Things have quietened down again on the news front, with almost everybody going back in to hibernation to evaluate the results of their test. Meanwhile, I've been super busy and finally completed the transcript for Episode 69. Whilst this may sound like I'm crazily behind (which I am), that was the epic long British GP show that was well over an hour long. Check it out, if only to humour me.
Anywhere, there has been plenty going on in the comments, so read on to see what you might be missing:
- Valentino Rossi has taken to the seat of the Ferrari once again. He's three seconds off the pace so far - because he can't do it or because he just needs a little more time?
- Gavin gave us all a challenge in yesterday's comments, to list your top ten drivers for 2008. Ten is a lot, so think carefully.
- We also have more Sidepodspace news, with yet another space walk. I think nothing was dropped this time, although we could do with another update.
- The possibility of living on Mars.
- Ecuadorian dwarves that are genetically immune to cancer.
That's not the only things to be talked about though. There's always plenty going on in the comments. Share your thoughts, tell us the news, and discuss anything you like. I'll see you there.
42 pages of waffle. girl you are crazy.
I just watched James May's program on inventions that come from war. THe last section is James in the back seat of a Eurofighter Typhoon. The plane is awesome. It shoots up vertically so fast that the pilot says it climbs like a homesick angel.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b007tgf1/James_Mays_20th_Century_Take_Cover!/
sidepodspace
I haven't seen the last hour or so of the spacewalk but they are finishing off now and everything seems to have gone OK. The big problem they have just now is one of the spacewalkers is having major radio problems but he is on his way in while Heidi is finishing off the last bit before she comes in.
on her own?
Slavica Ecclestone has filed for divorce
"Much of the family wealth is believed to be held by Mrs Ecclestone in a trust that also owns just under 10 per cent of Formula One."
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article5199172.ece
Donington delayed before they've even started. What are the odds on this race actually happening?
non-existent. pretty much the same odds we had that friday at silverstone.
So Bernie is to divorce.
People assume that he will have to pay Slavica a huge amount of money after 24 years of marriage. However, if he has signed over the bulk of his fortune, it's legally her money (isn't it?) so maybe he will have to prove what he brought to the marriage and get a hand-out from her (snigger!).
Wouldn't that be a turn up for the books!
"have you done any parachuting? nope. me neither"
:D
I wouldn't be that mean: I'd say a long shot. :)
If the divorce is amicable (and I'm guessing it is), Bernie will get much (but definitely not all) of his money back. If it's not... things will get messy.
My top 10 drivers of the year:
10. Kovalainen
9. Rosberg
8. Webber
7. Heidfeld
6. Vettel
5. Raikkonen
4. Kubica
3. Alonso
2. Massa
1. Hamilton
It was only a small job and she is the lead space walker. Both are now in the airlock and have shut the hatch and started to pressurise it. I only found out during the first space walk that their suits are only pressurised to 4.5 to 5 psi. I am amazed that is enough.
Beat me to that comment. There was never the slightest chance of the race taking place at Donington. Bernie spotted a mug and signed him up. Like the mugs at Brands Hatch a few years ago when they signed a contract to get the race the Donington mugs will have to pay Bernie several million to get out of the contract.
I meant to say Heidi's fellow space walker today was Shane Kimbrough who went to astronaut school with Dan Brunell's friend Dottie whatshername-somethingorother. He is the first member of that class to go into space.
gp.com has something to say about the telegraphs recent "big spenders honda" report:
"Our sources say that the stories fail to take into account a rather important fact which was overlooked [by] the authors. At the time Honda was being forced to pay for most of Super Aguri's operations in addition to its own activities. This does not mean that the budget quoted is double what it should be but it is fair to say that probably 25% of the cost quoted was used up by Super Aguri rather than Honda Racing F1."
http://www.grandprix.com/ns/ns20987.html
“Our sources say that the stories fail to take into account a rather important fact which was overlooked [by] the authors. At the time Honda was being forced to pay for most of Super Aguri’s operations in addition to its own activities. This does not mean that the budget quoted is double what it should be but it is fair to say that probably 25% of the cost quoted was used up by Super Aguri rather than Honda Racing F1.”
