Margin Notes: Winter Views, Cards, Emergency

Osgoode Hall was visible at the end of York Street in Toronto, Ontario, as viewed from the Skywalk between Union Station and the CN Tower on 30-January-2010

TORONTO, ONTARIO - The disappearance of leaves in the winter reveals a variety of views that cannot be seen the rest of the year. Despite having walked through the Skywalk between Union Station and the CN Tower dozens of times in the winter, I had never noticed that one can look north up York Street and see Osgoode Hall in the winter. Yesterday, the sun was shining on the headquarters of the Law Society of Upper Canada so that it was hard to miss.

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I am intentionally missing the fact that this is my 600th blog post, seeing as I haven't found anything insightful in the past 200 posts worth writing about. Maybe there will be something to say by the 750th post, which at the present pace will come sometime in late spring or early summer.

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Some of the temporary track work on the Toronto's Bloor-Danforth subway on the Keele viaduct was noted on 23-January-2010

By that time, the Bloor-Danforth subway in Toronto should be operating at speed again over the Keele viaduct. Trains have been operated at restricted speed over the viaduct since structural problems were discovered last summer. Repairs are well underway, but the temporary track work intended to reduce the weight of the structure remains in place, as shown above. I was especially amused that the plywood-against-structure technique used to hold the tracks in place was the same method we had used in constructing portions of the miniature railway in Roundhouse Park.

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We're not doing much work on that miniature railway in the middle of the winter. The end of January is the time I put away my holiday card materials for the year, figuring I shouldn't have to re-send any additional returned cards (though last year I did get one returned well into February). The final tally this year is 97 cards sent, two returned to sender. I received just 22 cards, but that doesn't count reply e-mails, and I don't care if someone takes until the summer to check in with me, as a former boss did last year. I appreciate hearing how people are doing any time; thank you for writing!

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I can appreciate amusing radio at any time, too. Someone alerted me this week to a bit of hilarity from radio history, before I was born. The Emergency Broadcasting System apparently had a bad day on 20-February-1971, resulting in this amusing air check from Bob Sievers on WOWO in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

Radio Pick: The Wonders of Physics

TORONTO, ONTARIO - This week's radio pick technically breaks the rules, as this program first aired in 2009. For some reason I passed it over at the time, and it was the best program I heard in the past week on its re-run. In exploring physics, Wisconsin Public Radio's premier interview show To The Best of Our Knowledge brought out insights from Richard Muller's reasoning on why a president should understand physics to the idea that all chemists are gangsters. There is just enough scientific "inside baseball" to hold my attention in the 53-minute program while being presented in an accessible way for a general audience--a feat not easy to attain.

Listen to streaming RealMedia of To The Best of Our Knowledge "The Wonders of Physics"

Transport: Most Common Place Name

TORONTO, ONTARIO - Recently, I finally finished updating the index of my railfanning experiences to the end of 2005. (Can you tell it hasn't been a priority?) More than a decade of serious ralfanning took me to a lot of places, each of which gained an entry in the index. I noted a place name in essentially two cases: When I saw a train or other significant railroad "thing" there, or when I passed through that place on a train. The sample size is large enough that the place names that are repeated makes for an interesting study. For the sake of this discussion, place names that are spelled differently are not counted (e.g. Bern, Switzerland is not considered the same as Berne, Washington even though the one in Washington was named after the one in Switzerland).

Place names that appeared twice were quite common. The list includes Adeliade, Afton, Albany, Alexandria, Argo, Athol, Aurora, Avon, Ayer, Ballard, Bannock, Batavia, Battle Ground, Bayview, Bell, Bellevue, Belmont, Berg, Berkeley, Bethel, Bingen, Bradford, Brunswick, Canaan, Charlotte, Cliff, Clay, Cold Springs, Comstock, Croydon, Edgecomb, Elmhurst, Erlenbach, Exeter, Gardner, Guilford, Georgetown, Glenwood, Goble, Glacier Park, Green River, Halifax, Harrison, Hermosa, Indian Creek, Jamestown, Jordan, Kent, Laufenberg, Las Vegas, Lawrence, Lindsay, Little Falls, Lombard, London, Ludlow, Midway, Milfod, Millersburg, Monroe, Morrisville, Mount Vernon, Newcastle, Newton, Niles, Norwood, Oneida, Park, Pine, Pinkerton, Portland, Providence, Quincy, Radnor, Riverdale, Rockland, Rockwood, Rosemont, Ross, Salem, Selma, Soda Springs, Somerville, Stratford, Syracuse, Tacoma, Thompson, Thornton, Trenton, Verona, Washington, Waterbury, and Wellington. I may have missed others that are considered part of a larger place (Glacier Park, Washington is a siding I have listed under Orillia, Washington, and arguably both Glacier Park and Orillia should be listed under Kent, Washington as they are both within the city limits of Kent).

