Saturday, March 27, 2010

French Nerds Read My Blog


French nerds read my blog! How strange is that possum?

Some of my regular readers may recall that last month, shortly after BMW Oracle had won the America's Cup, I wrote a post pointing out that the real credit for the win should be given to the "nerds" who had designed the monster trimaran that won the cup. I couldn't resist pricking the over-inflated balloon of American pride in the win by pointing out that many of The Nerds Who Won The America's Cup were not actually American but.... yikes.... French!!! In particular I highlighted the roles of
Vincent Lauriot Prévost and Marc Van Peteghem, the two principals in the multihull design firm VPLP.

Today I received an email from Katrina Kelshall at VPLP saying that they had had a good laugh over my post, and that they weren't ashamed to be called nerds. To prove the point, she attached a couple of photos of what Team VPLP were wearing in Valencia for the Cup: "90 x 90 Dare 2 B Square T-shirts". Get it?


French nerds read my blog! How strange.

9 comments:

will said...

il y a meme les francophiles qui lisent tillerman. ou la la!!

O Docker said...

Mais où sont les nerds d'antan?

KiwiYates said...

Hi Tillerman,
I'm a Kiwi who sails in Eustis with Sam Chapin. Your "possom" is actually an oppossum, from Aussie originally but was also introduced for its fur to NZ. It has now run wild and is destroying a lot of native forest. Like most Aussies, it is a huge noxious (or obnoxious) problem. And don't forget all the Kiwis on both those boats.....

Tillerman said...

I think Aussie possums are much cuter than American possums, KiwiYates. That's why I married one.

Pat said...

Dear mercy buckets

Joe said...

Buckets of ducats.

Calling Dr. Wiki:
Didelphimorphia (pronounced /daɪˌdɛlfɨˈmɔrfi.ə/) is the order of common opossums of the Western Hemisphere. They are commonly also called possums, though that term is also applied to Australian fauna of the suborder Phalangeriformes. The Virginia Opossum is the original animal named opossum. The word comes from Algonquian wapathemwa meaning "white dog". Opossums probably diverged from the basic South American marsupials in the late Cretaceous or early Paleocene. A sister group is Paucituberculata (shrew opossums).

david swensen said...

you dont only have french nerds who read your blog..count me in! ;)

Melissa said...

Oh - now things all start to become clearer - a POM & an Aussie, living in the US.....

my2fish said...

what is a possum? is that the same as an opossum? or is that species indigenous only to the O Dock?

very strange.

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