Winning At Any Cost?

This story illustrates that if the rewards are high enough then the unscrupulous will stop at nothing to attain them; in last year’s Singapore Grand Prix the Renault of Nelson Piquet Jr crashed on lap 47 out of 61 forcing the safety car to be deployed.

His team mate Fernando Alonso in what had proved to be an uncompetitive car all season had pitted for fuel and fresh tyres two laps earlier. This left the rest of the front of the field needing to stop for fuel and tyres but not Alonso who went on to win the race.

The crash happened on a part of the track where there were no cranes available to remove the car, it also occurred at a time when Renault were thinking of withdrawing from F1 due to the costs and lack of success.

A month after he was sacked by the team in August of this year Piquet revealed that he had been instructed to crash by the team principal Flavio Briatore and the chief of engineering Pat Symonds.

Last Wednesday it was announced that they had left the team and that Renault would not be fighting the allegations of race fixing. On Monday Renault received a 2 year suspended ban from F1 so if they do no more wrong then they are home free. Not so Briatore who has been banned indefinitely and this will apply to any F1 team or drive associated with him.

The danger that this pair not only put their own driver in but also everyone else on the track at the time was immense but they calculated that the rewards were worth the risk – cannot help but think that some time in a Singapore jail would be a more fitting punishment.

Fall Of Toledo – 1085

This was without question the most significant event of medieval times for the development of science, mathematics, astronomy and medicine in Western Europe. The city in Spain had been ruled by Muslims for over 350 years and scholars had flocked there from all over Islam and a very large library of works covering all these and other subjects had been established.

Fortunately for us the leader of the occupying Christian forces did not go on the rampage burning all of these books – which notably contained translations from Greek into Arabic of parts of the writings of Aristotle.

Islamic scholars had taken the words of the Qu'ran on observation, reason and contemplation to their hearts and starting from the Greek texts made great advances in the sciences from the 7th century onwards. As an example there were discourses written which put forward the ideas of a heliocentric solar system and the elliptical orbits of the planets in the 11th century – 600 years later Galileo was convicted by the Catholic Church of heresy for advancing the same ideas.

To put this in context, at that time my ancestors might have bathed once a year, put disease down to God's wrath and popular learning was actively discouraged outside of religious centres as it could lead to heresy.

All of these views were the exact opposite of the beliefs in the Islamic world.

In the years the Christian occupation of the city scholars from all across Western Europe travelled there and started translating these works from Arabic into Latin. Without this leg up it is very doubtful

The golden age of Islamic scientific expansion started in the 8th century and lasted for 600 years until the rise of certain clerical factions resulted in a terminal decline. Sadly this has been the fate of science at the hands of more than one religion – if empirical evidence contradicts religious scriptures then those responsible for that evidence must be heretics or infidels.

In these times it is good to be reminded of the debt we owe to those early enlightened Islamic scholars, makes a pleasant change from reading about extremist Jihadis.

Rodrigo Y Gabriela – 11:11

This week saw the return of my favourite Mexicans with a new cd 11:11 – which is comprised of eleven new compositions inspired by eleven of their favourite artistes. It was released on Monday and has been in pretty constant play since then after I got a copy on that day – and as a bonus it includes a DVD with footage of them rehearsing the songs and an interview.

I cannot recommend this highly enough, here is the opening track inspired by Carlos Santana.



They are touring all over the globe, check out their web site and follow the link to their MySpace page where the tour dates are listed - catch them if you can, you will not be disappointed.

News

The good people of Samoa are switching to drive on the correct side of the road today (IE the left) in a move designed to allow for the import of cars from New Zealand and Japan making it cheaper to get around.

Scientists had revealed that the Andromeda galaxy has consumed smaller galaxies as it continues to expand and that one day it will collide with our galaxy.

Meanwhile in Papua New Guinea a multi national scientific expedition has discovered a new species of “giant” rat – weighing in at 1.5 Kg they are about the size of a cat. They found another 39 new species including a fanged frog – just when you thought that things could not possibly get more weird this year.

The UK’s smallest cinema (capacity of two) has been opened in Shetland to critical acclaim – it used to be a bus shelter.

Florence And The Machine

Been a wee bit distracted over the last three weeks working on a job application, unusually for the 21st century this had to be completed in black ink and block capitals. Finally got it done on Tuesday and it arrived at it’s destination on Wednesday 2 days before the closing date – it will be a good gig to get and is more of a technical role than my current job has been.

Comes at a good time as after 2 stays of execution the current gig comes to and end this Wednesday when I have to use up my remaining one week of annual leave.

In the meantime, here is a great live performance from young Florence with a track from her debut album Lungs – which has been on steady play on the sound system at DBA cottages since it’s release in early July.



As a bonus here is another one Dog Days Are Over – and all best wishes to her for Tuesday night when her album is one of the 12 contenders for the Mercury Music Prize.

Beer 122 – Wylam’s Rocket

Returned from Newcastle last night after delivering 3 and a half days training to the team there who are taking over the work I have been doing this year. When I arrived on Sunday night this bottle of beer was in my room with a “with compliments” tag around it.

Had not come across the brewery before and some googling revealed that they only started up in 2000 in Northumberland.

It was a fine tasting drop, hoppy with a grand bitter taste – slipped down really well on Monday night as a restorative after a days worth of talking – and at 5% abv no slouch in the alcohol stakes.

Quad Amplifiers

Should have written this yesterday but have been too “busy” listening to them to write about them.

