Month: July 2011

  • A day at the Silverstone formula one race




    Formula 1 is not a two-hour race at Silverstone. It's a three-day weekend of racing and entertainment.Avinash Singh catches some of the colours, on and off the track. 

    The helicopters descend on Silverstone like invaders from the skies. They all come from one direction, offload their rich and famous cargo, and disappear into the skies, forming a vertical triangle. 

    Between 8 am and 9 am, they come down at the rate of two every five minutes; in the next two hours, one a minute. "They must be the high rollers," chuckles a fellow traveller, as another passenger is ferried into a waiting black Audi. 

    The low rollers, so to speak, come from the other direction. In cars and motorcycles, followed by a very long walk. This is race day in Silverstone, home to the British formula 1 grand prix , the biggest day in motor sport in this country. 

    Today's race doesn't have a championship context. For most people, Sebastian Vettel of Red Bull is a lock to defend his title. In May, one-fourth into the season, Paddy Power, a British bookmaker, even paid out on that eventuality. 

    The last time a 77-point lead was erased was in 1976, when Niki Lauda ended up a ball of flames and James Hunt drove in. Still, the British grand prix is a sell out. About 100,000 people showed up for qualifying on Saturday. 

    By one estimate, 28,000 never went back home. They just crossed over to the wet fields surrounding the former World War II airfield to their motor homes, tents and cars. They were happy campers, feeding off an excess of motor racing, air displays and music concerts. On race day, 120,000 people troop into Silverstone. 

    Most of them are McLaren fans, adorned in stuff that scream, in colour and text, more Vodafone - the main team sponsor - than the decorated independent team. For an F1 team, it is the ultimate national coming together. A top-flight British team, with two British drivers, in a British race. And, today, they are all hoping for some British weather. 

    Lewis Hamilton - the McLaren driver for whom they turn themselves into billboards, pitch their flags and blow their horns - is tenth on the grid. But if it rains, Hamilton should surge. It's a tricky one. If it rains, it will be race on. But it will also be hell in the open stands and areas. They are prepared. 

    Most of them have slung on their shoulders a cloth case, about a metre long, and six inches in width and depth. Its primary contents, typically, include a folding chair and a large umbrella, which opens up in its full glory when a dense, black cloud winks at Hamilton and them an hour before the race. 

    FANS WANT A GOOD FIGHT 

    Aaron Powers wants the rain, even though he is the rare Brit in Silverstone who doesn't wear his nationality on his heart, or his chest or his head. Or, even on the inside of his arm, which is reserved for a tattoo that is gothic in its look and factual in its statement. 

    It says '1984', the year of his birth. A banker by profession, Powers has a Red Bull jacket draped around his folding chair. His contrarian choice is as much a rejection for the McLaren team as an endorsement for Germany's Vettel. 

    "I'm not a fan of either of the McLaren drivers," he says gently, breaking into a wan smile. "Hamilton is too arrogant. 

    Button is ok, but I'm not a fan. Still, more than anything else, I want to see a good fight." Fans like Powers can be found on parts of the circuit that offer an intimate view of the action. They couldn't get grandstand seats because they were either finished or too expensive, but they have tickets that allow them to go anywhere else on the circuit. 

    Powers says a ticket in a grandstand at Stowe - a pure racer's corner and a vantage point -- would cost 300 pounds for the day. He's paid 200 pounds for the entire weekend. From where he has anchored his folding chair, he can't even see the entire race, as there are no TV screens in his line of vision. But he's here for a different reason. 

    As are many others, who sit three deep during the Formula 2 race - one of the side shows - in the morning. Stowe is popular because it combines the two ingre- dients essential to any good motor race: speed and overtaking. And fans can see the cars swish past 20 metres away. 

    "This is just a great corner," says 38-year-old Ben Pereson, who works in land remediation and is here with his nine-year-old nephew. The cars come screaming in at 300-plus km per hour -- imagine that, five times the top speed allowed in an Indian city. 

    It's a slightly loopy right turn, which means a gentle dab on the brakes and back on the power. In The Independent, Mark Webber sums up the driver's philosophy towards this corner: "grab the kerb on the exit." It's something Michael Schumacher failed to do in 1999, hurtled into the tyre wall, and shattered his legs and championship hopes for that season. On Sunday, Stowe doesn't do the dramatic. 

    However, it shines the lingering promise of overtaking as the cars chase each other like maniacs - at a speed so ridiculous, at a noise level so loud and violent, with gaps between each other so small. Every once in a while, a driver boldly takes the inside line and makes a pass stick. It happens so quickly it barely registers. 

    BIG PICTURE, SMALL PICTURE 

    For those who like to see the big picture as well as the small details, watching live can be an exercise in acclimatisation. The sense of continuity is difficult to establish as only a fraction of the track is visible. In the beginning of the race, the cars are bunched together. 

    For about 20 seconds, they create a racket of wailing engines and screeching tyres. Then, for about a minute as they steer though the rest of the circuit, they leave behind a shifty silence. Silverstone has large TV screens placed in front of the grandstands, but they are too far away to read the positions and timings. 

    Spectators here can also rent interactive TVs that are basically handheld consoles, with a screen size of 3 x 3 inches. Using one basically means juggling three visual mediums: the live race, the large screens and the console. It takes a while to figure it all out. 

    But once it happens and the cars spread out, and one gets sucked into the race, the transition is seamless across the three mediums. The console is a thing of beauty. One can choose a camera angle -- for example, the main view, or the view from the front camera on the cars of the leading drivers, which is stunning at the time of passing. One can call for replays. 

    One can choose commentary. On Sunday, there is the Silverstone commentary, which is dry and pithy. And then, there is BBC 5, which is deeply engaging in describing and reading the race in terms of variables like pit strategies, tyre choices and weather conditions. And it has the inimitable Murray Walker, a doyen of F1 coverage, as a guest commentator. 

    "Faaaaaantastic," he breaks out. As always, Walker is either a step behind the cars or he paints scenarios that are as predictable as the English weather. But Walker also mutters the line of the weekend, encapsulating a brutal paradox of F1: team-mates don't race each other. On the last lap, when Mark Webber was crowding his team-mate Vettel for second place, BBC 5 catches the former's radio. 

    The team, which likes to proudly affirm that they let their drivers race each other, says to Webber: "Mark, hold your position." Amid the last-corner frenzy, Walker says, in near slow motion, picking each word for careful construction and emphasis: "I have just heard the four most bitter words in formula 1, 'Mark, hold your position'." 

    OVATION FOR ALONSO 

    Before the race, when the drivers are all smiles and being interviewed while being taken around on open truck across the track, Fernando Alonso puts F1 racing into some context. He's just done two gingerly laps of Silverstone in a Ferrari that won its first race 60 years ago here. 

    The 1951 Ferrari looks like an extra-large bathtub, incredibly flimsy and anything but a racer. It's more upright and higher than the current car. The tyres look like a motorcycle tyre. There is no protection on the sides and a bad mishap can easily fling a driver out. When the race announcer introduces Alonso, boos ring out. 

    The fans here see the Spaniard as the evil one, who duelled with their British driver (Hamilton) in their British team (McLaren) in 2007. When he is asked about the car he just drove, Alonso expresses awe. "Modern cars have 200% more grip," he says. "But the power is the same." Hours later, after Red Bull botch it up for Vettel in the pits, Alonso drives home a 2011 Ferrari as winner. 

    As he returns to the pits, he even manages an ovation -- his first of the weekend. As does Schumacher, more as an acknowledgement of a glorious past. But the biggest cheer is still reserved for Hamilton, who shines in the rains; but as the track dries up, so do his chances. 

    As the race nears its end, the giant monitors flash a sign: "Please don't invade the track." Fifteen minutes later, someone finds a way through the fences and barriers. And the teeming hordes follow and park themselves right beneath the podium, with their chairs, umbrellas, beer and food in tow. 

    Not everyone is going home. A 20-something tells a friend on the phone: "Yeah, we met these three guys in the camper next to us. Yeah, five of us. Yeah, I got a case of cold beer." The official weekend schedule says: "After-race party and the classic rock band, 3.15 pm to late." The race is over, the weekend isn't. 

    (The writer attended the British Grand Prix as a visitor of the AT&T Williams Formula 1 team.)

     

    Copyright© 2011 Times Internet Limited. All rights reserved

  • 2,000 Years of Popes, Sacred and Profane

    uly 7, 2011
     

    2,000 Years of Popes, Sacred and Profane

    By BILL KELLER

    ABSOLUTE MONARCHS

    A History of the Papacy

    By John Julius Norwich

    Illustrated. 512 pp. Random House. $30.

    John Julius Norwich makes a point of saying in the introduction to his history of the popes that he is “no scholar” and that he is “an agnostic Protestant.” The first point means that while he will be scrupulous with his copious research, he feels no obligation to unearth new revelations or concoct revisionist theories. The second means that he has “no ax to grind.” In short, his only agenda is to tell us the story.

    And he has plenty of story to tell. “Absolute Monarchs” sprawls across Europe and the Levant, over two millenniums, and with an impossibly immense cast: 265 popes (plus various usurpers and anti­popes), feral hordes of Vandals, Huns and Visigoths, expansionist emperors, Byzantine intriguers, Borgias and Medicis, heretic zealots, conspiring clerics, bestial inquisitors and more. Norwich man­ages to organize this crowded stage and produce a rollicking narrative. He keeps things moving at nearly beach-read pace by being selective about where he lingers and by adopting the tone of an enthusiastic tour guide, expert but less than reverent.

    A scholar or devout Roman Catholic would probably not have had so much fun, for example, with the tale of Pope Joan, the mid-ninth-century Englishwoman who, according to lore, disguised herself as a man, became pope and was caught out only when she gave birth. Although Norwich regards this as “one of the hoariest canards in papal history,” he cannot resist giving her a chapter of her own. It is a guilty pleasure, especially his deadpan pursuit of the story that the church, determined not to be fooled again, required subsequent papal candidates to sit on a chaise percée (pierced chair) and be groped from below by a junior cleric, who would shout to the multitude, “He has testicles!” Norwich tracks down just such a piece of furniture in the Vatican Museum, dutifully reports that it may have been an obstetric chair intended to symbolize Mother Church, but adds, “It cannot be gainsaid, on the other hand, that it is admirably designed for a diaconal grope; and it is only with considerable reluctance that one turns the idea aside.”

    If you were raised Catholic, you may find it disconcerting to see an institution you were taught to think of as the repository of the faith so thoroughly deconsecrated. Norwich says little about theology and treats doctrinal disputes as matters of diplomacy. As he points out, this is in keeping with many of the popes themselves, “a surprising number of whom seem to have been far more interested in their own temporal power than in their spiritual well-­being.” For most of their two millenniums, the popes were rulers of a large sectarian state, managers of a civil service, military strategists, occasionally battlefield generals, sometimes patrons of the arts and humanities, and, importantly, diplomats. They were indeed monarchs. (But not, it should be said, “absolute monarchs.” Whichever editor persuaded Norwich to change his British title, “The Popes: A History,” may have done the book a marketing favor but at the cost of accuracy: the popes’ power was invariably shared with or subordinated to emperors and kings of various stripes. In more recent times, the popes have had no civil power outside the 110 acres of Vatican City, no military at all, and even their moral authority has been flouted by legions of the faithful.)

    Norwich, whose works of popular history include books on Venice and Byzantium, admires the popes who were effective statesmen and stewards, including Leo I, who protected Rome from the Huns; Benedict XIV, who kept the peace and instituted financial and liturgical reforms, allowing Rome to become the religious and cultural capital of Catholic Europe; and Leo XIII, who steered the Church into the industrial age. The popes who achieved greatness, however, were outnumbered by the corrupt, the inept, the venal, the lecherous, the ruthless, the mediocre and those who didn’t last long enough to make a mark.

    Sinners, as any dramatist or newsman can tell you, are more entertaining than saints, and Norwich has much to work with. If you paid attention in high school, you know something of the Borgia popes, who are covered in a chapter succinctly called “The Monsters.” But they were not the first, the last or even the most colorful of the sacred scoundrels. The bishops who recently blamed the scourge of pedo­phile priests on the libertine culture of the 1960s should consult Norwich for evidence that clerical abuses are not a historical aberration.

    Of the minor 15th-century Pope Paul II, to pick one from the ranks of the debauched, Norwich writes: “The pope’s sexual proclivities aroused a good deal of speculation. He seems to have had two weaknesses — for good-­looking young men and for melons — though the contemporary rumor that he enjoyed watching the former being tortured while he gorged himself on the latter is surely unlikely.”

    Sexual misconduct figures prominently in the history of the papacy (another chapter is entitled “Nicholas I and the Pornocracy”) but is hardly the only blot on the institution. Clement VII, the disastrous second Medici pope, oversaw “the worst sack of Rome since the barbarian invasions, the establishment in Germany of Protestantism as a separate religion and the definitive breakaway of the English church over Henry VIII’s divorce.” Paul IV “opened the most savage campaign in papal history against the Jews,” forcing them into ghettos and destroying synagogues. Gregory XIII spent the papacy into penury. Urban VIII imprisoned Galileo and banned all his works.

