Autoblog, my source for all news about cars, ran an article this morning titled “Poor people more likely to die in car accidents”. (Read it here.) This is bad news since the number of deaths on our roads has fallen per mile driven as more and more people drive in more and more cars. (Your daily commute might be the best evidence of the more and more part of this story.)

As an economist my first reaction to the headline was “why?”. After reading the article and thinking about it like an economist it’s actually pretty obvious. To the extent the following things are more likely, more poor people will die in car accidents:
1. Poor people drive older cars that are less safe and less well maintained.
2. Older cars have less safety devices.
3. Poor people live in regions and neighborhoods with fewer emergency services and medical facilities.

It’s not that poor, less educated people drive badly, nor engage in more risky driving behavior, or share the road with worse drivers (we all do that,) it’s primarily that poor people are less likely to have good outcomes once they get in a car accident. Of course, this might not be the biggest problem facing the poor in America.

…but the cover of Excellence magazine, dedicated to Porsche:

Thanks to Zach Mayne for featuring my black Cayman GTS on the cover and lead article. Zach had previously written two articles on my 2005 MINI Cooper S, with one featured in Bimmer magazine. But this is my first cover. Woohoo!

From The Economist:

Look how many are in Australia! …and some of us decide to leave and live elsewhere. Odd.

Good penmanship is a disappearing art (as perhaps we can hope is the masculine form of the term) in our world of the increasing use of electronic devices to write and communicate, as well as create art. Jake Weidmann is the youngest of 12 Master Penmen (again the masculine noun) in the world. Take a look at this video about him:

Master Penman Jake Weidmann

This is inspirational. This is not writing, it’s not calligraphy, it’s not art. It’s something of all three, and more. In fact, Jake talks about the power of the pen, and the importance of penmanship in our world in this TEDx talk.

As an economist, perhaps…

I don’t know where the center of the universe is (it might not even be knowable) but I know where The Center of The Universe is, exactly! Here’s a picture of it, in fact:

Yup, that’s it! Not what you were expecting? The singularity that created the expanding universe is likely still located at its center, and this structure is both singular, and labeled:

I work about 100 meters from The Center of The Universe, and you can visit it, as it’s located on the campus of the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque.

Pretty neat!

This last weekend Jordan Spieth won the US Open hosted by the US Golf Association (USGA). It is the second major championship of the four majors: the Master’s, the US Open, the Open Championship (sometimes called the British Open), and the PGA Championship, hosted by the Professional Golfers Association. The rules that qualify players for each of the majors are rather complicated, but generally the best professional golfers in the world play all four majors and there are more amateurs in the Open championships, although they rarely make up more than 10% of the field.

This year’s US Open was controversial because it was played on a “new” course called Chambers Bay in University Place, Washington. It is a links style course, similar to those on which the British Open is played, and quite rare in the US. It was built on an old gravel pit, and looked like shit to me. With only one tree on the entire course, and old concrete structures making the landscape look more like Dunkirk, both fairways and greens are made of fescue grass, the terrain is extremely undulating, and the bunkers look more like diagrams of viruses than nice little beans. Apparently golf can be played on any surface since it’s really a competition to find the best player in the event, and so long as everyone has to play the same holes and surfaces, it’s all fair and the best player will emerge.

The 115th playing of the US Open ended up creating a fantastic finish for fans of golf as a competitive sport, so perhaps all the grumbling about the venue was unimportant. As the winner of the Master’s this year, and now holding two of the four cups for a Grand Slam, Jordan Spieth may be the best golfer in the world, even if Rory McIlroy can claim that title officially as the number one ranked player in the world. The US Open highlighted how great McIlroy actually is, as well as Jason Day, Adam Scott, Schwartzel, Snedeker and Oosthuizen for example. It provided more evidence that the glory days of Tiger Woods are well behind him, and Phil Mickelson will remain a crowd favorite even if he won’t win another major ever again. Rickie Fowler, winner of the 2015 Player’s Cup, didn’t much help his cause of proving that he’s a better golfer than his record shows.

Other than the golf course, and the player’s struggles, the biggest problem at the US Open was the FOX television coverage. While The Shark Greg Norman did an OK job, Joe Buck, the network anchor who seems more at home calling MLB or NFL games than golf matches, was a disaster, as was the camerawork (where’s the gdam ball…?) and the editing–moving away from still rolling balls to watch a player chat with his caddy about which way the wind is blowing. Let’s hope NBC Sports and its Golf Channel don’t lose any more important championship coverage deals…

Like many car nuts, I’m fascinated by YouTube videos of timed laps of the Nurburgring Nordschliefe–Jackie Stewart’s green hell. The first video I ever saw of a lap of the ‘Ring was of Derek Bell in a Porsche 956, which remains the fastest lap ever recorded on video (even though the video quality is terrible.) Bell narrates the lap, which adds to its value, even if it’s about the worst video of a Ring lap. Stefan Bellof, another Porsche factory driver, holds the official fastest lap record of 6’11”, which is amazing. In the Bell video he is passed by Jackie Ickx, also a factory driver, and Bell laments he is unable to keep up with Ickx because of the weight of the film equipment in his car! Bellof would die in 1985 in a horrific crash at Spa while passing Ickx at Eau Rouge. He was only 27 years old.

There have been many in-car videos of Ring laps thanks to it becoming the unofficial metric for supercar performance in recent years. Every manufacturer, even small ones like Pagani, wants to claim the fastest production car lap of the Nordschliefe. Porsche currently holds that crown with a lap of 6’57” in a 918 Spyder. (Just check out the video quality on that lap!)

Today I saw this cool comparison video of a Lotus Exige S on the left and the new Porsche Cayman GT4 on the right. What this video shows, and the thing that fascinates me the most about all these videos, is how difficult the circuit is, and how much work the driver must do to keep the car on the track. Just look at how much steering input is required! It has to be incredibly exhausting to do even one of these laps. They have a 24 hour race on this circuit every year, with cars going almost as fast as these production cars. Fortunately drivers are only allowed to race for 150 minutes before taking at least two hours rest.

Professionals often make the things they do look easy. Take professional golfers, for example, the best of which look relaxed, completely in control, and having fun.

The same is true for someone like Zach Mayne, a much-published photographer and writer of magazine articles about cars. His articles appear in Excellence (Porsche), Bimmer (BMW) and Forza (Ferrari), as well as many other magazines. He makes photos like this:

A Porsche Cayman GTS (981) and a Porsche Cayman R (987) out for a little spirited driving. I have always loved these “cars are obviously moving” photos, which it works out requires some planning, another car (preferably a Boxster or similar), and a whole lot of skill and practice. Zach brought all those things to this image!