The recent stories about Formula 1 in Greece have not sounded very sensible, given the economic realities of Greece at the moment. There may be some logic in using motorsport to revive parts of the economy, but the story seems to have been extrapolated into something it is not. Formula 1 is expensive and investing in a Grand Prix is not the thing for politicians to be doing at the moment. However, there is nothing wrong with investing in a racing circuit if it is felt that this will create jobs and the potential for more jobs later when there are events at such a venue. People seem to be confusing the two ideas. A small subsidy to build a race track could be a smart investment, but $37.67 million does not even scratch the surface of Grand Prix budgets these days. A serious F1 bid would require a commitment to 10 times that amount of money. The company that is planning to build the track is called Racetrack Patras and it has said that the media has been wrong to assume that the aim is to host an F1 race. That might be part of a longer term plan but only if the money is available.
“This project belongs to the private sector, it does not expect state funding for its operational costs,” said Evangelos Floratas, a former mayor of Patras, who is behind Racetrack Patras. “It is also wrongly assumed that we are aiming at organising a Formula 1 race, which is an event often subsidised by national government. This is not our primary goal. We are not prepared to pay to be added to the [Formula 1] calendar at this point. It is something we will think about at a later date if and when someone – in government or the private sector – wishes to subsidise it.”
The goal is to build a circuit near the village of Chalandritsa, which is located a few miles south of the city of Patras, which is at the northern end of the Peloponnese peninsula, close to the entrance to the Gulf of Corinth, to the west of Athens.
joeblogsf1 
Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes. They will be asking for a EU subsidy before we know it.
I would have thought that there were other infrastructure projects that might provide an equal financial benefit but would be more relevant to Greece’s current straightened circumstances. I have seen how there are new semi-deserted race tracks littered over Spain (Guadix etc), providing precious little in the way of financial or employment benefit to the local economy. The only upside is that they do provide nice cheap testing venues.
Wilson
With all respect to the people running Guadix the plan is to build something better and in a more central location. Teams from central Europe will only need to travel to Venezia, catch a ferry and next day the will be in Patras. Much cheaper than driving to south Spain.
F1 in Greece seems very unlikely in the next 10 or so years. With many world famous, long and well established, European circuits struggling to survive there is little chance of Greece being added to the F1 calendar. Bernie is flinging his darts further off the edges of the world map looking for sovereign wealth and mentioning things about only 4 races in europe.
Unless that is, F1 commercial structure is dramatically re-organised and the huge drain upon it removed.
Why, given Bernie’s desire to remove even more European races from the calender, would they think F1 would ever be an option for them?
I also agree it is pretty farfetched to aim for a F1 race, but if they want to build a track, that can be used for F1 in the future date, but in the mean is used to hold other forms of racing, bikes, tin tops for example, track days, driver training ect.
Does Jonathan Palmer and his Motor sport business group which owns a number of tracks in the UK and runs Bike and Tin Top races make any money? If it does, then this would be the format for the Greeks to follow.
In the 1980’s they had a pretty good Rally turnout. So maybe the Greeks do like motor sports and could support it?
Greeks like their motorsport. The very same persons that are behind this project organise every year a karting race in the downtown of Patras. The footage is from 2011, this year there were 20,000 per day watching
The day we stop supporting them, they are free to do this. For now I suggest that they make sure all of them – including shipyards – pay their taxes. Subsidized jobs are just another form of welfare.
Actually you are just suppporting your banks and (assuming you are Dutch) making a profit in your country’s budget in the process. At least the French goverment has the dignity of returning those profits back to Greece unlike yours and German goverments. Greek budget excluding debt payment is balanced this year, achieved through overtaxiation and severe pension cuts.
” A small subsidy to build a race track could be a smart investment, but $37.67 million does not even scratch the surface of Grand Prix budgets these days.”
Which is just ridiculous – Spending $1bn at Abu Dhabi or $600 mil at China is should be laughed at instead of a boasting point.
How much could you actually construct 5-6km of race track for?
