Dinosaur Comics Minus T-Rex

It's just not the same.

With apologies to Dinosaur Comics, garfield minus garfield and Square Root of Minus Garfield.

Writer apologizes for Battlefield Earth

NY Post: I penned the suckiest movie ever - sorry!

Let me start by apologizing to anyone who went to see "Battlefield Earth."

It wasn't as I intended -- promise. No one sets out to make a train wreck. Actually, comparing it to a train wreck isn't really fair to train wrecks, because people actually want to watch those.

A brief story of one man's flirtation with Scientology, and the making of possibly the worst movie I've ever seen.

The Environment: Introduction

I made a post on my Finnish-language blog about how I thought Earth Hour was rubbish. Not because I don't believe in global warming or I don't believe we shouldn't be doing something about it, but because I firmly believe that trying to get people to switch their lights off is a horribly inefficient, even counterproductive way to mitigate global climate change.

So far, expressing that opinion has cost me one friend. Several other people have disagreed with me in less drastic ways, and I want to explore this issue further.

Around the same time, my good friend Aaro wrote in his blog about how overpopulation threatens the Earth: if we don't change our lifestyles, he says, our children will be "really screwed" by 2050 when the world's population may approach 11 billion. I also think he's being very silly, but we're still friends (I think!). Of course, just saying he's being silly isn't very constructive criticism.

These are by no means the only debates I find myself in on the topic of the environment. After all, these are complex issues we're talking about here. I and my co-bloggers want to properly address them, so we're starting a series of posts titled The Environment. We hope to cover several broad topics, including:

The limits to growth
Probably not the book, but the topic in general. What are the limits to the growth of the human population? Is overpopulation a real threat to the ecology of the planet and our welfare in it? Are we running out of resources?

Climate change
I think I can speak for all of us when I say that we agree that global warming is happening, and it is strongly affected by human greenhouse gas emissions. We want to look at this topic in some detail. How much greenhouse gas are we emitting? What human activities are contributing the most toward climate change? We may even take a brief foray into alternate history.

The forgotten environmental issues
It feels to me like most people today equate environmental issues with climate change. During the course of this series of posts, I also want to pay attention to some of the "forgotten" environmental issues. Even though global warming is very real, it doesn't mean that we can afford to ignore other pressing issues like overfishing and air pollution.

What can we do?
Interspersed with all this is the most interesting question: what are we going to do about all this? The ambitious goal of this series is to try to figure out what kind of environmental policies we should be advocating in our communities. Should we all become vegetarians? Should we participate in Earth Hour? How should we generate electricity?

**

So, to sum up, this is the first post in a series under the label "The Environment". Over the coming months, several of us will be posting about a range of environmental topics. Our goal is to eventually create a series of summaries on the topics I've listed above. At first, the posts may be somewhat random, because we will do this using hypertext. Some of our first topics will be an overview of CO2 emissions, a look back at the Montréal Protocol that banned CFCs, and some hard limits on human population growth. We'll be working from the bottom up to put together a comprehensive look at the large issues. The first summaries will follow, um, later.

So stay tuned!

Swedish town applauds rapist

This is basically that one South Park episode where they have a convicted murderer freed because he's from South Park.

The Local: Girl raped and rejected by Swedish community

A storm of outrage has met revelations by Sveriges Television (SVT) that a 14-year-old girl from a small Swedish community was raped at her school only to be rejected by her friends and adult society when she reported the attack.

I could quote all of the article, and I could write a book about this whole topic. I intend to return to it in future posts, but for now, suffice to say that this is an old, old story, here taken to tragicomic extremes.

A 15-year old boy raped a 14-year-old girl. Despite his initial denial, there was forensic evidence and witness statements supporting the girl, and he confessed and was convicted. Despite this, the community decided that it must somehow all be her fault. At the end-of-term ceremony at the local church, he was celebrated as a hero.

Later that same night, he raped a 17-year-old.

The community he lives in believes that this, too, is a fabrication, and the boy is innocent of both crimes. He is a local hero.

This is the year 2010, in Sweden. You can rape two underage girls and be the town hero for doing it.

2012: Nostradamus

Have we been watching 2012 "documentaries" on the History Channel? Yes.

Are we going to do a series of posts on "the 2012 phenomenon"? Yes.

