Horse 3208 - "The Homer" - Was It Really That Bad?

There is an episode of "The Simpsons" in which Homer discovers that he has a half-brother, who is named Herbert Powell. Powell is a successful businessman and who owns a smallish motor company, until he meets Homer and this puts into action a chain of events through which he is bankrupted and eventually becomes a hobo.

The episode, so very obviously set in 1991, has Powell Motors struggling against the tide of Japanese imported cars and in some kind of last ditch effort, he enlists Homer to design a motor car; which given that it is Homer Simpson, will always be disaster. Such is the narrative drive of The Simpsons that no matter what kind of problem befalls them or whatever success strikes, the net distance travelled narratively always must snap back to exactly zero.

When given the opportunity to get a free car, Homer is asked what kind of car that he wants. His requests are actually ludicrously straightforward. He either wants a big car, or a car with a lot of pep. When Powell Motors is unable to fulfil even these simple desires, Herbert loses is mind and charges Homer with designing a car which will save the company. The car that Homer Simpson 'designs' with the help of a team which very obviously has zero initiative or imagination of their own, is so terrible that it apparently bankrupts the company. 

However, when viewed through the lens of both history and removing the comedic devices, are the actual things that Homer Simpson wanted in a car insensible?

- A ball on the antenna, so you can find it in a parking lot?

You could have possibly costed that at about five bucks.

- Multiple horns, all of which play “La Cucaracha”?

Put that on his car. That's not a production feature.

- A separate soundproof bubble dome for kids, with optional restraints and muzzles?

Yeah, nah. That's daft. Don't install it.

As for the idea of optional restraints, various Design Regulations have become harder and more strict with it comes to the installation of points for booster seats and child capsules. This would be about meeting Design Regulations. Muzzles are likely a step too far.

- One Powell Motors employee suggests a “built-in video game”?

The various infotainment systems on cars have become more and more silly. You can get cars with Bluetooth and ApplePlay et cetera as standard. My Mazda 2 which was a $20,000 motor car, has electronic everything and Bluetooth and USB ports. In 1991, an AM/FM radio with a five-bang graphic equaliser would have been pretty neat.

- Gigantic cup holders for the drink cups from the Kwik-E-Mart?

Some manufacturers have made bigger cup holders to hold huge cups (or mini–buckets for fried chicken), but in general, the 350mL and 375mL can is still the industry standard, and the 592mL (20 fl.oz.) cup in America has also remained unchanged.

- Soundproof interiors?

Insulation from road noise has definitely improved since 1991. Today there is active noise cancellation which uses embedded microphones to find the offending frequencies and destructive addition to cancel out sounds. It only works for engine drone and wind noise and does not work to remove the noise of children.

- Shag carpeting?

The most horrid carpeted car that I have ever sat in, was someone's 1985 Holden Commodore Calais VK. It had a rumbly V8 up front and a square LED display and it had blue plush pile over every conceivable surface. The owner was obsessive about keeping it clean and smell free.

What of the two original criteria? A big car and a car with a lot of "pep" with an engine that will make people think “the world is coming to an end”?

This is perhaps where fiction in the episode was able draw so much from the truth. Cars had become smaller following the 1974 and 1979 Oil Crises. Ford's flagship car in America was the Taurus which had a 3.0L engine, General Motors' could do no better with its wheezy V6s. The whole automotive industry was being hamstrung by an inability to develop new technology and a need to comply with the best practice as embodied by the Californian Automotive Fuel Emissions requirements, or CAFE, which grossly limited power output. Gone were the 7.0L V8 dinosaurs from only a decade before. 

The 1990s were kind of as the so-called "malaise era" was coming to an end. Ford had discontinued its 5.7L Cleveland V8 and was only tentatively bringing back the 5.0L Windsor V8. Chevrolet had abandoned its 5.7L V8 for family sedans but kept them for cars like the Camaro and Corvette. Little did anyone know that there would be a second age of ridiculous power to come, as the internal combustion engine has had one last hurrah.

Engines like the 707 horsepower which go in the Dodge Hellcat, or 7.3L V8 engines which now appear in trucks, would have satisfied Homer Simpson. Sure, we're now building pedestrian killing trucks and SUVs instead of sedans and hatchbacks, but idiots like Homer Simpson exist in their thousands.

As for the final styling of the car? Yes, it is hideous but it says a lot about Powell Motors if one prototype which would have caused a ridiculous amount of hype and which cost $82,000, is enough to bankrupt the company. The Holden Commodore VE, of which the project started possibly as far back as 2002, had more than a $1bn worth of development poured into it. That $82,000 in 2006 terms, to make the two comparable, was worth $147,677. Unless Powell Motors had tooled up an entire factory, which includes the stamping shop and resetting all of the welding robots at very least, to build this as a production car, then building one car should not have been enough to bankrupt a company. Besides which, I am sure that there would have been at least one loon in the world who would have bought that as a bespoke show car.

The "Homer" that Homer designs is comically awful from a stylistic point of, but in all honesty, is it actually terrible? Sports cars such as the Toyota 86 and the Honda Civic Type-R have in fact sprouted wings and spoilers. Cars do not have bubble domes but they are way more rounded than they were in 1991. Even greens and hideous purples have appeared on cars since then. 

A properly done show car such as the VT "Marilyn" Monaro which was at the Sydney Motor Show one year, was enough to ensure that Holden Motor Company were able to take deposits on cars that hadn't even been delivered. Tooling up for a car which mead use of plenty of already existing parts, wasn't really that difficult. Powell Motors apparently are so stuck and set in their ways, that producing one show car, is the straw which broke the camel's back.

As The Simpsons is a comedy program, there was never going to be any kind of sensible resolution to the central dilemma of the narrative. I on the other hand, with the benefit of hindsight and a very great deal of resentment that the Australian motor industry was shut down, do not understand why cars like the Ford Taurus, Ford Five Hundred Ford Fusion, or Chevrolet Impala from Generation 7 onwards ever needed to exist. Even within the narrative of The Simpsons, Homer does not car where his car comes from (he has a Croatian-built car), and the truth of the matter is that cars like the Ford Falcon and Holden Commodore in Australia were always better engineered, better backed, better tested, and better built than their American counterparts. 

To solve the internal problem of the episode, Herbert Powell could have bought a sedan from another company and slapped his own badge on it. Actually, the American motor industry could have done this many times and sold foreign cars under their own labels but instead kept on choosing not to, for reasons I fail to understand. This episode of The Simpsons is therefore not necessarily a commentary on the boneheadedness of Homer Simpson, but a parable for the American motor industry generally.

Horse 3207 - Eudaimonia - Why Bother?

I encountered a question recently which has stuck in my craw and will not come out. It is a question so incredibly irritating that it simply refuses to go away unless attempts are made to answer it. It also dove-tails nice into those series of posts which Horse has previously written about that grand question of Eudaimonia. Simply put, that question is:

"Why be good?"

I love the elegance of this question. In just three words it takes a sledgehammer to the egg that lies at the very heart of the issue. This is the beauty of "why" on full display. 

I think that we can all agree that a theoretical reasonable person, our Billy Brown from Sydney Town or Jilly Mavis from Brisvegas, will be carrying around in their heads some basic imprint of the underlying planks of common law. Don't kill people. Don't steal from people. Don't hit people. Invariably this will be then backed up by some variant of "the golden rule" which is "Do to others as you would have them do to you" or, "do not to others what you do not wish to have done to you." Variants of this exist across a whole host of cultures, religions, and law systems, and this can even be found in the  Code of Hammurabi. However just because this is practically universal and reasonably reasonable, does not make this so.

The Golden Rule I think implies that cultures, law systems, and religions, have all reasonably agreed that some kind of reasonable standard of universal justice exists. However, I still do not think that even The Golden Rule arrives at answering the question of why anyone should be good. The Golden Rule and justice itself can only last as long and as far as there is some authority big enough and powerful enough to enforce it. All forms of justice, be they restorative, retributive, or equitable, still rely upon that very brittle plank of "fairness" and immediately we run into a problem.

