Strange Thoughts of a Strange Man

You know those new Dyson airblade hand dryers? They’re meant to be more efficient and dry your hands a lot quicker. They have a simple set of instructions printed in very basic pictures on the top. There are two:

1. Insert wet hands
2. Draw out slowly over 10 seconds.

The idea is that the air from the dryer both pushes most of the water off the hands as you draw them out and dry the remainder with hot air. Simple.

Why then do most men do this … ?

1. Insert hands quickly.
2. Draw out just as quickly.
3. Repeat steps 1 and 2 until the drier stops.
4. Walk off complaining that it doesn’t work.

Is it the usual male thing of not reading instructions, I wonder? Even instructions that have two steps and are diagrams anyway? Or is it the male thing about knowing better?

Is it just men who are this stupid?

Labels: Dyson, Stupidity

I just asked someone who is going on holiday in a few days the cliché question of “going anywhere nice?”

If you think about this, it is a bloody silly question.

You are going on holiday – why choose to go somewhere horrible? Even if it is not the most scenic of places or the hottest or the most interesting. It’s somewhere you have chosen to spend time and money getting to – it is somewhere you want to be.

Labels: Holiday, Stupidity

Last night, there was a story in the free newspapers of a man who had had such a severe beating in Trafalgar Square a few weeks ago that he recently died. His attackers consisted of two blonde girls and a black man. Before the trio attacked the man they had shouted homophobic insults at him.

In short, two girls helped beat a man to death because he was gay.

Several months ago, another gay man was stabbed to death on his own doorstep in Bromley and his partner placed in intensive care. This attack has been attributed to homophobia as well.

My immediate reaction when hearing these stories is, strangely, to wonder why someone would do that. Why attack someone? Why kill someone purely because of his sexuality?

I can almost understand it if the attacks were made by straight men who had been propositioned by nasty predatory gay men.

Almost.

However, I really cannot understand why two women would do this. What possible reason could there be?

The usual tribal reason given in these circumstances is “because he was different.”

This is the reason that people tender for violence against someone who supports another football team or has skin that is a different colour or who speaks another language or who belong to another religion or are old or … any one of a million differences. Apparently this is enough reason to hurt or even kill someone else.

It’s a pity no-one uses it as a reason for attacking someone who actually thinks those sort of things actually matter.

Labels: Bigotry, Homophobia, Stupidity

My page-a-day calendar on my desk is, as I have mentioned before, crap. Today, as it is Friday, the calendar has dispensed this piece of advice:

if you hang up clothes taken out of the dryer when they are slightly damp you reduce the need for ironing and save energy

What? If it’s possible for you to hang the clothes up in the first place, why use a tumble drier at all? OK, it takes longer in the winter months to dry your clothes.

If it isn’t possible for you to hang up your clothes this advice is bloody stupid anyway.

I expect next Friday to see:

if you get your chauffeur to park near to the exit of the car park then you’ll save fuel

Labels: advice, calendar, environment, Stupidity

No, this is not a continuation of my story of standing half naked by the side of the road in Snowdonia but a gripe about photographers.

I have no objections to photographers as a rule. As most people know, I will photograph anything if it stands still long enough or looks good in an artistic way.

What I don’t like is people who buy cameras but don’t have the wits to know how to use them properly. You know – the ones who can’t manage to turn the beeps off or don’t know how to turn the flash off or, worse than that, don’t realise that using the flash in broad daylight when the subject is 20m away is a waste of time.

There is this thing call the Inverse Square Law which governs how well flashes work. Basically, it says that if you stand x metres away from an object then the light then the light that reaches you is 1/x^2 as bright. So, if you are 2m away from something then there will be a quarter as much light reaching the thing from your flash as it would if you were 1m away. If you are 3m away then there will be a ninth as much light, 4m and its a sixteenth.

For the 20m example I mentioned earlier there would be a 400th as much light reaching the subject.

You get the idea, I’m sure, but even if you don’t know the details, it is pretty much common sense that your flash would be less effective the further away you get.

At least, I would hope it is common sense and that people do this purely because they don’t know how to turn their flashes off. Or perhaps they are just stupid.

Labels: Flash, Inverse Square Law, Photographer, Photography, Stupidity

This happened last year but I was still surprised, not to mention completely dismayed, to see that we had a large group of teenaged Japanese tourists on the train this morning AND on the train home.

I was unfortunate enough to be in the same carriage on the way home.

Who in their right mind thought it would be an enormously good idea to stuff an extra 20 people in an already packed commuter train in the heat of summer?

Not only were there 20 extra people on the train but they were very very loud. I was trying to listen to an audio book but they made it impossible.

Surely they could have gone into London and back out again at other times?

Labels: Commuting, Stupidity, Tourists