    Most of the popes, being human, were complicated; the rogues had redeeming features, the capable leaders had defects. Innocent III was the greatest of the medieval popes, a man of galvanizing self-­confidence who consolidated the Papal States. But he also initiated the Fourth Crusade, which led to the wild sacking of Constantinople, “the most unspeakable of the many outrages in the whole hideous history of the Crusades.” Sixtus IV sold indulgences and church offices “on a scale previously unparalleled,” made an 8-year-old boy the archbishop of Lisbon and began the horrors of the Spanish Inquisition. But he also commissioned the Sistine Chapel.

    Even the Borgia pope Alexander VI, who by the time he bribed his way into office had fathered eight children by at least three women, is credited with keeping the imperiled papacy alive by capable administration and astute diplomacy, “however questionable his means of doing so.”

    By the time we reach the 20th century, about 420 pages in, our expectations are not high. We get a disheartening chapter on Pius XI and Pius XII, whose fear of Communism (along with the church’s long streak of anti-Semitism) made them compliant enablers of Mussolini, Hitler and Franco. Pius XI, in Norwich’s view, redeemed himself by his belated but unflinching hostility to the Fascists and Nazis. But his indictment of Pius XII — who resisted every entreaty to speak out against mass murder, even as the trucks were transporting the Jews of Rome to Auschwitz — is compact, evenhanded and devastating. “It is painful to have to record,” Norwich concludes, “that, on the orders of his successor, the process of his canonization has already begun. Suffice it to say here that the current fashion for canonizing all popes on principle will, if continued, make a mockery of sainthood.”

    Norwich devotes exactly one chapter to the popes of my lifetime — from the avuncular modernizer John XXIII, whom he plainly loves, to the austere Benedict, off to a “shaky start.” He credits the popular Polish pope, John Paul II — another candidate for sainthood — for his global diplomacy but faults his retrograde views on matters of sex and gender. Norwich’s conclusion may remind readers that he introduced himself as a Protestant agnostic, because whatever his views on God, his views on the papacy are clearly pro-­reformation.
“It is now well over half a century since progressive Catholics have longed to see their church bring itself into the modern age,” he writes. “With the accession of every succeeding pontiff they have raised their hopes that some progress might be made on the leading issues of the day — on homosexuality, on contraception, on the ordination of women priests. And each time they have been disappointed.”

    Bill Keller is the executive editor of The Times.

     

     

    Copyright. 2011. The New York Times Company. All Rights Reserved

  • Friday's FIA Press Conference

    Friday's FIA press conference

    Friday's FIA press conference

     

    The big bosses had their chance to talk on Friday at Silverstone with Tony Fernandes, Frank Williams, Christian Horner, Martin Whitmarsh and John Booth taking the floor in the press conference...

    Q: Tony, a big weekend in that you are showing the colours of General Electric, which is a major sponsor on the car, and also Caterham as well. Tell us what sort of effect that is going to have on the team having that support.

    Tony Fernandes: Well, it is always useful to have a little bit of money. General Electric has been more than just on the sponsorship side obviously. They will do a lot on the technology side, so it has been a welcome addition to the team. Also, with Caterham, one of the principal reasons GE got involved was because of the car side and the production side in terms of electric cars and some of the things we are doing on the Caterham cars. It has been a fantastic symbiotic relationship we have put together. A big day for us.

    Q: Where do you believe this will this lead in future, in terms of looking towards next year?

    TF: What do you mean?

    Q: Well can this bring you into, certainly, the midfield?

    TF: Well, this year was always about trying to stay 10th and become a column one team. We are inching away slowly. I think by now we have all the facilities that we require. It's the first time that we have got a full CFD cluster. We have got now a fantastic facility with Williams, our second wind tunnel. So, by September, we will really be able to utilise much more wind tunnel time than we have ever had. We are in a position now to really start developing next year's car from as much of a level playing field with other teams than we have ever had. We will have to see, but it is our best shot. We always said two years, try and be 10th and then build from that.

    Q: And of course you are both going to be running the same engine in the future, with Williams also having the Renault engine.

    TF: Yep, the three of us here. Could be four if Martin's changing.

    Q: The Williams tie-up. Is that a year or so? How long is it for or is it quite a long-term arrangement?

    TF: It is for two years but we hope to use it for a long time. I learnt a lot from Frank and hopefully we can continue that relationship for a long, long time.

    Q: John, similarly, you have recently announced a tie-up with McLaren. Just give us the details of that?

    John BOOTH: Yes, obviously very excited to have a technical partnership with McLaren. It is a wonderful opportunity to tap into years and years of experience and knowledge and give us a real leg up as we look to develop our 2012 car.

    Q: How many people can you envisage actually working from McLaren, working with your team?

    JB: I don't think that is very clear at the moment. The deal was only finalised seven days ago. Although it is in operation as of now, I think it is an ongoing process working towards next year's car.

    Q: And you have also bought the Formula One business of WRT. What was the thinking behind that?

    JB: Well, Marussia became a stakeholder in Virgin Racing six months ago. They have led an overview of the team over those six months and we needed to take decisive steps to move forward. It was evident from the start of this year we weren't moving forward as quickly as we wanted to. In fact, arguably not at all performance wise, so we had to take steps to ensure the future of the team and put us on a positive footing. That's the result. We need to take control of our own destiny and we now have our own design team working on the car for next year.

    Q: I have seen the classified adds in Autosport this week. It is a double page of recruitment almost, but how quickly can you put it together?

    JB: The base of the team is together. We are carrying people forward with us from our existing programme. We have some fantastic people that have been with us from day one and we are carrying the majority of those forward with us and we are just adding as we go along. The process is underway for next year. Design has started, it's a good way down the line. It is just a matter of adding and building to that design team now.

    Q: Christian, today very mixed weather conditions. How much did you learn, particularly about the diffuser effect or lack of off-throttle diffuser effect?

    Christian HORNER: In reality very little with the way the weather has been. It's been a typically English summer's day where we seem to have three seasons in one day. We have run on the inters. We nearly got to the slicks, didn't quite and then it seems that every other category has had a run on the dry tyres apart from Formula One. But we have learnt a bit about the pit-lane, tried out the new garage. Turned up and thought we were in John's garage, not ours. It has been a restrictive day in terms of what we managed to learn on track.

    Q: Are you happy being that end of the pit-lane?

    CH: I was quite surprised, as I thought we were going to be up this end of the pit-lane. There is some nice grass up here and so on, but all the garages are the same size at the end of the day. But we are down the other end, which probably isn't great for the spectators as they are not going to see many Red Bull or McLaren pit-stops this weekend, but there you go.

    Q: But you could be in the position that you are in the pits and a column of cars come past you as happened in the GT race and there is nothing you can do?

    CH: I don't know about that. We will have to see. It's a short pit-lane here, which adds another element to the race. Obviously the entry is a bit tight, so that is going to be interesting for the drivers. It's a very fast run-in to the pit-lane, and obviously if it is wet on the way out we have seen a few cars down at our end of the pit-lane having a few moments on the way out. But I am sure it will be fine. But you have to say, other than being the wrong end of the pit-lane it is a great facility.

    Q: Fernando Alonso has been quoted as saying he is going to wait for Sebastian Vettel to make mistakes, which will give him a chance in the championship.

    CH: I think at the end of the day we are focused on our own performance. Sebastian has had an unbelievable first half of the year. In reality, I think he is 14 points off the maximum score, so he has not made too many mistakes so far. He has driven impeccably well and deserves to be in that position.

    Q: So it could be a long wait?

    CH: You know it's a long season. We are not quite at the half-way stage. Eleven races to go. As we all know, with 25 points for a win now, leads can quickly diminish but it's obviously a very useful lead. We hope we can be competitive in the upcoming races.

    Q: Martin, to go back to that pit-lane choice. How does that pan out? Who decides which end you are going to be?

    Martin WHITMARSH: I am not sure who decides that. I think it is a shame, as Christian mentioned, that we are slightly subterranean where we are. I don't think it materially really affects us but clearly those in the grandstand cannot see pit-stops, which is a bit of a shame. But I have got to say that we can all turn up with opinions, but it is an incredible facility and I am sure a lot of people have put a massive amount of effort to be ready here this weekend, so for us to turn up and be critical I think would be the wrong thing to do. We have got to congratulate the BRDC and Silverstone for a fantastic set of facilities.

    Q: Just going back also to the diffuser effect. How much did you learn today?

    MW: Well we learnt half-way through the session that Christian hadn't lost as much as we expected as obviously the rules are slightly fluid and appear to change by the hour at the moment, so we are still learning is the answer.

    Q: Is that what the conversation with Stefano (Domenicali) was about?

    MW: Yeah, I think, again, it is not a criticism of Red Bull. They have got to try to get the best they can out of the situation. I think we were all a little bit surprised when it appeared from whatever we'd been told that the regulations changed half-way through P1 and I am sure that put many teams this weekend a little bit on the back foot, so we are trying to cope with that at the moment.

    Q: Can you explain in what way they have changed?

    MW: Well, I think the expectation is that when you are off the throttle the engine throttles would be closed but there has been a negotiation and as I understand Renault's throttles are 50 per cent open under braking and I think that is probably not what most of us expected coming into this event. That's been a little bit of a revelation that we gathered during the course of the sessions today and we are trying to understand what we have to do.

    Q: Like your own lobbying?

    MW: Well, like our own lobbying, I am just trying to understand. Again in fairness to Red Bull, their view is as I understand, but Christian can answer better than I can that this is a reliability issue and they need to blow air through their engines for reliability purposes. I am not familiar with that particular precedent, presumable Charlie (Whiting) is.

    Q: Christian, can we just get an answer on this?

    CH: I mean Martin's interpretation is interesting. My understanding is that Mercedes are firing on over-run. There has been a series of technical directives that have happened since Valencia and the latest technical directive is quite clear in that engines that have been run in previous configurations the FIA would take into account on an equitable basis. Mercedes argued that they're over-running that they currently do was permitted, which was granted I believe on certain handling characteristics that if offered on a historical basis, and Renault is no different to that. Renault is in a situation as an engine supplier, not just to Red Bull but to two other teams as well, where again precedents have been set in 2009 and 2010. That data has been openly available to the FIA and the primary purpose of opening the throttle and, for want of a better word, cold-blowing as it has become known has been because of two purposes. The primary purpose being the blip on the down-shift and the second being a reliability issue. I think there was an expectation that coming here obviously a lot of focus has been placed on Red Bull. Do Red Bull have a silver bullet ion their car? We don't but at the same time we expect the FIA to regulate in a fair and proper manner and that's exactly what they have done in this case. They are the only ones with all the facts. They are the only ones with the data. They have looked at it. They have listened to Mercedes case and allowed Mercedes certain parameters. They have looked at Renault's case and they have allowed Renault certain parameters based on an historical content, if you like, on what is a very, very complex subject that perhaps would have been better dealt with at the end of the season when the exhausts move to a completely different location which will remove an awful lot of the emotion that seems to surround this topic. I think the FIA have responded in a right and correct and equitable manner as all the engines aren't the same. They operate in different ways. They have different control codes. They are the only ones that are privy to all that information.

    Q: Frank, I am sure you are very excited with the tie-up with Renault and the return of Renault to Williams for next year.

    Frank WILLIAMS: More concerned in a way than excited, as I think they might be disappointed they are not going to get back what they last knew 10 years ago. We are not quite as top a team as we were then but having that said it's a wonderful opportunity for us to regain our momentum.

    Q: Is that what it needed? Did it need the presence of an established engine builder, for example, if you wanted to put it that way, you have had a lot of data over the last many years?

    FW: Well, it is different to a company like Cosworth, who sell engines. That's their job. They are very good engines by the way. With ours we have never had a failure. But when you are allied with a manufacturer they have a certain number of facilities available to a team such as ours that we can't afford for ourselves. Some of those little facilities make a big difference. A tenth here and a tenth there and that's what we hope will happen.

    Q: In fact, you are allied with a lot of manufacturers as there is Porsche as well, Jaguar and also Team Lotus on the racing side. Is that just part of Williams Grand Prix Engineering?

    FW: That's just commercial matters in other parts of the company.

    Q: And that contributes to the overall budget to keep Williams Grand Prix Engineering?

    FW: Exactly that, yes.

    Q: Is that an exciting and hugely beneficial thing for WIlliams?

    FW: It is a lot of hard work for a small gain but we need the gain and any Team Principal would tell you he'd give anything to find a couple of tenths of a second between now and the end of lunchtime.

    Q: And thoughts on the drivers for next year? Rubens (Barrichello) says he wants to stay with the team for next year.

    FW: Well, I can't say anything about our drivers until we have made up our own minds. Rubens is very highly regarded and is truly a treasure trove of information and experience and that's something that will not be thrown away lightly.

    Q: Has he done all you expected of him this season?

    FW: Yes, I think he has. I think if we had given him a better car he would have been very close to the front, if not at the front. He is a superb driver.

    PRESS CONFERENCE

    Q: (Mike Doodson - Honorary) This question is for Christian and Martin as you have different engine suppliers. There are some mischievous scare stories in circulation about the noise the new engines will or will not make in 2014. What do you hear from your engine suppliers about this? Are the engines likely to be so anemic as we hear that the fans will be repelled?

