Moom's Law of Legroom

When
I was flying, a while back, I wrote a rant about how I hated flying, how
rubbish it was compared to travelling by train, etc., etc.

I'm
on a train now.

And
I'd like to add one important proviso to my previous comments - the train is a
much more agreeable way to travel ONLY if there is PLENTY OF LEGROOM.
In fact, I'm going to go further, and propose Moom's Law of Legroom - a
journey is more enjoyable the more legroom you have. Yes, you may blame it on
the child vomited down your back on your
last Trip From Hell, but think - how much legroom did you have? Not much, I'll
bet. The fact that people don't have babies vomiting down them in first class
is because there is more legroom. No other reason. Legroom defines a
journey's pleasantness.

The
basis for this observation is simple. My journey down to Devon
was miserable; the train was crowded, and as a result I was sitting in a bog-standard
'airline' seat, with the usual minimal legroom. This time, I was lucky enough
to get a seat (still airline, so no table, annoyingly) next to the 'priority
seat for disabled people'. Thus, extra legroom. The train is still very busy,
but my knees no longer touch the seat in front. I may even be able to use my
laptop without bending my wrist right back on itself. In short, I'm having a
much nicer time. Legroom: it's the way of the future.

By
the way, came across this in the paper: “Blog-standard (n): containing an
exceptional number of anecdotes about cats.”

Capitalism

(One thing about flying - the overall experience might suck, but the views are great)



So! Capitalism. Yeah.



I have a glib little theory about capitalism, which is this: capitalism is a system for creating monopolies.



Here's the way I see it. Capitalism is based on competition. That's all
fine and dandy, but competition is an inherently unstable state.
This seems to suit certain industries (plumbing is the one I keep
thinking of), but in other areas, competitions have a tendency to be
won. And then monopolies are created. I'm guessing this is to do with
the costs of entry into an industry - where they re high, you have a
natural tendency for monopolies to evolve. This is natural, and
unsurprising. I'm pretty sure I was taught this stuff at school.



Ooo, look! Snowdonia!



Sorry, got distracted by the view. Anyway, what I find surprising
is the regularity with which competitions are being won right now.
Maybe it's me, but there seems to be a tendency at the moment towards
consolidation, and few starter companies muscling in. Maybe this is
just because mergers make headlines, while startups don't...



Ew. Big black smear in the sea suspiciously close to that power station. Grim.



...Er, what was I saying? Oh yeah.



Okay, forget all that. What I was trying say was very simple: just like
pure oxygen, pure capitalism kills. Well, duh. People win competitions.
Our society is inherently unstable, but at heart its basic unit is not
the dollar, but the human being. We're surrounded by lots of
imperfectly working
systems, which we patch constantly. If we occasionally lose sight of
this because of the complexity of the systems, then that shouldn't come
as any surprise. Complexity is rarely a good survival strategy.



So that's that. Gosh, that was easy.



I wrote this a few days ago - looking
back, it seems like the most incredibly disjointed nonsense! Never
mind, there's truth in there somewhere. Off you go, little blog entry,
and good luck in the wider world!

Flying is dull

I am starting to really dislike flying. This morning's flight will
be just over an hour, but the whole process, from leaving the house to
arriving at the other end will take three and a half hours. That
doesn't include hanging around for luggage at the other end, which I
don't do because I won't have any.

By contrast, the train takes seven hours... but there are a few
other factors which, for me, tip the balance in favour of staying on
the ground.

First, I like train stations. They seem to me to be places of
infinite promise, where one can step onto any platform and go anywhere
at a moment's notice. There is nothing regimented about a train
station, the whole place floats on a tide of people. At an airport, by
contrast, the moment you check-in you are processed, searched,
channeled, ticketed, watched, searched again, and finally let onto a
plane like it's some great privilege.

And planes don't even look like they should fly! Oh, intellectually
I know they work - I studied as an engineer, for goodness' sake, I know
lots of things about planes, including quite a lot about crack
propagation and fatigue failure (don't ask), so I know they work. But
as anyone who has watched a jumbo jet lumbering into the air will tell
you, it just ain't right.

Now I know, of course, that it's different for long flights. But for
the sort of short hops I'm always doing, flying is an extremely
frustrating form of transport, because the time is all chopped up.
First you have to travel out to the airport, then hang around for an
hour or so at the freakin' place, then climb onto a plane, then after
you've reached altitude you're allowed to get all the toys out again,
but by that time you're only forty minutes' away! It's all wasted time.
Whereas on the train, it may take twice as long, but once you're safely
esconced in your seat, that's you until you're at your destination. You
can work, rest or play the whole time. So much more civilized.

Then there's the environmental argument. Planes deliver NOx and all
its other evil exhaust stuff into the upper atmosphere, right where it
can do the most damage. Global warming kept me awake when I was twelve
years old. That was seventeen years ago, for crying out loud. I don't want to talk about it.

Finally, there's the fact that on a train you feel like you've travelled. You go through places.
You watch the countryside whipping by. People get on and off. On a
plane, the sense of movement is so distant that I always get the
distinct impression that we've just gone up and circled round for a bit
while people on the ground rearrange the furniture.

(This isn't what I wanted to write about at all. I was planning a
long rant about capitalism and its nature as an inherently unstable
system, but I appear to have got distracted)

And then, of course, there's the travel horror stories, which mostly
seem to involve flying. My own best one was the time Ryanair cancelled
a flight back from Paris (or at least, from the distant provincial
airport that Ryanair laughingly call Paris) on a Sunday night at 3am,
and couldn't find a replacement until Thursday. I finally ended up at a
different airport, two buses and a train later, flying with someone
else, but it was an entertaining twenty four hours. (Actually, I've
just realized I can beat that with a story about trains from when I was
16 and traveling on my own through France, but that was through my own
idiocy so it doesn’t count). I'm sure people have better horror stories than that, though. Anyone care to share?

WOW! We just flew over an offshore wind farm! A neat little grid of
tiny wind turbines in the middle of the sea! I was peering out the
window, looking for oil rigs (I know they're around here somewhere),
when suddenly this wonder of modernity caught my ear! Eye, sorry.
Caught my eye. That is SO COOL. Stupid thing to get excited about, but
really, wow. Brilliant. I've seen plenty on land, but seeing them in
the middle of the ocean is really something else. I sincerely doubt
they'll ever pay back all the effort that went into putting them there,
but as a symbol of mankind looking for new wonders to create, that was
pretty powerful.