Technically Incorrect

They tell us not to drive Hummers.

They tell us to disconnect our cell phone chargers, once our cell phones are juiced. They tell us to switch off our laptops, burn candles rather than electric light, and sail boats rather than fly planes.

But do they ever tell us to wean ourselves off the animals that we cynically use as substitutes for our failed relationships with other humans?

I only ask because an article from the New Scientist has wafted in front of my breakfast bowl and slapped me about my flappy jowls.

Quoting such luminous organizations as the Stockholm Environment Institute at York, UK, the article purports to suggest that our pets have all the eco-friendliness of that Northwest Airlines flight that forgot to land in Minneapolis and just kept on going to Wisconsin.

Please, I understand that dogs and cats are lovely beings that just want to love you and lick you as long as you feed them and wash them.

However, the SEI seems to believe that a cat has almost the same carbon footprint as a VW Golf.

Here is a sentence from the article that I know may make some of you rather unwell: "As well as guzzling resources, cats and dogs devastate wildlife populations, spread disease and add to pollution."

Buddy, if you can't carry the family to the mall, you'll have to go.

(Credit: CC Mike Baird/Flickr)

Yes, I know you thought it was only multinational corporations that do that. So please imagine that there is a book, written by Robert and Brenda Vale, called "Time to Eat the Dog?: The real guide to sustainable living."

Because you are more numerate than me, I will leave you to examine their figures in lascivious detail. However, the Vales estimate that a 4.6-liter Toyota Land Cruiser has an eco-footprint that is less than half that of a medium-size dog.

It is largely to do with the amount of meat and cereal that dogs chow, but this is surely a vale of tears for those who need their dogs in so many different ways: to get exercise, to get companionship and to become attractive to members of their target sex.

In case you are not quite thoroughly depressed by this estimation of our ultimate demise, might I offer you two further calculations from the Vales?

Well, should you own two hamsters, that is the eco-footprint equivalent of your plasma. And one goldfish? Well, it's the energy-sucking equivalent of two cell phones.

To continue this cheery mood for just a little longer, please hark these words the New Scientist quotes-- they were uttered by David Mackay, a physicist at the University of Cambridge: "If a lifestyle choice uses more than 1 per cent of your energy footprint, then it is worthwhile reflecting on that choice and seeing what you can do about it."

The average cat, he estimates, represents 2 percent of a human's footprint. And as for dogs, oh, it really doesn't bear thinking about.

It seems to me, therefore, that you have some harsh choices to make in order to save our world.

Your goldfish or your family plan? Your hamsters or, at the very least, the plasma in your bedroom? Your dog or your Audi?

Your animal companions or your technological ones? Life just doesn't get easier, does it?

In this tough economy, forearmed is better than forewarned.

At least that seems to be the view of Mark Muller, owner of Max Motors in Clay County, Mo. Because, in August, he is offering a free AK-47 with every vehicle sold.

You might think this promotion a little on the eccentric side. However, Muller is no lily-livered Collapsenikov.

He believes in standing up for one's right to defend oneself. Indeed, he has a motto for his dealership that expresses his feelings very clearly: "God, Guns, Guts and American Pick-up Trucks."

You might wonder how on earth he came to devise such an outlandish, and perhaps slightly unnerving, promotion.

Well, last year he offered a free handgun. And, in an interview with CNN (embedded here), he said: "It spiked our Web traffic and we sold, we estimate, 35 more cars during the promotion than we normally would have."

So the seductive power of the gun seems to work on those who choose the Web to find the best deals.

This year, Muller said, he is looking to sell 100 extra vehicles, hence the attempt to locate your inner Rambo.

Muller explained to CNN: "Look, there's a bunch of evil in the world and we need to protect ourselves."

He added: "There's a tremendous crime problem around here with people doing meth. These people have lost their souls. They don't care about you. They don't care about me. They care about getting more dope."

Hence the need, according to Muller, for something stronger than a little handgun.

In case you were wondering whether he will have a pile of AKs in his showroom, from the top of which he'll take one and present it to every purchaser, well, it's not quite so glamorous.

He will offer a voucher that the lucky truck-owner can take down to a gun store and go through the proper vetting procedure before he gets his precious free gift. Which, should you suddenly feel the urge to pack extra protection, will set you back a mere $450.

However, Muller is keen to point out that just because he lives in a more rural area, this promotion is not indicative of some sort of uncultured nature on his part.

He was quoted in the Telegraph as explaining: "They think we are all cross-eyed rednecks down here. We are not. Tonight I am going to the theater with my wife to see Anything Goes and we will eat sushi on the way."

I am sure there will be at the very least a handgun tickling his hip as he nibbles on his rainbow roll.

However, I feel confident that Muller's strategy will prove to be a good one.