    CH: Martin.

    MW: No, I don't think they will. I think clearly there has been a lot of discussion about the future of engines and I think it is healthy now for Formula One to point forward to 2014 having all parties agreed to the new regulations. I think there was some care, clearly, the increase the number of cylinders, to increase the RPM, to stipulate a single turbo and all of those measures were about enhancing the sound. Everyone is aware and we have made sure that the engineers that are developing these regulations are aware that the very visceral engine notes are very important to Formula One. They are important to us. We all still love the sound of Formula One engines. They still send tingles down most of our spines. I think we will continue to work hard with the engineers and manufacturers to make sure that we have got great sounding engines in 2014.

    CH: I agree with everything that Martin said. I think Formula One actually ended up making the right decision. The V6 is a far better engine to install into a Formula One car. It should sound good. I think there was some concern about the straightforward engine but I think all the engine manufactures have got together and agreed on this with the Commercial Rights Holder and then passed it through the various channels to get it approved. I think it is the right move and hopefully they will sound great.

    Q: (Mc Greevey - CSMA Magazine) If I can direct this question at Sir Frank and Christian. What are the major challenges facing F1 in the future?

    FW: The demise, which will certainly take place, of Mr (Bernie) Ecclestone, that's my opinion.

    CH: I think that will be a huge challenge but hopefully that will be in another 80 years at the rate Bernie is currently going. I think Formula One is in good health at the moment. I think the racing has been fantastic this year. I think the best advertisement has been the racing itself, despite the fact that we have had a driver that has been dominant every single grand prix so far this year, has been pretty exciting. I think the regulation changes that have been introduced this season have proved successful but inevitably there will be challenges ahead but I think it is a bright future at the moment. I don't think there is anything that any of us should be fearful of. (Inaudible follow-up)

    CH: Whenever you change technology it costs money, so I think stability is crucial and stability of technical regulations is crucial. One of our biggest cost drivers are technical regulations so moving forward, working with the various stakeholders in Formula One, we need to ensure that we continue to keep costs under control.

    Q: (Marc Surer - Sky TV) I have a question for Martin: you tried the new wing on Lewis's car this morning and on both cars this afternoon. Did you get the correct data in the conditions today to decide which one you're going to use?

    MW: Inevitably in these conditions the data gets a little bit compromised. You're not going as quickly as you'd like. Various pressure tappings that you put on the wings and around the wing don't function if it's too wet but we got reasonable data and the engineers are going through that. I think we've got enough information; whether it's a quick enough wing, that's another story but I think it's doing what we thought it would.

    Q: (Andrea Cremonesi - La Gazzetta dello Sport) Question for Martin as president of FOTA; today we lost a lot of action on the track because there are just eight sets of wet tyres. Are you discussing with the FIA to change the rules, to have more sets of wet tyres?

    MW: In fact this weekend we had already spoken to Pirelli and the FIA about our concerns about such a weekend. We've got an extra set of intermediate tyres here this weekend that have to be given back. Had that rule change and the tyres not been available, then I think we would all agree that there would be very little running. So we've made one step better. I think the engineers and the drivers would always like as many tyres as possible and we'll keep pressing to have more tyres available but it has in fact improved this weekend, otherwise I think we would have had a very quiet couple of sessions.

    Q: (Andrea Cremonesi - La Gazzetta dello Sport) Christian, we heard some criticism of the pit lane exit from your drivers, could you confirm that? What is the problem exactly?

    CH: For sure, if it's conditions like today, if the speed limit goes up to 100km/h I think it could be a tricky down there. Yeah, it's part of the track, at the end of the day it's the same for all teams and all drivers but I think they probably need to have a look at whether we €- because the pit lane tapers as well - whether we remain with 100km/h or whether it would actually be better to look at a 60km/h speed limit.

    Q: (Ya'acov Zalel - Hege) In the past there was a strong link between technology of racing cars and road cars. In today's cars, there is very little influence or technology from Formula One into road cars. Do you think it's a problem, or the current situation is OK?

    MW: We've just been talking about the new engine regulations. I think that if you look into the automotive field at the moment - increasingly downsized engines, turbocharged engines, hybrid, kinetic energy recovery - those are all very relevant areas and that's one of the drivers behind the rule changes that we're now implementing. I think that it's important that there is some transfer, some linkage, some relevance to what we're doing. Formula One is increasingly about efficiency, fuel efficiency, use of resources and I think that - perhaps belatedly - we're putting quite a lot of effort there now. I think we ought to be hoping, in the coming years, that we will become more attractive to the automotive companies and more come in. I think the automotive industry has gone through an unprecedented recession, it's been tough. It's been tough in Formula One. We've survived. As Christian said, we've had some great races and we've been trying to improve our show, improve our governance, work together more effectively and I think that some of the rule changes that are being implemented now increase the relevance to the automotive sector. There was a problem in that not too many road cars were revving at 18/19,000rpm, unfortunately, and that's why we've had to come down a little, but it's a balance because at the end of the day we're a show, we're a sport, we're a spectacle, we're a technical contest. There's a degree of purity that's necessary in Formula One that those of us who have been engineers in the sport have enjoyed and indulged ourselves in for many years but we've got to have that balance. We can have our fun but it's actually got to be seen as relevant fun.

    FW: I think Martin has explained the real situation. I think manufacturers do have a place but Formula One will carry on without them. Their value to us, of course, is the supply of engines; they supply the engines for what they can learn from the use of those engines under very high stress conditions. I think our particular formula works quite well and the chain of events that one party depends on the other but whether manufacturers are dominant within the sport or not... teams like us will always fight them anyway so whatever is the status quo, we're happy to go along with it.

    CH: I think Formula One foremost and utmost needs to produce good races, needs to produce a good show. It needs to be a technological challenge and it's finding that balance that people turn on the TV or come to the races because they want to see man and machine at the limit, wheel-to-wheel racing which is something that we've really embraced for the last couple of years. As far as the technology is concerned, I think it is interesting, there are some relevant areas to the automotive sector. In our own case, we've obviously started a partnership with Nissan Infiniti, looking at certain hybrid technologies as the technical regulations become clearer for 2014. Obviously for Renault there is relevance to their road car sector but I think beyond that has to be the quality of the racing. I think Formula One, to a degree, is also a form of escapism, that people are coming here to hear loud cars, fast cars and, as I say, the drivers and machinery on the ragged edge, on the limit and that's what makes Formula One the spectacle that it's been over the last fifty years.

    Q: (Andy Benson - BBC Sport) Martin and Christian, the original ruling on the off-throttle blown diffusers was 10 per cent for everybody. Now Renault are being allowed 50 per cent throttle. Mercedes, I assume, aren't but they are being allowed some fuelling on the overrun so how can we be sure we're watching a level playing field, and is this the end of the matter this weekend?

    CH: I think, as you clearly say, first of all there was a technical directive which effectively turned it all off. That was obviously with reticence by the manufacturers and it has been very much a manufacture issue. Certain teams were then allowed to have fired overrun, to fuel their overrun, of which there are also, obviously, secondary benefits through the exhaust plumes and thrusts that that creates but that was permitted. Obviously Renault presented their position to the FIA, and let's not forget that this is an extraordinarily complex matter, to demonstrate that precedent is there that, for purposes of throttle blip and reliability, that cold air blowing open throttle was a necessary part of the operation of their engine, otherwise it would cause serious issues. It would be unfair to allow fire overrun and not allow the same parameters for another engine manufacturer. I think it's a very, very difficult job for the FIA to pick their way through this and I think all credit to them, they've looked to try and be as fair, balanced and equitable as they decreed that they would be through the technical directive, to come up with the solutions that they have. We're not totally happy with the solution that we have, that's for sure. I'm sure Martin isn't with his and I'm sure there are a lot of conspiracies in the paddock that these are the reasons why Red Bull is performing or McLaren is performing, or some cars aren't performing. That's just circumstantial at the end of the day. The fundamentals are that the engine manufacturers have been treated in a fair and equitable manner.

    MW: I'm sure people set out to do that. I think there have been about six technical directives on the subject so far and it's moved around and when the goalposts are moving partway through a practice session, then I think it makes it quite difficult. I think that with the benefit of hindsight, it would have been better to make changes at year end, which I think Christian would agree. I think that to do this and to do it in a fairly cloudy and ambiguous and changing way inevitably, in a competitive environment, every team feels that it's been hard done by. At the moment, I think potentially a lot of teams will end up making the argument to cold blow. Renault have been in that domain for some time, other teams haven't and don't have that experience but we're talking about a very substantial performance benefit here...

    CH: Why is it any more of a performance benefit than fired overrun? At the end of the day, Renault is allowed to fired overrun for reliability purposes. If you can operate your engine in the same way as the Renault, then you are welcome to do it. The secondary effect... I think it is wrong to suggest that there is a benefit beyond that.

    MW: No, but clearly if you've got, under braking, your throttles are open 50 per cent then it's a reasonable benefit. There's a lot of gas going through and I imagine that all engines will end up doing that, which I think isn't what was envisaged when it was said we're going to stop engine blowing.

    CH: Where is the difference between firing on overrun and creating... so Mercedes engines aren't firing on overrun?

    MW: They've been constrained. As you know...

    CH: As have Renault.

    MW: ...so I think, providing the constraints are the same for everyone, but I think that it is clearly, the fact that we are having this discussion, it's messy and I think the intention people believed was that we were going to stop exhaust blowing when the driver didn't have his foot on the throttle. I think that was the simple concept but that concept has been deflected and therefore it hasn't been clear and the fact that these things were only coming out during the course of today is fairly extraordinary. But nonetheless, I'm sure we will remain calm and pick our way through, but I think it's probably better to make changes to the regulations between seasons, not in-season and also make changes to regulations that are clear and unambiguous. I think, at the moment, a lot of people are clearly getting emotional about the situation and I can understand why: it's frustrating for the engineers not to know what it is that we're allowed to do, because these changes... by cold blowing you're getting 30, 40 points of extra rear downforce in braking and that's quite an attractive thing, so if you can do it, then you're going to try to do it, aren't you?

    CH: But you also get that from... Let's not make any mistake here, that firing on overrun, the thrust that that generates through the exhaust creates a bigger effect, so let's just be absolutely clear on that.

    MW: And that's why it's been largely contained, and a lot of those strategies, as you know, are not permissible now. At least, it wasn't when I came in here. Maybe it's emerged as I've been sat here that maybe we can do it. Maybe you know more about it than I do, Christian.

    CH: I don't know. I read the technical directive that said four-cylinder fired overrun was permissible for certain competitors and that, I think, includes your engine. As far as we understood, before Renault were allowed their parameters, obviously there was a significant advantage going to any Mercedes-powered team. As you can see, it's a massively complex subject. I think the one thing that Martin and I will agree on is that it should have been addressed at the end of the year, but unfortunately, here we are.

    TF: I've been focusing on these two in front of me. Could I just say something on that, as someone who is very new to the sport, in that I think it's a little bit of a shambles that we're having these kind of discussions, I think you don't have that in many other sports. The rules should be very clear, everyone should understand them and they should be pretty black and white. It costs the sport a lot of money. I think that one of the dangers of the sport is changing the interpretations, it's really got to be black and white and I think it can be. If you look at GP2, it's very clear. I run a GP2 team, we don't have these kind of situations. Of course Formula One is technologically advanced and you need all that sort of thing but I think the regulators of the sport need to make things clear so we don't have this 10 per cent blowing, 50 per cent blowing, hot, cold, in between etc, and teams and engineers have clarity. Even over the last few months we've heard of all the controversy in football but the rules in football are clear, it's black and white, it's easy for the spectators to understand and I think that's a really big challenge for the sport because a man in the stand - I don't understand anything that these two have just said, God knows about all the spectators over there, so that's just something I wanted to add, as someone relatively new to the sport. I think it needs to be simpler, and I don't think it makes a huge amount of difference to the people who are watching it.

    Q: (Heikki Kulta - Turun Sanomat) Tony, have you been thinking of who will drive your cars next year and if you have, when are we able to hear of your decision?

    TF: No, we haven't, it's still very early days. It depends whether we have hot, cold, how our drivers react to it, but I echo what Frank said, it's early days for us to decide where the drivers are next year.

    Q: (Nick Westby - Yorkshire Post) Martin, the link-up to Virgin Racing, what benefits does that bring to McLaren?

    MW: (Laughter) I think you're aware that McLaren is a group of companies now and we have an electronics business which, I'm glad to say, all of the teams in Formula One are customers, as are all the teams in IRL, as now are all the teams in NASCAR. We have a company called McLaren Applied Technologies which is working with some teams to help them and develop them, and I think it's early days. As John said, they've now acquired some assets and some people and our business McLaren Applied Technology will try and accelerate them up a learning curve to make sure that they've got a competitive car next year. Exactly how we do that is something that's got to be resolved, it's fairly fluid as we look at what resources, what capability, what knowledge that they have and obviously we've got a range of experience and facilities within our group that we hope will bring benefit to Virgin.

    Q: (Andrew Frankl - Forza) Frank, do you miss Max Mosley, especially at times like this?

