#in conclusion. renault hot | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

callumilott-archive · 3 years

Text

the curious case of the renault sport academy: an essay

alternatively titled: the essay i wasn’t going to write about the mess of the rsa but here it is anyway, supported by facts (also titled: the curious case of anthoine & guanyu)

some standard background: rsa started in 2016, they organise training camps occasionally (tho not so much what with covid) that consist of a lot of cycling. so much cycling they all cry about it. they currently have 6 drivers signed to their academy of which one is a notable outlier - guanyu zhou. the other boys signed have all won titles at one point. guanyu has not. in fact, his best championship result was a second place in 2015, he has not placed higher than 6th since. now, renault is known for snatching up title winners, the winner of formula renault would get signed to the academy (like max fewtrell, oscar piastri) and they’ve picked up some other promising guys as well, signing them to the academy straight away.

if we count back to 2019, another curious addition adds itself to the academy. actually should say 2018 because that’s where it gets interesting. anthoine’s results in 2017 weren’t mind blowing, he didn’t score a single win but did manage to get a couple fastest laps to find himself in 4th position at the end of the year. renault invent a new role, designed specifically for anthoine as he was the first driver to carry this role: affiliate driver. it’s not quite being signed to the academy, he doesn’t run a renault livery, merely has renault on the rear wing (and ART ran an altered livery for 2 other renault kids in f3 the following year), but he does get to go on training camps. it’s a sort of halfway signing, and while i have not been able to find any proof for this, i suspect they told him to win the gp3 title for an actual signing (stick, meet carrot) or get dropped. as we know, he did win and he did get the full signing, black and yellow suit included.

the only other affiliate i’ve been able to find was leonardo lorandi in early 2019, around the same time anthoine got ‘promoted’ for lack of a better word. lorandi didn’t do so well however (18th place in the championship that year) and i haven’t heard anything about him so i suspect he’s just kind of disappeared. definitely was not added to the academy. begs the question, if you want to have a junior program filled with talented drivers and you have someone with better results than one you already signed. why the hassle? why sign guanyu with no outstanding results since 2015, but invent a whole new role for anthoine with a better result in 2017 and a title to his name (french f4 2013)? i’m gonna take an educated guess and say the answer is money.

this isnt related to my essay BUT since im talking about this anyway and i’m still pissed about this, have a little look at the very backhanded compliments of one cyril abiteboul on september 2, 2019. https://www.planetf1.com/f1-races/belgian-grand-prix/abiteboul-f1-was-right-to-race/ make of this what u will :)

moving on, there’s also the matter of renault dropping drivers like hot potatoes at a fairly similar rate to red bull, if i’m honest. guys in the academy in 2018 were long gone by the time 2019 rolled around. ye yifei was a newly signed member of the rsa in 2019, a new signing for placing third in formula renault the previous year. he had a dreadful season in f3 and was consequently dropped. he then finished second in f3 asia (late 2019/early 2020) and went on to win euroformula open in 2020. not a bad driver, right. victor martins, too. his name might sound familiar if you’ve watched formula renault in 2020, because he became champion. the year before that, runner up in formula renault (to oscar piastri). renault dropped him anyway, presumably because he did not win the title. very interested to see if they’re gonna have to sign him again because he won. anyway, i digress.

rumour’s been going around that max fewtrell and hadrien david will both be dropped from the academy for not acquiring results expected of them. in this i would just like to point out that hadrien is literally 16 and this was his second season of single seaters, and he was a total rookie in formula renault. most recent formula renault champions (max fewtrell, oscar piastri, victor martins) required 2 years to get up to speed in that category. hadrien placed tenth in a field of 22, so not entirely dreadful. max fewtrell’s season was just a disaster all around and given that he has 2 titles to his name (2016 and 2018), i wouldn’t go ahead and call him a bad driver. now i have no clue what happened or why he and hitech decided to part ways before spa but it’s pretty obvious he wasn’t feeling good in that team.

THEN there’s also the matter of the rsa director saying everyone did a fuckin terrible job except oscar. https://formulaspy.com/f1/renault-we-expected-more-from-our-junior-drivers-73087 ‘not mad just disappointed’ vibes.

in short, the rsa just feels like a giant mess and like they’re desperately trying to gather whichever driver is hot topic at the moment and then dropping them without hesitation when they don’t perform up to standard. do they even get support aside from the cycling bootcamps? and WHAT are they even gathering them for, considering there’s the ongoing issue of no renault seats ever going to a member of their academy. my professional conclusion is this: FUCK renault. thank u for ur attention

#.txt #this is so long i did actual research for this #the whole affiliate thing just fuckin baffles me #like. what was the point #'in my professional opinion' being i literally do not know shit i just know that when i have questions about shady shit going #its almost always 100% about money #long post #renault sport academy #this is really just for myself i spent an hour on this n i had fun browsing wikipedia #love doing research when its not for a grade #all stats are just public #for the record i love guanyu i just cant understand his signing from a logical point of view #it makes no sense

141 notes · View notes

jeannereames · 3 years

Note

Hi, I'm curious about the incident with the Pages, what exactly happened with that? Was Alexander not exactly a "kid" person and the pages didn't really bond with him? It seems extreme for them to want him dead. I thought of Alexander as a people person who wanted to be liked. He seemed to care about his brother, even with his disability. Maybe that's just Renault's influence since her books portrayed Alexander as compassionate and empathetic. I think you'd provide a better take on it, thanks!

What happened with the Pages or, as Beth likes to refer to them (accurately) the King’s Youths* had nothing to do with Alexander’s feelings towards kids or even teenagers. It had to do with timē, or public honor. I’ve written before about the importance of timē in Macedonian politics, particularly with regard to Pausanias’s murder of Philip.

Before I go further, however, I want to point to an excellent article by senior Macedoniast Elizabeth D. Carney, “The Role of the Basilikoi Paides at the Macedonian Court,” in Macedonian Legacies, Howe and Reames, eds., (2008), 145-64** Beth doesn’t just write about Olympias and Macedonian Women. She frequently deals with Macedonian court politics, and that’s what this article addresses. The incident with the Pages is examined in detail, and she comes to somewhat different conclusions about the complexities of it than she did in her earlier “Regicide in Macedonia,” although the latter should be read by anyone wanting to understand why Pausanias killed Philip (see linked post above).

Much of what follows summarizes Beth’s article, but read the whole thing as she explores a number of intriguing issues surrounding the Pages. (Beth is a good writer, clear, unlike some.)

Back to timē. One of the (many) jobs of the King’s Youths involved attending the king on hunts.

Also, a critical ritual that marked the movement from boyhood to manhood in Macedonian society was a hunt wherein the boy was expected to spear a boar (very dangerous prey) without nets (to hold it). If you read Dancing with the Lion: Becoming, Alexander undergoes that very ritual in chapter 3.

Anyway, most Macedonians would have undergone this rite-of-passage in their mid/late teens, possibly early 20s. Much is made of the fact Kassandros hadn’t, even though he was in his 30s. It was seen as a lack of courage (and thus manliness: andreia).

Furthermore, there was a Persian tradition that nobody in the royal hunting party could strike at an animal until the king had. To anticipate the king was a serious affront. Persians were all about rank and status.

Macedonians didn’t really have rules, per se, but something similar seems to have been assumed (unless the king intended somebody else to be chief hunter). In Macedonian hunts, competition was very much the name of the game, and “helping” the king wasn’t appreciated. Lysimachos found that out the hard way. That Krateros had the gall not just to save Alexander from a lion, but commemorate it in an ex-voto, is notable, although it was actually Krateros’s son who commissioned the statue group (c. 320 BCE) memorializing his father’s bravery … after both his father and Alexander were dead. By choosing that event of many in his father’s career, what do you think is the message sent? Not just his father’s ties to Megalexandros, but that Alexander wouldn’t be Alexander without Krateros. Perhaps it was his son’s way to hit back at Alexander’s own elevation of Hephaistion (his dad’s chief rival) to semi-divine status as a hero.

Another bit of background, Alexander had been trucking around Asia for about six years by the time this occurred. He was getting reinforcements for troops, but it’s not clear he was getting other reinforcements: e.g., new Basilikoi Paides. Hatzopoulos has theorized not, or if he did, it was early in the campaign, when he sent back Koinos and Meleager along with the newlyweds to Macedonia for a “break” in the winter of 334/3, to make new little Macedonians. They returned with reinforcements. So, maybe we can shave off a year. Still, and assuming Hammond is right that boys were King’s Youths only between about 14 and 18, these “boys” were getting a bit long in the tooth, even the youngest being past the 4-year appointment.

A lot of focus is spent on the conspiracy, Kallisthenes as their stoic-ish teacher, and fluffed up speeches (written by Curitus) about freedom and tyranny… It comes off very Romanized. I won’t go into Kallisthenes, but he reminds me a bit of some US Senators (Ben Sasse): a lot of hot air about principles while kissing ass with his votes. In Kallisthenes’s case, kissing ass with his glowing, propagandic history written for the Greeks. Even his own uncle (Aristotle) thought he didn’t know when to keep his mouth shut. (Yeah…don’t think much of the guy; can you tell?)

