::Leilani Munter.com::

This is a place for me to express my thoughts on racing, the environment, science, politics, and whatever else might cross my wandering mind. It will be an overflow of random ideas, reflections, notes and quotes to be enjoyed by those of you who take the time to read it. Thanks for stopping by and I'll see you down the road...

Peace,

5.26.07 a plea to nascar

Cheers to Senators John Thune and Evan Bayh for sending this letter to Brian France asking NASCAR to do the right thing.

"In America today you can murder land for private profit. You can leave the corpse for all to see, and nobody calls the cops." -- Paul Brooks, The Pursuit of Wilderness

5.21.07 my fenders flew off!

Okay, you caught me. I have been sneaking off to Indianapolis working on my secret plans to move from stock cars to open wheel racing. I have been there several times over the past couple of months for physical exams, meetings, seat fittings, and it has been hard to not talk about it. Finally, it's official and I can openly talk about what I've been up to. It's quite a relief.

I have gone over to the dark side, Luke. Just kidding. Honestly, this little stock car racer had the best time *EVER* driving the open wheel car last Monday. As Harry Hog would say, my car weighs half as much, my tires are twice as wide and let me tell you that makes for some good times. The car is incredible-- it's stable, light, full of downforce, full of grip... and like a fine tuned thoroughbred racehorse, chomping at the bit to run. I was entering the corners at Kentucky at around 190 mph and the car felt like a rocket underneath me. I don't think I've ever had more fun in my life. The team had a hard time getting me out of the car. I could have run that thing all day long, but alas, they would not let me...

I feel great about the move, I have entered a whole new world of racing and the open wheel community has been nothing but kind and helpful. Special thanks to everyone at IndyCar for making me feel so welcome to their league, Peter Parrott and Speedworks Racing for putting me in their race car, and most of all, to Larry Cahill who made all this possibile. It is not confirmed yet that I will be racing at Indy on May 25, just like my stock car racing career, it is all dependent on the sponsors. I am being told to be ready. And I am. I feel like my whole life has been working towards this opportunity. I can hardly wait to begin... see you there.

Leilani

PS. If you are at all a fan of nature, this video is incredible, it's amazing that they caught all this on tape. Be warned, you must be patient, it's a long video, but well worth the wait.

4.22.07 happy earth day

Today is Earth Day and if you know anything about me at all, you know that I have been an avid environmentalist for many years before I started racing cars. I know it is ironic for me to support all these environmental causes while I drive race cars, but I am doing everything I can do outside of racing to reduce my carbon footprint and educate others. Eventually I predict that NASCAR will make a move like IndyCar and use pure ethanol or another alternative fuel for our vehicles. I hope you will take the time to visit my list of eco-friendly organizations who are making strides to help our Earth. Also, there are some recent news stories relating to the environment on my Earth Watch page.

This is the cover of the May 2007 issue of Vanity Fair with Leonardo DiCaprio hanging out on a glacier with a baby polar bear. Leo has a new environmental movie coming out soon called "The 11th Hour". Vanity Fair calls it their "Green Issue" which made me wonder if it was printed on recycled paper. They did present the amusing opposing viewpoint of Myron Ebell who states "Everybody knows that CO2 has been higher in the past, just more than 650,000 years ago." This is really your argument against global warming? You're funny, Myron. By the way, Myron is employed by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), who has received more than $2 million dollars from ExxonMobil. Hmmmmmm. Interesting. But Myron also claims, "We're not beholden to our donors, I can't even quite tell you who supports us on global warming." Again Myron, you are a funny guy. Read the full Vanity Fair article about Myron -- A Convenient Untruth. Another article that I found to be an interesting read -- Rush to Judgment. Here is what our pain medicated golfer had to say, "If the owl can't adapt to the superiority of humans, screw it." In 1991, Mr. Limbaugh also claimed that Styrofoam was biodegradable and paper wasn't. Ummmm... okay.

