A Four Part Interview on Reality Asserts Itself, The Real News Network.

Marx and Tolstoy Helped Me See the Limits of Liberalism

Questioning the Underlying Structures of Property and Power is “Off the Table”

Chelsea Manning, the Nuremberg Charter and Refusing to Collaborate with War Crimes

International Law and “The Responsibility to Protect”

It’s not what you think.  This is the game Christopher Robin played with Winnie the Pooh in many of their A.A. Milne adventures.

The basic concept is simple- find some sticks, drop them in a stream or river on one side of a bridge, see which one emerges on the other side first.

Since this a childlike and contemplative game it’s best not to choose a rushing torrent as your course and turbulence can make it difficult to determine stick identity when it emerges.  Your best bet is a slowly meandering waterway on a hot summer day with a broad bridge to enhance the suspense and encourage deep philosophical conversation while awaiting the outcome.  

If your nature is more, ahem, competitive there are some tricks (all very fair and within the rules and spirit of the game).  They involve, as you might expect, stick selection since it is the only variable under your control.

Revealed: how to pick the perfect Poohstick

Press Association

Wednesday 26 August 2015 03.52 EDT

Poohsticks, the timeless game made famous by Winnie the Pooh, Piglet and Christopher Robin, is not a game of chance, according to scientists – and there’s even a formula to win.

…

Egmont Publishing joined Dr Rhys Morgan, director of engineering and education at the Royal Academy of Engineering, to equip the 39% of people who already take time sourcing the perfect Poohstick with the formula to ensure they pick the speediest stick to sail to victory.

It comes after a survey of 2,000 British parents revealed that 41% of players take the time to personalise their sticks to ensure they take no chances in knowing exactly who wins.

It turns out that just 11% of Britons naturally pick the right sort of stick, with a third of people (30%) heading straight for a long and thin stick, which according to Dr Morgan is only half right.

The scientist, a father of two and avid Poohsticks player himself, said the main variables that need to be considered when designing the optimum Poohstick included cross-sectional area, density/buoyancy, and the drag coefficient.

The perfect Poohstick would be tubby and long, fairly heavy (but not so heavy it will sink to the bottom of the river), with quite a lot of bark to catch the flow of the river like paddle.

Science and Technology News and Blogs

• US astronauts drink recycled urine aboard space station but Russians refuse, by  Ellen Brait, The Guardian
• How a Volcanic Eruption in 1815 Darkened the World but Colored the Arts, By WILLIAM J. BROAD, The New York Times
• Garum sauce: ancient Rome’s ‘ketchup’ becomes a modern-day secret ingredient, by Olga Oksman, The Guardian
• Guy spots super-rare ‘living fossil’ a second time — 30 years later, by Michael Franco, CNet
• Dinosaur foot found on beach in Wales could be mini T-Rex ancestor, Press Association
• How do you go about embracing complexity? It’s complicated, by Duncan Green, The Guardian
• Aztec skull trophy rack discovered at Mexico City’s Templo Mayor ruin site, Associated Press
• Flash is dying a death by 1,000 cuts, and that’s a good thing, by Samuel Gibbs, The Guardian
• Here’s why fire fountains erupted on moon’s surface, Business Standard
• Want to read this article later? Maybe you should just print it out, by Oliver Burkeman, The Guardian
• Ancient Greek palace unearthed near Sparta dates back to 17th century BC, AFP
• Poland drought: Jewish tombstones and fighter plane uncovered as rivers run dry, Associated Press
• The Huge, Pricey Detectors That Capture Tiny Neutrinos, Katie M. Palmer, Wired
• Large-Scale Peer-Review Fraud Leads To Retraction Of 64 Scientific Papers, by Glyn Moody, Tech Dirt
• When surveillance is a feature, not a bug, by Joshua Kopstein, Al Jazeera
• Windows 10 doesn’t offer much privacy by default: Here’s how to fix it, by Sebastian Anthony, Ars Technica
• Windows 10 Reserves The Right To Block Pirated Games And ‘Unauthorized’ Hardware, by Karl Bode, Tech Dirt

Science Oriented Video

The law that entropy always increases holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of Nature. If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell’s equations – then so much the worse for Maxwell’s equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation – well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.

–Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World (1927)

Obligatories, News and Blogs below.

