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The Other Ferrari

Drive Time

An email from Reader Larry F asks:  “I know you love the Dino 246, but you also admit that they’re not that great to drive.  If you could have any recent Ferrari (produced since the Dino), which one would you choose?”

That’s actually an easy one.  The only Ferrari I’d care to drive today (other than the Dino 246) is the last model Ferrari offered with a stick shift, the 599 GTB of the early 2000s.

Here’s a comparison of the two:

I need to make a couple of points, though.  One of the things I love about the earlier Ferraris like the Dino is that they’re small and nimble.  After that they started growing and growing, until we finally arrived at elefanti  like the 599.  Here’s the comparison between the Dino and the 599 (l-r):

 

By comparison, the Dino is the nimble teenager while the 599 is its fat-ass Italian mama.

Of course, the power is not comparable, the 246 GT’s V6 192hp being dwarfed by the 599’s V12 612hp (which it needs to get that extra 1,600lbs moving).  I wouldn’t care about acceleration (0-60:  7.0secs vs. 3.7secs) or top speed (148mph vs. 208mph) unless I were at Spa-Francorchamps, which is never gonna happen.

I’ve never driven the 599, but it’s probably a lot easier to handle than the Dino, so there’s that.

But in looks, the Dino still wins by a country mile.  The 599 looks like a fatter Mazda Miata RF:

YMMV.

Statistical Bollocks

Drive Time, Numbers & Statistics

Did you know which is the most dangerous interstate highway in the U.S.?  (I’ll let you ponder that for a moment.)

According to this study, it’s Interstate 45 — with five accidents per 100 miles — which runs from Dallas to Galveston via Houston.

Which, as any fule kno, is complete nonsense — what statisticians call “bullshit” — because I-45 is also one of the shortest highways in the U.S.  And yes, it’s busy.  But ask any Texan whether they’d rather drive from Dallas to Austin on I-35, or on I-45 to Houston (about the same distance) and 35 would lose by a landslide.

But I-35, you see, is a long interstate highway (running from Laredo TX all the way north until it dies out of sheer boredom somewhere in Minnesota), so its deadliness is mitigated by long stretches of nowhere in which nothing happens (I’m looking at northern Oklahoma, Kansas and Iowa, for example), so its deaths / mile count drops substantially.  Hell, I’d rather drive on the Long Island Expressway than the distance between Dallas north to Denton on I-35.  (I’ve done both, more times than I can count, and there’s no comparison.)

And for sheer white-knuckle terror, consider I-40 from California to wherever it ends on the East Coast…

Be careful of numbers, folks:  they often lie.  And by the way, the article itself is, quelle surprise, complete bollocks too because they use two totally different measurement metrics — deaths per 100 miles (distance), and deaths per million passenger-miles — which are completely different.  But hey, it’s the Daily Mail.

News Roundup

Bad News, Sports

Try to contain your excitement, because it’s time for our OLYMPIC SPECIAL !!!!


…the irony of singing “Imagine there’s no countries” [sic] at a gathering which is the most nationalistic event in the world (outside actual warfare)…

And speaking of bad taste:


…what’s to apologize for?  I haven’t laughed so much since Nancy Pelosi caught her tits in the swing door at the Four Seasons.  (In Comments, feel free to add your own mocking national symbols.)


…lowest TV ratings in living memory.  And:


…that’s LesboSoccer, which nobody watches anyway, but they lost to the LadyFrogs, which somehow makes it worse.  And:


…probably because they actually are ugly.  And speaking of ugly:


…and a nation mourns:

Of course, there are the usual killjoys:


…prolly because Butbul (excellent name, btw) was gonna kick his Muzzie ass anyway.


…if this goes on, the Izzies are going to medal in every event, just by default.


…good thing there wasn’t a Jew in the pool, or Ahmed would have watched the final on TV.

And speaking of people who haven’t always liked Jews:


…which makes no sense, in that the only people who actually watch Olympic gymnastics are women and homos anyway.


…thus giving us even less reason to watch the Olympics.

And the wokeness continues, e.g. the Norwegian women’s beach volleyball team is wearing shorts instead of bikinis.


…and they used to look so nice:

Fortunately, our girls continue to show good form:

And to round things off:


…wait, it gets hot in Japan?


…and guess what else they lied about:


…sounds like an all-round success to me.  Not that anyone cares.