Happiness

Whilst this may only be a renaming or reclassification of what many have thought before, it seems that there are two types of activity: those that make you happy for doing; and those that make you happy whilst doing. The rarity are those that are both. For me, eating chocolate makes me happy whilst doing, whilst cleaning my room makes me happy for doing.

After life

If there is an afterlife, what form will we (hopefully including me although my relationship with God has been a little rocky) be present in?

If we maintain our physical form, is that the form we have at death, do we age or change further? Or is it our physical form at peak physical condition? Will it be warts and all?

If it is only the mental/spiritual, will we not be very different to our mental/spiritual side in real life that is so much influenced by the physical?

Perhaps we should strive in life to isolate that which is the spiritual/mental side from the physical side and its influences.

Commuter trains

London has a larger number of terminus commuter train stations (e.g. London Bridge, Victoria, Waterloo). This is largely the result of different train companies at the time of the first railways, but I'm sure its limitations are not confined to London.

Whilst all rail stations are connected by the tube, a cross London journey requires changing on the tube and perhaps changing the tube line once or twice, probably not the optimum solution. So what would we design if we were tasked with designing a city transport infrastructure today?

I think I would have all trains coming into one fairly inner ring and going round most if not all of the ring. Or other services that come into the city, round half of the ring and out of the other side. Obviously the ring would need to be several tracks wide to accomodate all the trains, but there would be no need for a dedicated ring service, as so many trains would be traveling the ring.

I have produced a rather basic diagram below to illustrate the point (on the left is a terminus system, on the right is a ring system):

The mobile internet revolution

Whilst Vodafone may be advertising that the web it now mobile and we can all save time, the mobile internet revolution will not happen until we have low-cost flat-rate broadband-speed internet on a phone with a screen big/good enough to use it.

Savings accounts, current accounts and moving money

It frustrates me moving money between bank accounts to get better interest. I understand the reason i.e. you're being paid for the illiquidity of your cash in the savings account, but I'd prefer not to have the hassle.

I suggest having all your money in one account, but being able to "lock" a certain portion of it for a certain length of time (i.e. unable to use without a fee). The interest rate you get is proportional to the amount you have "locked". This way banks get their cash to play with, and I get my interest.

Obviously, this would only really work well with online accounts where it's easy to log in an "lock" your money. The bank site could have a bar chart showing each portion that is locked, what date it is locked to, and the interest rate it is getting.

Pub names

I do appreciate a good pub name, both the traditional, modern and funny. I'd like to see a pub named competent, so that all those people shouting down their phones when they're meeting their mates would be saying "I'm in Competent".

Team loyalty (the new nationalism)

Whilst I am of the opinion that nationalism is bad, its replacement, football-teamism is hardly better. How can this be eliminated without eliminating competitive sport?

Perhaps the obvious answer is to deprofessionalise it and relocalise it. Have teams made up of people who live and work near the stadium and fans that know the players.

Whilst this is unlikely to happen another possibility is to have hybrid teams in particular competitions where the hybrid is the best possible team of several teams that are drawn out of the hat. For example, imagine there are teams named A through I. In the normal season all of these teams playing in a league. In the hybrid season, team ABC may play DEF etc. And the next random season, BGI may play CDF etc. As people will always be cheering on people from other teams, the opportunity to create grudges and bigotry is reduced.