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OMG!!!



Santiago de Compostela, yesterday,
a tragedy, so many casualties...



Photo: Reuters

Edit: I had to relink the youtube video today, because the first video I linked here was categorised as "too cruel" by youtube (it was simply deleted)...
I just say: welcome to reality, life is no Hollywood movie with good ending, wake up!!!
In Germany we had to face the most horrible highspeed train catastrophy in history already in 1998:

Eschede train disaster



photo taken from here

I've seen that on the local press here, something horrific.

Local press here relate: Spanish minister Rafael Catala say that it seems that the cause of this tragedy looks as an excessive speed.
They talk about 220 km/h in a spot were the speed is limited at 80 km/h. They say also that the driver was not drunk.

As often in such case, the newspapers here hastens to reassure the good people, as it had done for Fukushima and other disasters: Can this happen in France?

And as often in such case, they hastens to prove by a + b that it's highly unlikely because, of course, we are the best and we always do everything better than others.



Here's the full translation of what took place today on the local newspapper here .


"Speed ​​control.

Tags placed at regular intervals on the track control train speed. Once a TGV exceeds of 5 km/h the speed limit, a signal is sent to the train driver. If he ignores this warning, an emergency procedure is set up and the train is stopped automatically."

Automatically? What a kind of blind faith in the infallibility of French technology...



"Trains set each other.

Another additional security measure do exist in our TGV. The trains are firmly attached to each other. So that in case of derailment (it has happened three times *), the cars are secured to each other instead to fit into each others as in Spain or Brétigny-sur-Orge, where it was a Corail (classic non high speed train)."

Oh really? Then, in others countries, the trains are attached with rubber band, no doubt?







How i hate this mentality of wanting to always put us above the rest, always wanting to prove that we are, in France, above everything. It's so self-absorbed that it becomes stinking. The blood is not yet dry in Galicia and all they think to say here is "sleep quiet, people, here it's France, everything is under control"? I don't want anyone to experience such a tragedy, i don't want a Fukushima in France, Japan or any other nuclear power plant in the world, but when the drama will happen here, because this stuff ignores borders and colors of the flags, it will be nice to see all these blue-white-red sermonizers invoking fate. I don't give a shit if we built the best high speed trains or the best nuclear power plants, i don't give a shit if i'm here in France and not in Japan or Spain. I know in which world we are and i know that the speech "security first" is a vast hogwash. I don't eat this shit and i don't eat my warm soup in front of the assuaging Claire Chazal's news at the TV. All of this touches me and frightens me, even if i'm far at the bottom of a port in Brittany, just as when i saw the images of the Exxon Valdez, at the other end of the world, the shit in Alaska had the same color as the one we know so well here in Brittany. That's all and, even if i look angry, i wish peace in the hearts of my family over there and in those of my Spanish friends.




* See here

I agree completely Nikita.
And regarding nuclear power plants:

I always had a positive attitude towards nuclear energy...

...unless Fukushima did happen...
Fukushima urgently showed me 2 facts:

1. wether mankind nor technology can dominate nature
2. nuclear waste; most of these substances have a half time period of 200000 years. That means half of the material stops
   radiating in this period. It takes another 200000 years to stop half of the rest to radiate and so on...
   Show me just one building made by human hand that already exists 200000 years. And we are talking, regarding nuclear waste, about buildings of special necessities.
   Is this seriously our legacy for the next generations? How stupid and ignorant can we be?

Or take the example of the Boeing 777 crashing into the runway at San Francisco International Airport.



Or the Costa Concordia at Isola del Giglio.



Mankind is not that perfect as always expected.

And no technology can dominate that.

Goodbye Kepler, you did great work, R.I.P.

NASA calls off attempts to fix Kepler space telescope

a new presumed highlight for future sightseeing tours is discovered