This is the legacy of the holy war waged by the former FIA president. The cause in question was to allow smaller teams to get into Formula 1. This is the outcome: two teams will limp into the start of the championship, a third is being pushed into the ring by an invisible hand – you can be sure it is not the hand of Adam Smith – and, as for the fourth, well, you would do better to call on Missing Persons to locate it. In the meantime, we have lost two constructors along the way, in the shape of BMW and Toyota, while at Renault, there’s not much left other than the name. Was it all worth it?

As fans have watched the progress (and non-progress) of the new teams over winter, many will have been wondering just how much of a success the FIA’s initiative to introduce new teams have been. A lot of political turmoil was caused last year when the FIA all of a sudden decided that ten teams on the grid is not enough.

Never mind the fact that there were just ten teams on the grid for the majority of the past decade, and it was never viewed as a problem before. And never mind that it was Max Mosley who originally said that the existence of teams like Williams was not how he envisaged the future of Formula 1.

Just like that — to prove some kind of political point, or maybe just for a bit of a scrap — he changed his mind. New privateers were now essential for the future of the sport. Manufacturers were driven out, to the point where basically only Mercedes are left (and Ferrari remain, but clearly unhappy with the way the sport is run).

Quantity over quality?

Formula 1 2010 brings yet another radical new look to the sport. There is no doubt that the greatly shaken-up grid has generated a large amount of interest. But there is a distinctly different style to the grid. This brings us to ask: is the new way better than the old way?

In recent years, the emphasis has been on the quality of the participants. Yes, there were relatively few entrants. Costs were sky-high. But viewers were guaranteed to be watching the best of the best.

It is probably no exaggeration to say that the 20 drivers in F1 were among the 25-or-so most capable people for the job. Pay drivers, who have been a fixture of motorsport since its earliest days, had all but vanished. Even the very worst of recent F1 drivers — the likes of Romain Grosjean or Nelsinho Piquet — would put drivers like Jean-Denis Délétraz or Ricardo Rosset in the shade.

I am all for new and privateer teams coming into F1. But it should be a proper process, and not rushed and contrived like the situation this year.

Although the history of the F1 Rejects — the remarkable drivers who ploughed on with their F1 careers despite not ever having a hope of achieving anything — is long and proud, the pinnacle of motorsport ought to be the pinnacle of motorsport. Right now, F1 is going through a process of artificial watering down. This is thanks to the FIA.

The FIA’s fundamental misunderstanding of motorsport

I have been genuinely worried by the FIA in recent years. They seem to have genuinely no idea what makes motorsport great. Witness the continued decline of the World Rally Championship. While it is currently undergoing a slight boost thanks to Kimi Räikkönen, it is otherwise a shadow of its former self. Meanwhile, the relatively new Intercontinental Rally Challenge, just a few years old and more or less invented by a television company, continues to gain admirers.

IRC is attracting attention because it gives the fans what they want. Meanwhile, the FIA continue to do mad things with the WRC, such as messing around with the calendar unnecessarily.

Up until recently, the idea that the FIA were totally clueless was just a hunch of mine. Sure, it has appeared that way for a long time. But maybe they saw the bigger picture. Perhaps the crazy “world engine” concept — whereby Formula 1, World Rally and World Touring cars would all share the same engine — really was needed in order to save the environment.

Well, no. It simply derives from a fundamental misunderstanding about what makes motorsport exciting to so many people.

The January edition of the excellent Motor Sport magazine podcast contained a truly shocking revelation that I’m surprised more hasn’t been made of. I urge you to listen to it. The relevant section is 35 minutes and 50 seconds in.

Motorsport journalist Nigel Roebuck recounts a meeting with Max Mosley:

He did actually say at one point — and he meant it, he wasn’t being facetious — we were talking about the spectators and he said, “Would they miss the noise, Nigel, do you think?”

I couldn’t believe he was asking the question. I said, “Max, the noise is half of it.”

And then he said, “I always find when I’m watching the race on television, the engine noise is such a distraction. I can’t hear what the commentator’s saying sometimes.”

And he wasn’t being facetious. It did strike me then — it does worry me. You know, “you and Bernie are the most powerful people in motor racing, and you’re not actually sure of the answer to that question. In which case, you’ve missed the point entirely.”

