Enjoyed the NASCAR essay, and, curious I Googled it: The National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR).

Enjoyed the NASCAR essay, and curious, I Googled it: The National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR).

I've been a crew member for two different Nascar teams. I'd like to see any event, anywhere, with over 100k people in attendance, and alcohol being served, where there aren't extreme examples of why some people shouldn't drink. At least they don't riot like they do at soccer matches.

It's really very simple; you're either into racing or you're not. If you love racing, you will have a great time at a Nascar event. If you don't care for racing, you'll come home sunburned and bitching about the rude guy that sat next to you that apparently spilled a large amount of his $6 a gallon cologne all over himself that morning. I'd come home cranky after spending the day at a needlepoint convention, which is why I don't go to any.

Besides, Nascar is just beginners stuff. Sprint cars are where it's at. 700 horsepower in a 1300 pound car, with no battery or transmission, racing on a clay/dirt oval track, is much more fun. If there isn't mud in your beer, you're not really racing. :)

PKRWUD, that really sounds interesting. The Ampang racetrack is in Malaysia, a country next door to mine and I went there. I did not have good seats, so all I can remember is the heat and the smell of burning rubber. Maybe I'll try it again.

on reason.

I agree that intellectuals have been much to blame for the fall of the enlightenment both those on the left for reasons of deconstructing privillage as well as those on the right for the purpose of keeping the rabble out of the way.

As a west-cost post-modern anarchist/ecologist white male, I have been raised to deconstruct my own privallage and to remain as open-minded as possible of other points of view. (in this way i feel we are closely tied with Habermass' notion of communicative reason: each partial observer contains a perspective on truth and together, with multiple viewpoints, we can attempt to reassemble it.

With all this acceptance and tollerance, i began to hit a dead-end which i started to think about it in terms of justice. For example, it is all well and good to be open minded about my friend who is into dousing for water and has definately succeded in finding water for people who needed wells, but it is another thing entirely to, say, try someone for murder on the results of a dousing rod. When you take it to the point of human rights and justice, i beleive that a clear line between reason and unreason comes into focus. what would it take to make the situation with the douser at a murder trial just? it would take proving with repeated results that dousing could accurately determine whether one was guilty of a crime if one could do it, it would enter into the realm of valid evidence. think about DNA testing- as it has gotten better, it has a role to play in court.

I think one of the things that the over-fanatical (whether their fanaticism be for reason or belief) is assume that reason and beleif can not inhabit the same society. I think that there is a solution and it is one that some of the folks who founded the country struggled with as the crafted our country.

It's simply that in order to be just and from the concent of the governed that the structure of the state should only be that which emerges from the repeated experiences of the majority of the people- it should be founded on the need for evidence and the cold gaze of one trying to approach rationality. this doesn't mean that the individual can ever be objective, just that the public sphere should be a ration process of talking out the various perspectives including the marginal.

the other side of this is that the cummulative result of the publics rational discourse must NEVER infringe on the ability of people to beleive the unprovable. It is a foolish reductionist who beleives that there is only that which she preceives in all that there is. but we can't go around forcing people to do things or punish people on the basic of the unprovable, so the rights of people to say or beleive anything MUST be maintain. We can prove it, but it must be protected by realm of the provable.

"PKRWUD, that really sounds interesting." - kes

It really is. Sprints are so much more fun. I've spent the last 6 years crewing for Jim Porter Racing, and have had a blast. Sprints are just more exciting.

Here is a fun video I threw together. You'll need the latest version of QuickTime. I think you'll enjoy it. It's about 30 megs (runtime is 5 minutes or so). Let the whole video download before starting it. :)

NASCAR is corporate racing. I prefer to go to the local speedway to see an enduro race any day. Don't forget the cooler full of Busch and the bologna burgers!

BillB, you found the joke acronym.

The real one is Non-Athletic Sports Centered Around Rednecks.

Re: NASCAR -- what a mean slam at the folks in NC, gays, and NASCAR fans all at once. I agree with BillB ... you are either into NASCAR or you aren't. But is there really any reason to say:

seriously doubt that there is a male over the age of seven in North Carolina—who isn’t a choreographer—who doesn’t know what Nascar means. Of course, there probably isn’t a male over the age of seven in that state who doesn’t have a ring imprinted on his back pocket from his chew can. Whether or not North Carolina choreographers chew tobacco is the subject for another essay.

The EPA is headquartered here. The biggest IBM site in the world is here. The American Dance Festival is here, full of straight and gay choreographers, none of whom seem to chew tobacco.

Really, Norm, we love you even though you live in Utah, which has MANY fine attributes and a fair number of folks at least as weird as the NASCAR folk. (Must I bring up "Trick or Trunk"?). Don't beat other states senseless for no good reason.

Hi! Thanks for the nice clip. Why do the cars have the wings? They seem to make it run on 2 wheels half the time?

The "wings" are there to push the car down into the dirt and improve traction.

The "wings" are there to push the car down into the dirt and improve traction. As the cars speed up, they're going to become more unstable in turns and such. The spoiler is pretty much just an upside down wing, so that it pushes down instead of creating lift.

Why did you post a link to an article lambasting academic lefties by a person outside of academia who doesn't realize that Todd Gitlin is a right-wing shill in liberal sheep's clothing? He sucks. Don't take his word for what's going on in academia. He's feeding mainstream anti-intellectualism, and more specifically, it's thinking on social inequities. I work in academia, and I can tell you that the best, most insightful thought on how this society works and where it's going comes from academic minds. The book by Eric Lott mentioned in the article is just one example.

The real problem with left and right is that we are again defining ourselves with two simple terms.

We start to group one set of standards with either being left and right.

If you can group something you dislike into the opposing group's standards, you can pretty much defeat their arguements without even attempting a real arguement.

Today, you can just say, "Oh, that is just some left-wing bullshit." and a lot of people will instantly agree with you and not even attempt to defend it.

It is just a further manifestation of bi-partisan politics.

Just like how a person is a republican, because their father was, and they do not even consider the actual candidates views.

Sure we might have evolved a little with using extreme and moderate, but those things are basically bullshit descriptions as well.

Everything one person considers to left or right, is totally different from another persons.

All in all, it works because it saves people time so they can spend more time reading who Brad Pitt is fucking now, or watching a tour of some rap stars house or listening to the latest pop song singing about shaking some body part (which is cleverly hidden by labeling it as something else like, laffy-taffy.)

Now if you will excuse me, I'm going to go read about Richard P. Feynman (hopefully nothing about the various people he has fucked), maybe watch a little of the Daily Show (hopefully we will not be touring some politicians house), and possibly listen to some Badawi (thank god they have no references to the shaking of body parts).

;) We are all hypocrites are we not?

I would like to see Jon Stewart shake his ass.

"Hi! Thanks for the nice clip. Why do the cars have the wings? They seem to make it run on 2 wheels half the time?" - kes

AsinineAmerican's second post is right on the money. Sprint cars are very light (1300 pounds) and have huge horsepower (700hp+), and become unstable through the corners. Some sprint car racing series race winged sprints, which help bigtime. The wings are the same as an inverted airplane wing, with the convex side underneath. This creates downforce as the speed increases. The sides of the wings also aid in the corners. Winged sprints often don't have to let off the gas when going into a corner, whereas wingless sprints do.

The team I crew for runs wingless sprints, which saves us money, but costs us speed.

Hi Guys, thanks for the info. I don't know much about sprint cars as it's mostly F1 racing in Southeast Asia.

I also do a bit of Go-carting but that's it : <