March 19, 2024

Horse 3316 - THE PEOPLE v VAPE COMPANIES [2024] - Judgement

THE PEOPLE v VAPE COMPANIES [2024] - Judgement

The Fake Internet Court of Australia

H3316/1


It has come to this fake internet court's attention that vaping is now seen as cool by 'da kidz'. We are also aware that there is a secondary issue which has to do with the wide scale littering of vaping products, which we assume are supposed to be refillable but in practice never are. At least in the olden days when smoking cigarettes was seen as cool, the litter would be a cardboard box as well as miscellaneous filters festooned about the world. A vape device contains magnitudes more plastic than was ever generated by a packet of cigarettes, as well as a battery and the necessary elements to flash boil the syrup inside to generate the vape cloud.

This is not part of the primary hearing but this court by way of direction hereby orders everyone who does vape, to dispose of their rubbish thoughtfully. Don't be a mucky muk maker, do thing right thing. Chuck it the bin. If you can only be forced to do the right thing by means of the threat of punishment which stands behind the law, then you are a bad member of society and no better than an animal. 

Back to the principle matter at hand, e-cigarettes were originally invented as a quit-smoking aid. This would have been all that they were used for except that some bright spark worked out that by changing the syrup inside the device, they could get e-cigarettes to taste like anything. With some clever marketing in a practically unregulated market, within a few years e-cigarettes magically changed into what we now called 'vapes'.

Instead of a quit-smoking aid, vapes have turned into a nicotine delivery system in their own right. They have become popular enough and drawn sufficiently enough of their own market, that the ultimate proof that they have become their own thing is that there is vape advertising on Formula One cars. 20 years ago, these 200mph billboards would have advertised traditional cigarettes and it should surprise nobody that many of the various vape brands are owned by exactly the firms which owned the various cigarette brands: such as Philip Morris, British American Tobacco, et cetera.

This fake internet court makes no moral prescription about whether or not people should vape. The facts are well enough known that vaping causes lung damage, as well as health issues like black lung. This is only to be expected as vaping is yet another particulate delivery system to ones lungs. It is also a reasonably established maxim that people like what they like and are going to do what they like unless regulations and/or the law is so restrictive as to be a barrier to doing it. If people know the dangers and yet keep on wanting to do this anyway, then no direction from a fake internet court is going to change their minds.

These are the facts as this court sees them:

As someone who does not vape but who shares enclosed spaces with people who do, I know that most of the flavours of vapes are fruit based. I personally think that fruit flavours like pineapple, mango, strawberry, et cetera, after they have been sucked into someone's lungs and them blown back out again, all seem to resemble a poor facsimile of rotten fruit. This is not pleasant. 

As I live in the bogan west of Sydney and work in the harbour suburb of Mosman, and commute to work on trains and buses, I think that I must be singularly unique in that in one day I can share a bus with people from both the poorest and the richest suburb of the harbour city. In many respects, the difference between the quality of character of people at the very bottom and the very top of the economic ladder may as well be non-existent. One of the basic premises of economics and indeed most religions is that people are either rationally or irrationally selfish; and I can tell you that the likelihood of someone vaping on the bus in both the very richest and very poorest suburbs, is pretty well identical.

Vapes on the bus go round and round the air-conditioning system; so a bus ride is often like a smell roulette wheel. In addition to whatever other smells that we get on the bus, the smell of expended vape from someone else's lungs, is just one of legion. What smell are we going to get today? 4711? Pubescent boys' body odour? Rotten pineapple or rotten strawberry vape? Chanel No.5? Lynx Africa? Who knows? Wheel of olfactory, spin, spin, spin. What smell today do we find ourselves in?

There are two delicious ironies about this. The first delicious irony of this is that it is not delicious. Vaping probably tastes nice as evidenced by the fact that people like to do it. The second delicious irony of this is that it this is not merely a case of an old man yelling at a metaphorical cloud but a case of an old man yelling at a actual cloud. In the twenty-first century we have in some cases returned to the fug and palls of cloud which form inside of public transport. 

Final Judgement:

One of the things about smoking is that burning tobacco had a certain smell about it. That smell indicated to the world that the person who was smoking was aware of the risks and did it anyway. There is a sense of daring-do with tobacco smoke. The smell of a Gauloises wrapped inside a Gitanes indicates that a French person is looking down on you. The smell of a Marlboro indicates that person has dreams of punching a bison. The smell of a Lucky Strike indicates nothing other than it's toasted. The smell of putrid pineapple, mouldy kiwifruit, or not quite strawberry, indicates that you have accidentally wandered into a creche during snack time. Tobacco smoke was cool because fire is dangerous; even if it is tiny. However, can someone really said to be cool if they smell like rotten banana, mouldy strawberry, or pine lime?

This court hereby orders that henceforth, all vaping companies replace their fake fruit flavours with something actually cool and daring. This court suggests that such vape flavours as espresso coffee, southern beans and chili, charred capsicum, schezuan beef, and that most venerable flavour of all, bacon, be used instead. One does not impart any sense of being cool with vape exhalations that smell like someone has vomited an entire ice cream shop into a bus.

Vape Companies, you are guilty of both conspiracy and deception. You have brought hateration and holleration into this fake internet court and as you have no sensible business by altering the air that we breathe, we order you to desist and stop this egregious pretense. If we ever see you back before this court, the penalties will be severe. Get out; lest you make a mockery of my courtroom. We are already perfectly capable of making a mockery of this fake internet courtroom as it is. You are malevolent and have now ensnared others in your villainy. Can you not see what trouble thou hast wrought? 

- ROLLO75 J

(this case will be reported in FILR as H3316/1 - Ed)





March 15, 2024

Horse 3315 - The Primaries Are Over And 22 States Needn't Bother Showing Up

Just like a packet of the well known epoxy resin Araldite, this post comes in two parts.

Part I:

I watch politics like many people watch sport. There are big football teams in various leagues, a few star players, lots of yelling and shouting from the sidelines, and scores, and swings, and polls, and gains, and losses. There are political pundits and commentators, and even entire television networks who act as de facto cheer squads to make the general public rally behind their preferred football team.

Most sporting contests at least start with the possibility that there will be some kind of competition but in 2024, the two 'races' to get enough delegates to become the nominees of the big political parties in the United States, are simply non-events and non-contests. As I write this in March of 2024, the presumptive nominees of the big political parties in the United States, are as good as decided; with only the interference of Grimaldi Reaper who walks at 1mph as the possibility that one of the old men will not get to be President in November.

Following a series of riots at both the Democratic National Convention and to a lesser degree the Republican National Convention in 1968, the big political parties in the United States instead of having party members across the country decide who their nominees for President are, have had what is known as open primaries. This would be as if in Australia, the political parties opened up their pre-selection processes. The primaries are treated as if they were part of the normal democratic process, when in reality they are actually bonkers crazy-making and do not really exist in any other nation; with good reason. Political Parties are private entities and the fact that even allow the general public to have any say at all on their internal decision making process is just accepted in America. 

Before 1972, there were no real open primaries and the only time that the general public got a say was in the General Election; which makes sense as that is what it it. In Australia an election cycle is about six weeks long and that should be true in America but because there are fixed dates and it makes for good television, a lot of words can be breathed out, in a long winded process, where everyone is full of hot air.

So called 'Super Tuesday' which which massive amounts of delegates are decided across more than half of the states in the union, proved to be one giant snooze fest in 2024. Everyone knew who was going to win and this was so incredibly likely that betting companies weren't taking bets on this. You could get bets against but that really was like money for old rope for betting companies; with any and all outsiders running at worse than 1000:1. Because data is delicious (and in this case dull), here are the important numbers.

The Democratic Party sends 3,934 delegates to the Democratic National Convention. The votes of 1,968 votes are needed to win. As of 14th March 2024, Current President Joseph R Biden has 2,107 bound votes of delegates. That is already 53% of the total number of delegates and already an unassailable lead.

The Republican Party sends 2,429 delegates (2,272 pledged and 157 unpledged) to the Republican National Convention. The votes of 1,215 votes are needed to win. As of 14th March 2024, Former President Donald J Trump has 1,249 bound votes of delegates. That is already 51% of the total number of delegates and already an unassailable lead.

The 2024 Presidential Election will come down to Joe Biden as incumbent and Donald Trump as the challenger. What this actually means is that with about 20 million registered voters already having decided the fates of who will appear on the ballot papers in November, it matters not an iota, not a jot, not a tiddle, not a zak, what the voters in 22 states have to say. This is democracy manifest. Someone long forgotten in the mists of political lore once said that "Democrats fall in love, while Republicans fall in line" when talking about respective candidates for the general election. Well this time around, nobody is falling in love or line; instead they are all falling asleep.

If you are in one of the 22 states yet have to say, then don't bother. The results are already known, your votes count for literally nothing.

Part II:

Having run out of any and all political excitement as far as the ballot goes, all that is left is to scour history to see where this fit into the grand story of American politics and it appears that as with everything else about Donald Trump, this is unusual.