Just make a good track and pits – a mound on the hill or simple concrete open grandstand (With excellent views of the whole track- because it wont be obscured by a $500 mil phallic shaped hotel)
You might even get a better track than a modern F1 track for whatever series they want to run.
Then if the event is successful improve it over time.
if you had ever been there you would know that mr floratas is having a laugh
If you had ever been there you would know that the guys name is actually Floratos.
That goes to Colin Grayson obviously, not Joe
Apparently, Greece has about enough money to pay the interest on their bills until the end of the week.
Turkey is apparently buying Iranian oil with cold heavy gold, in diplomatic bags, to cover up the outgoing money – they just got a ratings upgrade.
Valencia just shut down their pharmacies, on strike..
If only these new tracks were somewhere you’d like to take your girl for a weekend. Or yourself, between the action. Not saying they’d survive, but a view would help, a beach within a drive, some actual life .. well it might make the difference whether I go alone, or get dumped again . . I have no idea why they don’t want to suss this. Far too many “widower” fans, and at the prices, you need to be a two income family. I’m stretching family. Kids too expensive alongside following the races for real. We had a nice holiday for two weeks for about just what a race jaunt would have cost.
I cannot personally attest to these proclamations of financial mess, it’s me reading ZH again. If you believe them, and it’s plain as day they have a axe to grind, maybe too worn now, apparently some tiny credit ratings agency in Canada is singularly preventing Spanish govvies from being recognised by the ECB as junk. I read that, if so, that’s be a 20BLN call for collateral.
All we need, I sometimes dream, is to make sure the tracks are near a local town that’s nice, preferably a few of them, to make it a local event, not a national one. Well, that sort of thing. Austin may be a few miles out, but they’re lucky with a wonderful amount of normalcy within a short hire car drive. I badly want them to pull it off.
My personal wish is that either you have a awesome locus for racing so sick people come anyhow. Else please – pretty please – stop putting the races where the only way you get a normal girl to go is dragging her by the proverbial pony tails.
Bet the journo coverage would be so much more upbeat, too, if something on a human scale could be done . . How much would it really cost to guarantee the working reportage non insulting hotel rates? That’s no subsidy, just plain getting the locale told as part of the story, which is what locals want even if they don’t like car races.. You can see Melbourne as a nice place to go, but up the eiffels at SpaFFchamps, just say it’s Glastonbury for silly fast cars, mist drizzle and drinks. Forget so many others .. honestly, muddy Spa is a easier sell to many a girl than “Istanbul Park”. I can’t have been the only one whose gone to a race and thought the grid girls are a taunt to a dangerously not hitched guy who can’t see a unattached bit of skirt for the horizon.
I confess, I simply cannot find the formula for GPs and nice girls who otherwise might tolerate me. Yup, I fail. (fail, failed, failed before ad nauseam)
But if you get that general idea right, a more balanced mix, or more close by towns, I think a new track makes sense. Instead of having one place dependant on a few events a year and car parking fees or hotel kick backs, if you have a few local small towns, some might compete for attention, some bargain, some expensive, some couldn’t care less and vend respite. You just need multiple players to have a market.
My thought is simple, it’s mono crop, not variegation. If you have a few chances of nearby places finding a balance to get business from a major race, I reckon that’s way more justifiable than one steamed up blithering Eden Project bubble. Maybe then even a broke government might look at the idea favourably.
This simply does not work for Bernie, though. It pays him to have tracks wholly dependant on the annual circus visit. I’d go so far as to say that some his plans ought to find foul of committees, being destructive, like the argument of superstores. Safeway / WalMart have effect on small towns. From afar, with a vast car park. I’ll fantasise a while now, that a major league sponsor might find some sanity leverage.
The other hope is enough tracks are built, we luck on a handful that are really good. And have somewhere to eat out within 20 miles sunday driving.
I think that in many cases it it the rest of the year’s income at the circuit that subsidises the GP and not the other way round.
