C
Chris Gerhard
Guest
From:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article3278710.ece
> I have a small electronic milometer on my bicycle which, among other fascinating statistics (maximum speed, average speed, current speed), records the distance covered to two decimal places. Thus ten and two thirds of a mile shows up as 10.66, just shy of 16 and a half miles is 16.49, and so on. It will be seen immediately that although those figures represent mileage, they can also be read as dates, very famous dates in the case of the two examples.
>
> Using this insight, I have developed a game combining my twin interests of cycling and general knowledge. The game is to think, as you pedal along, of something significant that happened on that date in the moment that your milometer registers it. Beautiful in its simplicity, no?
>
> You haven't got long. One one-hundredth of a mile is 17.6 yards, or not much over 50 feet. In the time it takes to cover that distance, 14.15 (battle of Agincourt), say, to 14.16 (nothing immediately springs to mind) you've got to come up with a birth, a death, a treaty, a publication, an invention, an edict, an horrific brutal blood-soaked racist massacre, something, anything, of at least a modicum of historical importance. And then on to the next one. And the next, and the next, all the while, of course, keeping a watchful eye out for Matthew “Piano Wire” Parris, whose house I pass, ducking low, on the way to work. Not easy.
It continues. I wonder if he really passes Matthew "Piano Wire" Parris'
house.
--chris
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article3278710.ece
> I have a small electronic milometer on my bicycle which, among other fascinating statistics (maximum speed, average speed, current speed), records the distance covered to two decimal places. Thus ten and two thirds of a mile shows up as 10.66, just shy of 16 and a half miles is 16.49, and so on. It will be seen immediately that although those figures represent mileage, they can also be read as dates, very famous dates in the case of the two examples.
>
> Using this insight, I have developed a game combining my twin interests of cycling and general knowledge. The game is to think, as you pedal along, of something significant that happened on that date in the moment that your milometer registers it. Beautiful in its simplicity, no?
>
> You haven't got long. One one-hundredth of a mile is 17.6 yards, or not much over 50 feet. In the time it takes to cover that distance, 14.15 (battle of Agincourt), say, to 14.16 (nothing immediately springs to mind) you've got to come up with a birth, a death, a treaty, a publication, an invention, an edict, an horrific brutal blood-soaked racist massacre, something, anything, of at least a modicum of historical importance. And then on to the next one. And the next, and the next, all the while, of course, keeping a watchful eye out for Matthew “Piano Wire” Parris, whose house I pass, ducking low, on the way to work. Not easy.
It continues. I wonder if he really passes Matthew "Piano Wire" Parris'
house.
--chris