So, did Nostradamus predict the events of 2012? No.

**

Seriously, he didn't. Not a single Nostradamus scholar said or wrote anything about this whole 2012 thing until it was invented a couple of years back. It's only lately that they've jumped on the 2012 bandwagon, cheerfully helped along by the (pseudo-)History channel, who keep running rubbish "documentaries" on the topic.

However, there's one thing we're thoroughly convinced Nostradamus did make several astonishing predictions about, all of which have come true: the National Hockey League.

Take, for instance, the very first quatrain of them all. Century I, quatrain 1:

Tripod seated at night in secret study
Only resting on the aerian saddle:
Tiny flame leaving the solitude
Make prosper what is not vain to believe.

It's clear that "tiny flame" refers to that diminutive Calgary legend, Theo Fleury.

He recently tried to make a comeback to the NHL, or in other words, "leave the solitude". On September 10, 2009, he was reinstated and allowed to make a return in a meeting with NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman, Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly, and league doctors. Notice that's three; Bettman, Daly and the doctors: a tripod has three legs.

They must have done some thinking and research before this meeting, but they couldn't reveal their conclusions beforehand: hence, secret study. I'll bet they didn't get much sleep, apart from what they caught on a plane trip, or, as Nostradamus would put it, "on the aerian saddle".

Fleury's comeback didn't pan out, but he was made to prosper, as his autobiography, published at the same time, did sell quite nicely. A mystery remains, though: is Nostradamus saying that it was vain to believe in his comeback, or is he saying that the allegations Fleury made in his book are "vain to believe"? We don't know. He did.

**

Even more momentous is the third quatrain.

When the litters are overturned by the whirlwind
and faces are covered by cloaks,
the new republic will be troubled by its people.
At this time the reds and the whites will rule wrongly.

Can he be any more plain? When the litters are overturned by the whirlwind; like maybe a hurricane? This clearly refers to the Carolina Hurricanes winning the Stanley Cup; their jerseys were, at the time, red and white. Seriously, he couldn't make this more explicit without just coming right out and saying that the Canes will win the Cup, and as we all know, prophets just don't do that.

The "new republic" here is Canada, which became a (quasi-)independent state later than the United States, and many Canadians were quite upset when the Oilers lost to the Canes in the final! Astonishingly, Nostradamus knew the Hurricanes were going to win the Stanley Cup over 400 years before it happened.

Again, Nostradamus is telling us something we didn't know beforehand, too: the reference to "ruling wrongly" seems to suggest that the Canes shouldn't have won the Cup! Was there some terrible officiating mistake that cost the Oilers the Cup? Should some other team have represented the Eastern Conference in the finals? Frankly, we don't know. He did.

**

In quatrains 12 and 13, Nostradamus predicted the vicissitudes that the NHL Players' Association would face in the 2000's:

12

There will soon be talk of a treacherous man, who rules a short time,
quickly raised from low to high estate.
He will suddenly turn disloyal and volatile.
This man will govern Verona.

13

Through anger and internal hatreds, the exiles
will hatch a great plot against the king.
Secretly they will place enemies as a threat,
and his own old (adherents) will find sedition against them.

The "treacherous man" is clearly Ted Saskin, who became executive director of the NHLPA after Bob Goodenow's resignation ("quickly raised from low to high estate"). He was fired after the NHLPA members found he had masterminded a campaign to hack into players' e-mail accounts. So instead of representing the players, he had "suddenly turned disloyal and volatile".

We remember Verona from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet as a city riven by factional strife; not a bad description of the NHLPA at any time! Quatrain 13 details Chris Chelios's campaign to dethrone Saskin, who was forced to resign in 2007.

But wait, there's more! Quatrain 23:

In the third month, at sunrise,
the Boar and the Leopard meet on the battlefield.
The fatigued Leopard looks up to heaven
and sees an eagle playing around the sun.

In the 1995-96 season, the Florida Panthers made it to the Stanley Cup finals. To make a long story short, as is common in prophecy interpretation, the Latin name for the leopard species is panthera pardus, a panther. The Panthers were pretty fatigued by the time they got to the final, where they lost to the Colorado Avalanche. The Avs are based in Denver, Colorado, and the seal of the city of Denver has a bird and the rays of the sun on it. Coincidence? We think not.