(Note: This is a panel discussion from some time ago with Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman, Nobel Laureates in Economics, and Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century.  The interview with Christopher Beha of Harper’s Magazine referenced below took place recently at Book Culture book store in New York- ek)

Joe Stiglitz: The Dangerous Economic Thinking That’s Killing Greece and Threatening the European Union

By Lynn Stuart Parramore, AlterNet

August 21, 2015

Bad economic ideas inflict untold human suffering. When they come cloaked in a fog of Orwellian obfuscation, their poison and effects can spread with little hindrance. The public is misled. Power plays are hidden from view.

…

In discussing Greece’s Third Memorandum of Understanding and its draconian terms, Stiglitz observes that the MoU is really a “surrender document” that eclipses the country’s economic sovereignty and ensures that Greece’s depression – already deeper than America’s Great Depression – will get worse. An economy that is seeing youth unemployment reaching up to 60 percent is likely to lose another 5 percent in GDP. That is over and beyond the 25 percent plunge in GDP the country has suffered since the imposition of austerity measures.

Socially conservative Germans, Stiglitz warns, are doubling down on the discredited notion that austerity policies help economies recover in times of crisis. In reality, the insistence on keeping wages down, stripping bargaining power from workers, forcing small business owners to pay taxes a year in advance, and cutting pensions will only hamper demand and lead to a deepening spiral of debt. (Stiglitz emphasizes that hardly any of the money loaned to Greece has actually gone to help the Greeks themselves, but rather private-sector creditors, namely German and French banks).

…

In Stiglitz’s view, what’s behind the ill-advised economic schemes is a power struggle in which Germany and its supporters seek to undermine the Greek economy in order to push out a government (Syriza) they do not like. In doing so they are tearing apart families, snuffing out the hopes of young people and delivering humiliation and suffering to a country. History shows that such a policy does not turn out well for anyone.

Stiglitz reminded the audience that John Maynard Keynes once issued warnings about the Treaty of Versailles, the peace settlement signed at the end of World War I, which ordered Germany to pay massive reparations. Inflicting more pain on a weakened economy would send an already-battered nation into depression. Keynes turned out to be correct: resentment of the harsh terms and the resulting high unemployment led to the rise of Adolf Hitler. Far from restoring stability in Europe, the Treaty set the stage for an unprecedented disaster and unspeakable human misery.

Stiglitz warned that Germany, a major beneficiary of debt write-offs following WWII, had not learned the lesson of its own history. Officials are blind to the reality that debt forgiveness is necessary for Greece at a time when nearly everyone, including the International Monetary Fund (IMF), recognizes that the country simply can’t pay back what it owes. Instead of remembering the terrible consequences of mass unemployment following WWI, many Germans insist that it was hyperinflation that led to Hitler, and so they tend to support central bank policies that guard against that problem rather than the far more worrisome specter of joblessness.

As Stiglitz describes, the result of all this historical amnesia and economic blindness is a “Dickensian” nightmare that recalls 19th-century debtors prisons where people were punished for the inability to pay debts and locked (literally) into a situation in which paying them was, of course, impossible. Only now, the prisoner is an entire country.

Stiglitz notes the fundamental problem that eurozone leaders will not let individual countries like Greece, Portugal or Spain change economic policies, no matter how harmful they become. Extreme right-wing elements will benefit as trust in government diminishes. As Stiglitz sees it, flaws in the design of the euro, as well as flaws in the design of the European Central Bank, which is not equipped to address unemployment, hurt Europe’s prospects and yet are extremely difficult to address because they are embedded in treaties that require the unanimous agreement of member countries to alter. He pointed out that if you look at countries like Sweden, it appears that those that did not join the eurozone seem to be in better shape than those that joined. The eurozone has been stuck in persistent stagnation, whereas Sweden’s economy, for example, is brightening.

When an audience member asked whether forgiving Greek debt would lead to moral hazard – encouraging other countries to borrow beyond their means – Stiglitz responded that it was unimaginable that any country would want to go through what the Greeks are enduring. He noted that the lenders bear even more responsibility for the current mess than the borrowers. Goldman Sachs structured irresponsible deals that allowed the Greek government at the time of the Maastricht Treaty to hide its debt. Stiglitz concluded that if anything, moral hazard is a problem on the lender side, as there is little to discourage lending money to countries that are unlikely to be able to pay back. He also noted that the idea of the Greek government selling assets in the middle of a depression to pay back debt was a bad idea, because prices are so low this amounts to little more than a fire sale.