Twenty-two names appeared three times. They are:

• Brookfield - Connecticut, Illinois, and Wisconsin
• Bristol - Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Washington
• Burlington - Iowa, North Carolina, and Washington
• Cannon - California, Pennsylvania, and Quebec
• Clifton - New Jersey, Ontario, and Oregon
• Essex - Connecticut, Montana, and New York
• Harrisburg - North Carolina, Oregon, and Pennsylvania
• Hinsdale - Illinois, Massachusetts, and Montana
• Hudson - Colorado, New Jersey, and New York
• Huntington - Massachusetts, Oregon, and West Virginia
• Lowell - Indiana, Massachusetts, and Washington
• Marysville - California, Kentucky, and Washington
• Newark - California, Delaware, and New Jersey
• Norwich - Connecticut, North Dakota, and Vermont
• Plymouth - New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Washington
• Ramsey - Idaho, New Jersey, and Wyoming
• Richmond - California, Virginia and Vermont
• Russell - New Hampshire, Illinois and Massachusetts
• Summit - Pennsylvania, Utah, and Vermont
• Wilmington - Delaware, Illinois, and Massachusetts
• Winona - New Hampshire, Minnesota, and Ontario
• Woodford - California, New South Wales, and Virginia

Five names appeared four times:

• Auburn - California, Massachusetts, New South Wales, and Washington
• Fairfield - California, Connecticut, Iowa, and Oregon
• Hamilton - Massachusetts, New Jersey, Ohio and Ontario
• Springfield - Illinois, Massachusetts, Oregon, and Virginia
• Westport - Connecticut, New York, Oregon, and Vermont

I had thought that Springfield would be the overall winner, as it was a name so generic that it was used for the generic town in the Simpsons, but it didn't even make the top three.

Three names appeared five times:

• Ashland - New Hampshire, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Oregon, and Virginia
• Lincoln - California, Illinois, Massachusetts, Nebraska, and New Hampshire
• Riverside - California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois and Vermont

And the big champion, appearing six times? Chester. I have been to the Chesters in Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, Montana, Pennsylvania, and Vermont. I had no idea that Chester was the most prolific railroad place name in my experience.

Media: Looking Back on Changes

TORONTO, ONTARIO - In 2009, the (arguably) most intellectual evening newscasts in Canada and the United States, CBC's The National and The PBS NewsHour (formerly the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer) went through major re-formatting. Now, after some months in which the broadcasts have stabilized, I would contend that neither re-format has proven to be especially profound and both broadcasts remain the worthwhile presentations that they have been for years.

The National made its changes first, in late October, and the first day was not well-received on this blog. Visual changes aside, the story selection and emphasis on man-on-the-street interviews was disturbing--the amount of hard news and "real" (perhaps "traditional" would be a better term) journalism had clearly declined, and I wasn't the only blogger complaining about the changes.

A survey of the last week of programming reveals a different story. The "streeters" are basically gone, except when the story is actually about public opinion (e.g. on a change in political polls) and thus have journalistic relevance. Originally touted as a weekly feature, the "Analysis with Wendy Mesley" pieces have proven to be less frequent, bumped at times by real news like Haiti, and have tended to be more relevant, particularly in the political sphere, such as exploring the accountability of the prime minister. The puff pieces like whether NASA should be funded (hardly a burning issue for Canadians) seem to have quietly disappeared.

In fact, I daresay that if one compared a National program from August with a recent program from January, the only significant difference that would be seen would be the visual appearance changes. I don't find Peter Mansbridge walking the set to be distracting (or enticing, for that matter), or the new color scheme incorporating blue to be that significant. Guests--if not reporters introducing a story--are now allowed to sit down again (Rick Hillier was especially awkward standing up). Differences of style rather than substance don't really bother me. Ratings are apparently still down (though a MacLeans article points out this may have as much or even more to do with new monitoring devices to determine ratings than with the broadcast), so this story may not yet be over.

The PBS NewsHour made its changes officially on 7 December, but as has often been the case on this show, many of the changes were gradually introduced, including the placement of the news summary after the top story of the day, something that prompted a margin note from this blog last August. The major changes in December were a mild (compared with the CBC's) visual makeover and the re-introduction of two anchors each evening, just like the program had prior to Robert MacNeil's retirement in 1995. The second anchor besides Jim Lehrer rotates amongst the program's senior staff. Hari Sreenivasan now reads the news summary instead of one of the anchors.

