Reason

Barataria - The work of Erik Hare

“Conventional Wisdom” isn’t.

Everyday life is the process of understanding and using key facts about the world around us. The sky is blue, red means stop, the 94 bus leaves at 7:53, and coffee will wake you up. Most of the important things in life are obvious enough, based on immediate observation or past experiences strung together.

However, the presence of technology and a growing interconnectedness impinges critical “facts” onto our lives which reach far beyond our senses and sensibilities. Cell phones work because they just work, this thing called “money” in our bank account is extremely important, people who live in distant lands are motivated by something akin to demonic possession, et cetera.

This is where it all breaks down. Or, more importantly, where things breaking down accelerates as reason itself fails.

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Why Did The Penn Central Railroad Fail?

PenneyVanderbilt

The Penn Central was born amid great expectations and promises on February 1,1968 by the merger of the New York Central System into the Pennsylvania Railroad on that date.

Neither railroad had been forced through the trauma of bankruptcy and reorganization.

With incompatible computer systems ,signal systems, operating styles, and personalities at the top, the new railroad remained essentially two in operation though it was one in name.

1.) PC was forced to pay $125 million for the bankrupt New Haven, which had a negative cash flow.

2.) PC was required to operate well over one half of all the passenger service in the US, which by that time had a monstrous negative cash flow. Amtrak only partly relieved this in 1971, as PC was still saddled with commuter service in the New York and Philadelphia areas.

3.) Freight rates and abandonments were rigidly regulated, preventing PC and others from…

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The 3 Essential Ingredients for Cooking Up Transit That People Want to Ride

KCJones

Streetsblog USA via California Rail News

Speed. Routes should be direct, instead of cutting labyrinthine paths across a city. Fare payment needs to be fast and easy, via off-board fare collection or tap-and-go entry at every door. Transit can’t get bogged down in traffic, either, so features like dedicated space on the street and priority at traffic lights are needed to keep things moving.
Frequency and Reliability. People won’t ride transit if they can’t depend on it…
Walkability and Accessibility. Transit works best when people can walk to it. That means both concentrating transit in compact, walkable places, and making it easier to walk to transit in places where pedestrian infrastructure is lacking…
On the Dublin buses you can pay your fare with a tap card. Passengers can walk past the farebox next to the driver to tap the card reader and not wait behind cash paying riders to dig out their money.

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JACK DeJOHNETTE trio feat. Ravi Coltrane & Matt Garrison: ‘Wise One’ Blue Note Milano

Jazz You Too

Jack DeJohnette – drums
Matt Garrison – bass
Ravi Coltrane – saxophone

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My Thoughts on Memorial Day

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Here Rests In Honored Glory An American Soldier Known But To God

Last June, I was in Washington, D.C. for a short series of meetings. I had some free time before one of those meetings and I decided to squeeze in a little sightseeing. When I realized how easy it is to take the Metro (subway) to Arlington National Cemetery, my mind was set. Next stop, Arlington.

To my knowledge, I don’t have any relatives buried at Arlington. Still, simply walking the grounds is a sobering and humbling experience. Visiting the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is especially moving. Staring over the vast number of graves – men and women who served, many who died while protecting our freedom – one cannot help but think about how very lucky we are.

The cemetery was crowded, and people were moving slowly. That was fine by me. I enjoyed looking at some…

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Texas High-Speed Rail Project Moves Forward

PenneyVanderbilt

NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth via California Rail News

Texas Central, the Dallas company planning to build a high-speed train between Dallas and Houston, has reached a deal with a major global consortium to design and build the project.

An official announcement is expected within a matter of days

“We have a world-class design builder that has just signed on to come and build this for us,” said Carlos Aguilar, CEO of Texas Central.
The 59 year-old Aguilar has been on the job at Texas Central since December. He brings decades of experience with huge infrastructure projects, including the Cantarell offshore natural gas field in Mexico, the London Underground and the world’s largest solar thermal energy plant in Ivanpah, Calif.

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Indianapolis 500 versus Monte Carlo Grand Prix: Train to the Race

KCJones

Yes as far as the races: Indianaplis 500 and Monaco Grand Prix; there are a lot of differeces. We won’t try and appear intelligent; let’s conclude they are HUGE spectator events that happen every May.

In 1911, The Peoria & Eastern  Railway will convey about 70,000 to the Indianapolis Speedway.  1963 The Peoria & Eastern runs the last of its “500” specials. The trains are profitable, but do not fit into the company’s long-range plans.

Beginning in 1929, the Grand Prix of Monaco is also a really huge event.  Compare to Monaco F-1 Grand Prix held end of May. SNCF (French National Railways) runs through Monaco over a high speed electrified line from French Riviera to Italy. Most trains are eight car Alstom-manufactured trainsets. Four of these are owned by the Principality of Monaco and painted royal colors of red and white with royal crest. Limited roads into Monaco and very…

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How Home Ownership Became The Engine Of America Inequality

PenneyVanderbilt

New York Times Magazine via California Rail News

Almost a decade removed from the foreclosure crisis that began in 2008, the nation is facing one of the worst affordable-housing shortages in generations. The standard of “affordable” housing is that which costs roughly 30 percent or less of a family’s income. Because of rising housing costs and stagnant wages, slightly more than half of all poor renting families in the country spend more than 50 percent of their income on housing costs, and at least one in four spends more than 70 percent. Yet America’s national housing policy gives affluent homeowners large benefits; middle-class homeowners, smaller benefits; and most renters, who are disproportionately poor, nothing. It is difficult to think of another social policy that more successfully multiplies America’s inequality in such a sweeping fashion.

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Art Of The Week: Rob Higgs

The Arts Mechanical

I did a post with Higgs’ corkscrew a while back, but his stuff is certainly worthy of an “art of the week.”

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Loosely Connected to Greatness #WATWB

Amazing Lady!

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Katherine Johnson

I remember hearing a story on NPR last year about a book, “The Rise of the Rocket Girls” which told the story about women who had been recruited into service at NASA’s predecessor agency, The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) to perform mathematical calculations before computers were commonplace. I thought about reading that book, but I quickly forgot that thought.

Almost a year later, part of that story arrived in my inbox, courtesy of my alma mater and the WVU Alumni Association. The story that I am linking to today for WATWB is about Katherine Johnson. Katherine Johnson is a black female physicist and mathematician. A fellow graduate of WVU, a leader in the work that put men into space and, on the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission, helped bring them safely home. She is also a recipient of the 2015 Presidential Medal of Freedom award.

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