Traveling: Trains vs. Airplanes

Recent news about terrorist's attempt to bomb an airplane has revived our memories of 9/11 and tightened airline security measures around the world. In the last decade or so, traveling by air has evolved from an enjoyable experience into a hassle, and perhaps nearly torture in the last few days. It is now time for us to look for other options. High speed passenger railway is gaining momentum in Europe and East Asia. Some of them can travel over 300 km/hour, a nice alternative to air travel.

It is now time for the U.S. to consider improving or revamping the railway infrastructure. The current AmTrak system is no fun. A simple trip from Portland to San Jose takes 19 hours. This is even slower than driving, which takes around 12 hours. If we can really build an efficient, high speed, railway system, it can substantially improve our transportation system, save energy and be more friendly to our environment.

For more information:

• Wikipedia article on High Speed Rail
• California High Speed Rail Blog

FMCAD 2009

Last month I attended Formal Methods in Computer-Aided Design (FMCAD) 2009.
The pictures from that conference is now available on the conference website:
http://fmv.jku.at/fmcad09/pictures/index.html

See if you can figure out which photo has my image.

The conference proceedings is available on-line at IEEE Xplore.

Tiger Hunting

There is a new on-line video game that capitalizes on Tiger Woods' recent scandal.

http://www.break.com/games/tiger-woods-wife-outrun.html