John,
I fail to see how Valencia pharmacy strike or Turkey buying oil from Iran (so does India, South Korea, Japan and a couple of more countries by the way) have anything to do with this. For the past couple of years, decade actually, F1s model seems to have shifted to f**k the grand stands we want the TV rights money.
As far as your comments go for the new venue locations, I can say, Bernie seems to go just the opposite way so that he can secure the TV rights and hold the track owners at a short leash. Why else he would have chosen the remotest, crappiest place to build the Turkish track out of the three possible locations offered to him? If my memory serves me right, the other locations, offered were fitting your description almost verbatim. One was to be within 10-15 kms of the Ephesus with huge vacation towns/beaches within driving range, the other was within Antalya city borders which is another huge vacation roaming ground for European tourists. Both locations with large ports and airports close by. I blame the Turkish motorsports federation for even considering Istanbul to start with anyway. For someone with a little bit of a brain, it made as much sense as street races in Manhattan or London made.
Hi Ishan,
I could reduce my point to there exist bigger financial problems than getting a EU subsidy released for a track. This is a strange recession, it simply is not hitting everyone in equal measure. If I had more time, I’d like to look just how much Bernie’s Game relies on state / supra state subsidies. That’s why I highlighted – somewhat disconnectedly – the Valencia strike, because it came on the heels of some German Pharma companies withdrawing some credit to Greek hospitals. I know that hit hard headlines, and may not be end of world dangerous, but I think failure to supply medicines is a pretty major one in the supposedly modern world. That’s not something I want to trade for a race.
I totally agree with the f-k the grandstands, send us the Murdoch Money aspect of this. Apart from a very few standouts, my end of season personal review would have to be “Thank You, Rupert, for the bills.” I genuinely feel selfish for having taken that service, for validating a expensive thing that I don’t see will open the sport to new fans. They must be laughing in Greenford (if they still have offices there) that I couldn’t bring myself to watch some weekend.
Thanks for the planning history. That does restore faith in my fellow man, quite a bit. It looks as if once everyone is strung out and hung out to dry, with no local ecosystem or economy, a thread I hoped I picked up. That leaves them at the mercy of extortionate fees.
I hadn’t been to Turkey until this year. I spent most of the day (my companion had plans scheduled I couldn’t follow) talking to anyone who would in the town where we were. Maybe not rabid F1 fans, but I got a lot of conversation, far more than I ever imagined. Anyhow, highly sociable place. I was down the road from Antalya, a bit quieter. Will return. Got offered office facilities for next time by friends I made. Very sweet. I also noticed a general discontent with authorities of all kinds, most polite and at worst grumpy.
David Cameron, with much blunt prompting in the press, actually complained about silly EU budgets lately. But fluffed it. Any semi conscious urban planner would never put a race track too far from a cluster of people, IMO. But subsidies of all kinds get funnelled to the reddest open mouths in the nest which gape at the equally open mouth breathing bureaucrats. Sad. The coastlines I drove along make places like Valencia look plain tawdry.
I don’t think I ever commented on a NY Manhattan race, but certainly I did on some London talk. Plain silly thoughts. Whilst I can dream, put a track half way up the coastal rises where I was in Turkey, now that would look utterly epic. People might just come to trip out at the spectacle.
all best ~ j
John,
I didn’t know you’ve been to Antalya. Wouldn’t it have been great if the track was there? Or any where near the Mediterranean /Aegean coast? Get a two week vacation package with a 3 day race tickets in the middle of the fortnight? I guess it must have made too much sense.
Best
I’d vote for that, any day, Ishan. You have the most amazing territory there, and moreover, it’d be close to people. These out of town tracks, when there is no long history of people assembling, they don’t have the soul. I very much enjoyed the company I found, simply by walking around the towns.
There are exceptions to my “close to small towns”, for sure, I hope Austin will be one, because our cousins over there know how to make a big place work. But I think if you place things in good proximity, you will do very well.
I was in Alanya as a base, by the way. Same size, also a seaside town, as where I grew up.
I drove past quite a few (dozens, really) new build seaside condominiums, where easily you have the lay of the land, and good transport. That’d be the ultimate sunset race!