The last time that an incumbent president ran against a former president in a General Election was all the way back in 1912. In the 1912 Presidential Election, incumbent president William Taft against Theodore Roosevelt. Owing to the way that the Electoral College works, the number of delegates that these two gentlemen got was as follows:

Taft - 8

Roosevelt  - 88

Back in 1912 there were 531 delegates who were sent to the Electoral College which meant that a candidate needed 266 of them to win. 

So who won?

Woodrow Wilson - 435

Wilson winning with 435 delegates looks on the face of it to be a landslide but if you drill down into the data even just a little bit, what reveals itself is the utter stupidity of the American electoral system.

Taft as the Republican Party candidate got 23.2% of the vote. Roosevelt as his own Progressive Party candidate got 27.4% of the vote. There was also a Socialist Party candidate called Eugene Debs who got 6% of the vote; so he appears as an interesting but irrelevant appendix to this story. Wilson as the Democrat candidate got 41.8% of the votes; which given that states then bound 100% of their delegates to whomever won the state election, meant that as he won  40 of 48 states, he was entitled to 81% of the delegates.

Here's the problem. A Most Votes wins system coupled with a bound delegate system, meant that Wilson won via unpopular vote in every state, as well as the unpopular vote for the overall vote in the Union. Together Taft and Roosevelt won 50.6% of the vote and given that Roosevelt only formed the Progressive Party after he had lost the nomination process to become Republican Party candidate, then what he did was very effectively split what would have been the Republican Party vote in not quite twain. 50.6% of the vote would have been enough to secure 100% of the delegates.

This might very well be instructive.

There is a small but not improbable chance that faced with the choice of either Donald Trump or Joe Biden, that some wedge portion of the electorate who are faced with more gerontocracy, will simply not bother to show up at the polls in November. Some people, especially if they are disgusted at the way that Trump handled his presidency (including sparking an insurrection on Jan 6th 2021) may actively not bother to show up at the polls, or vote for some wingnut in protest because they know their vote is wasted.

As America runs a Most Votes Wins system, coupled with a bonkers hat-stand Electoral College which also operates on a Most Votes Wins system, then there is reason to quietly sigh in despair as Joe Biden wins the Presidency for a second time; due to securing a landslide of delegates, because the system itself is monumentally stupid. The system invented by Alexander Hamilton, I think purely to install George Washington as a hemi-semi-demi-god-king-President, was fit that and only that purpose. 

The difference between Trump and Roosevelt is that Trump made use of the fact that the Republican Party runs open primaries and he very effectively gamed and subverted the system. Now that he is on the inside, he has sucked all of the oxygen out of the Republican Party. Trump might very well win the Presidency in 2024 again, in the same way that Wilson did in 1912 and he himself did in 2016; by being an unpopular candidate. 

March 14, 2024

Horse 3314 - Toyota's First Step To Abandon Selling Cars

 

Hybrid Available... hmm... very interesting... BUT STUPID!

A very funny thing happened this week...

As of March 11th, Toyota Australia no longer sell petrol only variants of their motor cars. The announcement which was made last week was swift and in the background to the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries having a whinge about not wanting Euro 6 and Japanese fuel economy standards to apply in the Australian market, Toyota made a business decision.

Up front people like Michaelia Cash and Sussan Ley have been carrying on like shrieking goats (while Peter Dutton slinks off to run a campaign bout nuclear power) and complaining voraciously about how the Albanese Government is dictating what people are going to drive, and this in turn has fed the mewling and puking cacophony of howling morons at Sky News, 2GB and 3AW. Meanwhile, Toyota made its announcement almost silently and nobody took any notice at all. 

As someone whose choices of cars in the past has included the Hyundai Excel X1, Ford Ka Mk I, Peugeot 206, and currently a Mazda 2 DJ, I have crossed shopped the Toyota Yaris (also Echo) on multiple occasions. On every occasion thus far, Yaris has always lost out by virtue of being soulless and lifeless. From what I can gather, Toyota make excellent vehicles and although they can make exciting motor cars, their policy has always been to charge a premium for them and to leave cars that feel no more exciting than an appliance to drive, to whom they consider to be plebs. Pleb money is good enough to sell dross to but not good enough to sell fun to.

However, with the end of all petrol only orders for Yaris and Corolla, this leaves only their Hybrid and GR Hybrid levels of trim for these cars. Again, the hybrid Yaris by virtue of carrying 195kg in batteries, is permanently like carrying two fat men around forever. Discontinued petrol Yaris weighed 995kg, and Hybrid Yaris weighs 1190kg. Similar kinds of shenanigans occur with the Corolla and it is only with GR Corolla that Toyota bother to hand back any kind of fun at all.

As of today, the 14th of March 2024, any options to order what used to be the normal Yaris, Corolla, and even the Hilux Work Mate, have all been removed from the Toyota Australia configurator on their website. Orders officially stopped on Monday the 11th but evidently it took a bit of time for Toyota to slowly turn the lights out.

As of today, the variants from bottom to the top of the range for Yaris and Corolla are:

$36,260 - Yaris Hybrid

$52,590 - GR Yaris

and

$40,620 - Corolla Hybrid

$62,300 - GR Corolla

Granted that the GR Corolla is a turbocharged and four-wheel-drive car which exceeds the specifications of the utterly mad Group B cars of the WRC in the 1980s and the World Rally spec of the early 2000s but at more than $60,000, it is neither cheap, nor necessarily cheerful. The Yaris at more than $50,000 for its own GR variant, is also not great value for the money. 

At this point I have to question whom exactly Toyota think are going to buy either Yaris or Corolla any more. Is 36 grand for a Yaris even remotely sensible? What about 40 grand for a Corolla? Even if you adjust for inflation, this means that the base model Corolla is now more expensive in real terms than what you used to be able to get a 5.4L Coyote V8 Ford Falcon for. Maybe Toyota actually are pricing these things so that they direct people into buying yawn inducing SUVs and that Yaris and Corolla are essentially penalty pricing these two cars. If we roll back the clock, Corolla at one time managed to work its way all the way up to No.3 on the sales charts behind Commodore and Falcon, but now with Ranger, Hilux, and D-Max taking those place, Corolla actually isn't the volume seller that it used to be. As for GR Yaris and GR Corolla, can they really survive as hot-hatches if the hatch which they come from, dies? 

I write this as someone who likes cars and who likes driving them. However, as someone who works in an office all day long, corralling numbers into grids in tax returns and the like, I do not get to drive many of them. As far as driving the GR Yaris and GR Corolla go, I will likely never drive either. That's fine. I completely understand that by virtue of being soulless and lifeless, Toyota weren't likely to get my money anyway. However, by removing any and all variants of reasonably cheap cars, and practically making the only cars in their lineup worth driving their GR line, what Toyota have done is decided that Pleb money is no longer good enough to sell dross to any more.

This is fine. We have seen this before.

Motor manufacturers are businesses which exist for profit. Their sole point is to make money. Once upon a time, motor manufacturers were businesses which would sell motor vehicles to ordinary people. As wages since 1978 have been falling in real terms, and as the share of GDP given to wages has also been falling, and as the number of 'kids' who can actually afford to buy cars has also been falling, the whole market to sell any kind of cheap car to chase Pleb money has also fallen out. Ford decided that it could not be bothered any more and in its last dying gasps, it removed all but the ST-Line from Fiesta, Focus and Mondeo, before giving all of them the knife. Ford no longer sell cars except for Mustang. Toyota are in fact playing exactly the same game here. My suspicion is that Toyota will no longer sell either Yaris or Corolla by mid-2026 and that in their place, Yaris Cross (which already exists) and nothing will replace the two.

Yet again this is classic behaviour which can be described by the basketball heat map. Why bother trying to go for 2-points when you can shoot from further out  to make 3-points, when you only need to hit 2/3rds of the shots? 3 x $20,000 = $60,000 or 2 x $30,000 = $60,000. This is the same result. Or if you shoot for a more premium market then 1 x $60,000 = $60,000. For all of the shrieking of the goats, Toyota's Head Office in Aichi made a business decision which was almost completely divorced from the flavour of the political carry on in Australia. Toyota decided to make goat curry and cook everyone. 

March 13, 2024

Horse 3313 - Let's Change The Change In Our Pockets

 I currently have $2.60 in my wallet.

$2.35 of this is made up of the following coins: $1 x 1, 50c x 1, 20c x 3, 10c x 1, 5x x3. More astute readers will of course realise that $2.35 is 25 cents short of $2.60 and that is because the last coin that I have is an Australian quarter.



In 2017 the introduction of the quarter was in part commemorative and in part experiment to see how far and wide the coins would travel. In truth, they were withdrawn by the public and kept as keepsakes for the most part but the experiment did show that a few people were in fact willing to use them.

