I can’t say I’m completely enamored with everything to come from the Apennine Peninsula. I am not the kind of guy to throw out Italian phrases with the zest of someone passionate about the culture. I am much more likely to enjoy saying ‘auspuff’ than ‘marmitta’. But something seems consistently inspired about the people of boot-shaped strip of land extending south from the Alps into the Mediterranean Sea. The New Cafe Racer Society noted a small collection of historic images from the Gran Circuito Del Sestriere. The three men pictured in the example shown seem to be surrounded by great products of creativity, if not art for art’s sake. Are we, modern humans in Italy or elsewhere, surrounded in the same way? Do we take it for granted? Will generations to come recognize it where we cannot? At least click on the link and enjoy the old pictures of scooters and cafe racers. They are fun to look at and imagine what it was like to live there, and then.
7 thoughts on “Who Cares About Old Italian Stuff?”
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That’s you, me, and Rye in a former life.
Here, use this link to go to their homepage and see the babelfish x-lation of all their pgs.
http://babelfish.yahoo.com/translate_url?doit=done&tt=url&intl=1&fr=bf-home&trurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.grancircuitodelsestriere.it%2Findex.htm&lp=it_en&btnTrUrl=Translate
John, you need to disover The Google Toolbar!
The thing is, I long ago got in the habit of staying away from computer tweaks like the Google Toolbar because if you sit down to use a computer that doesn’t have it, you may suddenly find that you’ve sort of been lulled to sleep by it. A great non-computer related example of this same phenomena is the contact list on a cell phone. Because I’ve never had to manually dial the numbers on that list, I haven’t memorized the numbers. In fact, I’ve forgotten ones I used to know, This is all no big deal until I drop the phone in the toilet on a trip and then suddenly have no clue how to reach my own family members! I’m no Luddite, but I certainly have discovered that it’s possible to make yourself a little dull by overrelying on every available technological trick, particularly ones that are designed to free you from the burden of memorization.
Not to belabor the point, but there may be some fairly persuasive evidence forthcoming that indicates that old-fashioned (massive) memorization was gerat for the brain. Even mental arithmetic (rather than using a calculator) may turn out to have been really great exercise for the brain.
P.S. I should have used TinyURL to tame that stupid huge URL I published above. It wouldn’t have looked so idiotic had I just thought to do that. Note to self…
P.P.S. Does that Google Toolbar have enough smarts to advise you before you post a misspelling like “disover?” ;->
I’m not sure. Firefox just does it for you. I use IE at home for some reason and have to rely on my speling skillz. I can say for sertin, I can always use the extra hepl.
That stated, I think the google toolbar doesn’t fall in the same category. It just reduces the number of clicks to complete the act of laziness. Now, if you were to translate the document manually from knowledge of the language, that’d be different. But then you wouldn’t have need of the babelfish or google translate services.
I do agree with the brain training. I leave that to sudoku, crossword puzzles and never writing down anyone’s birthday and trying to remember them at a later date.
Here’s a date to remember that’s almost related to the original topic of this thread, WSBK at Miller Motorsports Park – May 29-31. Heh.
Ha! I wish. Have fun! jerk.