Just forget the words and sing along

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Mark's Morning News


Got a little more concerning my blog entry yesterday about the high speed rail link between Edmonton and Calgary. As expected, letters are popping up in today's Edmonton Journal where the naysayers are once again poo-pooing all over it.

Take this one fellow, with his letter entitled "No Magic Bullet Train". In it, he makes the argument that high speed rail is a bad idea because certain important "facts" are being left out. Among those "facts:" OK, it'll take 80 minutes to go from Edmonton to Calgary, but factor in that that time will double once you take into accounted driving from your home to the station, and then driving from the other station to your final destination. And besides, he says, once you get to the other city, you'll have no car and no way to get around.

To that, I say, the same argument can be made for bus service between Edmonton and Calgary...the same can be said for air service between Edmonton and Calgary, and they ain't hurtin'!

He also works on the assumption that there'll just be one track and one train running, leading to fights between Edmonton and Calgary about who gets it first in the morning, plus lengthy delays as they turn around the train. And to that, I have to say that I'm no expert, but just about every high speed rail system in the world employs two parallel tracks and more than one train, so that argument is rendered moot.

We need more thinking like this letter right here, entitled "Thinking Big". This guy is saying that they should actually make the high speed rail link a loop, and have stops in Jasper and Banff.

Premier Ed Stelmach has described a high speed rail link between Edmonton and Calgary as "inevitable." For once, I agree with the Tories.




Let's see what's going on with the new Star Trek movie.

The big news today was that Dr. Bruce Banner himself, Eric Bana, has just signed on to play the villain! The villain this time out is a Romulan general named Nero.

For those not in the loop, the plot right now seems to be a Star Trek version of The Terminator. A group of Romulan soldiers - led by Nero - find themselves zapped back in time to the early 23rd Century. They figure that the best service they can do to the Empire in this era is assasinate the young Captain James T. Kirk, who is merely Cadet Kirk. In order to preserve the timeline, none other than Spock (once again played by Leonard Nimoy) follows the Romulans back in time, and Spock teams up with his younger self (played by Zachary Quinto, Sylar on Heroes) to stop the Romulans and save the future.

Christmas Day 2008, and I'm still not feeling it.




And the award for stupidist unintentional pun goes to...Lindsay Lohan!

Lohan was recently released from rehab. In her first interview about it, Lohan described rehab as "a sobering experience."

don't believe me? Here's the article.

No comments: