Stephen Phelan on the world’s deadliest motorcycle race:
On the first lap, rider No. 63, Jochem van den Hoek, rocketed through Ballig on his Honda at more than a hundred and fifty miles per hour. Some twenty seconds later, turning through a tricky curve at the eleventh milestone, he came off the bike. His death was confirmed that afternoon, around the same time that No. 52, the Irishman Alan Bonner, had his own collision higher up the mountain. Bonner was also killed, bringing the historic death toll on this circuit, which has been in use since 1907, to two hundred and fifty-five, including thirty-two in the past decade. (That figure does not account for race officials and spectators hit by runaway bikes.)
Looks like Yoko Ono will finally share songwriting credit for “Imagine.” It’s only fitting, I suppose, since it’s a terrible, terrible song.
Scientists or charlatans? Dan Rosenheck hangs out with legit wine “supertasters”…
Everyone has read florid promises of “gobs of ripe cassis”, “pillowy tannins”, and “seductive hints of garrigue”. Yet the relationships between such mumbo-jumbo and the chemical composition of a wine, between one taster’s use of it and another’s, and even between the same drinker’s notes on the same wine on different occasions tend to be faint at best.
…while Brian Palmer asks, “Is wine really art?”
The answer has more to do with how you define art than how you think about wine, and therefore is a deep philosophical question that probably shouldn’t be answered by a half-in-the-bag socialite at a $1,000-a-bottle bacchanalia.
And in sports news, Ford Motor Company turns 114 today—on the eve of 24 Heures du Mans, where the Ford Chip Ganassi Racing team will defend its 2016 LM GTE Pro class win.
