Economist, Aug 17, 2013 (I)

choi

(1) Chinatown buses | Driving Them out of Business; Regulators nobble cheap travel.
http://www.economist.com/news/un ... g-them-out-business

My comment:
(a) nobble (vt): "British informal  try to influence or thwart (someone or something) by underhanded or unfair methods[, including] tamper with (a racehorse or greyhound) to prevent it from winning a race, especially by giving it a drug"
Oxford Dictionaries, undated.
http://oxforddictionaries.com/us ... ican_english/nobble
(b) "Kerbside pick-up"
(i) That is British spelling for "curbside."
(ii) I have no idea how British got the "k."  Its etymology says it should be "c."

curb (n; Middle French courbe curve, curved piece of wood or iron, from courbe curved, from Latin curvus; First Known Use 15th century)
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/curb

(c) "In March this year they withdrew the licence of Fung Wah, the longest-running Chinatown bus service. Two other lines, Ming An and Lucky Star, soon followed it off the road."
風華
(I can not find the Chinese name for "Ming An."
(d) "YO!, a new line jointly operated by Greyhound and Peter Pan, is now the only bus that runs from Chinatown to Boston. The name is derived from a Chinese word that means 'to protect.'"

Yo!  佑
http://yobus.com/
(e) Before reading this article, I had a bad impression about Chinatown bus, which is similar to 野雞車 in Taiwan.
-----------------
() The future of transport | No Loopy Idea; Elon Musk, electric-car entrepreneur and proponent of private colonies on Mars, now plans to redesign the railway.
http://www.economist.com/news/sc ... ivate-colonies-mars

Note:
(a) "HALF a century after they were pioneered in France and Japan, could high-speed trains be coming to America?"
(i) Shinkansen  新幹線
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinkansen
(Starting with the Tōkaidō Shinkansen 東海道新幹線 [connecting Tokyo and Osaka] (515.4 km) in 1964; Japan was the first country to build dedicated railway lines for high speed travel)
(ii) TGV
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TGV
(French: Train à Grande Vitesse, high-speed train; the inaugural TGV service between Paris and Lyon in 1981)

(b) "The Hyperloop would carry passengers across California at more than 1,200kph—faster than a jet airliner—allowing them to zoom between San Francisco and Los Angeles in little over half an hour, compared with more than two-and-a-half hours for CHSR. * * * at almost the speed of sound."

sound
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound
(section 2.4: Speed of sound: In 20 °C (68 °F) air at sea level, the speed of sound is approximately 343 m/s (1,230 km/h; 767 mph))

(c) "Vac-trains, as first described in the 1910s by Robert Goddard (better known as a pioneer of rocketry), would send rolling stock (or hovering stock, perhaps) hurtling through hermetically sealed tubes from which the air has been evacuated."
(i) Robert H Goddard
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_H._Goddard
(1882-1945; American; credited with creating and building the world's first liquid-fueled rocket, which he successfully launched on Mar 16, 1926)
(ii) rolling stock
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_stock
* rolling. Online Etymology Dictionary, undated.
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=rolling
("Rolling stock 'wheeled vehicles on a railroad' (locomotives, carriages, etc.) is from 1853")
* stock (n):
"1. A store or supply
* * *
     3. Railroad rolling stock.
Wiktionary, undated.
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/stock

(d) heading: "Loop the loop"

Loop-the-Loop (disambiguation)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loop-the-Loop_(disambiguation)

Check out the first two items: about roller coaster and flight maneuver)

(e) "Nor is there any reason to believe that Hyperloop would be immune to the hypertrophication of cost"
(i) eutrophication (n)
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/eutrophication
(ii) eutrophication
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eutrophication
(or more precisely hypertrophication)
(iii) For etymology, see
eutrophic (adj; probably from German Eutroph eutrophic, from Greek eutrophos well-nourished, nourishing, from eu- + trephein to nourish; First Known Use 1928)
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/eutrophic