Here's my problem. My problem is not with the fact that I have one coin in my wallet which is unusual but rather that the rest of the coins in my wallet, of which there are eight of them, are not really enough to buy anything useful. Even if you account for shinkflation where the standard 375mL can is disappearing from retail, $2.35 is not enough to buy a 250mL can of Coke at a Colesworth supermarket. Yes, it is possible to buy 2L for less than that but if all you want is a nice refreshing drink and do not need a bladder bursting amount of liquid diabetes gut rot, then you would buy a sensible amount.

Admittedly I am probably quite rare in that I still prefer to use cash for buying small items; this means that I am probably quite anachronistic in that regard. Even worse, I am one of those wacky people who like to buy fruit by the piece, bread rolls as individual baps, and meat by the slice. Yes, I am in fact quite French in this regard as I assemble my own lunch. Fruit and cold cut meat does not increase in price because you buy small quantities and baps at 55c cost $2.75 per week as opposed buying a whole loaf of sliced bread which now costs $2.70. The fun thing about carrying cash to buy small things is that funds transfer is even faster than EFTPOS, for if I hand you a five dollar note, you are now instantly five dollars richer. The network can't go down and you don't pay a fee to a bank to receive the funds.

Most of the current set of coins that we use in Australia, the 5, 10, 20 and even the 50 cents, have their ur-prototype in the 1816 shilling in Great Britain. While Australia was still a collection of British colonies, it used British coins. It took 9 years after the enactment of the Commonwealth before Australia got its own coins and even then, the whole entire planchet set was a 1:1 facsimile of British coins. It wasn't until decimal currency that we got out first deviation with the 1 and 2 cents which were different, and the 50 cent coin which sat on the planchet of the half crown.

Apart from the one and two dollar coins, Australia's coinage is designed for a time which was more than 200 years ago and I think has long outlived its welcome. If coinage has one purpose which is to facilitate basic commerce and it doesn't do that very well, then it seems to me that the best thing to do would be to replace it. I note that Britain already replaced its 5 and 10 pence coins, as well as replacing the 50 pence coin and made all of them smaller. 

The smallest of our coins currently in circulation, the five cent coin, when it was introduced, has roughly the same buying power as $23.39 does today. The 10 cent coin has roughly the same buying power as $46.78 does today. The 10 cent coin was exactly equivalent to the shilling upon conversion to decimal currency in 1966. Bob Cratchitt in "A Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens which was written in 1840, was paid (what was quite a handsome wage at the time) of fifteen shillings a week. It is interesting that the tradition of putting a sixpence into the Christmas pudding which is roughly contemporary to that, is still like putting the equivalent of about $20 into someone's mouth now. It's not a huge sum of money but it is not insignificant. By the time that Enid Blyton came to write the Noddy books in 1949, Noddy's standard charge for a ride in his little red and yellow car is sixpence; which wasn't much for a big person but still reasonably exciting for a small person.

As I write this in 2024, five cents which is exactly the same size and equivalent to sixpence, is so pathetically valueless that it actually isn't worth most people's bother to pick up. All three of the five cent coins in my wallet came to be there because I did bother to pick them up; before they jammed the workings of escalators.

What do you do when a thing doesn't actually do the job it was designed to do? You either throw it away, which is evidently what people already do with five cent coins, or you change the thing so that it does do the job it was designed to do. I prefer the latter. I do not propose that we make the current set of coins smaller but rather, replace all of the silver coloured cupro-nickel coins with the quarter and replace the five dollar note with a coin. This would mean that instead of six coins, there would be only four.

How would rounding work? Exactly the same way as it does now. Electronic payments are rounded to the cent. In principle they can be rounded to the mil and in practice the only organisations that do round money to the mil and smaller are petrol stations and people doing dividend calculations like BHP who declare dividends to six places after the decimal point. At the other end of the

All that aside, twelve goes down and thirteen goes up. Thirty-seven goes down and thirty-eight goes up. Sixty-two goes down and sixty-three goes up. Eighty-seven goes down and Eighty-eight goes up. It this sounds hard, then remember that we have already been through this kind of process in 1992 when 1 and 2 cent coins were quite rightly removed. That 2 cent coin had roughly the same buying power as 7 cents does not and that was not enough for it to survive. 

I do not think that there will be the same kinds of objections from charities this time around either. When 1 and 2 cent coins were removed from circulation, there was minor outcry that charities would lose out because people were saving up 1 and 2 cent coins. I do not think that charities want the hassle of collecting tiny change as it is now; much less object to it being gone. 

Moreover I do not think that there would be much, if any, objection from the general public either. The people who currently do not use cash have no reason to object and the people who carry cash would I think, be more happy in carrying more useful cash. I find it slightly weird that the change in our pockets which was designed for use 208 years ago, still persists. Using the very long historical rate of inflation of 4% since the founding of the City of Rome in 1 Ab Urbe Condita (753BC), then even the Farthing had more buying power than the biggest coin which I would propose ($5). Part of the reason why we are now a semi-cashless society is that the uselessness of cash to do its only purpose, makes it hard to use. We can make it better.


March 12, 2024

Horse 3312 - NASCAR's Golden Problem

Week in and week out, whenever there is a snooze-fest of a NASCAR race, there is a section which always blames a lack of horsepower and/or the aero package that the car ran for that particular race. The problem is that if you map the fan survey which is regularly run by The Athletic Auto's correspondant Jeff Gluck and his totally officially unofficial scientifically unscientific question of "Was Such-And-Such a good race?" then what you find is that whether or not something was a good race has no mapping whatsoever to the amount of horsepower, the particular aero package that weekend, the size of the speedway, whether it was a superspeedway, short-track, or road course; in fact as far as I can make out, there is near enough no correlation with anything to determine if a given race will be good or not.

In a series like NASCAR, where the teams are very much bound inside a tightly controlled box by the rule book, any advantage that anyone can find comes at a premium. However, it all appears to be chasing down the very edges of performance such as manipulating 1% items of aero, which is why Joey Logano tried driving with a webbed glove to block out window drag, or why Joe Gibbs Racing put down 30 layers of tape underneath the livery wrap.

The thing that nobody can address is that a NASCAR Cup car is very wide for the length. They are very hefty hecka-chonks that just don't rotate through any of the three axes of rotation all that well. While this means that they are stable, it also means that they don't pitch much and don't turn through corners all that well.

Speaking as someone who can only manipulate numbers and who can not actually perform the experiment, my suspicion is that the ideal ratio of Wheelbase to Width, is the Golden Ratio. The Golden Ratio is (1+√5)/2, which is about 1.618033. A lot longer than this and cars will not turn very well hence why dragsters are long and skinny, and a lot shorter than this and paradoxically cars also do not turn very well due to the fact that turning a car is essentially operating a lever through the yaw axis.

In terms of what horsepower and the aero package actually do when it comes to how good the racing is, the reason why I think that they are most irrelevant is that even with a 1000 horsepower car, that power is still only being applied linearly and at best is only going to break the mechanical grip of tyres on the road. The aero package which is designed to suck a car to the track, only really applies vectored suck forced downwards relative to the axis of pitch in the car.

When it comes to what makes racing 'good' or not, then I suspect that the overriding aspect of a car's basic geometry by means of the axis of yaw, is in fact the single most critical aspect. Cars that are twitchy, are mostly twitchy through the yaw axis and while the three axes of pitch, roll and yaw all come into play when driving a car but only yaw is important when it comes to turning a vehicle through a corner. Granted that pitch and roll will affect the ability of the wheels to attach themselves to the road surface but how well a car turns through a corner, is the subject of loads and loads of dark arts which apart from camber, castor, toe, rubber compound, et cetera, is mostly determined by yaw. 


A NASCAR Cup Car which has had the base dimensions baked in ever since the 1981 season has the following dimensions.

NASCAR Cup Car: Wheelbase/Width.

110.0' / 78.6' = 1.399

A W/W ratio of only 1.399 is actually stubbier than my wee ickle Mazda 2 DJ. What this means is that a NASCAR Cup Car is a hefty chonky boi, which doesn't turn particularly well; which is expressed in the fact that they aren't exactly the fastest thing around road courses and street circuits.

So what's the solution?

The obvious thing that I can think of is simply to make the cars narrower. The closest that you can get to the Golden Ratio is 66 inches wide but that might look a bit silly. Seeing as the Ford Falcon from 1960-2016 was within a quarter percent of 110.0 inches by 72 inches, then that seems to me to be about right. A 72 inch wide car is like about the upper limit as that gives you a W/W radio of 1.52. 

The second obvious thing that I can think of is to make the tyres narrower. A NASCAR Cup Car sits on tyres that are 365mm wide. A V8Supercar tyre, which is a tyre for a similar application but which turns far more easily, is only 280mm wide. That's roughly a whole palm width wide. While that doesn't seem like a lot, rotating a wider tyre through its own axis of yaw is also harder than rotating a narrower tyre through its own axis of yaw; in addition to rotating the whole car.

The third thing that I would do is to increase the ride height relative to the road. This would also help to remove some of the mechanical grip by removing a lot of the vectored suck force which happens because a big thing is clearing the air away. 

