78 dead as a high-speed train leaps off the tracks.

In Spain.

Video footage showed carriages crumpled and lying on their side. Almost all those who perished were found dead on the scene, in an indication of the force of the derailment. A local official likened the scene to Dante’s "Inferno."

I'm blogging this because it's not an atypical incident and because too many people in America have unrealistic, idealized notions of the goodness of trains and their capacity to whisk everyone around everywhere at high speed. 

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Violent crime in Milwaukee up 5% in the first half of 2013 — mostly because of robberies, which are up almost 20%.

But overall crime is down 8%, because of a decrease in property crimes.

This seems to mean the thieves of Milwaukee have decided it's easier to confront people on the street than to break into their homes, but why would such a sudden shift in preference occur? Writing that question, I pictured the classic robber pointing a gun at a guy in a your-money-or-your-life scenario, but, reading further, I see it's all about the smartphones. Folks on the street with their iPhones on display are conspicuous targets, and all the thief needs to do is grab it and run. The solution to this big spike in robberies is for the damned phones to be designed to be utterly unusable if stolen. Or unusual except for one thing: to lead the police to the thief.

But if property crimes are down, maybe the stealable iPhone problem isn't a problem at all. Maybe the good people of Milwaukee and elsewhere are better off having the thieves running around outside, snatching smartphones, instead of breaking into houses. But how long can that go on? At some point, no one will display a phone in public. You may think: Great! Another nonproblem. I'm sick of these idiots who walk around texting and fiddling with apps.

But the police in Milwaukee are acting like they are doing something about the smartphone theft problem, which isn't all mere snatching, and does include armed robbery. One idea is: Teach citizens to use passwords and tracking apps. (If we use tracking apps, will they really expend resources going after the robbers? Or are the tracking apps just supposed to deter robbers?) The other idea:

Investigators also are focusing on local stores that are reselling stolen phones to try to cut off a secondary market....

That sounds so lame: focusing. Show me the prosecutions.

Mayor Tom Barrett [said he] was pleased that the number of crime victims was down. But he said he was concerned about a robbery increase.

Pleased and concerned. Again, lame. (Barrett, by the way, is the Democratic politician who lost to Governor Walker in the 2010 election and then, a year and a half later, lost to him again in the recall election.)

Tony Gibson, a member of the Johnsons Park Neighborhood Association, said the Police Department had informed neighborhood groups of crime trends during monthly meetings.

"It takes a lot of involvement from residents, from everyday folks" to work with police, plan community programs and keep crime down, Gibson said.

So you want people to pitch in with the neighborhood watch type activities that we've seen condemned in the overwhelming assault on George Zimmerman? Good luck eliciting that sort of community service. It's been smeared in the press as the pastime of racist wannabe cops.

What I learned from reading this article:

It's a good thing that Tom Barrett lost the 2010 election to Scott Walker, because Barrett, unlike Walker, would have taken the federal money to build a high speed train line between Madison and Milwaukee, and we the people of Madison are not going to be wanting to go to Milwaukee these days, because you can't toddle around the streets gazing into your iPhone there. 

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"Police say there's evidence Canada train was tampered with."

And here's the highest-rated comment at the link:

Not to go off on some "conspiracy "deal but, Speaking as an experienced[heavy duty] mechanic, this cant happen, the "maxi-brakes" don't need air to stay on, they need air to release,,something does not compute with this,.Even if the engine was still running?, these type of brakes cant!! "self release", someone has to push the "maxi button" to make them come off,...and crude is not,in general, "explosive" per se,.. unless there are lots of fumes present[unlikely in a fully loaded car],..methinks there is more to this than meets the eye and I for one, am glad that this is being investigated etc,..Condolences to those who have experienced losses,.. we! are thinking of you all,..I know, it is not much, but it is good in the whole,,

Here's my post from yesterday observing the motivation for sabotage.

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Why did that train explode in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec?

It's a mystery, but consider this clue:

The train was carrying crude from the region that has spearheaded the revival in the use of oil trains in North America: North Dakota's Bakken shale.... Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, has enabled North Dakota to quickly become the No. 2 oil producer in the United States, but the state has few pipelines to carry its new product to market.... So the oil industry has turned to rail to move crude to refineries on the East, West and Gulf coasts. The train that derailed at Lac-Mégantic was bound for a refinery in New Brunswick, east of Quebec....

An important factor keeping the cost of train transport down for oil producers has been the practice of sending the crude in trains made entirely of tanker cars of oil, like the train that crashed in Lac-Mégantic. Shipping in these "unit trains," long lines of black tankers that look like a moving above-ground pipeline, is cheaper than the traditional "manifest train" that is a mix of boxcars, flatbeds, grain hoppers, and coal cars (an operator needs a "manifest," or list, to keep track of what's aboard.)  New onloading and offloading stations are being built especially for all-oil trains.

Sabotage?

If it was sabotage, what interests did the saboteurs have in mind? They could have been opponents of fracking, but they could have been proponents of pipelines — radical environmentalists or radical opponents of environmentalism.

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