…

The real deficit in Europe, said Stiglitz, is a “democratic deficit.”

Michael Hudson (Research Professor of Economics at University of Missouri, Kansas City (UMKC) and a Research Associate at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, a former Wall Street analyst) is the author of Killing the Host: How Financial Parasites and Debt Destroy Global Economy.

“Casino Capitalism”: Economist Michael Hudson on What’s Behind the Stock Market’s Roller-Coaster Ride

Smoke and Mirrors of Corporate Buybacks Behind the Market Crash

Or rather, panic about the right things-

The GOP’s austerity hawks are throwing away a golden opportunity (again)

by David Dayen, Salon

Tuesday, Aug 25, 2015 05:58 AM EST

The U.S. Congress should have gaveled in an emergency session yesterday to react on the latest twist in the capital markets. Failure to do so creates unnecessary pain and will damage American competitiveness for the next generation.

I’m not talking about the stock market.

…

Right now, the U.S. can borrow money for 10 years at around 2 percent – a staggeringly low number, made so by an increase in global demand for Treasury bonds. When the economic winds shake globally, investors lead a “flight to safety,” looking for any instrument that won’t lose money. And despite the tumult of the past decade, investors still see Treasury bonds as the safest investment in the world.

What this means is that investors will hand over cash to the U.S. government with effectively no interest in real terms.

…

Significant borrowing, to repair crumbling infrastructure like bridges and water systems, or upgrade the electrical grid and broadband capacity for the entire nation, would have a seriously stimulative impact on an economy that’s already showing some labor market success. It would help arrest the persistent demand deficit that has existed in our economy since the outset of the Great Recession.

…

The lack of government debt is a problem for the world, as Paul Krugman pointed out recently. Former White House economist Jared Bernstein goes further, explaining that budget deficits lead to smoother and stronger economic growth. Our deficit is falling fast, and the government not only can handle throwing a couple hundred billion at upgrading the basic structures that make the country go, but would benefit handsomely from it.

…

This actively harms our economic potential over the next several years. We can’t have nice things because we’re still governed by a backwards ideology that thinks the government should run the country like a family manages their budget. But if a family could borrow money for free and use it to make all kinds of improvements in their lives, they’d jump at the chance. If we ever want to make America great again, we have to get over this dysfunction and get out our checkbook.

Those letters nice and friendly enough for you?

The Hugo Awards are named after Hugo Gernsback, the founder of Amazing Stories.

Now unlike some competing awards like the Nebula Award which is decided by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Hugos are nominated and decided by fans, specifically attendees at the World Science Fiction Convention (the Hugos are also older).

There are two classes of registration, a regular one which, uhh… gives you the right to vote for Hugos I guess, and an attending registration that gets you onto the Convention floor and allows you to attend some seminars and workshops.

While most of us tend to think of Science Fiction as kind of lefty utopian fantasy worlds that present metaphorically the condition of society and present solutions for challenges humanity might face, there has always been a jingoist, misogynous, racist, authoritarian element that some authors embrace with gusto and glee, some pander to as a way to make a quick buck off inferior work, and others lazily use as a crutch they hardly notice in pursuit of a rattlin’ good yarn with lots of babes and blasters.

Quick- how many Black people in Star Wars?  Yes, Lando.  And…?

I do think it’s a rattlin’ good yarn and not as obviously horrible as, say, Horseclans or Gor but there you go.

For years the target audience of Science Fiction was pimply-faced adolescent white boys who hated women because they were nerds who were never, ever, going to meet one, particularly since they spent all their time either jerking off or reading Sci-Fi, Comic Books, and playing Dungeons and Dragons in their mother’s basement.

But starting in the 60s Science Fiction started to change and there were more and more thoughtful works about the nature of Science and Humanity and they began to attract a more main stream audience.  This made the publishers very happy of course, but it kind of pissed off the fan boys who wanted epic space battles with monsters and aliens.  And where the Green Wimmen at?

As time passed the same social impulses that led people to the Right-Wing also started causing virulent divisions in the gaming and Science Fiction communities.

