Uruguay mourns writer Benedetti

Uruguay mourns writer Benedetti (BBC)

Celebrated Uruguayan writer Mario Benedetti dies (CNN)

Adiós al poeta del compromiso (El Pais, España)

El impacto de un adiós (El Pais, Uruguay)

Morre aos 88 anos o escritor uruguaio Mario Benedetti (FdSP, Brasil)

Q2237 on the news

Astrónomos de la Universitat observan las proximidades de un agujero negro supermasivo

Astrónomos de la Universidad de Valencia están determinando con precisión el tamaño del disco de acrecimiento que alimenta el agujero negro central de un cuásar. La detección inequívoca de microlensing cromático en el sistema lente gravitatorio Q2237+0305 (también conocido como Cruz de Einstein), recientemente publicada en el Astrophysical Journal, ofrece perspectivas sin precedentes para el estudio de las propiedades físicas de los discos de acrecimiento.

El efecto lente se produce cuando la luz emitida por un objeto distante, la fuente, es desviada por una masa, la lente, ubicada entre el objeto y el observador. En el caso de Q2237+0305 la luz de un cuásar distante es desviada por una galaxia espiral cercana dando lugar a cuatro imágenes del cuásar localizadas alrededor del núcleo galáctico.

Si bien el efecto lente gravitatoria es independiente de la longitud de onda, en muchos casos se observan diferencias de color entre las diferentes imágenes del cuásar. Una de las posibles causas de este efecto de cromaticidad es el microlensing cromático. Cuando una estrella u objeto compacto de una galaxia lente se ``cruza" sobre la imagen de un cuásar ésta sufre una amplificación conocida como microlensing. Esta amplificación depende del tamaño de la fuente, en este caso el disco de acrecimiento del cuásar. Es de esperar que la emisividad del disco de acrecimiento dependa de la temperatura y, por lo tanto, que se observen diferentes amplificaciones a diferentes longitudes de onda. Este efecto se conoce como microlensing cromático y, sin lugar a dudas, es una poderosa herramienta para estudiar la estructura de los discos de acrecimiento.

Un grupo de astrónomos integrado por la doctorando Ana Mosquera, el Prof. José Muñoz, ambos de la Universidad de Valencia, y en colaboración con el Prof. Evencio Mediavilla del Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, han detectado microlensing cromático en una de las imágenes de Q2237+0305 utilizando imágenes de excelente calidad obtenidas con el Telescopio Óptico Nórdico (La Palma - España). Este resultado ha permitido realizar un análisis de los posibles escenarios físicos en los cuales dichos efectos puedan ser observables, así como también un estudio preliminar de la dependencia del tamaño del disco de acrecimiento con la longitud de onda a fin de testar los modelos de disco ya existentes. Estos datos, recientemente publicados en The Astrophysical Journal, conjuntamente con nuevas detecciones de microlensing cromático ya existentes permitirán obtener, por primera vez, restricciones muy precisas en el tamaño del disco de acrecimiento.

Source

Temporary (long) pause

A long time has passed since my last post, and time is becoming an even more scarce resource with so many things happening around. Because of that, I'm sad to say that possibly I'll not have that much time to blog in the near future, and the blog is going to be "paused" for a while. But I'll be back when everything is a little calmer. :-)

Image of the day

Why?

Dynamics of coin tossing is predictable

Finding of the week (unfortunately, for subscribers only, since there's no arXiv version):

Dynamics of coin tossing is predictable

Physics Reports in Press, Accepted Manuscript, Available online 7 September 2008

J. Strzałko, J. Grabski, A. Stefański, P. Perlikowski, T. Kapitaniak

Abstract

The dynamics of the tossed coin can be described by deterministic equations of motion, but on the other hand it is commonly taken for granted that the toss of a coin is random. A realistic mechanical model of a coin tossing is constructed to examine whether the initial states leading to heads or tails are distributed uniformly in phase space. We give arguments supporting the statement that the outcome of the coin tossing is fully determined by the initial conditions, i.e. no dynamical uncertainties due to the exponential divergence of initial conditions or fractal basins boundaries occur. We point out that although heads and tails boundaries in the initial condition space are smooth, the distance of a typical initial condition from a basin boundary is so small that practically any uncertainty in initial conditions can lead to the uncertainty of the results of tossing.

10/90

“Success is 10 percent inspiration and 90 percent perspiration.” T. Edison

From NYT.