By doing all of this, lap speeds would blow out and get worse but the cars would be far more nervous than they are currently. If the aim is to actually provide good racing, then making the cars more directionally unstable and making them dance more is surely the way to go. However, in making the cars more directionally unstable I would give back part of what I took away.

When Chrysler shut down its missile division in 1968, it found that it had a bunch of engineers left over. Rather than waste them, it immediately employed them to attack the problem of going motor racing the Superspeedways. The result was the Dodge Charger Daytona and the Plymouth Road Runner. Both of these cars had almost comically large fins which provided directional stability and kept them pointed in a straight line. 

Of course the idea of putting fins on a racecar had been known about since the 1930s. In the 1950s Jaguar made use of the existence of a driver in an open cockpit and put a giant fin behind the driver on their D-Type. Even though the 1955 Le Mans 24 Hour Race was marred with tragedy and Mercedes-Benz withdrew their cars, they were still being pushed by the Jaguars all the way. When in 1956 Mercedes-Benz didn't show up, Jaguar D-Types basically had no competition. 

Practically every car with any kind of aerodynamic attachment has end plates on the ends of their wings and modern Le Mans prototypes still have fins. Even NASCAR Gen-1 cars for a while had fins by default and it is reported that cars like the 1959 Plymouth Fury where the fins were quite pronounced, were pleasant to drive. If I was Grand Poohbah and Lord High Everything Else, then I'd think about putting big fins on the back of NASCAR Cup cars again. I'd also likely use the same kind of generic body from which the second division Xfinity series cars could come from and where Truck series trucks would come from. 

I have seen enough races over the years to know that when you have drivers pushing and bumping each other, that no human however superhuman they think that they are, can possibly understand or react to forces that they can not see. Quite often small taps, especially caused when a pusher is pushing a pusher, result in the car at the front of the train wiggling, then the driver trying to correct and overcorrect the steering; then in the space of microseconds, we have ten to twenty cars torn up for no good reason at all. At 200mph at car is moving at more than 293 feet per second. By putting big fins on the back, at least there'd be a tendency for the cars to want to continue to travel straight and true; which given the current aero kits which want to pull a car downwards, does not happen. Remember, forces are vectored; which means that they have both magnitude and direction.

And I think that fins look cool.


March 08, 2024

Horse 3311 - Green And Gold Crossed The Thin Blue Line

https://www.skynews.com.au/australia-news/matildas-star-sam-kerr-allegedly-called-police-officer-a-stupid-white-bastard-after-cops-called-to-taxi-fare-dispute/news-story/5838b58a84545d37023ba2e35079bf20

More details have emerged about what Matilda's star Sam Kerr allegedly uttered to a police officer, which led to her racial harassment charge. 

Police will allege the 30-year-old called an officer "a stupid white bastard" after cops were called to break up a dispute over a taxi fare in Twickenham last year, The Sun has revealed. 

It has been claimed Kerr was sick while she was in the taxi after a night out with friends on January 30, 2023. 

Kerr has been charged with intentionally causing racially aggravated harassment, alarm or distress to the male PC under section 31(1)(b) of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998.

She entered a plea of not guilty to the offence when she appeared via videolink in Kingston Crown Court in the United Kingdom on Monday. 

Kerr, who sported a t-shirt and black jacket for her virtual court appearance, had only confirmed her name and plea of not guilty during the hearing. 

Judge Judith Elaine Coello indicated Kerr's defence would be that she did not intend to cause alarm, harassment or distress to the police officer, and that her behaviour was not racially motivated, The Sun reported. 

- Sky News Australia, 7th Mar 2024

Oh dear.

Discrimination cases generally, have a pretty high standard of proof which needs to be crossed over. Racial discrimination cases in particular, take that standard of proof and apply a very particular set of conditions over the top of it. Generally speaking, these kind of cases have two elements. Firstly there is the question of whether or not a reasonable person was likely to be offended. Secondly there is the question of what kind of material tort resulted from the alleged event of discrimination. 

From what I can determine, as it specifically relates to this case, and from what little information which we've been told, this case will hinge upon what constitutes 'mere abuse' and whether or not The Man On The Clapham Omnibus is likely to be offended.

If the Metropolitan Police are to allege that Sam Kerr called the Police Constable a "stupid white bastard", then that will be a question of to what degree that a police officer can be offended and whether or not this constitutes racial discrimination.

If it is just the word "bastard" then the likelihood of a police officer being genuinely offended is small. If this was in Australia, then this would be a non-event. In fact there is quite a famous story when during the Bodyline Test Cricket series, Douglas Jardine complained to the Australian Test Captain Vic Richardson, who is reported to have opened the door to the dressing room accompanied with Jardine and asked the question:

"OK, which of you bastards called this bastard a bastard?"

I personally do not believe that "bastard" is the word that was used in this context, and that the media is using scare quotes to hide actual words used; which might have genuinely caused offence.

However it is the qualifiers which have been used at the beginning of this abusive epithet which is where this case might actual draw its venom from. "Stupid" might very well be just an intensive modifier and therefore not material to the case. The thing that really might what lies as the heart of the case, is Kerr's use of the word "White". 

Is a White person materially likely to be offended if they were called "White"? Remember, the law not only has to be seen to meter out equal justice, it has to actually do so. If this had been someone racially abusing a black police officer, then the law can not act differently. 

I can almost guarantee that the Metropolitan Police have the incident on a body camera affixed upon the person of the police officer in question. I can also almost guarantee that the Metropolitan Police would not have taken this to the Police Prosecution Service unless they thought that this was a watertight case. I am 98% sure that the police have Sam Kerr bang to right on this. There is likely absolutely no fault with the legal materiel of this case.

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/37/section/31

31 - Racially or religiously aggravated public order offences.

(1) A person is guilty of an offence under this section if he commits—

(b) an offence under section 4A of that Act (intentional harassment, alarm or distress)

- Section 31, Crime and Disorder Act 1998

And:

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1986/64

4A - Intentional harassment, alarm or distress.

(1) A person is guilty of an offence if, with intent to cause a person harassment, alarm or distress, he—

(a) uses threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour, or disorderly behaviour, or

(b) displays any writing, sign or other visible representation which is threatening, abusive or insulting,thereby causing that or another person harassment, alarm or distress.

- Section 4A, Public Order Act 1986

Was there an offence under Section 31?

Can the police demonstrate that there was intent to cause a person harassment, alarm or distress?

Because almost certainly, if video and audio exists of the incident, then Section 4A(1a) and (1b) are a simple matter of fact. 

What I want to know is what the Metropolitan Police hope to achieve by bringing forth this case to court. If this involved a black player from the Premier League, would the Metropolitan Police still have brought the case to court? What kind of other political flavours are going on under the surface? Is the Police Constable in question a member of the National Front or the BNP? To what degree is this statutory revenge because this can be used as a highly publicised case? Remember, the 1980s and the 'sus laws' still linger on in people's memories.

This case has already gained political traction in right-wing media outlets like GB News, OAN, Fox News, and Sky News Australia. Likely it will also gain political traction across Europe as well. I imagine that there is quite a lot of dog whistling going on, as Britain sleepwalks to the right and as sections of the media quietly goose step towards cultural fascism. If that was the intent of the Police Constable in question and the underlying culture of the Metropolitan Police Service, then this is an open goal for them. 

There is of course a tension which exists in progressive politics which simply does not exist on the authoritarian right. An inconsistency like this debases progressive politics because although we want to lecture society on how we have zero tolerance for racism, it is still hypocrisy to dismiss it and laugh it off jovially it it happens to occur against white people.

The manner in which people dismiss this out of hand, precisely because due to the fact the recipient of the alleged abuse was a white man reinforces the notion in young white men in particular, that they are the enemy of progressive politics. It does not help that among some sections of progressive politics white men are the designated enemy of progressive politics. This in turn, which drives an imagination of the victimisation of white men (despite all evidence to the contrary) actually does help to drive extremism.

If what I suspect is true and that the Metropolitan Police have a watertight case, then this is pretty open and shut. It still doesn't detract from the fact Kerr was trying to use someone's race as a slur. She was being racist.

You can't sugar coat it.

It was a racist slur.

Actions have consequences.

March 07, 2024

Horse 3310 - Where Were You When You Were Us? Who Are You Now You're Not Us?


AFC Wimbledon 1 - Milton Keynes Dons 0

Curtis 90' + 4'

Four minutes into extra time, Ronan Curtis scored a stoppage-time winner which in the scheme of League Two, merely puts a temporary dent in the hops of MK Dons' automatic promotion hopes. In the grand scheme of English Football though, this was more than just a goal and a win in the fourth tier of English Football.

This was proof that the game always did belong to the people and that it always will do. This was proof that money can not buy some things. Money does not buy tradition. Money does not buy class. Money does not buy history. Money does not buy community.

To put this in perspective, here is a potted history of the last 40 years:

May 1983: Wimbledon are Fourth Division Champions and are promoted to the Third Division.

May 1984: Wimbledon are Third Division Champions and are promoted to the Second Division.