Which brings us to the present and the Sick Puppies.  Just as there is a Conservative publishing cartel that games The New York Times Best seller list (Dinesh D’Souza, ‘nuf said), someone thought there were too many non-white and female Hugo Award winners recently and decided to do something about it.  They and their like-thinking comrades bought a bunch of registrations to WorldCon and submitted their favorite authors, books, movies, and TV shows and openly organized to nominate them and make sure they won.

It wasn’t much of a secret and after the ballots were cast the steering committee in charge of the Awards simply refused to give them out in the categories they thought were compromised by what most considered ‘cheating’.

If only the sci-fi writers who hijacked the Hugo awards had the wit to imagine a world beyond the Good Old Days

by Helen Lewis, The Guardian

Saturday 18 April 2015 03.00 EDT

(For some science fiction and fantasy fans) the alternate universe they most crave is the Good Old Days. SFF is in the grip of its own culture war, with a group of authors suggesting that the recent success of female and non-white writers is proof that political correctness has spread its tentacles so far that it is now ruining stories that include actual tentacles.

…

The sticking point is nominations for the Hugos, the genre’s best-known awards, which will be handed out in August. Anyone who pays $40 (£27) to attend the science-fiction convention Worldcon can nominate up to five of their favourite books in each category for a Hugo. The intention was that the awards would be more democratic and open to a greater range of works: nerds know how it is to be excluded from the cool gang. (Even if the cool gang here is literary fiction writers, which is absolutely no one else’s idea of a cool gang. Pass the sambuca, Richard Flanagan!)

The voting system encourages fans to feel they have ownership of the awards and to treat them as a barometer of genuine, grassroots opinion. As 2014 winner Kameron Hurley put it: “They historically rewarded popular work, set in the kinds of old, colonial, dudes-rule-everything universes that my work explicitly challenges.”

But times are changing, and there are complaints that the Hugos are being used “as an affirmative action award: giving Hugos because a writer or artist is (insert under-represented minority or victim group here) or because a work features (insert under-represented minority or victim group here) characters”.

That sentiment comes from US SFF author Brad Torgersen, who is a Mormon, a libertarian and a gun-rights enthusiast, and as such feels that the current trends in SF do not favour the types of books he personally enjoys. In February, he suggested a slate of works readers could vote for to ensure the Hugos had relevance outside “rarefied, insular halls of 21st-century Worldcon ‘fandom'”. The slate is called Sad Puppies, because fellow author Larry Correia once said that not having his books nominated for the “snooty and pretentious” awards “made puppies sad”.

So far, so niche. But because this is the internet, someone always has to pitch in and turn the hostility up to 11. Enter a man called Theodore Beale, also known as Vox Day, with his own slate called Rabid Puppies. Vox Day is even less polite about minorities and “victim groups”: he claims that marital rape is an oxymoron, because “marriage grants consent on an ongoing basis”, and that race is linked to IQ (you can imagine which way). He also opposes women’s suffrage, saying “the women of America would do well to consider whether their much-cherished gains of the right to vote, work, murder and freely fornicate are worth destroying marriage, children, civilised western society and little girls”. He’s so bigoted it’s perversely refreshing. Oh right, he actually said that, you think. Bloody hell.

The result of this perfectly legal manipulation is that, in the words of Game of Thrones author George RR Martin, “The Sad Puppies have broken the Hugo awards, and I am not sure they can ever be repaired.”

…

It works like this: if you worry that you might be accused of an -ism, get your defence in first by asserting that the accuser is an envoy of an ivory tower elite and you are merely a tribune of the people. As it works for Farage, so it does for Vox Day. Yes, you might have gone to private school, worked as a commodities trader and have been a member of the European parliament since 1999, but you are an outsider! Yes, you might have got nine titles from your own tiny Finland-based publishing house on the Hugos shortlists, but that’s only because you are trying to seize back science fiction from a self-serving clique!

Over and over again, we see the mechanism by which power re-asserts itself when challenged. With a gymnastic leap, those on the defensive become the underdogs, cruelly repressed by the BBC, feminists, people from Islington, some nebulous “elite” or the suggestion that sometimes a female character in a videogame might wear a decently supportive bra.