Thanks to the FIA’s recent moves, we are now in a situation where Formula 1 is no longer the elite sport that it was. I have recently been asked if the 107% rule — whereby excessively slow cars are weeded out during qualifying — is still in force. It hasn’t been for years, but it’s telling that some people haven’t even noticed that the rule was ditched long ago, but are now interested to find out if it still exists.

For the past few years, it didn’t matter whether the 107% rule existed or not. Every team was capable of producing a competitive car. Not this year.

Incidentally, the quotes from Max Mosley and Bernie Ecclestone about the introduction of the 107% rule are very interesting in relation to their recent policy of encouraging more small teams, regardless of their quality:

Max Mosley: “Any small team which is properly organised will be able to get within the the 107 per cent margin.”

Bernie Ecclestone: “Formula 1 is the best. And we don’t need anything in it that isn’t the best.”

In a letter (PDF link) sent to each of the teams earlier this month, Max Mosley said:

Formula One is becoming unsustainable. The major manufacturers are currently employing up to 1000 people to put two cars on the grid. This is clearly unacceptable at a time when all these companies are facing difficult market conditions.

But it makes me wonder quite what qualifies Max Mosley to declare F1 “unsustainable”. I can’t help but notice a glaring hole in Mosley’s argument.

A central pillar of our economic system is the idea that individuals and firms are able to decide for themselves how best to use their resources. After all, the individuals and firms (in this case the F1 teams) have all the necessary information at their fingertips. If Formula 1 is sustainable for a team, that team enters. If it is unsustainable for a team, it does not enter. Simple as that.

If an F1 team finds it to its own advantage to employ 1,000 people to put two cars on the grid, so be it. That is a fact of life. If the teams really feel a need to cut costs, they will. It. Is. That. Simple. The idea that people make these decisions for themselves is a central pillar of liberal society.

Meanwhile Max Mosley, the head of the governing body, is sitting in an ivory tower and has seemingly just decided that he knows better than the teams. Despite the fact that he has absolutely no experience and no knowledge whatsoever of what it is like to run an F1 team in 2008. Sure, he was heavily involved in March — but that was over thirty years ago, when F1 was a very different world indeed.

To underline just how little information Max Mosley has on what it takes to run an F1 team, think back to his proposed budget cap. That was apparently met with some mirth among the teams. Flavio Briatore was particularly taken aback:

I already pay 40 per cent less than the cap. If I want to keep to the limit then I need to spend more. It’s nonsense.

So here is the situation. We have ten parties that find it sustainable to enter F1. We have one party that thinks it is not sustainable, and that is the party with the least amount of information on it.

Sure, there could and perhaps should have been twelve teams on the grid this year. But let us not forget that the reason the smaller teams left is because they were not given a suitable guarantee that customer cars would be allowed. And who is responsible for that? Oh yes, Max Mosley.

Right there, we had the perfect opportunity for costs to be cut in F1. But Max Mosley failed to let it happen. I can only conclude that he is not actually interested in cutting costs. This adds yet further weight to the suspicion that the FIA will use the “cost cutting” explanation to justify any of their mad schemes for the future of F1. “Cost cutting” is the back door through which Max Mosley’s endless vanity projects are shoved through.

You can choose which topics you’re interested in by distributing 20 points among 14 categories. I gave one point to each category then bumped up a few areas where I feel strongest. It then gives you a set of questions based on those topics.

Once you’ve answered them, it ranks the Presidential candidates in order of similarity. You can go right into each question and see how each of the candidates would answer each question, with all kinds of quotes, voting records and suchlike to back it up.

Of course, it’s not very fair for me to be waxing lyrical about American politics. I have never set foot in the country, and chances are I could have different views on American political issues if I actually lived there. A lot of these are very US-centric questions rather than the big ideological picture.

Still, it is interesting to learn a bit more about the candidates. The names we all see are Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Ron Paul and Rudy Giuliani. Sometimes John McCain. It’s not often you hear of any of the others. But it’s important to learn about them.

I remember at around this stage of the last US Presidential election we were discussing the Democratic candidates in our modern studies class. Trying to work out which of the candidates were the most important, our teacher immediately scored off John Kerry because he was a no-hoper! (In retrospect, she was actually probably right.)

Anyway, the quiz. The candidate who comes out as most similar to me is someone I’ve never heard of before — Mike Gravel. We are 81% similar, with very similar views on drugs, civil liberties, gay rights, crime and punishment, abortion, environment and immigration. But we have dissimilar views on social security and economics.

Second is someone else I’ve never heard of — Christopher Dodd, with 75%. We are different on social security and very different on economics. Dennis Kucinich also has 75%, but we disagree on taxes and budget, social security and economics.

Of the big guns, Barack Obama is fourth with 74% (different on taxes and budget, social security and very different on crime and punishment (Obama supports the death penalty)). Hillary Clinton is 66% similar (different views on taxes and budget, drugs, social security and very different on crime and punishment).

All of the Democratic candidates score more highly than the Republican candidates. The top Republican candidate for me is Ron Paul — 9^th with 61%. We have very similar views on drugs, civil liberties and crime and punishment, but very different views on immigration, health care and abortion.

Rudy Giuliani only comes out 13^th with 47%. We have very similar views on environment and gun control, but very different views on gay rights, Iraq and foreign policy, health care, civil liberties, drugs and crime and punishment.

My least similar is my namesake, Duncan Hunter. We are only 30% similar, with similar views on social security (and even that is only because neither of us has an opinion on it).

Via Blah Blah Flowers.

In a way you can understand the lack of information from before the 1990s on the web. After all, the web didn’t exist until 1989. But the meticulous recording of events since the invention of the web is dizzying. It’s good in some ways, but sometimes I come across a piece of useless information that makes me think, “Really, what is the point of that? Who thought it was worth their while to put this on the internet?”

A home for a large proportion of this useless information is Wikipedia. I should point out that I am generally in favour of Wikipedia as a quick and easy way to plug embarrassing gaps in your knowledge. And I think a lot of the criticisms some people make of Wikipedia are quite wide of the mark.

Wikipedia churns out astonishingly mind-bending articles like 0.999…, Architecture of Windows NT and Equipartition theorem. But Wikipedia also contains masses of articles concerning contemporary popular culture.

I do not at all mind Wikipedia carrying such articles (I read many of them myself), but it has to be said that the quality decreases pretty rapidly. Sometimes I read something in Wikipedia and can’t believe that I actually spent time reading it.

This evening I was innocently reading up on Bonde do Rolê because I have just bought their album, With Lasers. Overall it is an adequate encyclopedia entry. It delivers the facts in a fairly straight manner. But from the middle of nowhere, some way through the article, I was bombarded with this:

Rodrigo Gorky [is] the DJ/producer who, when combined with the powers of MC Marina Ribatski and MC/producer Pedro D’eyrot, create the hellish firestorm of beats and thunderous bass that is…Bonde do Rolê.

Someone has been reading too much music journalism. As if describing something as a “hellish firestorm of beats and thunderous bass” on a website that is meant to be a reasonably reliable source of reasonably impartial information wasn’t bad enough, they go and add an ellipsis to signify mock suspense. Do they think Wikipedia is just one long cheesy film trailer? It is such an irritating sentence. I would understand if somebody wrote it for the NME, but not Wikipedia.

But it is not the fawning that annoys me the most about pop culture articles on Wikipedia. It is a sometimes unbelievably anal focus on inconsequential information. Take this section from the article about Fonejacker.

The end of the show [Fonejacker's Christmas Message] displayed Fonejacker: Coming April 2007 – Don’t Pick Up The Phone.

In March, a teaser trailer started to air on Channel 4 and E4, which consisted of clips of the pilot put together into a thirty second advert, ending with e4.com/fonejacker, which redirected users to the Fonejacker MySpace page. [1]. However, for undisclosed reasons, the show was put on hold, and wasn’t aired in April. After this, a rumour spread that the show would start on June 7, 2007, but this also proved to be incorrect. Whilst fans thought there was no hope for the show, new trailers aired in June which saw the Fonejacker in his own flat performing various calls, and a television tuned into the news reporting “new sightings of the Fonejacker”. The advert ended with the catchphrase Don’t Pick Up The Phone and finished with the same E4 website. This was followed a couple of days after by a newer alternative advert.

