Skip to main content

Why do they do it?

Appearing on the Litopia After Dark internet radio panel show last night, I quite surprised myself how worked up I got about the futile nature of the glory given to people doing stupid things. There is something very sad about the obsession with doing things because they stretch human beings to the limit. This is what leads to attempts to trek across the North or South Pole on foot, or to climb Everest without oxygen. To any sensible onlooker, it’s stupidity. There is no scientific benefit. There is no discovery. It’s little more than risky posturing.

The ultimate example of this madness is that awards have already been funded for the first person to climb Mount Olympus on Mars, to cross the Martian poles 'without airborne support or resupply' and to descend the vast Valles Marineris on Mars 'using no technological support other than that required for life support and basic mountaineering.' Leaving aside the total strangeness of these challenges (for example, what airborne support do they have in mind?  There is no air on Mars), this is Boy's Own stuff that now seems hugely dated - it is celebrating vast effort for no benefit whatsoever. You might as well have an award for the first person to hop all the way round the Moon, or the first person to eat a whole asteroid (it's possible in very small pieces) - these are challenges that should inspire a huge 'so what?'

Those who design great treks across vast wastes would laugh at a challenge of standing on one foot for as long as you can, or hopping around Manhattan with a paper bag over your head – yet each has exactly the same benefit: it tests the limit of human endurance. If that doesn't present enough danger, stand on one foot as long as you can on the edge of the roof of a 20 storey building. We should see these 'great feats' for what they are. A way of showing off that has no more value than standing on one foot.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why I hate opera

If I'm honest, the title of this post is an exaggeration to make a point. I don't really hate opera. There are a couple of operas - notably Monteverdi's Incoranazione di Poppea and Purcell's Dido & Aeneas - that I quite like. But what I do find truly sickening is the reverence with which opera is treated, as if it were some particularly great art form. Nowhere was this more obvious than in ITV's 2010 gut-wrenchingly awful series Pop Star to Opera Star , where the likes of Alan Tichmarsh treated the real opera singers as if they were fragile pieces on Antiques Roadshow, and the music as if it were a gift of the gods. In my opinion - and I know not everyone agrees - opera is: Mediocre music Melodramatic plots Amateurishly hammy acting A forced and unpleasant singing style Ridiculously over-supported by public funds I won't even bother to go into any detail on the plots and the acting - this is just self-evident. But the other aspects need some exp...
118 comments
Read more

Is 5x3 the same as 3x5?

The Internet has gone mildly bonkers over a child in America who was marked down in a test because when asked to work out 5x3 by repeated addition he/she used 5+5+5 instead of 3+3+3+3+3. Those who support the teacher say that 5x3 means 'five lots of 3' where the complainants say that 'times' is commutative (reversible) so the distinction is meaningless as 5x3 and 3x5 are indistinguishable. It's certainly true that not all mathematical operations are commutative. I think we are all comfortable that 5-3 is not the same as 3-5.  However. This not true of multiplication (of numbers). And so if there is to be any distinction, it has to be in the use of English to interpret the 'x' sign. Unfortunately, even here there is no logical way of coming up with a definitive answer. I suspect most primary school teachers would expands 'times' as 'lots of' as mentioned above. So we get 5 x 3 as '5 lots of 3'. Unfortunately that only wor...
25 comments
Read more

Why backgammon is a better game than chess

I freely admit that chess, for those who enjoy it, is a wonderful game, but I honestly believe that as a game , backgammon is better (and this isn't just because I'm a lot better at playing backgammon than chess). Having relatively recently written a book on game theory, I have given quite a lot of thought to the nature of games, and from that I'd say that chess has two significant weaknesses compared with backgammon. One is the lack of randomness. Because backgammon includes the roll of the dice, it introduces a random factor into the play. Of course, a game that is totally random provides very little enjoyment. Tossing a coin isn't at all entertaining. But the clever thing about backgammon is that the randomness is contributory without dominating - there is still plenty of room for skill (apart from very flukey dice throws, I can always be beaten by a really good backgammon player), but the introduction of a random factor makes it more life-like, with more of a sense...
6 comments
Read more