Under Pressure

We have been able to do great things as a human race. In the past hundred years, look at our advancements. From the invention of the car to the air plane to spaceships that have put men on the moon. We have hours of information, entertainment and everything else at our fingertips on our TV's and computers. Computers have revolutionized how we live life. From our purchasing at stores with UPC codes to judging how much pressure to put on the shocks of your car due to the bumps that it runs over. Why, however, is water pressure such a difficult task to accomplish?
Once upon a water fountain, whether in an office building or a public park, the question looms, what will be this water frequency? Usually only one of two options occur. Either the water barely trickles out and you ask yourself is your thirst worth getting that close to the fountain? Or it shoots out as if it were designed to water a baseball outfield.
Surely, after long-term continual experience with a water fountain, the water pressure can be predicted and life becomes comfortable. However, the new fountain always creates that eternal question of "how much?" Compounded upon this is the fountain that is not visited frequently. The one in the park by your home changes with the seasons. What once was a stream that could be felt two towns over could have become a trickle this summer.
Plus, you pray that you aren't the first to come across this necessary source of liquid nourishment in several months. For at this point, the warm feeling on the back of your throat lets you know that you have just gotten more rust than water.
Is water pressure that much of a mystery still? Do the unknown forces of gravity, Z Particles and Quarks effect the flow of water? Even though we have entire "Water Departments" they still fail at maintaining just enough water to reach the end of the bowl and glide gracefully in it's spiral toward the drain. Otherwise we gather the much needed quenching of our thirst whilst also any other disease that can be picked up with a weak stream. Or we drench the poor unsuspecting toddler next to us. Either way, the technology necessary to control this common element of everyday life has given yield to government funded research of the mating habits of the tsetse fly. Damn tsetse fly! I'm thirsty!