That's good to know :)
My top ten drivers for the 2008 season and the reason why.
10. Button. He drives a Honda. I am amazed that he finished races.
9. Nakajima. Rookie drive beats a few talented vets and kept Rosberg honest. Not bad for a driver that I thoguht came with the engine as a package deal.
8. Barrichello. Kicked his teammate's backside in a car that I thought was doubtful to complete a race.
7. Webber. Decent points haul for Mr. Bad Luck Artist. Must have transferred it to a Voodoo Doll of Coulthard's likeness.
6. Heidfeld. Not expecting BMW to build the third best car of this season. Fell to sixth becasue the Toyota car caught up and their drivers were better over teh long haul.
5. Trulli. Toyota finally built a decent car, and the Trullimeter was on a high for most of the season.
4. Glock. On Trulli's pace after missing a few seasons.
3. Nice solid performances in a car that proven to be the third best in the field. But he did drag it up to challenge for the Driver's Title.
2. Alonso. I have not seen two clean-house performances like that since I saw the Bruce Lee Movies "Chinese Connection" and "First of Fury" as a double bill!
1. "Der Seb" Vettel. For beating Ferrari on their home ground. Bonus points for making me happy listening to both the German and Italian national anythmes. (Never happened before). Double Bonus points for winning in Italy in a car with Minardi DNA!
The third of the four spacewalks planned for this mission is scheduled to start at 1845 GMT Saturday. However this crew has beaten the schedule on every single thing that they have been asked to do so it could start anything up to an hour early. There is plenty coverage of the build up to it for anyone who is interested. It is scheduled to end at 0145 GMT Sunday
I assume this is Kubica or is his identity a secret like someone else's rounf here?
If that's the case, why was the money charged to Honda and not to Super Aguri? :-/
Can't they be reliable but slow? :p
Webbo still had horrible luck towards the end of the season though.
Hahahaha! Exactly my thoughts. :)
In that case, Jordan, where does Hamilton and Massa end up?
Minardi DNA: that must be the phrase of the year! :P
A website I'd like to recommend by the way. Very cute and adorable F1 sketches. They made some great sketches for all the 2008 races too. :)
http://mantovani.zip.net/
Hmmm... Now, will this fall into the spammy wagon? :P
The final spacewalk is scheduled to start at 1845 GMT Monday and finish at 0115. EVA3 will be carried out by the same pair who did the first one and for EVA 4 Heidi gets a break and the two men get to go out and do the work.
Yes, my link DID end up in the spammy wagon! I guess it got confused with the word 'zip'. :) Please pull! :)
done.
Looks like there could have been life on Mars after all. Using ground penetrating radar Nasa have found buried glaciers hald a mile thick and covering huge areas. That amount of water along with basic organic material must have generated some kind of life.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/18/20081120/tsc-evidence-of-vast-frozen-water-reserv-e123fef.html
Thank you!
Is it time to start those discussions about humans living on Mars then? :)
Yeah, I had Kubica in 3rd place.
That was already factored in. I expected Webber to have bad luck and for Coulthard to kick his backside left, right and center. Since the opposite to what I expected happened I was impressed with Webber's performance. When the bad luck did happen, well, that's the Webber I expect...
The Ferrari and McLarens are pretty well expected to win races and championships. Therefore, Massa is the best of the four (2nd driver turned into champion contender), Raikkonen and Hamilton are roughly equal (both fumbled the ball too many times), and Kovi is an absolute joke (2nd driver that should be a 4th (reserve to the reserve driver) , below Davidson and Sato!
That's why they are looking for water. It makes things so much easier if they can find a useable water supply on Mars.
There's still the matter of oxygen, though. We'd need to find an easy way to lug that around in Mars, or create those huge dome-thingies.
I'd rank Hamilton above Raikkonen (to be fair to Lewis, he did a lot more with his car than Kimi). Kovi = yep, a total joke. 2006 and his Renault renaissance in the 2nd half of the year seems but a distant memory. More so his 2004 RoC rocking debut.
