Great:
The Autobiography of Stalin. Richard Lourie. Every single word is brilliant. This book is perfect.

Mostly Wonderful:
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. Michael Chabon. It has a few rough spots, when the foreshadowing gets oppressive or when it briefly feels like Chabon's writing above his weight. But it pulls through impressively. Although it reminds me a little bit of histori-fiction like, well, like the unholy union of Neal Stephenson, Thomas Pynchon, and Salman Rushdie, it usually has the readability of the first, a hint of the depth of the second, and every now and then a fantastic turn of phrase that's just words on a page but makes you gasp out loud.

Good:
Lives of the Monster Dogs. Kirsten Bakis. This book is, somehow, the ghost of a better book. It's very enjoyable, it's well written and the atmosphere is great, but it's missing something.

Readable:
Shrub. Molly Ivins and some other guy. Stupid White Men - Michael Moore. Both of these books just make your blood boil and highlight the futility of paying attention and staying informed.
Kiln People. David Brin. Every new David Brin book makes me more afraid to go re-read Startide Rising, one of my all-time favorite books, because I'm afraid it just isn't at good as I remember it. Kiln People does quadruple-duty: first, as a mediocre sci-fi detective thriller; second, as a reasonably interesting if superficial exploration of the ramifications of a world in which people can literally duplicate themselves and send their copies out on their daily business; third, a pulpit for Brin's views about the "Transparent Society," i.e., how society can and should change to accomodate privacy-destroying technology that is here to stay for better or worse; and fourth, as an attempt at pun-based humor that would embarrass Piers Anthony. Interesting, a quick read, and a bit thin for a 500-page book.

Don't Bother:
Polgara the Sorceress. David and Leigh Eddings. Bought it for airplane reading and because I got guilty pleasure out of Belgarath the Sorcerer. But by now the repetition has reached the ad nauseum stage. It was a guilty pleasure without much pleasure.
The Gates of Hell, Kings of Hell. C.J. Cherryh and Janet Morris. The Stephen King of fantasy/sci-fi, Cherryh churns out readable, engaging, intelligent, ultimately empty prose by the ream. Here she's anchored by Janet Morris, who brings both interesting historical tidbits and patches of flat writing. This pair of books follows the story of Julius Caeser and his household (Kleopatra, Hatshepsut, Antonius, and others) as they get entangled with Alexander the Great (and his sidekick Judah Maccabee), a perpetual re-enactment of the Trojan War, Achilles in his new career as ace chopper pilot, and assorted other Great Kings. I'm completely addicted to this pulpy series - about thirteen books published between 1986 and 1989, mostly short story collections, wildly varying quality. I read them out of order and it doesn't seem to matter much.

It's pretty hard to figure out where FCC Chairman William Powell stands on anything - he "[spoke] in eloquent riddles, whose circumlocutions left listeners elated but somewhat dizzy." (Economist). Though we do know he likes his Tivo. The FCC, you may recall, is the government entity responsible for making sure that the benefits of technology for the American public are held secondary to narrow commercial interests. Last week they had a nasty brawl, apparently over who could give the biggest handouts to the phone companies.

It's hard to tell exactly what happened. Powell apparently got screwed by fellow Republican commissioner Kevin Martin, who is also a fellow beneficiary of nepotism - sorry, "connections" - Martin's wife is Cheney's spokeswoman. Martin made a deal with the two Democrats on the commission and won the vote 3-2. The vote lets the Bells stop sharing their infrastructure with competitors.

A brief history lesson: last century, the government granted monopolies to phone companies, and, using what amounted to public money, they built big networks. It was basically a case study for socialism vs capitalism: the old phone networks were stable and reliable, and cost far more than they should have and many features were postponed decades. Deregulation tipped things the other way: now the systems are generally cheaper, and not nearly as reliable.

The 1996 Telecommunications Act, in a nutshell, randomly shuffled the industry. The Bells were supposed to start sharing their networks with competitors, and in exchange the Bells could compete in previously forbidden markets. The sharing has turned out to be fairly farcical - the Bells get fined regularly for not actually sharing (forgetting orders, randomly cutting lines - "oops, there went Hoboken. We don't care! We're the phone company." - and other dirty tricks) and they just pay the fines because it's much cheaper than real competition.

