Trout Awareness
Beatrice de Gelder’s article “Uncanny Sight for the Blind” raises fascinating evolutionary questions about consciousness. Given that sight slowly evolved from the first light-sensing structures to today’s sophisticated ability to perceive, focus on and be aware of the world around us, when did conscious awareness get paired with sight? Presumably a plant that turns toward the sun has no awareness of doing so. What about insects, reptiles or fish? Is a trout aware that the dark disturbance on the water’s surface is a bug that it can eat, or is its swift rising to consume the insect simply a nonaware response to a perception that is more akin to “blindsight” than it is to our awareness? Perhaps this line of research will help us to know which species have consciousness that is akin to human awareness.
Joseph Ossmann
Carmichael, Calif.
Ancient Geeks
Steve Mirsky’s “140-Character Study” [Anti Gravity] is humorous and enjoyable, but the illustration’s attempt to render the word “Tweet” as a Greek inscription on a statue is an abject failure. Any classicist worth their bow tie and suede jacket would tell you that the only way to render the /w/ sound in ancient Greek is through the oft-overlooked digamma, uppercase , lowercase . Your artist used an omega, which many Greek fonts link with the W on our keyboard but which was nothing more than a long O-sound.
Matthew Chaldekas
Los Angeles
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8 Comments
Add CommentLike it or not, steel wheels running on steel rails is 19th century technology which is only economic in an unsubsidised way taking long trains of relatively durable goods and commodities long distances with few stops and little or no transferrance to road transport at either end. Since the development of the pnuematic tyre ( tire in the US )it has just been a question of time before it's inherent limitations show up in the economics. Energy use comparisons that appear to favour it over road freight haulage are not comparing like with like as trains do not have to compete with other traffic on the same route and no matter how long you make them convey less passengers or freight than a road over a reasonable period ( measured in hours ). This is down to the safe interval between road vehicles being down to a few seconds whereas trains require minutes.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisProbably the best development for medium range fast transport would be evacuated tube transport ( ETT ) and though not yet even at the prototype stage, promises to be more energy efficient, environmentally benign, and cheaper to build and run ( once development matures ) than present day alternatives.
Please explain how ETT, the limitations of which we have discussed before, can ameliorate a high-percentage grade route?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAlso, you mention ETT - which can be done WITH steel rails & wheels or without. Either would be prohibitively expensive.
@ scots engineer
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSorry mate you're wrong. High speed rail has been proved to be more energy, time, and cost efficient over long distances than automobiles or aircraft. Perhaps the fact that rail technology appears not to have changed (though it has, considerably) is proof in itself that it is a lasting success.
Also, how do you know ETT is better than modern day alternatives, if no prototype has been built yet? The proponents may say so, but as an engineer in the mass transit industry (I've been working on California High Speed Rail recently) I can promise you that such plans are routinely under-costed to make them look politically attractive.
davidh1 - As an engineer (I presume someone working in systems design rather than a train driver), I'm surprised to see your blanket statement that "High speed rail has been proved to be more energy, time, and cost efficient over long distances than automobiles or aircraft." Surely any such analysis must account for local variables, including potential populations served, correct?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHi davidh1 - It's horses for courses. I don't deny that for some distances trains are more energy efficient than automobiles, or aircraft, but they are often not the natural competitor. Buses are not seen as "cool" but often supply a cheaper service than trains and are only slower because they don't get preference on the highway. When you increase the speed the energy consumption goes up, and as cars are limited to certain relatively modest speeds by law, the only competitor , so far , is short haul aircraft. A lot of the energy they use goes into gaining altitude, only some of which is recovered when descending. I don't know where the break even point is, but I suspect that high speed rail going from coast to coast in the US would be little better, if as energy efficient, as modern wide bodied jet airliners. This is down to three things, the thinness of the air at altitudes above 30,000 feet, the coldness of that air ( often below minus 40 makes the engines more thermally efficient), and much of the air that is disturbed does the useful purpose of opposing gravity, whereas with a high speed train only some can be used to increase downforce for improved traction, the rest has to be dissapated in wider cuttings, bridge and tunnel entrances.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHi candide - In Britain the steepest gradient on the rail system is just under 4% ( as far as I have been able to discover ). The suspension system for the vehicles in an ETT would only require an additional force of that order of amount to handle that type of gradient.There is no reason in principle why steeper gradients could not be tackled. Since the primary aim is speed , the construction will want to avoid sharp changes in direction, and that includes changes of gradient. When tunnelling is required the diameter of tunnel needed for an ETT will be much less than for high speed rail, and therefor cheaper.When one sees pictures and movies of high speed rail lines in Europe, one is struct by the width of the ground track taken up.Pity and householder near one of these tracks for the suddenness and volume of the sound of one of these trains passing.
See? Reread these comments. If *six* people can't agree on any point; How do you expect 535 Congressional members to get it solved?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe U.S. is a very big place. With relatively little population density. IE cars and roads. Lots of little loads travel to a plethora of destinations.
NO TRAIN design can do that.
Oh, about the little population density; outside the New York - Washington, LA, Dallas-Fort-Worth, and like. Most square miles in the U.S. are like Indiana. South Dakota. Texas. Have you ever been in New Mexico?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHigh speed trains will never be economical in Tucumcari. Even our old slow trains now skip most of the communities *they* built. Why? Nobody there wants a train.
Trains leave you with an intractable problem: How do you drive from the station to you *real* destination?
Matter Transporters are the solution. But, I don't think they're in the prototype stage either.
I read the comment about the cost,Has any project in the U.S.come in on or under budget in the last 40 years?Not quite a billion,when it is done it will be more than,and just like the Big Dig it will be a huge mess, falling apart after just a year.
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