They can hydrolise the water and get oxygen from that. I assume that they can still use solar power on Mars to power cells to do that. They can also capture hydrogen to use for fuel at the same time.
Hmmm... Interesting, very interesting. But the question is: when will it become the focus of R&D? As it is, the Obama administration wants to focus more on preserving the current environment than looking for new ones.
If you overturn the stewards decisions at Valencia and Spa Lewis won 7 races which is pretty good for a second season driver. He has also out-scored every driver over the last two seasons despite all the dodgy decisions and penalties. For my money the Ferrari was a better car than the Mclaren. Trickier to drive but with more performance.
maybe the plan is to use a KERB like device to separate the frozne water on Mars into 2 parts of Hydrogen for every part oxygen? I mean, the BMW boys will tell you that their KERB's system carries enough juice to do that....
You can say that the Ferrari's sweet spot is sweeter than McLaren's, but it's harder to find. :)
Should be interesting to see where Lewis will figure next year, though, and who will be challenging him. :)
The space shuttle replacement Ares is designed to go back to the moon and then to Mars. Add in the four other space agencies involved in the ISS - European Space Agency(esa), Japanese Space Agency(JAXA), the Russian Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency. By the time a Mars mission is realistic it may be feasible to add in the Chinese and Indian space agencies. If you have seven agencies working together the costs could be comparatively low.
Strange things you hear on the news. Dwarves in Ecuador are genetically immune to cancer. Who'd have thunk it?
you're making that up?
Nope. Weird as it seems scientists had come across the sme gene elsewhere and implanted it in mice to trial it then they found a human population that already had it. So now they are trying to see if there is a way to give it to the rest of the human race without everyone being restricted to being four feet tall.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1045987/Immune-cancer-The-astonishing-dwarf-community-Ecuador-hold-key-cure.html
Found a link and a picture of some Ecuadorian dwarves. I must check Christine's intro post to see if she has this on today's subjects for discussion list.
My top 10 drivers for the year:
10. Barrichello
9. Trulli
8. Glock
7. Webber
6. Raikkonen
5. Vettel
4. Massa
3. Hamilton
2. Alonso
1. Kubica
It's there now :)
Here's something for Christine and me:
http://boinx.com/boinxtv/overview/
FOTA to discuss new qualifying format
Don't they have more important things to do?
"The new idea to be looked at consists of all cars jumping onto the track at the same time and with the same amount of fuel, with the slowest driver being eliminated after each lap."
So this is a series of 1 lap races then? :-|
doesn't the current knock-out system work well enough as it is? :-/
It's not a possibility - I'm from Mars.
Total rubbish, leave qualifying alone! It was OK before 2003 with 4 quick laps, they absolutely ruined it between 2003 and 2005; 2006 - 2008 formats were not bad and now, not again! But this medal system beats everything - what in the name of Alonso are they trying to do??? I think my winter vomiting disease is back. Honestly, people in charge of F1 are too old, they had their moments but now they've got to go away. Max and Bernie are like Keith and Mick, a pair of mummies!
is it even going to be the same sport by the beginning of next season? :/
How long before Bernie announces the Mars GP?
grr. i should have got here 15 minutes ago - i was thinking the same thing :) Maybe Donington will get moved there.
I'd say he needs less time -- about three seconds :)
...As for these Ecuadorian dwarfs, I'm skeptical about their lack of cancer. On of the reports I quickly read says that it has not been confirmed. If a population doesn't get cancer, I find it hard to believe that the world didn't know about it faster than now. I'm a skeptical geneticist.
haha. apparently not.
ooh, cheers. have downloaded a demo, will see what it can do.
I may have taken this a bit too far, but I made a spreadsheet out of the top ten choices:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=p8keuzIyql2ZGBnVSSvyjWA
Assigns a value to the order you guys have chosen, divides to create an average, and then reorder to make an ultimate top ten.
At the moment it is:
Alonso
Kubica
Massa
Hamilton
Vettel
Raikkonen
Heidfeld
Glock
Webber
Rosberg
I'm still trying to decide on my top ten, and if we get anymore I'll add them in as well.