This is a paragraph and a bit entirely dedicated to the different dates that the first proper series of Fonejacker was supposed to start. It is really just an incredibly long-winded way of saying, “The first series was delayed by a couple of months.” I mean, really. Big deal!

It’s just topped off by the phrase “fans thought there was no hope for the show”. I have images of some socially inept Fonejacker fan rushing to update Wikipedia with “useful information” about the latest teaser trail or even plain hearsay about possible transmission dates about a television series that he feared for the life of.

Then there are the articles which clunkily add news into an article with absolutely no regard given to the overall flow of the article. The following paragraph appears at the end of a section about the 2007 season in the article about Felipe Massa:

On 24 August 2007, Felipe Massa stated that he is a fan of Fenerbahçe [2] . Massa said: “Zico was idol of my childhood, Roberto Carlos is my best friend. I am a Fenerbahçe fan, because it is just like Brazilian team. I love Turkey, as I won my first championship in Turkey, it has special value for me.”

The whole paragraph is spew-worthy trivia which is placed in a section about Felipe Massa’s 2007 season. I don’t mind the inclusion of information like this, but it should be in a separate ‘Trivia’ section. It is jarring to be reading about Felipe Massa’s on-track events in one sentence and about his footballer pals in the next.

And don’t get me started on the sometimes cringeworthy articles about Boards of Canada. Just check out this one about Old Tunes which reports happenings on a messageboard as though it was as serious a situation as Watergate.

The thing is, though, I can understand why people put such information in Wikipedia pages, and even that there might be demand for such information. I would be interested in this kind of information if it was about a topic that I was really interested in. But it does make some Wikipedia articles look rather ragged and untidy, with a sometimes obsessive focus on inconsequential details.

I know I could edit the articles myself, but it would probably be fruitless. I don’t want to risk upsetting the obsessive Fonejacker fan. Besides, it would probably be reverted back anyway. Plus, I think the information is of value. Just, maybe not on Wikipedia.

Wouldn’t it be good if there was a Fanpedia? A wiki site where people are allowed to be disgustingly obsessed with the minutiae of their hobbies. This could leave Wikipedia to focus on information that has proved to be important over a period of time.

I guess Wikimedia would not be too keen to provide a ‘Fanpedia’ service. I wonder who would actually be prepared to fund one? Then we might find out the real value of this trivial information is not so great after all.

I think it looks revolting. It ensures that this season will be one of the ugliest in history, with Renault’s multicoloured vomit-coloured livery, Ferrari’s funny slanted subliminal Marlboro non-descript barcode and, of course, Toro Rosso’s paint factory explosion.

Now Honda have only gone and taken the Earth, and re-moulded it into the shape of a Honda RA107. Yuk!

But for those people who aren’t just interested in a racing car’s colours, Honda’s sponsor-free livery has raised more than an eyebrow around the place. Friends of the Earth have been particularly critical, pointing out the hypocrisy of a gas-guzzling Formula 1 team trying to push forward an environmental agenda.

On the other hand, as Ollie White points out, isn’t it better for a Formula 1 team to try and promote an environmental cause? That’s better than nothing, right? After all, if they didn’t, Honda could be accused by Friends of the Earth of burying their heads in the sand.

I think Friends of the Earth are being a little bit too harsh. It’s easy to paint a picture of motor racing being a horrible, over-indulgent, carbon emitting, environmentally unfriendly sport.

But the reality is a good deal more nuanced. Some say the F1 teams are there just to sell cars. But it’s worth remembering that they make cars as well.

As such, much of the life-saving technology that is in everyday use in road cars is developed, improved or even invented by motor racing teams. Once upon a time, the technology we take for granted today was the cutting-edge in motor racing. So motor racing has probably saved countless lives.

The strangest thing about this all is the revelation that Formula 1 has been carbon neutral for a whole decade! This is news to me, which immediately makes me suspicious.

But I mean how can a sport be carbon neutral? Has Bernie Ecclestone been going around planting trees on behalf of each of the teams? And does it count the testing, air travel to long distance races, and suchlike? This revelation poses more questions than it answers.