If you haven't seen it yet, please watch the movie "An Inconvenient Truth", above is a preview for it. And I don't care if you are liberal or conservative, democrat or republican, we live on the same Earth and THIS IS NOT A POLITICAL ISSUE!!! Renowned movie critic Roger Ebert had this to say about the film: "In 39 years, I have never written these words in a movie review, but here they are: You owe it to yourself to see this film. If you do not, and you have grandchildren, you should explain to them why you decided not to." Read his full review here. Do yourself a favor and educate yourself. And by the way, this trailer was made before the end of 2006, so there is one fact that is now incorrect in this trailer, 2005 is no longer the hottest year on record. It should now read: IF YOU LOOK AT THE TEN HOTTEST YEARS EVER MEASURED THEY'VE ALL OCCURED IN THE LAST 14 YEARS AND THE HOTTEST OF ALL IS 2006.

PS. As a side note, Roger Ebert just bravely faced cancer and now he is talking about why we spend too much time hiding from illness. I like that Roger Ebert. Good people.

4.20.07 simon likes leona better than sanjaya

I had to share this song by X Factor winner Leona Lewis (X Factor is Britain's version of American Idol). I think her version of this song is fantastic and I think this girl has one of the best voices I have ever heard. Leona is in America right now recording an album and I think you are going to see a lot more of this girl in the near future.

4.17.07 today we are all hokies

On a college football message board someone posted, "Forget all college affiliations, today we are all Hokies," reminiscent of the French newspaper headline after 9/11 -- We Are All Americans. There is nothing like a horrific tragedy to make us realize how small our differences really are. Someone asked me after the Virginia Tech shooting, "What is wrong with people?" and I don't know. None of us know why or how a person can suddenly snap like this. Or is it not so much snapping, as it is a slow unraveling? Hindsight there always seem to be warning signs... the Columbine kids were "disturbed"... as a young boy Jeffrey Dahmer killed animals for fun... this guy is now a "stalker" and "a loner." But the question is -- how can you tell the difference between a kid that is just going through some difficulties growing up and a kid that's going to show up at school with a gun and start shooting? My heart goes out to everyone in the Virginia Tech family. I can't imagine what you are going through. What a terrible day. Jim Gorman, 53, is a part-time Virginia Tech security guard and this is what he had to say after the tragedy: "In a typical day in Baghdad, there are 30, 40 people killed and it's a blurb on the news," he said. "We had 30 people killed and the whole world is here. It kind of helps you relate to what's going on in a war zone -- if only a little." In fact, the death toll today in Baghdad, JUST TODAY, is 180. Since the war began (Mar 19, 2003) 3311 American troops have died and 24,645 have been wounded. I cannot even find an Iraqi death toll number-- the numbers range from 10,000 to 655,000. Regardless, it's too much human life lost. God bless us all-- in Iraq, in Virgina, on Earth.

PS. A sad and thoughtful essay about Virginia Tech from the New Yorker.

4.12.07 we lost one of the good ones today- so it goes...

Today one of the most beloved authors of the 20th century, and one of my favorite people on the planet, Kurt Vonnegut, left us for another place. I did cry when I read the news about his widowed bride. The media described him as...

"Vonnegut, the satirical novelist who captured the absurdity of war and questioned the advances of science in darkly humorous works such as "Slaughterhouse-Five" and "Cat's Cradle," died Wednesday. He was 84."

Such simple words for the end of such a complicated and intelligent life. His words echoed in my mind, an author I discovered in high school... because it was his words and his ability to say things in just the perfect magical way to capture your imagination, I think that the most appropriate way to remember him and to celebrate his life, is to share his words...

We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.

I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can't see from the center.

Life happens too fast for you ever to think about it. If you could just persuade people of this, but they insist on amassing information.

The universe is a big place, perhaps the biggest.

The year was 2081, and everyone was finally equal.