I bought this pair in 1983 using some of my tax free earnings from my year in the deserts of Kuwait in '82; a friend had owned the previous models for over eight years and I had always liked their neutral sound.

These went very well with my Celestion Ditton 442 speakers and were a good match with my Linn turntable, the other design feature that I really approved of was their design which lends itself to very easy servicing. The input channels on the pre-amp are like PC expansion cards and the power amp was designed with maintenance in mind.

They went u/s while I was living in Scotland a couple of years ago and I had kept putting off getting them repaired but while I am on a couple of weeks leave I decided to get them fixed. Rang up the service centre in Huntingdon (where they were made) and was told that for a £20 fee on top they could do a same day service and that they opened at 07:30.

I arrived and booked them in at 08:20 and they said that they would give me a call when they were ready to collect, drove into town and mooched around finding a good looking old church (St Marys if the street name reflected the church) and a pub that served a really good pint of Youngs bitter at lunchtime.



Got a call at 13:20 that they were good to go and I was back home by 15:30 and they were powered up 10 mins later sounding really sweet.

I paid around £520 for them in '83 which is around £2,000 to £2,500 in todays terms – chicken feed compared with what the nephews have spent on amplification in the last 10 to 15 years. They have always blamed my system for “inspiring” them to go out and spend shed loads of cash to get the best sound that they could find – I have always maintained that I was not striving for perfection, just a sound quality that I liked and suited the variety of sounds that get played.

MP3 Player

Last week I took delivery of a 8Gb Zen Creative which my friend D had kindly preloaded with 92 albums for me from his collection and having put on 16 myself I still have 2Gb left and if I really wanted loads more I could add an 8GB SD memory card.

This was purchased to supply some sounds in my “farmers” car via a Sony cassette adaptor that D no longer needs. Today it came into its own as I had a 200 mile round trip to perform to get my 25+ years old pre-amp and power amp serviced.

Selected one of the playlists I had created and thoroughly enjoyed the sounds of Jimi Hendrix (Electric Ladyland), Neil Young & Crazy Horse (Live Rust), Radiohead (OK Computer) and Lou Reed (New York).

Trip was successful and the amps sound even better than I remembered, but more on that tomorrow.

Jeff Beck at the Royal Albert Hall

Had a phone call from the finest guitar player that I know personally on Thursday night asking if I would be interested in going to see Jeff Beck on Saturday night as he had a spare ticket. Are bears Catholic etc?

Transport in from West London was a nightmare as the tube line was shut for engineering works but we caught a cab and made it there with plenty of time to spare. It was his first time at the venue and he was impressed by the building and view from the bar, I had been there once before in '83 and had seen Jeff on that night as well along with a very interesting line up which will make another post.

It was very hot and humid inside but once the music started we forgot all about that, damn fine gig from a group of very fine musicians and the bass player deserves a special mention Tal Wilkenfeld who is only 23 but you would never guess that from her playing.

The show passed by very quickly and all too soon came to an end and when they came back for the encore they were joined by Dave Gilmour; some cove in the audience sitting much closer caught it on video.



We came out into the cool of the evening and after a restoring pint of Fullers London Pride set off on the long trek home, caught a bus to Hammersmith and found that the tube was still out. Missed a replacement bus service by 20 seconds and so ended up on the last bus to Ealing with a bunch of other people.

A big hello to the 3 “happy” and loquacious drunks who were sitting behind the 2 happy Scotsmen – you provided an amusing backdrop to the seemingly interminable bus journey around West London tube stations. Reached his place around 01:00 and then sat up for another 2 hours chatting and viewing part of his guitar collection.

BMW 325i

Last Sunday morning D arrived at my place not long after nine and we set off to drive round the M25 for the second time in 2 days and had a pretty uneventful trip to Orpington – no aircraft to see apart from the usual commercial stuff. With wallet in hand this time he completed the deal and prepared to head off in his second hand Mazda 6 (complete with climate control and an mp3 jack on the sound system).

Meanwhile I was preparing for a trip down memory lane as I had not driven a 325 for 15 years; I bought one of the first ones imported into the UK back in '85 kitted out to my specification with metallic dark green paint and the optional ABS system. This was one fine car to drive with it's gorgeous 6 cylinder 2.5 litre engine delivering the power to the rear wheels as the gods of motoring intended all good handling cars to do.

Over the next nine years we clocked up 145,000 miles and I had a lot of fun driving it, especially on the roads in the Highlands but not in the winter – it was a pig to drive in snow unless the boot was packed with heavy stuff.

One Sunday morning in July '94 I got up came down the stairs and opened the kitchen curtains at the back of my house and there was an empty space where my car should have been resting. Never saw it again and in December of that year I acquired a two year old “farmer's car” that has been my ride since then.

First thing that struck me leaving the garage was how weird the accelerator felt as it is a full size one hinged on the floor, after stalling it on the first attempt to leave I slowly readjusted. The trip back went well initially until we hit a jam one junction before we were due to leave the M25 and were stuck for 20 minutes; at least I had D's mp3 player hooked up to his sound system via a device inserted into the cassette player.

It was only when I hit the last 5 miles of B roads that I was able to open her up and have a play – creating a large gap to the car in front before flooring it in 3rd and listening to the engine sing as the revs passed the 4000 mark.

Still a pretty looking car even after 20 years but underneath the skin there is over £1,000 worth of welding to be done to get it through it's MOT next month so sadly she has to go – brought a huge grin to may face though.