and it needs to be, er, 3D. It looks artificial to me because there is no depth of focus.

I'm British, and for what it is worth, my car does 50+ mpg.

Can you back that capacity claim up with some hard facts?

I've done some calculations based on the main London-Bristol line in the UK that runs close to where I live. Based on a 500 seat train passing every 5 minutes during the peak, that's 6000 passengers per hour*. Compare this with cars traveling at 100km/h, each 10m apart carrying 1 passenger, that's 10000 passengers per hour. (*My guess for the train seems to be more or less in line with the offical UK stats at http://assets.dft.gov.uk/statistics/releases/rail-passenger-numbers-and-crowding-on-weekdays-2011/rail-passengers-crowding-2011.pdf that show's approx 5000 passengers per hour at Bristol, of which my main line is only one of 4 routes into the city)

As for the power, suffice to say that if the politicians can sort out the renewables then that won't be an issue.

More to the point, what's the point of trains?

It seems to me that a better way to solve the graffiti problem is to do away with the trains altogether. Rip up the rails and their place lay down some nice smooth tarmac/asphalt. Then run self driving vehicles along these lines. I wouldn't trust a self driving car on a road where most of the other cars have a nut behind the wheel, but if all the other vehicles on the "road" were all driven by computers talking to one and other, then I'd be more than happy. And once I get to my "station" the system would direct my car to an exit siding. Once there I would engage the manual driving mode of my pod, and take it home - where hopefully it won't get spayed with some gangster man's tag.

Yes you can store the power. All you need to do is convert the energy into some other form when the sun is shining and release that energy when it is not. Something like the Dinorwig power station in North Wales, UK. Whilst that was built for something very different, (to supply power for short surge demands), the principle holds for storing renewable power. The reason it isn't currently done for renewable power is because the generators get more money from replacing fossil fuel based power generation, than they would do from shifting mega tonnes of water. If there were no fossil fuel based power generation then that would no longer be true. Burning fracked gas is not an option, the long term cost from global warming will be bigger than huge. As for your truck, all it takes is a bit of imagination. Use overhead power cables on the main routes, like trolley buses do, and then run on batteries for the last few miles to your house (I'm guessing you don't live in the wilds as you have access to the Internet - but then again, maybe you're using satellites)

But surely everyone knows that BRIAN'S ALIVE!

Nobody can spell Lundun properly, not even us Brits!

I agree, Its not what this fossil can say about evolution that is important, but rather what it might say about how life started in the first place. At some point something interesting must have happened to create something that could harness the energy and chemicals in its environment to make copies of itself. Once that started, evolution was inevitable.