In the United States, on average, food travels a very long way from farm to fork (a 2007 estimate puts the figure at 1,000 miles for delivery from producer to retail and an enormous 4,200 miles over the entire supply chain). Food transportation accounts for nearly a ton of the average American's CO2 emissions each year, and a good chunk of the 15.5 million trucks on the road.
But what if we could instead send food around the country through a system of lightweight tubes, like a "transport industry Internet." This is the vision of the U.K.-based Foodtubes Project, a consortium of scientists, project managers, and businessmen. On their website, the group argues that a network of just 10,500 miles of subterranean tubes could connect all major food producers and retailers in the British Isles, taking up to 200,000 trucks off the road and saving 40 million tons of CO2.
But doesn't that just replace one form of transport with another? What's so great about pneumatic tubes? The Foodtubes Project argues that 90 percent of the fuel used to transport food by road and rail is used just to move the vehicles. Sending lightweight capsules zooming round through vacuum power or linear-induction still requires electricity, but Foodtubes Project spokesman Noel Hodson claims that the group's calculations demonstrate a saving of 23 percent on overground transport, plus another 77 percent saving from the "decongestion impact"—fuel reclaimed from the inefficiencies of urban gridlock.
Nonetheless, the U.S. equivalent to the Foodtubes Project, the Capsule Pipeline Research Center, has closed its doors to lack of funding, and even the irrepressible Hodson acknowledges that challenging the surface transportation system is an uphill struggle:
The freight industry is deeply entrenched at every level of government and commerce. Many traditional politicians and food bosses are oil-junkies, dedicated to keeping things as they are—whatever the social costs.
This slideshow collects a selection of functioning and fictional pneumatic tube systems from around the world, to showcase their continuing appeal as well as their glorious past. In an era when gas prices are rising, carbon dioxide emissions need to be curbed, and ambitious infrastructural investments seem to be making at least a minor, stimulus-related comeback, perhaps it's time to look at the Foodtubes Project as a serious alternative, despite the awe-inspiring ugliness of their website and PowerPoint presentations.
Gif of Bryan CRanston being angry via 
Hungry and ready.Photo credit 
The mac and cheese staple presentation.Photo credit 
Pizza ready from the oven.Photo credit 
Friends hover around the barbeque.Photo credit 
Seafood platter on the beach.Photo credit 
Scarecrow watches over a vegetable garden.Photo credit 
Happiness next exit.Photo credit: 
Butterflies in a flower patch.Photo credit: 
Happy running doggie.Photo credit: 
Positive confirmation.Photo credit:
Will your current friends still be with you after seven years?
Professor shares how many years a friendship must last before it'll become lifelong
Think of your best friend. How long have you known them? Growing up, children make friends and say they’ll be best friends forever. That’s where “BFF” came from, for crying out loud. But is the concept of the lifelong friend real? If so, how many years of friendship will have to bloom before a friendship goes the distance? Well, a Dutch study may have the answer to that last question.
Sociologist Gerald Mollenhorst and his team in the Netherlands did extensive research on friendships and made some interesting findings in his surveys and studies. Mollenhorst found that over half of your friendships will “shed” within seven years. However, the relationships that go past the seven-year mark tend to last. This led to the prevailing theory that most friendships lasting more than seven years would endure throughout a person’s lifetime.
In Mollenhorst’s findings, lifelong friendships seem to come down to one thing: reciprocal effort. The primary reason so many friendships form and fade within seven-year cycles has much to do with a person’s ages and life stages. A lot of people lose touch with elementary and high school friends because so many leave home to attend college. Work friends change when someone gets promoted or finds a better job in a different state. Some friends get married and have children, reducing one-on-one time together, and thus a friendship fades. It’s easy to lose friends, but naturally harder to keep them when you’re no longer in proximity.
Some people on Reddit even wonder if lifelong friendships are actually real or just a romanticized thought nowadays. However, older commenters showed that lifelong friendship is still possible:
“I met my friend on the first day of kindergarten. Maybe not the very first day, but within the first week. We were texting each other stupid memes just yesterday. This year we’ll both celebrate our 58th birthdays.”
“My oldest friend and I met when she was just 5 and I was 9. Next-door neighbors. We're now both over 60 and still talk weekly and visit at least twice a year.”
“I’m 55. I’ve just spent a weekend with friends I met 24 and 32 years ago respectively. I’m also still in touch with my penpal in the States. I was 15 when we started writing to each other.”
“My friends (3 of them) go back to my college days in my 20’s that I still talk to a minimum of once a week. I'm in my early 60s now.”
“We ebb and flow. Sometimes many years will pass as we go through different things and phases. Nobody gets buttsore if we aren’t in touch all the time. In our 50s we don’t try and argue or be petty like we did before. But I love them. I don’t need a weekly lunch to know that. I could make a call right now if I needed something. Same with them.”
Maintaining a friendship for life is never guaranteed, but there are ways, psychotherapists say, that can make a friendship last. It’s not easy, but for a friendship to last, both participants need to make room for patience and place greater weight on their similarities than on the differences that may develop over time. Along with that, it’s helpful to be tolerant of large distances and gaps of time between visits, too. It’s not easy, and it requires both people involved to be equally invested to keep the friendship alive and from becoming stagnant.
As tough as it sounds, it is still possible. You may be a fortunate person who can name several friends you’ve kept for over seven years or over seventy years. But if you’re not, every new friendship you make has the same chance and potential of being lifelong.