Voting with your (remote control) thumb?

JohnnyKnockdown said:

How do you feel about cannibalism?

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As long as its consensual, I see no harm.

Kropotkin said:

If I were to spend my time bigging up MotoGP, I would be accused of being a stooge for the sport. Nobody would believe me, because they see the races for themselves. Right now, I'm being accused (on my own website, nota bene) of being a stooge for Dorna, because I dared to challenge Honda's arguments. If I were to write "what a fantastic sport MotoGP is, really exciting, don't know what all the fuss is about" I'd be accused of being a Dorna stooge, and for closing my eyes to the problems.



Yes, the sport needs promoting, yes, the positive sides need highlighting. But these MotoGP bikes do not stir my soul. They are too clinical. The riders I can admire, precisely because of the fact that these bikes are so clinical. Pedrosa, Lorenzo, Stoner have all exceeded their predecessors by a massive margin, because these bikes are so immensely difficult to ride to the very limit. The precision these three achieve is breathtaking. The problem is, when ridden correctly, these bikes look easy to ride. They barely move, Dorna's TV feed has to slow the speed down to 1000fps for viewers to appreciate the magnificence of both man and machine. That's your problem right there.



Anyway, enough self-justification. If you don't like what I do, then I suggest you find other websites to read and put me on ignore, I am just trying to pass the time until I finally die (and am hopefully composted, or turned into Soylent Green) as painlessly as possible.

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Damned if you do damned if you don't, eh? What is a journalist job? What do we expect from journalists? Kropo, I'd say your balance of reporting is a unique positive stand out from the rest of the sport media. Do you know this? Apart from the compliments and detractions you get, do you know that your site and reporting style is a unique refreshing stand out? Journalist are for the most part humans, so of course we are all flawed with some bias here and there, some more than others, and much like the readers, we have our own inclinations. But to make a general media comparison, the Fox news of the worlds are to be avoided, and you are no FoxGP news. Please, don't ever become a propaganda arm of GP as it seems its being suggested? (Unsure, if so, baffling). I’m laughing, because I’ve suggested the opposite, that is, not enough investigative reporting has occurred, and rather the media tow the Dorna party line, haha. Its certainly obvious to most diehard fans (of which the sport has a small fraction as most are more responsible about their lives) that your site and takes are distinctive and exceptional. I find much pleasure in being able to exchange with your opinions in real time, and that takes big balls I suppose from a mildly public figure, especially the times you’ve been asked to defend your opinion. I've emailed other journalist and mailed letters too, only to get back lame standard answers (and thats in the rare occasion I got a response).



Lets leave the promoting of the sport to say, …the…promoters, shall we.



You bring up a good point, and that is that the product on the field is a result of the arbitrary rules for the formula. That is something we need to be reminded of, as many still don’t get this concept. The “clinical” nature of the riding is simply a result of the nature of the machine. Except, I disagree with you that only the “aliens” can ride them in such a way (I noticed you’ve reduced your list to “3”…for now). As you propose that the bikes are “clinical” this also should makes us realize that the minor differences between entries translates into massive parity issues that are manifested in results. If the bikes are more precise as you say, then any small deviations of the best packages makes their riders appear inept (again, watch for VR to be on the podium regularly next year). Why this reality continues to be overlooked or glossed over is amazing.





“Passing the time until I finally die….”, uhm, melodramatic much? Hahaha. Dude, honestly, I told you once before, and I’ll say it again, one of the scariest things I’ve ever read from you was you periodically considering retiring, that would be really a ....... tragedy (its bad enough that we have to stomach the best rider in the sport quit much too early, considering that us diehards look to the super-slow motion clips like they are .....) Back in the day, I’d go to the mail box to see of that monthly issue had finally arrived so I could thumb through the glossy pictures of riders (this was before Nicky, though I’ll admit, I still thumb through the glossy pics with much the same enthusiasm, maybe even more). But in the age of the internet and tweets and ...., I always check to see whats up in the morning before work, that usually involves checking your site to see what new horseshit Carmelo has been up to. Regardless, don’t expect me to agree with everything you post, as I’m still at odds with you over this use of the ........ lazy “alien” concept. You’re simply wrong on this one.

Kropotkin said:

Dear Powersliders,



Thank you for your vote of confidence, but I think I prefer to being a whiny little ......



