|
  It wasn't until I moved to Vermont in the
mid 1980s that I first heard about
cow tipping
(which is mostly just legend). Now there is a high
tech version of cow tipping known as
Smart Car tipping, and it is definitely NOT legend. 'Smart' began as
an adjective that referred to a class of hybrid cars whose small, lightweight form
factor resulted in high fuel efficiency, but 'Smart' became a noun
when Mercedes-Benz capitalized on the nomenclature to name its car that. Hopefully,
only the all-electric Smart Cars are being tipped or the eco-warriors that pervade
SF are becoming eco-terrorists by risking HAZMAT cleanup scenarios with fuel and
oil spills in the city streets.
 Back in the
1960s and 1970s when wee little foreign cars were often the butt of jokes, Volkswagen
(VW) Bugs and Beetles found themselves falling victim to pranks. Their relatively
diminutive size rendered them easily picked up by four guys and relocated to other
areas of a parking lot, turned 90° in a parking space
 between two cars, put up on cinder blocks
so the wheels didn't touch the pavement, and other such shenanigans. In fact, the
instructor (Russ Lorenzen) for the electrical vocational course I high school
drove a VW Beetle and on several occasions some of the most muscular guys in class
would turn Russ' car's in its parking spot. We referred would tell him it was his
fault for teaching us inductive reasoning so we couldn't resist rotating his car's
vector by +90°. Unfortunately, pranksters would sometimes roll the cars onto their
roofs, often causing gas and/or oil to contaminate the vehicle and ground. Hanging
a VW from the Golden Gate Bridge has been a long-standing prank by senior engineering
classes for many years.
Posted June 9, 2014
|
