iNuts.

Have I mentioned that my sister works at the Cube, and was in charge of the iPhone rollout there?

I bet she's tired.

Me voice, Popeye, me voice!

I'm happy to announce that I've finally completed the reading of G. K. Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday for LibriVox, and it's available here. You can get versions in MP3 and Ogg Vorbis, and can even subscribe to the 64k mp3s as a podcast. At some point in the future it will be linked from Gutenberg as well, but that's not up to me so I don't know when it will happen.

Also, at some point in the future my voice will be showing up at Audible.com and the iTunes store--I did a commercial reading of three short stories, woo hoo! More on that as soon as I hear more.

Best last paragraph ever.

Speaking at a Democratic National Committee fundraiser Monday night, Al Gore said that now that Bush has taken up the cause of global warming, the former vice president and environmental activist will redirect his energies toward developing a personal spacecraft capable of transporting a family of four to a distant planet.

Well, I'll be damned, Digby is a woman. Awesome.

Addicted again.

CURSE YOU, LUCASARTS!

There IS a difference...

...between 128kbps and 256kbps. Slate has the goods.

Some things you might not know about hybrid cars in general and the Camry in particular.

1. In the first five to ten minutes, it uses the gas engine just like a regular car. After the vehicle warms up a bit, you can go into "stealth mode," where the gas engine stops running and you're entirely on electric power, under certain circumstances. But if you hit a stop light in those first few minutes, you're guzzling just as much gas as an Escalade.
2. Despite this, I've gotten "stealth mode" at speeds as high as 40 mph. After you've driven for a while, if you're going, say, downhill, the car will indeed cut out the engine and operate entirely on electricity. And if you have a light touch on the accelerator, it'll continue doing so when you reach level ground. Going uphill will always invoke the gas engine, though.
3. Watch out for pedestrians when driving slowly. It's amazing just how quiet the damn thing is when the gas engine is off. And if people don't see you, they tend to not get out of your way if they don't hear you.
4. The economy display is hypnotic. The dash has a section that displays exactly where the power is going--if it's coming from the engine or the electric motor, or if (when coasting or braking) the wheels are sending power back into the battery. Be aware of the road, though. As fascinating as it is, it will not be an excuse in your hit-and-run trial.
5. The MPG gauge is the tachometer for the '00s. Every car should have one of these, whether hybrid or not. It's a beautiful sight to see when, exactly, you're getting over 60 miles to the gallon.
   
6. It starts with a button, and opens with a touch! Maybe Toyota is implementing this with their whole fleet, not just hybrids, I don't know. But there's nothing quite like the X-Men feeling you get when you have a transponder in your pocket and your car unlocks when you touch the door handle. Bizarre...
7. The nastiest secret of all: despite all the technology, and the advance in years and gas prices, our '94 Saturn still got better highway mileage.