What about the boar? Well, wild boars are mostly found in Europe. The Cup-winning goal was scored by Uwe Krupp, who's from Europe. So this time around, Nostradamus knew that the Panthers would make the finals, but lose to Colorado! Over 400 years before it happened!

**

Nostradamus also predicted some unpleasant things. Quatrain 26:

The great man will be struck down in the day by a thunderbolt.
An evil deed, foretold by the beare of a petition.
According to the prediction another falls at night time.
Conflict at Reims, London, and pestilence in Tuscany.

It's obvious to us that this quatrain refers to Matt Cooke's hit on Marc Savard. Savard was Boston's number one center, a "great man". He was blindsided by Matt Cooke, which is to say he took a hit that he didn't see coming, like a thunderbolt. You don't see those coming, either. Our Penguin Dictionary of Symbols identifies the thunderbolt in Celtic mythology with the hammer of Sucellus, the "hard hitter"; how unambiguous is that?

This hit was definitely an evil deed, and it was foretold by a petition. In fact, there have been numerous petitions to ban head shots in the NHL for years, but nothing has been done. To cap it off, the Bruins-Pens game on that day was at 3 P.M.; in the day.

Cooke wasn't penalized, and that weekend, on Hockey Night in Canada, it was predicted that more players would be injured unless the headshot rule was implemented immediately. And according to the prediction, another reckless hit left Brian Campbell injured just days later. The NHL may not have known that another player would be injured if they didn't react; Nostradamus did.

**

These examples are more or less randomly selected from just the first century of Nostradamus's prophecies. We believe that they are entirely convincing PROOF that Nostradamus was a true prophet, who could indeed foretell the future. Here is evidence enough to convince even the most hardened skeptic.

Most excitingly, it stands to reason that the remaining quatrains contain many more of hockey's secrets. More likely than not, locked away in his prophecies is this year's Stanley Cup winner! We leave the search for this answer up to you. Don't read it here first; read it there yourself. The Prophecies are available on Wikisource: the future is in your hands.

Better grades through level grinding

How about a different way of grading courses? I found an interesting article from technoccult (via Hacker News) that referenced an article in escapist magazine that mentioned australian itnews as its source which had interviewed Lee Sheldon (forefather of Hari Seldon, I hope).

Our grades could be based on how much coursework we complete - as inviduals and as teams. Each completed excercise could give us couple hundred experience points that would go towards better grades in differential geometry, computational alchemy or fnordian excuses (or whatever we happen to be studying). 

My google-fu was weak - I did not find anything of note about this idea from Indiana University web page - just link to Sheldons profile. His webpage is somewhat more informative, but just not about this idea.  

Most emphatically I am that one!

Now that I've returned to my studies, I'm reading up on world history. I found a book at the university library on South American "Indians", by Paul Radin. The book is from 1942, so I have to check up on this stuff later, but it's an interesting read.

I'm currently on the Tupi-Guarani, who lived in the Amazon basin. Ritualistic cannibalism was part of their culture; they would take prisoners of war and ceremonially eat them. Before a captive is killed, he has a ritual "conversation" with his executioner. As I read it, I couldn't help but visualize it like this, with my apologies to Ryan North.

(click comic for larger image)



I feel I have to stay true to the source, so I reproduced the entire conversation, but I can't help thinking the comic would be much better if the last panel was blank.

Ovechkin suspended for being Ovechkin

Alexander Ovechkin was suspended for two games earlier this week for hitting Brian Campbell into the boards. To make a long story short, it was a dirty hit, and would certainly warrant a two-minute penalty for boarding. Instead, Ovehkin gets five minutes, a game misconduct and a two-game suspension. And I don't understand why.

Again, he shouldn't have thrown the check; Campbell has his back to Ovechkin and is clearly vulnerable. I'm assuming Ovechkin thought Campbell was going to the boards to dump the puck to his left, and he was going to take him into the boards. when Campbell didn't, Ovechkin shouldn't have taken the hit.

Shockingly, I find I agree with Mike Milbury, who said something along the lines of "if Campbell can't take a hit, maybe he should switch to playing squash". I don't understand what Campbell was doing skating like that; he'd just played the puck, and hitting him in that situation is legal. What's he doing crouching a yard from the boards? At the end of the day, the reason Brian Campbell was injured is because he was sleeping on the play.

