
“the sounds of hummingbirds are not exactly considered music…it would be more appropriate to call them chirps then it would be to call it music.”
This testimony, along with the audio evidence provided on their site, suggests that the claims of The Be Good Tanyas should not be taken at face value. Further undermining their claims is this list of the top ten song birds from ‘Bird On! News’. While some of the entries on this list also feature in whatbird.com’s list of small-sized birds (those birds 5–9 inches in length), the top 10 list also includes the mute swan which can grow up to 1.5 meters in length, a size described by Wikipedia as ‘impressive’.
Without published data in a peer-reviewed journal we find the evidence to support any claim that ‘the littlest birds sing the prettiest songs’ to be lacking and we humbly request that The Be Good Tanyas ‘show us the data’.
Please do not read this
Reposted from my older blog that is about to disappear.
This is a test, a little psychological play thing. I’m just curious as to how many people will proceed with reading this even though I have (kindly) asked that you refrain from doing so. Most people will come across a link to this blog post from Twitter or App.net and therefore will see nothing more than the following text: ‘Please don’t read this’ along with a shortened web link.
And yet…and yet you are here, reading these very words which I asked you not to read. You disregarded my instructions and if you are still reading this then you have thrown caution to the wind and are willing to risk the possible destruction of your computer in order to see what I had to say (have you people never heard of clickjacking?). From a psychological viewpoint, you might be interested to know that you are now a victim of my (successful) attempt at using the Pique Technique.
Of course it is entirely possible that the brave souls who have clicked on the link to arrive here actually know me (at least in a virtual way) and therefore trust that I would not do something so malicious as to cause them (or their computer/internet device) any harm. However, who is to say that I am not a sleeper agent that has been recently ‘activated’ to carry out a mission of inflicting chaos and mayhem on an unsuspecting world?
Okay folks, here is your final test. If you scroll down to the bottom of this page you will find three words waiting for you. However, I strongly suggest with all of the urgency that I can muster, that you DO NOT READ THOSE THREE WORDS! I can take no liability for what damage, psychological or otherwise, may arise from the reading of those three words. These three words have been carefully chosen for their potential to cause grave offense and so I will end this post by once again urging you that you should not, under any circumstances, scroll down to the bottom of this post to read those three words.
Moist muffin flaps.