May 1986: Wimbledon come 3rd in the Second Division and are promoted to the First Division.

May 1988: Wimbledon win the FA Cup Final 1-0 against newly crowned league champions, Liverpool.

May 1991: After the publication of the Taylor Report (following the Bradford, Heysel, and Hillsborough disasters) which following recommended all-seater grounds for top-flight clubs, Wimbledon left Plough Lane after 79 years to groundshare with neighbours Crystal Palace at Selhurst Park.

May 1997: Wimbledon chairman Sam Hammam sold the club to two Norwegian businessmen, Kjell Inge Røkke and Bjørn Rune Gjelste; who intended to bulldoze Plough Lane and turn it into a supermarket site.

Aug 2001: The new chairman, Charles Koppel, announced that Wimbledon intended to relocate to Milton Keynes. The English FA refused the move.

May 2002: A Independent Commission appointed by the English FA approves the relocation of the club to Milton Keynes.

Feb 2002: The English FA declared that it was "not in the wider interests of football" to have a club based in Wimbledon

https://web.archive.org/web/20120205212904/http://www.wisa.org.uk/cgi/l/files/20020530_fa.pdf

Aug 2003: "Wimbledon" plays its first matches at the National Hockey Stadium in Milton Keynes.

Jun 2004: The name of the club plying its trade at Milton Keynes changed its to reflect it's relocation.

The rest of the story of AFC Wimbledon, which is a new club for the fans, , and owned by the fans is long and complicated of itself but the relevant parts here are:

Nov 2020: AFC Wimbledon play their first game at the new Plough Lane 

Mar 2024: Ronan Curtis scores a 94th minute winner as Wimbledon record their first-ever win at Plough Lane against the club from Milton Keynes.

The match itself, played out in fading sunshine on a still crisp spring afternoon in Southwest London, has a two minute highlight reel and really that's all that there was. This was two sides playing relatively neutral football, who were both being cancelled out in the centre of the pitch; both shifting between 4-4-2 and 4-5-1, with not enough presence up front to make use of any firepower. As almost a neutral, watching this match for me was like watching two boxers with one glove tied behind their backs. Curtis's goal which came as the last actions of extra time, was the brightest spark of the whole match.

The two sides have met before on a number of occasions. The two sides have even met this season. This particular match was not about getting one up over the club who used to be you before it was stolen away but something deeper.

Wimbledon FC, that is the club with a century of tradition and which held aloft the FA Cup after beating Liverpool in the Cup Final, once upon a time played at a ground further up Plough Lane. AFC Wimbledon, that is the club which was born out of the ashes of the supporters base of the old club, and became a club for the fans and by the fans, only very recently moved back to Plough Lane after playing out of other club's grounds. This is the final chapter in the story of the club coming home and to win at home against the club who used to be you before it was stolen away, is special.

This is not merely a geographical rivalry like Arsenal and Tottenham, or City and United in Manchester. This is as bitter a rivalry as Liverpool and Everton would have been in the 1890s, after the former was formed after the then new owner bought the ground and then had to buy 12 players to put in that new ground. In every respect, what the new owners of Wimbledon FC did, in taking a club and ripping it out of the community where it had been for more than a century and moving it 135 miles away, is magnitudes more horrible, heinous, and horrid, and far worse hateration and holleration.

Herein lies the reason why this goal and this 1-0 result is more important than any other mere derby result and possibly more important than a cup final. AFC Wimbledon is not just a phoenix club that rose from the ashes of a previous club which went into administration and bankruptcy but had to be built anew after people with money stole a club away. This 1-0 result is the club owned by and for the fans, demonstrating that you can never buy the heart and soul of the game.

1-0 in a club owned by the fans, in a ground owned by the fans; against the franchise currently plying its trade elsewhere because people with money had no regard for the fans, is the demonstration that community matters more than many billions of pounds. 

March 06, 2024

Horse 3309 - THE PEOPLE v THE CHIZZA [2024] - Judgement

The Fake Internet Court of Australia

THE PEOPLE v THE CHIZZA [2024] - Judgement

H3309/1


"Great Judge Rollo,

Make a ruling on whether or not The Chizza from KFC should exist. I think it's dumb and is pointless and needs to **** right off and never come back."

- Kyle18, 2nd Mar 2024.

It has come to the attention of this court that KFC has invented a thing called "The Chizza" and this week, I was sent a message on a motorsport forum of all things, to make a ruling on Kentucky Fried Chicken's apparently new invention. Firstly I am flattered to be called "Great Judge" because that helps to solidify the inherent silliness and seriousness The Fake Internet Court of Australia. This court is in a unique position in that it simultaneously asserts that it is both definitive, irrelevant, and igororable.

This fake internet court has been asked in the past to rule on whether or not pineapple belongs on a pizza (no, it doesn't), whether or not banana belongs on a pizza (no, it doesn't), and what the best pizza actually is (it is pepperoni and red onion). This court claims to therefore be qualified in this realm to answer this kind of question. The point of order contained in this application is whether or not The Chizza needs to exist. Before we can get to that point of order, we need to know what a Chizza is.

These then are the facts as the court sees them:

The Chizza appears to be no more than a flattish piece of chicken which is fried in the fast-food chain's signature batter of 11 herbs and spices, topped with pizza sauce, mozzarella cheese and pepperoni slices.

The 'what' of this case is pretty easy to establish. The 'why' of this case, became the subject of a Washington Post article:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2024/02/27/kfc-chizza-review-chicken-pizza/

KFC’s Chizza is a chicken-pizza mashup with one looming question: Why?

- Emily Heil, Washington Post, 27th Feb 2024.

The article is quite reasonable in trying to attack both of the questions of 'what' and 'why'; so it doesn't need much in the way of discovery by this court. Let's not beat about the bush and attempt to call a 'spade' a 'square headed digging and hauling hand tool'; let's call this out for what it is. KFC have just invented a chicken parmi with a proprietary name.

Before judgement is pronounced, this court would like to thank our learned friends and esteemed colleagues, Hen Solo acting as counsel for The People and Marsha Mellow who acted as counsel for the defence.

With these known facts, the court is more than adequately armed to be able to make judgement.

Final Judgement:

Anyone who has been to an Ari in Australia or New Zealand in the past 50 years knows exactly what a chicken parmi is. We all know that a chicken parmi is an act of magic where you take a big chicken nugget and with the addition of sauce and cheese, are able to charge $18 for it. All that KFC have done here is made a slightly fancier chicken parmi and added it to their menu.

Maybe this is novel and new to an American audience but as someone who has been to many Aris, the fact that KFC has done this looks so blatantly obvious that it should have already been a fait accompli.

The art of putting things on top of other things is not new; nor is the art of putting food on top of other kinds of food. A long long time ago, in a land called 'the 90s', a pie shop on my way home from school sold a 'pizza meat pie'; which was the same idea as a Shepherds' Pie but with a layer of pizza on top instead of potato. This was brilliant. When the pie shop closed forever, all that was left was the idea, the memory, and the hope, that one day someone would reinvent pizza meat pie. Nobody has but chicken parmi is a very fine substitute. 

It is the opinion of this court that The Chizza despite its ridiculous name, is inherently a brilliant idea. If as the Washington Post suggests, that The Chizza is disappointing, then that's fine as well and should be expected. What do you seriously expect from a fast-food chain which has disinterested teenagers working behind the counter? In some respects this court applauds poor customer service and quality because that equates to something being cheap. 

If the Chizza ever comes to Australia then the name is already perfect. People have no problem in calling a proprietary object a weird name. KFC have sold a burger in the past called a 'Zinger'; so the name 'Chizza' doesn't seem at all out of place. Where this name excels is that it sounds like the nickname that you might give to someone called Charles, or who has the surname of Cheesman. If this was sold by KFC in Penrith, or Spotswood, immediately after closing time for pubs in the area, it is very easy to imagine a lot of drunk bogans yelling "Chizza!" at 1am in the morning. The fact that said bogans might have been kicked out of Panthers, where they could have already gotten an $18 chicken parmi, is a lesson in dramatic irony.

To answer the general point of order of whether or not the Chizza needs to exist. Probably nothing needs to exist but walking back from the concept of causa sui to the less absolute position of 'should' as opposed to 'need', then The Chizza is not a thing that does exist and should not. I am unlikely to ever come across a Chizza in person (because the truth is that even though I live within walking distance of a KFC, I have never been to that KFC); so it seems churlish to rule against it. The whole idea of proprietary parmi is likely inevitable and unless it actually is disgusting, this fake internet court is uninclined to rule against it.

Judgement is hereby made in favour of the continued existence of The Chizza, with absolute unqualified ambivalence towards it. In the words of Icona Pop as used in the KFC adverts "I don't care." That is all.