I never detected any serious change in editorial selections or tone as a result of the re-formatting, or any change in the journalistic value of the newscast. What has changed significantly has been the on-line integration of the broadcast. Whereas the podcast had been spotty in delivering the complete program (and, in fact, the program as presented on-air was not available on-line, just most segments), the On-Line NewsHour, as it is called, is now if anything more valuable than the broadcast itself, with additional coverage of some stories and often extra interviews with analysts. The full broadcast is readily available. As someone who was traveling for most of the early weeks after the change, I really appreciated the improved on-line NewsHour.

So, a few months into the changes, I rate the CBC changes as a long-term wash after short-term negatives, and the PBS changes as a clear improvement.

Transport: Deciphering "High Speed" Funding

TORONTO, ONTARIO - Those hoping for high-speed rail in the United States are likely a bit confused by where the $8 billion in Recovery Act money designated for high speed rail will be spent. President Obama and Amtrak-riding Vice-President Biden announced today that only two true "high speed" projects would receive funding, in California and Florida. However, a number of other states will receive money to incrementally improve their conventional services. What's going on here?

Cynics would say this is only about politics. While certain "blue" states (California, Illinois, Maine, Washington, and Wisconsin) are being rewarded under this view with significant project funding, swing states are over-represented, with Florida getting the only complete high-speed system funded, North Carolina getting a significant grant, and Ohio getting perhaps the most unexpected grant, $400 million to improve infrastructure for new corridors within that state, which sees only Amtrak long-distance service at odd hours presently. "Red" states? There is just a small grant to Texas and some spillover money for Missouri from the Chicago-St. Louis corridor that will go to states that did not vote for Obama.

I'm not going to argue that politics played no role here, but there may actually be a policy strategy here that makes sense which I have yet to see presented elsewhere. For a long time, advocates have been arguing that a demonstration corridor was needed to show what a high speed rail corridor could do. Orlando to Tampa, Florida has apparently been selected as that demonstration corridor, and in that regard, it's an interesting choice. It's long enough--80 miles--to show the speed advantages of high-speed rail, but short enough to be relatively inexpensive to build, and it has the interesting advantage of competing mostly just with the automobile--few fly for that short of a distance, and Amtrak runs only long-distance trains between the two cities. The only inexplicable part is that the Federal money will only pay for about half the cost of the project--Florida will have to come up with the rest of the money on its own, and in its current budgetary situation that's far from certain.

The bulk of the rest of the money went mostly to states that have already demonstrated an ability to effectively improve existing service. The California money may be designated for the high-speed system supported by Governor Schwarzenegger, but California has been the national leader in using state funds to create meaningful corridors, with the greatest success achieved in the "Pacific Surfliner" corridor from San Diego to Los Angeles and on to the Central Coast, and the "Capitol" corridor between San Jose and Sacramento. Washington received a significant grant which fits right into its incremental approach that has already shaved a half-hour off the travel time between Seattle and Portland, Oregon and increased the number of corridor trips from one to four in the past fifteen years. Maine fought almost single-handed to create and improve the Portland to Boston, Massachusetts "Downeaster" corridor which also runs through New Hampshire and now may get to extend its corridor to Brunswick, with a goal of reaching the capitol in Augusta.

From a policy perspective, that just might make sense--get a demonstration corridor going, encourage the states that have invested in rail by reinforcing the investment, and hope that by setting this precedent, other states will start to invest. It's hardly a bold move, but perhaps it sets the stage for a further round of investment someday if the demonstration corridor becomes popular. The Obama administration is all about hope, isn't it?

Philosophy: "Only One Way to Win A Race"

TORONTO, ONTARIO - In the run-up to tonight's State of the Union speech by United States President Barack Obama, Tom Schaller wrote a column on fivethirtyeight.com exploring the idea that progressives need to win every battle to accomplish anything, whereas conservatives only need to win one battle to kill everything the progressives want to accomplish. Schaller compared the situation to terrorism (society needs to win all the time, the terrorists only need to win once), but what I was reminded of was a statement made by the greatest living driver in unlimited hydroplane racing, Chip Hanauer: "There's only one way to win a race, and a thousand ways to lose it."

I generally admire Hanauer, respecting his intense, hard-working style and having been amazed by some of the things I had seen him accomplish in the cockpit over the years. However, this statement bothered me from the second I heard him utter it. The guy had won about twenty-five races at the time (he went on to win 61 before retiring)--and there was no way each of those wins was in any way the same.