Also, not surprisingly, people talked to me in German, (embarrassing my ability!) which would make for a useful link to a lot of the sporting fans from there. All the fittings in the new builds (they are mostly new, along the coast) were German manufacture.
You can’t get that aspect “Istanbul Park”. East of Antalya there really is lots of accommodation, good walking, affordable and genuine (out of the party zone and cheap expat drinking) hospitality.
But maybe that is the thing? That the idea is to make “investors” think they can run a super 5 star hotel at lunatic rates, just because there is a track there? I never went in, but on the near horizon from Alanya’s bay port, there is a scintillating and coruscant outbreak of very plush hotels. On my return, I googled them, and came up with the information they are a favourite of Russians, Ukrainians, Belorussians and Romanians running “Miss World” type competitions. Very top end buildings. Well, that suggests to me there’s some money being spent, and, erm, okay, I don’t think much of whatever they may occasionally go on there, but I’m sure that is a kind of mini Monte Carlo experience, or one that could develop yet.
Still, you would have to get some decent airlines to fly direct, because the cheap charters are a nightmarish experience and a under pressurized health hazard, as I experienced. Rude words in particular need to be said about Gatwick, which I experienced for only the second time, and was tremendously worse than Antalya.
Oh, I cannot do anything, sadly, about any of this. But maybe if whoever makes the decision separated for a moment from their Gulfstream jets, and had a look about, they’d find much nicer places.
One can dream, eh?
Genuinely, that whole area simply cries out for James Bond type “lairs” in the hills. They missed something, by only photographing the opening to “Skyfall” in Istanbul.
good night, from a overly imaginative mind, I was inspired by that visit, very positive and strong memories
thanks,
– john
“I confess, I simply cannot find the formula for GPs and nice girls who otherwise might tolerate me. Yup, I fail. (fail, failed, failed before ad nauseam)”
Monaco. I mean, it’s not a cheap option, but if you can’t convince a young lady to do Monaco-Nice-Cannes-St Tropez-Toulon-La Ciotat-Cassis with you then either the problem is financial or the problem might be you.
Cold, Jem, cold! But hey, I’ll take that one standing up. I exaggerated a little, quite a bit actually, for effect, but you know how most people reign themselves in when they have their first child, the extravagances tend to simply be forgotten, well, I have it worse, trying to jump start a business that did not really survive the loss of my co-founder. Some similar symptoms, overly protective behaviour, worry for the future beyond who you are, broken nights . . . but yeah, it was always me. High maintenance, spendthrift floozie I was. (and imagine who that might inadvertently attract ..) I didn’t downscale for too long, and that on a totally unleveraged base. When you come to – at least the one time – ruing that what you habitually spent on suits would make a lifestyle difference of note, you end up with the occasional sour emanation, as my above, I’m sorry. Grumpy, not bitter, always best to laugh at oneself. But these things change, it’s a mentality and reaction that has to be filtered out in real time. I knew when I should have shorted my own stock, and timed it all wrong. Equally, there can be too much self realisation. Oh, my, I must be sounding a right piece of work now, but I can’t help but giggle at absurdities I’d rather not share. These things do change, however. Very sure of that, But you can put yourself ostrich like in a mood to not realise when they change for the better. That last one is in my experience rather hard. I think it’s a real obstacle to many a come back. As it happens some of the worst arguments I had in life were with [not going there] who was virulently against me spending money, when that simply had no material effect. Bad enough to give me a complex I never had, or may have been latent from my father’s teaching. It can be tricky, when your earliest memories are of accounts and discovering NPV (solo, HP calc) because your dad was no mean banker. That got so under my skin, that as a very little boy, I can recall now as if I was still there, throwing my untouched pocket money out of the window. The fact remains I am far better with OPM than my own. But all of this can be deeply off-putting to a nice girl. Facts of a somewhat unlikely and still fairly young life. I know for sure, can count years when I took it all too seriously. But, in my defence, I would argue I learned the light touch, quite a lot more, lately. Bloody late, but hey, better than not at all!
p.s. I thought the solution was to divest myself of long interest in my work, threw it into trust, ostensibly so I’d not care, again. But I’ll make no bones, the visceral reaction I have to the outcome of deals, or rather people tripping over themselves in contortions in bad deals that could have gone right, save for petty venalities, remains absolutely intense. There’s a few morality tales in observing me, I just don’t want to spell them out. Might loose a edge. Knowing one’s own flaws too often means you perceive others’, and that’s too often a unremitting lens through which to look at the world.