    FW: Sorry, my hearing is damaged after 30 or 40 years. Life goes on. Max - I happened to see him yesterday, actually, he came by at the office, clever as ever, sharp as ever, a little more genial at last. Retirement, in a way, is doing him some good. I think he was an outstanding administrator and leader of the FIA - I didn't say Formula One, I said the FIA.

    Q: (Niki Takeda - Formula PA) Tony, following on what you have said, you mentioned that the rules have to be black and white so how do you propose in your opinion to remove all the different shades of grey in this sport?

    TF: I'm the last person (to ask) because I don't understand half of them, but I think there are enough smart people in this business to make the sport easier to understand the rules and I have proposed it at the last FOTA meeting and I think there are some suggestions being put forward at the TRWG in terms of the terms of reference. I'm coming in as someone who is an outsider and saying how I look at it and making some suggestions. I think there are lots of smart people in there who can make it an easier and more black and white sport and I think that's what I put forward to FOTA last week because I think it is... This blown diffuser, I think it should be at the end of the season. I've always said that. If you're going to make a rule change like that, where teams have invested, it should be at the end of the season and now you're getting things being changed in practice sessions. I think this kind of greyness needs to be taken out. It has, in many other motor sports, where it is black and white, and I think it would be good for Formula One. I don't know how to do it but there are enough people in there who do know and I think there should be less energy spent on so much of the rules and the engineering ways of getting around the rules and they should just be black and white, so you know this is what you can do as opposed to... we spend so much time trying to find ways to circumvent the rules. It should be very clear, and I think it can be done, because it is done in 99 per cent of other sports.

    JB: The other point to make there is that I think it's much better to address these problems in private, so that we don't add too much confusion for the spectators. A bit of in-house housekeeping before it goes public would be helpful, I think.

    Q: (Byron Young - The Daily Mirror) Putting aside the technological gobbledy-gook that most of us didn't understand just now, am I right in thinking that what you're saying basically Martin, is that you believe that Renault-powered cars have a technical advantage - Red Bull have a technical advantage - and Christian is saying No, they don't?

    MW: I don't know whether they've got a technical advantage or not. All I'm saying is that we've evolved into quite a complex set of guidelines as to what's permissible. We've done everything against what Tony's suggested i.e. what was not exactly black and white but what was reasonably clear and what was being exploited has become a whole heck of a lot greyer and subject to negotiation which probably wasn't appropriate and I think that again, everyone here agrees, having clear rules that aren't unambiguous and are changed after good consent and between seasons is the right thing to do.

    CH: I agree with Martin. I think that at the end of the day, we don't want to be disadvantaged. We think it's unfair to have been excessively penalised through a technical directive that was released just after Valencia, that has been addressed in an equitable manner and I think that inevitably McLaren or Mercedes will think that they're losing out to Renault and Red Bull. Red Bull feels exactly the same, that the way that they operate their engine offers an advantage. It's something that we're just not going to agree on but I think that that's where the role of the regulator is, to balance this and on what is a very complex subject, they've done their best to do it. I think that as Charlie will probably admit, it would have been best to deal with this at the end of the year, because it is tantamount to a rule change and when you enter the championship at the beginning of the year and you design your car around it - and let's not forget that there's other teams that have significantly designed their cars around this set of regulations - for them to suddenly change halfway through the year is cost, it's time, it's effort, it's money and it's confusing. It's confusing to you, it's confusing to the fans and it's confusing to Formula One. So that's where we are. I think hopefully we can now draw a line under it and move on. It's probably not the last you're going to hear about blown exhausts or whatever else is blown these days but hopefully we can now move on.

     

    Copyright. 2011 Planet F1.com  All Rights Reserved

  • Five myths about Americans in prison

     

    By Marc Mauer and David Cole, Published: June 17

    No country on Earth imprisons more people per capita than the United States. But for America, mass incarceration has proved a losing proposition. The Supreme Court recently found California’s overcrowded prisons unconstitutional, and state legislators want to cut the vast amounts of public money spent on prison warehousing.

    Why are so many Americans in prison, and which ones can be safely released? Let’s address some common misunderstandings about our incarceration problem.

    1. Crime has fallen because incarceration has risen.

    U.S. crime rates are the lowest in 40 years, but it’s not clear how much of this drop is a result of locking up more people.

    In Canada, for example, violent crime declined in the 1990s almost as much as it did in the United States. Yet, Canada’s prison population dropped during this time, and its per capita incarceration rate is about one-seventh that of the United States. Moreover, while U.S. incarceration rates have steadily risen for four decades, our crime rate has fluctuated — rising through the 1970s, falling and then rising in the 1980s, and falling since 1993.

    Harvard University sociologist Bruce Western believes that increased incarceration accounts for only about 10 percent of the drop in crime rates; William Spelman, a professor of public affairs at the University of Texas, puts the figure at about 25 percent. Even if the higher figure is accurate, three-quarters of the crime decline had nothing to do with imprisonment. Other causes include changes in drug markets, policing strategies and community initiatives to reshape behavior.

     

    2. The prison population is rising because more people are being sentenced to prison. In the 1980s and early 1990s, the number of people sent to prison grew mainly because of the war on drugs. The number of drug offenders sentenced to state prisons increased by more than 300 percent from 1985 to 1995.

    Since then, however, longer prison terms more than new prison sentences have fueled the prison population expansion. These are a result of mandatory sentencing measures such as “three strikes” laws and limits on parole release. Today, 140,000 prisoners, or one of 11 inmates, are incarcerated for life, many with no chance of parole.

    Longer stays in prison offer diminishing returns for public safety. As prisoners age, the likelihood that they will commit crimes drops, but the cost of their imprisonment rises, primarily because of increased medical care. Harsher sentences also offer little deterrence: When people consider committing crimes, they may think about whether they will be caught, but probably not about how harshly they will be punished. In 1999, the Institute of Criminology at Cambridge University reviewed studies of deterrence and sentencing and found no basis “for inferring that increasing the severity of sentences generally is capable of enhancing deterrent effects.”

     

    3. Helping prisoners rejoin society will substantially reduce the prison population. Ninety-five percent of American prisoners will return home someday. While reentry programs can aid reintegration into the community, they do little to reduce our reliance on incarceration. Prison appears to make inmates as likely to commit crime as not; about half of released inmates return to prison within three years. Congress appropriated only $83 million for reentry in fiscal year 2011, or less than $120 per released prisoner. Even with additional state funds, one is not likely to overcome a lifetime of low educational attainment, substance abuse and/or mental health disabilities with this meager commitment.

    Investing in prevention and treatment instead of imprisonment is more likely to shrink the prison population. The Washington State Institute for Public Policy, for example, found that home-based supervision of juvenile offenders produced $28 in taxpayer benefits for every dollar invested.

     

    4. There’s a link between race and crime. Yes, African Americans and Latinos disproportionately commit certain crimes. But in a 1996 study of crime rates in Columbus, Ohio, criminologists from Ohio State University concluded that socioeconomic disadvantages “explain the overwhelming portion of the difference in crime.”

    Nowhere are racial disparities in criminal justice more evident than in drug law enforcement. In 2003, black men were nearly 12 times more likely to be sent to prison for a drug offense than white men. Yet, national household surveys show that whites and African Americans use and sell drugs at roughly the same rates. African Americans, who are 12 percent of the population and about 14 percent of drug users, make up 34 percent of those arrested for drug offenses and 45 percent of those serving time for such offenses in state prisons. Why?

    In large measure, because police find drugs where they look for them. Inner-city, open-air drug markets are easier to bust than those that operate out of suburban basements, and numerous studies show that minorities are stopped by police more often than whites. For example, a Center for Constitutional Rights study found that 87 percent of the 575,000 people stopped by the police in New York City in 2009 were African American or Latino.

     

    5. Racial disparities in incarceration reflect police and judges’ racial prejudice.

    Shocking instances of racism still come to light in the justice system. But racist cops and courts are not the primary reason for racial disparities in incarceration.

    Consider increased penalties for drug offenses in school zones. Though not racially motivated, these laws disproportionately affect minorities, who more often live in densely populated urban areas with many nearby schools. In New Jersey, for example, 96 percent of people incarcerated under such laws in 2005 were African American or Latino. Judges didn’t necessarily want to sentence these defendants to more prison time than those convicted outside school zones, but under the law, they had to.

    Where we spend money also contributes to the problem. The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 appropriated $9.7 billion for prisons and $13.6 billion for law enforcement, but only $6.1 billion for crime prevention. Politicians eager to be seen as tough on crime too often find ways to fund new prison cells, even though they know that minorities will predominantly fill them. This isn’t the fault of racist individuals. It’s the fault of a system that fails to take the promise of equality seriously.

    The United States imprisons a larger proportion of its population than Russia or Belarus. Our incarceration rate is eight times that of France. These tragic statistics force us to ask: Would the American public accept these rates if incarceration were distributed more equally across race and class?

    mauer@sentencingproject.org

    cole@law.georgetown.edu

    Marc Mauer is executive director of the Sentencing Project. David Cole is a professor at Georgetown University Law Center.

     

    Copyright. © The Washington Post Company. All Rights Reserved

  • The Value of a Work Ethic - 10 Great Quotes

     

     

    What kind of work do you do? Whatever it is, much depends on your willingness to work your buns off when it counts. 

    It‘s amazing what you can get done when you push yourself to your limits. And that‘s exactly what you sometimes need to do. But will you? Sometimes success depends on your willingness to move faster, devote more personal energy and work longer hours. 

    Yet, when challenges slow your progress, it‘s hard to remember that something good might come from all your hard work. You might wonder whether the results you hope for are worth the physical aches and pains or the mental fatigue that you‘re enduring along the way. It‘s natural to wish you were able to do something that didn‘t drain so much of your personal energy. 

    At times like this, remind yourself that while hard work might exhaust you, in the long run it‘s how you get what you want.

    Almost always, a worthwhile goal requires tremendous effort and commitment. If your goal means that much to you, and if you‘re willing to do the tough stuff and not give up, you have an excellent chance of achieving it. The key is to have a goal you really care about so you give it your best effort even when you're tired. 

    Remember, you already have within you everything you need to give the required effort. You can concentrate on the challenge before you, no matter how difficult, and give it your best.

    What some really hard workers have to say about effort...

    ― "Striving for success without hard work is like trying to harvest where you haven't planted." - David Bly, American politician (1952- ) 

    ― "Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work." - Stephen King, American novelist (1947- ) 

    ― "Nothing will work unless you do." - John Wooden, American college basketball coach (1910-2010) 

    ― "You just don't luck into things. You build them step by step, whether it's friendships or opportunities." - Barbara Bush, American first lady (1925- ) 

    ― "Without labor nothing prospers." - Sophocles, Greek playwright (B.C. 496-406) 

    ― "Always make a total effort, even when the odds are against you." - Arnold Palmer, American professional golfer (1929- ) 

    ― "Fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds‘ worth of distance run." - Rudyard Kipling, British novelist (1865-1936) 

    ― "The highest compliment that you can pay me is to say that I work hard every day." - Wayne Gretzky, Canadian ice hockey player (1961- ) 

    ― "Satisfaction lies in the effort, not in the attainment. Full effort is full victory." - Mohandas Gandhi, Indian religious leader (1869-1948) 

    ― "The world belongs to the energetic." - Ralph Waldo Emerson, American philosopher (1803-1882) 

    Post by Dennis E. Coates, Ph.D., Copyright 2010. Building Personal Strength . (Permission to use photo purchased from istockphoto.com)

  • BEING SEBASTIAN VETTEL - IT'S NOT AS EASY AS IT LOOKS


     

    by Jimmy Von Weeks on Jul 3rd, 2011

     

     

    Statistically speaking, Sebastian Vettel's 2011 campaign has been pretty near perfect. From eight races he's scored seven poles, six wins and two runner-up finishes. With less than half the season complete the writing is on the wall: the drivers' crown is staying with Seb, and he's going to win it with crushing dominance.

    But the feeling among a significant number of F1 fans we've spoken to lately - in fact, seemingly everyone who isn't a Vettel supporter - seems to be that the Red Bull man doesn't deserve his success. Moreover, the words 'bad for the sport' are beginning to be bolted on to the end of sentences about his winning streak. Fair?

    Photo: Red Bull/Mark Thompson/Getty Images

    Sunday was his 16th win in Formula One, equaling the number taken by Stirling Moss. He's now just two off Kimi Räikkönen, four shy of Mika Häkkinen and six behind Damon Hill. You'd not be foolish to suggest he'll surpass all three this season.

    Of those 16 wins Vettel has taken 12 from pole, three from second on the grid and just one from third. The latter was at last year's Malaysian Grand Prix, where a superb start saw him lead the race by the first corner.

    And this is where the idea that he doesn't deserve it springs from: true champions can carve their way through the pack to score wins. Vettel has never really displayed his racecraft. On occasion - Turkey and Spa 2010 come immediately to mind - he's shown himself up when trying to get past his rivals. Seb still needs to prove himself as an overtaker of genuine ability if he's to be one day considered a true great of the sport.

    His reaction to the Turkey incident - where he blamed team-mate Mark Webber - didn't endear him to the wider public either. Perhaps there is a need for Seb - like a few others in the paddock - to take a calm look at racing incidents before making any public declarations.

