Welcome to a new week, everyone. First off, unrelated to anything, I’ve just got to see that this story about how California’s high-speed rail is going way over budget (tens of billions) and is going to be many years late is the least-surprising thing I’ve ever witnessed. California came up with this thing in the throes of the financial crisis, I guess as a changey-hopey way to convince citizens they were forward-thinking, but I immediately concluded it would be an utter debacle.

For those unfamiliar with it, the idea is basically to retrofit existing tracks, as well as build new ones, to create a sorta-kinda “high” speed train between San Francisco and, frankly, Disneyland (portrayed as “Anaheim”). This is not going to be anything like those amazing multi-hundred MPH beauties from Japan or China. No, in the end, it’s going to be an incredibly expensive, incredibly late, slightly-modernized train which they’ll probably wind up driving at 80 mph or so. My dire prediction seems to be right on target so far.

Anyway! (more…)