This whole thing does kind of prove one cast-iron law about environmentalism: don’t open your big yap about the environment, or you’re bound to be exposed as a hypocrite.

(eg. Do Friends of the Earth go without electricity then? Don’t they realise that electricity use contributes to one third of carbon emissions — ten times more than air travel. This makes them hypocritical environmentally unfriendly scum!!1!etc.)

Perhaps the worst thing about Myearthdream is the fact that it is blatantly designed to disguise the fact that Honda have not managed to find a new sponsor since the enforced departure of Lucky Strike.

When rumours that Honda was thinking of changing its livery first surfaced I was a little bit disappointed. Honda were in a unique position, where the colours of their tobacco sponsor coincidentally matched with the team’s traditional colours. All Honda had to do was remove the ‘Lucky Strike’ logos and it would have been fine. (Remember the ‘Impossible Dream’ advert…)

And who would have minded that? Nobody would have accused Honda of being hypocrites, or jumping on the bandwagon, or even of being unable to find a sponsor. The environmental message may be a laudable aim, but Honda are taking a hell of a lot of stick for it.

And perhaps this is deserved. After all, this is the big idea of Simon Fuller — a man who, it is worth remembering, was responsible for S Club 7 and Pop Idol. The man has brought nothing but pain to this world. This is just his latest hare-brained scheme.

The problem was that he was hired by Honda to do something. He would have been better off doing nothing, and sticking with Honda’s traditional colours. But he would be out of a job then.

That wasn’t just because we were using computers all the time. It was just that there really isn’t much need to write at all is there? The only thing I can think of is letter writing. But how often do you do that? Once a year, if that? Maybe, back in the day, people wrote letters to each other. Nowadays people keep in touch by IM or text message. Or, if you’re really old-fashioned, by email. No need to lift a pen.

It’s sensible for me just to avoid writing altogether because my handwriting is a complete mess, and it has been probably since I started secondary school. My lowercase letters are all over the place. If I’m not careful, my ‘b’ looks like an ‘S’, my ‘a’ and ‘o’ both look like an ‘e’, my ‘i’ looks like an ‘l’, my ‘g’ looks like a ‘y’, ‘m’ looks like an ‘n’. And ‘v’ and ‘u’ look exactly the same.

The article says, “Teenagers are still experimenting with their handwriting and trying out new things”. The shocking thing is, I’m not a teenager, and I’m still experimenting with my handwriting. I could cope with all of the other things because I could understand myself what I was writing. But when my ‘v’ and ‘u’ began to look the same I had to take action. In the past couple of months I’ve actually added on a tail to my ‘u’. I never used to add tails because I thought they were a waste of time. Now they are how I tell a ‘u’ (or a ‘U’) from a ‘v’ (or ‘V’).

It became necessary because a lot of the equations I have to use at university involve a u or a v — often in the same place, meaning subtly different things. But I can’t be confusing them or I will get myself… well, confused. At the same time I’m coping with how to write Greek letters. Before it was just π in maths and the occasional μ in physics.

Now, in economics, I have to grapple regularly with Σ, θ, δ, γ, α and the dreaded σ. When you’re struggling with the Latin alphabet, the last thing you want to do is work out how to write a σ (my ‘σ’ actually looks like ‘δ’!).

Whenever I have to handwrite a note or something, I always write it in all capitals. Not print, though, because I am such a lazy bastard that I can’t even be bothered to write neatly in block capitals. My capitals used to be neat — when I was in primary school. But when my lowercase letters became illegible and I moved on to using capitals instead — well, of course my capitals became illegible as well. Nevertheless, it is the least-worst option. Although I always have to apologise and explain that I’m not shouting!

I don’t have a signature either. Well I do, but it’s basically just a scrawl. I’ve tried practicing writing my name, but I think I am actually physically incapable of doing it. It looks kind of like “D____ Sl_____”. Distinctive, in a way, but it’s just a scrawl. Some people are genuinely shocked by my signature.

Despite my uneasy relationship with handwriting, I find it absolutely fascinating. It’s interesting to note how different people can take such radically different approaches to writing the same symbols. My friend and I had a discussion about somebody else. I just said, “I like her ‘a’s.” My friend thought I was using some kind of secret man-code euphemism. But no. I genuinely like her lowercase ‘a’.