Anyway, the FCC decided last week to let the phone companies off the hook for even pretending to share. The idea is that, without the distraction of having to pretend to cooperate with competitors, the Bells could invest in real DSL infrastructure of their own. They promptly responded to the gift by complaining: "... forcing SBC and others to carefully consider how they will invest, where they will invest, how many people to employ and even what kind of consumer services to deliver." (SBC Press release). Reading between the lines, this means cutting DSL.

The Bells don't like DSL, because it's disruptive to their much more profitable main business. They wouldn't provide DSL at all if they weren't forced to for appearances and by competition from companies like COVAD. Companies that exist because they are legally entitled to share the Bell systems. The new rule phases out that mandatory sharing over the next few years, and thus the Bells will have much less pressure to provide DSL. The FCC naturally spins things differently: "The new framework ... brings the benefits of competitive alternatives to all consumers."

Basically everybody on the FCC is bought and paid for by phone companies, but the phone companies are even greedier (but stupider) than Chairman Bill. The Commissioners were tripping over each other to help them, and ended up giving them even more stuff for nothing. And despite all that, the phone companies still aren't happy. But at least Powell's position is starting to materialize:

After the ruling, many of the local phone companies announced that they would not be making new investments in high-speed services as a result of getting only half of what they wanted from the ruling. But Mr. Powell dismissed the Baby Bells' reaction, saying, "Here is a lot of crying crybaby reaction to the decision." He said he thought that the announcements were more like "public affairs reactions" than like reasoned management decisions. Mr. Powell also said he was getting tired of the "passion play between billion-dollar self-interested actors."

There are two ways of opposing a war with Iraq. The first way is simple and wrong; the second way is right but difficult....

The right way to oppose the war is to argue that the present system of containment and control is working and can be made to work better. This means that we should acknowledge the awfulness of the Iraqi regime and the dangers it poses, and then aim to deal with those dangers through coercive measures short of war. But this isn't a policy easy to defend, for we know exactly what coercive measures are necessary, and we also know how costly they are.

"We have five decades of research on all kinds of disasters -- earthquakes, tornadoes, airplane crashes, etc. -- and people rarely lose control," Clarke said. "Policy-makers have yet to accept this. People are quite capable of following plans, even in the face of extreme calamities, but such plans must be there." - Lee Clarke

Clarke says that part of the panic myth is that people misinterpret their own, and others’, behavior as panic. "What they are usually reporting, though, are feelings of fear and not panic-stricken behavior." He explains that the myth provides authorities (i.e., decision-makers, politicians, and administrators) with an easy explanation for complex events. Even when panic does happen—say at soccer matches—focusing on it usually detracts attention from more important factors such as official misconduct or police over-reaction. In addition, by using pacifying speech (e.g., "Everything is under control...") to allay public fear and hiding information from the public, spokespersons cultivate distrust at a time when nothing could be more important to public safety than trust of the information that authorities disseminate.

Citing three disasters in which panicky behavior would be expected, Clarke shows that in dangerous situations (e.g., in a plane crash, a fire in a crowded hotel), people don’t usually turn against their neighbors or forget moral commitments. People rarely lose control. The same message rises from the rubble of the World Trade Center.In Disasters, Panic Is Rare; Altruism Dominates, ASA News

Almost eight years ago, in the summer after college as I entered the working world, I made my second wave of "adult" consumer purchases. The first wave, as I entered college, comprised most expensively a stereo and a computer. I replaced every single component in the computer case more than once before finally shelving it as hopelessly obsolete. The stereo I still have, except that I had to replace the receiver twice and the cd player once, but the speakers are original. The second wave including a car, some furniture, and a bicycle. Most of the furniture, transported home from IKEA on a Los Angeles freeway sticking out the sunroof of the car, has been replaced by other IKEA furniture. And the car's gone, too. But I still ride the bicycle almost every day - I rode it to work this morning. And this is why I felt betrayed when, after seven years of faithful service, the bicycle computer died.

It's not actually original equipment - I think I had to replace the first one after using it as a detachable pocket-watch and losing it - but it's of the same lineage. Every few years I have to replace the battery, and though I lost the manual a long time ago, a bit of fiddling always suffices to set the clock and tire size (which I miraculously remember. It's 2074. I think that's millimeters).

Well, it died last month. It got dimmer and dimmer, and then it just wouldn't wake up any more. I got a new battery, and put that in, and then you could see the display if you squinted and looked at an angle, but a day later even that was gone. So I needed a new bicycle computer.