What people have forgotten about—but Beth discusses—is the lead up to the conspiracy. What prompted it?

A hunt gone wrong prompted it. Hermolaos stepped between the king and his quarry, to spear the boar for himself. One source says he did it because he thought the king in trouble, but the other doesn’t give that as a motivation.

A-ha! Did you just say that in your head? You should have. 😊

The fallout: a furious Alexander had Hermolaos not only flogged, but also took away his horse. (Kinda like Dad taking the keys to your car.)

Now, flogging wasn’t that shocking (horrible as it sounds) in Greek and Macedonian society. “Spare the rod and spoil the child” is a saying they’d condone. Normally it was reserved for slaves and children (and women). The King’s Youths were a little old for it but…it’s the king. Curtius specifically states that the Basilikoi Paides performed jobs that were normally slaves’ duty, but being for the king, it became an honor. Plus most of these teens would age out c. 18 into another unit, probably the Hypaspists (Pezhetairoi under Philip) or the Companion Cavalry.

But—if Hatzopoulos is right—these young men may have been some years past 18, which would make a flogging especially humiliating. Even if they weren’t, and Alexander had been getting new Basilikoi Paides post-Gaugamela as well as new troops, Hermolaos was still a touchy teen punished like a “little boy” or a slave for just trying to spear his boar and be a man!

In punishing Hermolaos for insulting Alexander’s timē, Alexander, in turn, insulted his. Alexander no doubt saw it as a breach of discipline and decorum, as well as a slap at his own courage and prowess in the hunt. But to Hermolaos, it was, as Beth points out, “emasculating.”

Keep in mind: these are young men, even if late teens/early twenties. Everything’s a crisis. They’re also the sons of the top tier Macedonian elite, so very tetchy about their honor. And the Basilikoi Paides would have been an absolute stew of competition and testosterone poisoning.

I can just imagine a background to this of his mates teasing him, “When ya gonna get your boar, Hermolaos?” “You too much of a white-belly to face down a boar, Hermolaos?” Etc. Maybe he really did think, for a moment, Alexander was in danger AND this would be his chance! He could protect his king (his job as a Page) AND win his manhood! Two birds with one spear!

Except it didn’t turn out like that.

Smarting from more than the flogging, he would have complained to his friends in the unit, and griping grew legs and became a conspiracy. As Beth points out, they may even have heard fathers and uncles complaining about Alexander’s “Persianizing,” but they only complained. The boys, spurred by youth and Kallisthenes’s attempts to cover his ass-kissing with a pretense of philosophy, imagined themselves—especially Hermolaos and his lover Sostratos—as the new Harmodaios and Aristogeiton. (And yeah, I bet some clever soul pointed out the similarities between Hermolaos’s name and Harmadaios’s.)

So what is usually seen as an event all about Alexander’s increasing Persianizing and tyranny really gives us a peek into the pressure cooker that was Elite Life at the Macedonian court. Now you understand why I keep comparing these guys to a pack of sharks.

More on the Pages, Companions, Somatophylakes at the court....

------------------

(**) The link above takes you to academia-edu where you can obtain a free download not only of that article, but the entire festschrift in honor of Gene. Tim (Howe) and I have made it free in PDF form and very cheap in paper form at Amazon. It’s basically sold at printing cost and a few pennies. All proceeds from paper copies go to the subvention fund of the Association of Ancient Historians, which provides financial assistance to grad students and junior scholars to attend annual meetings. Tim and I get nothing. (You will also help us shaft the dirty dog who bought Regina from its original owner and shafted us by printing and selling copies but giving us no royalties [like we got much anyway]. Academic karma.)

(*) While Beth’s translation of “King’s Youths” is more accurate, I decided not to use it in Dancing with the Lion because it falls awkwardly on the ear, and most people familiar with the court are already familiar with the Pages. That said, I agree with her that “pages” is misleading, causing most to envision pre-pubescent boys after the medieval fashion, whereas these guys are closer to squires.

#Royal Pages #Basilikoi Paides #Pages' Conspiracy #Hermalaos's Conspiracy #Hermalaos #Sostratos #Alexander the Great #Elizabeth Carney #Classics #ancient macedonia #Ancient Greece #Macedonian court #asks #Macedonian Royal Pages #Kallisthenes #Callisthenes #Krateros #Craterus

11 notes · View notes

adrena-dine · 4 years

Text

Mexican GP 2019: a summary

Rain (but only during the night)

Max and Lando racing during the hot lap

The conclusion of the Renault Brakes Drama®️

Charles and Daniel playing football

Daniel « Fuck » Ricciardo

But he had that beautiful jacket on the parade

Haas doing shit

Mexican crowd being the best public

Max had the pole but claimed all over the world that he didn’t slow down when he was aware of Bottas’ crash so no pole lol

The FIA being clowns again

So do Ferrari

Catastrophic pit stops (an emotional thought for Lando)

Good racing between Daniel and Sergio

Complicated radio communications

The best F1 podium in history

Sebastian trying to catching a confetti, pushing the mariachi annoying guy and doing some dad joke

Some good sewis and maxiel content

Carlos and Lando on a night club

#f1 #charles leclerc #lando norris #daniel ricciardo #lewis hamilton #sebastian vettel #sergio perez #haas

69 notes · View notes

crystalracing · 5 years

Link

Kimi Räikkönen talks and laughs and talks. And laughs again. motorprofis.at experienced the most talkative and analytical Iceman of all times in a double interview with his Alfa Romeo team mate Antonio Giovinazzi. It’s exciting what the two of them have to say to each other and to us.

Source: motorprofis.at Pictures: Alfa Romeo Racing, Gerald Enzinger

In the end Spielberg was worth a trip for everyone: for the Alfa Romeo Racing drivers Kimi Räikkönen and Antonio Giovinazzi because they both scored with a 9th (Kimi) and 10th (Giovinazzi) place – in the case of the Italian for the first time in his career. And for the selected journalists, who were invited to the roundtable with the two, even more so: in this interview session one experienced a brillantly cheerful and talkative Räikkönen. And first impressions of Giovinazzi, who once drove at eye level with Verstappen, Ocon and Auer in Formula 3.

Your team has always been known for its ability to work well with young people – as was the case with you, Kimi. What are your memories of your beginnings in Formula 1?

RÄIKKÖNEN: I wasn’t as young as others, I was 21, but I was still very inexperienced. I came straight from Formula Renault (which was the 4th level at the time, note), but it was of course a completely different world than the one I was familiar with. When I first drove a Formula 1 car it was – I wouldn’t say it was a shock now – but it was definitely anything else I had known up to that point. But the first day went by fast and then with every day it became easier and more normal in all areas.

How has Formula 1 changed in all these years?

RÄIKKÖNEN: In essence, it’s still the same. Over all these years the cars have changed a bit, the driving as such, the rules. But in principle, we as drivers still do the same thing as we did back then. Maybe now we do more PR work and sit more in meetings.

What is your goal for the rest of the season?

RÄIKKÖNEN: Hopefully we can fight regularly for the top 10 places and points. You don’t really have concrete goals, it’s just that you should always improve your car step by step. And if that works, then we can be in a good position – after a long way.

Question to both of you: As boring as Formula 1 usually seems to be, it must be fun to fight in midfield, where things are very tight and you have a lot of battles in every race.

RÄIKKÖNEN: Everyone tells me all the time: the races are so boring. But I think if you’re in the middle of it, it’s not boring. On some days you’re just defending, then there are phases where it’s always about attacking. From the outside it looks more boring than in the car, where things can get very hectic in the midfield. In this area it’s so tight, you might even see better racing than at the front.

GIOVINAZZI: I fully agree. It’s so close. In this area of the race you’re on the offensive and defensive at the same time, and your race goes both forward and backward. You have to have both in mind. But that makes pure racing more fun here. Honestly: it’s hard.

Kimi, your memories of the A1 Ring and the first years of the Red Bull Ring now?

RÄIKKÖNEN: I’ve always enjoyed being here – and it was a shame we lost this track for so many years. I think 2003 was the race back then. I have many positive memories. Fortunately, I’m old enough to have gotten to know some old race tracks – like the old Hockenheimring when it still had its long straights. Many tracks that are fun in their own way – Spa with the bus stop chicane, Hungary.

In Spielberg there are great sections, even if some things have changed in small details. But the first turn or the last two, they are a lot of fun. It’s always a great place to come here. And it’s probably also because of the whole scenery with all the mountains that the atmosphere here is always so relaxed. It’s a shame that we once didn’t have the track on the calendar – but it’s great that they got it back.

I think that you would have loved the old Österreichring with its long Flatschach straight, in whose braking zone, as Gerhard Berger puts it, you always looked death in the eye.

