Daniel

Conditions: ...

Tribute to Dan



Last week Dan Wheldon died in a horrific crash during the IRL season finale at Vegas. A genuinely nice guy, he had been a regular in the series but had not been able to secure a seat for this year despite winning the Indy 500 (for the second time). So the organisers cooked up an idea where he'd start the final race of the season from the back, and if he won he'd get five million dollars. This turned out to be a popular idea, so much so that about 34 cars turned up for the final race. This was not a good thing.

The track at Vegas is what they call a Mile and a Half oval. A steeply banked, vicious thing of pure speed. Because the track surface was so smooth and so wide, cars could get up nice and close to each other, all the better for maximizing the all-important draft. The problem is they do that at about 225 miles per hour. And as we have seen so many times before, when you put too many drivers in 225 mph race cars on a mile and a half racetrack, you get crashes.

And crashes are nothing new to the IRL. In fact, crashes are what made it famous. Back in the nineties when the Indycar series and the IRL series were slugging it out for ratings, it was the spectacular crashes coming from the IRL formula of tightly packed cars on fast ovals that gradually won the fickle audience away from the less spectacular (but better) Indycar series.

In time the IRL series grew, as did the crashes. And on many occasions people would say that this was stupid. The races on road courses, and even on street tracks, were dangerous, but reasonably so. The Indy 500 was mad as ever, but at least drivers spent weeks practicing for it. However the Mile and a Halfers, they always, always felt like roulette. And yet for the most part they kept getting away with it. The big ones they did have would usually result in everyone walking away, and if not the injured would heal up in time to be a heartwarming bit of filler in a later telecast.

It could only last so long. And so finally, finally, after so many years of pure undeserved luck, the simple madness of it all has been exposed. In front of a half-empty grandstand, with the usual lackluster telecast going out to a paltry number of viewers, on lap twelve a couple of cars at the front touched wheels at hyperspeed and in an instant, everything turned to chaos.

Of the thirty four cars rushing headlong through turn two, fifteen of them crashed, some tumbling through the air while exploding and smearing into the catch fencing, like a scene from a disaster film. The wrecks gradually slid to a halt amongst smoke and debris, and gradually most of the drivers emerged, taking off helmets and comparing notes and shaky grins with each other. A couple were hurt and were taken away to be seen to. But one car, or more accurately, one smoking wreck, remained surrounded by medical personnel, desperately trying to put the driver onto a stretcher, then to the waiting ambulance, then to the emergency helicopter, then to the local hospital.

Everyone prayed for Dan, everyone worried, everyone brooded. And the wait seemed endless. But finally, in an unsurprisingly half-assed and fumbling manner, it was announced that Dan Wheldon had died.

He was 33 years old, and had two kids.

The drivers decided to do a five lap low speed run as a tribute to Dan. Most of them were in tears. In an interview the championship winner Dario Franchitti asked himself what was it all for. A damn good question.

The point of racing is fun. It's gladiatorial and intense. Danger is an important element to it - but it's actually the danger of making a mistake, or getting beaten. Drivers do not think about actually crashing, or getting hurt or killed. There's no time for it, the laser focus is on the next corner, the next braking marker, the next pit stop, the next gear change. It's up to the organisers to think about crashes.

Putting 34 cars on that track was stupid. It was reckless and foolish. Crashes were always going to occur, and given that the cars are designed such that they cannot get away from each other, they are forced to race in packs, any crash that occurred was likely going to trigger a pileup. Sticking Dan in the back and goading him on with a 5 million dollar payday was the final garnish on the ticking time bomb.

Will anything happen? We've got several months to wait before the next season starts. And they've already organised a new car to be used next year, ironically one Dan helped develop, no doubt "safer", if there is such a thing on the Mile and a Halfers. But no, nothing will really happen. They'll have a funeral, go away for a while, and then come back ready to do it all again.

Dan was a great guy, a likable champion who had time for everyone. His loss is a huge loss to everyone, and a massive mark against the sport. The IRL is the most dangerous form of high level motor racing today, and it's long past time that it was fixed.



Film Review: Abduction.

Well, we all knew this day was coming. It was simply a matter of time, and no matter how much we may wail and gnash our teeth at the unfairness of it all, it is simply an inevitable fact of life, as relentless and unarguable as the setting of the sun, or the change of seasons. I thought we had more time before this process would start to happen, but there you go: Tempus Fugit, as they say. I speak, of course, of the inheriting of stereotypical action movies by the latest, youngest generation. Generation Tweet, or whatever they're calling themselves these days. As they grow and take over market share in the all-too-important movie demographic stakes, more and more product is targeted directly at them. This time it's the old Little Nikita standard, the one about the kid who finds out his parents aren't actually his parents, and suddenly the CIA and a whole bunch of bad guys want him dead, it's a classic.