In Monday night's Bruins-Devils game, Dennis Seidenberg threw a far dirtier hit on Zach Parise. Seidenberg hit Parise as they were going for the puck, and Parise hit the boards awkwardly. He never played the puck, so it was clearly interference, as well as a very dangerous hit. No penalty was called, and I can't help thinking it's because his jersey says "Seidenberg". Looking at that hit and the Ovechkin hit, it's unfathomable that one of them is a misconduct and suspension and the other isn't even a minor penalty.

Penalties based on a player's reputation are given all the time. Anyone who follows the Finnish league may remember Matt Nickerson, who could barely step on the ice without getting a penalty. In my opinion, there are two reasons why Ovechkin is suspended. Firstly, he's acquired a reputation for "reckless hits". Sure, he makes them, but so do several other players, and they don't get suspended for plays like that. Milan Lucic hit Andy Greene from behind and jumped on him in the same Bruins-Devils game. That wasn't a penalty either. Again, if it was Ovechkin...

The most important reason Ovechkin is suspended is, nevertheless, Matt Cooke. Everyone who follows the NHL must know by now that Cooke took a run at Marc Savard and blindsided him in the head. Savard now has a serious concussion and is out for the remainder of the season, if not for good. Cooke wasn't given a penalty in-game, and wasn't suspended. For what it's worth, I think it's perfectly understandable; head shots aren't a penalty in the NHL, after all, and Savard had played the puck, so as per NHL rules, it's a legal hit. The argument has been made, by Don Cherry among others, that he should have gotten a five-minute penalty for deliberately attempting to injure his opponent. That penalty is almost never called in the NHL, and I've never seen it called on an otherwise legal hit. Basically what is being argued, and what Cherry was openly saying, was that Cooke should have been given a five-minute major because he's Matt Cooke.

In my opinion, Ovechkin would never have been given a major penalty without Cooke's hit on Savard. There's been such an outcry over Cooke not getting a penalty that the threshold for calling a major penalty is probably lower right now than it's ever been. If not for Cooke, maybe Ovechkin would have gotten a two-minute penalty; now they're essentially suspending Ovechkin because they didn't suspend Cooke.

So at the end of the day, Ovechkin has to sit out two games because he's Alex Ovechkin, and because Matt Cooke hit Marc Savard. That's NHL officiating for you.

Dispatches from the front lines of 2K10

I'm concerned my previous post may not have conveyed an accurate impression of how, for lack of a better term, stunning the 2K10 experience is. Yesterday I watched my co-blogger try to create a team and franchise.

One of the first things we noticed while looking through the players' stats was that in the Finnish version, goaltenders have two stats called "speed". For example, Henrik Lundqvist has a speed of 88 and a speed of 60. Of course, it's a longstanding 2K tradition to not explain these stats at all, so you don't know what they actually mean. Besides, as far as we can tell, most of them mean absolutely nothing. So far, though, at least they had different names.

We could check what they are in English, but that would require quitting the game, changing the Locale of our console to the UK, and restarting the game. We're not that interested. Overall, the translation quality is poor; in Franchise mode, each team is marked as either rebuilding, buying, selling and so forth. We're guessing that in English, this was called "Team State", because the Finnish version has "Joukkueen osavaltio"; that's state as in Missouri.

Also, looking at stats too closely is hazardous. There's a menu where you can look through the free agents and players on different teams, and select them for your team. If you look at someone's player card, when you close it the game has unsorted the lists and always returns you to the Anaheim list, regardless of whose player card you were looking at. I've rarely seen anything so brainless.

As an aside, 2K claim that there are more customization options than ever. In team creation mode, there are less than in previous 2K games, so we're not sold on that, either. There are lots of customization options we don't understand, though, because again, there is no online help, and the manual doesn't even tell you what the controls are, let alone explain anything more complicated.

If you look at your match results, you get a table that tells you what games you've played and the results. For example, 11th of March, so-and-so o'clock: Washington @ Calgary, 2-4, winner: Washington. Now read that again. Yes, it says Washington scored two goals against Calgary, and won the game. In fact, the Caps scored four, so the result is right, but the numbers are wrong.