Next year, when he looks to send his Web traffic soaring in an attempt to sell 200 more vehicles, I feel sure he will offer bazookas, a mortar or two, perhaps even a rocket launcher.

Google Street View seems to have caused a little friction in the United Kingdom, as the British whisper loudly to defend their sense of privacy.

However, one group of people seems to have stared at the Street View camera cars, smiled, and been inspired.

Yes, the police took one look at the 360-degree cameras perched on top of innocent little cars and said to themselves: "We can do that."

Which is why residents of Greater Manchester will be delighted to hear that two Smart Cars, with cameras soaring skywards from their roofs will be patrolling their neighborhoods in a pilot scheme.

Will they ensnare texter-drivers or those applying make-up at the wheel? One hopes. But will they also capture gentlemen emitting their copious pints of lager onto the pristine sidewalk? Will they spot unfaithful husbands enjoying creepy trysts away from their forlorn wives?

What is clear, and this is something that I know will make some readers' loins gird with grit, the UK police is trying to do everything the Google way. Yes, they're doing it by the data.

In a cost-cutting joint venture, might there soon be a policeman inside?

(Credit: CC Master Man/Flickr)

A police spokesperson declared to the Daily Mail: "'The Smart enforcement vehicles are fully police liveried and working in areas where our data analysis has identified a high occurrence of 'driver distraction' collisions and where officers have regularly observed offenses being committed."

The UK police is, indeed, being turned on to data analysis. What beautiful knowledge with which to start the week.

I only have one concern. In the Greater Manchester area, there do exist posh districts, populated by lawyers, accountants, night club owners, and money launderers.

Will they follow the example of the villagers of Broughton and surround the street-viewing Smart cars with a view to intimidating them from their midst?

If mob rule hits Greater Manchester, what hope is there left for the rest of the kingdom?

He hasn't twittered it yet, but I am suddenly full of belief that Shaquille O'Neal is about to buy a Smart car.

What has driven me to this "yes, we can" moment? Why, the first-ever NBA Green Week.

Launched Thursday, this is the NBA's attempt to reduce its carbon footprint (size 45).

It's a footprint that is characterized by large, pimped-out SUVs, vast, flashing scoreboards, long flights in 757s to New York and Los Angeles, and, especially, the infinite noxious detritus from its Pistons--exemplified by the fumes regularly emitted by power forward (and technical foul king) Rasheed Wallace.

The NBA has gotten its teams together to launch Green Week with the National Resources Defense Council, a green organization that proudly whispers the tagline: "The Earth's Best Defense." (This might cause a few of the Boston Celtics to cough a little furiously.)

The NBA even persuaded renowned, um, power hitter, Robert Redford to introduce the week on YouTube.

And, should you be so inclined (though it might burn up quite some laptop power), there are seven NBA videos to encourage you to change your position on the environment from center to power forward.

You can see members of the Houston Rockets and the Atlanta Hawks planting trees. You can enjoy Louis Amundson of the Phoenix Suns riding his bike to work. And you can commune with the Suns' Steve Nash as he talks about getting solar panels on the arena roof in Phoenix and about his clever basketball shoes made from recyclable materials.

Now doesn't that say No. 1 draft pick to you?

(Credit: CC Alan D/Flickr)

Nash is one player who, when it comes to preaching, would never utter Allen Iverson's famous complaint: "Practice?? We're talking about practice?"

Nash lives in New York during the off-season and doesn't even keep a car there. Yet as you read on the special NBA site about the Denver Nuggets, the Charlotte Bobcats and the Chicago Bulls all wearing uniforms and socks made from 45 percent organic cotton, you wonder where the greenery begins and the greenbacks end.

It's all very well for the Toronto Raptors to offer a 25 percent discount to anyone who shows up with a ticket from public transportation. And it's lovely that any Minnesota Timberwolves fan who arrives by bus, train or, who knows, balloon for the game on Sunday will get a free upper-level ticket.

But these are teams that drying paint refuses to watch.

Then there's the extra-special opportunity for fans to purchase 100 percent organic-cotton shooting shirts and recycled Spalding basketballs.

As any fan of the Golden State Warriors will tell you, something is better than nothing. But wouldn't it be the ultimate joy if LeBron James suddenly rolled up to a game in a Prius with recycled, personalized hubcaps?

I mean, the NBA is where amazing happens, right?

I know people will do anything online these days.

But it is hard not to rubber-neck when someone does something so astonishingly witless that even your serially drunken aunt wouldn't do it at Christmas dinner.

Please consider the curious case of Benjamin Ryan.

He gets himself a VW Golf. He has it tweaked for maximum torque. Then he goes a little torque mad. He decides to race a friend of his along a freeway, his friend being the proud owner of an Audi RS4. They travel at speeds that touch 130 mph.

