Blame The SLOW Trains

So another tragic major train derailment in Philadelphia this week. 

Already 8 people killed and over 200 injured. 

All over the news, we see that the train was speeding by going just over 100 mph.

Yes, it was a curve, and maybe we need to build some straighter more stable lines (I believe that is partly what eminent domain used properly is for) and with the latest safety features. 

But does anyone ask how can other countries safely implement their trains at far faster speeds–that makes 106 mph look virtually like a mere snails pace in comparison.

Just last month, the Wall Street Journal ran an article about the U.S. potentially upgrading to bullet trains that rountinely and safely go at far higher speeds:

Japan: 375 mph!

France: 199 mph.

China: 186 mph.

U.S.: 149 mph (even the Acela train has the potential to do at least this much, but for the most part they don’t due to shared lines with commuter and freight trains and an aging infrastructure–uh, so where did all that money from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act go exactly?)

In what now seems retrospectively almost mocking, Japan Railways, International Division Chief stated: “We have a track record of transporting a huge volume of passenger traffic with very few delays or accidents…Because the trains operate so accurately, travel can be made very efficiently [and safetly].” 

Do you think we the U.S. can catch up with our 21st century peers here?

(Source Photo: here with attribution to Toshy Island Paddy)

How You Treat Animals

This little bird is singing pretty with his Coronoa.

But this isn’t always how we treat animals. 

Some absolutely revere their animals as integral parts of their family or faith–as pets, they may be loved and cared in nice homes, and as source for milk, dung, and tilling, they may even considered sacred as in Hindu India, or for sacrifices on the holy Temple alter in Jerusalem. 

I’ve seen dogs picked up after and wheeled around in baby strollers, while in the Movies like “Meet The Fockers,” Jinx the cat is exalted for doing her deed in the toilet, the same one used by the family.

One colleague told me how she had to run after her dog cleaning up all over her house, when it was sick and had a bleed out of its butt–yeah, ick!

And I remember learning about how in Nazi Germany, dogs would walk on the sidewalk, while Jews were forced into the gutters. 

On the other side of the animal coin…

We have animals sickeningly and inhumanly confined and caged in tiny spaces; starved or fattened; pepped up on antibiotics, and clubbed, electrocuted, given lethal injections, shot and cut up.

Animals are used for food, fur, and even so-called fun from cock fighting to bull runs.

Further, animals are used for research in everything from new medications to abusive studies in mind control and even punishment.

Animals have also been used for horrific torture of POWs where masks were attached to victims faces and a fire would heat the other side and force the rodent locked inside to burrow into the faces of their victims.

Similarly, in Nazi Germany, gruesome studies were conducted on humans by sewing live cats into the stomach of victims.

In more positive ways, animals have been used to locate everything from disease to the implements of war–from dogs being used in identifying human diseases like cancer and tuberculosis to giant rats used to locate land mines. 

Also, animal products are used in many life-saving medications. 

I found the remorse of an animal experimenter today in the New York Times to be refreshing, and those who choose to become vegan or disavow the use of fur and other animal products to be noble, as long as they accept that others may feel different. 

When the experimenter in his guilt thinks about the tables being turned, he imagines aliens coming to Earth and abducting and conducting experiments on us humans…oh, he seems to go, now I know how it must feel. 

Guess he didn’t think to walk in that chicken’s shoes before…

While to carnivorous animals, we are just another piece of beef in the food chain, other domesticated animals can be “man’s best friend.”

Killing an animal for survival is one thing, and where people draw that line can vary quite some–for example, how badly does Kim Kardashian need another fur to keep her warm?

But pure abusive and sick treatment of animals for amusement, profiteering, or psychotic ends is wrong, period. 

Animals are not people, but they are G-d’s creatures and sentient, and they should not be harmed or pained just because some of us like to act like animals too. 😉

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Everything Else Is Anticlimactic

We went to a Veterans Day Concert yesterday, and it was quite moving.

Before the music–60’s and 70’s (and some dancing)–started, there were a number of heartfelt speeches by distinguished veterans of the Vietnam War.

One lady was a nurse in Saigon working 16 hour days tending to the wounded and dying from the battlefield. She joined the army after 8 of her high school friends from her small hometown were killed in the war. The nurse told us how on the flight to Nam, they were told to look to the person on the immediate right and left of you, becuase one of you will not be coming home.

Another speaker was a special forces Army Ranger who was fighting in North Vietnam on very dangerous covert missions. He led many draftees, who he said had only minimal training, yet fought bravely on missions with bullets flying overhead and mortars and rockets pounding their positions. He described one situation where he knelt down to look at a map with one of his troops, and as they were in that psition half a dozen bullets hit into the tree right above their heads–if they had not been crouched down looking at the map, they would’ve both been dead. 

A third speaker was a veteran who had been been hit by a “million dollar shot” from the enemy–one that didn’t kill or cripple him, but that had him sent him to a hospital for 4-6 weeks and then ultimately home from the war zone. He told of his ongoing activities in the veterans community all these years, and even routinely washing the Veteran’s Wall Memorial in Washington D.C. 

Aside from the bravery and fortitude of all these veterans, what was fascinating was how, as the veterans reflected, EVERYTHING else in their lives was anticlimactic after fighting in the war. The nurse for example read us a poem about the ladies in hell (referring to the nurses caring for the wounded) and how they never talked about the patients in Nam because it was too painful, and when they returned home, they had the classic symptoms of PTSD including the hellish nightmares of being back there. 

Indeed, these veterans went through hell, and it seems that it was the defining moment in (many if not most of) their lives, and they are reliving it in one way or another every moment of every day. 

Frankly, I don’t know how they did it being dropped on the other side of the world with, as the special forces Vet explained, maps that only told you in very general terms wherer you even where, and carrying supplies for at least 3 days at a time of C-rations, water, ammo, and more–and with the enemy all around you (“there were no enemy lines in this war; if you stepped out of your units area, it was almost all ‘unfriendly.'”). One Vet said that if you were a 2nd Lt., like she was, your average lifespan over there was 20 minutes. 

The big question before we go to war and put our troops in harms way is what are we fighting for and is it absolutely necessary. For the troops being sent to the battlezone, everything else is just anticlimactic–they have been to hell. 

(Source Photo: Dannielle Blumenthal)