Robot Cabbage

[rain_gryphon]

So, Sunday was a rather depressing start to the IRL season with Paul Dana being killed at Homestead. Most of the news articles describe him as a rookie, but he really wasn't. The man was a capable, experienced race driver. He'd raced (and won) with open-wheeled cars on that track many times, and he drove part of the season last year in the big cars as a substitute. He was a rookie only technically, in that he'd never been in that particular race before.

It's one of those that they'll probably never know what happened. The yellow light had been on for at least five seconds after Carpenter's spin, and Dana just simply barreled into him at full speed. IRL said today that his yellow dashboard warner worked, which was my first thought. I'm amazed that there was enough of the circuit left to test, frankly. Hitting a stationary engine block at 200mph doesn't leave much intact.

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Buck Owens has bit the dust too :P Gloom, Despair and Agony on me!

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Schools in Argentina decide to let kids watch World Cup games. If I were in charge, I'd prolly let the kids watch the soccer game, just on the theory that you lose two hours that way, but they'll prolly skip the whole day if you don't. It's stupid and annoying to pretend that this represents some kind of cultural enrichment. Nobody can ever admit that they're bending with the wind anymore. Giving in to reality always has to be framed in terms of some seeking some improbable benefit.

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Now this..., THIS is tacky.

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I wonder why some effort isn't made to restore the Faberge eggs, along with the Tsar's other possessions, to his surviving relatives? There seems to be this general concensus that if the Nazis stole something, it has to be gotten back to the original owners, even if it's passed through generations of legitimate purchasers since them. Why doesn't that same scruple apply to things stolen by the Bolsheviks? Lenin and his gangsters murdered the Romanovs in cold blood, stole their stuff, and sold it to finance their revolution. Surely what applies in one case should apply in all?

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Did anyone else notice how the Russian bobsleds at the Olympics had the Romanov eagle emblazoned on the front? The world changes in such unexpected ways sometimes.

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Oddly enough, I've just learned from poking around on Google that Prince Youssepov, who managed (after considerable effort) to kill Rasputin, traces his descent from the first Caliph of Baghdad.

Comments

[stu-ath.livejournal.com]

That IRL incident is :(

[xolo.livejournal.com]

It's sad, yeah. Things are so much better than they used to be in the late 60s/early 70s in that regard, though. I recall when you'd watch the season opener (always from Phoenix, in those days) and you knew three or four of the drivers would be dead by the end of the season.

[stu-ath.livejournal.com]

It's true, we've come a long way.

Imola was shocking for me

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

Personally, I don't think it should apply in the one case. After a certain point it stops making sense to redress old wrongs, and 'everyone involved is dead' seems like a good first guess at where to draw the line.

I wouldn't be surprised if lawsuits along those lines happened someday, though.

[xolo.livejournal.com]

After a certain point it stops making sense to redress old wrongs

That's pretty much what I was getting at, in an indirect way. I don't think it makes sense in the case of the Bolsheviks, and I don't think it makes sense in the case of the Nazis. Attempts to "correct history" rely on a number of unspoken, and probably untenable assumptions, chief among them the proposition that it's possible to predict what would have happened had circumstances been different. I'm uncomfortably aware as well that much of what drove the behaiour of the Nazis and Bolsheviks was the desire to "correct historic injustices", and to alter the present to what they thought it would have been had their own moral precepts been followed in the past.

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

chief among them the proposition that it's possible to predict what would have happened had circumstances been different.

Well, I know one thing that would have been different... without both the Nazis and the Bolsheviks I would never have been born. One grandparent was fleeing Hitler, another Stalin, and the other two were already in the States.

[xolo.livejournal.com]

You can never really be sure, though. Something else may have happened to bring them together.

[ruwhei.livejournal.com]

Well, the Romonov's were Russia, so their possessions as heads of states revert back to Russia when they're gone.

L'Etat - C'est moi.

[xolo.livejournal.com]

For the Romanovs themselves I suppose you can make a case for that. On the other hoof, you could also use that logic to argue that they should be restored to the throne, by force if need be, since the Russian people were their possessions as well, and were taken from them.

What about people like Prince Youssepov, though? The man owned like half of Russia in 1918, and owned it as private property that he'd purchased and traded for, not as feudal holdings. If that were restored to his nearest relative, the man could hire Bill Gates for a shoeshine boy.

[xolo.livejournal.com]

hire Bill Gates for a shoeshine boy

Although on reflection, Bill probably wouldn't prove humble and loveable.

[potoroo.livejournal.com]

I know it's almost a year late...but somehow I managed to remember your request and wrote a song about zinc...even weirder, you were like #13 on a list that was supposed to be 10, and yours is the only one I've written so far ;)

I may be lazy...but damn...I remembered!

[xolo.livejournal.com]

Woohoo! Yay! Zinc's a natural topic for a song - they practically writes themselves! You can perform it at Morphicon :)