Musings

I read the news section of the Guardian on Monday for the first time in, oh gosh, ages. It was quite interesting in the end. I see that teenagers these days are more unhappy and mentally unstable and wondered whether it was linked to a finding I read recently in Scientific American about how increase of choice can lead to increase in unhappiness. These days there are so many choices to make even at that age and so many ways to fail - it seems like there's more pressure these days. There were some interesting articles about the positions of Blair and Bush and their implications for the institution of democracy.

The reason for this was that I was travelling back from Wakefield on the train, which gives you plenty of time to browse. I tried to tune into Radio 4 but couldn't get any signal. In fact there were no signals at all except for the silence at 93.15, which I can always get anywhere in the country. What is that about? About half an hour before I got home I remembered you could listen to the radio by plugging into the socket between the seats, which is fine except that it cuts out for station announcements and stuff about the buffet car, which is extremely annoying. Also, why is it that every ticket collector has a different type of ticket stamp or puncher? What's the system?