"Fairness" although a useful overlay from which to explain the word, is ultimately bunk. The reason for this is that humans are very much not impartial players in the game. Every one of us, has as the centre of the observable universe, a point which is roughly 19mm behind our corneas. When you then attach a personality, a mind, a soul, whatever, to observe and explain the kosmos from that centre of the observable universe, "fairness" devolves into a mere extension of relative selfishness. Considering that what is fair and just is always coloured by that viewpoint, it is a truly awful standard. Remember, 'tragedy' is when I cut my finger whereas 'comedy' is when you fall into an open pit and die.

If even the most readily agreeable rule immediately crumbles upon inspection, then it has to be thrown out. What if you inspect the authority by which cultures, law systems, and religions, assume to derive their reasonableness from. Again we have a problem. When you have self-interested  cultures, and law systems, even the destruction of people who are not you, can be made acceptable. Granted that you may have to invent some convenient cultural assumption or legal fiction or religious reason to enable that to happen, but if the underlying basis of the authority to determine what is and is not fair, just, or good, it itself not fair, just, or good, then even the plank of authority is itself bunk.

If we then interrogate that central authority which lies at the centre of the universe, a universe with no god has no inherent reason for being good, and a universe with one central all-powerful god also has no inherent reason for being good. Why should they? If you are that central all-powerful god then literally everything in the universe is answerable to you. Anyone and anything that questions your authority can be arbitrarily destroyed for the simple reason that might makes right. To be honest, I find the reason to be good because god is good, to be faulty because all this does is shift the question back to an already crumbled plank of authority, which is itself bunk.

Consistently, the question of "Why be good?" under those circumstances falls back to the opinion and choice of someone. History is littered with cases where cultures, religions, and law systems, have had to choose that other people have inherent dignity and are worthy as being accepted as objects to be good to. Questions of storge, agape, eros and philos, including civic philos are all dependent on a choice which has been made by someone and especially in the case of civic philos where the state has been forced to make that choice because people have demanded it for a very long time. However, the question of "Why be good?" when it is dependent on choice, fails to be answered. Whilst someone may choose that the other is a worthy object to be good to, it still does not adequately arrive at answering of "Why be good?" in the first place.

If I have brushed aside The Golden Rule, the concepts of fairness and justice, and even seemingly explained that goodness is not necessarily dependent on authority itself, then what's left? It seems to me that the answer to the question of "Why be good?" is that it is good to be good. It is good to do good. Goodness is its own end. The telos of goodness is goodness. The kosmos has no problem with atomic concepts like this which are indivisible. Existence exists. 1=1. 

It is as if the kosmos actually does contain a priori elements, that there are unmovable movers, that there really can not be turtles all the way down. The fun thing is that my conclusion which is reasonably possibly wrong, because just like our theoretical reasonable persons of Billy Brown from Sydney Town or Jilly Mavis from Brisvegas, who carry around basic imprints of how the kosmos works in their heads does not make this so, was also arrived at a long time ago:

But goodness, since it has the aspect of desirable, implies the idea of a final cause, the causality of which is first among causes, since an agent does not act except for some end; and by an agent matter is moved to its form. Hence the end is called the cause of causes. Thus goodness, as a cause, is prior to being, as is the end to the form. 

- Summa Theologica, Prima Secundae, Thomas Aquinas (1274)

Since as a reasonable actor, I can only come to a reasonable conclusion, then I think that it is reasonably reasonable that the the question of "Why be good?" is answered "because it is good to be good and that is the end to itself", is itself good enough.

Horse 3206 - Vote 1 IRV, 2 Star, 3 Score.

From time to time I get emails from people requesting me to write a piece on a thing. I am happy to do so because given enough material, I would write day and night like I am running out of time. Send me an email to rollo75@yahoo.com.au and I might write a piece for you; including if your suggestion is silly.

This week, I have been asked (rather rudely via email) to try and justify why Instant-Run-Off Voting (IRV) is in my opinion a better voting system than the writer's preferred system of Star Voting and Score Voting. Firstly, we need a brief description of the two voting systems.

Instant-Run-Off Voting is where the voter ranks all their choices 1, 2, 3, 4 et cetera, and when the votes are tallied, the candidate with the lowest number of votes is eliminated, and their votes are then distributed according to the next choice of the voter. In principle Instant-Run-Off Voting asks what would you like? And then if you can't have that, then what would you like? And it keeps on asking that question until at least 50%+1 of the votes are for one candidate, who wins.

In Star Voting and Score Voting systems, voters are asked to indicate their relative approval to various candidates by rating them relative to each other. If we assume that we can award 1-5 stars to whom the voter thinks is the best candidate, then they will award 5 stars to whom they think is the best and 0 stars to whom they think is the worst. These systems then either take a tally of average of the various scores and do maths to arrive at a winner. 

The argument in favour of these systems is that they indicate the relative approval of the electorate for the various candidates and this satisfies a bunch of criteria which are nominally good at determining what people like. I will agree that Star Voting and Score Voting are good achieving these ends but that IRV demonstrates one thing better - hate.

The writer in their email who wishes to be anonymous, argues that IRV can lead to insincere voting where voters will preference a candidate whom they perceive will lose, even when they know that their preferred candidate will survive later, for the sole purposes of knocking out their more hated candidate. The writer asserts that tactical voting is a bad thing because it distorts the results because of push-over voting tactics. Again, I will agree that this absolutely happens and will readily admit that I will do this and have done this in the past; precisely because IRV demonstrates one thing better - hate.

I have now mentioned hate twice as a feature and motive of IRV as though I was some kind of Sith Lord. In the words of my late mother "you shouldn't hate something unless you want it dead"; in the world of politics, wanting a campaign and even a political party to die and remain dead forever, are I think perfectly valid motives. IRV expresses that hate in the most excellent way and does so empirically.

Unlike voting for where people want to go for dinner where the outcome doesn't really matter if all of the choices are okay, politics is full of policies which different people think are excellent through to vile. Also unlike voting for where people want to go for dinner, the consequences are such that an elected candidate gets the job of being in power for many years at a time. Asking for the mere approval of the electorate isn't actually good enough. In a single-member district, where there is only one winner, then the voter is actively being asked to make a choice where the outcome is explicitly exclusionary. IRV actually forces the voter to make an explicitly exclusionary choice.

Push-over voting, where a voter preferences a candidate whom they perceive will lose, even when they know that their preferred candidate will survive later, for the sole purposes of knocking out their more hated candidate, is itself a deliberate action. The ballot box is itself a game of not only trying to get whom you want to win, to win, but also of to get whom you want to lose, to lose; and in some cases to never ever come back. If there are ten candidates rating from all-right, to okay, to meh, to cuss cuss cuss, then marking "10" in that last box for the cuss cuss cuss candidate not only expresses hate through the ballot box but is actually also quite cathartic.

Single-Member districts are themselves subject to Duverger's Law which says that in the long run a political system will tend towards two-party politics or two pelotons. This is because there are only two end outcomes in the game - win and lose. In the long run, teams generally form to knock the other out; this already front loads the electorate. If there are two groups who like/hate Allan Albertson and Betty Bingle, then sincerely voting for Carol Cox, Dave Digby, and Ektar the Exterminator ahead of the others, is I think a perfectly valid way of expressing hate at the ballot box. Voting CEDAB if you hate B is valid. Voting ADECB if you love A and hate B is also valid.

Instant-Run-Off Voting and especially voting 1 for someone's first preference, as an exclusionary choice. This is perfect when the result itself is exclusionary because there can only be one winner in a single member district. In Star Voting and Score Voting systems, voters are only asked for their approval and not their abject hate. Star Voting and Score Voting systems can lead to electing someone whom some of the electorate may tolerate but they can not deal with abject hate because 0 stars is not a disrete unit. 

Someone much smarter than I suggested that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. Star Voting and Score Voting systems can deal with approval but they are unable to determine a withholding of consent or a refusal to give consent. Instant-Run-Off Voting by its nature, which forces voters to make an empirical distinction between their preferences of candidates, explicitly tells you who they hate because that person will be last.