August 17, 2008

Phelps’s Epic Journey Ends in Perfection

By KAREN CROUSE

BEIJING — It was so surreal to be Michael Phelps here, to listen to people debate whether he is the greatest athlete in Olympic history after he passed a group that included the runners Carl Lewis and Paavo Nurmi to become the one with the most gold medals.

Phelps is a self-described klutz, a real fish out of water on land, and he has a surgical scar on his right wrist to prove it. In October he took a nasty stumble that imperiled his pursuit of Mark Spitz’s single Games record of seven gold medals. Phelps, 23, slipped on a patch of ice and fell while climbing into a friend’s car in Michigan and broke his right wrist.

It made for a tough start to the training cycle that carried him through these Beijing Games, but the climax was perfect. On Sunday morning, Phelps swam the butterfly leg on the United States 4x100-meter medley relay that held off Australia in a world record-setting victory, giving Phelps his eighth gold medal of these Games and his 14th over all.

“I wanted to do something nobody ever did,” Phelps said. “This goes hand in hand with my goal of changing swimming.”

Spitz’s record lasted 36 years, and it figures to be even longer before the world sees Phelps’s successor. In 1972, Spitz swam two strokes, the freestyle and the butterfly, and none of his swims covered more than 200 meters. Phelps swam all four strokes, at distances ranging from 100 to 400 meters, and faced three rounds in each of his five individual events, one more round than Spitz had.

“I think it’s probably one of the greatest things sport in general has ever seen,” said Brendan Hansen, who swam the breaststroke leg in the winning relay Sunday. “The shame of it is other athletes aren’t going to realize how hard it is. The world is fast in swimming right now. The world was not fast when Mark Spitz did his seven.”

How fabulous was Phelps’s feat? At Sunday’s start, the Person’s Republic of Michael would have ranked fourth in gold medals and been ahead of all but 14 countries in the medal count.

Phelps’s longtime coach, Bob Bowman, has been preparing him for this since Phelps made his first Olympic team, in the 200 butterfly, as a 15-year-old in 2000. In the beginning it seemed foolhardy, sending Phelps out to swim 17 races over nine days.

As time went on, one could see Bowman’s vision crystallizing. At the 2004 Olympics in Athens, Phelps won six gold medals and two bronzes. Swimming the same program at the 2007 world championships, he won seven golds, missing a shot at an eighth when a relay he would have raced was disqualified in a preliminary heat.

Every time Phelps dived into the water for a final here, the ripples extended into every corner of the Water Cube. On Saturday, the Andrew Lauterstein of Australia won the bronze medal in the 100 butterfly. Standing on the medals podium alongside Phelps, Lauterstein said, he was thrilled to have had a cameo role in this recording of history. “I was saying to myself, ‘This is pretty special,’ ” he said. “ ‘Look around and try to remember this moment.’ ”

Lauterstein’s countrywoman, Liesl Jones, who won two golds and a silver here, said: “I just feel very privileged that I got to watch Michael Phelps win eight gold medals. That’s been the highlight of my Olympics.”

These Games produced many unforgettable swims. With Phelps contributing to seven, 25 world records fell, 10 more than were broken at the 2007 world championships in Melbourne, Australia. The pool was conducive to fast times. It was three meters, or 10 feet, deep, with two empty lanes on either side serving as buffers to keep waves from ricocheting. The new corset-like suits, which shoehorn the swimmers’ bodies into more streamlined positions, also had a role in the record assault.

Not to be overlooked is the psychological component. When one swimmer achieves what was once unthinkable, be it Phelps breaking 1 minute 43 seconds in the 200-meter freestyle or 4:04 in the 400-meter individual medley, it makes every barrier suddenly look vulnerable.

“When you come out and swim fast times, people realize that it can be done,” Grant Hackett, a three-time medalist in the 1,500-meter freestyle, said. “You set that bar a bit high and people are going to come with you.”

As the meet went on, the otherworldliness of Phelps’s performance found expression in other swimmers’ tales. In the men’s 50 freestyle final on Saturday, the goggles of Eamon Sullivan, the Australian world-record holder, filled with water on his dive and he never recovered, finishing sixth.

In the third of Phelps’s five individual events, the 200-meter butterfly on Wednesday, his goggles were leaking so badly he could not see the ends of the pool. Counting his strokes to gauge where the walls were, he won and shaved six-hundredths of a second off his 17-month-old world record.

Katie Hoff came to Beijing billed as the female Phelps because she, too, had qualified in five individual events at the United States Olympic trials. After performing well below expectations and collecting one silver and two bronze medals, Hoff said her program had been too ambitious.