Yours,



Kropotkin

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...., you guys are posting too quick on this thread. So, ooops, I started my post before I read this. Sorry for my attempt at a "vote of confidence" to you. Please disregard the above, continue with your ..... ... ways then.

Kropotkin said:

As long as its consensual, I see no harm.

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You Netherlandians are so enlightened!

Jumkie said:

Lets leave the promoting of the sport to say, …the…promoters, shall we.

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....... Dorna? Are you kidding me?

Jumkie said:

“Passing the time until I finally die….”, uhm, melodramatic much?

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I am an atheist. Worse still, I spent way too much time reading existentialist literature when I was a teenager. To me, the purpose of life is to fill your time usefully until you die.

Jumkie said:

Regardless, don’t expect me to agree with everything you post, as I’m still at odds with you over this use of the ........ lazy “alien” concept. You’re simply wrong on this one.

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Yes, alien is lazy. But it is also accurate. The results and the timesheets bear it out. Nobody can stay with Stoner, Pedrosa, Lorenzo. This, I might add, is also down to the support they get from the garage, having a great crew chief makes a big difference here.

Geonerd said:

You Netherlandians are so enlightened!

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Food taboos are funny. People balk at the idea of eating insects, and yet will die for lobster and shrimp. Shrimp are basically the cockroaches of the sea.

J4rn0 said:

F1 is car racing. Everybody can relate to holding a steering wheel (however illusory that feeling may be). Driving a car on the highways, everybody also becomes familiar with fighting off sleep... So the masses are perfectly trained for appreciating F1

For motorcycle racing, you need a good show and some real on-track rivalry and real or contrived off-track drama (yes, a la Rossi... even my grandmother knows who he is) to attract those who don't ride and cannot immediately relate to just holding handlebars, opening throttle with the right wrist and leaning into corners. It looks fantastic to us, but non-bikers remain indifferent. And the 'pure prototype' excitement is confined to an even smaller, esoteric circle of worshippers...

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Everybody can relate to cars, I thought this was a universal common knowledge as to why car racing is infinitely more popular. Amazing, another post I agree with you. Btw, your grandma is a bopper too? (Just kidding, my attempt at lighthearted humor).

povol said:

But instead of agreeing with the reality of the sport, you are more than happy to preach a false narrative that all of a sudden, we dont have have fender bashing start to finish racing. That is not reality. The reality is, a handful of new age riders have reached a plateau that is so precise, it should be celebrated, not scorned. Same with the bikes and the eggheads that build them. Like MA said, instead of concentrating on Dorna's narrative, educate people on how damn near impossible it is to ride at these limits for 45 minutes without making a mistake. Write articles for the casual fan who has no idea how exceptionally talented these guys really are who can pull off damn near impossible week after week. That is what they should be selling, not rules changes that take us back to a mythical era that never existed.

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The GPC did not conceive of MotoGP b/c they were happy with the status quo of 500cc two-stroke MotoGP. All of them had expectations for how MotoGP would grow and the business objectives it would achieve. For the last decade, MotoGP has fallen short of its benchmarks due to unsafe competition, global financial instability, regulatory instability (CVC anti-trust; GPC restructuring), and technical instability in the regulations, namely the conversion of MotoGP from engine-displacement-controlled-performance to fuel-capacity-controlled-and-tire-controlled-performance.



Investment, participation, marketing, etc all revolve around the expectations of the people who pay the bills. MotoGP falls short of its performance benchmarks. That is reality.



The end goal is to find a situation where everyone involved is better off. Krop doesn't often waste his time with irrelevant abstracts, like the true history of the sport, which makes him appear much closer to the sport than most people.

mylexicon said:

Krop doesn't often waste his time with irrelevant abstracts, like the true history of the sport,

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Motorcycle racing started when the second ever motorcycle was built.

Kropotkin said:

Food taboos are funny. People balk at the idea of eating insects, and yet will die for lobster and shrimp. Shrimp are basically the cockroaches of the sea.

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Now you're stealing my lines? I've been saying this for years. I don't eat crustacean for that very same reason. Bottom dwellers who spend their whole lives eating quite literally everybody's .... (that is ...., as in feces). Btw, I also use to not eat pork, until I went to the UK, seems I couldn't eat anything unless I had some swine. Speaking of which, how about cheese? We artificially induce some nasty ... white secretion from a field animal, let it sit until it coagulates, quite literally becomes rancid with rot, and then eat the .....