    But the idea that what he's doing is easy doesn't stack up. If it were true then serious questions would need to be asked of Webber, because with the same car underneath him he's unable to match Vettel's performance. Take the first few laps in Valencia: Mark wasn't under any real pressure from the drivers behind - his sole objective was to chase down Vettel, get within a second of his team-mate and stab that DRS button.

    But Vettel built a gap and held it. He was pushing like mad to keep Webber a safe distance behind and was successful in doing so. I'm not sure that this could be described as easy.

    The 'easy' argument also ignores Vettel's unquestionable ability to nail a fast qualy lap. The reason he has it relatively easy on a Sunday is because he works so hard on Saturday to take the box seat on the grid. He's now scored 22 pole positions, more than anyone in the current field bar Michael Schumacher; he's utterly destroyed Webber in qualifying.

     

    And this is by no means easy. You can question his racecraft if you wish, but Vettel's pace over one lap is under no scrutiny: he's immense at banging in a fast one.

    No one would deny that it spoils 'the show' when one driver dominates race after race, particularly when the action behind them is as turgid as it was in Valencia's docklands.

    But you can't hold that against Vettel - he's only doing what every other driver on the grid would give their hind teeth to do. He has the fastest car and is naturally going to use it to his full advantage - i.e. qualifying as high up as possible and disappearing at the head of the field when the lights go out. His responsibilities are to himself - to be the most successful driver he can be - and to his team, who pay his wages and thus demand a high level of performance. Like it or not he has absolutely no responsibility to put on a show. If he does that's fantastic, but it comes a very distant second to fulfilling his personal potential and repaying the work that the Red Bull team do for him.

    I find it hard to believe that this is not the attitude with which every driver on the grid today would - in fact should - approach Formula One. Take, for example, a self-proclaimed racer like Lewis Hamilton: would he, given the choice, prefer to start every race from pole and dominate to the flag, or would he rather have to work his way through the pack on a fortnightly basis, facing the many pitfalls this can present? The answer is pretty clear: he'd take pole and the win every single time.

    Photo: Red Bull/Mark Thompson/Getty Images

    Because a racing driver's career is short, particularly in the you're only as good as your last race world of Formula One. They have to live in the belief that each win could be their last, and so scooping up every available victory is natural.

    I understand the negative feelings about Vettel; they’re natural given his dominance of the 2011 season.

    But to suggest that he's got an easy job overlooks just what a fantastic qualifier the guy is; it ignores the work he does in building an maintaining a gap to his pursuers; essentially, it implies that running at the head of the field is a breeze. It's not.

    Yes, he has the fastest car by some margin, but that shouldn't be held against him. I'd like to see him carve through the field for his wins as much as anyone. But at the moment he simply doesn't have to. You can't give him a hard time for that.

    And let's be honest: even with a second title at 24 he still won't be considered a true great. To do that he will have to win or at least challenge the championship in a car that isn't the fastest on the grid.

     

     

    Copyright. 2011. BadgerGP.com All Rights Reserved

  • Married, With Infidelities

    Illustrations by Ciara Phelan; Photographs from Corbis
    Photograph by Sven Hagolani/Corbis (woman and child); Jonas Ingerstedt/Corbis (man)
    June 30, 2011
     

    Married, With Infidelities

    By MARK OPPENHEIMER

    Last month, when the New York congressman Anthony Weiner finally admitted that he had lied, that his Twitter account had not been hacked, that he in fact had sent a picture of his thinly clad undercarriage to a stranger in Seattle, I asked my wife of six years, mother of our three children, what she thought. More specifically, I asked which would upset her more: to learn that I was sending racy self-portraits to random women, Weiner-style, or to discover I was having an actual affair. She paused, scrunched up her mouth as if she had just bitten a particularly sour lemon and said: “An affair is at least a normal human thing. But tweeting a picture of your crotch is just weird.”

    How do we account for that revulsion, which many shared with my wife, a revulsion that makes it hard to imagine a second act for Weiner, like Eliot Spitzer’s television career or pretty much every day in the life of Bill Clinton? One explanation is that the Weiner scandal was especially sordid: drawn out, compounded daily with new revelations, covered up with embarrassing lies that made us want to look away. But another possibility is that there was something not weird, but too familiar about Weiner. His style might not be for everyone (to put it politely), but the impulse to be something other than what we are in our daily, monogamous lives, the thrill that comes from the illicit rather than the predictable, is something I imagine many couples can identify with. With his online flirtations and soft-porn photos, he did what a lot of us might do if we were lonely and determined to not really cheat.

    That is one reason it was a relief when Weiner was drummed from office. In addition to giving us some good laughs, he forced us to ask particularly uncomfortable questions, like “what am I capable of doing?” and “what have my neighbors or friends done?” His visage was insisting, night after night, that we think about how hard monogamy is, how hard marriage is and about whether we make unrealistic demands on the institution and on ourselves.

    That, anyway, is what Dan Savage, America’s leading sex-advice columnist, would say. Although best known for his It Gets Better project, an archive of hopeful videos aimed at troubled gay youth, Savage has for 20 years been saying monogamy is harder than we admit and articulating a sexual ethic that he thinks honors the reality, rather than the romantic ideal, of marriage. In Savage Love, his weekly column, he inveighs against the American obsession with strict fidelity. In its place he proposes a sensibility that we might call American Gay Male, after that community’s tolerance for pornography, fetishes and a variety of partnered arrangements, from strict monogamy to wide openness.

    Savage believes monogamy is right for many couples. But he believes that our discourse about it, and about sexuality more generally, is dishonest. Some people need more than one partner, he writes, just as some people need flirting, others need to be whipped, others need lovers of both sexes. We can’t help our urges, and we should not lie to our partners about them. In some marriages, talking honestly about our needs will forestall or obviate affairs; in other marriages, the conversation may lead to an affair, but with permission. In both cases, honesty is the best policy.

    “I acknowledge the advantages of monogamy,” Savage told me, “when it comes to sexual safety, infections, emotional safety, paternity assurances. But people in monogamous relationships have to be willing to meet me a quarter of the way and acknowledge the drawbacks of monogamy around boredom, despair, lack of variety, sexual death and being taken for granted.”

    The view that we need a little less fidelity in marriages is dangerous for a gay-marriage advocate to hold. It feeds into the stereotype of gay men as compulsively promiscuous, and it gives ammunition to all the forces, religious and otherwise, who say that gay families will never be real families and that we had better stop them before they ruin what is left of marriage. But Savage says a more flexible attitude within marriage may be just what the straight community needs. Treating monogamy, rather than honesty or joy or humor, as the main indicator of a successful marriage gives people unrealistic expectations of themselves and their partners. And that, Savage says, destroys more families than it saves.

    Savage, who is 46, has been writing Savage Love since 1991 for The Stranger, an alternative weekly paper in Seattle that syndicates it to more than 50 other newspapers. Savage’s sex advice puts me in mind of a smart, tough old grandmother, randy yet stern. It’s Dr. Ruth if she were interested in bondage and threesomes. And if she were Catholic: Savage was raised in ethnic-Irish Chicago, one of four children of a cop and a homemaker. He did some time in Catholic school, and his writing bears traces of the church’s stark moral clarity, most notable in his impatience with postmodern or queer theorizing or anything that might overturn the centrality of the stable nuclear family.

    Savage is not a churchgoer, but he is a cultural Catholic. Listeners to “This American Life,” which since 1996 has aired his homely monologues about his family, might recognize the kinship of those personal stories to the Catholic homilies Savage heard every Sunday of his childhood. Less a scriptural exegesis, like what you get in many a Protestant church, the priest’s homily is often short and framed as a fable or lesson: it’s an easily digested moral tale. You can hear that practiced didacticism in his radio segments about DJ, the son that he and Terry Miller, his husband, adopted as an infant, and you can hear it in the moving piece he read about his mother, who, on her deathbed, said she loved Terry “like a daughter.”

    And you can hear it in the It Gets Better project, Savage’s great contribution to family values. Last September, in response to the reported suicides of several young men bullied for being, or seeming, gay, Savage prevailed on the very private Miller, whom he married in 2005 in Vancouver, to make a video about how their lives got better after high school. In the video, they talk into the camera about their courtship, becoming parents and how wonderfully accepting their families have been. “We have really great lives together,” Miller says at the end. Savage adds, “And you can have a great life, too.” Savage posted the video on Sept. 21. Within two months, there were 10,000 videos from people attesting to their own it-gets-better experience, viewed a collective 35 million times. The “It Gets Better” book, a selection of narratives, made The Times’s nonfiction best-seller list. In May, the It Gets Better campaign was featured in an advertisement for Google’s Chrome Web browser.

    It Gets Better is, in the end, a paean to stable families: it is a promise to gay youth that if they can just survive the bullying, they can have spouses and children when they grow up. With Savage, the goal is always the possibility of stable, adult families, for gays and straights alike. He is capable of pro-family rants that, stripped of his habitual profanity, would be indistinguishable from Christian-right fund-raising letters.

    How, then, can Savage be a monogamy skeptic? When Savage first began writing Savage Love, it was a jokey column, one in which he aimed “to treat straight sex with the same revulsion that straight advice columnists had always had for gay sex,” as Savage told me, when we met in Seattle in April. But he quickly realized that his correspondents were turning to him to save their love lives, not their sex lives.

    Today, Savage Love is less a sex column than a relationship column, one point of which is to help good unions last. Sexual fulfillment matters in its own right, but mainly it matters because without it, families are more likely to break apart. It is for the sake of staying together — not merely for the sake of orgasms — that Savage coined his famous acronym, “G.G.G.”: lovers ought to be good, giving and game (put another way, skilled, generous and up for anything). And if they cannot fulfill all of each other’s desires, then it may be advisable to decide to go outside the bounds of marriage if that is what it takes to make the marriage work.

    Savage’s position on monogamy is frequently caricatured. He does not believe in promiscuity; indeed, his attacks on the anonymous-sex, gay-bathhouse culture were once taken as proof of a secret conservative agenda. And he does not believe that monogamy is wrong for all couples or even for most couples. Rather, he says that a more realistic sexual ethic would prize honesty, a little flexibility and, when necessary, forgiveness over absolute monogamy. And he believes nostalgically, like any good conservative, that we might look to the past for some clues.

    “The mistake that straight people made,” Savage told me, “was imposing the monogamous expectation on men. Men were never expected to be monogamous. Men had concubines, mistresses and access to prostitutes, until everybody decided marriage had to be egalitar­ian and fairsey.” In the feminist revolution, rather than extending to women “the same latitude and license and pressure-release valve that men had always enjoyed,” we extended to men the confines women had always endured. “And it’s been a disaster for marriage.”

    In their own marriage, Savage and Miller practice being what he calls “monogamish,” allowing occasional infidelities, which they are honest about. Miller was initially opposed to the idea. “You assume as a younger person that all relationships are monogamous and between two people, that love means nothing can come between you,” said Miller, who met Savage at a club in 1995, when he was 23 and Savage was 30. “Dan has taught me to be more realistic about that kind of stuff.

    “It was four or five years before it came up,” Miller said. “It’s not about having three-ways with somebody or having an open relationship. It is just sort of like, Dan has always said if you have different tastes, you have to be good, giving and game, and if you are not G.G.G. for those tastes, then you have to give your partner the out. It took me a while to get down with that.” When I asked Savage how many extramarital encounters there have been, he laughed shyly. “Double digits?” I asked. He said he wasn’t sure; later he and Miller counted, and he reported back that the number was nine. “And far from it being a destabilizing force in our relationship, it’s been a stabilizing force. It may be why we’re still together.”

    While his marriage opened up gradually, Savage says that “there’s not a one-size-fits-all way” to approach nonmonogamy, especially if both partners committed to monogamy at the start. “Folks on the verge of making those monogamous commitments,” Savage told me in one of our many e-mail exchanges, “need to look at the wreckage around them — all those failed monogamous relationships out there (Schwarzenegger, Clinton, Vitter, whoever’s on the cover of US magazine this week) — and have a conversation about what it’ll mean if one or the other partner should cheat. And agree, at the very least, to getting through it, to place a higher value on the relationship itself than on one component of it, sexual exclusivity.”

    Not that heeding our desires always simplifies matters. One recent writer to Savage Love thought he would enjoy seeing his wife fool around with another man, and initially did: “Almost every kinky kind was being had and enjoyed.” But when his wife had vaginal intercourse with the other man, something happened. “It was as if all the air in the room was sucked out through my soul,” he writes. Savage’s reply is pragmatic: “If there’s a sex act — say, vaginal intercourse — that holds huge symbolic importance for you or your partner, it might be best to take that act off the menu.” The answer, to Savage’s way of thinking, is smarter boundaries, not hard-line rules about monogamy.

    For most people, sex cannot be so transactional; it is bound up with emotional need — to feel we excite our partner above all others, to believe that we have primacy in their lives. The question is whether it’s possible to act on our desires sensibly, as Savage would have it, while maintaining the special equilibrium we trust our marriages, or long-term partnerships, to preserve. Do we know our relationships well enough to go outside them?

