Bureaucracy.
I'm typing this blog entry on the train.
Opposite of me is a gentleman of approximately 35 years old, who's got a paper lying on the table between us. That paper would seem to be approximately 20 pages thick, and is entitled...
Technical Specification
Sandbag
With a header above that which tells me that it's from some government body to do with the "Civiele Bescherming", an agency which is mainly used when something happens in the country that could threaten the citizenship at large (natural disasters such as storms or flooding, large-scale electrical failure, water poisoning, etc).
It's obvious why the civiele bescherming needs to have sandbags. It's quite funny to see how they need to write twenty-something pages on what a sandbag should look like. After all, it's just a bag filled with sand...
Ah well, but what about: -the type of cloth? has to be soft enough not to chafe hands, yet rugged to hold the sand without breaking. -the sand, quality and quantity? after all it's got to hold in place, but also has to be carried by hand. -cost: it should cost very little...
And yes, it's tongue in cheek. But there's a great short story by Primo Levi, an italian writer, about specs. It talks about a factory where specs cover everything in great detail, so you find specs for brooms, machinery and even men (the male should comply with endurance tests x y and z, etc...).
If you aren't a civil engineer then it may be that you're unaware of the intricacies of sandbag construction. They might not be important intricacies in the majority of cases, but intricacies nonetheless. I can think of a few man pages which are fourteen times as long as the lay man would expect.