h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

sometimes chocolate helps
and gentle friendliness and good humor are good too

just don't try too hard

"The high speed rail link would benefit a lot of people, and cause problems for only a few"

You've got that the wrong way round.

It will benefit only a very few people - the very, very few to whom a few minutes shaved off their journey time actually matters.

It will cause problems for every single person in the country, because it will be financed out of our taxes. And it will inevitably cost far more than we're promised, and will inevitably not be as popular as forecast.

Most of the so-called economic benefits it's calculated to offer are based on the assumption that 20 minutes shaved off a journey means you're in the office 20 minutes sooner, which means you'll get 20 minutes more work done.

Whereas anyone who's actually DONE any work in the last, say, ten years, knows that 20 minutes more on the train means 20 minutes more with your laptop and 3G dongle and effectively probably an hour's worth of interruption-free, distraction-free work time.

Since nobody appears to have notified the government of the existence of laptop computers and mobile internet connections, they're still banging on with the idea that a quicker train means more productivity, when in fact it might actually mean the opposite.

The new Burka Avenger cartoon looks like SEP.
Though whose problem it is remains in question.

http://youtu.be/8pdbshf4iPE


~jwf~

Looks like something Adult Swim would make to me.