Now I'm going to find something more useful to do.
sato and davidson? nice touch.
Just discovered that Wetpaint have a "Wetpaint 500" list, which is the most edited wiki's each week.
http://www.wetpaintcentral.com/page/Wetpaint+500
Sidepodcast has just got on there, joint 437th.
Must try harder ;)
ahh, you likes a challenge.
I wonder what Christine would do with those supposed hours of time saved in post-production work?
What annoys me about this idea is that the last placed guy does not even get to warm up his tyres before he is knocked off the session, but he might get a set of tyres that are fresher by 19 laps at the start of the race. That is worth a pit stop in itself.
Is he carrying 19 extra laps worth of fuel at teh start of the race? He is just lost 2 seconds a lap right there.
...And Christine's from "Planet Claire."
Hey! At least Keith and Mick know that when you have a good thing going, there is no need to chance anything.....
How hard can it be to type "Bourdais" ten times?
:D
You to have used Wetpaint for 30 days in order to qualify, so we are into our 5th week.
Two brilliant headlines I've seen:
"F1 boss in pole position for huge divorce payout" - CNN International
"Bernie Ecclestone's wife Slavica black-flags marriage with F1 boss" - The Australian.
http://www.instantrimshot.com/
they're ripping off need for speed now?
how long before he cancels it?
Probably make some more spreadsheets.
:D
Christine might get so bored she will make a spreadsheet showing the number of spreadsheets she made per mounth....
That may be the saving grace of this qualifying proposal: race fuel is out the window. Since they're all starting on equal fuel, surely they'd give themselves the leeway to change it before the race?
Its not ugly!
Oh wait, no one said anything about the wings yet...
My 2008 top ten
Robert Kubica
Sebastien Vettel
Felipe Massa
Fernando Alonso
Lewis Hamilton
Rubens Barrichello
Nick Heidfeld
Mark Webber
Jarno Trulli
and finally, Nelson Piquet. Kidding of course, Timo Glock
...
What was ever wrong with the 12 laps per driver in an hour?
I notice neither are British.
I blame the Inuit scientists, they're probablyy ahead of us as well.
Speaking of which, its 72-72 on the webblogs awards
i think we need to say "thank you" to the 72 people who voted :)
Well, if you haven't realised, you can vote every two days.
what??
in that case, we should say "thank you" to the 12 people who voted 6 times :)
Every two days, you can vote for sidepodcast again, tis what ive been doing
i admire your dedication, i wish i'd known.
I was wondering about that when I voted the second time. I think the Russian elections have the same system:
Vote early - Vote often.
Vote here, then change computer and vote again (we're +3 atm)
Yeah, well, when you are suck in Alert, (formerly Northwest Terrorties, studying Inuits, you have a lot of time on your hands. More than enough times to stuff a ballot box 12 times over....
Speaking of which, I need to check the Flight Roster.....
Sh**! Wouldn't you know! Alert!
My revised top ten:
1. Alonso
2. Massa
3. Vettel
4. Lewis
5. Kubica
6. Heidfeld
7. Kimi
8. Rubens
9. Webber
10.Jenson :) (sorry to Rosberg but I felt bad that Jenson wasn't on my list)
There. That's much better :)
You can tell I was tired when I wrote this. I didn't even think of the effect it could have on F1. Imagine Adrian Newey's joy at discovering a generation of 4 foot tall drivers. Just think what he could do with packaging and aerodynamics.
:D
My Top 10 drivers for 2008 (accounting for the car they had to drive)
1. Alonso
2. Massa
3. Vettel
4. Kubica
5. Hamilton
6. Heidfeld
7. Raikkonen
8. Trulli
9. Glock
10. Barrichello
I liked the 12 lap(4 quick lap) system. Watching Senna prowl the garage before his last run was more gripping than practically anything i have seen in qualifying since.
I bet he says that someone has applied to have a race there before long.
agreed.
i liked the quiet 'peek around the garages' periods too, as i do during fp 1, 2, 3.
1). Vettel
2). Hamilton (He did win the Championship y'know)!