    There have always been nonmonogamous marriages. In 2001, The Journal of Family Psychology summarized earlier research, finding that “infidelity occurs in a reliable minority of American marriages.” Estimates that “between 20 and 25 percent of all Americans will have sex with someone other than their spouse while they are married” are conservative, the authors wrote. In 2010, NORC, a research center at the University of Chicago, found that, among those who had ever been married, 14 percent of women and 20 percent of men admitted to affairs.

    There is no agreement over how honestly we should discuss this reality with our own spouses. Some are nostalgic for the old hypocrisy, the code of silence, the mistresses and concubines men kept discreetly on the side. Clergy members may practice a kind of selective muteness: in their premarital counseling, they often do not stress the possibility of future affairs — but once an affair occurs, they vocally urge couples to tough it out. But what if they were to say, ahead of time: “You two love each other, and you promise you won’t stray, but you might. People do. And if you do, I hope you won’t think it’s the end of the world.”

    Such straight talk about the difficulty of monogamy, Savage argues, is simply good sense. People who are eager to cheat need to be honest with their partners, but people who think they would never cheat need honesty even more. “The point,” he wrote on his blog last year, “is that people — particularly those who value monogamy — need to understand why being monogamous is so much harder than they’ve been led to believe.”

    How exactly does Savage think talking about monogamy’s trials make practicing it easier? In part, by reminding people to be good, giving and game. Straight talk about why we might cheat helps couples figure out ways to keep each other satisfied at home. If I promise my wife that I would never, ever, ever sleep with another woman, the conversation might end there, the two of us gazing into each other’s eyes (even if our minds might be wandering). But if I say, “I’ve been feeling sexually unfulfilled lately because I have a secret fantasy about trading dirty pictures with a woman” — well, then maybe my wife will e-mail me some of her. And so monogamy is preserved.

    “If you are expected to be monogamous and have one person be all things sexually for you, then you have to be whores for each other,” Savage says. “You have to be up for anything.”

    Savage’s straight-talk approach has an intuitive appeal: our culture places a huge premium on honesty, or at least on confessional, therapeutic, Oprah-fied admissions. We are told to say what is on our minds, so why not extend that principle to sex? Why not tell your spouse everything you want, even if that includes wanting another person? My sense is that this kind of radical honesty may work best for couples who already have strong marriages. Where there is love and equality and no history of betrayal, one partner asking if she can have a fling may not be so risky. Her partner either says yes, and it happens, you hope, with only the best consequences; or the partner says no, in which case their relationship endures, maybe with a little disappointment on one side, a little suspicion on the other.

    That is the ideal situation. What if the revelation that a partner is thinking about others creates a shift, one that plagues the marriage? Words have consequences, and most couples, knowing that jealousy is real and can beset any of us, opt for a tacit code of reticence. Not just about sex but about all sorts of things: there are couples who can express opinions about each other’s clothing choices or cooking or taste in movies, and there are couples who cannot. I don’t mind if my wife tells me another man is hot, but it took me a long time to accept her criticism of my writing. We all have many sensitive spots, but one of the most universal is the fear of not being everything to your partner — the fear, in other words, that she might find somebody worthier. It is the fear of being alone.

    Where a relationship is troubled, and one partner senses, correctly, that aloneness is an imminent threat, then the other partner asking for permission to have a fling is no neutral act. If you are scared of losing your partner, you may say yes to anything she asks, including permission for an affair that will wound you deeply. “The problem is that with many of these couples, one partner wants it, and the other says yes because she’s afraid that he will leave her,” says Janis Abrahms Spring, a psychologist and couples’ therapist whose book, “After the Affair,” is about couples badly damaged by infidelity.

    Spring is inclined to a pessimism as strong as Savage’s optimism — after all, she works with couples who have ended up in counseling — but she offers a persuasive reminder that there may be no such thing as total honesty. Even when we think we are enthusiastically assenting to a partner’s request, we may not know ourselves as well as we think we do. This is true not just for monogamy but also for sexual acts within marriage. Some of Savage’s toughest critics are feminists who think he can be a bit too glib with his injunction to please our partners.

    “Sometimes he can shame women for not being into things that their male partners are into, if they have male partners,” Sady Doyle, a feminist blogger, told me. “The whole good-giving-and-game thing is something I actually agree with. I don’t think you should flip out on your partner if they share something sexual with you. But I think sometimes it’s much harder for women to say, ‘I’m not into that,’ or ‘Please, I don’t want to do that, let’s do something else,’ than it is to say, ‘Sure.’ Putting all the onus on the person who doesn’t have that fetish or desire, particularly if the person who doesn’t have that desire is the woman, really reproduces a lot of old structures and means of oppression for women.”

    Spring and Doyle both hint at a larger truth about men and women, which is that, generally speaking, they view sex differently. While there are plenty of women who can separate sex from love, can be happily promiscuous or could have a meaningless, one-time fling, there are — let’s face it — more men like that. The world of Savage Love will always appeal more to men, even men who truly love their partners. Cheating men are often telling the truth when they say, “She meant nothing to me.” It really was just sex. And Savage tells us that, with proper disclosure and consent, just sex can be O.K.

    But for many women, and not a few men, there is no such thing as “just sex,” for their partners or for themselves. What if a woman, or a man for that matter, looks outside marriage for the other emotional satisfactions that come along with sex? Savage has less to offer that person. He does not tell people to take long-term boyfriends or girlfriends. He is skeptical that group marriages, of three or more partners, can last very long. Nor could he have much to offer the person who feels a partner ought to constrain his urges. There is a reason that sex advice is easier to give than relationship advice. Satisfying a sexual yearning is easier than satisfying a hole in your life.

    In an e-mail he sent me, Savage countered that “there are plenty of women out there who have affairs just for the sex.” But he agreed that there is something male about his perspective. “Well, I’m male,” he wrote. “And women, straight women, are in relationships with men. Doesn’t it help to know what we’re really like? Women can go on marrying and pretending that their boyfriends and husbands are Mr. Darcy or some RomCom dream man. But where’s that going to get ’em? Besides divorce court?”

    Savage’s honesty ethic gives couples permission to find happiness in unusual places; he believes that pretty much anything can be used to spice up a marriage, although he excludes feces, pets and incest, as well as minors, the nonconsenting, the duped and the dead. In “The Commitment,” Savage’s book about his and Miller’s decision to marry, he describes how a college student approached him after a campus talk and said, as Savage tells it, that “he got off on having birthday cakes smashed in his face.” But no one had ever obliged him. “My heart broke when he told me that the one and only time he told a girlfriend about his fetish, she promptly dumped him. Since then he had been too afraid to tell anyone else.” Savage took the young man up to his hotel room and smashed a cake in his face.

    The point is: priests and rabbis don’t tell couples they might need to involve cake play in their marriages; moms and dads don’t; even best friends can be shy about saying what they like. Savage wants to make sure that no strong marriage ever fails because an ashamed husband or wife is desperately seeking cake play — or bondage, urine play or any of the other unspeakable activities that Savage has helped make speakable. If cake play is what a man needs, his G.G.G. wife should give it to him; if she can’t bring herself to, then maybe she should allow him a chocolate-frosted excursion with another woman. But for God’s sake, keep it together for the kids.

    If you believe Savage, there is strong precedent, in other times and in other cultures, for nonmonogamous relationships that endure. In fact, there has recently been a good deal of scholarship proving that point, including Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá’s “Sex at Dawn,” one of Savage’s favorite books, and Stephanie Coontz’s definitive “Marriage, a History.” Like Savage, Coontz says she believes that “people often end up exploding a relationship that was working well because one partner strays or has an affair that doesn’t mean anything.”

    But, she says, we are to some extent trapped in our culture. It is one thing for the Inuit men to have “temporary wives,” whom they take along on trips when they leave their other wives at home, and for pregnant Bari women, in Venezuela, to have sex with multiple men, all of whom are considered responsible for the eventual child. Their societies have very different ideas about marriage. “I think you can combine a high tolerance of flings with a de-emphasis on jealousy in long-term relationships,” Coontz said, “but usually that is only in societies where friendships and kin relationships are as emotionally salient as romantic partnerships.”

    In the 18th century, according to Coontz, American men could mention their mistresses in letters to their wives’ brothers; they could mention contracting syphilis from a prostitute. Men understood the masculine prerogative, and they countenanced it, even at the expense of their own sisters. “That would be unthinkable today,” Coontz said. “For thousands of years it was expected of men they would have affairs and flings, but not on the terms of honesty and equality Dan envisions. I can certainly see the appeal of suggesting we try and make this an open, mutual, gender-equal arrangement. I’m a little dubious how much that is going to work.”

    It was not until the 20th century that Americans evolved an understanding of marriage in which partners must meet all of each other’s needs: sexual, emotional, material. When we rely on our partners for everything, any hint of betrayal is terrifying. “That is the bind we are in,” Coontz said. “We accord so much priority to the couple relationship. It is tough under those conditions for most people to live with the insecurity of giving their partners permission to have flings.”

    There is one subculture in America that practices nonmonogamy and equality between partners: the sizable group of gay men in open, or semiopen, long-term partnerships. (A study published in 2010 found 50 percent of gay male couples in the Bay Area had sexual relationships outside their union, with their partner’s knowledge and approval.) But it is unclear if gay habits, which Savage thinks can be a model, will survive the advent of gay equality. Historically, gay men have treated monogamy more casually, in part because society treated gay coupledom as unthinkable. Now, however, gay men are marrying or entering into socially sanctioned partnerships. As they are absorbed into the mainstream of connubial bliss, they may lose the strong friendship networks that gay men once substituted for nuclear families — friendship networks that, according to Coontz, can make infidelity less threatening. In other words, as they take out joint mortgages and pal around with straight parents from the PTA, they may become considerably more square about fidelity. Living in their McMansions, they, too, may decide that the walls of their marriages must be guarded at all costs.

    Judith Stacey, a New York University sociologist who researched gay men’s romantic arrangements for her book “Unhitched,” argues that gay men, in general, will continue to require less monogamy. “They are men,” she said, and she believes it is easier for them — right down to the physiology of orgasm — to separate physical and emotional intimacy. Lesbians and straight women tend to be far less comfortable with nonmonogamy than gay men. But what matters is that neither monogamy nor polygamy is humankind’s sole natural state. “One size never fits all, and it isn’t just dividing between men and women and gay and straight,” she said. “Monoga­my is not natural, nonmonogamy is not natural. Variation is what’s natural.”

    I asked Stacey if, given the differences between men and women, she thought Savage’s vision was unrealistic for straight couples. Yes and no, she said: “I believe monogamy is actually crucial for some couples and totally irrelevant for others.” That does not mean that nonmonogamous couples are free to do as they please. Creating nonmonogamy that strengthens rather than corrodes a marriage is surely as much work as monogamy. Couples should make vows and honor them. Not all good relationships require monogamy, but they all require what she calls integrity.

    “What integrity means for me is we shouldn’t impose a single vow of monogamy as a superior standard for all relationships,” Stacey said. “Intimate partners should decide the vows you want to make. Work out terms of what your commitments are, and be on same page. There are women perfectly happy to have agreements in which when you are out of town you can have a little fling on the side. And rules range from ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ to ‘I want to know’ to ‘bring it home and talk about it and excite our relationship.’ ”

    Stacey and Savage each say that monogamy is the right choice for many couples; they are exalting options, not any particular option. As a straight, monogamous, married male, I happen to think this is a good thing: if there are people whose marriages work best with more flexibility, they should find the courage to choose an arrangement that works for them, society be damned. I also recognize, however, that we may choose marriage in part to escape the terror of choice. There are so many reasons to marry; we could call them all “love,” but let’s be more specific: admiring how she looks in a sundress, trusting her to improve your first drafts, knowing that when the time comes she will make the best mother ever. But another reason might be that life before her was so confusing. In all those other relationships, it was never clear when there was an exclusive commitment or who would use the L-word first or when a Saturday-night date could be assumed.

    Marrying has the virtue of clearing all that up: exclusive, you both use the L-word, Saturday night assumed. Simple, right?

    Not long ago, I mentioned Savage to a psychotherapist who works with children. He said that the It Gets Better project had saved the lives of several of his patients. “They tell me they might have killed themselves if it weren’t for Dan Savage,” my friend said, as tears filled his eyes.

    Hearing such reactions, and having been personally subjected by Savage to his earnest, ardent effusions about his wonderful husband and awesome son, it is tough to credit anyone who thinks Savage is a subversive figure. When I think of Savage, I think of his response to the mother whose ex-husband, her son’s father, was undergoing a sex change. Her son was angry, and she wondered what she should say to him. Savage said the boy was entitled to his feelings. “Children have a right to some stability and constancy from the adults in their lives,” Savage wrote. “Perhaps I’m a transphobic bigot,” but asking a father to wait “a measly 36 months” before having his penis chopped off “is a sacrifice any father should be willing to make for his 15-year-old son. Call me old-fashioned.”

    Savage is old-fashioned, as bitterly hilarious as that might sound to gay-marriage opponents. After the news of the Arnold Schwarzenegger love child broke, I received an e-mail from Savage in which he expressed concern about the article I was writing. As I would expect, he framed his position in terms of respect for the family.