It so happens that another friend rides shotgun with him on this torque-mad sprint. This friend has a cell phone. The kind of cell phone that makes video.

Benjamin, whose heart clearly pounds to a different beat, loves the video so much that, oh, you'll never guess. Yes, he posts it on an online forum.

"Look at me," he seems to say. "I'm a very driven intellectual."

The people's car ends up in the people's court.

(Credit: CC The Car Spy)

You know that it's hard to have complete faith in humanity? Well, someone on the forum decides that Benjy is a menace to society, tips off the police and, with appropriate speed, a court fines Benjamin 400 British pounds and bans him from driving for 15 months.

Your eyes may aquaplane a little at discovering that his lawyer, Mark McNeil, suggested that Benjamin did check to see if the road was clear before embarking upon his daytime Daytona along the A46 in Lincolnshire, England.

He added: "It was never Mr. Ryan's intention to encourage or incite other road users to follow his actions and race on roads." Something that was heartily proven by his action of posting the video of his toupee-raising antics online.

You know these stories always have a sad ending. Yes, Benjamin actually lost the race.

It's a venal world.

People scrambling over each other to reach that muddy dollar lying on the sidewalk. And uncontrolled competition to secure a lover who will make others envious of our powers of seduction.

Researchers at the University of Wales Institute in Cardiff wanted to believe differently. Or, at least, I want to believe they wanted to believe differently.

They showed women pictures of the same man in two different cars: a silver Bentley Continental and a Ford Fiesta (think small, dinged, possibly driven by an academic). Women aged 21-40 expressed a vast preference for the gentry in the Bentley.

I wanted to weep when I read this. Every profile I have ever read on Match.com tells me that women want a sense of humor, not a sense of Beemer. But no. It seems that a purring motor is the way to make a female turn feline.

Your faith in humanity may well be restored when you discover the researchers tried the same ruse with men--with very different results. The men couldn't give a broken sprocket if the woman was driving a stolen Lada. All they were interested in was...oh, go on, just guess. You know the answer.

This information drove the researchers to some brutal and depressing conclusions. The Institute's Dr. Michael Dunn told the "Telegraph": "Females focus on questions of wealth and status because if the male possesses those, that male would be in a better condition to rear healthy offspring."

You may consider a little purple pill when you hear that even when women make more money and have extremely attractive, um, cars, they still seek out men with even greater status (and, presumably, Mercedes) than their own.

My place? Or my place?

(Credit: CC The Car Spy)

Dr. Dunn, clearly a brave and happy man, even ventured to declare that women are the shallower sex. "Let's face it--there's evidence to support it," he said.

So what kind of car are you going to get next? Perhaps, I might tempt your credulity by asking you to consider a new eco-car called the LEKO.

A Toyota? No, an IKEA.

A strange Web site has appeared, roulez-leko.com, on which a very relaxed, modern, eco-friendly chap, allegedly the great car designer Christophe Grozs, stands next to an apparent car draped with the word LEKO and the tagline "la voiture selon IKEA."

Yes, the car according to IKEA.

Looks like a perfect car dealership, no?

(Credit: Flickr/OiMax)

The LEKO (L'eco, get it?), allegedly has the backing of the World Wildlife Fund in France. Which might mean the fund has put money into the creation or that the car will have plastic panda-skin seats.

It also will save you untold (because unspecified) amounts of money on your expenditure. And it is humongously eco-friendly.

This is an ad, right?

If IKEA made a car, the doors might not fit quite perfectly into the body. Then you'd really have to work hard to use those tiny screwdrivers to make sure the engine didn't wobble. And just imagine the number of screws it would take to put in the cup holder.

There's the name too. Real IKEA product names never make sense. They always seem to resemble a fair to middling Scrabble hand--for example, KLIPPAN or LYCKSELE. LEKO is far too meaningful.

Highway patrolmen have a lot of time to contemplate cars. And I've always wondered why they stop the car going 10 mph over the limit rather than the one that just overtook it in the outside lane at the speed of Joan Rivers' mouth.

So I am grateful to CNET's Wayne Cunningham for revealing the list of the 10 most ticketed cars and the 10 least ticketed:

Most ticketed		Rate		Least ticketed		Rate
Hummer H2/H3		463%		Jaguar XJ		11%
Scion tC		460%		Chevrolet Suburban		16%
Scion XB		403%		Chevrolet Tahoe		21%
Mercedes Benz CLK63 AMG		397%		Chevrolet C/K 3500/2500 pickup		28%
Toyota Solara Coupe		306%		Buick Park Avenue		32%
Mercedes Benz CLS63 AMG		276%		Mazda6		34%
Scion xA		275%		Buick Rainier		37%
Subaru Outback		266%		Oldsmobile Silhouette		37%
Audi A4		264%		Buick Lucerne		40%
Toyota Matrix		264%		GMC Sierra C1500 pickup		40%

*Violations per 100,000 miles driven, expressed as percentage of average.

