Staying at a hotel recently, I went to its swimming pool. Not an unusual thing for a hotel guest to do, but an unusual thing for me to do, as I may be about to prove. The large swimming pool was not very deep. It was 3 and a half feet deep, from lip to bottom. And the top foot or so was dry air, so it was actually just 2 and a half feet from water surface to bottom. What surprised me was not that it was that depth but that this pool, apparently of recent construction, was of a uniform depth throughout. There was no "shallow end" nor any "deep end." When did those features of a hotel pool cease to be standard? For all I know, this is an anomaly and most of the world's hotel pools still have deep ends. Or, maybe this has been a characteristic for a long time, and I am merely remembering fondly the deep ends of pools of my childhood, a period vanishing in the rear view mirror. Tort lawyers? Is a pool of constant depth easier to defend in a lawsuit? I ...