    “I’m afraid,” he wrote, “it’s going to become: ‘This Savage person is krazy. Just look at what nonmonogamy did for Arnold! Look at the chaos that being nonmonogamous creates! Failed marriages, devastated children, scandal!’ But Arnold wasn’t in a nonmonogamous relationship. He was in a monogamous relationship. He failed at monogamy; he didn’t succeed at nonmonogamy.”

    Savage does not believe people should live in toxic, miserable marriages. The Schwarzenegger family is surely beyond repair. But they are an extreme case: not all adultery produces secret families. Most of it is minor by comparison, and Savage believes that adultery can be one of those trials, like financial woes or ill health, that marriages can be expected to survive.

    “Given the rates of infidelity, people who get married should have to swear a blood oath that if it’s violated, as traumatic as that would be, the greater good is the relationship,” Savage told me. “The greater good is the home created for children. If there are children present, they’ll get past it. The cultural expectation should be if there’s infidelity, the marriage is more important than fidelity.”

    It gets better? It does. But it also gets very complicated. Savage is not arguing “let Arnold be Arnold.” He is imploring us to know the people we marry and to know ourselves and to plan accordingly. He believes that our actions mark us as a compassionate people, that in truth we are always ready to forgive an adulterer, except the one we are married to. He points out that the Louisiana senator, and prominent john, David Vitter — “who I hate,” he reassures me — is still in office, and that “Bill Clinton is a beloved elder statesman, and Eliot Spitzer is back on television.” We are already a nation of forgivers, even when it comes to marriage. Dan Savage thinks we should take some pride in that.

    Mark Oppenheimer (mark.oppenheimer@nytimes.com) writes the Beliefs column for The Times. He is also the author of a memoir, ‘‘Wisenheimer: A Childhood Subject to Debate,’’ now in paperback. Editor: Vera Titunik (v.titunik-MagGroup@nytimes.com)

    This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

    Correction: July 3, 2011

     

    The article on Page 22 this weekend about marital infidelity misidentifies a disease contracted from prostitutes that men in the 18th century could write or talk freely about. It is syphilis, not smallpox.

    Copyright. 2011. The New York Times Company. All Rights Reserved

  • Maneuvering to Control Future of Formula One

         
    Vincent Damourette/European Pressphoto Agency

    A scene from the Grand Prix of Monaco, which is part of Formula One, the most widely followed auto racing series in the world.

     

    Antonio Calanni/Associated Press

    John Elkann, chief executive of Exor, an investment company owned by the Agnelli family, is said to have discussed a move on Formula One for several years.

     

    June 26, 2011
     

    Maneuvering to Control Future of Formula One

    By  and 

    The fortunes of a Formula One race can change in a split second. When Sebastian Vettel, the 23-year-old star of the Red Bull Racing team, slipped up on the last lap of the Canadian Grand Prix this month, he allowed Jenson Button of McLaren to snatch away the victor’s Jeroboam of Champagne.

    The business of Formula One could be set for a similarly drastic swing. Much more than a trophy and a big check is at stake: the future ownership of the world’s most widely followed auto racing series — and, perhaps, the way in which hundreds of millions of fans watch it on television — is ultimately up for grabs.

    The starting gun in this contest was fired this spring when News Corporation, controlled by Rupert Murdoch, and an investment company owned by the Agnelli family of Italy, overlords of the storied Ferrari racing team, expressed interest in taking over Formula One Management, which organizes the races.

    Since then, in trackside chats and informal conversations, officials of the two companies have been trying to convince skeptical team owners and other interested parties that they are the best future stewards of Formula One.

    People with knowledge of the talks say the pitch goes something like this: News Corporation could do for Formula One what it did for English soccer, which was transformed by an infusion of billions of pounds of television rights fees from a News Corporation pay-television affiliate in Britain. News Corporation’s global reach and considerable financial resources could generate interest in markets where Formula One has lagged, particularly the United States.

    Meanwhile, by aligning themselves with the Agnelli company called Exor and Ferrari, the team owners might be able to extract a larger portion of the commercial proceeds of the races, rather than handing over half to the central organization, as they do now.

    Still, questions abound. Would team owners agree to part ownership by another team? Would regulators allow Formula One to move from free television, as stipulated in its current operating agreement, to pay-television outlets in Europe and Asia owned by News Corporation? If so, would fans and sponsors stick with the sport?

    And perhaps most important, would this marriage of a media company and a sports organization work better than other recent examples, most of which have broken down after failing to deliver the expected benefits?

    “I can’t see how a media group could take over without changing fundamentally how the sport is run,” said Nigel Currie, the director of BrandRapport, a sponsorship agency. “Media companies are now one spoke in the wheel of Formula One, but in this case, a media company would become the hub.”

    Precedents for media companies owning sports franchises or organizations are not especially encouraging. News Corporation bought the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1998, hoping to generate viewership for its Fox TV network. It sold the team six years later when the hoped-for synergies failed to emerge.

    American media companies, like Tribune Company and Disney, have also been bailing out of team ownership. The New York Times Company is trying to sell its stake in the Boston Red Sox.

    The hurdles are so high that some analysts say they think News Corporation and Exor do not intend to make an actual bid for Formula One, which is majority-owned by CVC Capital Partners, a private equity firm. Instead, they may be trying to persuade key teams to peel away and create a new race series — a threat that has been dangled several times in the past.

    Bernie Ecclestone, the 80-year-old impresario who has been the driving force behind the race series for four decades, said that officials of News Corporation and Exor had not made any formal presentations to CVC or to him.

    “It’s a pity they don’t come along and sit down with the people that own the shares,” Ecclestone said. “That conversation hasn’t ever taken place.”

    By keeping everyone guessing about their intentions, News Corporation and Exor figure they cannot lose, insiders say. An agreement between the teams and Formula One Management expires next year. If the teams were to break away and set up a new series, the value of CVC’s investment in Formula One, which it bought for about $2.6 billion, would plunge.

    CVC does not want to sell, Ecclestone said. “Having said that, the type of company they are — a private equity firm — if the price was right, they would sell,” he said.

    John Elkann, the 35-year-old chief executive of Exor and scion of the Agnelli family, and James Murdoch, 38, who runs News Corporation’s European and Asian operations, are said to have discussed a move on Formula One for several years. This spring, with more than the usual amount of political and financial turbulence swirling around the organization, they saw their opportunity.

    Political unrest in the Gulf state of Bahrain disrupted plans for a race that had been set to take place there in March. The race was rescheduled for the fall, but team directors protested, fearing that they would be seen as endorsing a crackdown on dissidents. Finally, race organizers in Bahrain canceled the event.

    Meanwhile, Ecclestone is embroiled in a German investigation of bribery accusations related to the sale of Formula One to CVC in 2006. Ecclestone, the chief executive of Formula One Management, said he was said he was cooperating with the investigators and has vehemently denied any wrongdoing. The investigation stems from a change of ownership that followed the bankruptcy of the Kirch Group of Germany, a media company that briefly held a controlling stake in Formula One before it collapsed under the weight of its debts in 2001.

    Turmoil is nothing new to Formula One, which seems to careen from one tabloid scandal to the next, only to emerge stronger. Television viewership has bounced back after a dip a few seasons ago.

    Formula One Management says 527 million people watched at least part of a race on television or in person last year, up from 520 million in 2009. Sponsorship is expected to bring in a total of $4.4 billion this year for the teams and the central organization, according to Formula Money, a research report on the finances of Formula One.

    In Vettel, Button and Lewis Hamilton, Formula One has bankable young stars. This season has produced exciting races. There is even a comeback story: Michael Schumacher, the seven-time world champion who retired in 2006, returned last year.

    Still, there are questions about the future. Formula One, whose most famous race twists and turns through the streets of Monaco, has struggled to expand its appeal beyond white European men, an audience that is aging. Sponsorship of the race teams has recovered slowly after a steep drop during the global financial crisis. And there are no obvious candidates in Ecclestone’s family or in the Formula One organization to succeed him as chief deal maker.

    “There’s no line of succession, no one waiting to take over, so what you’re left with is a vacuum,” said Simon Chadwick, a professor of sport business strategy and marketing at Coventry University in Britain.

    Against this backdrop, officials of four of the most powerful teams in Formula One — Ferrari, McLaren, Red Bull and Mercedes — gathered in mid-May in Stuttgart, Germany, at the headquarters of Daimler, which controls the Mercedes team, to discuss the approach from Exor and News Corporation, as well as the negotiations on a renewal of their deal with Formula One Management, called the Concorde Agreement.

    Those four teams then called a separate, secret meeting to consider the Exor and News Corporation situation in more detail. This gathering took place at the end of May in Rome, according to a person who was briefed on the discussions.

    Any takeover involving News Corporation could require a rethinking of the Formula One business model. The Concorde Agreement stipulates that races should be shown on free television whenever possible, so as to maximize audiences, which typically reach 50 million to 60 million, more than most any sporting event other than the World Cup final and the Super Bowl.

    “If it were to become a pay-TV product rather than a predominantly free one now, it would be one of the most seismic changes in the history of the sport,” said Kevin Alavy, who analyzes television audiences at Initiative, a media buying agency, in London.

    Sponsors, the biggest source of revenue for the individual racing teams, could demand compensation for lost television exposure. On the other hand, revenue from television rights would probably rise, because pay-TV companies typically have deeper pockets than free broadcasters like the BBC, which now owns the rights in Britain.

    A newspaper owned by News Corporation, The Sunday Times of London, appeared to jump the gun on such a change, reporting on a recent weekend, “BBC axes F1.” The story cited unidentified sources as saying the BBC, a frequent subject of criticism from Murdoch and his father, Rupert, was considering dropping Formula One to save money. The BBC responded that this was speculation.

    Tony Fernandes, a Malaysian entrepreneur who owns Team Lotus, said Formula One officials and team owners ought to keep open minds about pay television.

    “I don’t know if it is right or wrong, but I think it would be foolish to say it’s a bad thing,” he said in an interview at the Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal. “Pay TV has worked. It has worked in America; it has worked in Europe.”

    Neither News Corporation nor Exor has commented publicly since issuing a brief statement in May, in which they said they were “in the early stages of exploring the possibility of creating a consortium with a view to formulating a long-term plan for the development of Formula One in the interests of the participants and the fans.”

    Other parties are said to be potentially interested in Formula One, too, either with a group led by News Corporation and Exor or alone. These include Carlos Slim Helú, a Mexican billionaire; Mubadala, an Abu Dhabi investment company; and Raine Group, a New York investment firm.

    Spokesmen for Mubadala and Raine declined to comment. A spokesman for Slim, a major shareholder and creditor of The New York Times Company, did not respond to an e-mail requesting comment.

    CVC declined to comment beyond a statement issued in May, when it said Formula One was “not currently for sale.” Rather than shutting the door, however, the firm added: “CVC recognizes the quality of Exor and News Corp. as potential investors, but any investment in Formula One will require CVC’s agreement and will need to demonstrate that it is in the interest of the sport and its stakeholders.”

    At the center of all this strategizing is Ecclestone, who owns a minority stake in Formula One Management but who knows how all the parts are bolted together.

    Ecclestone can claim credit for guiding Formula One through several major challenges in recent years, including the loss of sponsorship money from tobacco companies and the departure of racing teams owned by BMW, Honda and Toyota. Ecclestone also held Formula One together in 2009 when team owners revolted against the International Automobile Federation, which sets Formula One rules, over proposed changes championed by Max Mosley, then the president of the federation.

    The team owners won that battle, and also ousted Mosley, the subject of an embarrassing tabloid exposé — by a News Corporation publication, The News of the World — of a sadomasochistic romp with prostitutes. Mosley sued the paper for invasion of privacy and won.

    Ecclestone said he planned to “carry on doing what I want to do until people don’t want me doing it.”

    He added: “People say to me, ‘What do you do?’ I say, ‘I’m a firefighter.’ And generally the answer comes back, if there are no fires, you light them.”

     

    Copyright.2011. The New York Times Company. All Rights Reserved

     

  • True Patriotism in the Feudal States of America

    MON JUL 04, 2011 AT 10:57 AM PDT

     

    byVyan

     

     

     

    We hear it all the time. Repeated like a prayer manta.  Like a hypnotic trance.

    "America is the Greatest Country in the World".

    It's taken as a matter of faith. A matter of fact.

    "America is the Greatest Country in the Word"

    It's said without thought.  It's said without consideration.  It simply IS.

    "America is the Greatest Country in the World"

    But I wonder today as we celebrate this particular 4th of July - exactly what is so Great about it?

     

    Are we the Greatest Nation at Soccer? (No, apparently that would be Spain based on the 2010 World Cup!)

    Are we the Greatest Nation at Basketball? (Well yes - as we are the current FIBA World/Olympic Champions, but I doubt we'll even get a medal in 2012)

    Are we the Greatest Nation at invention, creation, music or manufacturing?

    Are we the Greatest Nation at educating our young, taking care of our poor? Of our sick?  Of our Elderly?

    It seems pretty clear that if you're one of those people, they don't really care about you.

    Are we the Greatest Nation at making War?  

    How's Libya and Afghanistan working out so far?