Diversity wins as the Sad Puppies lose at the Hugo awards

by Damien Walter, The Guardian

Monday 24 August 2015 08.25 EDT

As I write it is clear that the Puppies’ disproportional effect on the Hugo shortlists was not reflected in the award winners. In fact, the fan vote was triumphant in nearly all categories, except a handful where the Sad Puppy bloc vote forced work of such poor quality onto the ballot that fans were left no choice but to nominate “no award” instead. It was the worst result possible for the Sad Puppy voters, and a personal humiliation for their leaders.

Far from infecting sci-fi with with their right-wing rhetoric, the Sad Puppies have only succeeded in inoculating the field against it. Theodore Beale, a Hugo protest leader and prominent anti-vaxxer, has himself acted like a weakened viral infection, catalysing sci-fi’s immune response against the retrograde aesthetics on which he has built his reputation. The other Puppy leaders retreated into relative silence as the determined response of sci-fi fans rolled over them. Meanwhile, their antics have woken up all of sci-fi fandom to the value of diversity.

‘No award’ sweeps the Hugo Awards following controversy

by Michelle Dean, The Guardian

Sunday 23 August 2015 12.20 EDT

The World Science Fiction Society noted in its announcement of winners that the “no awards” were without precedent. Five, they said, was also “the total number of times that WSFS members have presented no award in the entire history of the Hugo Awards, most recently in 1977”.

The unprecedented number of no award votes followed a controversy over a voting bloc, known as the Sad and/or Rabid Puppies, that loaded the ballot earlier this spring.

The Puppies say they are reacting to the transformation of the Hugos into what one called an “affirmative action award“. The Puppies organized themselves to vote as a bloc in the nominating process in order to put more white, male candidates on the ballot. As the voting turnout for the nomination process is typically low, the strategy worked.

Critics of the Puppies in the science fiction community pointed out that their leaders, among them Vox Day and Brad Torgerson, were promoting unrepentantly sexist, racist and homophobic views. Among the Puppies’ slate of nominees was a book put out by the Patriarchy Press. Another of their favored writers, John C Wright, is better known for his rabidly homophobic views than for his work.

Further reading-

• Hugo award nominees withdraw amid ‘Puppygate’ storm, by Alison Flood, The Guardian
• The Puppies are taking science fiction’s Hugo awards back in time, by Adam Roberts, The Guardian
• The Hugo awards will be the losers if politics takes the prize, by Sarah Lotz, The Guardian
• George RR Martin says rightwing lobby has ‘broken’ Hugo awards, by Alison Flood, The Guardian
• George RR Martin urges ‘every true fan’ to rally for Hugo awards vote, by Alison Flood, The Guardian

Entertainment

• The 100 best novels written in English: the full list, by Robert McCrum, The Guardian
• Not to be: Barbican U-turn over Hamlet soliloquy, by Jamie Grierson, The Guardian
• Yvonne Craig, the original 1960s Batgirl, dies aged 78, by Alexandra Spring, The Guardian
• Patrick Stewart: totally over the top – but impossible not to love, by Stuart Heritage, The Guardian
• The Daily Show with Trevor Noah: trailer features ‘same chair, different ass’, The Guardian
• Watch Jon Stewart hit John Cena with a chair at WWE SummerSlam, By Justin Wm. Moyer, Washington Post
• ‘Fear the Walking Dead’ Premiere Recap: Welcome to Hell-Ay, By Noel Murray, Rolling Stone
• John Oliver has received ‘thousands’ of donations for his televangelism ministry, By Abby Ohlheiser, Washington Post
• Tails of the unexpected: the craziest cat quiz ever, by Leo Benedictus, The Guardian
• Sundance 2015 review: Grandma – Lily Tomlin cranks it up to the max as a ranting poet on the road, by Brian Moylan, The Guardian

Sports

The Little League World Series starts with a double elimination round (you need 2 losses to wash out).  Currently eliminated on the International side of the bracket are White Rock South Surrey of BC and Los Bravos de Pontezuela of the Dominican Republic.  Advancing are Tokyo Kitasuna and Cardenales of Venezuela.  On the Bubble facing deciding games are Tung Yuan of Taipei, Cronulla of Australia, AVRS of Uganda, and Seguro Social of Mexico.

On the United States side of the bracket Webb City MO and Wilshire-Riverside of OR have been eliminated.  Advancing are Red Land PA and Pearland West of TX.  Bowling Green Eastern  of KY, Cranston Western of RI, Northwood SC, and Sweetwater Valley must win to advance.

