Cardboard Spaceship

Renault, Crash, Bang, Wallop!

I stopped following Formula One for precisely the reason that the Daily Mash gave in this story about the return of Michael Schumacher.

"He insisted: "No more overtaking, no more surprises, no victorious underdogs. Just a procession of tax-avoiding millionaires following each other around the track in the precise order they set off."

But what with Old Man Mosley getting a thrashing for seven hours off a bunch of hookers dressed as Nazis, and Bernie Ecclestone's antics, F1 was beginning to get interesting again.

Then we get this revelation - Nelson Piquet Jr. deliberately took a fall in last season's Singapore race, at no small personal risk.  I had dismissed it as being a far fetched story.  Not a bit of it.  Flavio Briatore and Pat Symonds have walked from Renault, who have refused to contest the charges in an FIAA meeting on Monday.

That's bonkers.  Two very senior guys in a leading team deliberately cheated.  They also took some pretty bloody cavalier risks with the lives of the drivers, marshalls and others. 

Global Warming Impact on Skiing

Interesting, if sad, story about the demise of Alpine skiing.  As the article suggests, the paucity of snow, and the fact that it is only available in the higher level resorts will have two effects. 

Firstly, the kind of mom and pop resorts at medium height will simply disappear, leaving people to go to the high level resorts like Verbier and Zermatt, and secondly more people will travel to the places with more guaranteed snow, like the Rockies in the States.  (As long as air travel remains cheap, that is.)

Another option is that the resorts start blocking access to non-residents, by doing things like limiting day pass numbers, and so on, effectively making them like big country clubs.   Also given the over-development of most of the big resorts that is currently going on, then this might have to happen anyway, just to keep the numbers of people on the slopes acceptable. 

Icelandic Offroad

After all that doom, and gloom, I thought I would post something uplifting.  In this case it is person uplifting themselves on a verticla cinder cliff using a formula off road buggy.  Way to go.

Has to all be good fun, and if you to see someone enjoy it for the first time, here is a Norwegian chap having some fun as a passenger.