3). Massa
4). Alonso
5). Kubica
6). Nakajima
7). Kimi
8). Rubens
9). Webbo
10). Wurz/Meylander in the safety car...
On another note, what does everyone think of Bernie's proposed 'Medal System'? eg Gold for a win, Silver for second and Bronze for 3rd...
Not only is it daft, but what about the smaller teams who have no hope of a medal. At the moment they have a small chance of fighting for all important points, but with this new system they would be financially buggered wouldn't they?
Worryingly, it seems that Bernie (and according to him, the teams) are pretty adamant to push this one through...
The weekly update e-mail we get has mentioned the 500 every week. Your wiki has to be at least a month old before you are eligible and i think last week we were about 480 something. So we are making progress.
the problem is, the economies of scale don't add up, up there.
to afford the berniefee, mars would have to get jupiter in on the act too.
dumb.
we said it the first time he suggested the idea, and nothing has changed anyone's mind.
at least r.g. approves of the fugly cars. no-one, but no-one thinks medals are a sane idea.
It also means if one of the quick guys makes a slight mistake in an early lap he ends up at the back of the grid. The whole point of qualifying is to see what someone can do on a flying lap. The current system requires drivers to deliver three laps instead of one now these idiots want them to deliver 15 laps. This system totally misses the point about qualifying and why for years people loved qualifying and many prefered it to the actual racing.
I didn't know that. I voted twice accidentally at the start and got a message saying go away nasty person, you have already voted.
anyone willing to be the inuit's did?
It is now 81 : 72 versus the eskimos
They could stop off and have a race at the moon on the way. Given that the moon has no atmosphere and the Martian atmosphere is so thin that you can stand still in a tornado there we might at last eliminate the effect of aerodynamics. We just need to find a way to get air into the engine.
not too dissimilar from bahrain then?
Motor racing is all about finding and exploiting the unfair advantage.
But Edmonton is not even in the Grey Cup....it is between the Stampeders at Alouettes.....
I haven't ever followed the CFL. THe only thing I know about Edmonton is the Oilers and Gretzky & co but that was a while ago.
Oh noes! I missed a call this afternoon from Motor Sport Magazine and I can only assume it's with regards to a competition I entered recently to win tickets for the Wales Rally GB!
Nobody is there now and I can only hope they haven't just gone on to the next person and given the tickets away to them!
(not that I know much about the world of WRC - but hey!)
Let us figure this one out. $175 million plus every last penny of the sale of each corporate box and advertising space on the circuit.
Now how on earth does the organizer, Grand Prix du Canada, a private company make any money off of this? It has all the bills that you have to pay of any company and any any revenue it has must be from the ticket sales. Maybe if you charge triple the prices...But I think China and France have tried that approach already....
By the way, Bernie, you Genius. IRL is now interested in Montreal. If I where Normand Legault, well, two words can best sum it up: "Long Beach".
Did they leave a number? If so, it's a good thing :)
The circuit doesn't get the advertising money. That's Bernie's.
I have. Failed.
Medals are a great idea.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
If you were over obsessed with the the olympics and think each race should be started with a lap around a circuit with an flame.
Ba doom ch
We can afford that can't we. If not, $175 million is a lot of money for a company solely for a grand prix event.
They did. I called it back and left a message as well as fired off an email. Fingers-crossed!
No Steven. All of this money was going to Bernie for the possiblity of a Canadian Grand Prix.
Nope. The Canadian Taxpayer was fleeced for 110 million, and your left with $55 million to to dig up in order to have the Canadian Grand Prix.
Then you have the company that operates the Canadian Grand Prix, whose sole revenue seems to be the ticket sales of this event. Somehow I doubt that Bernie does anything to help out any Grand Prix, so I imagine that this company has to pick up the costs of renting the scaffholding, the tents, security, its own employees, the call centre, electricity, porperty taxes and whatnot. All that is covered by the ticket cost. I am pretty sure that tripling his ticket price would create a whole bunch of empty seats liek we saw in China.
There is an obvious solution. It is called the IRL. Just judgeing from the cost of previous champcar events at Gilles Villeneuve, on a seat per seat basis, F1 charges 300% more than champcar did for exactly the same view from the stands.