As you know it was a Mercedes 1 – 2 at Spa-Francorchamps.  Third place (at the time) Vettel was a stop after a blow out on the next to last lap.

In other racing news, British IndyCar driver Justin Wilson in coma after being hit by flying debris.  He used to drive for Minardi and Jaguar and his former Formula One associates are shocked and sympathetic (having lost Jules Bianchi to head injuries suffered a year ago in Japan in the last few weeks).  At the same time, like many others they wonder why IndyCar is so dangerous.  The answer to that is that the Drivers are encouraged to use Turn Left bumper car tactics that are totally unsuited to open wheel racing.  Also the Yellow Flag rules mandate bunched rolling re-starts that result in multiple additional accidents.

They do this to promote “close races”.  Those are always much more fun to watch as are flaming chunks of twisted metal.

Bullfighting is hardly a sport which is why I enjoy titles like this- Man killed during bull run in Spain pushes death toll to 10 so far for year.

Usain Bolt beats Justin Gatlin to 100m gold in ‘clash of good against evil’.  His opponent was twice banned for doping.  Oh, and he’s from the U.S..  Yay team.

Baseball

• How ’bout those Mets?  Five games ahead in the NL East.
• Damn Yankees lost C.C. Sabathia, not much of a loss but it’s probably a career ending injury, and the game.  Half a game back in the AL East.

The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.

–Aristotle

Obligatories, News and Blogs below.

ell, we’re back racing again. Here’s a piece at The Guardian evaluating the season so far by team from Mercedes to Manor.

Has Success Spoiled Formula One?

By BRAD SPURGEON, The New York Times

AUG. 21, 2015

“The words that I would use to describe it is that it is too perfect,” said Gil de Ferran, who worked at the Honda team a decade ago and who won the Indianapolis 500 as a driver. “People got too good at it. They are very, very good. So you don’t see anymore the imperfections, the human factor as clearly. The cars don’t break down, they don’t blow up. Nothing happens.”

…

Mercedes had only been guilty of achieving what every team and driver had always aimed to do.

“As a driver, think about this for a second, what is the perfect race?” de Ferran asked. “The perfect race is when I put the car on the pole, and I get the perfect start and each lap I pull away by a few tenths. Which is also possibly the most boring race you could think of.”

In a totally wrongheaded move Formula one is moving to further communications restrictions.  There is a new start rule that restricts communications between the car and pit about clutch settings.  Mark Webber for one worries this could lead to a rash of stalls and subsequent collisions.

Lotus in financial trouble.  Charles Pic is suing over their commitment to him as a driver (for which he paid, mind you) and he’s secured a court order impounding the cars after the race.  Gosjean qualified 4th but was dropped 5 grids for a gearbox replacement.  Alsonso and Button on the other hand will have to start from the back due to changes in their Honda power plant.

Renault evaluating F1 commitment.  Because of the poor performance of its engine and the dissatisfaction of Red Bull, their primary team, they are deciding whether to quit all together or buy a team.

The Guardian has a financial state of play article about the acquisition of Formula One by the Quatari Sovereign Wealth Fund and RSE Investments (owners of the Miami Dolphins).  The Russian GP could become a night race.

Driver gossip- Raikkonen has a new contract with Ferrari.  Jenson Button’s house was broken in to, and there is some speculation he and his wife may have been gassed.  Hamilton was caught playing with fully automatic weapons (perfectly legal if the people you’re renting time from have the right paperwork and you can afford it).  Kvyat was fined for not paying attention and unsafe release from pit lane.

There were several shaky incidents in practice.  There were 4 penalties in Qualifying penalties, all due to engine woes.  Grosjean got 5 Grids for his gearbox (as previously mentioned ); Alonso, Button, and Verstappen got 30, 25, and 18 Grids for exceding Engine Allowance.  Grosjean will start 9th, Verstappen 18th, and Button and Alonso will start 19th and 20th.

On offer are Mediums and Softs.  Rosberg had a huge blowout in Practice.  Rain is expected, but it always is at Spa.

• Spa
• Also Spa

Mid-Season standings below (pretty tables).

