There Should Be A Law About...Escalators!

Escalators! They're great. They help you quickly get up what would have been a lot of stairs. Or they would do if people didn't always stop walking when they got on them.

What is this about? Do their legs stop working? Is there some kind of regality bestowed upon a person as they rise (or descend) majestically that now makes moving seem undignified, the normal act of walking now somehow beneath them?

Next time, as you deign to meet your waiting subjects on the next floor, how about just standing to the left?

No Room for Doubt

The day of execution for the two Australian drug smugglers seems to be drawing irreversibly nearer.

I have much ambivalence about the situation.  While, I have no sympathy for the drug smugglers who, likewise, didn't spare a thought over the untold harm they would be spreading by peddling their wares, I am no fan of the death penalty.  There's no room for error with the death penalty; the options to remedy an error are none. And while it can be argued that no errors have been made in this instance, it does appear that the decision is less about dispensing justice and more about projecting a strong image.  People's lives shouldn't simply be being disposed of as part of an image campaign.

But my real sense of disquiet comes from our own Federal police's role.  Rather than arresting the culprits on arrival in Australia, they gave them up in Indonesia, knowing full well that they could be facing the death penalty.  Now, Australia does not extradite people to countries where there is a risk of the death sentence being applied, so why on earth would they give these people up to the same fate.  There has been remarkably little scrutiny of this aspect of the case given the scale of the media coverage but apparently the person(s) concerned have no regrets and would do it again.  People with that kind of certainty in their own convictions always leave me feeling uneasy.

Valentines Pay

If ever a day has been hijacked, it has to be Valentine's Day.  Sure, Christmas and Easter have become commercialised but they are still have their original purpose.  Valentine's Day on the other hand has long since lost its meaning.

I can remember when it was a day that you sent a card to the object of your dreams who didn't even know you existed.  And it was done anonymously, so they still didn't actually know that you existed but they became aware of the possibility of your existence.  And one lived on such cherished hopes.  Now that was romance!

These days, it's predominantly a couple's, and even worse, married couple's, day.  Don't these people have anniversaries on which to celebrate their love for one another?

Somewhat ironically, it's subsequently entirely devoid of any romance.  For starters, there's no suprise here is there?  There's no "I wonder who this card is from" speculation.  Far from that, there is  actually a horrid sense of obligation about the whole thing. I know more than a few people for whom the whole day is more about staying out of trouble than about making any kind of statement.

Of course, the obligation thing is where the money is made.  Hallmark, restaurants and flower-shops aren't going to survive on the revenue generated by anonymous romantics.  So, instead, everybody has to send a Valentine's Day card or buy a gift, otherwise they're just not being romantic (i.e. supporting the economy) and we won't even get started on how all the prices miraculously rise on that day.

So I'm going to do my bit.  I'm going to buy some Valentine's Day cards and I'm going to send them off.  To married people.  Just to spice it up a little.