- ROLLO75 J

(this case will be reported in FILR as H3309/1 - Ed)

March 02, 2024

Horse 3308 - Dunkley By-Election: Labor Retain

https://tallyroom.aec.gov.au/HouseDivisionPage-29778-210.htm

31,532 - BELYEA, Jodie (ALP)

29,877 - CONROY, Nathan (Lib)

4,997 - BRESKIN, Alex (Grn)

As I write this, the results for the by-election in the division of Dunkley, look very much like the Labor Party will retain the seat; with Jodie Belyea winning 41.02% of the primary vote, versus former Mayor of Frankston Nathan Conroy with 38.87% of the primary vote. This by-election was not the result of a member resigning but by the death of sitting Labor member Peta Murphy who had been battling breast cancer for 13 years. So unlike other elections where the previous member was unpopular and/or left in disgrace, this by-election was held in a fairly neutral environment. 

Jodie Belyea winning 41.02% of the primary vote, which is a swing of 0.05% to Labor is so slight as to be statistically unimportant. It is so small that the by-election actually tells us nothing about Labor's chances of retaining government in 2025. I personally think that there will be an early budget in March; with the election taking place on or about the 17th of May 2025; which would be an ordinary House and Half-Senate election.

Nathan Conroy was in fact a fairly popular Mayor for Frankston; which meant that he could and did run a pretty positive campaign. However, if you had been watching Sky News, reading either The Age or The Herald-Sun, then you would be forgiven for thinking that this would be an absolute walkover for him. The obvious question is 'what went wrong?' and the answer is 'nothing really'.

Except:

https://twitter.com/sussanley/status/1763060889765515496

If you live in Frankston and you’ve got a problem with Victorian women being assaulted by foreign criminals, vote against Labor.

If you do not want to see Australian women being assaulted by foreign criminals, vote against Labor.

Send Labor a message.

- Sussan Ley, 29th Feb 2024, 15:37pm (on X)

Sussan Ley, the Member for Farrer and Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party, decided to turn this into a racist dog whistle campaign. Trying to stoke the fires of irrational fear by blaming "foreign criminals" when we all know that she really means 'black people' but is too craven to bring her actual racism into the light, is quite frankly despicable.

There probably will be a lot of commentary about 'who really won' the by-election as though this were some gnostic set of runes that nobody can read but the thing about a an election is that it is really ridiculously easy to determine who won. We have the numbers. The person with the most votes after all the instant run-offs, that is the person with more than 50% plus 1 of the votes has won the election. You don't need to clutch pearls, look at bird entrails, read tea leaves or wave burning leaves over your head - the person 'who really won' the election is the person who WON the election.

However in dissecting why the Liberal Party lost the seat when their candidate was actually quite affable and seems like a nice chap, then this moment at thirteen minutes to four in the afternoon, which is time enough for news bulletins to pick up their sound bites, the exact moment that the Liberal Party lost the seat.

At this point, Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party, made her intentions clear that she intended to court the racist vote for her own political ends, and rather than mere blaming the Labour Party for this or that, turned this into a 'wink wink nudge nudge black people' moment. Sussan Ley as an openly racist knave, tried to dog-whistle and the people of Dunkley responded by telling her party where to go.

If you drill down into the numbers as they stand, the Labor Party retained its primary vote. The Liberal Party can try and pretend that it has had a successful campaign but all that they have in fact done, is pick up votes from the absence of Pauline Hanson's One Nation and the United Australia Party. I do not know how you can pretend that a 6.82% gain is a success when the corresponding loss of 7.70% is from parties who weren't even running. What that actually says is that 0.88% of the population or 709 people, would rather vote for an empty chair than you.

If there is a lesson to be learned here, it is that trying to use American advisors and American strategies to push American-style misinformation in an Australian context, is a road which puts you on a hiding to nothing. Yes, there was a time and a place when demonising asylum seekers and blaming immigrants for the woes of the country did work but that was back in 2001. American advisors which suggest that a winning political strategy which involves energising their base, is in the third decade of the twenty-first strategy, a losing one. 

The take-aways from this election are that the Labor Party has gone nowhere because boring government is good government. The Liberal Party only increased its primary vote because the further-right-wing sections of the political spectrum fielded zero candidates. The Greens having lost 4% of the vote are going AWOL in the public imagination. And weirdly, the fact that we have an Animal Justice, a Libertarian, and a Victorian Socialist who together polled 5.48% of the vote would suggest that the fringes of the electorate are fracturing.

Curiously, I suspect that Ms Ley is either delusional, drunk, or just openly lying to the Australian people:

https://twitter.com/sussanley/status/1763882241892270580

The people of Dunkley have sent Anthony Albanese a strong message and it's not ‘Happy Birthday’, it's 'do something about the cost of living crisis.’ A swing of this size at the next election would see us win 11 seats from Labor. This is a terrible result for the Prime Minister.

- Sussan Ley, 2nd Mar 2024, 20:01pm (on X)

I actually do have a spreadsheet and can calculate this. 

Ms Ley is in fact correct, a swing of this size at the next election would see the coalition win 11 seats at the next election. By my reckoning, they would increase from 55 to 66 seats. Also, a swing of this size at the next election would see Labor pick up two seats, taking them from 77 to 79. The Greens would lose 3, Centre Alliance would lose their only seat, and there would be 7 independents.

I still fail to see how retaining a seat is a "terrible result for the Prime Minister". Perhaps someone can explain that to me.

Horse 3307 - It's About The Wind, Yo

On Tuesday, following the race at Atlanta Motor Speedway, NASCAR made the announcement that both Ryan Preece and Noah Gragson had been penalised 35 points for "non-conforming air deflectors" on the rooves of their cars.

On Friday before the race, NASCAR confiscated the offending parts and made Stewart-Haas Racing fit new parts to the cars; then watched SHR very very closely.

The 35 point penalty means that both Ryan Preece and Noah Gragson go into the third race of the season without any points.

The question which I was asked is my most favourite question in the world... "Why?". Why would you do that if you know that you are possibly going to be picked up for it? Because this is sport and everyone who is not currently seeking an advantage should immediately seek to do so, and given that this is motor racing where everyone is cheating all of the time if they can get away with it and/or invent solutions not yet covered by the rules, then this kind of thing is as expected as the sun rising in the morning.

This particular infringement is a classic physics question and at its heart is entirely to do with fluid dynamics and how air flows around an object and how you can control that air flow. Air, water, fluid, traffic, crowds, electricity, politics, moods: these are all things that flow and where resistance can be controlled.

An object which is moving through the air creates wind resistance which is variable depending on how slippery the object is through the air (drag coefficient), as well as the surface area being presented to the wind, as well as the relative air speed, and the pressure of the air (or water, or other medium). Very obviously, a dart or torpedo shaped object with a pointy end is going to pierce the air more easily than a brick. Also reasonably obviously, an object which is not moving but which has air moving around it, is also going to create wind resistance; which is true for a building, or a person in a storm with an umbrella, or when MY HAND IS A DOLPHIN!¹

Stewart-Haas Racing were pinged for unauthorised roof rails at Atlanta Motor Speedway and while NASCAR has not specified what the infringement was, given that every team is likely to be cheating all the time in some way because they want to gain even the smallest advantage, it is reasonable to suggest that SHR was trying to chase a very wee bit of speed by affecting the wind resistance due to the spill which comes off of the roof rails at speeds of 190mph.

The roof rails exist in principle, so that when a car is turned sideways, they create turbulence over the car because a sideways car and the attached air flow is a bad analogue of an aircraft wing. If this was a purely clean object designed to create laminar flow of air over it, then that produces a high pressure area above and behind it, which induces a suck pull force which is lift. It seems almost absurd that a 4000 pound thing can be lifted into the air but flying and flipping motor cars is a thing which does happen and is unwanted; as opposed to a thing weighing many many tons which you do want to fly inside of².


My suspicion is that SHR have altered parts A and D in some way, to affect the swirl patterns coming off of the roof rails as they pass through the air. Again, a thing moving through the air creates wind resistance but there is also wind resistance caused by the attached air presenting itself as an area of turbulence in the wake of the object. I have no idea what the actual effective area of that attached air flow is but that leading edge of those roof rails creates a force of about 0.1 of a Newton (at 180mph);  which of itself is small but is enough to affect the shape of the air behind it.

Most big passenger aircraft which have cruising speeds of about 500mph, have little turn ups on their wing tips. When wind resistance is drag and drag is inefficient, then drag costs money. The objective of an airline is to create profits by not spending money. Those wee little turn ups on the ends of the wings, help to shape and minimise the size of the cone shaped swirling vortices which spill off the ends of the wings. The objective of an race car is to create speed. When wind resistance is drag and drag is inefficient, then drag costs speed³.

The distance between first and third place in that same race was 0.003 seconds; which at the instantaneous velocity of 177mph worked out to be about nine inches. Nine inches multiplied by 200 laps is 150 feet; and if you are conceding 150 feet to the opposition, then it is absolutely worth the effort to chase down 0.003 of a second per lap. Stewart-Haas Racing literally are trying to control the distance between coming first and being an also ran. 

