…or Happy Holidays., if you prefer, and Happy Solstice. With Love, Michele and Steve

They sort of gave the race to Verstappen, on the other hand, he did have a better season and probably should be champion. From an email from me to Linda Melton.

Max Verstappen is the new Formula One Champion after winning the last race, on the last lap, in Abu Dhabi. Without going into the gritty details, Michael Masi, the FIA Formula One Race Director, let five cars that were between Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen, but were one lap down and would hold Verstappen up, get out of the way so that Verstappen on new, soft tires, could have a free shot at Hamilton on old, hard, tires. It was a one-off decision, similar to the Supreme Court ruling that Bush the Younger had won Florida in 2000, and Mercedes is appealing to the FIA – Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile – International Court of Appeal.

I think it was a bad decision on the Race Director’s part and a controversial way to end a race but it would be even more controversial if the Championship changed on a court ruling so I’m in favor of just getting on with it. When things like this happen, I’m always in favor of just getting on with it. It makes me realize that I’m not anywhere as competitive as somebody like Toto Wolff, the Mercedes Team Principal. On the other hand, the rumor is that Hamilton, to no avail, has asked the team to drop the appeal and he is super competitive.

While Mercedes is appealing, the earth continues to spin on its axis, every day becoming a less hospitable place to live. A major tornado plowed through Kentucky killing scores of people and leaving more than 1,000 families homeless- a “once in a lifetime event” that will probably happen again, sooner rather than later- a major ice-sheet in Antarctica is breaking up unexpectedly quickly threatening to raise sea level sooner than predicted, the temperature topped out at 127.9°F in Kuwait last year, a new but not welcome, record – it is 68°F today, BTW – two major hurricanes slammed into Honduras killing a hundred people, to scratch the surface; It all makes thinking about who won an auto race seem pretty trivial.

As the Earth heats, our country’s political life goes on: among other things, the House Committee investigating January 6th is releasing information that indicates the White House and several members of Congress knew about and participated in the Insurrection, Covid deaths in the U.S. have passed 800,000 and a new variety is scaring almost everybody else, Derek Chauvin has pleaded guilty to violating George Floyd’s civil rights during a Federal hearing, and over at Fox News, they are complaining that a mural that shows black revolutionaries is in the background of the swearing-in ceremony of the new Chief of Police. The strife and controversy over who won the Championship seem petty. But Next Year! Next year, Hamilton will win.

I’m passing on this Tweet by Peter Sagal because I think he may be right. (Link to post or click on Obama’s Secret Weapon In The South here or below).

his behaviour in combat with Hamilton, which earned him two separate time penalties, was unflinchingly fierce in its intensity and at times it felt as though Max, requiring Hamilton to run into difficulty in order to secure the title, was trying to provoke or lure Lewis into trouble. Oliver Harden on the Planet F1 website.

“I respect him as a driver, but the rest…nothing,” Jos Verstappen, Max Verstappen’s father talking about Lewis Hamilton to the Daily Mail

Wow! What a crazy race last Sunday’s Saudi Arabian Grand Prix was. Lewis Hamilton won from the pole position but it was way more difficult than that, and way more fun, and nerve-racking. Now, Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen are tied in championship points with only one race left, so winner takes all. Sort of: Max has won more races than Lewis, so, if there is an accident and neither one of them finishes the next race, Max wins.

A couple of years ago, before Lewis Hamilton won his seventh title, somebody asked Martin Brundle, a former F1 driver but then a color guy – or pundit – on Sky Sports, who he thought was the best driver, Ayrton Senna, Michael Schumaker, or Lewis Hamilton. Brundle said, Hamilton because he never drives dirty like Shumy or Senna.

There is a scene in Downton Abby – this is the same subject, trust me – at a luncheon for Rose’s wedding to Atticus Aldridge, that has stuck with me. The Crawley clan has already met the parents of Rose’s fiancé, the Aldridges, but the Aldridges have not met Rose’s parents and everybody is on their best behavior. Rose’s mother, Susan MacClare, the Lady Flintshire, who we already know is a boorish bigot, asks if the Aldridges are “even one bit English” and then asks Rachel Aldridge if she “finds it difficult these days to get staff?” and Rachel Aldridge answers, “Not really….but then we’re Jewish so we pay well.”

The implication in Rachel’s answer – maybe more than an implication – is that she, and her husband, pay well because they are Jewish. They do not want to be thought of as tightwads because it not only reflects on them, it reflects on all Jewish people. Rose’s mother, Susan doesn’t have that problem. If Susan is an asshole, it doesn’t reflect on White people, nobody says that all White people are assholes because Susan is. If Robert Crawley, or Lord Grantham for that matter, doesn’t pay his staff enough, it doesn’t reflect on other White people, but that is a privilege that the Aldridges do not have.