The thing is, bicycle computers have infrastructure. They sit on "shoes," plastic clips on the handlebar with metal contacts that lead to wires that go down the front fork to a magnetic sensor that lines up with a revolving magnet on a wheel spoke. They installed the first one at the store, it's all covered with road grime, and has worked perfectly for seven years, except for when I change the front tire and put the wheel on backwards. I don't really want to futz with the shoe and the sensor, because I can tell it's going to be a pain in the ass. I just want to buy a new computer that fits the shoe. Of course, each manufacturer has a different shoe, so I need a new "Vetta C15," or at least some kind of Vetta.

I won't bother with the details of the visits to six different bicycle shops except to mention that Fremont Free Range Cycles is not open on Tuesdays, even if you go three Tuesdays in a row.

And Vetta doesn't make my model any more; in fact, they don't make any model with that shoe any more. In the end, I bought a CatEye Mity 3, because it was the cheapest on the rack at the bicycle store where I happened to be standing when I gave up on a simple replacement. Installing it was, as I had foretold, a pain in the ass. And when I finished, at a total cost of two months of calendar time, several billable hours, and $30 (twice what I paid for the old one), the replacement was in most respects worse that the original.

Why? Because it's a speedometer combined with a computer, and anything combined with a computer is a computer, and most people can't design computers. The old computer must have been designed by bicycle elves who have since departed across the Western Sea, because it actually worked. It told me how fast I was going, my average speed, my top speed, how far I'd gone, how long I'd been going, and the time of day. It did this with two unlabelled buttons on the front. Push the button on the right, it shows you different information. Push the button again, you see differenter information. If you push it a few more times, you're back where you started. Anything the computer can tell you, it will, if you just push the button enough times. Push the wrong button and nothing happens. Push both buttons and hold for two seconds, it resets the speed and distance for your new trip.

The new one had three basic modes, which you get to by pushing the button labelled Mode. Each mode has a different number of submodes, which you get to (if it's in AT mode, and don't ask me what AT mode is and what the alternatives are; I just know that AT mode has nothing to do with the Mode button) holding down the Start/Stop button, which is labelled S. The buttons are both on the bottom rim of the device, so that when you push them too hard you run the risk of popping the computer out of the holder and onto the street in front of - whoosh - behind you. Most of the screens display something cryptic like 0-Hr or "Tm 0.00.02. Setting the clock entails holding down three buttons at once - the two on the rim and a third, on the back of the computer and recessed so you need a third hand to hold the pin that you'll need to push it. It is, of course, inaccessible if the computer is mounted on the clip. But you knew that, didn't you? The instructions refer to the Set button, so make sure that you remember that that's the tricky one on the back and not the yellow button labelled S, which, remember, is Start/Stop except that holding it down for several seconds also does something non-start-stoppy; I think it changes you from one sub-mode to another sub-mode, which is something you'll have to do regularly because it each time you change the main Mode it goes to the first sub-mode, not to the sub-mode you left it in. But holding down the Mode button for two seconds also changes something. But not the same something.

I think I've reached an accomodation. I've got it set up so that I see the time and how fast I'm going. I'm not going to try and see other things, like how far I've gone or my top speed, because it's just not worth the pain. So while in theory the new computer does more than the old one, in practice it's not worth the bother. But by leaving it on current speed at least I can focus on the one improvement: it gives me tenths of mph instead of nearest 0.5. That's progress for you.

What, then, explains the administration's Iraq policy? I offer here my own account ... It's not an explanation that will satisfy anyone looking for a single cause such as "blood for oil." ...

Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld were not concerned about enriching American oil companies, but they were worried that if Iraq acquired nuclear weapons, Hussein could achieve dominance over a region vital to world economic stability. ...

The second consideration was more psychological. The September 11 attacks, combined with the subsequent anthrax episodes, created a national trauma -- a feeling of powerlessness in the face of the unknown. ... Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld believed that by knocking out Hussein they would reduce America's vulnerability to attack.

Bush and White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer went out of their way Thursday to cite a new survey by "Blue-Chip economists" that the economy would grow 3.3 percent this year if the president's tax cut proposal becomes law.

That was news to the editor who assembles the economic forecast. "I don't know what he was citing," said Randell E. Moore, editor of the monthly Blue Chip Economic Forecast, a newsletter that surveys 53 of the nation's top economists each month.