Incidentally, what I reply is by no means revelatory to me, else I’d be sitting down, curtains pulled, having a long think. (I did, at the time, though it may seem raw since these are factors one lives with a while) Just a direct reply. I have other failings, for sure, but they would not be correct to announce, when the context was just a bit about money, and as to the perversions of money one can be less personal. I just felt a bit cornered into a have – have not question, applying across both financial and human grounds, and hence you have my assessment. I don’t invent the need to expatiate privately in the open, unless it might be of possible wider interest, even if this one cut it fine.
Sorry Joe, but living here in Greece I must try to correct some more misunderstandings of some commenters:
@Wilson Laidlaw – “They will be asking for a EU subsidy before we know it.” Afraid not – the project (along with a number of other projects not motor racing related) already has some EU funding that was secured a few years before the current economic crisis. The funding was then put on hold due to the economic situation. Because certain requirements have now been met the EU funding for this project and some of the others has been released.
@wilfred – “would they think F1 would ever be an option for them” I know the do not, even Joe quotes “It is also wrongly assumed that we are aiming at organising a Formula 1 race, which is an event often subsidised by national government. This is not our primary goal” then “It is something we will think about at a later date if and when someone”…”wishes to subsidise it.”
The project just outside Patras will provide a much needed boost to jobs (upto 500) and to the local economy. This is the suggested layouthttp://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/imageroot/2012/09-2/Greece%20racetrack.jpg
Why not just build something useful with the money – if its all about the construction jobs.
Em no. It is all about alternative types of tourism which hapens to be our main “industry”. Have your track day in Patras and the next day visit Olympia, the place where Olympics were born, which circuit can beat that?
It’s obviously a stupid plan to host an F1 race in Greece, but the Patras people have been sending out regular press releases saying that is their intention since Monaco this year. So the wrong end of the stick has been handed to journos on a plate; it’s not necessarily people adding 2 + 2 and getting 912.
I’ll dig through the archives, but my personal favourite was the one announcing they’d met face to face with Bernie in Monaco this year – as his personal invited guests, natch – and discussed his support for an F1 race just outside Patras.
Can’t say I’ve had any of them.
Of course you haven’t Joe since Kate obviously mixes up the Patras project with a pie-in-the-sky “project” for a F1 race in Drapetsona (which a district in Athens in the port of Pireus). The latter basically is a single individual putting out press releases and making wild claims. Not to be taken seriously.
Beware of Greeks bearing gifts 🙂
I don’t get it. It did cost $400m to built the track in Austin, TX (source The Financial Times) which seems excessive given that it will cost $250m to erect an oval which will seat 150.000 and the Greeks think they can do it for a paltry 35m. Recycling the Parthenon possibly …… they – the Greeks – they have had had their fun and [Olympic] paid for by the EU, must try to do a repeat job with the help of BE (who thinks rightly, that a F1 GP is better value than the Olympics).
Oh God, recycling the Parthenon, great joke… FYI A number of grade 2/1T circuits in Europe have been built at a cost range of 40-50m Euros.
I’ve just thought of one reason some tracks might be put way out of town: Dengue fever is on a bluster, and that thing is nasty nasty nasty:
Nice move, then, Korea, dumping everyone next to a swamp.
Maybe Greece is betting on dryer conditions, for a swap. I jest, but Dengue is no joke.
Nowhere near epidemic levels, but Dengue fever has cropped up in Nice. You know, that big French town that people who aren’t rich enough to be Monagesque live in. West Nile has cropped up along the French south coast too.