“Michael is doing what he’s doing,” she said, “and it kind of makes the rest of us look like if we don’t win a gold medal ...” Hoff’s voice trailed off.

Swimmers who, by any yardstick other than Phelps, were wildly successful here, were among the awed. The individual medley specialist Stephanie Rice, who became the fifth Australian to win three gold medals in a single Olympics, said, “I don’t even know how he does it.” Rice, who, like Phelps, competed in the 200 and 400 individual medleys and the 4x200 freestyle relay, became worn down from the stress and got sick. “I just don’t even know how he holds himself together,” she said.

There was one night when Phelps’s spirit felt weak. On Friday night, after winning the 200 I.M. and racing in the semifinals of the 100 butterfly, he said, “I was absolutely to the point of where I was like, ‘Oh my gosh.”

Phelps was absolutely to the point of despair after the fracture was discovered in his wrist last fall. Bowman said that when they talked immediately after the accident, Phelps was as upset as Bowman had ever seen him. “He was devastated,” Bowman said. “He kept saying, ‘It’s over. I’m finished.’ ”

The bad circumstance ended up doing Phelps a world of good. For a few weeks after the surgery, Phelps was confined to kicking in the pool with a kickboard while his teammates swam. All that kicking strengthened Phelps’s legs, which was like a fish growing more gills.

Phelps was already blessed with a killer kick, but his added strength was evident on the turns in his races here and at the finish of the 100 butterfly, his seventh event. In the last five meters, an exhausted Milorad Cavic was dragging his legs while Phelps used a strong kick to get his hands to the wall first, by a hundredth of a second.

With his victory in the 100 butterfly, Phelps tied Spitz’s record. Swimming the third leg of Sunday’s relay, Phelps propelled the Americans to first place from third, adding to his legend. The team of Aaron Peirsol, Hansen, Phelps and Jason Lezak was timed in 3:29.34, 1.34 seconds faster than the 4-year-old world record, set by the United States at the Athens Games, and 0.70 of a second ahead of Australia. On the freestyle leg, Lezak’s split of 46.76 — 0.70 of a second slower than his gallant effort in the 4x100 freestyle — was enough to hold off Sullivan.

With 16 overall Olympic medals, Phelps is behind only the former Soviet gymnast Laryssa Latynina, who has the most, with 18 over three Games.

“This is all a dream come true,” he said. “Doing all best times. Winning every race. Everything was accomplished that I wanted to do. It’s been one fun week, that’s for sure.”

Throughout this journey, Phelps has insisted he was not following Spitz’s footsteps but forging his own path. “I want to be the first Michael Phelps, not the second Mark Spitz,” he has said repeatedly.

Before traveling here from Baltimore, Phelps’s mother, Debbie, received a letter from Barbara Kines, who had taught Phelps in the third grade. Before he found an outlet for his abundant energy in swimming, Phelps had immense difficulties concentrating and sitting still, leading one of his grade-school teachers to wonder if he would ever be able to focus on anything.

Kines, recalling those days, wrote about how proud she was of Phelps and how, perhaps, it had never been focus he lacked, but, rather, a goal worthy of his focus.

The only loss Phelps sustained all week was for words. “I’ve been speechless,” he said. How could he explain all that he was feeling? “If you dream as big as you can dream,” he said, “anything is possible.”

DM confirmation??

Full text here, from Nature News.

Physicists await dark-matter confirmation

PAMELA mission offers tantalizing hint of success.

Geoff Brumfiel

Rumours are swirling that a European satellite mission may have detected dark matter, the mysterious particles thought to make up as much of 85% of all matter in the Universe.

Nature has learned that the PAMELA (Payload for Antimatter Matter Exploration and Light-nuclei Astrophysics) mission — a collaboration between Italy, Russia, Germany and Sweden — has detected a surplus of high-energy antielectrons whizzing through space. The antielectrons, also called positrons, could be the clearest signature yet of the dark matter lurking in the Milky Way, according to Dan Hooper, a theoretical physicist at Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois. “If it's true, it's a major discovery,” he says. 

[...]

For now, however, the community is waiting with bated breath. As McElrath says: “We all wonder what's going on up there.”