¹From that same race, Joey Logano was fined $10,000 fine for modification of a driving glove. His left glove had webbing added between the thumb and forefinger. Again, this is about controlling air flow by putting your hand out of the window to create MY HAND IS A DOLPHIN! out of the side of the car. That also creates vortices and affects air flow.

²except when the doors fall off. 

³A NASCAR Cup car also has roof flaps which blow open when a car is facing backwards. These act as automatic air brakes; which present all kinds of air resistance and turbulence. 

February 29, 2024

Horse 3306 - February 30th

I hate today. Boo!

Today is the 29th of February, which is the 60th day of the year. Of itself that shouldn't be a problem but the fact that this is a extra-calculic day, in a month which three-quarters of the time only has 28 days, is maddening to me.

The Gregorian Calendar, with its corrections for leap years, and then uncorrections from leap years at the end of the century, and then uncorrections for uncorrections for leap years at the end of every fourth century, is a bodge on a bodge on a bodge. Why do we persist with this? Because although it is apparently easy to change from Imperial to Metric, of from PAL to Digital, changing the abstract fabric of the calendar is too hard. Predictably when England came late to the party in 1752, there were riots. 

It is one thing to complain about a thing but most of the time if you want to justify the complaint, you had better have a better fix for the same problem. As usual, I have a fix and it is a good fix.

There are very close to 365¼ days in the year. However, as humans do not want to mark the year to that degree of exactitude, then the idea of 365 days in a year is practically sensible. Since we also want to overlay smaller divisions of months and weeks, we find that 12 divisions does not work properly and neither does 7.

The answer therefore is to use that principle of arithmetic called the 'common multiple' and lo and behold we have a common multiple of 7 and 4 which is dangerously close to 365. 

364 = 7 multiplied by 52

364 = 4 multiplied by 91

And because multiplication is commutative and 52 is a multiple of 4, each of those four subdivisions divides into 13 sets of 7.

The very very obvious solution for the calendar, which retains months and weeks, is thus:

In every quarter there are 91 days. The first two months of the quarter both have 30 days and the last month of the quarter has 31; which acts as a reminder that the quarter has ended. 

You will also notice that at the bottom right hand corner of this table there is one Bonus Day which isn't part of any month or week. Functionally it would be part of December but as nothing ever gets done on New Year's Eve, then this is almost moot. All the rules for leap years would be applied by adding another extra-calculic Bonus Day after that

Since this solution solves the problem of weeks not matching up with the year, and since it also has the bonus of creating four identical quarters, then this would be a perpetual calendar. 

For those critics who would say that this mucks with the nature of the abstract fabric of the calendar, may I remind you that calendar reform has happened before and the most visible evidence of this is that the October Revolution in Russia is celebrated in November because the Russian Orthodox Church was even later to the party than the Church Of England, and 14 days were added to the calendar and not 11.

Granted that 2/7ths of the population will perpetually win as their birthday always falls on a weekend, while 5/7ths of the population loses because theirs do not, but seeing as this is really a minor concern and people will hold parties on the weekend anyway, although it matters a non-zero amount it is still not critical. As Easter is defined as a Sunday and based upon the moon which is no respecter of the calendar, that does not change. As a bonus, Christmas is now always on a Sunday; which ought to make the church happy. 

The beauty of this calendar is that as it begins on January 1 (or even April, July, or October 1), it can simply be adopted at the beginning of the year (or quarter). We lose no days. As it also retains the extra-calculic corrections and uncorrections, it never has to be adjusted once adopted. 

As it is, the accounting package that I use has a 20 month calendar with 40 days per month. This is so that you can process journal entries without disturbing any monthly figures. 40/20/2024 is already a valid date; which means that the idea of February 30th, or May 35th is not a foreign thing to me.

Today should be February 30th. The current calendar is bonkers hat-stand crazy making. 

February 22, 2024

Horse 3305 - Private Education Is A Veblen Good, So Why Must We As Taxpayers Pay For It?

https://www.heraldsun.com.au/victoria-education/student-background-the-big-difference-between-private-and-public-school-results/news-story/35f531679417cb03def4b571913b6035

Despite some charging almost $50,000 a year, a new study has found that education at private schools is nothing special in comparison to government and independent schools.

- Herald Sun, 9th Feb 2024

This isn't the first time that 'a new study' has found that education at private schools is not any better at delivering educational excellence and results than public education.

https://link.springer.com/epdf/10.1007/s13384-021-00498-w

No differences were evident after controlling for socioeconomic status and prior NAPLAN achievement. Using longitudinal modelling, we also found no sector differences in the rate of growth for reading and numeracy between Year 3 and Year 9. Results indicate that already higher achieving students are more likely to attend private schools, but private school attendance does not alter academic trajectories, thus undermining conceptions of private schools adding value to student outcomes.

- The Australian Association for Research in Education, Inc, 2nd Mar 2021

Okay, so maybe this is a recent phenomenon...

https://www.theage.com.au/education/fourth-study-this-year-confirms-private-schools-no-better-than-public-20141110-11jlgn.html

The fourth study this year has found Australian private schools produce no better results than public schools, when students' socio-economic backgrounds are taken into account.

Stéphane Mahuteau and Kostas Mavromaras, academics at the National Institute for Labour Studies at Flinders University, conducted the latest study, which found a strong and positive association between the socio-economic status of a student and their test scores. The core result of the paper is that, after controlling for a number of school and student characteristics, "school quality does not depend directly on the sector of the school". The main determinant of the higher raw test scores observed in private schools is the higher socio-economic status (SES) of students attending private schools, the report found.

- The Age, 10 Nov 2014

...no, it isn't.

I shan't bore you with repeated studies which happen again and again, which prove exactly the same thing because the further that we go back into the past, the less relevance they have to modern schooling. Suffice to say that in looking through newspaper archives, I have found roughly the same thing being reported roughly once ever three years going back all the way until 1974. That's fifty years of telling us exactly the same thing; namely that private education despite its expense, provides no actual educational benefit to the children who go there.

There is an old adage which says that 'Madness is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result'. When it comes to education in Australia not only do we have multiple studies which prove that private schools do not provide better educational outcomes but we also have decent modelling which demonstrates that private schools don't actually save taxpayers any money either:

https://www.sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/news/2020/03/16/myth-busted--private-schools-don-t-save-taxpayers--dollars.html

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rnn0w1nWYreOMRSsDfzt4n8KXHaGbw2h/view

Given all of this, why do we do it? Why do we as a nation deliberately choose to spend public monies on private schooling, which is by nature exclusionary, when it produces no educational benefit and actually has negative financial benefit? Because politics is a demand driven system and parents demand that they get to send their kids to private schools which are subsidised by the taxpayer. If this was any sane commercial market, it would be quite rightly seen as open corruption and there would be a Royal Commission into it. 

The question then is, what do parents get out of private education? As private schools still charge private fees, parents obviously think that they derive some kind of benefit because as at least semi-rational beings, they want something to show for their many dollarpounds that they have parted with. If it is not better educational outcomes then they must be buying something else while claiming that they have the moral right to demand that we the good and fair people of the Commonwealth pay a second time when we already are obligated to provide public education.

What I think is going on, after having worked in legal and legal adjacent workplaces such as the law courts and an accounting firm, is that what parents are actually buying when it comes to private schooling for their children is in fact a Veblen good.

American economist Thorstein Veblen in his 1899 work "The Theory of the Leisure Class" noted that there were certain kinds of goods such as artwork, jewellery, watches, yachts, and the relatively new fangled invention of the motor car, actually had an increase in demand as the price went up. These things were purchased because the person who bought them, perceived an increase in displayed status. Quite literally these goods were 'status symbols' and the term that Veblen used to describe them was 'conspicuous consumption'. The whole class of goods in turn would eventually be come to be known as Veblen Goods as a result of his work.

The weird thing about Veblen goods is that they appear to violate the basic law of demand, which states that quantity demanded has an inverse relationship with price. That is, that as the price goes up, people want less. Imagine a Mars bar. If they are $2, you might only want 1. If they are $1, you can have 2. If they go up to $2.30, you might not want any. Veblen goods don't do that. If the price goes up, people actually want more of them. These are not normal things. In fact, Veblen likened the purchase and display of things for conspicuous consumption to that of the tail feathers of a peacock. These things were bought precisely because there was an emotional appeal of their exclusivity; which the majority of the population simply would not or could not purchase.

Human beings are otherwise semi-rational electro-mechanical meatbags who economics assumes are looking to maximise their happiness and/or utility with the things that they purchase. Veblen goods are less about satisfying raw utility and more about maximise people's happiness. In making someone more exclusive and important, the purchase of a Veblen good actually makes them believe that they have purchased something of high quality that is out of reach for others. In turn, they then believe this is worth the premium they pay.

Generally speaking, when a particular good or service has a higher price, consumers will assume it to be of better quality; including when that is untrue and simply not the case. As I have demonstrated a repeated interest in motor cars, then my prime example of this is BMW; which has a reputation for pushing out technology way too early and being notably unreliable. Likewise, people generall perceive that the Toyota Hilux is of better quality than the GWM Cannon; even though maintenance costs prove this to be untrue.

