Railroading the discussion

Did you know that rail transport is five times as energy-efficient as road? Or that air transport takes about 420 times the energy of rail to move the same amount of weight? And so why would we give road travel an artificial boost with a promise of cent-for-cent excise reduction to cover any rise in petrol under an emissions trading scheme? Quite apart from being a disappointing cave-in that sends precisely the wrong message (the Government will protect you and your car), it also means that rail freight will be disadvantaged over road. In their wisdom, our leaders obviously consider it to be a necessary political sweetener to wash down the bitter pill of the end of our energy-intensive lives.

When there is soon national hand-wringing and finger-pointing over QANTAS needing to be bailed out or being bought out in the coming consolidation of air carriers, spare a thought for poor underfunded RailCorp and CityRail.
H/T Doug for the statistics.

One dollar jackpot

Here's the deal. Answer simple questions in twenty-five words or less and win a dollar. Not just any old Canadian, Kiwi, Singaporean or even Australian dollar, but a genuine, PayPal American greenback.

This new website is a simple idea, and word is spreading. No luck is involved. All you need is a keyboard, a (free) PayPal account and a brain (or, failing that, a team of a million monkeys at a million keyboards and a bit of time). The best entry (as chosen by the team at Brown Box) wins the dollar. The current competition asks you to complete the sentence "I wish that I..."

There's a new competition every couple of days. You can enter as many times as you like. Previous competitions have included such difficult questions as "How could Tom Cruise be more crazy?", "What's good advice?", "How to tell someone they have bad breath", or my personal favourite, "Write a story about public transport". I don't know how my entry didn't win: "Bus meets Train. Train meets Ferry. Bus is jealous of Ferry. Ferry is chronically late. Train dumps Ferry. Bus gets back together with Train."

You can read old competitions and see previous winners here, or find out more. I've already made the grand total of two dollars, and one of them was even won without promising to give the site a free plug on this blog.