RÄIKKÖNEN: Yes, definitely! Everything I’ve seen about it looks pretty exciting. And of course there would be really good overtaking manoeuvres on such tracks. There are a lot of good corners where you can do something while braking. That’s the kind of track we want.

Antonio, what are your memories of the Red Bull Ring?

GIOVINAZZI: It’s certainly one of my favourite tracks and I have good memories of this place as well. Here I won my first race in Formula 3 and had a very good weekend in Formula 2. There are many high-speed corners. It’s not a long track, it’s more of a kart track. That’s why there are often good races. Here in Formula 1 we have three DRS zones, so a lot of action is possible. That fits well!

Kimi, you as a racer: What do you want from the Formula 1 of the future?

RÄIKKÖNEN: Holidays! (laughs).

In the long run, doesn’t concern me what’s going to happen. If I have no interest, I will definitely not turn on the TV and let myself be disturbed in my free time (laughs again).

But if you ask me, I’m sure I’d change a lot. For instance, remove all these data analyses if possible. If you wouldn’t setup the cars based on so much data, it would depend more on the feeling and certain qualities could make the difference.

What’s more fun: driving a Formula 1 car or a rally car?

RÄIKKÖNEN: Rally is so completely different. You’re not really driving against each other, but against time. If you see another car on the special stages during the rally, then something just went damn wrong for one of you. (grins)

But if you compare: I drove NASCAR once, you were allowed to use telemetry data during testing, but not during the race. That’s why you have to make your own experiences at a certain point. This makes oval races seem very simple, but in reality they are far away from simplicity. It’s a highly complex thing. That’s more pure racing. If you realize: Shit, I’m not fast enough – then you can talk to others. Then one person tells you that, and the other means that. In the end you have to draw your own conclusions. In Formula 1, on the other hand, the data is there and they tell you everything that needs to be changed. If you have to find your own setup and can’t look at the computer during set up, then that would be a completely different feeling.

Antonio, does Kimi help you, can you learn from him?

GIOVINAZZI: It’s like Kimi just said: Even if he wouldn’t tell me or if I don’t ask him, I can see all his data and draw my conclusions. There are no real secrets in the team when it comes to voting.

RÄIKKÖNEN: Now imagine how difficult it would be for you if you didn’t have access to my data. That would make a massive difference.

GIOVINAZZI: Yes, I agree. Without data it would be difficult – especially for me as a very young driver in the first season, who of course benefits from having such an exceptionally experienced teammate. That would be hard, but I’m lucky to be able to look at everything. And so it’s easier to improve session by session.

There are quite revolutionary ideas in the DTM: For example, that you can’t preheat the tyres or that radio communication is now very limited: Would such rules also be good for Formula 1?

RÄIKKÖNEN: Originally there was also a radio ban in Formula 1, for example in the warm-up lap. I’m that guy who doesn’t mind if nobody talks. (grins mischievously)

In other teams it is often the case that someone says that this driver is faster here or slower there. But what difference does it make? For me this information is no help. I think: if you ban radio, it won’t really change the races.

And as for your tyre question: If it’s as hot as in Spielberg, we’ll bring the tyres up to temperature even after a few laps, even without blankets. But if it’s cold, we’d drive like on ice without heating up. We would have zero grip, especially in the morning sessions. We would even fly off on the straight because we would have so little grip.

So if you ban the heating blankets, you would have to change the tyres completely at the same time. If the tyres are designed in such a way that they have to work without heated blankets – then it’s fine. But there are no plans. And it won’t change the game.

You’re a fan favourite, a real hero. What does that mean to you?

RÄIKKÖNEN: Yeah, that’s clearly a nice thing. It’s nice when they cheer for you! So some seem to like what I’m doing. Or maybe I’m just old and that makes them sentimental. (smiles)

Antonio, for you as an Italian, the day Kimi won Ferrari’s last World Championship title in 2007 must have been something very special. What are your memories like?

GIOVINAZZI: Of course I was a Ferrari fan! I saw the race at home on TV. And it was also special as three different pilots could still become World Champion – Alonso, Hamilton and Kimi.

RÄIKKÖNEN: (interrupts) But I strongly hope that you cheered me on.

GIOVINAZZI: Uh, sure. I made the point difference. (laughs)

RÄIKKÖNEN: How old were you back then?

GIOVINAZZI: 14! No – 12. I was driving a mini kart.

You are now factory drivers of Alfa Romeo, a big brand in motorsport. What do you associate with this name?

RÄIKKÖNEN: I’m too young to have experienced Alfa in Formula 1. But I know that they have a great history in this sport. They have won races, world championships. I think it’s great that they’re back in Formula 1.

Who was the last winner with an Alfa engine?

GIOVINAZZI: (answers immediately). Niki Lauda! (Note: Right, Anderstorp 1978, Brabham-Alfa.)

Privately you also drive Alfa: Kimi a Stelvio, Antonio a Giulia. Right?

RÄIKKÖNEN: Yes, in the Quadrifoglio version. It’s good for Switzerland and with the family. It’s fun.

GIOVINAZZI: The Giulia is a well-done car. I always enjoy driving it.

What is the biggest difference between a big team like Ferrari and a smaller one like Alfa, Kimi? My feeling tells me that this is a family size that you really like.

RÄIKKÖNEN: The pure work is not really different. The driving, the workflow, the meetings, it’s all very similar. The big difference is the stuff around it, I have less to do here. That was one reason why I wanted to do it that way.

But the passion, it’s the same, and usually the cars are very good. Only if you have a problem with the car it can take longer to fix it here – in such a case the size of the staff and the budget does make a difference.

What do you feel today when you are in Maranello?

RÄIKKÖNEN: I had good times there, even if the results weren’t always. But Ferrari is a big part of my heart, of my life. Not many can claim to have driven for this team and have won a drivers world championship title and the constructors’ championship twice. That connects and I still have contact with the people there. Of course.

How was it in 2007? The day on which you became world champion – and little Giovinazzi was excited in front of the TV?

RÄIKKÖNEN: Our only chance in the races was to be in the top two and then look: what are the McLaren doing? We had a lot of speed, but the World Championship was no longer in our hands. We had to bring our cars to 1 and 2. It worked. But it wasn’t just this one race. We had a phase of the season where we were struggling, but then we were really good.

Can Vettel still fight for the championship this year?

RÄIKKÖNEN: He can fight. Can he also win? That’s something different. He’s not in an easy position, but things often change fast. They will fight to the end.

GIOVINAZZI: I agree. Giving up is not an option for a team like Ferrari.

#Kimi Raikkonen #raikkonen #Antonio Giovinazzi #giovinazzi #alfa romeo #alfa romeo f1 #F1 #Formula 1

8 notes · View notes

renaultamour · 3 years

Text

Renault Megane RS 300 Trophy - SA’s Most Exclusive Hot Hatch

The Renault Megane RS 300 Trophy is the ultimate Renault Megane. It is what happens when Renault Sport designers are given free rein to build what is, in their opinion, the conclusive hot hatch.

Throughout the generations, Trophy versions of this hot hatch have become renowned for their thoroughbred efficiency in combining performance and accuracy and the newest Megane RS Trophy certainly lives up to this legacy.

What makes it special? Aside from its undeniably good looks, the Trophy offers a multitude of enhanced Renault Sport features. On the exterior, the RS 300 Trophy boasts exclusive side panel Trophy insignia, a distinctive sport front bumper with F1 blade, a specific rear diffuser, an intelligent central exhaust pipe and unique Jerez triple tone 19-inch wheels, that give the Trophy an imposing stance.

Stepping into the cabin, one is greeted with a definite nod to the motorsport world. Signature Recaro seats, finished in Alcantara, with racy red top-stitching provide comfort and added support for spirited driving and have allowed the driving position to be lowered by 20mm.

An Alcantara steering wheel, a Zamac aluminium gear knob and handbrake gaiter add to the driver-centric experience.

The RS Monitor and Race Mode, ensure an augmented driving experience. The RS onboard tracking system keeps the driver informed of engine performance and features Race Telemetry to monitor track timing statistics.

The Renault multimedia system includes an 8.7-inch touchscreen, satellite navigation with maps for South Africa, Bluetooth, USB and auxiliary input as well as Apple CarPlay and Android Auto but the touchscreen system was a tad tricky to operate.

Power to the people Under the bonnet is an uprated, more powerful, version of the 1.8-litre turbo engine - with increased power of 221kW, thanks to upgrades to the ceramic ball bearing turbo and intelligent exhaust with a dual sound valve system.

This engine is mated to either a six-speed manual transmission with an output of 400Nm or a six-speed dual-clutch EDC gearbox boasting 420Nm.

Driving dynamics I tested the manual version and found that it struggles to find traction when launched, no matter which mode the traction control has been set to, but in gear acceleration is brisk and it is here and around a circuit that this hatch shines.

Track driving ability is further bolstered by the four-wheel steering system, 4Control, which ensures added agility through tight turns and impressive cornering ability at higher speeds.