Horse 3205 - The Barbenheimer Bin Fire

With the two movies Barbie and Oppenheimer currently in cinemas at the same time, the opportunity to watch both of them as a kind of textual contrast seems really delicious to a lot of people. The interblobs are full of the phenomenon of "Barbenheimer" and I have even heard of some people's desire to see the two films cut together and then redubbed in the same way that "Kung Pow! Enter the Fist" which was released in 2002 was a recut of the 1976 film "Tiger & Crane Fists" with new unrelated footage.

Personally, I have no interest in seeing Barbie but I might have some in seeing Oppenheimer, however my social media feeds are a mix of angry people from left and right parts of the economic spectrum along with authoritarians and libertarians all having a five bell alarm dumpster fire. Both films are said to have some king of luxury-gay-space-communism-apologist-cryptofacist-death-imperialst agenda; depending on which member of the commentariat is speaking. With every opinion turned up to 11, the wall of sound is such that as a neutral, I have no ability nor desire to bother to understand any nuance at all.

As I don't really care about any of this insane yell-fest, the things that I have found to be the funnest have been pink and black meme worthy contrasts, people trying to shoehorn quotes into both films, and the following graphic which in my mind looks like the kind of thing that you'd see for the Electoral College in a United States Presidential Election:

Presumably the degree to which something is trending in America, correlates to the level of anger at the thing because that's the way the interblobs work. The interblobs are the ultimate perpetual outrage machine for the simple reason that human nature is such that while pleasure and yumminess and happiness is good, it it fleeting and dissipates. On the other hand, rolling resentment and anger feeds itself. This is a phenomenon which newspapers have known about since the beginning of newspapers which is why the adage "it it bleeds it leads" works so well. Indeed being angry and having designated enemies is the entire basis and business model of a lot of print and TV media. 

We can probably conclude that Oppenheimer is trending in New Mexico because that's where the nuclear bomb tests were conducted and where Oppenheimer was based. The rest of the map is a mystery to me, other than to say that something major has happened in Mississippi as the index figure has reached maximum. Also what's kind of odd is that this map would not be out of place for the Electoral College in a United States Presidential Election.

If we take pink as red and blue as blue, then plug those trending index numbers into the expected votes for the Electoral College in a United States Presidential Election then we get this:

Where the index is 0, I have taken this to mean that the state is undecided and that this would remain a toss-up. Something really interesting emerges. That is that six states which are currently sitting on 0, are sufficiently powerful enough to render the imaginary Barbie-Oppenheimer election for 20XX, too close to call. As the Barbiecrats still need 26 and the Oppenblicans still need 31, then this imaginary election swings on the hinges of Michigan and Pennsylvania. I would suggest that Barbie needs to mount a campaign based on building pink Cadillacs and rock-and-roll and Oppenheimer needs to campaign for steel production and higher automotive tarrifs. 

Perhaps the freakiest thing about this whole Barbie-Oppenheimer thing is that are not quite contemporaries. Oppenheimer worked on the Manhattan Project and the the Atomic Energy Commission before being driven out during the second red scare as a supposed communist. Barbie on the other hand, is a doll which was first introduced in 1959 and well and truly into the Cold War.

Assuming that the peak performance of an organisation happens when the average age of everyone within it is 38, then that puts the birth dates for the two enterprises as 1907 and 1921. It is reasonably safe to assume that probably everyone involved in either is either very very old or very very dead. Either way, both stories either because nobody is left alive or because the work is only making use of the branding and intellectual property, are both works of some degree or completely textual fantasy. I can make that remark without having seen either because that's how films work.

Ultimately the Barbie-Oppenheimer outrage election is about the audience of 2023 yelling in all directions and running from side to side like a bunch of brainless sheep. Also, before you accuse me on commenting on films that I haven't seen, remember that Barbenheimer started out as a meme flame war and that has been very much on display and burning brightly from the outset. I would still like to see both films put through the meat grinder and made into one new glorious abomination sausage.

Aside:

I know very little about Barbie lore. I do not know if she was/is intended to be a teenager or young woman but if we take her age to be 20, then she would have been born in 1939. Barbie is therefore a member of the Silent Generation, who would likely have little memories of the Second World War which would be sensible, but who would have grown up with rising awareness that what Oppenheimer started was leading to nuclear brinkmanship of two superpowers. That is unless of course Barbie is truly a vapid and empty vessel, with no knowledge whatsoever of the world of 1959 which she found herself in. The actual real-life Barbie would be 84 years old now. 

Horse 3204 - Easily Countered With !!!!

The way that the algorithm works at chess.com means that if you play someone at about the same skill level, you can expect to win about 50% of the win. A database of millions of users provides possibly the truest set of calculations of Elo within any organisation.

I find myself being able to win plenty of games against people in or around the same kinds of skill level and then get absolutely beaten back into the stone age by people a thousand and two thousand Elo points higher. However the problem with playing against people rated roughly the same as you; especially down here at pleb level, is that you get to see the same rubbish again and again. 

One of the consistent things that you see at slightly better than rank amateur chess is the Wayward Queen Attack; which is used by people primarily trying to win cheap Elo points off of other users. 

Wayward Queen begins:

1. e4 e5

2. Qh5

Moving the e4 pawn to the centre of the board opens the door for the Light Bishop to play the cross diagonal and for the Queen to hang out on a white diagonal with only the opponent's f7 pawn standing in the way. play the g-pawn too quickly and the queen then takes Black's e-pawn and places it on the long dark fianchetto to take out Black's Kingside Rook. From here, the White Queen can do all kinds of merry damage before running away. This leave Black in a Not Good™ position.

If Black makes a complete dog's breakfast of the whole thing, then instead of a Not Good™ position, this results in a Scholar's Mate by having thw White Queen sit on f7, being supported by the Light Bishop on c4. 

If you are playing in pleb level chess, then this is such a common attack, that the obvious counter should also be known; which is why White should definitely never do it. However, since we are down here in pleb level chess, not doing something is often mistaken for doing; so people will do it anyway. 

This is the perfect counter to the Wayward Queen.

https://www.chess.com/game/f4b04be9-25fa-11ee-83c3-175b9801000f

Wayward Queen.

1. e4 e5 

This accepts the attack.

2. Qh5 Nc6

As the White Queen has moved to h5, the only reasonable response is to defend that pawn. d6 might be a good choice but Nc6 is nastier as this then gives opportunity to develop an attack

3. Nc3 g6

I have no idea what the White Knight is doing here. Black's next move must be to kick the Queen away. However, since this is pleb level Chess, White has never learnt anything at all and must continue to attack f7 at all costs. The only sensible thing for White to do is to retreat to f3.

4. Qf3 Qe7

White retreats to f3.

Black Queen to e7 is in preparation for the Light Bishop because at pleb level chess, because at pleb level Chess White has never learnt anything at all.

5. b3 Nd4

This was an unexpected turn of events. I was fully expecting White's Light Bishop to go to c4 but because they panicked, b3 is a move of incompetence.

Black Knight to d4 attacks that Queen. White must move that Queen because not doing so loses it in a stellarly terrible trade.

6. Qe3 Nxc2+

Queen to e3 attacks the Black Knight. This is a sensible move but only at the end of a chain of utter stupidity.

The Black Knight's next move is of course to c2, thus forking the King and the Queen and the a1 Rook.

A check is usually marked as ! a fork is usually marked as !! a fork of two major pieces is usually marked as !! a fork which places the King in check and forks two major pieces can be marked as !!!!

At this point, with only pawn having been taken, White resigned.

1. e4 e5 

2. Qh5 Nc6

3. Nc3 g6

4. Qf3 Qe7

5. b3 Nd4

6. Qe3 Nxc2+

As far as I can tell, precisely because this is pleb level chess, then the Wayward Queen is the chess equivalent of griefing n00bs in an MMO. While a "griefer" is someone who derives pleasure from the act of annoying other users and being a general nuisance, the punchline to this sad joke of an attack, is that there is a counter to it and it is just as easily deployed. Black advancing a pawn to e5 after e4 has been played, is fairly standard, as is playing the knight to defend it. Neither of those moves have left the book. 

