An Interesting Judging Criteria

How A Pebble Beach Judge Chooses The Best Car In The Entire Show

Points are deducted for any imperfections, inaccurate details, and over-restoration, and are awarded for style, beauty, color, and field presence. A perfect score is 103 points. Each winning entry must be driven over the show ramp to claim an award.

A class victory at Pebble Beach confirms that a car is historically correct, very close to the way it originally came from the factory or coachbuilder, and arguably perfect. But even that’s not enough. From those class winners, the Best of Show is chosen by a secret ballot cast by the Chief Class Judges, along with a cadre of Honorary Judges, many of who have been or are presently automobile designers, along with the event Chair.

[...] The comprehensive, 103-point judging sheet, derived from Classic Car Club of America criteria, has been carefully refined over the years.

There’s a subjective factor of three points for elegance, presence, historic significance, color, etc., so a perfect 100-point car—and there are several of those each year—may be out-pointed by a 99-point example with better field presence, more sheer elegance, etc.

(Jalopnik.com)

Oh, The Irony

(BroBible.com)

Duh!

Ex-BBC boss says firing Clarkson was a huge mistake

Even if he did punch a guy in the face.

By now, we all know why the BBC fired Jeremy Clarkson. The man punched producer Oisin Tymon in the face because there wasn't any hot food ready after a long day of filming. It's unfortunate for fans of Top Gear, but you can't go around hitting people and expect it to be OK. Despite the incident, former BBC boss Mark Thompson feels it was a huge mistake for the BBC to let Clarkson go.

According to The Sunday Times, Thompson believes that Clarkson's talent outweighs his temper. "Clarkson can be a deeply objectionable individual, and I say that as a friend," Thompson said. "I don't think people should punch their colleagues. It's hard to keep them if they do. But I would say his pungent, transgressive, slightly out-of-control talent was something the BBC could ill afford to lose. He spoke to people who didn't find much else in the BBC."

(AutoBlog.com)

The Reason Makes A Lot Of Sense

Why No One Makes Grape Ice Cream, According to Ben & Jerry's

Grapes in ice cream = ice chunks in ice cream 

Sean Greenwood, Ben & Jerry's PR lead, agreed to speak with me and set the record straight.  

"Yeah, those stories sound like a stretch, a little bit of ice cream lore," he said after I detailed the tale of Ben, his misguided attempt at capturing love through ice cream, and the dead dog.  

First off, using grapes as an ice cream base presents logistical problems. "Making ice cream at home, you can get fruit like grapes pretty close to a puree, but when you are using fruit as a base on a large scale, that's when you run into problems." 

Fruits -- grapes specifically -- have high water content. When using such a watery base to make ice cream, the results often come peppered with chunks of ice. Which equates to some pretty shitty ice cream. 

"Jerry and Ben will talk about the days of making melon ice cream, or cantaloupe ice cream, and how good that was. But then, they were doing it on a 2-gallon batch. To try to do that on a massive scale is much more challenging." 

For something like popsicles -- which are predictably icy and often artificially flavored -- this is fine. But for a company like Ben & Jerry's, it presents a nearly insurmountable engineering hurdle.  

(Thrillist.com)

This Makes Sense

(CavemanCircus.com)

The Medalists Did Not Suprise

Inbee Park, Lydia Ko and Shanshan Feng Win Medals in Rio

The Republic of Korea’s Inbee Park, New Zealand’s Lydia Ko and China’s Shanshan Feng are Olympic medalists.

Saturday at the women’s competition in Rio de Janeiro, Park added gold medalist to her list of accomplishments by extending her 54-hole lead to as many as six-strokes over the course of the final round, winning at 16-under par to secure her place atop the podium. Ko finished at 11-under par for the silver medal, with Feng taking home the bronze medal at 10-under par.

(LGPA.com)