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| Rory's Rambling | |
| An Occasional Column from the Antipodes | by Rory Gordon, Australia |
Are you ready? All together now. Come on, join in!
Happy birthday to you, Okay, where are they? Come on, hand them over. The presents... where are they? You didn't get me one? Well, thank you VERY much!
Quite a few things have changed around Atlas F1 since then, but there are some things that haven't changed. While some of the early articles and editions were a little patchy, the basic concept and realisation of that concept haven't changed, I believe (what follows is very much a personal opinion and does not necessarily reflect the... you know the rest). Atlas F1 always set out to be the... well, I can't put it any better than the title ... journal of F1. I'm biased, but I think that Atlas F1 not only does this, and does it well, but I also think that Atlas F1 is the only "publication" (I use the term loosely) that does this. Anyway, most of that is beside the point - it's just me rambling. What I'd like to ramble on about today is the Rambles. I thought it was about time to try and lay out what the Rambles try to do - the philosophy of the Rambles, if you like. As I said earlier, the first "Rory's Ramblings" appeared in the 1995 French Grand Prix issue of Atlas. At no stage did I ever think that it would still be going all this time later. When I first started, I just wanted to get a few F1-related hassles off my chest... it now seems that I had a lot of F1-related hassles to get off my chest. There's a large clue to the underlying philosophy (if you can call it that) in the title of the column: "Rory's Ramblings". The columns are meant to ramble over the place a bit, because that's the way my brain (or what's left of it after it has been abused for years by nicotine, alcohol, hamburgers, pizzas, caffeine, television, computers, polyunsaturated fats and all the other good things in life!) works. That's why computers with their simple "yes/no" logic can't think like me... I'm illogical... I'm human. And the sub-head of the column has another couple of hints, too. "An Occasional Column from the Antipodes". Occasional because sometimes I just can't find a topic that gets me going. And it's an Antipodal column - upside-down thinking? (Mind you, we Antipodeans think you Northern Hemisphere-ers are the ones that are upside-down and we are the ones that are the right way up.) My main purpose is to promote discussion and thought. That is a large point of the column. My aim is to provoke you, to throw thoughts into your brain that you may not otherwise have. To make you think about angles of Formula One that you may not have thought of before. And, in doing that, I have to provoke myself and my thought processes into thinking about Formula One in different ways. Sometimes I amaze myself at just how conservative my thinking about F1 is. So, I'm trying to provoke our thought processes about Formula One. Sometimes, I put forward an argument that I disagree with, purely to see how my thought processes will react... and then see how you will react. Where my opinions start and where other peoples' start is a very fuzzy line, but I always try to give credit where it is due. F1 is, after all, an emotive subject whoever you talk to about it. Opinions range from the broad "it's just cars going around in circles", all the way through to detailed discussion of the relative merits of one type of valve springing over another. I try and stay away the overly-technical issues. I am not technically competent at the best of times, so I tend to treat that topic fairly simplistically. And I try to stay away from current issues. You can see coverage about them all around the place. What I like to look at and think about are the slightly different angles to F1. Topics that don't normally receive much open discussion. And I welcome discussion, debate and comment. My mail box is always open. I try to reply to anyone who wishes to debate or discuss. Sometimes, there are circumstances which mean that I just don't do that - my apologies to those who expected a reply in the past and never got one, and to those who expect one in the future and will not get one. (I might point out here that, even if you throw abuse at me, I will try and reply if you make a point or want to debate something. I am more than happy to discuss and debate, but not to indulge in mutual abuse.) I hope you enjoy reading and thinking about the topics raised here (even if you don't necessarily agree with them), as much as I enjoy - in my own sick way - thinking up and writing about those topics. But that's just me.
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| Rory Gordon | © 1999 Kaizar.Com, Incorporated. |
| Send comments to: gordon@atlasf1.com | Terms & Conditions |