Brush with technology [Editorial]

SPORTS LIKE speed skating and the luge will never cross our minds for years at a time. Whatever else we're doing, we won't be wondering how far or fast you have to skate to be in with a chance of a gold, or what the top speed is for a four-man bobsleigh team. And then, once every four years, it seems this casual lack of interest is suspended. Suddenly, everyone is an expert on snow and ice, and what it takes to get across it as fast or as artistically as is humanly possible. People are talking up our chances in alpine skiing, the 'Nordic combined' or the 'skeleton'. And they're obsessively following curling, a sport they haven't given a second's thought to for four years, and explaining the latest brushing technique on the kitchen floor.