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East vs. West
I watched "Scrapheap Challenge" last night. Start of a new season, and the first task was to build a flinging device for an ostrich egg which would send it the furthest distance without breaking. Much to my disappointment, noone built a trebuchet. One crew built a mediæval slingshot, the other built a Heath Robinson device involving a 45-degree chute, a cable, a flywheel, and a motorbike. In the end, the slingshot won out, but only because the kludgey guys flubbed their last shot, which went a startling 1.5 meters. Throughout, the presenters gave fun - and occasionally scathing - commentary on the goings on, and it was an altogether entertaining programme.
This evening, I caught an episode of "Junkyard Wars", which is what SC becomes when it crosses the pond to the left of Ireland. Strangely enough, it was another challenge involving ostrich eggs; these guys had to build a rocket to get the egg up as far as possible and land it intact. The show was, on the whole, far more irritating for me to watch. Very little entertainment from the presenters, and lots of self-congratulation all around before anything had actually been done to test the devices. It's basically that cliché of "there are no winners and losers, it's important just to be there" which is frankly nonsense in a show like this. Really. If you don't win, you SUCK MIGHTILY and you should be told that in no uncertain terms by the presenters.
It's how we do things here in the Polite Continent.
You guys really need that show where you get to build a flash car of some description given three days, a workshop, and some quantity of money, at the end of which the losers have their three days of work summarily trashed before their eyes. And I mean LITERALLY, not FIGURATIVELY. Now that's soul-destroying stuff.
Whew. That's quite enough of that. I'm just killing time while this up2date finishes.
This evening, I caught an episode of "Junkyard Wars", which is what SC becomes when it crosses the pond to the left of Ireland. Strangely enough, it was another challenge involving ostrich eggs; these guys had to build a rocket to get the egg up as far as possible and land it intact. The show was, on the whole, far more irritating for me to watch. Very little entertainment from the presenters, and lots of self-congratulation all around before anything had actually been done to test the devices. It's basically that cliché of "there are no winners and losers, it's important just to be there" which is frankly nonsense in a show like this. Really. If you don't win, you SUCK MIGHTILY and you should be told that in no uncertain terms by the presenters.
It's how we do things here in the Polite Continent.
You guys really need that show where you get to build a flash car of some description given three days, a workshop, and some quantity of money, at the end of which the losers have their three days of work summarily trashed before their eyes. And I mean LITERALLY, not FIGURATIVELY. Now that's soul-destroying stuff.
Whew. That's quite enough of that. I'm just killing time while this up2date finishes.