Kropotkin said:

Every Sunday (at Euro rounds at least) I sit in a room full of other journos and watch 3 races. The first two are accompanied by a lot of shouting, cheering and banter. The final one takes place to the sound of silence.



At least in the old days, when Doohan was dominating during one of the most tedious periods of motorcycle racing, the bikes looked really hard to ride.



I suppose I can always go off and write about a different sport, a properly pure sport. Like cycling or something.

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Thats because they were much harder to ride,they were very light with a hard hitting power delivery and not dressed up in nanny electronics,i put a post on a while ago saying build 25 Roc Yamahas and may the best man win,i also stated that the old 350 lc racing was very exiting to watch,at the end of the day its the electronic era that has put Moto gp were it is today,what ever happened to just riding the ....... thing.

Jumkie said:

Now you're stealing my lines? I've been saying this for years. I don't eat crustacean for that very same reason. Bottom dwellers who spend their whole lives eating quite literally everybody's .... (that is ...., as in feces). Btw, I also use to not eat pork, until I went to the UK, seems I couldn't eat anything unless I had some swine. Speaking of which, how about cheese? We artificially induce some nasty ... white secretion from a field animal, let it sit until it coagulates, quite literally becomes rancid with rot, and then eat the .....

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I love shrimp, and do not care that they eat faeces and other detritus. One of the greatest ironies is that lobster, that great delicacy, basically lives on rotting fish corpses.



As for cheese, my personal favorites are blue cheeses, which is basically mouldy milk.

birdman said:

Mental said if its a riders series then promote the riders. All of them. What tangent are you on? Its very simple, you cant answer it with economics, more to do with tribalism and primitive human emotions. Kroppo is from England, so is Crutchlow. Where's the article on Crutchlow? I know little about him, there's very little written about him. By comparison there's a lot written about Carmello. The question is why?

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Are you kidding? I can't open up the Brit media and not find a story of Cal as the center piece of their reporting in the last two years. What Brit media are you reading?



Second, I don't quite understand yours and Mentals takes on this topic toward Kropo other than the point that Dorna should be promoting riders equally, not just VR. Ok, we get that. But you ask Lex what "tangent" is he on? Uhm, the one that speaks to the problem of economics for the sport that obviously went completely over your head buddy.

Kropotkin said:

I love shrimp, and do not care that they eat faeces and other detritus. One of the greatest ironies is that lobster, that great delicacy, basically lives on rotting fish corpses.



As for cheese, my personal favorites are blue cheeses, which is basically mouldy milk.

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Shrimp and lobster are nasty in every which way, .... taste and ugly to look at. Milk is also ....... nasty ..... But that didn't stop me from bringing home 5, yes count them, 5 wheels of cheese from the UK. Apropos to this topic, I guess we know somethings are ...., but we subscribe to them anyway, eh.









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Kropotkin said:

....... Dorna? Are you kidding me?

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You may not be living in Great Britain any longer, but I thought at least you still had vestibules of their humor. [/background][/font]

Lobster is one Of the few Foods that we eat That looks exactly the same As when it was killed. I find thia creepy.

When i see people eating lobster i always picture a cartoon ala Gary Larson ( the far side) of a family of lobsters sitting around a dinner table with a bright red human corpse sitting atop, while they delightfully converse about tonight the fresh human delicacy they about to consume.

mylexicon said:

Let me get this straight. You and Mental accuse Krop of being unreasonable b/c he criticizes MotoGP. The non-hypocritical solution, naturally, is to criticize Krop and Dorna for criticizing MotoGP.



Then you say that solution for unreasonable criticism (in your opinion) is to embrace tribalism and primitive human behavior (unreason). When Krop's already unreasonable behavior (in your mind) doesn't make reasonable sense to you, you demand to know why?!



You and Mental want journalists to function as unpaid advertisers, and you want 'primitive human emotions' to be regular, predictable, and easy to manipulate. I don't know what to tell you. Seek psychological help?

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Still on that tangent. Since you're so interested, yes I have sought psychological help. Diagnosis, only mildly psychopathic , yet more than a little psychotic . How about you Dr Lex?



Enough of that. Are the origins and continued human attachment with sports in general, specifically these sporting 'heroes' we tend to worship, be better defined by economic theory of maximised social benefits. Maybe. Imo the origins are far more primitive, as in humans are social beings who once gathered around great tribal leaders, fierce warriors, men or women bleased with amazing physical abilities that we could all admire.