The secondary punchline to countering a Wayward Queen attack, is that down here at pleb level chess, the likely gain at the end of it all, is no more than about 10 Elo. We are all playing for chump change. So why bother? It would be easier playing actual chess.

Horse 3203 - He Probably Didn't Care Why He Was Studying Philosophy

This week at work, we had a client arrive off the street as a cold client, wanting us to do his tax return. This chap aged 22, was doing a Law/Economics/Philosophy degree and will more than likely end up as a staffer for the Liberal Party, where the ending of the career path is almost to become a Member of Parliament as if by right.

Maybe to hold it over me as someone whom he guessed was lesser in intelligence or class (because I work in an accountancy firm) he asked me what I thought of various things in philosophy. I think that he was quite surprised when I mentioned Aristotle and his discourse on "telos" in the Nicomachean Ethics, which in a roundabout way speaks of what the end goal, what the point, what the purpose of things like Law and Philosophy were. I would expect that particularly Aristotle and Plato should be superstars of western classical philosophy but I guess that whatever his course was, decided that they were interesting but ultimately to be moved on from. Almost certainly because I work in an accounting office, I very much want to ask the pragmatic questions of telos and ethos, and because I am a person of faith to ask the questions of philos and logos and theos.

I do not know where this puts me in the world of philosophy but due to my continual questions of if something is true and can be proven or not, questioning what and whom a thing helps, and how whatever the thing in question is is supposed to make the world better and/or for whom, but I get the impression that I am probably somewhere on the fringe and asking questions which philosophy students in universities today, simply do not care about. Probably that's a function of the fact that university students want to turn in papers to get the marks and get the degrees so that they can go off into the world and jump onto the treadmill of employment but is that really what university is for? Surely it is actually about scaring people into the very real notion that we don't really know 1% of 1% of anything, and that the kosmos is complex and confusing and scary, and we need to ask questions of it all the time.

Looking in from the outside it seems to me that philosophy is like looking at those warning labels on electrical substations that say "Danger: Keep Out" because once you move past the labels, it gets very scary very quickly. The big questions should alarm people and philosophy should require a critical disposition because even you do nothing, the finiteness and smallness of humans becomes all too apparent. 

The biggest statement about humans which should scare everyone practically all the time, is that humans are finite beings, who live on a finite world, with finite resources and who occupy a finite place in space and time. The reason that that should scare people, is that those statements about humans and the world being finite, are immutable and unchangeable. 

Sooner or later, every single person must face the fact whether they like it or not, that they will die. Religion makes claims about what happens after death and that definitely changes peoples attitude and perspective but even irreligious people, areligious people, agnostics, and hard atheists must eventually face head on, that they too will die. Human beings are finite and fragile creatures who live in the face of death.

Actually I think that there's something vaguely poetic about the fact that for people born naturally (that is not by Caesarian Section), that humans first entry into the world is between the points where urine and feces enter the world. Make whatever poetic claims you like but apart from a brief flash of pleasure (or not) humans first acts are to cause pain, and then enter the world between urine and feces. The last moment of a human's life may or may not be painful (I do not know) but after having caused paid, it is the lot for humans to ultimately return to being the dinner of worms, where once again the elements which made up a human body are converted back into the things that the Earth is made up of, through the process of urine and feces.

Yet even in the face of death, humans still have rational and even irrational desires. As limited and finite beings we have various animal desires, to eat and drink things, to have sex with things, to move to places where it is warmer or cooler and to be in physical comfort, and to go sleep, but all the while even satisfying animal desires simply isn't enough. Humans also have desires to love and be loved, to know and to be known, and because they are limited in space and time, to leave some kind of mark upon the world which will outlive them when they are gone and return to becoming worm food.

Probably because humans stand in the face of death, they also have rational and even irrational desires to decide what is and isn't true, and to make rational and even irrational decisions to hold on to what they think is true. At some point, everyone either through conscious effort or by falling back to a set of default, either accepts or invents some belief set. People might like to play with semantics here but at some point literally everyone must come up with some belief set, some degree of faith in their belief set (because it is impossible to believe in nothing), and accept or invent some rudimentary religion. Even if it is not formal, if religion is a set of practices based around what one believes and it is impossible to believe in nothing at all, then everyone has their own religion.

Formal religions where belief sets are codified exist, but even people who do not have formal religion in their attempts to hold into certainty in the face of death, still must arrive at something. Anyone who arrives at any kind of conclusion, must eventually ask the question of if that thing is either true or not. Defending what people think is true, is the essence of dogmatism. Likewise it follows that if dogmatism exists, then the questions of worship and idolatry also exist because the things that people are dogmatic about and hold out as being true, are the things that people hold as worthy of praise and worthy of defending.

Perhaps even more worrisome is the amount of power and force that people will wield in order to defend what they think is true. Eventually we have to conclude that anyone who has any kind of power, has to decide who gets to control it and what to do with it. When you have disagreement between different people about what to do with power, who controls power, and how those who have power are held to account, then invariably there are questions of dialogue.

It is those last few questions about power, particularly the control of power and the possibility of domination of everyone else which results from it, which should be of importance to someone doing a Law/Economics/Philosophy degree. Everything that is of economic value in the history of the world is either the resources in, on and under the ground and the people who live on it and the law exists because we want to make some kind of order of the chaos.

It is also those questions of the control of power and the possibility of domination of everyone else which I suspect is the reason why people who assume that by birthright, they have they ability to decide what to do with power and who controls power. Those other questions of how those who have power are held to account and questions of dialogue, are to be ignored, minimised and extinguished. It was curious that this week at least, this person maybe for the first time, found someone else who asked questions. I wonder if he liked them or wanted to dismiss them.

"It takes more courage to examine the corners of your own soul, then it does for a soldier to fight upon the battlefield."

- William Butler Yeats

Horse 3202 - The Wings Likely Didn't Do It

The thing about a good argument is that it is not mere contradiction but a series of propositions which are designed to establish a reasonable position. The thing about a bad argument is that it contains assertions which when contradicted by evidence, is still asserted as though it were fact. It is the latter that I come across when people assert that the rear wing on the NASCAR Car of Tomorrow caused flips and blowovers. I think that this car is unjustly maligned and that the accusation made of its rear wing is misplaced. 

The reason why the NASCAR Car of Tomorrow had a rear wing as opposed to the simple spoiler which had been in place since the mid 1980s, was itself in response to "the big one" which had become a feature in NASCAR racing. Cars travelling together at close proximity in very big packs, were beginning to have accidents of 20 cars in them. By keeping the rear of the car more grounded, it was hoped that the cars would track straighter and finally enter the world of modern motor racing. By adding end plate vanes to the rear of new rear wings, it was hoped that cars would track straighter and truer.

During 2007 and 2008 though, the accepted story that the rear wing was causing flips and apparently backed up by cars flipping and blowing over, ran away from the truth, and partway through the Car of Tomorrow's run, the rules were reverted back to an older style spoiler. The flips still happened but don't let the truth get in the way of a good story. This post is about arguing against the story with a series of propositions about why things work the way they do; instead of how they are imagined to be.

This is a tale of forces, of wings, and of air. Let's begin with the air.

Air is a physical substance which has weight. Air is a mixture of various gases, of mostly mostly nitrogen (78%), some oxygen (21%) and other gases such as water vapour, argon and carbon dioxide. All of these gases are made of various molecules of the gases in constant motion. Air pressure is created by these molecules moving around. Things that move create forces because things are made of stuff and stuff when accelerated, creates a force.

Things that fly, make use of those forces, either by moving through the air or by floating in it. Moving air is a swirly mass of forces which creates lift, which is itself a force, which lifts things like kites, balloons, birds, and aeroplanes. You can move air and make it do what you want it to do, with fins, blades, vanes, planes, et cetera et cetera et cetera.

