New rule on car weight bothers Patrick

The IndyCar Series' biggest driver doesn't see eye to eye with its smallest one.

The series' new rule that attempts to equalize the weights of cars, including the driver, is "the first step in making things fair," Justin Wilson said Thursday at Homestead-Miami Speedway, where the 2008 IndyCar Series begins with the Gainsco 300 on Saturday night....

IndyCar officials haven't announced specifics of the rule. Spokesman John Griffin said it's likely to establish several weight categories, with the heaviest drivers able to subtract weight from their cars and the lightest having to add as much as 35 pounds.....

Found via wcg's LJ, a Slate series on "American Lawbreaking" (namely, the laws that are not only routinely broken, but routinely expected to be broken with a wink and a nod, if that, from the authorities).

This is one reason why I keep coming back to the idea that all laws should expire after twenty years or so (the same law could be passed again, with or without modification, but in the absence of such an active step the law would go away).

Eugene Robinson's column in today's Washington Post has what I think is an insightful take on the reaction to Apple's latest price-cut announcements (about which thatcrazycajun and scruffycritter commented):

Poked in the i
If I were an iPhone owner, I'd be hopping mad. I'd be iRate.....

But when chief executive Steve Jobs announced Wednesday that Apple was slashing the iPhone's price by a third -- meaning that owning a slice of the future now sets you back only $399 -- the iPhone Internet forums lit up with buyers who felt they'd been taken for chumps....

Occasionally, there's a real breakthrough. But mostly what we're getting from the purveyors of electronic devices are incremental advances and improved packaging. Jobs was quick to realize that you have to sell image along with the gizmo.

This time, though, he has failed to live up to one clause in his implied contract with iPhone buyers. The sky-high price was supposed to guarantee a decent period of exclusivity. For a time, if you bought an iPhone, you were supposed to be the envy of your friends. The ability to show off all the neat things it could do was your compensation for the fact that the iPhone didn't really change your life.

Eventually, you understood, everybody would have one -- as happened with the iPod. But after spending $599 for a cellphone, the aura of supercool should have lasted longer than a couple of months.

Sorry if you feel cheated. As the man said, that's technology.

I think that nails the underlying cause of much of the early-purchaser irritation.