Back after a long pause

After a looooong time away for several different reasons (and yes, I must admit that I left the blog resting aside for a while), it's time to come back. To feel less guilt, a short review of some of the stuff that happened in the last 2 months and a half :-)

1. I've traveled to the US for a couple of conferences: "A Decade of Dark Energy" at the STScI, and "21 cm Cosmology" at the CfA, Harvard. Moreover, I had the chance to meet again, in the same week (!), two old friends I haven't seen since I left Trieste: Thomas Sotiriou, who is now a postdoc in the University of Maryland, in a short visit to DC, and Marcos Valdes, who was attending the 21 cm conference. By the way, both conferences have recorded the seminars, and they are available as webcasts (DE & 21).
   
   
   



2. I finally got a MacBook!! All I can say is that now I DO understand why so many people are crazy about them. Absolutely fantastic!!
   
   




3. I became 30...
   
   



4. We're still fighting with numerical issues of our MaVaN paper, but it seems that now things are converging (literally!), and it should appear on arXiv in the next weeks.
   
   



5. To keep it short, a last thing is that we are organizing in Valencia a school on neutrino physics, "Probing the Universe with Neutrinos". More on that soon.
   
   
6. etc, etc...
   

That's it for the moment. :-)

How to lose your luggage frequently...

• Create your own travel map or travel blog

In the meantime on the Blogosphere

Will Brazilian soap operas save (or doom) the planet? (via Tim Harford)

Darwin on-line (via Marginal Revolution).

Dawkins & Krauss (via 3quarksdaily).

LHC and the end of the world (shorter version in Cosmic Variance).

New dark matter detection claim (by Dennis Overbye).

John A. Wheeler, 1911-2008

Obituary on the NYT, by Dennis Overbye:

John A. Wheeler, Physicist Who Coined the Term ‘Black Hole,’ Is Dead at 96

WMAP 5 years

The WMAP 5 years data was just released!

It seems that, again, they got the old same 6 parameters LambdaCDM, but with much better constraints in all the other possible variations.

March 14 - TLP Day

Talk Like a Physicist Day, via CV.

To be (or "On Teletransportation")

Fantastic!

Hat tip: Marginal Revolution.

When Inflation meets Strings

Click on it for a larger version :-)

Via Fermilab Today (here for the .pdf).

From Physical Review D personal ads:

Mature paradigm with firm observational support seeks a fundamental theory in which to be embedded. No loop quantum gravity theories, please. Contact alan @ mit.edu.

Elegant theory of everything desires to explore the landscape with a phenomenon in the hope that it will lead to a prediction. Let’s get physical! Contact ed @ ias.edu.

Caffeine

For the coffee-dependents:

"Caffeine: A User's Guide to Getting Optimally Wired"
(by Developing Intelligence)

and don't forget to check

"The Complexity of Coffee"
(via Cosmic Variance)

Jonathan - Kamelo.Semos

New success in Spain, with fantastic lyrics :-) hahahahaha



Letra:
¡Jonathan! Que no te metas pa lo hondo,
que tu no sabes nadar, vente con el yayu, vente con la mama
que tu no sabes de ná, come tu bocata y no te bañes más
que tu no sabes nadar, vente con el yayu, vente con la mama
que tu no sabes de ná, come tu bocata y no te bañes más

¡Jonathan, Jonaaaaaathaaaaaaan! No vacile a la niñataaaas
¡Jonathan! Que no vacile a la niñaaaaaaataaaas…
que tú no sabes nadar, vente con el yayu, vente con la mama
que tú no sabes de ná, ¡come tu bocata y no te bañes más!
que tú no sabes nadar.
¡Jonaaaaaathaaaaaaan!

Hat tip: Papelybit

Will that be the final word against creationism??

Just got in my mail:

Science, Evolution, and Creationism Committee on Revising Science and Creationism: A View from the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Sciences and Institute of Medicine


In the book, Science, Evolution, and Creationism, a group of experts assembled by the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine explain the fundamental methods of science, document the overwhelming evidence in support of biological evolution, and evaluate the alternative perspectives offered by advocates of various kinds of creationism, including “intelligent design.” The book explores the many fascinating inquiries being pursued that put the science of evolution to work in preventing and treating human disease, developing new agricultural products, and fostering industrial innovations. The book also presents the scientific and legal reasons for not teaching creationist ideas in public school science classes.

"Hubble Finds Double Einstein Ring"

Full story here.

Hat Tip: cvj

5 years ago

"El primer síntoma de la vejez es que uno empieza a parecerse a su padre" G. García Marquez.

My father surely would agree with that.

Hacking Boeing's 787...

If you, like me, think that flying is for birds :-), an extra reason to be worried... (Via Wired).

