And we come once again back to the start: _because_ there's an explicit algorithm right there in the standard which allows to start from something "not special"

And we come once again back to the start: _because_ there's an explicit algorithm right there in the standard which allows to start from something "not special" like the digits of Pi or even the ASCII strings of the beginning of the Declaration of Independence, why the completely opaque constants instead? Even if it's, as Filippo suggests, because "the counter has to be there because only one in every 192 to 521 hashes is actually good to make a curve out of", if the counter is a known part of the process of such a selection, all these details could still have been "open". At least, that's my understanding why there's still talk about it all, and this bounty: those who don't like the opaque constants argue: why aren't they "open", if really "irrelevant"? Now, if the bounty shows that the constants come from something like SHA-1("Jerry and Alice deserve a raise. 1398") then all this looks a little better, especially if it can be shown that that "1398" was the first integer that "worked" for the selected phrase, according to the publicly known criteria.