Segway continues to pursue the business model cherished by many free-market conservatives: government handouts. Bush's executive team are nearly all millionaires, and many of them made their money at companies in heavily regulated industries where connections, not competition, determines the winner: Cheney (Halliburton), John Snow (CSX), Mitch Daniels (Eli Lilly), Tommy Thompson (Amtrak), Ann Veneman (Monsanto), and, well, all of them, really. But while the Bush team's profiteering dwarves the alleged misdeeds of the Clinton administration (most investigated ever, but fewer convictions than Bush I), they still have a lot to learn from some other unelected leaders: Kim Jong Il, $1 billion, King Fahd Bin Abdul Alsaud, $28 billion, Queen Beatrix, $2.5 billion (Forbes). Yassir Arafat, $1.3 billion (though that's a Mossad source, so you gotta wonder).

It's my great pleasure to invite all of you to celebrate our 'Back to Profitability Luau' on Wednesday, March 5, starting at 4:00 pm.

...

P.S. Please do NOT speak to anyone in the media or customers about our "Pro Forma" vs. "GAAP" profitability. Less is more, in this case. Please also refer any questions about the resignation of our most recent CEO to investor relations.

But a definitive ‘classic’ sound scares the hell out of record companies, and when they listen to ‘classic’, they inevitably think something’s wrong with the production. The real bitch is sometimes ‘classic’ is ‘modern’, but you just have to keep up with the times to know when that is, and then take advantage of that window of opportunity to be both ‘classic’ and ‘modern’ simultaneously. Regardless of all that, what the record companies REALLY want is ‘now’. Because ‘now’ is something that Record Companies understand. Unfortunately, for everyone involved, by the time a record comes out, ‘now’ was ‘yesterday’ and the record is in the shitter for not being ‘modern’ enough, even if it somehow happens to be ‘classic’.

The point is the News Corp.'s journalistic and ethical malfeasance, and this time around, reporters seem to get that.

It is the New York Post, of course, that published another piece of homophobic baseball gossip last spring that led the New York Mets' Mike Piazza to feel he had to publicly announce he was not gay. Besides the Post, the News Corp. also owns Fox Television, Fox News Channel, and other companies that produce products structurally similar to "news."

...

Koufax, the Post wrote, "cooperated with a best-selling biography only because the author promised to keep it secret that he is gay. The author kept her word, but big mouths at the publishing house can't keep from flapping." So here's how it worked: The same corporation that published the rumor is actually the source of the rumor. It also profited from the alleged blackmail and employed the victim.

I reject the false dichotomy of "No War" vs "Support our troops." I support our troops; I don't want them to die, not while protecting me from someone who isn't a threat to me, not while fighting to secure corporate profits, not while killing civilians while liberating them from a tyrant of American creation.

"Everybody's getting two JSLISTs [NBC protective suits]," says Army spokesman Captain Benjamin Kuykendall. "We've got 1.4 million on hand, enough for two suits for each troop — they last 45 days — and we're cranking out 90,000 more a month."

But in October, the General Accounting Office said these weren't enough and that the old suits they were to replace were already expiring. In any case, Pentagon policy is that each soldier is supposed to have four suits, not two, and — to repeat — the suits last less than a day under concentrated attack, not 45. Congressional investigators estimate 3 million JSLIST suits will be needed in the Gulf.

And lest you think that doesn't matter:

Nearly 700,000 Americans served in Desert Storm. Only 148 of them died in combat, a quarter by "friendly fire." But postwar casualties tell a much more troubling story: Since 1991, more than 160,000 Gulf War vets have fallen ill — many of them now permanently disabled. Eleven thousand have died — a much higher death rate than soldiers who didn't serve in the Gulf.

I keep hearing the anti-war protesters chant, "No blood for oil! No blood for oil!" But what they never seem to say is exactly how much oil we're talking about. Don't you think that's pertinent information? Are we talking a gallon of oil for every 10 gallons of blood? Or is it more like 30 gallons of oil for every pint of blood? Because if it's the latter, maybe a blood-oil exchange would be a good idea.

