You may say, so what? I’ll either be somewhat inconvenienced or I’ll find another route. Yes, you would, but Stefan Sharkansky decided that a mode of transportation he doesn’t like not working perfectly occasionally means that it’s time to pack in this whole public transit experiment.
Because trains are more dependable than cars
Usually, yes.
“Sounder train between Everett and Seattle canceled for Monday”
If only there was a commuter bus you could take you from Everett to Seattle, this whole post would be a fucking waste of everybody’s time.
There seems to be a lot of that.
My God, occasionally trains get delayed or canceled. Traffic jams literally don’t exist, because otherwise this post is so stupid that you’ll lose fewer brain cells banging your head against a wall while drinking grain alcohol than you would reading it.
As the Sound Transit enthusiasts have been telling us for years, the Sounder is “a dependable, stress-free commute” and a “reliable service”
Compared to driving, it sure is. Seriously, how many traffic jams have there been on I-5 between Seattle and Everett since Sounder opened? Do scientists even know have numbers that reach that high?
The taxes we pay for it are a reliable and dependable outflow.
Roads are literally free.
In as much as Stefan Sharkanky doesn’t appear to be gainfully employed, he has no concern for the realities of actually commuting from Seattle to Everett, or anywhere else. Consequently, he can sit around taking cheap potshots at any form of transportation that he doesn’t feel the need to use.
Sharkansky and virtually all of the redneck truckers I encounter seem to think there is no government subsidy for the interstate highways they travel up down. So they think they are somehow paying there own way.
Guess what guys, those roads, and for that matter the commercial aviation system are very heavily subsidized by your friendly but hated federal government. And without it, you would be out of business very soon.
Roads, wars, computer science, wars, internet, wars — all of the things glibertarian whining* bloggers** like and/or use: they’re all FREE FREE FREE. Only unemployment insurance, Social Security, and public parks which are not Green Lake constitute theft from Galtian Superheroes to reality-based people.
* Department of Redundancy Department
** Located in the Building We Built Building
Stefan’s mean spirited and dishonest and best left to fester in his own little dump. Stefan’s also incapable of functioning in his mean spirited and dishonest ways in only the most genteel environments, note he chooses to live in Seattle, where nice is enforced by law. In any rougher community Stefan would get get chewed up and spit out before lunch time.
Oops, that should be capable, not incapable.
@2
Saw your post over at SP, you missed that the three largest cities in Washington have Democrats for mayors.
Gee Carl, you forgot to mention how many people get killed every year by drunken train engineers. Isn’t that number somewhere around zero?
I suspect what Sharansky dislikes most about trains is they’re run by unionized crews.
I’ll bet Stefan is all for cheap, clean, dependable nuclear power.
http://www.progressohio.org/bl.....osion.html
As our roads and infrastructure decay, they will gradually be privatized. In many cases, the rights to charge tolls on American highways have already been sold to foreigners in the Bush administration.
If good commuter trains are in service, the roads wouldn’t be musch of a cash cow for investors. I’m not saying that Stefan Sharkansky understands this, but the people who feed him his ideology do.
@9 That’s only the beginning. Eventually breathable air will be privatized. The idea that we “breathe free” pisses off those who think absolutely everything, regardless of who paid for it in the first place, should be a profit center.
How To Buy Respectability
Here’s a useful how-to guide to purchasing social respectability if you happen to be a pilfering genocidal freak.
http://www.economist.com/node/18330435
@8
Roger, do you have any idea just how unsafe and dirty both the oil, gas, and coal industries are?
Even factoring in all of the accidents to date, a rational assessment by the numbers would still favor nuclear power over fossil fuels.
That said Stefan is still an idiot.
I’ve railed against this before. Republicans have the “one drop” thinking. Because there was a single slow down, rail should be disconnected. Because a person somewhere cheated on their welfare, welfare must be defunded. Because a woman somewhere had an abortion when she could have had the baby, abortion should be made illegal.
Do you see the pattern?
@ 13
Odd thing, they don’t apply the same logic to our extremely liberal firearms laws.
I’ve heard an NRA Representative at a gun fair, say flat out that the occasional mass murder, ala Columbine HS and Ruby’s Cafeteria, is just the price we have to pay for having the second amendment. Such events are unimportant.
Whenever I point out contradictions and falsities in a conservative’s statements, I get the ‘consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds retort’.
At that point, I ask for the source of the statement — which none of them has ever been able to supply.
They are very consistent in their ignorance.
Why does anyone waste time on the minnow’s drivel?
@12: I don’t know what numbers you’re looking at but here’s a couple to consider:
17 Years — the period of operation required by a nuc plant before it produces net energy from the fossil fuel inputs required to build it.
27% — Overall efficiency of all energy produced in the US, meaning we waste 73%.
$12B — Cost of construction for a 2000 MW nuc plant
$2B — Cost of construction for 2000 MW of wind power
Without huge subsidies and “indemnification” from risk, no nuc plant can “pencil out” on its own.
And that’s not counting what it costs to deal with the downstream waste generated which are huge and basically forever in human terms.
17 – Zotz, c’mon don’t neglect the bigger picture:
Assume the 17 year payback is true that’s for the current legacy plants, the newer designs are generally smaller and don’t require as much input.
Yes any new status quo nuke is ridiculously expensive. Of course most nuke supporters say any nuke is better than no nuke but they also support much cheaper designs.
2000 MW of name plate wind power almost NEVER delivers that much. It’s embarrassing hype. A nuke plant these days almost always delivers close to name plate. There are a few promising storage options for renewables out there but I doubt we want to live in world where ginormous turbines and solar panels are every where you look. Wouldn’t you rather have the wide open spaces back?
