MadYaker wrote: » Lamborghini makes tractors as well as cars.
uch wrote: Actually it's the other way round, they make cars as well as Tractors, Tractors were their original business, owner just fancied making himself a supercar and voila
RiderOnTheStorm wrote: » Haven't got time to look up exact story/detail, so pls forgive any minor errors. According to urban story, Mr Lamborghini wanted to buy a Ferrari, but they would not sell him one. Ferrari are (still) very picky who they sell to. Just having enough money isn't enough. They regarded Mr Lamborghini as "just a farmer", albeit a very rich one. So he hired a Ferrari designer (or engineer?) and he dedicated some of his tractor factory to making cars. Thus started a great rivalry between the 2 super car makers....and their fans.
Realt Dearg Sec wrote: » I'm not sure how one would decide which thing is the MAIN theme, different readings identify different dimensions of the text. When I was teaching it we also discussed the tension in the novel between modernity (and science, technology, rationalism) and the archaic (the magical, the animalistic), van helsing being a clear representative of the former and Dracula in some ways the latter. That tension was an important part of Victorian society as it came to terms with Darwinism, industrialisation, etc and so on, and there was a kind of anxiety or fear of the premodern. A student of mine noted that when Harker (or whatever name is!) goes to Transylvania first, the journey is punctuated by a gradual deterioration of the specificity of time. So leaving London you have exact departure times of trains and so on, to the minute, while as he approaches his destination the times of his transports become less exact, eventually being measured in days. The idea of needing to know the exact time is itself a product of the industrial agree, in particular the train, which connected massively disparate places and required the standardisation of time to an extent never before known (and the formalisation if time zones). The novel uses descent into an informal sense of time as a way of measuring his movement away from the rational and the civilised, and into the unknown, the archaic, which is linked in various ways with fear, and anxieties of the age about things outside of "civilisation", a kind of definition that was increasingly coming to help justify the empire (see the image of van helsing drawing a circle in the snow into which no evil can come). So, there really are a lot of things going on in the novel, none of this even scratches the surface of the issues of sexual repression you're talking about (though it's probably related to that idea if keeping libidinous uncontrollable forces outside of rational society). There's plenty to be said about the conflict between an emergent middle class, as represented by Harker and his wife, and a declining aristocracy that is threatened by the Ascension of such people. It's really a novel that you could spend years teasing out the interpretive possibilities. It resonates in so many contexts. For example the Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes wrote a short novel, Vlad, depicting Dracula reemerging in present day Mexico City, where he is a surrogate for the drug cartels and the vampiric relationship they have with the country. I could go on but this isn't really quite on the topic of the thread (that and nobody asked me!).
bonzodog2 wrote: » I once had some forestry safety wellies made by Nokia
DEFTLEFTHAND wrote: » Yes. The company was founded in the 1800s and has been involved in a vast array of different ventures in its history. Paper mills, rubber products, hospital equipment.
goose2005 wrote: » I think you'd really like "Who Is Dracula's Father?" by John Sutherland, which really goes into all the details. For example, he totally rejects any connection to Vlad the Impaler - Dracula clearly goes back earlier, and is possible the son of Attila the Hun!
Wibbs wrote: » He set out to make a better, more reliable high speed Italian grand tourer.
Candie wrote: » Every time I see it I'm struck by just how beautiful a bird the Concorde was. It's just such a gorgeous triumph of aviation engineering, so impossibly elegant.
bonzodog2 wrote: » I remember seeing it take off on probably a test flight in maybe 1972-3 from about 10-15 miles away from RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire
Candie wrote: » bonzodog2 wrote: » I remember seeing it take off on probably a test flight in maybe 1972-3 from about 10-15 miles away from RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire I'd say that was as elegant to see as watching a ballerina dance. I envy you, I'll never see the Concorde in flight outside of old videos.
snorrie wrote: » I was in a Concorde once. There is one in a technical museum in Germany, an Air France model. I remember feeling very claustrophobic. The cabin was very narrow and the ceiling very low. I couldn't wait to get out but you had to wait for people to come up the aisle so you could get out. I nearly passed out.
snorrie wrote: » At the beginning of the 20th century a fellow called August Horch was working for Carl Benz designing automobiles. He thought he could do better on his own so he set up August Horch and Co. The name Horch doesn't exactly trip off the tongue so he was looking for a new name for his company and for his cars. One evening, his son was doing his Latin homework and said to his Da: "Vater, did you know that our family name, Horch is "audi" in Latin?" And August had his company name. Horch is the Germany for hark, like in "Hark the Herald Angels Sing." It's audi in Latin, like audio, auditory, etc.
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