It seems that the police love to ticket Hummers most of all. Perhaps some of you will find this understandable. Rarely has a brand attracted such wholesale disdain. Rarely have men attempted to make up in such an obvious fashion for their paunches and manboobs.

But why do police have it in for the Scion? Three different Scion models festoon the Top Ticketed Ten. They were accompanied by two types of Mercedes, the Audi A4, the Subaru Outback, the Toyota Matrix, and the Toyota Solara Coupe.

I have a theory. The Scion site describes the brand as 'United by Individuality.' Unfortunately, too many individuals have bought Scions and chosen for them to look like instruments of youthful, effeminate subversion. Naturally, in times of orange alerts and a surge toward national defense, these strange Toyotas harbored a visual threat to our secure motorized monotony.

The third most ticketed car in the United States. Surely you can see why.

(Credit: CC Monica's Dad)

My theory appears to be strengthened by the list of the least ticketed. There you will find the following nine cars: Chevrolet Suburban, Chevrolet Tahoe, Chevrolet C/K 3500/2500 pickup, Buick Park Avenue, Mazda6, Buick Rainier, Oldsmobile Silhouette, Buick Lucerne, GMC Sierra C1500 pickup.

This group arouses a couple of questions: 1.) Is it possible to create a list of cars any less moving, any more tranquilizing than this? 2.) What is an Oldsmobile Silhouette? And 3.) What is an Oldsmobile?

Is it therefore possible that whenever our police see one of these cars rolling down the road, they feel an emotion somewhat akin to a dulled sympathy? Is it possible that these cars arouse so little feeling that a radar gunner cannot quite believe that they are speeding or running a red light, even when they are?

My theory is only threatened by the presence of the Jaguar XJ as the least ticketed car in the United States. Why might this Jag be so resistant to the routine of flashing lights and spreading legs?

Well, perhaps there simply aren't many of them on the roads, and this number is a statistical anomaly. Perhaps a majority of Supreme Court judges drives Jaguar XJs. Perhaps these cars are so beautiful that the police just stand and stare, incapable of flagging them down and wafting the wand of justice at their drivers.

Or perhaps there are many among our police forces who simply have a fondness (or an understandable sympathy) for things British.

I had a Jag once. A pretty car. The engine (made in America, I believe) was great. But the vents (made in Britain, so they said) rattled, even after five visits to the shop. So I gave it back. But while I had it, I never got a ticket.

The founders of a company called Terrafugia are undoubtedly very, very clever.

All graduates of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, they formed the company four years ago with the aim of creating The Transition, a car that flies--not merely in the speed sense of "flies," but rather in the "takes off and does things planes do" sense.

The initial flight is planned for the end of this month or some time in February at an airport in upstate New York.

I am worried, not so much because I am suspicious of flying but because I am suspicious of people.

It's bad enough right now to trundle down a freeway and watch a demented Ford Focus or homogeneous SUV swerve from lane to lane, as if it were a supermarket trolley driven by a child. It's bad enough averting one's eyes when grandpas are crawling in at least two of the three available lanes, picking their noses and humming to Sinatra.

But can you imagine the things you tolerate on our roads and freeways being multiplied a thousand times in the air, at considerably elevated speeds?

This is an interesting picture. I think it's from some museum in Seattle.

(Credit: CC Sol Young)

The Transition costs a mere $148,000, which means that there will be enough wealthy bad drivers willing to invest in this latest form of one-upmanship.

The inventors, being very, very clever, are aware of the problems.

"We're not going to have a flying car, as people think of it, for a while," Anna Dietrich, Terrafugia's chief operating officer, told Computerworld. "I would never say it's not going to happen, but today, the infrastructure is not there, nor is the training, nor are the avionics that would make the training unnecessary. What makes sense right now is a 'roadable' aircraft."

But what may not make sense is that these wonderful machines may fall into hands of crass destruction. Terrafugia (isn't this Latin for "I'm running away from the earth"?) has already received 40 orders.

Who are these orderers? Can we trust them? Who is going to breathalyze these people, if they break the speed limit? And to what new forms of air rage might these pilot-drivers resort?

Before Technically Incorrect's diligent and astute commenters tell me to down a Diazepam, I will cease worrying of my own accord. I know that the new Obama administration will have already considered the potential consequences of flying cars. I know that education programs are already being funded to avert the worst excesses of airborne humanity.

Must fly. I want to miss the traffic.