Life, the Universe and Everything

This nearly makes it into The Ranting Category, but I'm going to make an effort to be restrained and reflective. A thing I've noticed about people and queues is that, whenever they're queing for something they like to orient themselves so that they're facing the thing they're queuing for, and it's quite hard to persuade them to do otherwise. The prime example is cash machines - take a walk down Oxford Street any Saturday, fairly busy, people bustling up and down the street. Let me stress here - people bustle up and down the steet, bustling across the street tends to be far less common than people using the pavement to get from one end of Oxford Street to the other (diving into shops along the way). There are several cash machines along Oxford Street and it is quite common for someone to already be using one when you walk up, now when this happens the person waiting to use the machine ignores the fact that he's standing in the flow of pedestrian traffic on one of the busiest streets in England and stands directly behind the person already using the machine, facing towards it. The next person to come along repeats this and stands directly behind the person in front so that, gradually, a human wall builds up across the pavement. What amazes me is that people don't even think this is strange, in fact when I've queued to the side of a cash machine alongside the wall I often find that the person who joins the queue behind me will stand far enough away from the wall to be able to see the cash machine, and since I'm a fairly large person this can end up being quite a long way from the wall. And not just with cash machines, ticket machines at stations, hot dog stands, anything. So I wonder, do humans have some basic instinct that requires them always to be facing the thing they're queuing for, or do they just care so little about everyone else trying to use the street around them?

The tube combines an interesting inability to vent warm air to the outside, coupled with a cunning ability to let all the water in when it rains. If you are from warmer parts of the world and worried about the weather in London, rest assured that tropical conditions prevail at all times throughout the London Underground network.

My attention was drawn to this article today. Now here is a guy who hasn't thought things through properly. "He was keeping a journal of sorts to put together for future history," John Ellsworth told BBC News. "He wanted to make sure that his generation, as well as following generations, have actual words from somebody who was there." And yet if he knew his son was involved in such an important task you think the least he'd be able to do was not delete the emails he received, instead he is demanding Yahoo! release them on compassionate grounds. Why does Yahoo! have to be compassionate just because he couldn't be bothered to archive his own emails?

Not much going on here yet, but I plan to start spouting copious verbiage shortly. I'm sure everyone I know is bored of listening to me complain endlessly about the same things over an over, but I figure there's bound to be people on the internet who haven't heard me yet...