Dear readers,
I have been occupied with quite a few different things for the last two weeks or so and will be very busy till sunday **sighs** soooo I haven't written anything and haven't even contemplated any thing to write ...as for my faithful companion paul ...uh well I dono what's up there other then I'm sure he has as valid an excuse as I do for not posting here in a while.
any ideas to get a working time table together will be greatly appreciated on my side!

On this note I would also like to welcome the great, the one and only, the ingenious ickle one as a new team member. Be warned people you might not be bright enough to fallow his ingenious conclusions and witty stories. poke up your ears and try to sharpen your brain for it would be a shame if you were to miss a word.
tata
yours
Adriana

The Thursday Thought -

Stating ones mind can be rather difficult. All of us have probably gone through the experience of standing in front of the class room, looking at ones class mates and not knowing if one was going to be able to hold the speech on drugs without messing up. In that instant all you want to do is sit down again you do the only thing you think will help. Talk. You talk quickly, very quickly, in the hope that it will all soon be over but the shaking of your hands and the feeling as though your stomach is shaking as well persists, even after you sit down. Why do things like this occur? Why can’t you just stand up in front of the world and state your opinion?

Stress. Yep stress is the word. Today’s meaning of this word is rather different from the actual function/meaning. When we hear the word stress these days we think of work, of any type of problems we have and the like. The ‘real’ use for stress however was to be able to run from or fight with enemies (such as a fox, wolf or the like that might approach or attack us in the wilderness) one still does refer to this type of stress these days though. ‘Fight or flight’ I believe, would be how it would more commonly be mentioned.

The same ‘fight or flight’ reaction that is taking control over your body when you are nervous about standing up in front of your class. And quite truthfully I don’t know anyone who isn’t one bit nervous, when stating his or her opinion to a larger group of people. Not one person (this including some outstanding actors that I have the honour of knowing). I will however stop talking right now if someone comes forward and says that they have never and are never one bit nervous in front of a group.

O no wait. I can’t ask my dear readers to do that though can I? It does seam as though an awful lot of people have popped into this site but it’s soooo hard to state an opinion, isn’t it? ..no? well then why is it that only some rather dear and close friends seam to have been able to manage the hard, hard job of posting a comment? Because you don’t have an opinion? You don’t have an opinion on bike riding, on intelligence, on communications, on reality OR the universe? O my! And last I knew those were all things that everyone deals with and therefore should have some sort of experience or opinion on. I guess I was wrong. …or was I? Is there something else holding you, my dear reader back from stating your mind?

NASA has made the experience that people are more open to computers than to people, that we are more likely to tell our woes, worries and opinions to a computer, then to a person. Possibly because we know that a person (weather they want to or not) will think differently about you and my even accuse you of the one thing or the other where as a computer wont do that plus we have the feeling of being anonymous but …why would our wonderful readers hold back their opinion/comment/idea/thought then?!!!!!! It shouldn’t be the thought that I, or others will judge you (for, for you I am but merely a virtual chatterbox that just rambles about everything) and so you shouldn’t be getting a type of ‘fight or flight’ reaction that you might be getting if confronted with myself face to face. I persist though (heaven knows even a virtual chatterbox must stop at some point) for I do not know the answer and would like to leave you enough time to get your thoughts together and post it. Why do you think people merely view this site but dont post their comments?

I'm sorry but I can't quite stop there. Till now it sounds as though I am not really asking you to be so kind as too tell us your opinion but more am accusing you of not doing so before. But you see I am rather upset about not hearing your opinion my dear reader for...imagine a world were noone were to say their opinion and ideas. There would be no progress what so ever. Not the small progress of an unimportant person as myself changing and contemplating a different idea and no progress that would affect the world either. Life as we know it wouldn't exist, would it?

The Thursday Thought - The Button Saga

I’ve finally learnt the joy of preparation. Preparation is great, it saves you hard slogs on the night or the night before, spreading the workload and allowing more room to manoeuvre if it all goes horribly wrong. And tonight, has been an excellent example of that, as I have very little substance to put up on this site, and a complete change to my original title of ‘Space and Time’.

For you see, I have been snowed under with work on my Fantasy F1 Competition, what with the result of the last race finally being all sorted out and announced nearly two weeks after the cars crossed the start/finish line for the last time.

Firstly, there was an incident in the pit lane involving Ralf Schumacher and Nick Heidfeld. Ralf was let out of his pit box in a very dangerous position, forcing Nick to brake hard and endanger the pit crews. This is not liked by the stewards of the race, and so a 25 second penalty was given to Ralf. This was contended after being given on the night of the race, but nothing came of it in the end, and Toyota accepted their punishment.

But, BAR’s Jenson Button was in far more trouble.

Tipped off by two former BAR employees, the stewards drained Button’s car of fuel after it initially passed the weighing test. Without fuel however, the car was more than 6kg under the minimum 600kg weight allowed and so he was under threat of disqualification for cheating. After a hearing at the track on the evening of the race, the car was deemed legal by the stewards and nothing was thought of it.

However, the FIA overruled this decision, and appealed the stewards’ decision. The hearing was set for the 4th May at a court in France and once again, BAR were defending their cars once again, after many a legal wrangling with the FIA in the past. This though, was far more serious. In their opening statement, the FIA asked the court, should they find BAR guilty of cheating, to exclude them from this year’s World Championship and fine them upwards of one million euros.

On this, BAR tried to defend themselves.

However, a secondary ‘storage’ fuel tank is never an easy thing to explain, especially when excluded by the regulations. (It is an ingenious way to get round the regulations though, as when this tank is empty, the car can run up to 10kg underweight, giving it a good advantage over it’s competitors. Then, in the final pit stop, you simply fill it up, so at the end of the race when the cars are weighed, you’re overweight again, and deemed fully legal.) BAR’s argument that they got no advantage from having this second tank (they said it was full for the entire race, so they were always racing a heavy enough car) was washed away by the fact they were using fuel as ballast, couldn’t supply the data needed to show the car was overweight for the entire race distance, and they tried to hide the fact they were doing this from the FIA. The judges could only rule against them, and so they were disqualified from the San Marino GP, and excluded from the two subsequent races, Barcelona and Monaco, seriously harming their championship challenge. This punishment, is deemed “lenient” by FIA President Max Mosley, especially after such a strong opening statement.

How does this explain my article. Well, this didn’t take too long to write, not much thought either. And, on the back of the hearing, I’ve had to re-calculate my Fantasy F1 Competition tallies, which took me some time, I’ll tell you.

Anyway, I’ll leave it there. Until next time. Paul