Mr Gordon guesses that one-third of the discrepancy between Europe's productivity and its GDP per head, relative to America's, represents freely chosen leisure. ... The huge cost of keeping 2m people in American prisons (a far bigger proportion of the population than in Europe) also bolsters America's GDP relative to Europe's, but not its welfare. ... [S]ubsidies to suburban motorways and a starving of public transport [lead] to higher spending on roads and energy, and hence higher GDP. In Europe the convenience of more compact cities and frequent train and bus transport does not count towards GDP figures.
Taking account of how Americans waste a chunk of their income on heating, air conditioning, prisons and the like, while also attaching value to Europe's superior public transport, Mr Gordon suggests that perhaps half of the current gap in living standards between America and Europe, as measured by GDP per head, is illusory. Add in the value of their extra leisure time and Europe's living standards are now perhaps only 8% behind America's, he suggests, not the 23% suggested by official data.

Kids in preindustrial times started working at about fourteen at the latest; kids on farms, where most people lived, began far earlier. Now kids who go to college don't start working full-time till 21 or 22. With some degrees, like MDs and PhDs, you may not finish your training till 30, which is close the average life expectancy in medieval times.

Teenagers now are useless, except as cheap labor in industries like fast food, which evolved to exploit precisely this fact.

More evidence (not that anyone in education needs it) that classroom discipline is far and away the most important element of school. Relative to this poor guy, I can't say I had any problems with my first-form students.

When I asked other teachers to come help me stop a fight, they shook their heads and reminded me that D.C. Public Schools banned teachers from laying hands on students for any reason, even to protect other children. When a fight brewed, I was faced with a Catch-22. I could call the office and wait ten minutes for the security guard to arrive, by which point blood could have been shed and students injured. Or I could intervene physically, in violation of school policy.

Even though I ought to know better, my mental picture of a typical Iraqi life is just a copy of my mental picture of Afghani life - total poverty, lots of veils and mullahs, dirt floors, that sort of thing. This article, as well as the recent story about Iraqi food distribution network offhandedly gives a peak into life in Iraq. It's a real country with a real economy, it's not suffering from back-breaking poverty, and people go about their lives every day just like everywhere else.

Playing along, the Westernized middle and upper classes took advantage of expanded opportunities and prospered during the oil boom in the late '70s. Their success exceeded all expectations, despite the restrictions of the command economy. In 1968, Iraq had fifty-three millionaire families; there were 800 such households in 1980, and some 3,000 by 1989. Salaried employees and property owners became powerful social forces. They did not owe their prosperity to a free market system; rather, they were dependent on government employment and contracts.

Not that I'm about to start playing another MMORPG (I wasted a few months on Everquest a few years ago), but compare this new one:

Leadership: The test of Trust. To complete this challenge, a player must place a significant amount of gold in a ritual vault, and give keys to ten high-level individuals. If, after 24 hours, none of the ten powerful individuals has stolen the gold, then the player really does know who to trust. He passes the test, and gains a level in leadership. -- A Tale in the Desert

to this description of Everquest gameplay:

Finally, when you reach the boss mob, the fight may last perhaps 30 minutes or more. This 30 minutes of combat is certainly not fun, as all you do is point your character at a mob and press a single button to auto-attack. Many melee-classes go watch TV for the duration of the fight. Your clerics (usually eight or more) cast the same healing spell in a long healing chain to keep your warrior alive, and your wizards all cast the same damaging spells for the 30 minutes of the fight. This is to kill a single mob (in this case, named Aten Ha Ra), which drops four items for your guild. --EverQuest: What You Really Get From an Online Game

Where are our carriers?

• 3 in drydock
• 5 in or headed for the Gulf
  (Abraham Lincoln, Roosevelt, Nimitz, Constellation, Kitty Hawk)
• 4 in service but not Gulf-bound
  Carl Vinson, "Pac"
  George Washington "conducting carrier qualifications in the WestLant"
  John C. Stennis in San Diego
  Harry Truman in the Alantic
• Two more under construction
• Three more on the drawing board

Meanwhile, the rest of the world:
France has one aircraft carrier, the Charles De Gaulle, which has a history of breakdowns.
Italy has a VSTOL (Harrier/helicopter) carrier, the Garibaldi
Britain has three VSTOL carriers ( Invincible, Illustrious, Ark Royal)
Spain has a VSTOL carrier, the Principe de Asturias

Russia has one (apparently) working aircraft carrier, the Kuznetsov. All of the Kiev-class carriers have rusted. Russia has sold three aircraft carriers to China; two Kiev-class are now floating casinos. The third, a more modern but incomplete Kuznetsov-class called the Varyag, was stranded in the Black Sea for several years (no engine, and the Turks wouldn't let it get towed through the Straits for fear it would get stuck).