FAA: Boeing's New 787 May Be Vulnerable to Hacker Attack


Photo: Robert Sorbo / Corbis, Wired

Boeing's new 787 Dreamliner passenger jet may have a serious security vulnerability in its onboard computer networks that could allow passengers to access the plane's control systems, according to the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration.

The computer network in the Dreamliner's passenger compartment, designed to give passengers in-flight internet access, is connected to the plane's control, navigation and communication systems, an FAA report reveals.

The revelation is causing concern in security circles because the physical connection of the networks makes the plane's control systems vulnerable to hackers. A more secure design would physically separate the two computer networks. Boeing said it's aware of the issue and has designed a solution it will test shortly.

Full story here.

LSST Receives $30 Million

Via Interactions.Org

LSST Receives $30 Million from Charles Simonyi and Bill Gates



The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) Project is pleased to announce receipt of two major gifts: $20M from the Charles Simonyi Fund for Arts and Sciences and $10M from Microsoft founder Bill Gates.

Under development since 2000, the LSST is a public-private partnership. This gift enables the construction of LSST's three large mirrors; these mirrors take over five years to manufacture. The first stages of production for the two largest mirrors are now beginning at the Mirror Laboratory at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona. Other key elements of the LSST system will also be aided by this commitment.

The LSST exemplifies characteristics Simonyi and Gates have exhibited in their successful lives and careers – innovation, excitement of discovery, cutting edge technology, and a creative energy that pushes the possibilities of human achievement. The LSST leverages advances in large telescope design, imaging detectors, and computing to engage everyone in a journey of cosmic discovery.

Proposed for "first light" in 2014, the 8.4-meter LSST will survey the entire visible sky deeply in multiple colors every week with its three-billion pixel digital camera, probing the mysteries of Dark Matter and Dark Energy, and opening a movie-like window on objects that change or
move.

"This support from Charles Simonyi and Bill Gates will lead to a transformation in the way we study the Universe," said University of California, Davis, Professor and LSST Director J. Anthony Tyson. "By mapping the visible sky deeply and rapidly, the LSST will let everyone
experience a novel view of our Universe and permit exciting new questions in a variety of areas of astronomy and fundamental physics."

The LSST will be constructed on Cerro Pachón, a mountain in northern Chile. Its design of three large mirrors and three refractive lenses in a camera leads to a 10 square degree field-of-view with excellent image quality. The telescope's 3200 Megapixel camera will be the largest digital camera ever constructed. Over ten years of operations, about 2000 deep exposures will be acquired for every part of the sky over 20,000 square degrees. This color "movie" of the Universe will open an entirely new window: the time domain. LSST will produce 30 Terabytes of data per night, yielding a total database of 150 Petabytes. Dedicated data facilities will process the data in real time.

"What a shock it was when Galileo saw in his telescope the phases of Venus, or the moons of Jupiter, the first hints of a dynamic universe" Simonyi said. "Today, by building a special telescope-computer complex, we can study this dynamism in unprecedented detail. LSST will produce a database suitable for answering a wide range of pressing questions: What is dark energy? What is dark matter? How did the Milky Way form? What are the properties of small bodies in the solar system? Are there potentially hazardous asteroids that may impact the earth causing significant damage? What sort of new phenomena have yet to be discovered?"

"LSST is just as imaginative in its technology and approach as it is with its science mission. LSST is truly an internet telescope, which will put terabytes of data each night into the hands of anyone that wants to explore it. Astronomical research with LSST becomes a software issue - writing code and database queries to mine the night sky and recover its secrets. The 8.4 meter LSST telescope and the three gigapixel camera are thus a shared resource for all humanity - the ultimate network peripheral device to explore the universe" Gates said. "It is fun for Charles and me to be a team again supporting this work given all we have done together on software projects."

"The LSST will be the world's most powerful survey telescope. This major gift keeps the project on schedule by enabling the early fabrication of LSST’s large optics and other long-lead components of the LSST system," said Donald Sweeney, LSST Project Manager.

LSST is designed to be a public facility - the database and resulting catalogs will be made available to the community at large with no proprietary restrictions. A sophisticated data management system will provide easy access, enabling simple queries from individual users (both professionals and amateurs), as well as computationally intensive scientific investigations that utilize the entire database. The public will actively share the adventure of discovery of our dynamic Universe.