Jem, you’re needling me I think a little tongue in cheek today! Yeah, I remember when someone still in a deal that has another life popped up in Nice. How awful that was, he hadn’t the address to go with his ambitions, poor thing. How Very “Non U” . . Anyhow, LOL at your thoughts today – spot on. Hope you no-one minds I answered to straight up*, no twist, above! 🙂
*I have no shame, at least when it might be instructive of human frailty.
All a bit of light hearted banter 🙂
But it is always interesting to note that in “the West” we often think of some of these tropical diseases as only existing in far off places – third world problems for third world countries. However a handful have been encroaching on Southern Europe for years now. Global warming? Perhaps just ever increasing trans-Med shipping?
My brother is an infectious disease / tropical medicine expert so gave me the lowdown when I moved to Marseille.
I’m very happy with the banter, Jem. Though privately I put myself on the spot a lot this year. Time to learn a bit more about myself, I reckoned. No harm telling the headlines, if they are appropriate.
School pal of mine wanted in to epidemiology, instead took a additional PhD on ophthalmology, his dream to fix myopia somehow more cheaply. Simon wanted to fix learning, that way. I’d like to do that by fixing the membrane barrier between trade press, research, academia, and wide print publishing (which I think more effective than on-line where one gets distracted) Remembering the ophthalmology thing was how I found him again. It was scary, in a intellectual lounge lizard way, to remember how my friends and (as only a possible agent) thought they could change big things in health.
I was quite the dunce as to anything serious. Something in my character lent me to promoting, I was running away a lot, then, also, and I did always hanker to be a generalist, or dream of having the tiniest part of eloquence a la Feynman, to explain something deep in a human way. So, in my 20s, when we were all wet, I was even sought out by my more serious friends. But then specialism, and careers, and marriages, those things all intervene. I found myself distinctly unhappy about that, that we were all ships passing in the night, and that social or practical matters meant I heard less from the few who could articulate. That’s why I stuck at specialist publishing things. Frustratingly, doing that at any scale is more finance maths. Had to take myself a decade to do what a masters degree could have taught me when I was more receptive! I have a better response to your above, sure, I do know it’s me, relationships and all. I have to be a bit careful not to be so intense about things I never properly studied, but I know I care about. I could never be the all absorbed intellect, ignoring normal life. If I can ever be a functional crossover, through my work, that’s also a goal that I realize could alienate who I care for. There really is some genuinely non trivial theory in the practise of simply shifting adverts. Just the leap between talking to a bunch of people in real hard science or related practical work, and getting a discussion as to how my market views (this is not now impressions, but genuine mechanics) and their view of their life, and that in context of a wider audience, well, that is for me all absorbing. I guess quick, and learn slow, and the same applies in my private life. Would I only have a bit more balance, but that is not how it works, real people are not paper problems, neither do they really demand 20 hour days of undivided thought, but contrary, long days of thinking need to be interrupted by a loved one’s needs.
As usual, I digress. Bring it on! It’s good.
Marseilles is super. Bunch of AI guys who worked on the stack machine chip that really only saw commercial use as a DAC in Linn CD kit decamped out there, I believe. Ex Edinburgh Uni. But I’d not go for that. Oft been on my “transitional plan” as they are just a bit more chilled at not having a cut Parisian accent out there.
