AI and DATA Centers Question Why ??

 Rewritten by Chat GPT on July 16, 2026 with the old 2017  blog still on my blog site. Longest Continuous Game  by ABC News on January 6, 2017

 At this time throughout the United States, where  "Data centers" Building is being refused by governments because of the electricity and water usage (cooling) needed. One would wonder about storage of this blog which I wrote 10 years ago and today almost 10 years later,  the original newpaper text is still available online.

 Stored in some Data center probably in Australia  - 10 years later. Lawn bowler attempts 73-hour game at Cloncurry Bowls Club after misreading world record - ABC News

Longest Continuous Game

A man in outback Queensland endured blistering sun and heavy rain to set the world record for the longest continuous game of lawn bowls. The obvious question is: how do you extend a game of lawn bowls for that length of time?

Cloncurry Bowls Club manager Shayne Barwick began playing on Friday morning and continued for 73 hours, delivering his final bowl at 10:00 a.m. today in front of a cheering crowd of supporters.

The phrase "continuous game" raises an interesting question. What constituted the game, and what caused the delays between the rolling of the bowls? Under the Laws of the Sport, a game can consist of 18 ends. If an end is burned, it must be replayed, so I wanted to examine the possible calculations behind how such a record could be achieved.

I would suggest that the game was played as Pairs, with a skip capable of delivering a very accurate running bowl. It would be necessary to burn ends deliberately to prolong the game. Presumably, the opposing team would also have been playing pairs and would have needed a similarly skilled skip to achieve the same result.

Why was it only Shayne who officially broke the record? This would suggest that the other players were replaced by as many substitutes as the club could find during the attempt. I am not aware of any rule limiting the number of player substitutions in this type of record attempt.

With the record rules allowing a 10-minute break for every four hours of play, a 72-hour attempt would permit 180 minutes, or three hours, of breaks. That means the actual game had to involve approximately 69 hours of playing time.

Australian rules define delays during play quite clearly:

"Players shall play their bowl without delay and when players are changing position as part of the play of an end this change of position shall occur without delay." (Rule 55, Bowls Australia)

Next, consider the time taken for each bowl to roll and the effect of green speed. Fast greens in Australia typically produce a bowl roll of around 20 seconds or less. Even on a longer green of approximately 33 metres, the rolling time does not increase significantly because the bowl must simply be delivered with greater pace to reach the jack. Regardless of the length, the bowl still comes to rest after roughly 20 seconds.

The next question is: how long could the game realistically be stretched?

Suppose we allowed three minutes between each bowl being delivered. In an 18-end pairs game with 16 bowls per end, there would be 288 bowls. At three minutes per bowl, that equals 864 minutes, or 14.4 hours, to complete the game. Adding the three hours of permitted breaks gives a total maximum duration of approximately 17.4 hours.

However, the record lasted around 72 hours. That still leaves roughly 55 hours of additional playing time that must have been created somehow. The obvious mechanism would have been burned ends that had to be replayed.

Using the same assumptions, 16 bowls at three minutes each produce a 48-minute end. If we assume the end was burned before the final bowl—perhaps after the 13th or 14th bowl—the average wasted time per burned end would be about 40 minutes before the end had to be replayed.

If approximately 55 hours, or 3,300 minutes, of additional playing time had to be created, then more than 80 ends would have needed to be burned and restarted before the record could reach its final duration.

The calculations may not be exact, but they provide an interesting perspective on what may have been required to achieve such a remarkable record.

Regardless of the precise numbers, it was an impressive feat of endurance and an effective promotional event. Those involved reportedly raised around $20,000 toward the construction of a verandah over the club's disability access ramp.

Perhaps my calculations are incorrect, but however you analyse the attempt, it remains a remarkable achievement.