HIX8

The rainbow symbolism crossed with the American flag symbolism strikes me as a kind of protest against this nation's attitudes and laws that stand in opposition to that particular way of life. The Red White & Blue American flag is often taken as a symbol of freedom, but obviously it is a freedom that is constrained by definite boundaries. The challenge is to figure out, as a society, which boundaries are healthy and productive versus those which are unhealthy and create more harm than benefit.

Those photos are posted not to express a position one way or another on these controversial issues, but primarily to highlight them as areas that need to be ironed out.

I have daughters that get bombarded by those Girls Gone Wild commercials on TV. My oldest is a high schooler and one time I saw her pretending to pull up her shirt as a joke. I could share the gist of the talk that I had with her, but it is going to be a group decision from our society at large to determine whether these types of behaviors are going to be ones that we support and foster, or ones that we will discourage.

dmc27

Which makes sense, cuz really christmas carols are kinda ghey, too.


But that whole thing makes sense - the diversity thing. Probably stemmed from the "united colors of benetton" !!! hahaha.

dmc27

Sadly, it's looking more and more like society as a whole will never agree. There will continue to be a rift between people who see nothing (or very little) wrong with bad behavior, or are too concerned with being friends with their kids to actually instill any sense of acceptable behavior. Eventually such kids will be parents - and what kind of boundaries will they set?? Scary.

But I'm not really sure if that's much different than the last 100 years, to be honest.

I think the media structure makes all of the transgressions much more available. Not to mention the bias towards "crash & burn" style news that just loves to show all the crap going on day to day. Some problems are new, but not many. Movie stars had drug habits back in the day, it's just that they were protected then. Now they're hung out to dry at every turn to boost ratings. Not that they should be protected - but it's kind of a shift in how such transgressions get handled.

HIX8

I've never thought of a ChampCar as low-tech! They actually had Minardi F1s at the track last week so you could do a side-by-side comparison to the Panoz DP01s. Obviously there is orders of magnitude more money going into F1, and you can tell the difference right away from just hearing the engines. But surprisingly, our track record is still held by Graham Rahal driving a DP01 (set last February).

Going by aesthetics alone, I actually like the ChampCars better than F1, Indy, A1GP, Atlantics, etc. But I did have the thought that one way to improve those photos would be to have them taken with Star Mazda cars zooming around with their Renesis engines! They might not be half as hot as top of the line open wheel racers, but keeping it in the rotary family would have been worth it! That's a photo to go for some time in the future. (Or someone here might already have some good ones.)

HIX8

If you want to compare for yourself, I found some video clips taken from approximately the same spot on the front straight going into Turn 1:

Mindardi F1:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PX4_Ttn8SUU

ChampCar:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrKpQJCNVM8


...and one more just for grins:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8Gw0yqG5NY

Socket7

Quoted For Truth.

The rainbow flag is meant to signify diversity.
The rainbow flag with a purple stripe on the bottom is the gay pride flag.

The difference is lost on most people, unless they've been in a situation where it's pointed out to them. We flew a diversity flag at my high school, and one ignorant, mouth breathing homophobe pitched a fit about how it was "disrespectful to fly a ****** flag on the same flag poll as the American flag" (his words, not mine )

He was duely informed that it was in fact a diversity flag, not a gay pride flag, and while the school respected his opinion, it would be best if he expressed it without using the word ******.

Nubo

I've always liked this "watercolor". FYI, the streaks are shadows from the wipers being up.

eclipsegsx

HEY..
i know that place. 59 and kirby, thats by the Ihop and rice village?

HIX8

I'm sure you could drive it there! But close, it's right off Main downtown. The cross street is like Prairie.

anet1737

nice pictures! the 8 likes to pose all over the place..its a picture *****..lol

HIX8

All over is right. Here's the Rotary Rover!