Rather surprisingly, there were no penalties called in that game. It turns out that was because the "Penalties" setting had changed from "on" to "off" on its own accord before the game. The last time we saw it, it said "on"; no penalties were called, and after the game, we found the setting was "off". The difficulty level also switches between Amateur and Pro, seemingly at random.

Also, the offside bug I mentioned in the previous post (where one of your players gets stuck in the offensive zone and won't come out), has so far recurred on average once per game. That's playtesting.

Founding a franchise was also harder than we thought. In previous 2K games, you could create your own team and replace an NHL team with it, with no trouble at all. In this game, sure, you can create a team. You pick players from either other teams' rosters or the free agent list, and you can enter your created team in the league. Here's the catch: you don't actually move players to the new team, you copy them. So if you pick a free agent for your team, let's say Peter Forsberg, for your team, and start the season, Forsberg has been copied onto your team; when the season starts, there's one Peter Forsberg on your team and another on the free agent list.

Not only is this unthinkably stupid, but it's just another example of 2K taking something that worked fine in the previous editions of the game and breaking it. The hopelessly confusing menu system is another example. In my opinion, the menus and overall presentation in general has just gotten more and more confusing over the years. The 2K5 and 2K6 menus weren't pretty, nor was the franchise management system, but they were infinitely less confusing.

One of the big problems 2K always had is that your players are idiots. You control one player on the ice, and the rest of them shamble around brainlessly. Despite what the promotional materials say about "intelligent hockey", this is still the case. I've never been able to understand what exactly it is your players are trying to do. When your defenseman has the puck and passes it forward, the winger or centerman is almost invariably facing your own goal. On the power play, both wingers hang around the halfwall, effectively guaranteeing you're not going to be able to set up a one-timer. Overall your forwards seem to be doing their best to not get open. This is "intelligent" as in "design", exactly like the previous 2K games.

You do get to choose from several different power play tactics. They don't explain what any of them are, beyond a name, and if previous 2K games are anything to judge by, they don't actually do anything.

**

The overall impression 2K10 gives is just shocking. I should stress that I've played 2K3, and 2K5, 6, 8 and 9 extensively, and my co-blogger has much greater experience of console hockey in general and 2K in particular. With this background, we find 2K10 hopelessly confusing, have trouble figuring out what the controls are, and find the menus nearly impossible to navigate, let alone make sense of. I can only imagine what it must be like if this is someone's first experience of NHL 2K.

We're simply shocked that a game like this is released. Again, the gameplay itself isn't hopeless, it's just almost exactly the same as 2K9. And 2K8. And 2K7, 2K6 and 2K5. And the menus, the franchise management, the fact you can't pick the language, the total lack of any kind of online help or manual, the tired commentary with lines that were written for 2K5... Popping this game into your XBox is a confusing, frustrating, horrible experience. In almost every way, this is worse than NHL 2K9. I reiterate: don't get it. Just don't.

This is the last NHL 2K game we're getting. Playing it has been a horrid experience. As soon as we get over the psychological trauma, we'll be getting EA's NHL 10.

Game review: NHL 2K10

I think this is probably the most awful XBox 360 game I've ever played.

The initial impression is, to say the least, dramatic. For a long time, hockey games sold in Finland have come with several language options. This one, too, has English, Swedish and Finnish. Once you pop the game in, you learn that it automatically sets the language to your Xbox's "Locale" setting, and you cannot change it. So if you play 2K10 on any console in Finland, it's going to be in Finnish, and you can't change it in-game. The only way to get English menus is to change your console's locale to the UK or USA; the console's separate language setting doesn't matter. So sorry about that if you're, say, Finnish-Swedish, or a foreigner living in Finland. Our XBox is set to Locale: Finland and Language: English. That gets you a Finnish-language game, and let me re-iterate, you cannot change the in-game language in-game.

This is so shockingly idiotic we couldn't wrap our minds around it. We spent at least ten minutes looking through the confusing Finnish-language menus, trying to find a language option. The menus themselves are thoroughly confusing. When the game starts, you're thrown into a screen where you can start a random NHL game. If you want to get to the main menu, you have to move the right stick to get to a really confusing pop-up menu. You have no choice but to browse them aimlessly, because there is no on-line help, and the manual only explains the controls.