An aeroplane as the name suggests, is a device which moves a thing through the air, with a series of planes which we call wings. A wing is just a fancy plane, which is used to control air moving over and under it. Aeroplane wings are shaped to make air move faster over the top of the wing. When air moves faster, the pressure of that particular air decreases. The pressure of the air on the top of a wing is less than the pressure on the bottom of the wing. Since practically the entirety of the physical world is about cancelling forces, an aeroplane wing wants to cancel the difference in air pressure on top of it and does this by trying to move upwards. This upwards movement is useful because the difference in air pressure creates a force on the wing that lifts the wing up into the air.

Physics is completely apathetic and agnostic when it comes to the orientation of wings in air; so if you turn a wing upside down, instead of lift being produced as a force to suck the wing upwards, downforce is produced to suck the wing downwards. The reason why wings are used on racecars and high-performance vehicles is because that downforce pulls the car downwards; which makes the tyres grip the road better. Since the only point of contact between a car and the ground is through its tyres, then having a wing pull the car into the ground is useful as it means that power is more efficiently transferred through the tyres into the road and also helps a car go through a corner better. Making a car go through a corner better means that when the corner straightens out, more power can be put to the road faster. The point of a racecar is to go around a track as quickly as possible.

However, if you turn that same wing backwards to the direction of travel because the car has spun, then you are no longer presenting the same shape of wing to air. Instead what is being oresented is a shape which because it was designed to face in the other direction, is now tilted upwards well beyond its stall angle, and where instead of the traailing edge having an attached layer of boundary air at higher pressure which creates downforce, that trailing side is now in turbulent air and is creating eddies. 

Downforce is not a push force because air hits the front of the wing but rather, a pull force as the whole device is sucked downwards to try and cancel an area of lower pressure. When the wing faces backwards, there is a baffling push force trying to push the wing upwards but no pulling suck force which creates lift on the other side. 

I know that this might require some rudimentary thinking but in order for that wing to present itself backwards to the air in the direction of travel, it means that the whole car must have turned around immediately before it. This is where the real world makes liars out of people claiming that the wing caused the Car of Tomorrow to flip. Instead of that wing being the first thing to present itself to the air, the thing that presents itself is the whole side of the car and then underside of the car. The most dramatic examples of the underside of a car presenting itself to the air and causing a car to flip, happened at Le Mans when the Mercedes-Bens CLK prototypes flipped twice going down the Mulsanne Straight.  

The Car of Tomorrow's rear wing was no bigger than about 6" x 75". This means that there is a nominal presentation area of 450 square inches. The underside of a NASCAR Cup Car is bigger than 135" x 78" or 10,350 square inches. This is an area a mere 23 times larger. Who is likely to win in a fight? An army of 450 or an army of 10,350? An 8 pound baby or a 184 pound boxer? There is no contest.

If you look at the statistics for the number of flips per year (fpy) then the real world yet again makes liars out of people claiming that the wing caused the Car of Tomorrow to flip.

It is possible to count every single flip and blowover in the entire history of NASCAR. I have only selected the first 73 years of data as the period of the so-called Gen-7 car is currently being run and is therefore incomplete. The Car of Tommorrow was Gen-5:

All flips:

Gen 1: 1948-1966 - 72 (3.78py)

Gen 2: 1967-1980 - 20 (1.53py)

Gen 3: 1981-1991 - 32 (2.90py)

Gen 4: 1992-2006 - 70 (5.00py)

Gen 5: 2007-2012 - 25 (4.16py)

Gen 6: 2012-2021 - 19 (1.90py)

If you drill down into that data for the flips and blowovers for the Car of Tomorrow we find two periods both with the rear wing and without it.

Gen 5: 2007-2012 - 25 (4.16py)

fpr w wing = 14/156 = 0.0897fpr

fpr w/o wing = 11/115 = 0.0956fpr

There was actually a weak tendency for cars to flip more after they changed the rear wing back to a spoiler.

If you really want to explore this further, then the Society of Automotive Engineers, ran models in water to experimentally address the issue at the time.

https://www.sae.org/publications/technical-papers/content/2011-01-1432/

There have been claims that the rear wing on the NASCAR Car of Tomorrow (COT) race car causes lift in the condition where the car spins during a crash and is traveling backwards down the track at high speed. When enough lift is generated, the race car can lose control and even become airborne. At least in part, to address this concern, a new rear spoiler was designed by NASCAR to replace the wing and prevent this dangerous condition. This paper looks at the flow characteristics of both the rear wing and the new spoiler using particle image velocimetry (PIV) to provide qualitative analysis as well as flow visualization. In particular, the interaction of these downforce devices with "roof flaps" (which are designed to prevent lift) is explored. 

- Society of Automotive Engineers, Jan 2011.

The punchline of this technical paper was that it found no correlation between the Car of Tomorrow's rear wing and flips and blowovers and the SAE couldn't actually produce a flip or a blowover by running the models backwards into the flow as presented. The paper concluded that the cause was something else but made no experimental attempt to discover that cause.

Actually the very big data set suggests that the most massive spike in flips and blowovers happened not as a result of adopting the Car of Tomorrow's rear wing but before then, from season 2001 onwards. I think that the actual reason is likely a function of the beginning of "tandem drafting" which is actually cars locking bumpers and pushing each other. The data spike tells the story that the rates of flipping and blowovers, have more to do with how aggressive everyone is, rather than the cars themselves. When you have cars pushing each other, that is by far and a way a larger set of forces than the downforce at the rear of a car. Drivers pushing and punting each other, which seems to have become more acceptable after about 2001, I think is a far more likely and reasonable reason for flips and blowovers. 3000 pounds of car belting into each other and being used as bludgeons to bash each other with, is the far more reasonable reason.

Horse 3201 - Hyundai's Wishful Thinking

https://www.drive.com.au/news/hyundai-aims-to-overtake-kia-top-100000-sales/

https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/8262572/hyundais-plan-to-sell-100000-cars-per-year-in-australia-again/

A looming sales battle between sibling rivals Hyundai and Kia in Australia is poised to deliver sharper prices and better deals for buyers on a budget.

South Korean car giant Hyundai is poised to bounce back off the ropes and aims to top 100,000 annual sales – a 30 per cent increase on today's rate of deliveries – and retake the lead over sibling rival Kia.

- Drive.com.au, 3rd Jul 2023

- Canberra Times, 8th Jul 2023 

In an article which appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald and Canberra Times on Saturday, which was already posted on drive.com.au five days earlier, we have what appears to be a puff piece with no substance, where someone at the Nine Ent Co. newspaper group has spoken with the CEO of Hyundai Australia, John Kett, and taken down a few quotes. Hard-hitting journalism this is nor; not is it particularly informative because as nothing more than a wholesaler/retailer of imported goods, Hyundai Australia is as much at the whims of its parent company as any other auto maker is.

This article offers no hints about how Hyundai Australia is going to get to 100,000 sales per year, nor what kinds of cars it intends to sell, nor what future price structures are going to be. However what this article does tell you is that Hyundai Australia's strategy is doomed from the outset. I can say this without any clue of their business plan because I can do simple maths:

"We are trying to avoid going back to the insatiable appetite to win," said Mr Kett because, in the process, you "just destroy everything about your business."

"The last time we sold a 100,000 cars was in 2016 and we nearly killed everyone to get there," he said. "No-one made any money and no-one can remember us for it, especially consumers, because they were all sold to fleet."

- Drive.com.au, 3rd Jul 2023

- Canberra Times, 8th Jul 2023 

To wit.

100,000 sales per year is 8333 per month and consistently VFACTS tells us that the only vehicles which have done better that since the end of VF Commodore, have been Hilux and occasionally Ranger. These two vehicles themselves are in fact distortions upon the market because the people who buy Hiluxes and Rangers are almost all tradies and therefore are able to write off the capital cost of the vehicles as depreciation expenses and get a tax benefit for it. If Hyundai wants to break into that market, they will find it difficult against Hilux, Ranger, Triton, D-Max, Amarok, BT-50 et cetera et cetera et cetera.