Maybe that’s why I don’t have a girlfriend.

Via Digg.

The score on the other question is currently 6–2 in favour of keeping F1 posts here. I came up with a good name if I were to set up a separate F1 blog, although now that I’ve said it’s good I’ve only built up your expectations which would make it a disappoinment. I would call it vee8. Maybe a bit too obscure if you’re not a big F1 fan, and you just know that they would let teams use V10 engines again as soon as I started the blog.

Turnout is high, currently running at a massive eight votes. You’ve excelled yourselves. I’ll keep the polls up for a bit longer, but to be honest it looks as though the result is settled. So here’s one of those boring posts about my life that I promised.

I can’t believe that this is the last week of my summer. University holidays are meant to be long. They are really really long if you look at it on a calendar for instance. And last year’s felt really long, but that’s mostly because I spent all of my time either sitting on my bum or making a general nuisance of myself.

This year, though, I set myself a few goals. I know this is very target setterish, but it had to be done — partly to get myself in shape for life, and partly to keep me busy (staying busy makes me happier). I started taking driving lessons, which was quite good at first because it gave me a reason to get up in the morning. Then I got a job and I lost all interest in the driving lessons!

In a lot of ways I think this summer has been very successful — in terms of reaching some of my goals and so on. In other ways it wasn’t so successful. I mean, I never did all those summery things such as going out to the local scum-club. I think we are getting too sensible as we grow up.

I couldn’t reach all of my goals, mostly because I haven’t had the time! I know, it’s incredible — I’ve hardly been able to keep on top of time this summer. It was all so very different last year.

While we’re on time management, I was sad to see that the Political Teenager has gone on hiatus for the following reason:

Now I am starting University, I will not have time for long winded posts and rants.

This is a bit surprising to me. I’ve always wondered why you don’t find more students writing blogs (I’m not counting those of the LiveJournal type here). It’s not as if students don’t have shedloads of spare time. And in my experience students seem to divide their spare time approximately as follows:

• 40% boozing it up
• 30% “ironically” watching Neighbours
• 20% on MyFaceBeboJournal
• 10% forcing everybody within a 20 mile radius to use Fairtrade goods whenever possible
• 9% pretending to be in poverty
• ¾% being unable to add up to 100 and making ridiculous, mostly fictitious lists with little bearing on anything
• ¼% studying

Surely more of them can squeeze in a bit of blogging? After all, they are always banging on about how politically aware they are.

Sitting here, I think that going back to Uni might give me more time to blog. I really do dread going back to Uni, especially what with it being 3^rd year and all. It is going to be hard work. But at least I’ll be in some form of a routine. I’ll always have a few hours of spare time at the end of every day; ample time to get some blogging in.

I’ll also finally be able to listen to all those podcasts that I’ve been stashing away, never to be listened to. There’ll be plenty of time on the train for that. And reading all those economics books that I somehow never found the time to read.

The thing about this summer is that I’ve just been arranging lots of things without thinking about whether I really have the time to do it, simply because I’ve been so eager to keep myself busy. I’ve actually had to strike things off my list because I’ve got so much to do this week. For instance, my driving theory test is on Thursday. Thursday morning indeed. Why oh why did I book it for that time?!

I said I couldn’t believe that this was my last week of summer, but technically that was last week. This week is freshers week, and all the cool kids are out having fun. Here I am getting pale in front of a computer. Oh well.

Anyway, I’ve got to go through to Edinburgh to matriculate this week. Regular readers will know that commuting to Edinburgh involves roughly a three hour round trip for me. This week I’ve got to go through to Edinburgh to write a time when I can meet my Director of Studies on a piece of paper. Then I’ve got to go back and meet him at that time. Six hours of my life wasted on bureaucracy! Aargh!

And then once I’ve got work on Saturday out of the way I’ll just have a teeny weeny bit of time left to get rested and make sure I’m all set to start University. Do I have enough pens? I don’t know. Did I clear out my folder from last year? Can’t remember. Have I done any preparatory reading? Of course not. I need to get my hair cut, my shoes have chosen this week to wear out, and I really ought to buy myself a jacket that doesn’t make me far too hot whenever Edinburgh doesn’t happen to be an ice cube.