Sports are tribal man. The successful ones that recognise the social aspect as the core of existence are economically viable even with ever expanding costs. The ones that dont are in dire need of cost cutting.

There is an excess of technology nowadays. Honda is waiting that Yamaha remains without R&D money, and then there will remain only them. Wow... can't wait.

If on the other hand the bikes are leveled a bit to a more easily achievable and less expensive level, the best riders and best bikes will still win but there will be a much closer competition, with more competitors.

Where is the problem with that? Even something like the CRT concept (but with a real GP engine and decent electronics) would be fine -- such bikes would be better than the 990s of 2006 and awesome enough for the premier class to be a credible (and hopefully a much more entertaining) premier class.

birdman said:

Still on that tangent. Since you're so interested, yes I have sought psychological help. Diagnosis, only mildly psychopathic

, yet more than a little psychotic

. How about you Dr Lex?



Enough of that. Are the origins and continued human attachment with sports in general, specifically these sporting 'heroes' we tend to worship, be better defined by economic theory of maximised social benefits. Maybe. Imo the origins are far more primitive, as in humans are social beings who once gathered around great tribal leaders, fierce warriors, men or women bleased with amazing physical abilities that we could all admire.



Sports are tribal man. The successful ones that recognise the social aspect as the core of existence are economically viable even with ever expanding costs. The ones that dont are in dire need of cost cutting.

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It wasn't a tangent. It was a load-bearing structure central to your main point, which is why you reiterated the 'tangent' in your reply.



Yes, sports are rooted in some kind of instinctual behavior. Welcome to the dark, drafty basement (the cave) of the 200-floor skyscraper known as modern socio-economic theory. The rest of your life is trying to use reason to harness the power of your instincts to improve the plight of humankind. Were the Greeks the first civilization to harness sport on a macro-scale? Honestly, I don't know, but suffice it to say that human beings have been developing sports beyond its instinctual foundation for several thousand years.



The sports in need of cost-cutting are not those that follow the general tenants of reason and economics. The sports that need of cost-cutting are those that indulge in unreason. As far as I can tell, no one here is suggesting that the competitors hold hands and cross the finish line simultaneously; therefore, no one has neglected the core existence of sport.



We all expect the participants to compete, and given the current circumstances in MotoGP, forcing the manufacturers to compete exclusively on the track, not in the rulebooks and boardroom meetings, is priority #1. I don't think a spec-ECU should be part of that mission, but I'm not worried about the GPC restricting the influence of the manufacturers.

Kropotkin said:

Rossi's genius was that a: he realized that he needed a villain to play off, and created them in the shape of Max Biaggi and then Casey Stoner, and b: he was so confident in his ability to beat the opposition that he could afford to play with them. In the years prior to 2006, he only showed his hand once, in what I regard as his best performance, Phillip Island 2003, where he basically dropped his laptime by three quarters of a second a lap when he had to make up time.

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Yes, it was the PI race to which I was referring.



The villain thing was fine for valentino and probably even good for the sport, but tough on the designated villains and presumably also their families. I am obviously biased, but the depth of passionate hatred of stoner, one of the fastest and fairest (in races at least) riders there has ever been, by many on the websites seems to be genuine and imo is totally irrational, and must have been hard for his family to take whether or not he can handle it personally.The vilification he received for suffering what he (and I) believe to have been a genuine illness in 2009 and lack of support from pretty well everyone but in particular ducati (company management and sponsorship, not ducati corse) at that time is by his own account the major cause of his disillusionment with the sport.



I think very few genuinely hate rossi.

michaelm said:

The villain thing ...



I think very few genuinely hate rossi.

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I can list a few.



Correct, not everybody has the same thickness of skin. But I'd say it wasn't just VR though as usual, many followed is stupid lead when it comes to this ...., but the whole damn thing: media, spectators, some memers of the paddock, like bopperBurgess, and as you mentioned, his own employers. And I'll add, the world dominated by sanguines. CS thought he was competing in a semi-authentic sport, then he realized he was just another combatant in WWF, where his role was the bad guy. The champ walking away at the prime of his life is a big FU to the sport and apropos to this thread...and lobsters in general.

CS has been as much of trash talker as anyone else, demonstrably before he was even in Moto GP.