I always wonder how much is too much information. In my own line, overly conscientiously, I have simply stuck my nose into just about everything I can read, language or numerals, of a couple of years. The young me being conscientious I don’t have a paper qualification to hide behind, and a new chap to work with. I recall my science master at prep teaching us about global warming theory in the early 80s. Really in depth. He grew up when a “serious” career meant the classics, and took us all at a tender age to listen to Richard Dawkins. Lately I over worked things (not especially good on the private front) but I am trawling through what passes for experience or knowledge which I may possibly possess, to see if some things fit. There was noted on a website earlier, a paper entitled: “Some Key Differences between a Happy Life and a Meaningful Life.” which sampled a mere 370 or so subjects, and on cursory reading (it’s short) what I read as you can aim for meaningfulness, but the strain of it will tax you, tire you, and sometimes, well, too much information is simply that. I am pretty sure that girls I meet, at least the sensitive ones, actually perceive I might just be about to unload “too much information” and I have to catch myself over the nervousness. I don’t think there’s a specific age, beyond which saying too much in faux erudite tones is a absolute put off, but I will say that the moment you yourself find it a put off, well, then you’re caught! I think I long reached a point beyond which I could manage my own interests alone, nor my own emotional well-being. So there’s a inherent conflict, just not one that cannot be dealt with by some humour, a little contrition, and a better deal of listening to others. I don’t know if in your line, you ever got told to go cold call to get customers, but that’s often a part of building a deal book, and I know the extent to which I did that made me in some ways more sensitive to others, and also detached me from paying attention to who is present now.
Needing a finish to this, all I can say is that the more I exist (really, just plain keep on breathing) the more ambiguities and the vast strangeness of perceptions and how they affect understanding. Random examples are infectious diseases, social normative, attitudes to TB and antibiotics, lackadaisical care towards hygiene . .and a big one I fuss about: hwo to account for what we all make fairly. Fiscal Cliff, or still buy “High Yield”? Am I moral to take the Captain Sunshine stance and call it all BS? Or is there a Mike Milken defence, that doing some business, on any potentially viable terms, is good business? Too much of finance certainly is to me a morality play. Are Liar Loans the way someone unfairly done in by credit scoring can legitimately buy a home? . . This is what I meant by mentioning Grey Goo, the idea that as you make every aspect of life more detailed, and exponentiate the results of small shifts, the real limiters of multipliers increasingly become perceptual, because we started that without theory, and now theory is far more complex in interaction, and happens at a possibly accelerating rate. Do we finally subordinate such distinctions to a algo? Has really any large percent of the programmers read Henlien, Asimov, Arthur Koestler? Can we keep up with our own emanations? Some people in business can’t. I have lately wondered if I can, at all, and have been digging deeply into the consciousness, somewhat forgotten, of the princeps of how I named and described my objectives.
If this was about F1, it would be a simple question as to whether the oversight of what is really going on can keep pace at all with technology. I don;t think RRA etc. is good enough to instil the values, not do playboys really belong, because they simply won’t be there enough to apply in detail their attention, assuming it’s good. You may see I wonder that about my own life, but for the sport, I have seen such a increase in complexity and am barely into my fourth decade, that I think there is not enough actual thought as to the future considered. A silly book parodying a imaginary situation as First Boston messed up and was bailed by Credit Suisse, had a character say “Only men of steel, and cockroaches survive”. There’s the majority of the former, but a few too many of the latter. Dulles almost senseless by this year, there simply is so much in flux, I shan’t be bored going ahead. But as life becomes increasingly more complicated, I think the paradox is we do end up with more two dimensional, narrow, characters , and importantly fewer translators. Not being funny, but in all good humour, I reckon that the way I talk I had better have some kids who can actually understand what is going on! 🙂
I think the reason I disconnected this year, with a lot of the racing, and certainly being less able to convey what I mean, is that economy and all that, my own circumstantial prejudices noted, one heck of a lot is on the block, if not immediately, then soon. This intractable deal I still hope to close, really for pride than anything else (1987 – to date, depending how you count, I came in about ’98) is the first one I never insisted was fully documented, because I thought that written heads and terms would simply close off avenues that had not been conceived of by any party before. Funny thing: it gets, after a lot of animosity, friendlier week by week. Maybe that’s a thought in context of the CA? The similarity is I have a trump card to play. The dissimilar aspect is that I do not mind loosing it. I’m not owing to a big “PE” outfit or bondholders. Could Bernie have forgotten that? I’ll say for sure, I did better, starting out, when I knew I had little or nothing to loose.
(I will seriously consider in future donating to a charity for each word I scribble, just I don;t know it will do so well as this one would have, being a more complex thought)
all best,
~ j