Once Works Well was pure technology. Now it seeks merely to divert.
Pansy subjects - Verse! Opera! Domestic trivia! - are now commonplace.
The 300-word limit for posts is retained. The ego is enlarged

Monday 31 August 2009

Technology the spur

Mrs BB’s birthday card to me had two people staring at the heavens and was captioned: “Do you think there’s somewhere up there where they don’t play football?” She knows my antipathies. Mind you I expect to be – and am - attacked for my sports interests, especially F1. The cars are noisy and just go round and round, I’m told. I say if the technology is of no interest forget it.

Raikkonen won the Belgian Grand Prix yesterday because of technology. Despite having a Ferrari that was only intermittently faster than Fisichella’s Force India he picked his moment, pressed the Kers button and went into the lead. Kers converts and stores waste energy produced by applying the brakes and is available for 6 – 7 seconds a lap.

Fisichella didn’t have Kers. Why not? Because of the laws of physics. Kers weighs about 30 kg, a huge addition to the overall weight of a racing car. Not everyone has been able to balance that equation. It’s far easier to watch a Guatamalan kick a ball about and, occasionally, kick a Ghanaian. No technology in that.

PROOF POSITIVE Lucy, faced with some fence painting, suggested I should do a comparison test on Cuprinol and its competitors. This photograph of our shed is one reason why I am the kettle and the pot.

MUM’S LIST Other phrases used by my mum keep on returning. “Giving backword” means reneging on something previously agreed. I use it without explanation; most people find it self-explanatory.

4 comments:

rouchswalwe said...

aah, now I understand your passion for cycling, BB. So Sumo wouldn't do it for you then? Thinking I would keel over of boredom at my first live Sumo tournament (as a spectator), I instead surprised myself when suddenly I began to cheer on the big guys.

Unknown said...

That shed looks much more interesting sans cuprinol than cuprinoled.

Roderick Robinson said...

RW (Zu schwer): And for motorcycling. I've watched Sumo on TV but I found I needed a commentator who was - as it were - translating from the Japanese. The posturing, the diddling (see my mum's vocabulary) and the scattering of salt needed integrating into the final encounter. Interestingly Sumo confirms a feeling I have about soccer. Sumo wrestlers may be said to be genetically engineered to do what they do. This hasn't happened in soccer yet but when it does the perfected player (based on the need to factor in prehensilism) will resemble a chimpanzee. Need I say anything more?

Plutarch: The artistically mottled effect came at a price. To ensure that the shed does not rot and collapse I had to replace the roof felt. A wearisome task but it did at least force me into acquiring an industrial-size stapler, a device which offers genuine tactile pleasures.

Avus said...

F1........I feel one might as well watch Scaletrix cars circulating. to me, about as stimulating.