If any lecturer makes some smart-arse remark about how we should all be fully refreshed after the summer, it truly will be the end.

Here is something on Make Trade Fair’s website that absolutely infuriates me:

Pitting fledgling industries in poor countries against big business overseas is like putting a rabbit in a cage with a tiger.

It is such a stupid analogy. They seem to have completely missed the fact that animals tend not to trade with each other, and that countries tend not to eat each other.

Of course, such things are not allowed these days. The complex of council flats at the bottom of the street contains a huge space in the middle, with nothing filling it but lots of pavement. It is surely the ideal place for youths to kick a ball about, socialise and get fit. There is one stumbling block though: “NO BALL GAMES” pinned to the wall. Some old curmudgeonly busybody comes out of his flat, acts all frail and vulnerable, and threatens to (and sometimes actually does) call the police, acting as though a little kickabout is the beginning of the end of civilisation. So instead, youths these days spend their time standing on corners and knifing people.

Anyway, I can’t find any reference to any hint of a suggestion that being in poverty makes you more likely to grow up to be a footballing genius, so maybe I just dreamt it, or it was a narrow-minded and prejudicial assumption of mine. Greg Mankiw asked on his blog why per capita (rather than total) GDP is highly correlated with success in the World Cup, unlike in the Olympics where total GDP counts for a lot.

This week’s Economist has a little editorial about the World Cup, and notes that the footballing hierarchy is delightfully out of step with political hierarchy. This makes the World Cup refreshingly free of the political issues that sometimes mar the Olympics.

Think of all those robotic East German sprinters, Romanian gymnasts and Chinese swimmers churned out by state-backed programmes. By contrast, a winning football team needs not just athleticism but also a spark of creativity and style that cannot be manufactured by sport’s central planners.

If GDP and success in football are linked, how do you explain poor Brazil’s world dominance and rich USA’s relative mediocrity in football? A comment by Colin on Mankiw’s blog had me convinced for a second:

I believe every one of Brazil’s players competes for a European club. So a big reason Brazil is so successful is that wealthy Europeans are helping to develop their players.

You’ll find that a heavy presence of players in Europe is also found among the more successful African teams.

So really your own GDP can be somewhat irrelevant if other countries are paying to develop your players.

So this kind of turns Brazil’s success on its head a bit. Brazil’s GDP doesn’t matter because talented players will be picked up and developed by European clubs. Maybe the link between GDP and a strong domestic league (rather than a strong international team) is stronger. But while South America has weak domestic leagues, GDP still wouldn’t explain why the MLS in the USA is a load of old pants. Surely, no level of GDP can bridge cultural differences.

I also found this paper on game theory and penalty kicks (via the comments in Mankiw’s post to here to here). At university, the penalty kick was the scenario used to introduce us to the concept of mixed strategies, so I was interested in reading this. I didn’t actually read it all, because I am a lazy bastard. But I want to comment on this quote:

Probably only a trio of economists would have watched videos of 459 penalties taken in the French and Italian football leagues. The authors were testing a complex point of game theory. What they found was that the best place to put a penalty was the middle of the goal, largely because goalkeepers always dive. Yet few penalty-takers actually choose the middle. “I think one reason people don’t is that it’s just incredibly humiliating to a kicker if he kicks in the middle and doesn’t score,” guesses Levitt.

I’m not so sure about this. The paper seems to assume that penalty takers and goalkeepers have only three choices during a penalty kick: left, right, middle. That is far too simplistic in my view. I asked my dad what he thought about penalty takers not aiming for the middle of the goal. We came to the conclusion that, even though the goalkeeper almost always dives, a quick-witted goalkeeper can always use his feet to save a ball heading for the centre of the goal.

So I guess it is actually wise for a penalty taker to avoid aiming for the middle of the goal. Say the goalkeeper is 50% likely to dive left and 50% likely to dive right, and in both instances has a chance to save a ball heading for the middle. If the keeper dives left, he won’t be able to save a ball heading for the right, but he could be able to save a ball heading towards the middle. So surely a striker will always have a better chance of scoring a penalty by striking away from the middle.