ALL IN THE INTEREST OF INTERNATIONAL COMITY

The weekend Financial Times had an article on the Thai relaxation industry. The article quotes a card Somerset Maugham is supposed to have received in 1923 in Thailand. It read:

Oh, gentleman, Sir,
Miss Pretty Girl welcome you Sultan Turkish bath,
gentle, polite message,
put you in dreamland with perfume soap, latest gramophone music.
Oh such service!
You come now!
Miss Pretty Girl want you, massage you from tippy toe to head top,
nice clean to enter Gates of Heaven.

I will freely admit that (a) "Turkish bath" makes me think this may be a gay thing, and (b) I am a little concerned that Miss Pretty Girl foresees my imminent entry into the "Gates of Heaven." On the other hand, in the interest of international comity, it might be necessary to explore this a little bit further if I were Mr. Maugham. I mean, why offend in the Land of Smiles?

MERCY

For weeks I have been working on a blog about the private development of public transit systems in New York, Boston, and Chicago. The thesis is that Chicago and Boston had municipal takeovers before competition went from good to wasteful, whereas New York did not and now has an irrational subway system to show for it. This was all sparked by a New York Times story a few weeks ago about New York taking over some private bus lines that still operate in the Bronx and Queens.

I have decided to show mercy to all four of my readers and just dump the topic. I think it might only be interesting to me, and frankly, I'm not sure I was all that thrilled. Anyway, the one good thing it does is allow me to post the links below.

Here are links to pages that show some of abandoned and/or incomplete mass transit or other rail projects in a variety of cities. These are sometimes failed attempts, sometimes competitive losers, and sometimes simply what is left over when upgrades are made. The pages are generally pretty good: London; New York; Chicago; Boston; Cincinnati; LA; Rochester.