The X-Factor In Musk's Human Transport Concept Gets A Boost

Hyperloop capsules being loaded with human and luggage cargo for a very quick and insulated trip that will be amongst the fastest type of public/commercial transportation devised by man. Image Credit: Daily Mail via Space X (2014)

The X-Factor In Musk's Human Transport Concept Gets A Boost

While standing in a long line at a Costco Wholesale during the Christmas season holiday, one may notice how communication from the checkout cashpoint to the central management office is accomplished.

The "Checker" at the cashpoint, with the all of the scanners, credit card terminals, and printers, also is equipped with a tube system that allows one to take checks, money, and other paper-based monied communications, place them in a cylinder, which is then placed in the tube and sucked through vacuum pressure where at the other end of the tube, the information is delivered almost instantly. 

Marshall Fields central communications (1947) - Before the invention of phones and fax machines, people in cities sent messages through a huge system of underground tubes filled with compressed air. Image Credit: chuckmanchicagonostalgia.wordpress-dot-com

Management is assured that these communications that result in good profits never become breached from point-to-point due the closed nature of this pneumatic tube system.

A typical Costco Wholesale cashpoint section where the pneumatic tubes of the money transfer system can be seen routed along the ceiling of the store. Image Credit: Flickr

This is the precise idea behind PayPal, Tesla Motors, and Space X founder and CEO Elon Musk. He believes that the findings of a recent 76-page report may go a long way in proving his pneumatic tube proposal/argument that a human transport system such as this vacuum "hyperloop" that is in use at all Costco stores is the future of human mass transportation from point-to-point.

Infographic of the proposed Hyperloop human transport system (video presentation link). Image Credit: via Space X (2014)

This edited and excerpted from USAToday -

Report: Elon Musk's 'hyperloop' idea could work
By Chris Woodyard - 12-22-2014 - USAToday

Enthusiasts behind Elon Musk's "hyperloop" proposal -- an intercity tube that speeds passengers riding in capsules at 600 miles per hour -- have taken the next step, producing a report outlining some of the big issues around the project.

Hyperloop Transportation Technologies' 76-page report focuses issues surrounding a system that could connect San Francisco with Los Angeles. The report says, however, that there are many city pairs round the world that would be candidates for a hyperloop.

The 400-plus-mile trip would take less than an hour, compared to more than six hours of driving. The goal is to keep the ticket price in the $20 to $30 range, although the report points out that at total cost estimates of $16 billion, they could go higher. Still, it says, hyperloop would be a bargain compared to alternatives. "If this same overall price point were preserved for other city pairings, it could dramatically change the way people live and work in cities," the report says.
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"The Hyperloop design uses a combination of low air pressure and magnetic acceleration to get people from LA to SF in just about 30 minutes," the report says. It would produce its own electricity from solar power.
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Passengers would travel in aerodynamic pods the size of vans inside the tube. HTT envisions developing three designs -- one each for luxury passengers, economy economy passengers and freight.
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HTT estimates that the cost of the system would be $20 million to $45 million a mile, as contrast from what it says are costs of up to $200 million a mile for conventional mass transportation system.
[Reference Here]

The report does point out one of the many problems of a self-contained closed loop pneumatic tube system ... how would passengers deal with an uncontrollable "Nature Calls" or a "Mile High Club"-like situation?

Good question.

... notes from The EDJE

Public OpinionPoll Results

Occupy LA Hits The Snooze Button

Los Angeles City Hall where for seven weeks now, a bunch of imported professional agitators set up shop on the 1.5 acre South lawn park in downtown LA. Image Credit: Edmund Jenks (2011)

Occupy LA Hits The Snooze Button

All citizens of Los Angeles want to do is wake up, go to work, have fun, and live their lives with definition ... the definition they choose to have for their lives. For seven weeks now, a bunch of imported professional agitators set up shop on the 1.5 acre South lawn park at City Hall, in the name of the Occupy Wall Street Movement. All they have been able to accomplish is attract a bunch of homeless, out of work students, and some media attention to the fact that .... and is the only consistent point ... they are there to "Occupy". All other potential political points to be made are subservient to the concept To Occupy.