However, if Hyundai Australia wants to sell 100,000 per year and doesn't want to break into the tradie market, then it actually has to dare to sell cars to ordinary people as regular retail sales. Guess what? That's hard.

I have now seen enough of the accounts of General Motors to ascertain that the total claimed development costs to bring the VE Commodore to production status, was A$993m. The wholesale landed costs of the VE Commodore to an average dealership in a metropolitan area was a shade under $30,000. This means that at the standard retail price of $35,990 for the normal VE Commodore Omega, the markup was 19.9% or the profit margin was 16.6%.

If we assume that the $30,000 landed costs are the total cost per unit to achieve break even for Holden, then to recoup the initial development costs, Holden would have needed to sell 33,100 units. At an average of 6000 units per month, then Holden would have recovered all of the initial costs within six months.

Therefore, the issue was never ever that the Holden subsidiary wasn't profitable because it was always rudely profitable for most of the 71 years of the company as a logical General Motors subsidiary. The issue was purely that on the 10th of Dec 2013, the then Treasurer Joe Hockey thundered on the floor of the parliament that he might take away the subsidy payments. Within the week, head office in Detroit made the announcement that it was going to end production in Australia; even though Holden was the most profitable arm of General Motors in the world.

If inflation has been running at 6% for the last 20 years, then we can roughly assume that to bring a brand new car to market costs something in the order of $3,250m. 

$3,250m / 5 years = $650m per year.

$650m per year / 12 months = $54,166,666 per month

At 8333 units per month, which is what Hyundai Australia wants to achieve, then they'd need to sell every unit at $6500.27

Here's where the rubber hits the road. At $6501 per car, Hyundai Australia would sell lots of cars. However, since we already know that for every dollar that you increase the price, the total number of sales is going to drop because consumers can not instantly change how much money they have to play with, then this might be an uphill struggle. I have absolutely no doubt that Hyundai Australia could make and sell a very very nice $6501 motor car, however they're not going to. Would Hyundai Australia sell a $20,000 motor car? Arguably they already do but the i20 and i30 just don't set the world on fire in terms of sale figures.

If a quiet revolution is going on at Hyundai where they intend to sell 100,000 per year, then I don't see how they can immediately do it. You just can not wave a magic wand and make a thing happen by making an announcement. If I was CEO of Hyundai Australia, then my strategy would be eat what used to be Ford and Holden's lunch and sell Focus/Cruze sized car. That might sound like idiocy in a world of SUVs but here me out. It already exists. i30 is already the machine that they need to sell but with a name like i30, it means nothing.

If the car was styled nicely, then given a tricked out GT version and went racing in the Bathurst 12 Hours, then you might be able to create enough buzz around the car to sell that 8333 per month. Race on Sunday, sell on Monday? Maybe not, however as it currently stands, I have no idea exactly how Hyundai Australia squares the circle.

Horse 3200 - Supercars' Parroty Parody Parity Party

It seems that the spectre of parity has been perennially at the feast of motor racing since the very beginning and in the Australian Touring Car Championship since day dot. The current whingefest by Ford teams about the Chevy Camaro having a clear and obvious advantage over their Mustang, is the same as Ford whiging about Monaro, Holden whinging about Falcon, Holden and Ford whinging about RX-7 and Bluebird, Nissan whinging about 240, Nissan whinging about Sierra, Holden and Ford whinging about GTR, Holden and Ford spending 25 years whining about minor differences about Commodore and Falcon, with occasional whinges from Nissan and Volvo and Mercedes, and Holden whinging about Mustang. Is there anything new under the sun?

So called "Gen-3" Supercars are in response to the fact that the Falcon which suffered an existence failure, was replaced by the S550 Mustang which when wrapped over the top of the Falcon underpinnings for Car Of The Future/Gen-2 looked goofier than Mickey's friend riding a surfboard right foot forward. When Holden also suffered an existence failure, the teams then scrambled for any kind of relevance and decided upon something which was supposed to retain the DNA of Supercars; while at the same time betraying everything that went before. The Camaro isn't even on sale in Australia and the Mustang except for one month in 2016 has never outsold the worst sales months figures for Falcon.

In trying to hatch a new formula, Ford went with a 5.4L version of their Coyote engine, while Chevrolet just went to the GM racing parts bin an pulled out a 5.7L small block derivative. On this point, an engine which has had no practical race development versus an engine which has been racing continuously for more than 50 years, was never going to be a fair fight. Also in trying to hatch a new formula, the two camps went their own way to get whatever aero kit they could homologated and of course this was going to result in a blatantly unfair fight, one way or the other; even Blind Freddy could see this.

I know that I am but a poor keyboard warrior smashing text into the world, and that as part of the chorus of howling morons who don't make any technical decisions whatsoever, then how come even I could have see this? If you are not running a spec series, which Supercars is not any more, then minor differences in equipment will be magnified. 

Ford drivers are generally complaining about a lack of aero compared with the Chevy drivers. I assume that because the chassis and undertray is the same, then this advantage is being caused by the airflow over the top of the cars. I suspect that this is likely caused by the styling and packaging decisions made by the car markers; as they are made without regards for motor racing.

The Chevy presents a brickish wall to the air in front; then as the air spills over the roof, it then trails off a squarer boot lid than what the Mustang has. This means that the Chevy, is doing a better job of having the air interact with the rear wing, and the flatter boot lid means that the underside diffusers are probably more effective. Meanwhile, the Mustang has more of a rounded bootlid; which means that the air is more likely to be more laminar as it flows over the cars. This is excellent for a road car where the object is to reduce wind resistance but awful if the object is to get  the air flow to interact with the rear wing and diffuser.

Drivers like Chaz Mostert and Cam Waters have been complaining that the Mustang doesn't feel like it is grounded at the back and that there is little effect from the rear end aero kit of the car. This is ironic given that Walkinshaw Andretti United switched from Holden to Ford, because they probably guessed that there would be an advantage. This would be hard to guess given that both cars were blank slates at the time.

If I were Grand Poohbah and Lord High Everything Else, then I would have called for a solution which NASCAR uses; which is excellent. That is that the chassis and undertray be identical and that the glasshouse also be identical. Differences to the glasshouse are purely cosmetic and the differences in the shape of the aft windows is irrelevant as the C-pillars are identical. The point of difference is the cosmetic differences between the grille and light clusters front and rear. I would have also mandated a control KRE engine because let's be perfectly honest here, the punter watching the racing from the outside honestly couldn't give a thousand revs, what the technical specs actually are. As long as race cars sound like race cars, then people are happy. 

The thing is, as the Supercars themselves are bespoke bits of kit, and the panels can be pulled off and replaced, then admitting that Gen3.1 has been a parity nightmare is still an option and the above suggestion can be implemented. The cars are already something that isn't for sale in Australia versus a car which in this guise also isn't for sale in Australia. I would even go so far as to say that a common glasshouse with common aero and only changing the grilles and light clusters, would allow other brands to compete. If say Brad Jones racing got backing from Audi, then it wouldn't be that difficult a process to get the front and rear grilles and light clusters approved.

I should at this point say that my rather worthless opinion here, has been shaped with reference to other series like GT3, Super GT both GT500 and GT300, LMP2, NASCAR's three series of Cup, Xfinity, and Trucks, as well as iRacing. For that last series where literally nothing is real, graphics can be changed to make a car look like anything and I have seen such illustrious car brands as ZIL, Trabant, Lil' Tykes, Tonka, Packard, and Breville, in various online racing series. If it sounds dumb to suggest that video games should influence real world motor racing, bear in mind that all commercially built cars in the world are now built on CAD, and shaped and edited before even one of them gets to be in the real world. I would even go so far as to say that abandoned intellectual property such as the XA-XC Falcon and the HG Monaro, would also be excellent choices for a Supercars team to go racing with; if not Supercars then TA2.

