32.881678,-111.854982,Francisco Grande, Casa Grande, Arizona,
USA

So the currently ranked top five pilots now have a position that,
surprise, surprise, benefits the current top five ranked pilots. Instead of
being willing to test themselves against all comers at the 2012 Santa Cruz Flat
Race, they have decided to do away with any uncertainty and declare themselves
the US National team eligible to go the 2013 Worlds in Australia in January.

Never mind that this is not how the author of the rule interpreted the rules.
Never mind that this is not how the person responsible for calculating the
ranking interprets the rules. Never mind it was never the intent of the rules to
cut off a major US competition and not count it if there was time between it and
the Worlds for pilots to make travel plans.

They seem to think that they can figure out the intent of part of the rules
(ignoring the intent of the other part of the rules). When the going gets tough,
the thinking gets muddled.

At least they realize that they have a conflict of interest, which somehow
doesn't preclude them from pontificating and lobbying for their favored
position.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/18/deluded-individualism/

There is a curious passage early in Freud’s “Ego and the Id” where
he remarks that the id behaves “as if” it were unconscious. The phrase is
puzzling, but the meaning is clear: the id is the secret driver of our desires,
the desires that animate our conscious life, but the ego does not recognize it
as such.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/12/the-veil-of-opulence/?hp

More than 40 years ago the philosopher John Rawls, in his
influential political work “A Theory of Justice,” implored the people of the
world to shed themselves of their selfish predispositions and to assume, for the
sake of argument, that they were ignorant. He imposed this unwelcome constraint
not so that his readers — mostly intellectuals, but also students, politicians
and policy makers — would find themselves in a position of moribund stupidity
but rather so they could get a grip on fairness.