Understanding Nothing

I picked up a few magazines in the airport lounge yesterday to read on the plane, including Esquire, a magazine I used to read fairly regularly, but haven’t really read at all in a few years.

It seemed to have quite a few interesting articles, including an interview with Martin McGuinness, and an investigation into why the British still have such a fixation on World War II.

But neither of these articles, nor in fact anything in the magazine, turned out to have any depth whatsoever. I guess I’ve just become to used to magazines like the New Yorker where most of the articles turn out to be interesting, even if they’re on topics I wouldn’t normally have any interest in whatsoever.

Apparently it took the US Immigration Service a very long time to accept that, because most of the rest of the world write their dates as dd-mm-yyyy instead of mm-dd-yyyy, their immigration forms should reflect this.

Yesterday, when arriving in Washington, I noticed that hanging in the immigration hall were samples of the forms you have to fill in. But they were all filled as John Traveler, Jane Traveler etc., even though most other English speaking countries spell “traveller” with two ells…