This whole parity saga, could have been foreseen, should have been foreseen, and like a classic tragedy, Supercars proceeded anyway. If you play stupid games, you win stupid prizes and time after time and again and again the parity wars prove to be a stupid game. Supercars chose this.

Horse 3199 - Super-Kiwi-Goes-Ballistic. NASCAR Is Atrocious?

Not really.

Though something else happened.

On July 2 2023, the NASCAR Cup Series had one of the most remarkable results in its 75 year history. The Chicago street race, run on closed streets in downtown Chicago, was (if you ignore the street/beach course at Daytona), only the first time that the NASCAR Cup series had run at such a venue. When you add in a dash of rain, on a course that nobody had ever seen before, then the result of Shane Van Gisbergen showing up a scoring a win on debut, is amazing.

Before the weekend, I am sure that apart from the motorsport faithful, most of the casual fans will have never heard of Shane Van Gisbergen. During the commentary of the weekend, seasoned commentators fell over pronouncing his name on several occasions. This is probably more likely in America as that nation is far more insular than other countries. In Australia, we are constantly looking outwards; which is why series like Formula One, Moto GP, the World Endurance Championship, IndyCar, and even national series like the BTCC, DTM, and Super GT rate a mention here. But for the casual American fan, it just looks like that Shane Van Gisbergen has showed up and given everyone a blood nose.

To be honest, he did. To those of us who have seen many different kinds of racing over many years, we know that rain is the great equaliser. When it is raining, no longer are the outright advantages of the cars themselves apparent. Aero devices don't work as well because the speeds come down. Tyres don't work as well because the temperatures and hence the mechanical grip comes down. When it is raining, the biggest single determinant of whether or not a driver will do well, is actually the skill of the driver. Probably in any given motor race, the ratio of car to driver in winning is about 80-20; the driver is still the biggest and most important component in a car. In the rain though, this might blow out to 30-70 and so much so that good drivers can overcome terrible cars.

So called "rainmasters" of the past have included names like Ayrton Senna, Jim Clark, Mika Hakkinen, Jim Richards, and rain has produced some truly memorable races such as the 1996 Monaco GP when Olivier Panis won in a Ligier, or Senna's stonking drive at Donington in 1993, or the absolute farce at Bathurst in 1992.

Shane Van Gisbergen's win at Chicago in 2023, being only the second win by a debut driver in 60 years in NASCAR, is less about this being a street circuit, more about the rain, and a whole lot more about Shane Van Gisbergen himself being a cut above everyone as a once in a generation driver. 

To objectively see why he was so good, then you need to look at his credentials and in this case, Shane Van Gisbergen's resume is pretty long. He has won 3 Supercars Championships, 2 Bathurst 1000s, a Bathurst 12 Hours and a Bathurst 6 Hours, a GT Endurance Cup championship, a New Zealand Grand Prix, a class win at the Daytona 24 Hours, and he has competed in the WRC, Le Mans 24 Hours, and Sprint Car racing. Very clearly the chap knows how to drive a racecar; any race car at that; so for him to win a NASCAR Cup Series race on debut, being only the second driver in 60 years to do so, is unlikely but not impossible.

The obvious question is how does his win rate and where does this put Supercars in relation to other series? I think that in terms of sheer talent, NASCAR probably fits below Supercars and above GT3 racing, aand likely above Super GT. I would arrange the grand pyramid in terms of skill as: F1, Le Mans, Indycar, Supercars, NASCAR, BTCC, DTM, WTC, Super GT, GT3, Xfinity, Super 2, Truck Series, Super 3.

The truth is that F1 drivers have done well in Indycar but not many have gone the other way. Indycar drivers generally do well in NASCAR but not the other way. Le Mans drivers have excelled in GT3 racing and occasionally done well at Bathurst but not many have gone the other way. 

For Kimi Raikkonen as 2007 F1 champion to show up in NASCAR and come away with not much by way of results, doesn't prove much. Raikkonen was already a retired driver whose star was fading. Likewise, Jensen Button as 2009 F1 champion and 2019 Super GT champion also doesn't prove a lot as his star was also fading but he still wasn't shameful. Button's issue has been that he has been in second-rate equipment for a team which is part charter-sitter and part privateer ascended.

In comparison to the driver talent on the track around him; Joey Logano is a 2x champion, Kevin Harvick 2x, Kyle Busch 2x, Kyle Larson 1x, Chase Elliot 1x; whereas Shane Van Gisbergen is a 3x champion. Van Gisbergen is one of two drivers who emerged as part of the generational change once Whincup, Lowdnes, and Tander stepped back; the other being Scott McLaughlin. 

It could very well be that once Jimmy Johnson as a 7x champion left, that no clear and obvious generational whirlwind emerged because they are all together collectively excellent or just very good. I do not yet know if Van Gisbergen is as good as Brock, Moffat, Johnson, Richards, Whincup, Lowdnes or Perkins but he is at least equal with Scott McLaughlin who drives for Penske.

Shane Van Gisbergen is not like the other drivers who show up from time to time. In comparison to other ATCC drivers who have tried and failed: Dick Johnson bought second-rate equipment and had no experience in running a team, and that goes for Allan Grice, and then Jim Richards who put in an admirable showing at Suzuka. Marcos Ambrose was also never in brilliant equipment but he was able to occasionally shine in cases which were already similar to what he had driven. In the ATCC, Shane Van Gisbergen is already everything that Marcos Ambrose was and more, and as he is a current top flight driver, and as he arrived in a team which is capable of winning races and which nearly won a championship last season, this was not an average cameo.

I was asked the question in a forum, how many races would Shane Van Gisbergen win on ovals if he were to be in NASCAR for three years; I said about a dozen, to which I was met with howls of derision. I think that Van Gisbergen is that very rare kind of driver who would excel in everything. These drivers are exceptionally rare and include names like Jim Clark, AJ Foyt, Mario Andretti and Jacky Ickx. 

And that there is the central kernel as to why I think that Shane Van Gisbergen showed up and gave everyone a blood nose in Chicago. You just don't get to ask these questions very often. The only like example where I can think of this happening in Australia is when Jacky Ickx won the Bathurst 1000 on debut and in arguably the most famous 1-2 of all. Granted that the Chicaco Street Race isn't the Daytona 500 or the Southern 500 but c'est la c'est. If Austin Dillion can win the Daytona 500, then that says that a lot of NASCAR races are a crapshoot anyway. This race wasn't one of those. It was a race where the only weapon which made any sense was driver skill and Shane Van Gisbergen being a once in a generation driver had it in buckets. I do not think that if anyone else from the current crop of Supercars drivers had showed up, they could have done this.

Horse 3198 - Johnny Bairstow's Smarter Than The Average Bair(stow)?

Johnny Bairstow's smarter than the average Bair(stow).

He is always getting in the Umpire's hair (stow).

He has got it better than a millionaire (stow)

Johnny Bairstow's smarter than the average Bair(stow).

The Second Test at Lord's has been and gone and England fans are looking at a series which is reminiscent of days of yore. Forget Bazball, Gazball, Cazball or Fazball, England are playing Surrender Ball and looking competent but inadequate against an Australian side which is not stellar but is doing just enough all the time.

Heading into this Ashes series, this was an English side who had been okay, but thanks to the press were heralded as the coming of eleven saints; along with full Greek chorus of praise. About three balls into the first over on the first day of the first test, the press reverted to type; wailing and moaning, demanding that every English player's head be put on a pike and put on display outside the wall of the city, as England hurtles towards a five-nil thrashing. I for one love it. In what other sport (except for every other sport) can you see such a turnabout, as opinion writers lurch from side to side like brainless sheep on a B-24 Liberator?

This England side has tried everything and anything, both sensible and insensible, to try and wrangle anything from the first two tests. To do the same thing over and over again and expect a different result is insanity. To do everything different and still get the same result is destiny. England has tried to smack every ball out of the ground. England has tried to bore Australia to death. England has tried playing attacking shots, measured shots, illogical shots, sensible shots; but the one thing that they have not done in this series is do enough of everything against an Australian side which is also doign those same things. The first objective in a Test Match is to take twenty wickets. England have done that. The second objective is to score more runs than the other side and they will not do that by giving wickets away. Both teams have sportsed and one team is sportsing better.

