AIs that understand cricket could have an impact on global politics
IIRC, in the weeks during the situation re the Falklands slowly simmering towards boiling point, Punch suggested defusing the situation by teaching cricket to the Argentinians. Because historically, no two cricketing nations had ever gone to war on each other.
The other suggestion for coping with the crisis was to teach youself bowls, as that is the thing to do to remain calm in the event of an approaching hostile armada.
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Slartibartfast interrupted his train of thought at this point as if sensing what was going through his mind.
"The game you know as cricket," he said, and his voice still seemed to be wandering lost in subterranean passages, "is just one of those curious freaks of racial memory which can keep images alive in the mind aeons after their true significance has been lost in the mists of time. Of all the races on the Galaxy, only the English could possibly revive the memory of the most horrific wars ever to sunder the Universe and transform it into what I'm afraid is generally regarded as an incomprehensibly dull and pointless game.
"Rather fond of it myself," he added, "but in most people's eyes you have been inadvertently guilty of the most grotesque bad taste. Particularly the bit about the little red ball hitting the wicket, that's very nasty."
Biting the hand that feeds IT