    When Michele Bachmann said she thought the media should do a penetrating probe to se how many in Congress had "Anti-American Views" - exactly what the Frack was she talking about?

    Anti-American How?

    Did she mean like Reverend Wright because he said "God Damn America" for it's many crimes against Humanity from Trail of Tears to the Internment of the Japanese Americans and the Tuskegee Experiment.  (Do people seriously think some kind of prize was deserved for that?) Well, what about Pat Robertson who just recently said "God Would Destroy America for the Sin of Marriage Equality?"

    Gee, that seems pretty Damning to me.

    Will America be Destroyed by God, or by Itself? I think Naomi Wolf has something to say about that.

    It seems to me that some of our more Conservative American brethren, only believe in aConservative America.  They seem to think that the Blue States are merely a Mirage.  A Phantasm.  That California and New York are really just parts of Europe or Canada or something, they aren't the Real America.  Isn't that what Sarah Palin meant, because that's pretty much what I heard.

    Apparently many of us aren't Real Enough for her, especially those of us on Lefty Coast And then she wonders why she has Hollywood so mad at her?

    And what about the much vaunted American Dream?  Maybe you can only have a dream when you're Asleep?

    We can see it from Massachusetts to California.  Massive cut backs in investment in infrastructure, in education, in public workers rights, pensions and health care - as if this were the magic bullet to creating jobs and prosperity.

    But this pyrite has already been proven false.  Cutting Government Spending Reduces Jobs.

    Here you can see, averaging across all the states of the nation the result in lost jobs as government cuts back on it's spending and investments.


    Steep state spending cuts have gone hand-in-hand with rising unemployment rates, falling private-sector payroll employment, and lower growth in state’s gross domestic product, or GDP — the sum of all goods and services produced by labor and equipment in each state, less imports.

    Take private sector jobs, for example. This graph shows that state spending is not just about jobs for public service workers, but also has far reaching consequences for private businesses and their workers. The downward sloping red line shows the relationship between cuts to state spending and changes in private sector employment relative to the national average since the start of the Great Recession. States that cut spending are seeing significantly more job losses in the private sector than states maintaining or increasing spending levels. For every 10 percent cut in state spending, state economies lost 1.6 percent of their private-sector jobs.

    And this is what the GOP is hell bent on giving us more of.  More job losses, more shattered dreams. Even though the CBO says the Budget will eficit-will-DISAPPEAR-if-Congress-Does-Nothing!?via=blog_747929">Balance Itself by 2016 if Congress does NOTHING.

    And here the Senate Appropriations Committee shows that we don't have a massive spending problem (except for the Military) we have a massive Revenue Problem because of expensive, ineffective tax cuts and job losses.

    The facts and numbers don't lie.  But apparently quite a few politicians do.  And Pundits as well.  Pundits like George Will as he attempts to blame all of this on ean-Baker-paddles-George-Will-for-his-latest-BS?via=blog_1">allegedly misplaced"Compassion" for the poor.

    It really is incredible to see such a concerted effort to rewrite history in front of our faces. There is not much ambiguity in the story of the housing bubble. The private financial sector went nuts. They made a fortune issuing bad and often fraudulent loans which they could quickly resell in the secondary market. The big actors in the junk market were the private issuers like Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, and Lehman Brothers. However, George Will and Co. are determined to blame this disaster on government "compassion" for low-income families.

    But of course they're going to blame the poor, how else do you dehumanize a victim but to turn them into the aggressor, deserving of not pity, but scorn.

    This is why ACORN was attacked.

    This is why the GOP is so constantly upset about Voting being too Easy, even though there is no real evidence of widespread Voter Fraud anywhere.

    The goal is simple, the Rich get Richer - the Poor get used and exploited for cheaper and cheaper labor while the Middle Class Disappears.

    And with no middle class, there's no upward mobility - and no American Dream.  No Hope for the future of our prosperity to live in Liberty.  Just more back-breaking, nervous breakdown inducing labor for lower and lower wages, while price rise higher and higher.

    Joe Biden: It's one of the Biggest Scams in American History.

    You're Damn Skippy it is Mr. Vice President.

    That's the America the GOP believes in, and longs for. A Feudal America, controlled by Corporate and Wall Street owned Politicians like Walker, Kasich, Christie and Scott.

    Our Corporate OverLords living in their Gated Community Castles, protected by private armed security Knights, flying about in their Jets, Helicopters and Private Limos through our toxic Mercury poisoned countryside, piss covered city streets and dilapidated schools to the Board Room to make Big Decisions and Golf Course let off some steam while we scramble for spare change to put just another gallon in the tank to get the work that keeps paying us less and less for more and more.

    "Let 'em Eat Cake" isn't right.  More like "Piss Boy - don't forget to wait for the shake".  

    This is what they think of the America People and American Workers.

    We are becoming their peasants and serfs. Chattel under their heel. And it's not by accident.

    We have to come to realize that all of this is part of the plan.  The Great Recession and everything they've done in reaction to it - is part of their Shock Doctrine, as Naomi Klein would say.

    They have used this economic disaster to strengthen their positions and power politically and financially, ensuring that the downward spiral of the middle-class continue ever onward.

    And why shouldn't they- they're making money hand over fist doing it aren't they?  America may suck for us, but for them it's pretty great.

    Just which way is it to their America anyway?

    They attacked Obama because he said he wanted to "Spread the Wealth Around" - which they interpreted - wrongly - as a call to socialism.  What it was, was a call to Economic Justice.

    A call for a return to an America where a man could be a journeyman working with his hands and his heart where he could earn enough to purchase a home, provide for his family and give them an even better future than he had.

    Where America is Great is where that Dream Lives.

    It's not about beating our chests, or beating some other nation in any sports or commercial contest.  The America Dream is about slowly, gradually, building a better future for ourselves and our posterity -isn't that what the Constitution says?

    We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

    WE....

    THE PEOPLE!

    It doesn't say "Under God".  Or Jesus.  America is not the property of Corporations.  It's doesn't belong to the Fat Cats.  Nor the Nu-Robber Barons of Wall Street.  It's belongs to WE - ThePEOPLE.  

    That Flag that we hoist and look at today is not about the Wars we've fought, lost, won or draw.  It's not about terrorism.  

    It's about Us.

    It's about our chance to build a better and brighter tomorrow.  Our chance to fight back against the Feudalists and the Corporatists to protect our rights to breath clean air, drink clean water, freely associate, freely assemble and petition our government via collective bargaining, our right to live healthy with access to affordable healthcare, safe food, safe working condition, reasonable hours, vacations, pensions -- our rights to be Respected As Human Beings and to share in the fruits of our labors.

    Our right to be Americans, the result of 300 years of refugees from every nation on earth gathering together into a motley and messy mass of humanity.  

    All Yearning to be Free.

    I think that's what Real Patriotism is.

    And for those who say "America: Love it or Leave it" - I say back...

    "America: Fix it or Lose It"

    Amen

    Vyan

    ORIGINALLY POSTED TO VYAN ON MON JUL 04, 2011 AT 10:57 AM PDT. Copyright. 2011. All Rights Reserved

  • German Women Are Champions, but Always in Second Place

    Ralph Orlowski/Reuters

    German fans have given the women's team warm support, but the men's team takes precedence in a soccer-mad country

     

    July 1, 2011
     

    German Women Are Champions, but Always in Second Place

    By 

    BERLIN — “Third place is for men,” read the advertisements for the Women’s World Cup here in Germany, billboards of large white letters painted on a green soccer field. “Boys, we will avenge you,” was the slightly more collegial version.

    Both signs referred to the third-place finish by the men’s team in South Africa last summer and the women’s team’s status as the two-time defending world champions. The jest may be in good fun, but it sometimes feels as if the men’s game is the only measuring stick against which success can be defined for the women.

    In a sports market where men’s soccer dominates every other sport, whether basketball, hockey, handball or auto racing, the bar may be set so high that even the notable success of this World Cup so far can look like failure by comparison.

    It was not enough for FIFA to report that the 14.1 million Germans who tuned in to watch their team open the World Cup with a victory was a record for televised women’s soccer here. The soccer association had to note that it surpassed by around 10 percent the average rating for Germany’s loss to Serbia in South Africa in 2010. What FIFA did not add was that the comparison was hardly fair, given that the men’s match took place in the middle of a workday and that millions of Germans played hooky from their jobs to watch.

    “Even as a nonsports fan you can’t escape the men’s matches, the televisions set up in every single restaurant, the roar of the crowds through your window after every goal,” said Jakob Augstein, publisher of Freitag, a small Berlin-based left-leaning weekly. Augstein wrote a column for the popular Web site Spiegel Online calling the soccer mania now gripping the nation an “artificial hype,” drummed up by sponsors and the news media, one that “does nothing for the more important goal of women’s equality,” he said.

    Even more viewers tuned in Thursday night, 16.4 million, to watch Germany eke out a 1-0 win over Nigeria. Yet after the victory the streets of Berlin were not filled with honking caravans of cars draped with black, red and gold flags, as they were after victories last summer by the men’s team.

    The truth lies somewhere between the spectacular marketing push and the unfair comparisons to the men’s game. The tournament has been by most other measures a success, garnering an unprecedented level of attention, even if it has not achieved anything like the nationwide saturation that the so-called Summer Fairytale of the men’s World Cup in 2006 accomplished in Germany.

    And attitudes toward the tournament do not split along predictable gender lines. A survey on behalf of the weekly newspaper Die Zeit of a representative sample of 1,056 people shortly before the tournament found that a larger share of men was excited about the Women’s World Cup than women. While 63 percent of men were looking forward to the tournament, just 43 percent of women were.

    If women’s soccer is ever going to break through to the mainstream, Germany would seem to be the place. The women’s team is a dominant force in international soccer, having won not only the past two World Cups but five straight European championships. The tournament has a murderers’ row of sponsors, from the financial giants Commerzbank and Allianz to the national postal service and the rail lines, Deutsche Post and Deutsche Bahn.

    The World Cup has been inescapable on newsstands and television. The grocery store Rewe is giving away collectible stickers of the players. The popular Sunday night crime series “Tatort” featured an episode about women’s soccer a week before the tournament kicked off, pulling in 8.27 million viewers. And for the first time, every game will be broadcast on one of Germany’s two public television networks, ARD and ZDF.

    A crew from ZDF showed up Thursday night to interview fans at Lido, an old movie theater turned music hall in the traditionally counterculture neighborhood of Kreuzberg. Around 600 soccer fans filled it to capacity Thursday for an event organized by the women’s soccer magazine 11 Friends, a quarterly supplement to a men’s soccer magazine. From about 30 pages when the first version appeared in 2009, the special issue for the Cup had grown to 100 pages.

    Jens Kirschneck, the magazine’s editor in chief, said that when the first issue came out, a subscriber returned the women’s soccer supplement to the office “neatly torn into one thousand pieces,” to register his disapproval. Thursday night there were as many men as women watching the game at Lido.

    “You really do an injustice to the women’s game when you constantly compare it to the men’s game,” Kirschneck said. “The men have a tradition dating back to 1900 or before, whereas the women were forbidden to play until 1970.”

    That is because the same soccer association that organized and promoted this World Cup, known here by the initials DFB, passed a rule in 1955 preventing its member clubs from allowing women to play.

    Since the rule was repealed in 1970, the women’s game has rapidly advanced, but interest in professional teams remains a small fraction of what it is for the Cup. Annette Wurth came out to watch the game at Lido to have fun and show her support. She said she became a fan of the sport rooting for the men’s professional club Bayern Munich. Asked if she would go to see games featuring Bayern’s women’s team, which finished fifth in the recently completed season, she asked with evident surprise, “They have a team?”

    Her response would not surprise Bayern Manager Uli Hoeness, who complained Thursday night that a mere 200 spectators turn up to a typical women’s match, compared with the nearly 70,000 who pack themselves into the Allianz Arena for men’s matches.

    “The truth will come after the World Cup,” Hoeness told reporters in Munich. “I wish that the hype for the ladies soccer continues after the World Cup, but it looks quite different in practice.”

    During Sunday’s opening game, 74,000 spectators, including Chancellor Angela Merkel, were on hand for the opening match between Germany and Canada. And according to the German soccer association, all of the German team’s games are sold out.

    Yet only 28,000 of a possible 45,000 tickets were sold in Mönchengladbach for Brazil’s 1-0 victory over Australia on Wednesday. And that was despite the presence of the biggest star in women’s soccer, Marta, the winner of the FIFA World Women’s Player of the Year award five years running.

    Jana Wiske, 36, has worked for the soccer magazine Kicker for 11 years and can remember when women’s soccer was covered with the attitude, “if there’s a little room left we can include something.” If she had to name a turning point, it would be 2003, when the magazine had not sent anyone to cover the World Cup in the United States. After Germany upset the United States in the semifinals, she was told to board a plane for Los Angeles the next day.

    Now it would be unthinkable for the magazine not to cover the women’s Cup. And Wiske, whose mother forbade her to play soccer as a girl because it was “unladylike,” said that the reaction to this summer’s event, and more important the wide acceptance across German society, already has exceeded her wildest expectations.

    “I think today,” Wiske said, “my mother would let me play.”

     

    Copyright. The New York Times Company. All Rights Reserved.