Eminem Wins Superbowl

My favorite of the commercials

Scenes I Love: The Ronin Car Chase

There are a lot of things to love about Ronin. Great cast, smooth script, one of the purest uses of McGuffin I have ever seen. But at the heart of this movie is the single best car chase I've ever seen.



No slow motion, no computer tricks, just brilliant stunt and camera work done at top speed. My favorite little touch - Stellan Skarsgård's icy cool ex-KGB agent, 2/3's of the way through the chase, when his car in now going the wrong way down a Paris highway tunnel, decides that it's time to put on his seat belt.

If you liked this taste, the full movie can be seen here.

No More Saturn

Saturn is coming to an end, part of the larger carpocalypse sweeping the nation. I'm getting a bit nostalgic. My 95 Saturn LS2 wasn't my first car, but it was the first car I bought and paid for. The first car I drove that I liked. It was green. It sat four comfortably. At least a few times I slept in it. I don't think it ever attracted the girls, but it didn't scare them off either.

Now its gone, replaced by a Toyota. Which is pretty much the whole world of cars summed up nicely.

Ripples

Want to see the economy fall apart in real time? The local new car dealership in my hometown shut down just before Christmas. GMAC, which has a world of trouble of its own, called in its loan. No credit, no business. So 60 people lose their jobs, every type of media - paper, radio, TV - in the area takes a huge hit with the loss of the biggest advertiser in the county. Local government takes a big loss in tax revenue and has to lay people off and so on. Now the same thing is happening elsewhere. Now repeat this scene 1,200 times over the next year and you have yourself a very bad economy.

Even Toyota

Is down. Who bails them out? The Japanese government, right?

Deal!

Bush bails out auto industry. Who's next?

I Helped

I helped do this:

For the first time ever, Toyota sold more vehicles globally in a quarter than General Motors.

Remember when we were all so worried about Japan taking over and buying up everthing?

I wonder what happened to all that.

Threshold

I just paid 3 bucks a gallon for gas. My problem is that I always wait too long to fill up my tank and am never able to look around for the cheap station. I was having some fun with this site to try and find cheap gas near Craigorian Chant World Headquarters. Of course, most of the time, this is only going to be useful once I get a car with wi-fi and a heads-up internet display. Or how about a car where I can just ask "KITT can you find me some cheap gas?"

I would also recommend this Billmon post on politics and gas prices and oil and foreign policy.

Open Thread

Craig's going to be learning the dark art of FEMA flood maps all day today, so talk amongst yourselves. I'll give you a topic:

Grape-nuts are neither grapes, nor nuts. Discuss.

Do you think that troops will remain in Iraq for the full Bush Presidency?

Did she get off beat the rap just because she's hot.

Is the BMW Z4 really the best car for Craig's mid-life crisis? I'm nowhere near a mid-life crisis, but I like to plan ahead. After all, Katrina showed us all the importance of planning for a crisis.

Answers, people I want answers. Use the comments.

I for One...

...Will welcome our new robot overlords:

An unmanned vehicle has successfully navigated a forbidding 132-mile section of the Mojave Desert. The next stop for the technology may be Afghanistan or Iraq.

A souped-up VW Touareg, designed by Stanford University, zipped through the course in six hours and 53 minutes Sunday, using only its computer brain and sensors to navigate rough and twisting desert and mountain trails.

The robotic vehicles had to navigate a course designed to mimic driving conditions in Iraq and Afghanistan, including winding dirt trails and dry lake beds filled with overhanging brush. Parts of the route forced the robots to zip through three tunnels designed to knock out their GPS signals.

The race is part of the military's effort to fulfill a congressional mandate to cut casualties by having a third of the military's ground vehicles unmanned in 20 years.

The Stanford team -- which spent $500,000 on the race, some of which was provided by sponsors -- celebrated by popping champagne and pouring it over their mud-covered car called Stanley.

Sure this is how it starts. A cute little VW Touareg that can drive itself. The next thing you know we are all slaves and being used as batteries to power an entire robot civilization. All hail our new overlord Stanley. Hail! Hail! Hail!