Civilized cities call what these people have been doing in terms of "Occupy" is to trespass.

Today, this morning, we citizens of Los Angeles have been treated to wall-to-wall television coverage of the Los Angeles Police attempting to restore some order to this trespassing hoard. The Occupy crowd was prepared for a confrontation of eviction because, after seven weeks, the Mayor decided that trespassing will finally not be tolerated on the South lawn park area of the Los Angeles City Hall. With a 72 hour notice that the laws would be enforced at 12:01am PT Monday morning, all the people the Occupy Movement could muster, what with the imported protesters from San Diego, Oakland, and other cities was an estimated 700 to 1,200 people on the South Lawn.

The crowd, wanting to create more tension, spilled on to the street surrounding City Hall, and for about six hours, the Los Angeles Police Department packed the area with personnel dressed in "tactical response gear" (the Occupy Movement wanted the media gathered to report "riot gear"). The LAPD, after broadcasting via bullhorn that the streets will be cleared at 5:00am PT, started to move people off of the streets. Some shouting ensued, objects were thrown (a couple of bamboo poles/spears and bottles), and about five people were arrested and removed from the scene.

One of the news reporters stated that this Occupy LA encampment represented the largest gathering of Occupy protesters in the nation. So wrapped up was this reporter at romancing this event, she stated erroneously that this started seven weeks ago and had grown into this major protest. If this were the Tea Party, and folks were given 72 hours to gather at a specific park, there would be far more than an estimated 700 to 1,200 people standing around. In fact with a seven week notice from Glenn Beck, the Tea Party folks were able to amass over 750,000 people on the Mall in Washington D.C. prior to the 2010 elections.

The television coverage, after about an hour of dedicated Occupy coverage, with helicopter shots and on the street interviews, has resumed to its normal morning news coffee talk. The weather here is Santa Ana wind beautiful and the temperature is expected to hit the low 80's.

As for the LAPD, they seem to have employed a strategy of "show up and wait" with intent of wearing out the cell phone batteries of the Occupy LA protester's iPhones and boring them to death with the intensity of presence.

Time to hit the snooze button.



<article first appeared as Occupy LA Hits The Snooze Button at Technorati>

Kwik-E-Mart Debut In Twelve "Springfield's"

Always wondered where Springfield really is? Does anyone really know? Well the folks at 7-Eleven do – in fact they’ve been working very closely with Apu Nahasapeemapetilon. The Kwik-E-Mart was made famous in The Simpsons and has landed in the streets of Burbank, Ca.. Image Credit: 7-Eleven Corporate website - YouTube Video (below) Credit: LAMISCH

Kwik-E-Mart Debut In Twelve "Springfield's"

Just before the release of the feature length movie, "The Simpson's Movie", scheduled for release on July 27th, twelve 7-Eleven convenience stores in North America have been converted to the famed "Kwik-E-Mart" stores.

We, at MAXINE were just minding our own business when all of a sudden we came upon a very crowded store where once a 7-Eleven stood on Olive Avenue in Burbank.

To our amazement, there stood a complete Kwik-E-Mart store and about 400 people were snaked from the front door to around the corner of the building wanting to share in the experience of a real life movie promotion.

It is pretty cool in that the Kwik-E-Mart not only looks like a Kwik-E-Mart, but it will sell products only found at the fictional store in Springfield. That's right, Buzz Cola, KrustyO's cereal and Squishees, the slushy drink knockoff of Slurpees.

Every promotion though has something that can kill a BUZZ ... no, really!

You are correct in guessing that there will be NO BUZZ BEER sold at the Kwik-E-Mart.

That is a Buzz Killer for sure!

Excerpts from AP via Yahoo! News -

7-Elevens become Simpsons 'Kwik-E-Marts'
By DAVID KOENIG, AP Business Writer - Sun Jul 1, 7:44 PM ET

DALLAS - Over the weekend, 7-Eleven Inc. turned a dozen stores into Kwik-E-Marts, the fictional convenience stores of "The Simpsons" fame, in the latest example of marketers making life imitate art.

