View from the North 40: Yes, these really are wonky times

Sometimes, in these modern times, it’s difficult for us to make sense of the world but, rest assured, I am here to tell you that there are very good reasons why things don’t make sense.

The world of sports is fueled by longtime rivalries. One of those epic rivalries is between Australia and England who have been, and I kid you not, fostering a cricket rivalry over an urn filled with the ashen remains of the cricket bails burned after a cricket match in 1882. The rivalry isn’t even about whether or not cricket is the most boring game invented or why they use bails instead of bats. It’s just over bragging rights on which team gets to possess the ashes until the next game.

Apparently this rivalry between the two countries extends to all sports professional, amateur and Olympic, but they’ve taken it one step further, or rather one giant leap backward … in history to Medieval times.

Agence France-Presse News reported earlier this month that teams of three, one from each country, met in Australia to go head to head in a full-on jousting match.

Yeah, you read that right. Jousting.

The competitors were in full metal armor, with shields and lances, on horses draped in heraldic skirts sporting each team’s colors and emblems. The competitors charged each other from opposite sides of a wood rail fence. The article said the jousters earned points for breaking their lance against their competitor’s armor — one point for a broken lance and three points if they shattered the lance in the blow.

Just like in that infamous 1882 cricket match, Australia won, and in homage to the Ashes match, they burned some of the broken lances and tucked them away in the trophy to be fought over in future jousting tournaments.

I would really like to make fun of the fact that these people are so desperate to find different outlets to further their rivalry that they are resurrecting centuries-old sports, but I have to admit that I think this is awesome. And if I were a few decades younger, I’d be starting my own team.

In alternate-universe weirdness, about five years ago students at Carnegie Mellon University and their goldfish made headlines around the world when they created a robot car that the fish could control by swimming around the tank. Video shows the fish swim-driving all around a vast room.

Now researchers at University of Richmond have created a little motorized cage and trained rats to drive it by using Froot Loops cereal as a reward for correct performance. AFP reported that the researches have noticed a distinct lowering of the rats’ stress levels.

I would just like to point out that if my job were to just drive around sightseeing all day, eating Froot Loops and not paying for gas, my stress levels would go down, too. Where do I sign up?

But before I get fitted for my little robot car, let’s head to Russia amid echoes of early-1800s Napoleonic times.

The Associated Press reported four days ago that a professor at St. Petersburg State University, who was an obsessive Napoleon expert and rabid historical re-enactor, killed his girlfriend, who was a student. The man was caught while trying to throw her body parts in the Moika River, and he has admitted to the crime.

AFP says he was so drunk as he was working on disposing of the woman’s body that he fell into the icy river, and that was how he was caught. It was also how he ended up in the hospital being treated for hypothermia.

One can only hope that after fair trial, his sentence is exile to a remote island, perhaps in the northern reaches of Russia’s Arctic lands.

Let’s end on a happy note, though, returning to Australia — this time in the bushland of South Australia. A landowner in Sydney, who was monitoring a remote camera he had installed on his unoccupied country property, noticed that someone had written SOS in the dirt. He notified authorities, and they found a 55-year-old woman who had been lost in the outback for three days, but had stumbled across the property and had the wits to notice the camera.

What are the odds of that happening?

My guess is it’s something like the odds of having a rat drive up to your foot begging for a Froot Loop.

——

What are the odds that we will one day read about an Australian gold fish and an English rat racing around the Daytona 500 track? I’ll take that bet at [email protected].