True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.

I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different.

Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?

Call me Jonah. My parents did, or nearly did. They called me John.

Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why.

If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you're a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind.

Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.

During my three years in Vietnam, I certainly heard plenty of last words by dying American footsoldiers. Not one of them, however, had illusions that he had somehow accomplished something worthwhile in the process of making the Supreme Sacrifice.

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.

Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops.

All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is. Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I've said before, bugs in amber.

Being a Humanist means trying to behave decently without expectation of rewards or punishment after you are dead.

I was taught that the human brain was the crowning glory of evolution so far, but I think it’s a very poor scheme for survival.

There is no way a beautiful woman can live up to what she looks like for any appreciable length of time.

We're terrible animals. I think that the Earth's immune system is trying to get rid of us, as well it should.

(talking about when he tells his wife he's going out to buy an envelope) Oh, she says well, you're not a poor man. You know, why don't you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet? And so I pretend not to hear her. And go out to get an envelope because I'm going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope. I meet a lot of people. And, see some great looking babes. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs up. And, and ask a woman what kind of dog that is. And, and I don't know. The moral of the story is, is we're here on Earth to fart around. And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. And, what the computer people don't realize, or they don't care, is we're dancing animals. You know, we love to move around. And, we're not supposed to dance at all anymore.

There is no reason why good cannot triumph as often as evil. The triumph of anything is a matter of organization. If there are such things as angels, I hope that they are organized along the lines of the Mafia.

Sometimes I think it is a great mistake to have matter that can think and feel. It complains so. By the same token, though, I suppose that boulders and mountains and moons could be accused of being a little too phlegmatic.

I was a victim of a series of accidents, as are we all.

You’re the only ones with guts enough to really care about the future, who really notice what machines do to us, what wars do to us, what cities do to us, what big, simple ideas do to us, what tremendous misunderstanding, mistakes, accidents, catastrophes do to us. You're the only ones zany enough to agonize over time and distance without limit, over mysteries that will never die, over the fact that we are right now determining whether the space voyage for the next billion years or so is going to be Heaven or Hell.

A great swindle of our time is the assumption that science has made religion obsolete. All science has damaged is the story of Adam and Eve and the story of Jonah and the Whale. Everything else holds up pretty well, particularly lessons about fairness and gentleness. People who find those lessons irrelevant in the twentieth century are simply using science as an excuse for greed and harshness. Science has nothing to do with it, friends.

"I wish I had been born a bird instead," he said. "I wish we had all been born birds instead."

If there is a god, he sure hates people. That’s all I can say.

All male writers, incidentally, no matter how broke or otherwise objectionable, have pretty wives. Somebody should look into this.

Listen. All great literature is about what a bummer it is to be a human being: Moby Dick, Huckleberry Finn, The Red Badge of Courage, the Iliad and the Odyssey, Crime and Punishment, the Bible and The Charge of the Light Brigade.

Thanks to TV and for the convenience of TV, you can only be one of two kinds of human beings, either a liberal or a conservative.

Here’s what I think the truth is: We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial, about to face cold turkey. And like so many addicts about to face cold turkey, our leaders are now committing violent crimes to get what little is left of what we’re hooked on.

The public health authorities never mention the main reason many Americans have for smoking heavily, which is that smoking is a fairly sure, fairly honorable form of suicide.

Where is home? I've wondered where home is, and I realized, it's not Mars or someplace like that, it's Indianapolis when I was nine years old. I had a brother and a sister, a cat and a dog, and a mother and a father and uncles and aunts. And there's no way I can get there again.

If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:
THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC

And because you were full of jokes, and wanted us to laugh, I say tonight, Mr. Vonnegut, I am glad that you are up in heaven. I know, as all your readers do, that this is your favorite joke. We all miss you already. I wish I could have met you before you left us, to tell you how much your words have touched our souls, our lives. But as you already have explained...

The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just that way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever.