Tag Archives: cars

The car dilemma… What do you think that I should do?

By Mark | January 27, 2013

In September of 2002, I purchased my first, and only, brand new car. I’d always told myself that I’d never buy a new car… as new cars, as we all know, are for suckers… but my old Jeep, which was built from salvaged parts by the kids in a rural Kentucky auto shop class, was [...]

Posted in Mark's Life, Uncategorized | Also tagged David Cross, Honda Civic Hybrid, personal transportation, SUVs, Tauntaun, transportation planning | 53 Comments

Death Race 2012

By Mark | January 31, 2012

It’s not that I want to run people over, but, occasionally, I see something that brings Death Race 2000 to mind, and I wonder, if I were to slip into Machine Gun Joe Viterbo mode and do the unthinkable, how many points I’d get. Today, driving through downtown Ann Arbor, I had one of those [...]

Posted in Art and Culture, Uncategorized | Also tagged 1975, Annual Transcontinental Road Race, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, cult classics, Death Race 2000, donkey semen, dystopia, Fear Factor, Machine Gun Joe Viterbo, Rocky, Roger Ebert, running people over, Russ Meyer, Sandy McCallum, Sylvester Stalone | 8 Comments

Autos, Infrastructure and Ray LaHood

By Mark | June 14, 2009

Today’s New York Times Magazine is all about infrastructure. I’m about to dig into an article on the high-speed rail line planned between Los Angeles and San Francisco, but before I do, I wanted to pass along a quick link to a very brief interview with Ray LaHood, the former Republican Congressman who now serves [...]

Posted in Politics, Rail, Sustainability | Also tagged election rigging, George Will, high-speed rail, infrastructure, Iran, livable communities, Los Angeles to San Francisco rail, mass transit, Orange Revolution, Ray LaHood, riots, secretary of behavior modification, Secretary of Transportation, small glimmers of hope, the American way of life is nonnegotiable, three-car garages are un-American, Tiananmen Square, Ukraine | 4 Comments

Michael Moore on the bankruptcy of GM

By Mark | June 1, 2009

I was going to write something tonight on my conflicted feelings on the bankruptcy of GM, but then, as I was thinking about what to write, I happened across this letter by director Michael Moore. And, as I agree with almost all of it, I thought that I’d reprint it here in its entirety, and [...]