Trojan Horse?!  Inconceivable!

Curried Qaeda

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Now I’m not going to try and blame all of Formula One’s problems on the undisputed fact that Nico Rosberg booted his ‘team mate’ Lewis Hamilton out of the race at Spa-Forchamps two weeks ago and will skate without any meaningful sanction at all, nor do I think the problem is merely ugly new circuits, ugly cars, no engine sound, or blatant nepotism, or even boring, slow, heavy cars.

Nope, the problem is money, but not the way you think.

The problem with any professional sporting franchise is that team owners pretend to think of it as a business, like selling groceries, instead of what it really is which is a gigantic penis you can masturbate in public.

First the power relationship is not at all like marketing directly.  The League you play in has every bit of it, otherwise you’re the Harlem Globetrotters inventing your opposition and playing High School Gyms against cops, firefighters, and politicians in wheelchairs (you want some public embarrassment?  Even the bad teams practice once a week and they use those chairs all day every.  Besides, they give you the crappy ones with the hinky wheels.  Yeah, that’s the ticket.  The fact I can’t hit an undefended layup standing on my own 2 feet has nothing to do with it).

The League always makes money, usually most of it, because their overhead is low and all they provide you with are rules, structure, and branding.  If you want to see libertarian Calvinball I suggest America’s Cup where everything is negotiated between the franchise owners except the wind and the water and they’re trying like heck to remove the water.

Anyway, if you want to watch Basketball you, the sports consumer, have certain expectations about what you are about to witness.  There is a ball.  It is round.  Players can touch it with their hands.  Occasionally they bounce it on the floor or throw it to another player.  There is a horizontal hoopie thing that serves as a point scoring goal.  I choose Basketball as my example because it was invented in the U.S., is familiar to most readers, and clearly and historically artificial in construction (a designed game), but the principles apply universally.  This is the ‘structure’.  If the hoopie thing were oriented vertically and the game played with your hips and the (usually) non-bouncy severed heads of your defeated enemies it would be Aztec-ball.

So ‘structure’ is what separates sports from each other and ‘branding’ is what fills the seats.  ‘Rules’ are about subtleties and competition.

You might argue that all non-running racing is ‘structurally’ the same.  You have a vehicle (bike, camel, doesn’t matter) and you win by either traveling the farthest or by crossing an arbitrary distance (could be farthest) in a smaller amount of time.  Yet there is no arguing that Turn Left racing is immensely more popular in the U.S. than camel racing, perhaps because of our Islamophobia or perhaps because of our outrageous taxes on camels (which I would walk a mile for).

And now we are getting closer to the subtleties.  What is the difference between IndyCar and Formula One?  Well, one favors close competition and the other favors speed.  In sports favoring speed the dynamic that develops is that one participant gains an early advantage which simply increases until the race is mercifully cut short.  The only chances for a change in position are reliability problems or management mistakes.  In sports favoring competition artificial and arbitrary rules are introduced to ensure any early advantage is erased.

Most team owners will complain about money when what they mean is that their team is uncompetitive because of management decisions.  Salary caps and other restrictions are put into place to make the Harlem Globetrotters play more like a team of politicians in hinky wheelchairs when the real difference is that they can make an undefended layup and you can’t.

In fact either you make a commitment to winning or you don’t.  Where Formula One has gone wrong is in restricting practice and testing.  Practice develops the pool of drivers, engineers, and mechanics so that supply side economics lowers your labor costs, not kickbacks, nepotism, and bribes.  Testing develops your design by exposing strengths and weaknesses outside of competition where corrections can reduce the impact of flaws and new strategies are suggested by discovery of advantages.

Yup, sure is expensive, but not as expensive as a failed program that is a waste and a joke (looking at you Scuderia Marlboro), simulated onanistic computer time (looking at you again Scuderia Marlboro), and wrongly calibrated high-tech wind tunnels (looking at you a third time Scuderia Marlboro).

At least Ferrari gets it and is agitating for more track time while the also rans are complaining that their cars need to get cheaper, not better, and blaming the drivers for lack of preparation while throwing ever increasing chunks of money at them in a lame attempt to create a box office bonanza out of noteriety and hype.

Autodromo Nazionale Monza is the fastest track in Formula One.  On offer today are the Hard and Medium tires between which there is not much difference.