I’ve spent a lot of time on the road this summer which has been good from the standpoint of refining my ability to get portable with all my equipment which right now consists of my laptop (not exactly a speed demon, but 16Gb RAM and a terabyte or so of space), my cell phone (Moto E with 32Gb flash and 2 Borg sets), and my Nikon Coolpix 9700 (many batteries and flash cards and a so-so tripod).

Plus toys like my drive ripper, usb hubs, wireless mouse and silicon keyboard.

This is a bigger pack than previously because I’ll be staying longer, up to a month- certainly more than 2 weeks, so there’s all kinds of other comforts like my good monitor, speakers, and cables that have to go.

I have a lot of work to do today.  Hopefully after I unpack I’ll be able to resume my normal level of obnoxiousness.

TMC will be traveling also, so if the sites are a little more relaxed than is customary at various points, it’s because both of us are busy with other things.  We’ll try to keep up.

Obligatories, News and Blogs below.

Would the fall ever come to an end?

This Week’s Market Sell-Off May Not Be Such a Bad Thing

by Neil Irwin, The New York Yimes

AUG. 21, 2015

The United States stock market was on track for its worst week since 2011 by Friday afternoon, and the Hong Kong market had already reached that milestone. The British stock market has fallen for eight straight days, the third-longest run on record. The price of oil and emerging market currencies around the world continued a swoon that dates to last year.

And it’s about time.

That’s not to minimize the losses investors have incurred, or to say that each of these moves can be completely justified by data, and certainly not to predict what will happen next week or next month. But if you step back just a bit, what has happened in financial markets this week looks less like a catastrophe in the making and more like a much-needed breather when various markets had been starting to look a little bubbly.

Yah think?

(F)lat stock prices in 2015 mask what came before: a remarkable run-up in stock prices in the preceding half-decade. From mid-2009 to mid-2014, stock prices rose much faster than corporate earnings, or gross domestic product, or pretty much anything else you might think of as fundamentals.

In effect, investors became more and more willing to take the risk inherent in owning stocks, so much so that they were willing to pay very high prices for shares relative to the profits of the companies they were buying a piece of. Thus, by definition, they were accepting low returns (low both by absolute standards and even relative to the very low interest rates offered on safer investments like government bonds).

Just over three years ago, in July 2012, investing $100 in the S.&P. 500 captured more than $7 in annual earnings; putting the same money in a 10 year U.S. Treasury bond paid out only $1.55.

In other words, stocks might have been risky, but investors were being compensated nicely for that risk.

…

Even after the sell-off in stocks this week, the same $100 invested in stocks buys only $5.59 in earnings, compared with $2.08 for Treasury bonds. The fact that investors aren’t being compensated very much for taking on risk is, quite logically, making them more skittish when those risks materialize.

A mix of interventionist policies from the Federal Reserve and other central banks, and a global glut of investment capital have created a mismatch between the global economy, which has grown glacially, and markets, which have been on fire.

As Josh Brown of Ritholtz Capital Management tweeted on Friday, “2015 is the first year since the recovery began where the real economy is outperforming the financial economy.”

Greek PM Tsipras Resigns, Calls for New Election as Left Wing of Syriza Splits to Form New Party

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras Tenders His Resignation

Greek crisis: Syriza rebels break away to form Popular Unity party

by Jon Henley, Shane Hickey, and Alexandra Topping, The Guardian

Friday 21 August 2015 06.00 EDT

Rebels within Greece’s ruling party, the leftwing Syriza movement led by the prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, have announced they are breaking away to form a separate entity called Popular Unity.

Angry at what they see as a betrayal of Syriza’s anti-austerity principles, the 25 MPs announced their intention to form a new party in a letter to parliament the day after Tsipras resigned to pave the way for snap elections next month.

Led by the former energy minister, Panagiotis Lafazanis, the new movement will be the third-largest group in the Greek parliament and could conceivably receive a mandate to try to form a new government.

Tsipras announced his resignation in a televised address on Thursday night. He said he felt a moral obligation to put Greece’s third international bailout deal, and the further swingeing austerity measures it requires, to the people.

Last week he piloted the punishing deal through the Greek parliament, but suffered a major rebellion when nearly one-third of Syriza MPs either voted against the package or abstained. Tsipras is gambling that he will be able to silence the rebels and shore up public support for the three-year bailout programme.