All in all, the disaster in Japan will probably mean a setback for progress for much safer and cheaper nuclear power. The reactors in Japan were 60’s designs. They should have been retired by now but both governments and the energy industry (fossil and nuke) have discouraged innovation in nuclear power. All the discussion about new nuclear power has been prompted by the climate crisis and the environmental and political disasters brought about by fossil fuel industries.
Do we really want to muddle through with the miserable status quo more than we have to?
ZOMG! Comments editing works with Chrome now!
Wha happened???
Almost forgot – there’s not an energy source out there that isn’t being subsidized – fossil, renewable or nuke.
@11 This might go some distance to explain…oh, say, a billionaire industrialist shelling out $100 million to renovate Lincoln Center to mask his and his brother’s expenditure of several times that to purchase the governments of six or seven states.
It also sorta-kinda raises the question of who really picked up the multi-million-dollar tab for Mariah Carey to seranade and titty-fuck Ghadaffi and his sons.
HA!!!
I found another one for the fun loving Republican file.
@YLB:
Absolutely not!
But before we spent $12B on a nuc, why not spend that to focus on storage (the key) so that all the intermittent stuff works better.
Or even better, figuring out how to stop wasting 3/4ths of our energy to begin with.
@YLB:
And, BTW, I used to be a Navy Nuc. I understand what it takes to do nuc stuff correctly — and it’s obscenely expensive.
The only way we should ever do nucs is the Navy way and there is no way that would ever fly with our fucked up politics or be commercially viable.
re 24: What a shame that Admiral Rickover was saddled for a lifetime with the first name of ‘Hymen’.
@25: Nonetheless, the quirky (brilliant) little guy is a hero of mine. My dad was on a 1st name basis with him, so we have history.
Here is an eerily prescient speech he gave in 1957 which pretty much lays out where we are today in energy terms:
“Energy resources and our future” – remarks by Admiral Hyman Rickover
In the good news Column (for everyone but The Rabbit anyway), oil prices are headed down quite sharply.
re 26: President Jimmy Carter was a good friend of Rickover’s. He mentions Rickover frequently in his latest book.
24 – Zotz, the Navy way has worked very well – for the Navy – props to the leadership of Admiral Rickover.
But again AFAIK the navy relies on pressurized solid-core reactors, the internal combustion engines of nuke tech. That’s ok – again it works just fine for the Navy’s mission.
But I believe a civilian ethos is attainable as well. And the French model appears to work very well.
As far as efficiency goes you are probably aware that most fossil thermal plants throw away about 2/3 of the energy to start with and more is wasted in transmission. (Ok Nat Gas plants are much better.) Wind has similar problems with transmission minus the ugly fuel situation but the trade off is in land consumption and overall energy density and yield (intermittency). Add in that almost NO ONE wants to live near wind turbines. The best solution in my book is to site energy production as close as possible to where it will be used and yes I hope nukes can be as safe and unobtrusive to be planted right in the midst of cities and industrial areas where energy needs are greatest.
No way am I for spending 12B on ANYTHING with a poor ROI. I’m seeing a lot of progress on the renewable front and I hope it’s enough (our deadline is 2050 right?) but I still believe it’s wise to innovate in the nuclear sphere. I’m just not yet convinced that renewables will scale to what’s needed and even if we could make them work, it will come at a cost that most people will not like.
Just my .02..
# 22: Looks like Randy Hopper is in hot water, and not just with his wife. His mistress was formerly a Senate staffer, but has since been employed at “Persuasion Partners”, a lobbying firm. Just as the story broke, however, her bio was removed from the firm web site, but screen shots were still captured and available on the web. Calls to Persuasion Partners received only the comment that she no longer works there.
His 2008 election campaign featured lots of images of his loving family, including his wife and two small children. But sources indicate that they split up as early as 2010.
So now he’s got three problems in keeping his Senate job: (a) he’s a target of the people who are outraged at the Wisconsin republicans who are trying to stiff the working class; (b) he’s just lost the vote of the religious right, and (c) he hasn’t been living in his own district for almost a year.
Maybe he can difuse some of it by claiming, as Newt did, that patriotism and hard work caused him to dump his wife and take on a mistress?
@YLB:
The fatal flaw of civilian nucs is the profit motive. No one with a profit motive should ever be allowed to construct or operate nucs.
I know there are better / safer designs (Thorium, etc.). But the Navy way means more than reactor design: Top down control, no nonsense, verbatim compliance to detailed written instructions, zero defects (perfect), cost is no object.
The French system is Government Owned / Contractor Operated, not unlike the Navy. The government is responible and takes responsibility. Areva (the contractor) gets a set price. Areva makes its profits here and elsewhere abroad where they aren’t constrained by the “fucking socialists”. For example, Areva was a partner with Duke Energy in the ADAGE biomass plant in Shelton that was just canceled yesterday. You don’t really think GOCO has a prayer with the insane Rs, corrupt Ds, and captured regulators we have?
@30
“Persuasion Partners”
I can’t tell by the name if she a lobbyist or a hooker. Not that there’s that much difference.
# 32: Yea, I noticed that too. It would be a great name for an escort service.
@32, 33…
…bet Hopper’s experience won’t feature a “happy ending”.
@34
LOL…
People have got to want it first. From time to time people have gotten things – even good things – that they’ve wanted and fought for in this country.
But at the moment…
I’d have to say NO..
carl–
please share with us the cost per trip of your wetdream. we are in a f*cking recession shitferbrains. inflation has already kicked in while your a$$hole buddies have pissed away hundreds of millions in consulting & staff time talking about this ad infinitum.
idiots.
@37 Has Puddy taken on a new pseudonym? Such an incomprehensible stringing together of slogans, scatological references and half-formed paranoid notions could only have come from him.
38 – Nope more like the style of tehchickenshit troll.
Puddybud applies a bit more style to his hatemongering.