Before it dies, I want to come out in favour of the hyperloop project in Minnesota to create underground tubes in which people would travel in capsules propelled by electromagnetic force at speeds up to 700 mph. No seat belts, no use of carbon fuel, no roaring engines or jarring bumps. They’re proposing a link between Minneapolis/St. Paul and Rochester, 85 miles, which by my calculation will take about 7 and ½ minutes, or one cup of coffee, whereas now it takes 90 some minutes, or about the length of the opera “Hansel and Gretel” if you include the search for a parking spot and the hike to where your appointment is.

Minnesota’s, of course, would only be an experiment, which, if successful, could be extended and thereby make the country smaller — three hours from Chicago to L.A. but without the pollution — and eventually you might eliminate the vast underpopulated middle, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, the Dakotas, Nevada, Wyoming, and Montana, which would become one huge federal agricultural reserve, run by the Department of Agriculture, tended by migrant workers, no need for towns and cities. Kansas has 105 counties, a pointless bureaucracy ruling over wheat and soybean fields. Farming is heavily subsidized by the feds anyway and in the name of efficiency, why not let them run it, allocating acreage based on nutrition, convert wasteful grazing lands to vegetable crops. Eliminating those states would reduce the U.S. Senate by 20 seats, which could only improve it, and likely send the Republican Party careening into history, which it has been seeking for some time now. And who can name the last great senator from Kansas or South Dakota?