In about 1759 or so, a new musical format started taking the world (and by ‘world’ I of course mean the elite upper class courtiers of certain western European Kingdoms and Principalities) by storm called the Symphony.

These pieces were typically quite short by comparison with Operas and Sacred works and scored for Concert Orchestra or Band while excluding vocalists which made a lot of sense in that they were normally abstract and non-representational (at least during the Classic period) and used as introductory, inter-act or movement, and departure music for more ambitious compositions.

Just like Sonnets there were competing formats the oldest being the Italian and distinguished by 3 movements, typically a Presto, an Andante, and another Presto in a different key or time signature.

Later many Symphonies were composed using the ‘German’ or 4 movement style consisting of an Allegro, an Adagio, a Minuet or Scherzo, and a Rondo.  More particularly 4 movement Symphonies can be characterized as Austrian since their most popular and prolific composers were Joseph Haydn (107) and Wolfgang Mozart (47).

And that is one of the reasons they called him ‘Papa’ (Mozart died a little too young).  It’s often thought Haydn ‘invented’ the Symphony, but among others with claims there are some who composed much earlier including Tomaso Albinoni and Antonio Vivaldi.  His day gig was Kapellmeister of Esterházy and during his long term of service there he helped out a lot of musicians who were basically otherwise unemployable.  He was incredibly fecund with all manner of musical amusements (hey, when it’s deadline time you take whatever crap you got, put a -30- under it, tear it out of the typewriter and hand it to the copy boy) and was actually constantly spoofing himself with things like the Surprise Symphony and the endless ‘false’ endings which became ‘Classical’ Clichés simply because lesser lights didn’t appreciate the irony (5 minutes in the dryer, I’m telling you).

It’s not that hard to see why I identify.

The downside is that the next major musical movement, Romanticism, came to be defined in opposition to his contributions which were not nearly as sterile and stylised as his detractors claimed.  Heck, one thing he did invent was Sturm und Drang.

Oh, and he had his head stolen.

That happened about a week after the funeral and nobody noticed for 11 years.  When they did the conspirators hid it in a mattress and parked one of their wives on top claiming she was menstruating.

Ick (one of many ways of pronouncing ek) said the searchers.

Anyway the thieves came up with another skull, continued to hide the real one, and it was 145 years before Yorick was reunited.

I came across this YouTube that represents about 5% of Haydn’s total Symphonies by Opus (as opposed to duration since it covers his first 5 which are very short).

Obligatories, News, and Blogs below.

David Cay Johnston is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and bestselling author whose recent work explores the causes and conditions of inequality in the United States. At the Syracuse University College of Law he’s a distinguished visiting lecturer, where he teaches the history of property, taxation, regulation, and commerce. He’s written a trilogy of books on our pro-corporate tax system; the most recent: The Fine Print: How Big Companies Use “Plain English” to Rob You Blind. He’s also editing the forthcoming book Divided: The Perils of Our Growing Inequality and writes regular columns for Al Jazeera America, Tax Analysts, and a weekly piece for Newsweek.

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Forecast: Cloudy

Kevin Spacey and the Caliphate

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Jurors will begin deliberating this week in the murder and manslaughter trial of four former Blackwater operatives involved in the 2007 massacre at Baghdad’s Nisoor Square. The suspects are charged for the deaths of 14 of the 17 Iraqi civilians who died when their Blackwater unit opened fire. The trial featured testimony from witnesses who survived the attack and saw loved ones gunned down. In closing arguments last week, prosecutors said Blackwater guards had shot fleeing civilians and boasted of taking their lives. Nisoor Square is the highest-profile deadly incident involving Blackwater – or any private war contractor – and many Iraqis are watching the upcoming verdict to see how seriously the United States intends to hold its private security companies accountable for their alleged crimes

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C’mon.  We’re so much more exceptional than the Islamic State Caliphate.  We would never torture people or murder innocent civilians and journalists.

Well, I mean not barbarically.

It would be a good, clean death administered remotely by rockets and bombs all the way from Langley.

Can’t you see how much more civilized that is?

Job Hunt

Then, in the dream, I’d take a nap.

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The Best Beer On The Planet

Zombie Reagan

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