India has one VSTOL carrier (Viraat) and is trying to buy a refurbished Russian carrier.

Brazil bought a French carrier.

Bottom Line:
We have twelve, each with an associated battle group of ships. The rest of the world has nine, and six of those belong to our allies. Each US carrier is three times bigger than almost anything else out there. British ships have the coolest names. China is the only nation whose aircraft carriers (casinos) are profit centers.

Other sources:
Russian aircraft carriers
Varyag World
World Navies

From the USA Today

How to react when terrorists attack Preparation key to survival -'Dirty bomb' attack... 'What you should have on hand: Coarse soap for washing is helpful in case someone is exposed to radiation.' -Chemical attack... 'What to do during an attack: If told to stay inside, turn off all ventilation, seal windows, doors and vents of an internal room and keep listening to the radio. Ten square feet of a sealed room holds air for one person for five hours. If outside, move upwind and seek shelter. You can provide a minimal amount of protection by breathing through a damp cloth.' -Biological attack... 'Symptoms of various diseases: Plague -- a rapid onset of pneumonia, chills, fever, rapid pulse and painful, enlarged lymph nodes.' -What families should do... 'keep an easy-to-grab box of important documents: deeds, wills, passports, bank account information, etc. And don't forget food and other supplies for your pets.' -What else?... 'Most important, authorities say, don't panic.'

Yes, of course. DON'T PANIC!

Warnings trigger a run on disaster supplies

At Central Ace Hardware in Miami Beach, long a prime source for hurricane supplies, calls came early. ''A guy wanted a dozen rolls of duct tape,'' manager Jack Terplicki said. ''He wanted to make sure he was prepared for the security alert and was afraid it would sell out. Normally, in hurricane season, all you need is one roll for the house.'

Skip the first four pages of tediously mediocre writing and revel in the getting-exposed-as-a-fraud third act of this sad story.

"Right. You can't be serious. I mean -- How did you get here? By what freakish circumstance did your résumé find its way into a pile with the rest of these seasoned professionals? I'm looking at this résumé and I'm thinking, Hey, this guy has never done anything serious in his life. Even the names here are ridiculous: QuantumLeaps, FutureClicks, Luminescence. What the hell are 'boutique eco-bungalows?' How did you end up here, talking to me?"

I was too shocked by her sudden change in demeanor to debate the relative merits of those names versus "CogentResponse."

There is exactly one proven solution for urban congestion: a multi-decade decline in population. Name a city that's reduced gridlock without double-digit emigration. You can't pave your way out of traffic jams because of psychology: When new, empty roads appear, drivers not only start using them but _increase_ the number of trips they make until they're back at the limiting frustration level. Alternate forms of transportation - the subway, light rail, carpooling, HOV lanes, park-and-ride, bicycles, Monorail - don't get cars off the road. They provide more pleasant alternatives for those willing and able to restructure their lives around them. To those who protest that HOV lanes are unfair to those who can't carpool, that lone drivers shouldn't have to alter their lifestyles to get access to pavement their tax dollars paid for, I say this: you made your own bed when you chose to structure your life around your car. So go sleep in your car. Or something.

I experimented with two new technologies Thursday afternoon, one social and one automotive. First, the automotive: specifically the Honda Hybrid. The term "hybrid" for a car means, as of 2003, a gasoline-powered car with a battery and electric transmission tacked on top. All of the energy comes, ultimately, from gasoline; you never plug the car in. Instead, the battery system acts as a buffer. By adding juice when accelerating or going up hills, the battery allows the gasoline engine to remain at a lower speed, and thus to stay more efficient and less polluting. When you hit the brakes, the electric motors turn into generators, siphoning power from your forward momentum back into electricity. And when the car stops, the engine tops up the battery if needed and then shuts down.