Those stores and most of the 6,000-plus other 7-Elevens in North America will sell items that until now existed only on television: Buzz Cola, KrustyO's cereal and Squishees, the slushy drink knockoff of Slurpees.

It's all part of a campaign to hype the July 27 opening of "The Simpsons Movie," the big-screen debut for the long-running television cartoon, which loves to lampoon 7-Eleven as a store that sells all kinds of unhealthy snacks and is run by a man with a thick Indian accent.

For 20th Century Fox Film Corp. and Homer's creators at Gracie Films, the stunt is a cheap way to call attention to their movie, since 7-Eleven is bearing all the costs, which executives of the retail chain put at somewhere in the single millions.
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"We thought if you really want to do something different, the idea of actually changing stores into Kwik-E-Marts was over the top but a natural," said Bobbi Merkel, an executive for of 7-Eleven's advertising agency, FreshWorks, a unit of Omnicom Group Inc. "It shows they get the joke."

The monthlong promotion has been rumored a long time — it's hard to keep a secret known by so many suppliers and franchisees — but 7-Eleven managed to keep the locations of the stores quiet until early Sunday morning. That's when the exteriors of 11 U.S. stores and one in Canada were flocked in industrial foam and given new signs to replicate the animated look of Kwik-E-Marts.

The U.S. locations where a 7-Eleven store was transformed into a Kwik-E-Mart are New York City; Chicago; Dallas; Denver; Burbank, Calif.; Los Angeles; Henderson, Nev.; Orlando, Fla.; Mountain View, Calif.; Seattle; and Bladensburg, Md.
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The Fox/7-Eleven deal is an example of a practice called reverse product placement. Instead of just putting products prominently in a movie or TV show, fake goods move from the screen to reality.

In some cases, 7-Eleven has contracted with manufacturers of similar products to make their Kwik-E-Mart counterparts. Malt-O-Meal, the Northfield, Minn., cereal maker, will conjure up a recipe for KrustyO's, for example. In others, existing products will simply be renamed. One flavor of 7-Eleven's own Slurpee will be sold as "WooHoo! Blue Vanilla" Squishee for the month.
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After Fox pitched a 7-Eleven tie-in last year, representatives from the studio, the stores, and Gracie Films — including Simpsons creator Matt Groening and executive producer James L. Brooks, met in Los Angeles to kick around ideas. Brooks added one — holding a contest to let one fan be drawn into a future episode of the TV show.

7-Eleven executives loved the idea. They had surveys showing a strong overlap between their customers and fans of the show — both tend to be young and male. It sounded like cash registers ringing.

"They've been looking at Squishees and KrustyO's and Buzz Cola for years and have never been able to put their hands on it," said Merkel, the advertising executive.

But they won't find Duff beer, the brand chugged by Homer Simpson. The movie will be rated PG-13, and selling a Simpson-themed beer "didn't seem to fit," said Rita Bargerhuff, a 7-Eleven marketing executive. "That was a tough call, but we want to make sure it's considered good, responsible fun."

Bargerhuff predicted extra sales to Simpsons fans will more than offset the cost of the promotion and create new customers for the chain. She also said the chain is prepared for crowds and will have extra security and clerks at the Kwik-E-Marts.
Reference Here>>

Always wondered where Springfield really is? Does anyone really know? Well the folks at 7-Eleven do – in fact they’ve been working very closely with Apu Nahasapeemapetilon.

Burbank, CA
Chicago, IL
Dallas, TX
Denver, CO
Lake Buena Vista, FL/Orlando, FL
Las Vegas, NV/Henderson, NV
Los Angeles, CA
New York City, NY
San Francisco, CA/Mountain View, CA
Seattle, WA
Washington, DC/Bladensburg, MD


UPDATE 7-10-2007:

Proof that the creators of The Simpson's have decided that the fictitious town of "Springfield" is actually ... Springfield, Illinois!