Being based on the Cup chassis, the Trophy is also fitted with stiffer suspension, including a Torsen mechanical limited slip differential, enabling better cornering and traction, for a more thrilling drive.

Bi-material brakes, including 350mm discs upfront clamped by red Brembo callipers not only add to the overall aesthetics but also allow for guaranteed optimum braking performance.

Summary The iconic Megane RS 300 Trophy represents the more focussed version of the Megane RS hot-hatch family, built for extreme performance and amplified driving pleasure.

The Megane RS300 Trophy is the ultimate Renault Sport, with limited units available worldwide and only seven units available to South Africa, making it a very exclusive vehicle to own.

Pricing Megane RS 300 Trophy manual R773 900 Megane RS 300 Trophy EDC R798 900

Article from https://motus.cars/

#Renault Megane #Renault RS models #Renault

0 notes

thefastf1 · 4 years

Photo

Pre-season testing has come to a conclusion, following this afternoon's session at Circuit de Catalunya. In the eyes of most, Mercedes are the team to beat in the upcoming campaign and they backed that up today as Valtteri Bottas went fastest, with a time of 1:16.196, on the C5 tyre. - It was also a strong day for Renault, with Daniel Ricciardo going fastest in the morning session (C5) and ending up in P3 overall - Debate was hot, among the Sky Sports F1 commentary team, as to whether Red Bull look as good as Mercedes, or not. One thing that is for certain, is that the RB16 appears to be a frontrunning car. - The Austrian squad ended the day in 2nd, thanks to Max Verstappen. Verstappen's best effort (C4) was just 0.073 secs slower than Bottas. - Charles Leclerc posted the 4th fastest lap of the day, but Ferrari still appear to be unhappy with their pace. - Indeed, Mattia Binotto was today quoted as saying the main problems facing Ferrari are "engine, downforce and set-up". Hopefully, for the team and its fans, Binotto's words prove to be overly cautious. - Sergio Perez, meanwhile, was just 0.462 secs off the pace of Bottas despite being on the C3 tyre. - With regards to the rest of the field, Racing Point appear to be a cut above their competitors from last season but aside from that, it is very difficult for @fastf1 to judge where anybody is in terms of performance. - Full results from today's action and the tyre compounds used will be available from formula1.com, shortly. - What have you made of 2020 pre-season testing? Who do you believe will be battling at the front of the grid, in Melbourne? 🤔 🏁🏁 | CREDITS: UNKNOWN | #F1 #FormulaOne #F1Pics #F1News #F1Memes #F12019 #ClassicF1 #F1History #CircuitdeCatalunya #MercedesAMGPetronas #MercedesBenzEQ #ValtteriBottas #VB77 #TeamLH #LH44 #MV33 #HondaF1 #CL16 #AlfaRomeoRacing #FernandoAlonso #RenaultF1Team #DR3 #ScuderiaFerrari #FerrariF1 #RedBullRacing #AG99 #KR7 #JensonButton #MichaelSchumacher #KeepFightingMichael https://www.instagram.com/p/B9Hj9b2Brse/?igshid=1c1zzjizdkstw

0 notes

smoothshift · 5 years

Text

I just bought my new (to me) Renault Megane RS250! via /r/cars

I just bought my new (to me) Renault Megane RS250!

Hey r/cars, I just picked up my new weekend warrior, meet Valentine :) I’ve never written a post like this before so here it goes! My last car was an E90 330d, so most of my opinion is based off a contract with that.

TLDR; this is one the most fun and balanced cars I’ve ever had the privilege of driving

POWER: when you keep the car out of sports mode, it’s extremely well behaved. It’s very gentle, smooth, but still has enough grunt to overtake and merge on the highway when needed. I’ve found the real magic happens however, when you kick it into sports mode. If you’re cruising along and you flick the switch, I’ve noticed my throttle position immediately becomes more sensitive and will spin the wheels without failure in at least the first 3 gears. Hearing the turbo immediately spool to life and flutter off with every shift is just extremely satisfying, and almost terrifyingly brutal. Outside of some cheeky motorway pulls, and some quick mountain runs, I’ve found sports mode way too much to use in regular driving. So all in all, the car is perfect for normal traffic, and feels like an absolute weapon when you need it to.

TRANSMISSION: I haven’t owned a manual transmission for about 5 years, and even then I only had one for about 3 months when I was first getting my license. On my way to picking up the car I was feeling extremely nervous as I realised the first manual transmission I was going to be stepping into in 5 years, was a turbo charged hot hatch. However, despite this, the transmission is extremely easy to use and get used to. Each shift just feels so smooth and feels extremely precise, the engine note is extremely responsive and you never feel unsure when the right time to shift actually is. The transmission is so transparent in fact, that it’s taken me all of two days to consistently rev-match my downshifts without a second thought. Shifting gears in sports mode is again just an absolute treat, there’s no resistance from the car and the feedback is almost as if it’s rearing to be pushed to the next gear.

HANDLING: Holy. Shit. I remember I used to think my 330d was great around twisties and navigating quick turns, but this is on another level. While there’s a clear difference in the turning circles, the Megane just feels SO sharp and planted on the road and some ridiculous speeds. A was extremely shocked to see certain corners I could take at 70kph in the BMW, I had no trouble being defeated at 100kph in the Megane. The Brembo front brakes give a WORLD of confidence too, being able to hit the brakes when you realise you’re not comfortable with the turn or you stuffed up, and knowing you’re going to stop on a dime, is just an absolute dream.

PRACTICALITY: I feel a bit odd bringing this point in straight after talking about the performance, but oh well. I was worried about how comfortable the Recaro’s would be on a long distance, but having driven the car 3 hours home after buying, I can confidently say that they’re extremely comfortable. I’ve had two passengers so far and both have said the seats are extremely snug and comfortable, and in fact are decently lounge-y if you put the back down a little bit. The rear seats... exist, and you could comfortably fit my two adolescent brothers in the back, but I’m not sure you’d want to put many more people than that. The Bluetooth works great, I’ve only had an issue once where my phone was having trouble maintaining a connection, but otherwise it’s great being able to answer calls, change songs, playlists volume controls, settings, and more without having to ever let go of the steering wheel. The cruise control is extremely easy once you figure it out, click a switch, press the speed you want, and that’s it. Keyless start, entry, and proximity locking are a very nice touch; the added touch of the beep and mirrors folding in as you walk away is borderline showoffy, but makes me giggle regardless every time. The boot is massive, I’m still confused as to how this is the case when you look at the size of the interior and exterior, but it’s extremely deep, wide, and decently long. I’m planning on heading to a mountain about an hour away next week for the day, and we’ve found I can comfortably fit a full esky, bug out bag, and lawn chair with room left over for more things.

CONCLUSION: if you get the opportunity to own or drive one of these, do it! A dream to drive, a dream to listen to, and genuine practicality, to me it’s perfect :)

#reddit #autonews #auto #cars

0 notes

ntrending · 5 years

Text

The Apollo moon rocks continue to reveal secrets of the cosmos

New Post has been published on https://nexcraft.co/the-apollo-moon-rocks-continue-to-reveal-secrets-of-the-cosmos/

The Apollo moon rocks continue to reveal secrets of the cosmos

A solid souvenir delivered to us by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin from their 1969 trip to the moon. (NASA/)

Toward the end of their two-hour moon trek, Astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin hurried to gather about 48 pounds of lunar rocks and dust in 20 minutes.

Some 240,000 miles below, earthbound researchers waited on a soon-to-be fulfilled fantasy: the opportunity to subject lunar samples to every known chemical, geological, physical, and biological test available.

Over the course of six Apollo missions—the first of which celebrates its 50-year anniversary this week—astronauts retrieved 842 pounds of sand, dust, rocks, and core samples from the moon.

They make for unconventional souvenirs, but the Apollo samples collected from 1969 to 1972 are a gift to science that keeps giving. Over half a century, they had divulged secrets about the history of the moon, Earth, and inner solar system—as well as inspired and demanded technological developments with applications for engineering, astrobiology, and medicine.

When you have the samples in hand, you can run a battery of lab experiments, says geochemist Richard Carlson, of the Carnegie Institution for Science in D.C. “You can analyze every single grain in that sample and learn a vast amount of information.”

In the years leading up to the first Apollo mission, lunar geology was more or less at a standstill, restricted to hypotheses based on faraway observations. “No conclusions can be drawn other than that the interpretation of the existing experimental data leads to many ambiguities,” a 1967 USGA report notes.

The bits of moon brought down to Earth changed all of that, says Denton Ebel, a geologist and curator for the American Museum of Natural History in New York, which houses three moon rocks of its own.

“The moon is a Rosetta Stone,” Ebel says. “These rocks keep giving up new secrets.”

Here’s some of what we’ve learned from 110,000 individually-catalogued geologic Apollo samples.

A moon rock from the Apollo missions. (NASA/)

The moon is not made from cheese, but its rocky surface has melted several times

Galileo launched lunar science in 1609 when he pointed his telescope at the celestial body and witnessed it with greater magnification (20x that of the human eye) than any person had before. What he saw was far from the perfect sphere we believed the moon to be at the time. Instead, Galileo observed a mottled surface pocked and peaked with mountains and valleys.