In the Formula One race last weekend, Max Verstappen ended up getting three reprimands. Two of the reprimands involved adding time penalties to Max’s total time, and one of them was for brake-checking Lewis. Brake-checking is when a driver hits the brakes to force a tailgater to back away. It is a dangerous and illegal move and very very dangerous while racing in a car without brake lights. Max had just passed Lewis by going off the track which is not legal and had been told by Race Control to “Give the position back.” But Lewis had not yet been told and was right behind Max when, in the middle of a straightaway, braked suddenly and decelerated at 2.7 G. As an aside, if you jam the brakes on in a decent sports car with anti-lock breaks, you can stop at about 1.25 G. End aside. Max’s braking was hard enough, so that Lewis, right behind him, ran into Max, damaging Lewis’s front wing. Often, hitting another car with a front wing is enough to knock the wing off but, somehow, the impact only knocked an endplate off of Lewis’ car. It was impetuous, even childish, maybe even thuggish, as they were going over a hundred miles an hour and Max was fined with a ten-second penalty but, that’s it. Because of Max, nobody says that all White people are thugs, very few people even say that Max is a thug. Nobody said that thuggery is typical of White people but Lewis Hamilton does not have that privilege any more than Rebeca Aldridge.

Both of these drivers want to win the Championship and the next race, at the Yas Marina Circut in Abu Dhabi this coming Sunday, should be very close. Lewis Hamilton has been here before and he has won the last three races, so he has the better odds. Unless Max crashes them both out. That Max may try a crash if he is losing looks more likely than it did a year ago, still, my money is on Lewis.

“While we, Chani, we who carry the name concubine — history will call us wives.” Said Lady Jessica, a member of the Bene Gesserit sisterhood and concubine to Duke Leto of House Atreides, to Chani, the concubine of Paul Atreides in the last line of the book.

Good artists copy, great artists steal. Pablo Picasso

Back in October/November, I re-read Dune, the book, which I wanted to re-read in preparation for seeing Dune, the movie. The first time I read Dune, I must have been in my late twenties, early thirties and I didn’t remember much detail and the re-reading sucked me right in. Fortuitously, it turned out, by the time the movie came out, I was only about halfway through the book and that’s close to the point at which the movie ended. The half book and the movie are very different in feel but the plot and the characters are almost the same. I liked them both, but neither one seems groundbreaking.

In the case of the book, though, that’s deceptive, Dune, the book, was groundbreaking. It’s just that Dune’s ideas have been so copied that we’ve become used to them. The Star Wars Universe seems the most derivative, Arrakis (Dune) looks pretty much like Tatooine, there is a mysterious organization – that can tune into a deeper reality and control people with their voice, and the known Universe is ruled by a cruel emperor. In both Star Wars and Dune, the people that count are royalty. With the glaring exception of Star Trek, Science Fiction of this era is right wing if not outright Fascist, even those that aren’t, lean that way. Not all, I know but a lot. My current theory is that it is because Science Fiction is basically medieval fantasy without the princess but with space ships and quasi rational sounding explanations for the magic. Sandworms that produce spice aren’t that much different than dragons.

That is not to say that Dune isn’t a fun read, it is, even if it is somewhat dated. Dune was published in 1966 and I read it sometime around that date. At the time, I didn’t pick up on all the references and I’m sure I still didn’t get them all but the book still almost immediately sucked me in, much like Shogun or Lord of the Rings, or, recently, Reamde by Neil Stephenson. All four have interesting characters and all are episodic, even if the other three have better writing. Still, Dune is original and byzantine in its complexity moving the reader along. It is the kind of book I ended up reading whenever possible, like sneaking a peek at while waiting at a stoplight. It also has some interesting surprises that probably would be cut today, like the Fremen were, at one time Sunnis, their war is called jihad, and the goal of every woman is to be a wife.

Dune, the movie, does not seem at all dated, either in plot or sensibility. For me, it was a welcome relief from the comic book feel of so many huge science fiction or fantasy blockbusters. When I say comic book feel, I don’t just mean the Marvel universe, Star Wars has spaceships that cruise around like airplanes – with no visible source of levitation – and then pop over to the next galaxy. In the movie, Dune, the spaceships have weight and the ornithopters feel real, they actually seem affected by gravity. Sitting home, quarantined, with one day fading into the next and each quarantined movie fading into the others, Dune stands out.