More information about the LSST including current images, graphics, and
animation can be found at http://www.lsst.org

In 2003, the LSST Corporation was formed as a non-profit 501(c)3 Arizona corporation with headquarters in Tucson, AZ. Membership has since expanded to twenty two members including Brookhaven National Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Columbia University, Google Inc., Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Johns Hopkins University, Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology - Stanford University, Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network, Inc., Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, National Optical Astronomy Observatory, Princeton University, Purdue University, Research Corporation, Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, The Pennsylvania State University, The University of Arizona, University of California, Davis, University of California at Irvine, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, University of Pennsylvania, University of Pittsburgh, and the University of Washington.

Today iPod is playing...

Blower's Daughter
Damien Rice




And so it is
Just like you said it would be
Life goes easy on me
Most of the time
And so it is
The shorter story
No love, no glory
No hero in her sky

I can't take my eyes off of you
I can't take my eyes off you
I can't take my eyes off of you
I can't take my eyes off you
I can't take my eyes off you
I can't take my eyes...

And so it is
Just like you said it should be
We'll both forget the breeze
Most of the time
And so it is
The colder water
The blower's daughter
The pupil in denial

I can't take my eyes off of you
I can't take my eyes off you
I can't take my eyes off of you
I can't take my eyes off you
I can't take my eyes off you
I can't take my eyes...

Did I say that I loathe you?
Did I say that I want to
Leave it all behind?

I can't take my mind off of you
I can't take my mind off you
I can't take my mind off of you
I can't take my mind off you
I can't take my mind off you
I can't take my mind...
My mind...my mind...
'Til I find somebody new

Happy New Year...

From PHD.

Merry Xmas

Picture taken 2h ago at home :-)

Hubble on Dark Energy

New cool Hubble site on Hubble discoveries, this one about Dark Energy. Worth checking it!!

PS: Long time with no postings. It has been a busy month, with lots of travels, etc. Soon I shall come back to posting massively :-)

SPFC to the five

Congratulations to São Paulo Futebol Clube (care with the hymn)

5 times National soccer champion!!! Unarguably the best Brazilian soccer team!! :-) :-)







PS: By the way, in 2014 there will be an extra reason to be in Brazil. But I still don't have an opinion if that is good or bad (also sportively)...

Earthquaking Dark Energy

Bizarre and funny enough so that I cannot avoid posting it :-) Risa writes on CV about her talk on Dark Energy,

As mentioned yesterday, I just gave a public lecture about dark energy.
I think the lecture went well. As Jamie said in the comments below, it was literally earthshaking.
[...]
Right after the words came out of my mouth, “Dark Energy, it Stinx, but it Rocks!”, the earth started shaking. Yes, indeed, there was a 5.6 magnitude earthquake, just about 25 miles from where I was speaking, right in the middle of my talk.

Full post here.

Learning of the day

America has 62 percent of the world's [scientist] stars as residents, primarily because of its research universities which produce them. Migration plays a significant role in some developing countries.

[Paper here or here]

Via Tyler Cowen.

Not a Gedankenexperiment

SMBC

Summary of the F1 season

Fair (sport) world

After so much discussion, spying, etc...

Raikkonen wins race and title in Brazil!



Amazing race!! Mistake(s) by Hamilton, McLaren unable to follow the Ferrari's pace, and in the end the most deserved result for everybody!

Congrats to the Finnish, and a much needed lesson to McLaren team :-)!!!

Immigrants...

Your country needs them!

They should read that in Spain... better saying, in whole Europe!

Via Freakonomics.

Team-Mates

I know I'm blogging a lot about F1 lately, but this season has been being so amazing that I cannot avoid doing that!

Photo: Alonso & Hamilton, Italian GP, 2007.

Anyway, it seems I missed those statements by Hamilton:

"I mean, if the team want to keep him, they keep him, but I'm here as long as they want me," said Hamilton, speaking before winning the Japanese Grand Prix.

"I don't know who else would slip in here, but I'd much rather it were Fernando at Ferrari and me at McLaren."

So now he wants Alonso out of the team!! McLaren is really playing a strange game... In the words of the three times world champion Nelson Piquet,

When asked whether it was normal that Hamilton should say he wants Alonso to leave the team, Piquet said: "No, it's not. No driver should behave that way with his teammate, much less when it's a rookie against a world champion."

But the best part of the interview with Piquet was the one below :-)

His [Alonso's] objective was to psychologically destabilise Hamilton, as I used to do with (Nigel) Mansell by saying his wife was ugly and he was dumb..."

Photo: Piquet and Mansell, Austrian GP, 1987.