For centuries after, scientists speculated about what the moon’s craggy surface signaled about its origins. Some theorized that the moon, like Earth, had once been a scene of intense volcanic activity that turned it “into an overcooked cinder, forming the Moon’s craters in the process.” Others proposed that our satellite was a cold object that slowly accumulated mass, and that its visible features were the product of meteorite bombardment. The first samples that came back instead indicated a hot, violent lunar origin.

Analyses showed four basic groups of rock in the Apollo 11 samples— including two types determined to be volcanic in origin, space journalist Anthony Young writes in his 2017 book The Apollo Lunar Samples Collection Analysis and Results.

We now know the moon is (sadly!) not made not of cheese. Instead, it is comprised of rocky material that has been “variously melted, erupted through volcanoes, and crushed by meteorite impacts,” Young writes.

Early in its history, the moon was a melty, vast, and deep magma ocean. Its highlands were formed some 4.4 billion years ago by rocks that floated to the surface of this roiling sea. Over time, meteors bashed the ancient floating crust, shaping mountain ranges and creating basins as spewing lunar volcanoes produced “deposits of orange and emerald-green glass beads,” Young writes.

Today, the moon has a 37-mile-thick crust cradled by a rigid layer that overlies a softer, viscous interior. Researchers are still determining whether a small, molten, iron core lies even deeper inside.

The Earth and the moon might be fraternal twins (sort of)

By comparing lunar and terrestrial rocks, researchers discovered that the moon’s composition is similar to Earth’s mantle, and that the two bodies are made up of different ratios of a common ledger of elements.

“It’s made out of the same stuff as the earth,” says Carlson, who published a paper this week in Science about lunar samples.

Scientists believe the moon formed when a Mars-sized planetary body smashed into Earth, flinging off bits of crust and mantle that coalesced in the our orbit to become the moon.

“So you end up with the moon without a single crater on its surface. It basically started from scratch,” Carlson says.

The bits of moon brought down to Earth from the Apollo 11 mission suggests the Earth and the moon share a close genetic relationship and that their cores formed around the same time. (NASA/)

There are no lifeforms on the moon

Alas, despite centuries of imagination to the contrary, the moon can’t support life.

Extensive tests have failed to reveal any traces of living organisms, fossils, or native organic compounds.

Researchers have also concluded the moon mostly lacks water (its rocks were formed through processes that involved little to no moisture) and any it has comes in the form of ice. And while some studies suggest the possibility of ancient magnetic fields, none exist, to our knowledge, on the moon today.

The moon’s surface hasn’t aged a bit

Ongoing geological activity constantly overwrites the Earth’s history. Weather, ice, and rain erode rocks. Continents drift and smash into each other. Tectonic plates fold, melt, resurface, and repave. Any geological evidence of the planet’s birth is long gone because that crust is long-since recycled. That’s not the case on the moon, whose surface has endured relatively undisturbed.

“The whole history of the Earth is gone. You’ve got the first edition still on the moon,” Carlson says. “The Earth has the last five chapters of a 10-chapter book. The moon has the first five chapters.”

Because the moon lacks an atmosphere and geological activity, there is no wind, weather, or tectonic movement to wear down its features. Everything that makes contact with the moon is mummified—from endless meteorite impacts to the footprints left by the occasional human visitor.

Its youngest rocks are virtually as old as the Earth’s oldest rocks, Young writes. Sampling from the moon’s highlands suggest rocks there are nearly 4.4 billion years old (the Solar System is about 4.567 billion years old), making them excellent record-keepers of the sun’s history, which is embedded in the moon by energetic particles from solar radiation and cosmic rays. And by determining the absolute age of lunar craters, scientists have been able to put a time scale on the evolution of Mercury, Venus, and Mars

Sampling from the moon’s highlands suggest rocks there are nearly 4.6 billion years old (the solar system is about 4.567 billion years old). (NASA/)

There’s still so much more to uncover

At the Johnson Space Center’s Lunar Sample Laboratory Facility in Houston, bits of the moon remain unspoiled.

There, three layers of gloves separate pristine samples from human hands. Moon samples approved for research are sealed under high-purity nitrogen before their lending. To safeguard the facility against hurricanes, its storage vaults tower above storm-surge sea levels. These precautions, among many others, protect moon rocks for about 100 annual visitors and allow investigators around the world to receive about 500 samples each year.

NASA still has around 85 percent of the Apollo program’s lunar sample collection, according to Space.com.

This March, the space agency announced it would unseal pieces of the Moon that have been untouched and unexposed to Earth’s atmosphere for nearly half a century, allowing nine science teams to study samples taken in Apollo missions 15, 16, and 17.

“These samples were deliberately saved so we can take advantage of today’s more advanced and sophisticated technology to answer questions we didn’t know we needed to ask,” said Lori Glaze, acting director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division in Washington, DC., in a press release.

Other modern sample missions—of asteroids, like the Hayabusaor OSIRIS-REx, of solar wind, like Genesis, or of comets, like Stardust—were grounded in what we’ve learned from the Apollo collections, Ebel says.

“We learned how to analyze those samples by studying, in particular, lunar rocks,” he says.

Written By Marion Renault

#Science

0 notes

getseriouser · 6 years

Text

20 THOUGHTS: Renault is French for ‘no spare seats at Ferrari’

NOT often this column starts with a quote from The Australian. No, it’s not going to be about immigration or how we need to save the white African farmers, its ok, but Peter Lalor has had a shocker.

“The laws of the land do not stop at the boundary line of a football oval, but you would be forgiven for thinking that they did… Why shouldn’t players be done for assault?”

Hmm ok, so when Shane Mumford annihilated Mitch Duncan in Canberra two years ago, a tackle come bump, right up the middle but not high, that would be assault as well? Not as grievous as Gaff on Brayshaw but where’s the line, Peter?

Someone gets sold candy and looks as foolish as Donald Trump at a spelling bee, can they sue for character defamation? Players can file VCAT cases when delisted for unfair dismissal? What about journos who make silly and prosperous statements about pressing charges in a contact sport, that’s fraud surely against those who are paying money for allegedly ‘quality journalism’ as Australian subscribes?

Never mind, Peter writes for a publication with a readership smaller than the Mr. Men books so he is just unlucky we even noticed.

Moving on.

1. Ok, onto Mr Gaff properly. So this has been written bits on Monday, bits on Tuesday, but before the verdict. Jeremy Cameron with his hit on Harris Andrews, he had priors, it was in play but did a fair bit of damage, he got five weeks. Tom Bugg, last year on Callum Mills, it was behind play, Mills was concussed and sat out the rest of the game but returned the following weekend, Bugg got six. For mine, Gaff, despite his pristine record and exceptional character, given it was behind play and did more damage than Barry Hall on Brent Staker, it starts at seven. Either way he doesn’t play again this year, no matter the Eagles season and finals from here.

2. Rated Ross Lyon’s presser, we’ve sorta forgot him a bit over here on the eastern seaboard but was awesome at St Kilda, has brought Freo as a club into relevance and is now trying to rebuild as quickly as he can. He was emotional, raw, super empathetic to the Brayshaw family and if you’re a Dockers fan you’d love to fall in behind him on the road ahead, just terrific.

3. West Coast in Perth. Wow. Gaff will get one of the biggest suspensions in recent times and the Eagles CEO comes out the next day, calls a presser, and tries to hijack the narrative with a drive-by for Ross Lyon. My view was that Lyon was brilliant but even if you found his comments post-game fractionally too emotional, Trevor, just don’t go there, this is about your player’s actions, not about deflecting. The Eagles are as arrogant a sporting club you’ll find, especially at home, they can’t be touched, or at least think they can’t be.

4. Red cards come up again. The NRL has the ability to send players off, and rarely does, so let’s not give the umpires another thing to stuff up, because to wrongly or unfairly use a red card in our spot would be so much worse than to not have the option for that once in a blue moon event in the first place, let me assure you.

5. "If there are people out there, managers, who are prepared to get up on radio and say 'Don't go to the Gold Coast', we'll have them in court as quick as we can.”

That’s Mark Evans, Suns CEO, on reports that player managers are, as per their position description, providing advice and counsel to their clients, vis a vis that a move to the Suns is, correctly too, a poor one. So Mark thinks he can take those managers to court? To you Mark, we just have one word – lolz.

6. Tom Lynch exercises his right and will return to Melbourne. Fair enough. But for the Suns to put up some players internally, in a confrontational sort of exit, criticising and demeaning Lynch for his decision is bad enough. But to put up young players, most notably Lachie Weller who did the exact same thing in ditching Fremantle to head back home only ten months ago, is so ironically laughable it’s gotta be a for a prank show on Channel Ten or something. This is a serious AFL club?