The full details of the Second Test are here:

https://www.espncricinfo.com/series/the-ashes-2023-1336037/england-vs-australia-2nd-test-1336044/full-scorecard

Australia 416 & 279 def. England 325 & 327

Perhaps the biggest symbol of why England have failed thus far, is the tale of how Johnny Bairstow got out "stumped".

10 - Jonny Bairstow - st.Carey b.Green

The reason why Johnny Bairstow got out "stumped" is to do with a simple checklist of Law 39 "Out Stumped". It reads:

39.1 Out Stumped

39.1.1 The striker is out Stumped, except as in 39.3, if

- a ball which is delivered is not called No ball

- and  he/she is out of his/her ground, other than as in 39.3.1

- and  he/she has not attempted a run when his/her wicket is fairly put down by the wicket-keeper without the intervention of another fielder. Note, however Laws 25.6.2 and 25.6.5 (Dismissal and conduct of a batter and his/her runner) and 27.3 (Position of wicket-keeper).

You be the judge. The frame immediately before the stumps are broken will now be showed presently:

As you, and I, or anyone, or even Blind Freddy can see, Johnny Bairstow being out "stumped", is absolutely bang to rights. This is a lay down slam No Trumps hand. This case is watertight. This is showing up before the judge, pleading guilty and having the book thrown at you. I think that there is no way, no how, in no universe, where Johnny Baristow is not out. He is so out that the Umpire didn't hesitate and upon appeal to the Third Umpire, they also didn't hesitate. 

Literally everyone in the world, including blind people who didn't see it, dead people who weren't alive, and imaginary people who never existed, except Johnny Bairstow could see this was out and yet, like a petulant child who has been caught scribbling on the walls with crayon, who has the crayon in his hand, and who has eaten some crayon and there's crayon all over his face, Johnny Bairstow stood out in the middle apparently confused about what the law says.

As a professional sports player, and even as a student of the game, he should have known what the Law says. If he had been playing for St.Hubris Third XI against Banana Primary School's Shoeless XI, he would have known what the Law says. The Law in question is law 20 "Ball Is Dead". It reads:

20.1 Ball is dead

20.1.1 The ball becomes dead when:

20.1.1.1 it is finally settled in the hands of the wicket-keeper or of the bowler.

This means that you can not have a faff about in the middle and discuss the weather. You can not go farming and pad down that imaginary bump in the middle of the pitch. You can not wander and stare at the sky and watch the planes, wondering where you will go on holidays. You can not feign or claim ignorance. The ball is still alive until it returns to the hands of the wicket-keeper or of the bowler. Full Stop; comma; no returns. Until the ball has returned to the hands of the wicket-keeper or of the bowler, it must be treated like an unexploded hand grenade with the pin taken out. Ignore it and it will go off. Ignore it and you will be out. Ignore it and you deserve to be out. Not even St Anthony, the patron saint of lost causes and quite a handy tail-ender who could be expected to make the odd pull shot and score a handy yet pointless 14 in a losing side, would dare stand about like some mouth open, hackneyed eejit, until the ball has returned to the hands of the wicket-keeper or of the bowler.

Yes, the Laws of the Game do speak about the Spirit of the Game but as a game of Laws and order, the Law is both a standard for the wise and a schoolmaster for fools. Take this as a lesson Johnny Bairstow. The one who never made any mistakes never learnt anything and you have made a mistake loud and proud in front of two nations.

And this is why England are two-nil down in the Ashes thus far. In a game which can and has in the past swung on the margin of 1 or 2 runs, it is the 1% things which need to be in order. England have been okay. Okay is not good enough when the opposition is Okay + 1%.

Horse 3197 - America, I Do Not Understand Your Vans

This is what I believe to be, is the default van of the United States. The Chevrolet Express van has existed in its current state since 1995; with engine choices ranging from a 2.8L to 6.6L turbodiesel, and from 4.3L V8 to the quite frankly absurd 8.1L V8 petrol. America, the land of insanely cheap petrol, simple doesn't care about fuel efficiency in the same way that the rest of the world does and even the use of the term "minivan" refers to engine sizes of less than 300cid or about 4.9L.

There is no doubt about it, cars in the United States have always been bigger than everywhere else in the world, and the vans and pickup trucks are also bigger. 

The Mercedes-Benz Sprinter, Ford Transit Connect, Ram ProMaster, Chevy Express (GMC Savana) are all massively more massive than the default van in Australia which is the Toyota Hiace but I had no idea just how much bigger. Of all of those vans, the smallest Chevy Express is 224 inches long, but of the normal vans in Australia, Toyota Hiace, Kia Bongo, Hyundai iLoad, Mitsubishi Express, Peugeot Expert, the biggest van was a mere 207 inches long. If the smallest van in the United States is a full foot longer than what we have in Australia, then that says that the rest of the van fleet is massively more massive.

When you also factor in the fact that the Chevy Express van is 16 inches wider than a Hiace, then this means that the default van size in the United States, occupies a space in the order of about 5136 cubic feet per vehicle which means that for every 6 million vehicles on the road, there is an entire cublic mile of air that needs to be accommodated for. Now that's find if you are building interstate highways where you have miles upon miles of free space full of nothing but in cities that were undesigned and which date from the 1700s and 1800s, you can not retrofit the world to take massively massive vehicles. 

I have no doubt that for hauling cargo, a big van is immensely useful. Companies like DHL, UPS, FedEx, the US Mail, et cetera, would prefer having a big thing to cart goods around in because moving things in bulk is more efficient and therefore cheaper per unit. However, if you are a tradie, who has plumbing equipment, or a dog washer, or an electrician, or a butcher, or run a mowing company, then the need for a massively massive van is not so obvious. From what I can gather, big vans occupy the same space in the market that both vans and pantechs like the Isuzu 200 series occupy in Australia, and tradies kind of have to make do with pickup trucks which are less suited to the job.

A lot of this has to do with the so-called "chicken tax" which protects the American auto industry from having to compete with the outside world. The tax on imported vehicles is sufficiently large enough that it isn't worth the effort in a lot of cases to re-engineer otherwise profitable vehicles for the United States; this explains why companies like Mercedes-Benz, Audi, BMW, Lexus etc. can be bothered, as their vehicles are already sold at a premium, the price has a Veblen effect. But for trucks and vans, GM and Toyota won't bother, and Ford is able to make use of the rules but will still only sell massively massive versions of their Transit van.

On my way to work, I pass by several industrial complexes, the big fruit and vegetable market in Sydney, as well as crossing over and under a bunch of main roads. At work as an accountant, apart from the idle rich, the people who are paid a premium for the labour and the rich elderly, we also do the accounts for several tradespeople and they either have Toyota Hiaces or Mitsubishi Express vans. The Hiace came to be the default van in Australia because it is a well put together machine and because it fits nicely with having to be in an urban environment. I have no idea how much the Hiace shares DNA and architecture with the ubiquitous Camry but I imagine that there must be significant cross pollination.

This is what I find so brutally maddening about the Chevrolet Express van, and vans and pickups and traffic generally in the United States. Even in the land of cheap petrol, there is still that drive by business to maximise profits. I would have though that the profit motive, which is that underlying motive of all business since the beginning of time, would have been strong enough to demand smaller and cheaper vehicles which have smaller and cheaper running costs. A smaller van uses less petrol and likely incurs less in road taxes.

I don't get it. Is there something all a bit Scooby-Doo where people want to carry their friends around in zero comfort? Maybe this is like the A-Team, where the Chevy Astro van is used to covertly hide a small battle pack of renegades who have escaped into the underground? Do tradespeople have such dreams? Or is this because of years of bonkers choices by the auto makers, which have meant that the malaise-era never really went away. Of course I very much realise that I am playing with all kids of biases and am looking from the outside at a black-box and trying to work out why the outputs are the way they are but this is still madness.