Background music: Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians performing Dylan's "A Hard Rain's A Gonna Fall." Sublime.

JB wrote: "First of all, the most important part of your post concerns insults, and probably explains both your absence and (relatively) good mood."

You just had to go and be nice in order to knock me off stride. Yes, yes, yes, and if I can manage to dress her up like a Christmas tree, I will take her picture and send it to you (I'm serious) so that you can see the uncanny resemblance.

"Unfair? UNFAIR??"

Yes, unless you think a caricature is fair. Ragozin knows that rain shuffles the deck, and you know that he knows that.

"Where I come from, "objective" means objective,"

Where I come from, "objective" means what the dictionary says it means: third definition: "Based on observable phenomena." Where you come from, what does "wrong" mean? (I'm just kidding, pal.)

"and "resilience" is a physical phenomenom."

It is that and more. There is also spiritual resilience. Friedman wrote "physical resilience of the track," I think. If you want to try to nail him for the sin of redundancy, do it in Texas--where he would probably get the death penalty.

"You and I and everyone informed enough to follow this conversation know that Ragozin doesn't use objective criteria any more than we do, or measure resilience(y), and that Friedman's use of the terms is marketing aimed at those who don't know better."

I have a hard time believing that anyone is dumb enough to think that Ragozin counts the raindrops and adjusts his variants accordingly. "Objective criteria" are things Ragozin's trackmen can observe: rain, snow, etc. "Resilience" is Friedman's word for what is affected by the rain and snow. Rain = a change in the resilience of the surface = a shuffled deck = cut the race/races loose.

"Even in practice they don't mean "observable", they mean observed-- see my story about the two Belmont grass courses (5/2/00), for one example."

This is a good story, and I would tell it if I were you, but it doesn't apply here. Your guy was at the track quite early in the morning and noticed that the courses were watered on different days, correct? On Sunday, it was raining in the middle of the card. Hard to miss, even for night owls like you and me.

"the rail last B.C. day, and the change of track speed that day, were examples
of events they observed but did not understand, at least within the confines of their dogma."

You cleaned Friedman's clock on the BC bad rail. That was you at your very best. You were fair, too.

"The first major downybrook"

No. The word is "donnybrook." It comes from a Dublin suburb that's famous for its brawls.

"(and Michael wasn't even involved!) on this site concerned the 00 Wood Memorial (the 5/2/00 post was a response to David Patent),and Friedman at that time said they tied that race (only 2 turn race on the card)to the rest of the card, despite rain, sealing and unsealing of the track, and having to give out numbers they never would have given had they cut the race loose."

I remember reading that and thinking Ragozin made an error. But let me ask you a question. Why would you EVER link one race to another? (Let's leave aside races that are full of first-time starters, first-turfers, etc.)

"I will guarantee you they did not do that 9/15 at Belmont, so the question is, on what basis (objective criteria) did they make that decision? That is why I brought this up, and it's a fair question."

It is a fair question. Why did you wait so long (on this string) to ask it? You buried the lead, pal. You buried it under an unfair caricature.