7. So the Crows win by a whisker because the goal umpire missed Josh Jenkins’ snap grazing the post and the score review showed nothing conclusive to go against the initial call. What do we do? Snicko or hot spot perhaps? Or better still, whatever the tennis use for a let on a serve, have that tech installed in all goal posts from perhaps above the padding up, whooshka. But get it right though, the camera angles at present are still a half pregnant solution.

8. Whilst we’re fixing the game, advantage rule, don’t blow the whistle until there’s no longer an advantage. Like Rugby Union, where the ref puts his hand up to signal a penalty, only then going to the whistle to stop the play. So, for footy, the umpire sees a free kick but the team still has possession, he then puts his arm out to signal a free kick but if the advantage isn’t there, only then would the umpire blow the whistle. Simple. Next.

9. “At the very least, the 6-6-6 format after goals will be adopted…”

“…the bigger picture — and that’s to spread the ground and stop 30 players congregating within 30m of a stoppage in the 50m arcs.”

That’s from old mate Robbo in his Monday blurbs.

We had a terrific game of football on Saturday afternoon between the Hawks and Bombers whilst the AFL had erections for rule changes watching Coburg and Werribee trial the new ideas.

But to Robbo’s point that the main rule change at play, the very satanic 6-6-6 starting positions will ‘spread the ground and stop players congregating’ is laughable. Once the ball is bounced after a goal, those starting positions go to the proverbial and then there’s nothing to stop said congregations around the pill. Unless you’re locking players to zones like netball people like Robbo need to start thinking things through.

10. Something about this state of the game talk – we’re changing the rules drastically. Why? Because of two main things – crowds are down and free to air television ratings are too. Firstly crowds, let’s have a look at them properly broken down. Perth has a new stadium and its getting filled, that’s a big tick. Adelaide, same thing just five years ahead, another tick. Geelong is expanding the size of Kardinia Park and filling it too, so that’s three new or expanded grounds getting bums on seats. Good. The big ticket though is crowds at the MCG or Marvel.

And we’ve done the numbers on that: ten years ago crowds between Victorian clubs at those two grounds were 1% higher, which equates to about 1000 people less per game. That’s nothing. The bigger picture shows it being greater but that’s when you take into account Melbourne clubs hosting the GWS or the Suns, which of course will impact numbers. So we’re losing our shit on 1%? When membership across the board is way up too?

Also Fox Footy subscriptions are up, about an extra 100,000 people are watching football each weekend on Foxtel than ten years ago, so wash that against the 1000 less at the ‘G or Colonial and I’m pretty happy.

That Foxtel figure might also eat into those FTA figures somewhat but let’s look at Masterchef. Each of the ten seasons’ finales has been the number one ranked show in the ratings, but the audiences in raw figures have dropped over 60%. Season One and Two had finales over 3.5 million each time, last week’s finale, still arguably as ‘popular’ relative to those who watch television, only 1.3 million.

So are footy ratings down because the goal square isn’t long enough or because we just aren’t watching free to air like we once did?

And lastly on that TV angle – if the ratings are down, why do we think it’s all down to the rules and not because we schedule crap games in prime slots, or perhaps the production of Channel Seven and how good that is compared to Fox Footy’s, or what we got with Channel Nine which was unquestionably far better presented?

11. Right, some onfield stuff? No, not yet, AFLW. Just shocking PR. Firstly, the comp isn’t ready to be expanded; clearly, the league can’t schedule any more games. So the mistake sits with premature expansion from 8 to 10 teams before you worry about the patronising decision to limit the games for the next season. But to have such disengagement between Town Hall and the women's game biggest stars is just such a bad look. The only way to fix it, given they can’t renege on expansion now, is to cop it on the chin and play the extra games and go up against Big Bash and tennis. Even though, as they’d well know, that will only increase the loss they write off each year to run the women’s game – it’s a mile off breaking even but they are too far in now.

12. Some onfield stuff now? Yes, finally. The Giants first. Even though it was only the Blues, the fact they played with 18 for so long and then even a man or two short onfield and could score so easily was a testament to not just their talent but their fortitude. A lesser side would almost let the Blues win that final term, just shut up shop and get back to Sydney to lick their wounds. But they are that good they got the margin over 100.

13. If they can get some names back and be reasonably fit come September they would be the ones to trouble the Tigers, even on the ‘G. But it’s their injury list, and the Pies one as well to be fair, that might be the clincher for Richmond going back to back. All three reasonably fully fit would go toe to toe deep in September, but Richmond being the healthiest gives them an almost unassailable advantage.

14. Port Adelaide can’t score. Pretty handy thing in this game to be able to score more than your opponents and the last month or so they’ve barely managed a good half time score let alone a winning full time one. Big problems there and it’s not an easy run home. Could miss the eight which given their draw post-bye would be unacceptable.

15. Great to have Nathan Freeman debut on the weekend, Alex Johnson get back after not playing since the War, funny seeing him play without panty hose and a cap, Brodie Smith got back after the tragedy of the knee injury during last year’s finals and Aaron Vandenberg as well, his last game was against Fitzroy so good to see him back out in the red and blue too.

16. Ben Stratton is the best defender in the game. Locks down on a variety of players as good as any, but also takes the intercepts as well as any too. A less flashy Alex Rance with the intercept prowess close to Jeremy McGovern. Just without the fanfare. The Hawks could go deep and his influence is pivotal.

17. Still hoping for another Richmond-Clarkson matchup at some stage. Hawthorn are not a top-four side by any stretch but have the best coach most of us have ever seen - after that Round 3 sighter he has had months to plot his plan. He may be a star or two short, but Clarko elevates teams to levels such he might not need it. If he gets his chance at Richmond in September, underestimate his coaching brilliance at your own risk.

18. Saturday afternoon football, whilst it doesn’t help the broadcaster (see above), has been elite. We’ve had the big game between Richmond and Collingwood followed by an epic last weekend and we’ve got the Hawks and Cats to write another storied chapter this week. Had these three games been the Saturday night timeslot instead I would have needed a different topic for thought number 10.

19. Alex Di Minaur. Remember him? Teenager, who got hot in the early parts of the summer of tennis eight months back, caused a stir before doing nothing, non-surprisingly, at the Australian Open. However he has had a very decent year since then for his age and that peaked last week when he made the final of the Washington Open losing in straight sets to world no.3 Alexander Zverev. He is now ranked inside the top 50 which for a 19-year-old is a phenomenal achievement. And crucially, where the likes of Kyrgios and Tomic have resembled the brat of Lleyton Hewitt early in his career, Di Minaur already resembles the tenacious fighter of Hewitt in the peak of his career, so the signs are good. Remember the name.

20. And we finish with the A-League, where the Melbourne Victory had a fair coup this week signing Japanese star Keisuke Honda. Well, he has retired from international football so on the back end of his career very much but still, for the Victory he should be handy. But it seems in the formulation of the deal that Fox Sports has either been a key powerbroker or perhaps even a financial backer to acquire his signature. Given the league tried to recruit Fernando Torres itself before having a club actually committed to even having him, and then possibly allows the broadcaster to play a part in club signing players, perhaps this is the gimmicky tournament Daisy Pearce was talking about. My word…

(originally published 7 August)

0 notes

greygamer · 7 years

Text

TP Countdown Day 6: Checkmate

As that title might indicate, the chess game between Cooper and Windom Earle begins to take on a larger portion of the show. Well, actually, the title would indicate that the game was over, which it isn’t, but it’s still a chess reference, so I assume that it’s the Earle storyline that it’s reference too.

At the conclusion of the episode, the power in Twin Peaks is knocked out thanks to a couple of nearby explosions, presumably at the hands of Earle. Hawk, Truman, and Coop have just returned to the Sheriff’s station and as Lucy relates a tale of the explosions to Truman, Cooper carefully enters the station, lighter in hand, and discovers the body of an unknown man in the Sheriff’s office. A body and chessboard, featuring Earle’s next move, a move that, very likely, involved taking a pawn. Because who the dead man is. Do you see what they did there?

Windom Earle’s story isn’t the only mystery unravelling in the town of Twin Peaks, though. In fact, it’s not even the most interesting mystery. That falls on the question around what happened to Major Briggs when he disappeared. The episode opens with Coop and Truman chatting with the Major, who begins to actually offer some information about his classified work, which is an unofficial continuation of Project Bluebook, a government project that was dedicated to uncovering the truth between UFOs.

It feels like this would be a good moment to mention, again, that owls were frequently cited in stories of alien abduction as a cover memory for the actual memories of the abduction itself. It’s particularly worth mentioning as Briggs himself says this his memories are clouded by the image of a large owl.

Before the Major can reveal too much of the truth, military members arrive to escort him to some likely classified facility. Truman tries to stop the soldiers from taking him, but Briggs, always a company man, leaves willingly, taking with him the answers we’re all so desperately seeking.