My understanding is Pddy McNally used to own all trackside advertising at every track bar Monaco and he sold his company to Bernie 4 or 5 years ago. I am sure I had this discussion with Ali a while ago and it was her who told me McNally had sold out.
Have updated the Top Ten Drivers:
Alonso
Massa
Kubica
Vettel
Hamilton
Raikkonen
Heidfeld
Glock
Barrichello
Webber
Massa has jumped Kub, and Barri jumped Webbo.
Still haven't made up my list yet.
andy, am i missing something here?
am experimenting with the demo. does everything we need:
- lower 3rds
- mulit-cam
- overlays
and all sorts of other cool stuff. but it appears to be missing the one feature that is of a certain amount of importance... live streaming.
unless i'm overlooking the obvious, all i appear to able to do is record to disk and upload later?
now, i know our buffering is bad... :)
I just had the same problem with the realtime thing that I had before. The last post didn't appear despite having been made an hour ago. I unchecked and re-checked the update box and it appeared.
Ah. Well to be honest I only read the email that appeared in my inbox this morning at work and didn't get much time to look at the details.
I was actually thinking more of Inside Track than live podcasting, but apparently the missing functionality will be added in a future release (remember they're on 1.0.1 right now...).
According to this link, with the current version you need a hardware encoder or additional software:
http://hdtv.biz-news.com/news/en_US/2008/11/11/0008
And while I think of it, we need to write a letter to Slavica:
"Dear Mrs Eccelstone
When your divorce is finalised and you have control of Formula 1 racing, can you please do 2 small things for us?
1. Bring back the Canadian Grand Prix
2. Renew the contract for the British Grand Prix with Silverstone for the next 20 years.
This would make many Formula 1 fans around the world extremely happy, but more importantly it will really upset your soon to be Ex-husband.
Yours etc."
Oops misspelled Ecclestone, sorry.
Is that a P.S?
I've added a Realtime section to the Website Bugs bit of the Wiki.
http://sidepodcast.wetpaint.com/page/Website+Bugs
I've put your bit in, but you might want to edit it with more detail, because I don't think it comes across well for you :)
Well I have no idea whats going on but whats new. But what I have noticed that there are a lot of ads floating around featurings midgets.
Top Ten drivers, blimey making me think on Friday after I've finished work is evil!
um...
1. Vettel
2. Alonso
3. Massa
4. Kubica
5. Kimi
6. Bourdais
7. Glock
8. Webber
9. Rosberg
10. Kovalainen
No Hamilton I hear you say, well no, I just can't bring myself to put him on there. It just doesn't feel right to me. :P
If you were not in charge of the pinger I would be tempted to retaliate.
:D
- It would make British fans around the world happy. The rest of the world doesn't care too much. Yes history; yes well known track; yes great memories - but bring back Brands Hatch or Estoril or Long Beach and the world would be happier (IMHO).
My top 10 driver's championship points takers (or as far as I can go...)
Fernando
Kimi
Lewis' Mum
Seb (whom I have met...)
Felippe
Takuma
Robert
Heikki
Nico
PDLR (pronounced 'piddler')
You have a point, Dave, but these are 2 things that are particularly close to Bernie and therefore would be the 2 things that would annoy him most :)
True - and stick it to Bernie! Oh, and my top ten are predictions for next year. I didn't realise that it was a round up of this season.
I'd love to see some of the older classic tracks that have been gone from the calender return. Kyalami in South Africa maybe, is that the right name for the track. I'm so over tired.
Wikipedia has come to the rescue again and shown all circuits and when they raced there. Even has a little image of the track to remind the older of us which ones are which...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Formula_One_circuits
And if I am not mistaken, does not Bernie own the Hun-bore-o-ring? so we just might have tio cancel the Hungarian Grand Prix for that reason alone....
I can't say I was expecting to see that topic... :)
:)
ahh, i see. it's not good enough for that by a long shot (and neither are we), but it's so perfect for live streaming i can't quite believe it doesn't do that one thing.
it's also out of our price range, but let's not go there :)
Read the intro Christine anticipated it.