The Smart ForTwo isn’t so much a small car as a short one. At just eight feet from stem to stern, it’s by far the shortest car on the market. What’s the difference between small and short? A small car can stay low to the ground to achieve excellent handling and fuel economy. A short car only excels at one thing: unmetered parallel parking. The first-generation Smart proved the point. As reviewed on TTAC, it was a noisy, slow, poor-handling, stiff-legged, bouncy and crashy car with meh mileage. So, Daimler says it’s rectified the first-gen’s faults. Is Version 2.0– headed stateside in 2008– ready for prime time?
The new ForTwo maintains its Tonka-toy proportions and look at me I’m wearing designer glasses (without a prescription) unconventionality. There’s now a painted parenthesis around the driver’s compartment: a clever if unsuccessful attempt to reassure drivers that Smart’s got their back (as there’s nothing much behind them). From certain angles, the slash-marked Four Two looks like a Pokemon with weird sideburns. Anyway, there’s no denying that observers (especially women) fight the urge to muss the ForTwo’s metaphorical hair and pinch its figurative cheeks.
Monthly Archives: November 2007
Hanoi: Temple of Literature
More photos and links here.
Illustrations with bite
I’ve been running across examples of illustration designed to shake things up & reflect on the world, for better & for worse:
- [Note: Not for those offended by profanity] Paul Krassner’s 1963 “F Communism” bumper sticker is a an incredibly efficient little satire of politics and obscenity. Check out Kurt Vonnegut’s commentary on the work for historical context.
- On war & walls:
The NYT features a piece on Baghdad muralists hired to beautify, or at least adorn, the city’s grim anti-suicide-bomber blast walls. “With few opportunities for work, [the artists] are delighted with the money, but are also uncomfortably aware that all they can do is paint the symptoms of a conflict that has mired their city in death squads…”
Elsewhere in the region, elusive British street artist Banksy has decorated Israeli’s security wall.- Back in this part of the world, online company Brickfish kicked off a contest to “Design your own border fence” for the US-Mexico frontier.
Giving Stuff Away on the Internet
As with most of my life decisions, my impulse to blog was a puzzling little soup of miscellaneous causes that bubbled and simmered until one day I noticed I was doing something. I figured I needed a rationalization in case anyone asked. My rationalization for blogging was especially hard to concoct. I was giving away my product for free and hoping something good came of it.
I did have a few “artist” reasons for blogging. After 18 years of writing “Dilbert” comics, I was itching to slip the leash and just once write “turd” without getting an email from my editor. It might not seem like a big deal to you, but when you aren’t allowed to write in the way you talk, it’s like using the wrong end of the shovel to pick up, for example, a turd.
Over time, I noticed something unexpected and wonderful was happening with the blog. I had an army of volunteer editors, and they never slept. The readers were changing the course of my writing in real time. I would post my thoughts on a topic, and the masses told me what they thought of the day’s offering without holding anything back. Often they’d correct my grammar or facts and I’d fix it in minutes. They were in turns brutal and encouraging. They wanted more posts on some topics and less of others. It was like the old marketing saying, “Your customers tell you what business you’re in.”
When will global oil production peak? Here is the answer!
Peak Oil will be one of the defining events of this century. Forecasts by professionals in energy-related fields fall in a large range between 2006 and 2025+, with most forecasts by institutions in the later half of this range. Estimates vary widely due to two very different kinds of factors.