Cars and blogs

Yay, I'm no a guest writer on Antti's recently established blog where the topic of discussion is none other than cars. I have to admit, I know nothing of cars and my taste in, well, everything, is notoriously bad. And I'm a wannabe-Brit without the nice accent, the passport, the family, and the estate. But that doesn't mean that I can't go shout around my opinions and try to act in an arrogant, Clarkson-esque way. So, without further ado, feel free to go read the rants and raves at b-pilari. (Oh, and apparently some of the content there will be in Finnish. But worry not, I will never forsake the only True language. ;-)

Why I am boring

Cars can be a source of endless debate. Just go over to a local pub and you can pretty much start a heated debate anywhere by throwing some car-related provocative comment. Naturally, you can also get beaten up if you don't know when to shut up, considering the amount of intoxicated buffoons who reside at a local pub. But that's another thing. Debates centering around incredibly expensive cars are also always nice, considering the fact that no one has typically ever even seen, let alone driven, any of the cars that are debated.

So considering this, I decided that I want to argue why the Aston Martin DB9 is so brilliant. And why, because of that, I'm a boring person. Consider your typical debate over fast cars. There's always a Ferrari, perhaps a Lamborghini, some AMG tuned Merc, a Porsche and whatever. But the point is that just about all of the debated cars are in the sports car or supercar category. Granted, they're quite possibly incredibly fast and can go around corners decently well. But I happen to be keener on grand tourers. I guess the whole idea that I can have a fairly fast car which doesn't sacrifice ride comfort on the altar of POWERANDSPEED just attracts me more. And of course, a car has to also be discrete. A Lamborghini is anything but. And Ferraris, well... The DB9, styling-wise, is just lightyears ahead of the style of the other manufacturers. And that's an absolute truth.

And then there's the brand. What Aston symbolizes is something that the other manufacturers can't get even close to, at least from my point of view. It's the understated elegance, the craftsmanship, it has a soul. Ze Germans can undoubtedly make brilliant cars and I guess I'd be lying if I'd say that I'd be unsatisfied if I owned a Porsche 911 Turbo. But it just feels so cold, so sterile. As an analogy, I guess one could argue that whereas an orchestra that's perfectly in tune and executes some piece flawlessly might (and actually should) be the ultimate goal, over a long period of time that just gets boring. No, wait, that actually wasn't that good an analogy, as an orchestra that's not in tune will also get incredibly annoying fairly quickly. But I guess that sort of describes the situation.

Overall I'm fairly boring because the F430 doesn't do anything for me. It lacks the finesse. It's sort of like some teenage punk, lacking the maturity and the appreciation of the finer things in life. It's a show off. It's the Rolex of cars. Well, that analogy is also a bit flawed as Rolex isn't, even in the technical sense, a top watch maker. You can find more expensive and more impressive (again, in a technical sense) watches elsewhere. The Ferrari is arguably a brilliant piece of engineering, but the status it has just doesn't attract me. I don't want to go to the track and shout POWEEER! while driving sideways. I want some elegant, soulful car with which I can pop in Monte Carlo to have lunch and drive to Paris for the night. And I want to do that while being subtle and not attracting too much attention.

But alas, this is in no way a relevant problem. And most likely never will be. At least for me. Maybe I should just get back to schoolwork and stop daydreaming.

Rate of Change

"Every action has an equal and opposite reaction." Newton's third law, if my memory serves correctly (ha! I know something about physics even though I haven't gotten around to passing my obligatory physics courses!). Although I guess that is primarily applicable to mechanics, it might have some interesting applications in other fields as well. Anyway, if you consider the current ICT field, it's obvious that in order for a company to be succesful, it must be able to react to changing situations immensely quickly (first-mover advantages, anyone?). This of course has some practical implications as well - namely that the individual people who make up a company need to be able to also react quickly and reinvent themselves as the need arises. All in all it would seem that the entire culture of doing business in high-tech is being pumped more and more full of steroids every passing year.

So, about Newton's third... That would explain why in the recent year Morgans have started to look very appealing. Well, ok, they still won't be very practical in your typical Finnish climate, but come on; a car for which you have to buy door handles from the options list has got to be immensely cool! Morgan Motor Company itself has been operating the same way since it was founded in 1910 and their cars are still reminiscent of the cars the predate the war. Perhaps because they, in fact, do. I guess you can't go further away from the rate of change of the ICT world than that. Unless you want to look at the British bespoke clothing scene, which predates the Morgans by a hundred or so years...