More Than Mind Games

You might remember the beginning of the Australia-Italy match during the 2006 World Cup. Because of “technical difficulties”, the only working camera was high behind one goal, and for ten glorious minutes, we could watch the game develop across the entire pitch. Much football broadcasting follows the ball around like a playground centre forward, which…

Experimental psychology is obsessed with fear. In purely scientific terms, rightly so: it’s easy to create under controlled conditions, which many other important feelings and emotions aren’t. Although they’re improving quickly, neuroscience’s tools of measurement are still almost unbearably crude. We need to restrict ourselves to what we have reasonable access to for the time…

“In a year, or two or three, maybe we will be too old.” He was right about that. It’s been 74 years, and Toby Wing died 6 years ago aged 85. Wing: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8g45VUWheMw] Another famous Wing of 1933:

Away for a few days. Let me tell you about the Fords I’m giving away. (This is worth seeing through to the end, btw.) 1932: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACZH4cNDnoU]

Away for a few days. Fake sports in a ’20s New York theme park. The amusements of the 1920s were far more dangerous than the majority of serious sports nowadays. No ride to represent chess, however. This is puzzling. Why a horseracing ride, and not a chess one? [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHQDRXIv1VQ]

Here’s Capablanca playing speed chess with a variety of opponents. Insofar as it goes: what we’re really meeting here is the same old problem of poor quality film and bad camera angles that we saw in the case of early football films. Was chess any good then? It’s hard to tell from this: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_b8If7_Z4Us] And…

We’ve discussed how good – or how not so good – football was in the past. And we’ve used what little film is left to help us judge. Let’s see if we can do the same thing for chess: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tghJe5warM] (Capablanca, Torre v Marshall)

When you reflect on it, Sam Tyler was lucky: flinging himself off a modern Manchester office block only consigned him to a railside shootout in 1973. He could have woken up a racing driver in 1908: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKZ6gzAOUYs]

It goes like this: I was a roadie for a fat lad called Humpty who had a NWOBHM type band at the time. They were quite good if your idea of music is the sound of amplified buzz saws and a shouting bear. He was booked to play a heavy metal pub gig. We unloaded…

Given that it is the 1930s, and that we are in a faraway country containing people of whom we know nothing, it would be easy to jump to conclusions about this photo: And are those mounted policemen, or troops? Still, at least the crowd is putting a brave face on whatever’s going on: Indeed, there…