Later in the episode, the attempt to arrest Jean Renault and that RCMP guy during the DEA sting operation goes kind of sour as a result of the Professor sweating so profusely that his police wire catches fire. Renault takes Dennis / Denise and The Professor hostage, but Coop exchanges himself for the two hostages, knowing that Jean wants to get his hands on him. Later, as Jean the RCMP Guy discuss their best plan of action, Denise approaches the house dressed as a Double-R waitress, just bringing them some grub. Of course the grub was just a ruse to get into the house, and to sneak Coop a gun (hidden under her dress, and the two of them attack the two captors. Renault dies in the firefight, bringing, I hope, to a close the saga of the French-Canadian brothers.

Finally, Leo has apparently tired of all the cripple shaming and has come back to life. As the power in Shelly’s house begins to waver (leading to a very Lynchian scene with the lights dimming and the music slowing then speeding up again), she discovers that Leo is back on his feet again. Which isn’t going to be good news for either Shelly or, when he eventually returns, Bobby.

In other less interesting news: Bobby continues to try to get work from Ben Horne, who is too busy reenacting the civil war to have any interest in him. Nadine continues to have the hots for Mike, and has no shame in sharing her feels with the rest of the world. James is still off somewhere getting tangled up with a femme fatale. And Dick and Andy are still trying to find out whether Little Nicky is the devil or not.

I’m currently playing at the idea of establishing head-canon that Little Nicky is in fact a reluctant inhabitant of the Black Lodge, bringing suffering and misfortune wherever he goes, so that BOB can feed on all that delicious garmonbozia. It has, so far at least, made the Little Nicky storyline mildly more tolerable.

#twin peaks #checkmate #david lynch #tv #television #commentary #review

0 notes

free-mormons-blog · 7 years

Text

Myths and the Scriptures -- Old Testament and Related Studies -- HUGH NIBLEY 1986

Myths and the Scriptures

A student confronted for the first time by classical and Oriental myths that read like reruns of well-known Bible stories—such as the garden of Eden episode and the Flood—often goes into a sort of shock, emerging from which he announces to family and friends that he has just discovered a fact of life: the Bible is just a lot of mythology.

Such a conclusion may be the result of a faulty approach to the Bible as well as to the myths. The first thing to do in such a case is to apply cold packs and calm the student down, pointing out to him that such deeply religious writers as Dante and Milton not only were aware of many parallels between Christian and pagan lore and imagery, but also freely mingled the two together in constructing their faith-promoting epics.

Some of the earliest religious writers were edified by the Egyptian Phoenix, and the later Fathers of the traditional church diligently catalogued those heathen myths and doctrines that most closely resembled their own beliefs as proof that the gentiles had always pirated the true teachings of the prophets and patriarchs.

The idea was that the Egyptians had picked up a lot of stuff from the Israelites during the latter’s sojourn in Egypt, and of course the Egyptians got it all mixed up. Also, since Adam, Enoch, Noah, and Abraham had all left writings behind long before Moses, it was only to be expected that in times of apostasy their teachings, in contaminated form, should fall into profane hands.

There is a good deal to be said for this theory, for the myths and rites of all the ancient world, if traced backward in time, do show a marked tendency to conform more and more to a few basic themes and to converge on a limited geographical area as their apparent place of origin. But whatever the real explanation, there is a very real relationship between the biblical and the worldwide pagan traditions. There has been no question of proving that such a relationship existed; however, there has always been the neglected task of showing just what that relationship is.

This sensible and promising line of approach to the problem of mythology and the Bible has been vigorously rejected by the modern clergy, by professional scholars, and by the literate. Three points bear elaboration here.

1. The clergy, Christian and Jewish alike, have insisted before all else on the absolute originality and uniqueness of the teachings of Christ and Moses respectively, laboring under the strange illusion that if anything coming from any other source shows a close resemblance to those teachings, the claims of the founders to originality and hence to divinity are in serious jeopardy.

A close resemblance between biblical and nonbiblical teachings and practices is necessarily a “suspicious resemblance.” Theologians have worked out their own theory of communication between God and man, which they have strictly limited as to time and place, allowing no latitude whatever for the possibility of anything occurring that is not accounted for in the Bible.

Indeed, the Fathers of the fourth century insist that we may safely assume that whatever is not explicitly mentioned in the Bible could not possibly have occurred—ever or anywhere.

The present-day insistence, especially by the Catholics (though vigorously challenged by the brilliant Jesuit Hugo Rahner), on the absolute originality of Jesus is the result of total rejection of the idea of dispensations. If we know, however, that the gospel has been on the earth from time to time ever since the days of Adam, then it is easily understandable that recognizable fragments of it should be seen floating around in sundry times and places.

But “dispensationism” has long been anathema to the clergy. Hence their hostility to the Apocrypha, their marked coolness to the Dead Sea Scrolls, and their hot denunciation of Joseph Smith for giving the world ancient writings that not only resemble the Bible but also lay claim to the same inspiration while widening, the horizon of God’s covenant people to include times and places heretofore undreamed of.

2. Professional scholars, who as a matter of course reject the whole idea of inspired writings, have been as reluctant as the clergy to recognize resemblances between the myths and legends of various parts of the world as being anything but the purest coincidence. The reason for this is departmental pride. For example, a Celtic or Semitic scholar may very well know more about Greek than I do; but if Greek is my one and only field, I may still turn up my nose with a great show of scientific skepticism and technical superiority, and categorically refuse to consider even the possibility of a relationship between the documents I can read and the documents I cannot read.

A dazzling demonstration of this type of precious myopia was the century-long refusal of Egyptologists to acknowledge any connection whatever between Israel and Egypt (they used it as an argument against Joseph Smith), though links and ties confronted them at every turn. When Erman finally showed beyond a doubt that an important piece of Egyptian wisdom literature also turned up in the body of Hebrew wisdom literature, he was almost ashamed of his discovery and never followed it up.

Secular scholars, on the other hand, have been quick to take any resemblance between heathen traditions and the Bible as absolute proof that the scriptures are simply ordinary stuff. The classic example of this was the Babylonian flood story, discovered by Layard in the mid-nineteenth century. It resembled the biblical account closely enough to show without doubt that they were connected, but before any search for the source of either version was undertaken, it was joyfully announced that the biblical account was derived from the Babylonian and was, therefore, a fraud. The experts were wrong on both points—the Assurbanipal version is really a late redaction, and the duplication of the flood story, instead of weakening it, actually confirms it. Indeed, if there really were a universal flood, it would be very strange if memories of it did not turn up in many places, as in fact they do.

3. Most students learn about ancient myths from teachers and textbooks of literature by way of the late classic poets to whom the myths were little more than literary playthings. A student cannot understand “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” without knowing something about the many myths that cluster about the figure of Theseus, but the teacher’s only concern is to put the student in the literary picture, and for that a trip to the handbook suffices.

For the student of literature, the myths are but handy aids to the writer, useful devices for achieving decorative or erudite effects, as they were once the paint and gilt of decadent poetry. Since the day of Augustus, the literati have had neither the desire nor the equipment to look beneath the surface.

Hardly worth mentioning at this date is the nineteenth century Wissenschaft, which inevitably explained everything as “nature myth”—primitive man’s reaction to his natural environment. The ancient Sophists played around with that idea, naively assuming, as did the scholars and scientists of a hundred years ago, that any reasonable explanation for a phenomenon that they could come up with would necessarily be the true and correct answer—how could it be otherwise if it was a strictly rational conclusion free of all superstition and religion? It was an impressive exhibition of scientific gullibility, but it is not taken seriously today, now that we know a lot more about ancient myths than we did.

In recent years the early myths have acquired a new status and dignity. A steady accumulation of comparative studies tying this to that and these to those now crams the stacks of our libraries. Spread out before the mind’s eye, their myriad pages interweave into a grandiose texture, a vast shadowy tapestry in which we begin to discern the common backdrop of all history and religion.

But the books are still sedulously segregated and widely distributed among the floors and alcoves of the library, and to bring them all together into the one organic whole from which they were taken is a task that will yet tax the capacity of the computer. Meanwhile, we must imagine the pieces of this huge jigsaw puzzle as heaped in separate piles, each representing a special field of study or cultural area, from Iceland to Polynesia. To date no one has taken the trouble to integrate the materials in even one of these hundred-odd piles; and as to taking up the whole lot and relating every pile to every other, so far only a few bold suggestions have come from men of genius like G. Santillana, Cyrus Gordon, or Robert Graves, whose proposals get chilly reception from specialized scholars who can only be alarmed by such boldness and appalled by the work entailed in painting the whole picture.

But such study as has been done shows us that the old myths are by no means pure fiction, any more than they are all history. As the Muses told Hesiod, “We know both how to fib and how to tell the truth”; and, as Joseph Smith learned of the Apocrypha, “there are many things contained therein that are true, and there are many things contained therein that are not true” (see D&C 91)—all of which means that we must be very careful in accepting and condemning.