Wait, did I say the manual explains the controls? It doesn't. Some years back, both EA and 2K started using the "Skill Stick", which means using the right thumbstick to basically control your player's hockey stick. 2K10's "Pro" controls use the Skill Stick, so all the manual tells you is that the right stick is "Skill Stick". It doesn't tell you, um, how to use it. Or what it does when you, say, push up on the thumbstick. And again, there is no online help (or if there is, we can't find it).

So interfacewise, we can't work out how to play the game properly, because it won't tell us. No matter, I gave it a shot anyway. The box advertises "intelligent hockey", and sure enough, when your opponent is on the power play, for the first time in NHL 2K history, it actually kind of looks like they're trying to play an NHL power play. Other than that, though, I've seen few signs of it.

The AI opponent's ineptitude was only one failure of intelligence in previous 2K games: far more frustrating was your own players' utter stupidity. I'm unhappy to report that that, at least, hasn't changed a bit. While the AI plays the aforementioned power play, your own players are content to stand around in their penalty kill formation, and ignore everything that happens around them. So in short, they're still the brainless position-playing zombies they were in all the previous installments of 2K.

In the offensive zone, your players are just as moronic. To set the scene, I watched the Tampa Bay-Montréal game a few nights back. Montréal scored three goals (IIRC) on backdoor plays, i.e. where the player with the puck passes to the other side of the net. Just try setting one up in 2K10! If the player with the puck is somewhere between the net and the faceoff dot, most of the time the other forwards are either behind the net or out behind the faceoff circle. You simply cannot execute perhaps the most basic scoring play in modern hockey, because the AI-controlled players on your own team play like idiots. Not that you can usually pass to anyone, really, because I've never yet seen a player even try to get open, much less into a scoring position. Nothing makes you really believe Alex Ovechkin is on the ice like seeing him aimlessly wandering around behind the net on the power play when the puck is in front of it.

In most other respects, too, the gameplay feels identical to 2K6, 7, 8 and 9. Your players, from Ovechkin to Brooks Laich, all feel totally and identically incompetent. Even the simplest action takes ages to execute, and it feels like everyone is skating in tar. Nothing they do feels or looks like NHL hockey.

Add to this the build quality we've come to expect from 2K games. In every game we've played so far, at least one forward has gotten inexplicably stuck in the offensive zone, causing an offside. They face the boards and stand there, shaking, until they either snap out of it or the offside is called. The commentators are using exactly the same lines as they were in, um, 2K5, and in the first game I played, the commentary consistently failed, calling a 5-on-3 goal a 4-on-4 and similar dumb mistakes.

So in short, this is an awful game. We bought in on sale for a ridiculously low price, but it wasn't worth it. Just don't get it. There's very little discernible improvement over 2K9 or 2K8, and in many ways, this seems to be much worse. I'm starting to think the high-point of 2K games was 2K5, and if you've played it, you realize how pathetic that is.

2/10, only because I have faith that there are even worse games out there.

F1 season preview, sort of

It's almost here! The Bahrain GP is next Sunday, and in between playing Mass Effect 2 and, well, playing Mass Effect 2, I've been trying to wrap my head around the next F1 season. This isn't really so much a season preview as my attempt to figure out who's driving for which team, and what teams are going to be showing up for the GP.

This has been the most confusing F1 offseason I can remember, and I'm trying to make some sense out of it. First we were told there would be four new teams participating next season: Lotus, Campos, Manor and USF1. Then Manor became Virgin, USF1 dropped out, and Campos became the Hispania Racing Team, abbreviated HRT. In the meanwhile, BMW sold their team to Peter Sauber and the Russian Mafia, but despite the fact that it isn't owned by BMW any more, it's still called BMW Sauber. Then Toyota dropped out, but sold their F1 operations to a Serbian guy, who started a team named after himself, which really should have got Toyota's place on the grid, but didn't.

Confused yet? I know I am. For what it's worth, what confuses me most is Stefan GP not being allowed into the world championship. In a typical press release, via autosport.com:

"Having considered the various options, the FIA confirms that it is not possible for a replacement team to be entered for the Championship at this late stage," the FIA said.

"In the coming days the FIA will announce details of a new selection process to identify candidates to fill any vacancies existing at the start of the 2011 season."