How does it work? The Honda was less peppy than my old Toyota MR2, which you could take perfectly level through a 90 degree turn onto a cross street at 25 mph if you knew how to heel-and-toe, but it was substantially more peppy than, say, a Saturn. Taking off from a stoplight, even with the engine off, was entirely unstressful and never felt, as it often does in, say, a Saturn, futile. Overall, more than adequate for pleasurable city driving, and it had no trouble on the freeway either. The interior quality was midway between the insubstantiality of a Hyundai Spoope and the modern Yuppie solidness of a 30K sedan. The front seats were comfortable; though it has four doors, I glanced at the back seats and they seemed to be closing in on me so I didn't look a second time. Most importantly, for people like me with a compulsive need to be both different and better than the average, driving the Hybrid fulfills that need precisely.

And that's because, while still maintaining a fun drive, you know you're moving yourself out of the problem column and closer to the solution.

Automobiles have four main problems: they require petroleum, they destroy the environment, they kill a lot of people, and they promote alienating (sub)urban landscapes. The hybrid solves one and a half of these problems. While it still runs solely on gasoline, it burns that magical fluid so cleanly that it's basically not polluting. And by putting electric technology into a non-masochistic package (unlike the EV1 or earlier Honda Insight) that will actually sell tens of thousands of units, familiarizing consumers and generating real-world trial experience, it's a medium-sized technological step towards true renewable-resource cars. And its quietness arguably leads to a better kind of lethality, a culling of the unobservant who step onto the street without looking both ways. But it still burns plenty of gas - my mileage for 20 miles of freeway/city was 36.3 mpg - and it's still a car, part of that system of individual transport modules whose infrastructure consumes 40 percent of our urban land and leaves you feeling all alone even when surrounded by thousands of other humans.

That last problem can't be addressed with better batteries. So let's talk about a social innovation - the Flexcar. Flexcar does business in four cities, and there are similar companies in other places. Flexcar owns about fifty cars scattered throughout Seattle and the greater metropolitan area, concentrated heavily in Capitol Hill (where I live). Some, not all, are hybrids, and there's a pickup truck and a Miata that cost a little extra. The business model is theoretically win-win: by using cars for more hours of the day, and by consolidating all the gas/repair/insurance/etc overhead, we drivers can use resources much more efficiently and still leave a profit for the company.

The deal is this: you pay $25 to join. When you want a car, you call and reserve one. You walk over to the parking place, use your smart card and PIN to get in, and drive off. Later, you put it back where you found it. You pay $8/hr to do so. You don't pay for insurance, gas, repairs, or anything else. If it gets dirty or runs low on gas, you wash it or fill it with the fleet card, and they pay you a few dollars for your time. If it isn't there when your reservation starts, you take a cab and the guilty party reimburses you (through the company, so you don't have to hassle them yourself.)

So Thursday, I bicycled to work in the morning, called to reserve the car in the adjacent parking lot, walked over at 12:30, and drove off to my martial arts class across the lake. I returned the car at 2:30, just when I said I would. Compared to the bicycle/bus combination, it cost me $12 more and saved me about an hour. Will I do it twice a week? No, too pricey, especially for a two-hour class where I pay $8 for it to sit in a parking lot. But as an extra option - for last-minute errands, for when it's raining and I don't feel soaking in spandex, or for when I want to know that I'm burning slightly less gasoline than anybody else with a measurable 0-to-60 - and burning negative gasoline for the 60-to-0 part - I think it may work out well.

This article is a good summary of why the virtual economy in MMORPGs like Everquest is actually interesting instead of just a curiousity.

"The economic dynamics of EverQuest also allow Castranova to calculate wage levels in Norrath. Take the PP value of an average avatar's skills and assets, divide it by the average number of hours required to accumulate those holdings, and an average avatar "earns" 319 PP/hour, or $3.42/hour at the prevailing exchange rate. (This doesn't sound like much, but Norrath's deflation means that "real" wages are actually rising.) Castronova estimates that Norrath's per capita GNP is higher than India's or China's."

... Opera7 receives a style sheet which is very different from the Microsoft and Netscape browsers. Looking inside the style sheet sent to Opera7 we find this fragment:

ul {
  margin: -2px 0px 0px -30px;
}

The culprit is in the "-30px" value set on the margin property. This value instructs Opera7 to move list elements 30 pixels to the left of its parent. That is, Opera7 is explicitly instructed to move content off the side of its container thus creating the impression that there is something wrong with Opera7."

Like all of our callers, the aspiring middle managers dialed a number and were put directly through to a recruiter. But the middle managers were different in that many of them made two disastrous assumptions. The first was that anyone who answers the phone must be the receptionist, and the second was that it's OK to be rude to the receptionist.