Today, formidable task forces of first-rate scholars and scientists are working on the Atlantis problem, whereas a very few years ago anyone careless enough to express interest in that question was announcing his candidacy for the asylum. The world that “deepbrowed Homer” was supposed to have conjured up out of his own head has in our own day taken on flesh and blood, and today we read the novels of Marie Renault or Robert Graves with a feeling that Theseus or Heracles were probably real persons who did at least something like the deeds attributed to them.

If we attempt to untangle the probably historical from the fanciful, we soon discover the common ground on which they meet and fuse: it is ritual. Myths arise at attempts to explain ritual doings, whose meaning has been forgotten—”What mean these stones?” After much discussion back and forth, the consensus now emerges that it is the rites and ordinances that come first. This should have been clear from the outset, since myths and legends are innumerable while the rites and ordinances found throughout the world are surprisingly few and uniform, making it quite apparent that it is the stories that are invented—the rites are always there.

Such indeed has always been the Latter-day Saint position. Adam first performed an ordinance and when asked to give an explanation of it replied that he knew of none “save the Lord commanded me.” (Moses 5:6.) Then it was that the true explanation came forth from the mouth of a heavenly instructor.

But if in later times members of some distant tribe, having inherited the rites, were asked to explain them, they would have to come up with some invented stories of their own—and that would be myth. It is in their contact with ritual that history and fantasy share a common ground and mingle with each other.

Take the model heroes Theseus and Heracles, for example. We know that they are ritual figures because they repeatedly get themselves involved in well-known ritual situations. Thus each in his wanderings is not once but often the guest of a king who tries to put him to death, forcing the hero to turn the tables and slay the host or his officiating high priest in the manner intended for himself. The nature of this business is now well understood, thanks to hundreds of similar examples collected from all over the world and from every century, making it clear that we have to do with an established routine practice of inviting a noble, visiting stranger to be the substitute for the king—on the throne, in the favor of the queen, and finally and all too quickly on the sacrificial altar—thus sparing the king himself the discomfort and inconvenience of being ritually put to death at the end of a sacred cycle of years. This exotic little drama was more than a fiction; it was an actual practice, surviving in some parts of the world down to modern times, but flourishing with particular vigor in the Near East around 1400 B.C., the period to which most of the Greek myths belong.

Since, as we have said, myths are invented or adjusted to explain ritual, the two are naturally identified, and hence any event reported in a myth is customarily dismissed as purely mythical. But that won’t do any more, because such strange ceremonial events actually did take place, regularly and repeatedly.

Ancient civilization was hierocentric—centered around the temple. The everyday activities of farming, trade, and war were all ritually bound to the cycle of the year and the cosmos. The great periodic rites were of a dramatic nature, but they were none the less real: a coronation is the purest ceremony, yet for all that it is still real recorded history; a war or migration, though only too real to its victims, would be carried out with strict ritual propriety, according to the religious rules of the game. It is hard for us to understand this ritualizing of history, but once it was a very real thing, and one can still find it miraculously surviving among the Hopi.

So when the ancient myths from all over the world show us the same situations and the same adventures and monsters recurring again and again, we may look upon this endless repetition not as discrediting the historicity of those events and situations but as confirming it. These myths tell about such things happening because that was the type of thing that did happen, and the ritual nature of the event guaranteed that it should happen not once but over and over again.

Nothing illustrates this principle better than the long-despised (by scholars and clergy) and neglected book of Abraham. Since we have chosen Theseus and Heracles as our archetypes, we may well consider the most spectacular and celebrated stories of how each escaped from his inhospitable host. The last and worst actor that Theseus had to deal with was Procrustes, whose notorious murder bed has become proverbial. Was there such a bed? A century ago the Egyptologist Lefebure noted that there are quite a number of old traditions around the eastern Mediterranean about kings who built cruelly ingenious altars, sometimes mechanically operated, usually of metal, and shaped like beds, on which they would put to death their noble guests.

In 1859, B. Beer pointed out for the first time that Abraham belongs in the old Procrustes tradition, noting that the wicked Cities of the Plain where Abraham was given a bad time all had in their central marketplaces ritual beds on which they would sacrifice strangers by stretching them out if they were too short and whacking them off if they were too tall to match the exact length of the bed. This, of course, is the celebrated Procrustes technique, and Beer duly notes that Procrustes’ other name, Damastes, has exactly the same meaning as Sodom—the “Forcer” or “Violator.” Furthermore, Beer reports early traditions telling how Eleazer, when he went to represent Abraham in those cities, appeared there in the exact form and stature of Abraham and narrowly escaped being put to death on such a bed. So we have Abraham on the altar as another Theseus or Heracles, surprisingly sharing the fate of the great patriarch of the Athenians!

But Lefebure also notices that Theseus and the bed of Procrustes have a close counterpart in the story of Heracles’ most famous and sensational escape. This took place not in Greece nor in Asia, but in Egypt, at the court of Pharaoh. The Greeks regarded this as the first and oldest example of the oft-repeated royal sacrifice of an honored visitor, the archetype of them all, and they always located it in Busiris, which actually was from prehistoric times on down, the most celebrated and venerated center of human sacrifice in Egypt.

Egyptologists do not doubt the reality of a periodic sacrifice of the king of Egypt in early times, or the practice of drafting a substitute (preferably a noble, redheaded stranger) to take his place, first on the throne to establish his identity with the king, and then on the altar. So we have a three-way tie-up, and a very firm one, in which Theseus is related to Heracles as an intended victim on the famous “cruel altar” of a desperate and designing king. The same Theseus is also related to Abraham in a like situation by the peculiar name and nature of his evil host Procrustes. And Abraham in turn is tied to Heracles as the intended but miraculously delivered victim on the altar of a pharaoh of Egypt.

What are we to make of these three heroes? Do their stereotyped adventures cancel each other out? On the contrary, they confirm each other as long as we recognize that the reality that lies behind them is a ritual reality. The book of Abraham is particularly strong on this point, making much of the awesome ceremonial nature of the doings in which the patriarch as a young man got himself dangerously involved. We are dealing with well-established routines of which nothing was known a few years ago.

Recently someone has noted that mention of the attempted sacrifice of Abraham is to be found in the once widely read Bayle’s “Dictionary” as early as 1732 and suggested that that is where Joseph Smith got the story. But all Bayle says on the subject is that there is a rabbinical tradition “that he was cast by the Chaldeans into a fire, from which he emerged unscathed,” with the usual stereotyped observation that the story arose from a misreading of his escape from “Ur,” Ur meaning both “Ur” (the city) and “fire.”

And that is the whole story—no mention of any altar, let alone a description of deliverance by the angel accompanied by the disastrous earthquake and other details that any reader of the book of Abraham knows about. Bayle mentions the rabbis but gives us no references whatever. All this is preserved in early Jewish tradition but was not published to the world before 1859, and the really significant documents did not first see the light until within the past twenty years or so. Actually, Joseph Smith’s account of Abraham is a highly unoriginal story, one that can be documented from a hundred parallel sources. But nobody in Joseph Smith’s day knew anything at all about that story or dreamed of putting Abraham in the mythical picture where he fits so nicely. The story is in every detail an authentic myth, describing an authentic ritual, and as such is to be considered seriously as authentic history.

Another example. To the Babylonian flood story and the Greek myth of Deucalion (the Greeks made much of their forefather Japetus—Japheth), Joseph Smith added yet another tale of the deluge, which he boldly attributed to the Egyptians. It was the story of a great lady who came to Egypt just after the flood, found the land still under water, and “settled her sons in it,” establishing the monarch by matriarchal right. (Abraham 1:24.)

It was not until the second decade of the present century that H. Junker gathered together the widely scattered Egyptian documents that told the same story preserved by the Egyptians since the beginning of their history by being ritually dramatized every year in a great national water festival. This episode from the book of Abraham is, like the story of Abraham on the altar, a perfect little vignette, placed with unerring accuracy in its proper ancient setting.

In conclusion, like those rare elements in deserted mines and dumps that miners and prospectors have hitherto ignored but that now promise great riches, the riches of mythology, so poorly worked in the past, still await the serious exploitation made possible by new skills and techniques.

There is no telling what wonders may be brought to light simply by bringing together new combinations and associations of documents already in our possession. But from the few hesitating steps that have been made so far, it already appears that the ancient myths, wherever they turn up, have a tendency to fit together into the same picture, supporting and confirming each other due to the solid ground on which they stand—the reality of ritual, by which history becomes a religious phenomenon—as is markedly the case in the annals of the Pharaohs. This leads us to conclude that there is a serious historical reality behind the myths as a whole, in spite of the adjusting and romancing that sometimes effaces them almost beyond recognition.

The myths thus provide us with a new and powerful tool for searching into hitherto inaccessible recesses of the past. Though the use of this tool has barely begun, it has already given us a useful means of checking up on the revelations of Joseph Smith, showing us that what were thought by some of his critics to be his wildest stories, the purest figments of his imagination, turn out to be mythological commonplaces, overlooked by generations of scholars and clergymen.

NOTES

* “Myths and the Scriptures” was published in the October 1971 New Era, pp. 34—38.

0 notes