It's really useless to try to figure out why anything happens in F1. For all we know, Bernie won't let them race because his ex-wife is from Yugoslavia. Also, he's totally dedicated to his new project, which involves a businessman from Qatar financing a Grand Prix on the Moon or something. Whatever the reason is, Stefan had cars and drivers ready, and as I understand things, would have been entitled to a spot on the grid as the inheritors of Toyota, but in the weird world of F1, they're barred from the grid. Maybe they would actually have been competitive...

Last time the FIA held a selection process, it included charming details such as forcing all the new teams to use Cosworth's rubbish engines, and not accepting any team that refused to. If anyone remembers Prodrive, this is the reason they're not on the grid.

**

Anyway, F1 politics is what it is. As far as I can tell, here's the teams and drivers for next season, in constructors' standings order from last season:

Mercedes GP
3. Michael Schumacher
4. Nico Rosberg

Red Bull
5. Sebastian Vettel
6. Mark Webber

McLaren
1. Jenson Button
2. Lewis Hamilton

Ferrari
7. Felipe Massa
8. Fernando Alonso

BMW Sauber
26. Pedro de la Rosa
27. Kamui Kobayashi

Williams
9. Rubens Barrichello
10. Nico Hülkenberg

Renault
11. Robert Kubica
12. Vitali Petrov

Force India
14. Adrian Sutil
15. Vitantonio Liuzzi

Toro Rosso
16. Sebastian Buemi
17. Jaime Alguersuari

New teams:

Lotus Racing
18. Jarno Trulli
19. Heikki Kovalainen

Hispania Racing F1 Team
20. Karun Chandhok
21. Bruno Senna

Virgin Racing
24. Timo Glock
25. Lucas di Grassi

**

All the unfamiliar names are GP2 drivers. There's a couple of new guys to look forward to. Last year, Nico Hülkenberg and Vitali Petrov tore up the GP2 series in an epic fight for the title, which Hülkenberg won. He's been pegged as the next Michael Schumacher, and there's a certain icy feel to his driving that is very reminiscient of Schumacher. Petrov, though, was my favorite driver to watch in GP2 last year, and I expect him to do well in F1, all things taken into account.

In my opinion, F1 drivers can be divided into two groups: combative and non-combative drivers. Some F1 drivers just have that fire in them, a willingness to take the fight to their rivals and drive for the win, not just trundle along for a finish in the points. All the great drivers had that fight. On the grid today, Schumacher and Alonso undoubtedly have it. Jenson Button never had it, and I still don't think he does. With all due respect to his driving abilities, which I do respect, I can't see any way he would have won last year's world title without the diffusor controversy. Felipe Massa is even more useless as a driver and a second driver because he has absolutely no fight in him. For that reason, I don't believe Massa will ever win a world title.

Two guys who have fight in abundance are Nico Rosberg and Robert Kubica, and Petrov fits right in. If the Renault car is even vaguely competitive this year, both Kubica and Petrov should do well. I'm really looking forward to seeing the two of them compete!

**

I suppose I should make some kind of prediction about the results, but quite frankly, I haven't been following things nearly closely enough. It was only when I did this roundup that I actually got the teams and drivers straight in my head, so there's no way I have an intelligent opinion on, for instance, who's going to do well at Bahrain. It'll be interesting to see if the new teams are really as hopeless as everyone expects them to be. Mercedes has kept saying they're not competitive, even though everyone expects them to be, and McLaren are trying to repeat last year's diffusor trick with a questionable rear wing, so maybe we'll have some proper controversy right at the start. There are several obvious rivalries to look forward to as well, including the return of Schumacher vs. Alonso, the two McLaren drivers and the two Ferrari drivers. I don't think Massa will take well to being number 2, nor Alonso to having a totally useless no. 2.

One thing to look forward to, by the way, are Red Bull's record-breaking two-second pit stops. I can't wait to see one!

fashion is the best cure

Im wearing a black Juicy Couture dress, vintage floral dress, American Apparel thigh high socks, Zara heels, vintage rings, and a forever 21 head band.
I've been really depressed for a while now. I havent been able to go out with friends, do homework even if its for music theory or choir (wich happen to be my favorte classes), and even singing with the LA OPERA hasnt cheered me up.So i went thrifting this weekend and all my pain seemed to slowly go away. I guess all i needed was a little retail therapy.