The exclusivity of Veblen goods is also useful because if something is perceived as difficult to purchase or expensive, and the majority of the population will not or cannot purchase them, then this might actually increase its attraction to those for whom status is important, because it is now even farther out of reach for the average consumer.

The thing about private schools is that precisely because they charge fees, this acts as a barrier to entry. School fees actively keep out those students whose parents can not afford to pay. Granted that there are occasionally a few scholarships and other conditions where some parents are exempted from paying either entirely or partially, but these are not the majority. Scholarships for private schools are generally only awarded to students on academic grounds where the presence of the student actively bolsters the school's academic standings in official reporting, or those legacy cases where a school might have been started as a ministry of a church and there are still some vestigial appendages which exist.

Private schools can and will eject a student for poor academic performance. Private schools can and will eject a student for behavioural reasons. This means that these students are placed back into the hands of the public school system; which also has the added benefit of bolstering a private school's academic standings in official reporting. 

It is true that some parents will buy private schooling for their children because of some perceived advantage in behaviour of the students. It is true that some parents will buy private schooling for their children because of some perceived advantage in extra-curricular activities such as a music program, a sports program, or other non-core program. However, there is not an insignificant proportion of parents buy private schooling for their children because of the imparted economic signal that going to a private school provides. A Higher School Certificate with the name of a private school on it, is an advantage when that child who is now 17, 18, or even 19 and 20, applies for a job. A Higher School Certificate with the name of a private school on it, is an advantage in professions like law, finance, banking, and other managerial positions. That Higher School Certificate with the name of a private school on it, is undeniably an economic signal that the person who has it, is not riff-raff.

Remember, Thorstein Veblen wrote about 'conspicuous consumption' of goods because the person who bought them, perceived an increase in displayed status. A 'status symbol' is not just an abstract concept but a physical embodiment that the person who has it, has been approved (or approved themselves) as having acquired status. Purchasing a Higher School Certificate with the name of a private school on it, is the purchase of status for one's child.

The moral question which practically nobody wants to answer because they have to confront the fact that this is ugly, is why the general public should be forced to subsidise the purchase of what amounts to status symbols and economic symbols for the privileged few? Moreover why should be forced to subsidise the purchase of what amounts to status symbols and economic symbols for the privileged few when those same privileged few have rejected public education, which the general public is already obligated to provide?

I find it utterly maddening that the excuse of 'choice' is used as a cudgel to beat the general public with, in order to justify perpetuating the public subsidy of a Veblen good. Admittedly it is very good business to show favoritism to rich people and look down on poor people but the commonwealth is not a business but a commonwealth. What is the point of a nation? Suppose there was someone in very expensive clothes and with valuable gold rings on his fingers, and at the same moment someone else comes in who is poor and dressed in threadbare clothes. If make a lot of fuss over the rich person and give them the best seat in the house but say to the poor man, "You can stand over there if you like or else sit on the floor" then this just looks like sycophancy. Why do we need to do this as nation when all it results in is further social stratification? 

"The accumulation of wealth at the upper end of the pecuniary scale implies privation at the lower end of the scale. The members of the leisure class planning events and parties does not actually help anyone in the long run. What results from this behavior, is a society characterized by the waste of time and money."

- Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899)

Madness is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result... why do we do it? Moreover why must we pay for a thing when as a society, it benefits a few at the expense of the least well off?

February 21, 2024

Horse 3304 - An Open Letter To Toyota, re: XV80 Camry

Dear Toyota,

As little as a decade ago you were the car company which did all things for all people. As such, the Camry and Corolla went to No2 and No3 on the sales charts, only behind the Holden Commodore which by that stage already had its death warrant signed off on, by Treasurer Joe Hockey. You also made the Yaris, which as the smaller car was excellent.

Then when the SUVification of all things happened, you once again decided to become the car company which did all things for all people. As such, the Hilux and RAV4 went to No2 and No3 on the sales charts, only behind the Ford Ranger. However, you continued to make both the Camry and Corolla because in doing all things for all people you correctly realised that a lot of people still want a normal hatchback because they are inherently useful and excellent, and some people still want a family sedan because despite and in spite of them being boring in a lot of cases, boring is beautiful and people want to carry around their most precious cargo in the world in a car which is competent at doing the job. Boring but excellent: that could have been and should have been Toyota's motto for the past 60 years. In doing all things for all people you decided that being cool was impossible.

Recently though, you have decided that being the car company which did all things for all people is a rubbish idea. I note that you too have abandoned the bottom end of the market, as the COVID-19 pandemic gave all of the car makers licence to charge 33% more for everything. Yaris is now a $30K motor car and Corolla is now beyond the reach of the people, whom you no longer need to care about. 

Weirdly, the Camry has remained at about the same kinds of price level that it always sat at; presumably because although you have realised that 'da kidz' are no longer paid wages and no longer have money, there are a few mums and dads who still want a sedan instead of an SUV. To this end, I note that you have unveiled the next generation of the Camry, the XV80. 

I have concerns.

My specific concern with the XV80 Camry is that that although it looks like it is cool. It is not.

Why not?

Why isn't it cool?

Look, I totally get that Toyotas generally are built for people who want appliances and not fun things buy why tease us like this? I have driven the GR Corolla and while it is fine, its 3-cylinder engine makes it feel like it is a sensible warm hatch, when it pretends to be bonkers. Why isn't it bonkers? I like bonkers. Why can't we have bonkers? Likewise, the XV80 Camry looks like it is the kind of car which should be in knife fights in carparks but the only knife fight that it is ever going to get engaged in is when that knife is used to cut birthday cake.

Traditionally the Camry is driven by sad old gits who are the kinds people people who after they have a crash and have gone to hell, would still be oblivious to the world around them and will not realise that they have crashed. Traditionally, Camry is for people who have given up on life. That's okay. You are allowed to make a boring thing well. My concern is that XV80 Camry looks like it is for people who have not given up on life. XV80 Camry looks it should be cool but it is writing cheques that it can not cash. And who is writing cheques these days anyway? Camry drivers.

As is my want, I played about with the Toyota Configurator and it seems that Camry Dents and Tissue Boxes come standard. Why is this? 

What really makes is sad is that I know that the 2UR 5-Litre V8 will fit in the XV80 Camry because it already does fit in the Lexus IS500F which is exactly the same monocoque under the panels and light clusters. Both the Camry and the Lexus IS500F are built upon the Toyota New Global Architecture platform. This means that you could drop the 5L V8 in the Camry and pitch it for $35,000 and steal Mustang's lunch but you don't. Why is that?

I believe that it was the great department store proprietor Nunya Bisniss while in conversation with Anne Nonymoos in 18X5 who said "Give the people want they want and they will come". In Australia, Ford gave the people a V8 Falcon and ruled the roost from 1967-1997; Holden gave the people the V8 Commodore and ruled the roost from 1997-2016. Since then, both of them and you, have all picked up sticks, closed the factories and all have decided not to give the people what they want. Did any of us change what we want? No. The only reason why everyone is now driving a Blodpanzer Brodozer or a Nomoto Kinderbox is because they can't get a family car with a big engine any more. The formula is simple. Get a family car; with the biggest, horkiest, borkiest, engine that you can spork in there.

SS Commodore was cool. XR8 Falcon was cool. The Coyote V8 Mustang when it isn't out murdering pedestrians is cool. As you Toyota are along with Mazda the only automaker who look like they are even prepared to make a family sedan any more, you have practically an open goal here. You've seen how it is done. You've seen how absurdly successfully the strategy was because even now, the price of a used V8 Commodore or Falcon is skyrocketing as people can not get what they want any more. You even already have all of the necessary bits to make a V8 Camry and with a stroke, single handedly rule the roost. So why not? You've also come so tantalisingly close too.

The GR Yaris looks like it should be fun, except that the kinds of people who that car is meant to be for, simply can't afford it. GR Yaris is everything that AE86 wanted to be. GR Yaris actually could deliver tofu on precarious mountain roads on the wrong side of 200km/h. he GR Corolla also looks like it should be fun, except that it just isn't. GR Corolla is trying to play a magic trick where you want us to think that it is cool but underneath is likely CH-R. The GT-86 despite my objection that this is actually a modern Celica, is a genuinely fun car except that that's a Subaru boxer up front. That's not really your handiwork. It is still excellent nevertheless.

XV80 Camry, which allegedly races in NASCAR (it doesn't really, those are bespoke cars with stickers on), arrived in 'Murica and defied all expectations by looking like the coolest family sedan of the 2020s. The problem is, that although it looks cool, and we know that the 2UR 5-Litre V8 will fit in it, you won't put it in there? Why not?

We want bonkers. We want grumbly rumbles. GIVE US NEW THINGS TO FEEL!

Love,

Rollo

PS:

I have subsquently learned that the XV80 Camry is not going to be sold in Australia. There is an outside possibility that we will be getting the Toyota Crown; which is yet another boring SUV. Yawn. Crick. Ho. Hum.