This time around Nikita is named Nathan, and is played by Taylor Lautner, who to me looks about fourteen years old. The cast is filled out with the likes of Sigourney Weaver and Alfred Molina, but the heavy lifting, such as there is, is carried by Taylor and girl-next-door Lily Collins, who looks all of eleven. The film starts by introducing us to them and their high school friends, before the plot is finally, mercifully, kicked into gear when Taylor accidentally discovers his picture on a missing kids website. Just before we get a tearful explanation from "mom", bad guys show up and all hell breaks loose. Now at some point someone puts a bomb in the oven, which blows up the house allowing our two heroes to escape. At this point one of two things will happen. You will either think "wait a minute, that makes no sense. Why would either the bad guys, or the parents, put a bomb in the oven?" Or you will think "Heh, bomb in the oven. Cool." If your thought processes are to the latter, then congratulations, you will enjoy the rest of the film very much.

However for the rest of us, the bomb in the oven is just the first in a series of odd or just plain dumb choices, in what ends up being a fairly pedestrian and light weight series of encounters as our two birds figure out what everyone is after, and why. In the end it all comes down to absent-father issues, and coming of age. Good issues for the youngest generation, but a bit "after-school special" for me. While Taylor does his best, I suppose, frankly I was left underwhelmed. He can scowl at the camera better than anyone I've ever seen, but there's more to a character than how he scowls. If they are going to inherit our cherished standards then good luck to them, but recycled art needs a dash of re-imagination to survive. They are all very young, though, so there's time to improve. At least director John Singleton doesn't shake the camera around, we can be thankful for that. Two Punches out of Five.


- Peace out

These Muddled Times

Conditions: Difficult.

The Split of a Hair

The War on Terror is heavily invested in using pilot-less drones, driven from bases in America and used to blow up people identified as being "terrorists" in various countries around the world. I believe it is a blunt and stupid weapon, incapable of nothing more than creating more outrage and resolve in America's enemies. Given that no proper identification of the victims are done prior to detonation, these things are really just fancy car bombs. Recently yet another victory was claimed when Anwar al-Awlaki and "some others" were claimed as kills by the latest drone strike, but it's curiously a victory that has struck some commentators as hollow.

But more died on that day than two suspected terrorists. Awlaki and Khan were both American citizens and, according to the 14th Amendment, are therefore to be afforded the “privileges” and “immunities of citizens of the United States.” Among those privileges or immunities:

No person shall be held to answer for a a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury … nor shall [any person] be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law. (5th Amendment)
[...]

Citizenship cannot not be dismissed because of suspected crimes or words. In fact, it is citizenship in particular that keeps a person accountable to the rule of law. The 14th Amendment also states that being a citizen means being “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States.

The idea that the government can authorize the revocation of someone’s rights because of words or suspected deeds, sets a frightening precedent — particularly when such a revocation leads to the assassination of the person without due process.

- antiwar.com/

I must say I find all this hand-wringing over Awlaki somewhat weird, akin to standing an a mountain of bones and complaining about the view. Exactly how many unknown people have been blown up by these drones over the last ten years simply because they were standing or sitting in the vicinity of someone who was thought to be a terrorist? Will we ever know? No, of course we won't. But blow up someone born in America and now the national conscious is pricked? Now we start worrying about due process? Now we're thinking about courts of law? This leaves yet more of a bad taste in my mouth.


Film Review: Hanna

Hanna is a very European take on a couple of themes we the audience are already familiar with. Firstly a young girl being taught by an assassin, secondly, a U.S government agent covering up an operation by any means necessary, and of course finally, a revenge flick. What's different about this movie is how decidedly odd it is. I'm not really sure what the plan was, how it was supposed to work, and whether it actually worked even partially in the end. Deep in the Arctic circle, Hanna is taught by her father (Eric Bana) the deadly arts until she is ready... to activate a homing beacon that will bring a squad of assassins who will put Hanna in an underground maximum security facility somewhere in North Africa, which she then escapes from while killing a lot of people, and sets off on foot for Berlin to meet up with her father, again. See, it just doesn't make any real sense.

Hanna is specially engineered on a genetic level, as part of a secret super soldier program, and that's why the Americans want her. Also the head agent (a very scary Cate Blanchett) is the one who killed her mother, long ago, while trying to shut down the project. The problem is that Hanna has spent her whole young life in the arctic, and knows nothing about the modern world other than what her father has told her. So she does rather well, considering. The director spends a long time showing Hanna enjoying, and talking to normal people. But the bad guys are never far behind. Considering how much preparation went into the "plan", it all goes wrong very quickly, and people start dying as Hanna enjoys her road trip.

While in the end there is an awkward comeuppance, once it's over we ponder things that the director did not show us: characters, plot explanations, inexplicable decisions, fight sequences, while thinking on the many moody shots of Hanna that he did show us. It is well shot, and well acted. But it leaves a bad taste in the mouth. A meal not quite cooked through, and not quite finished. While not quite the sum of it's parts, it is still an interesting take on an old standard. Two and a half dead cops out of five.


- Peace out