Just take some of his seven straight Gold Cups (1982-1988), a feat which is not likely to ever be approached. Was his 1984 victory in the Tri-Cities, in which he had to kick the steering wheel to get around the corners and only took the lead after his "old" boat, running for a different team, went dead in the water similar in any way to his 1987 victory in San Diego when staying out of the salt from other boats' roostertails was the key, or to his 1988 victory, which came in a boat that he had not even started the day in? It seems to me that Hanauer knows about 61 ways to win races, not one.

Even adding one word to his statement, "There is only one way to win a GIVEN race, and a thousand ways to lose it" might have more credibility, but I still don't buy it. Perhaps there was only one way for him to win the 1989 Seattle race over a clearly superior Budweiser entry by making a better start and boxing his opponent into a tight inside lane, likely the best driving performance I have ever seen. Yet, in the 1986 Tri-Cities race, with the rival Budweiser not even able to start, Hanauer arguably made mistakes at the start and still managed to outrun the second-place Squire Shop handily; he didn't need to drive the perfect race. No human being--even the extraordinarily disciplined and talented Hanauer--is capable of perfection.

As introspective as he is, I bet Hanauer doesn't even agree with his statement anymore (maybe he didn't believe at the time, but knew it made good television). He would probably phrase it something more like, "There are many more ways to lose a race than there are to win it," and I can agree with that. It doesn't take much more imagination than putting oneself in the cockpit instead of Hanauer, and those 61 victories would have turned into 61 losses.

Which brings us back to politics, an endeavor more filled with human imperfection than probably any other. No human being, even Barack Obama, can maneuver perfectly in an arena that is defined as the art of compromise. Asserting that progressive legislation can be stopped by any conservative victory along the way is as absurd as saying there is only one way to win a hydroplane race. There may be many more ways to fail to pass legislation than there are to pass it, but there is more than one way. The President started his new sales job tonight--now it's up to the congressional leadership to figure out how listen to the public and pass meaningful health care legislation. It's not an easy task, but I daresay there may even be more than one way to do it.

Politics: Thorium

TORONTO, ONTARIO - By some accounts, the world's current problems of energy production and nuclear proliferation could be solved by a Norse god. Okay, not exactly the Norse god of thunder, Thor, but the chemical element named in his honor, thorium. A fair number of scientists believe that relatively-abundant thorium can create power using a cycle that is useless for nuclear weapons and produces much less toxic waste than the currently-employed nuclear reactors.

Quite a number of thorium-advocacy web sites can be found on the Internet; just look at the links list in the left panel at the Thorium Energy Alliance web site. The sites all tell a compelling story. By most estimates (though nobody seems to be certain), thorium is at least four times as common in the earth's crust as uranium, and has the advantage of being commonly found in a single isotope, thus not requiring much purification. Thorium itself is not fissile, or spontaneously useful as an energy source, but if it is bombarded with neutrons, it can be cheaply converted to uranium-233, which is a very useful nuclear fuel. While uranium-233 can be used in nuclear bombs in pure form, in the thorium fuel cycle (especially if properly designed), it is contaminated with other isotopes and hence cannot be easily extracted to use in weapons. Plus, the decay products of the reaction are such that the waste remains radioactive for only a couple hundred years, instead of tens of thousands.

The groups would have it appear that thorium solves pretty much all the problems associated with nuclear power. The fuel is more common and easy to process. The waste produced is not nearly as dangerous and decay on a time scale in which we have confidence in our own engineering. Concerns about nuclear weapons proliferation are much diminished (if not gone entirely) from diverted materials. Furthermore, most proposed thorium cycles could not "melt down" in the way that other nuclear reactors have done. So why don't we use it?

In the early nuclear era, the answer actually had a bit to do with the weapons capability--the United States and the Soviet Union both wanted to invest in technology that would allow them to build their stockpiles. However, the most compelling reason right from the start was that there was more knowledge about uranium and plutonium, so the least risky way to proceed was to build on that knowledge.

There has been some exploration along the way, including experiments in Canada in the 1960's and more recently in India. In 2008, US Senators Harry Reid (D-Nevada) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) introduced a bill to fund more research in the United States, but that bill never made it to the floor, a victim of focus on immediate economic matters and that fall's election.

Assuming the promise of thorium comes even close to being realized, whatever nation does the work to commercialize the technology economically will be well-positioned in the coming century. As India and Russia start to put money into thorium, it behooves the rest of the world not to be left behind.