Rants + Raves
Note to selves: Readers are serious about their car stories. In response to our piece on the Tesla Roadster, a new battery-powered sports car, you wrote in with your own ideas: Had anyone considered regenerative braking? What about a prize for the best electric vehicle? One, um, enthusiast suggested "soda-bottle plastic helium foam structural and body and interior materials." Yeah, we'll keep that in mind. When you weren't geeking out on the cars you hoped to have, you were reminiscing about the cars that got away. After reading our article on (supposedly) theft-proof transponder-equipped vehicles, you regaled us with woeful tales of stolen rides and clever thieves. There is, you pointed out ruefully, a back door into everything. Note to selves redux: Make sure our insurance policy is up to date.
The Truthiness Hurts
The August issue should have been sold in a bag with a huge disclaimer: COVER PHOTO NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART. As an iPod user, the idea of Stephen Colbert hacksawing his way through my crutch for the digital age gave me night terrors. Congratulations on creating such a stirring image. I think I need therapy now.
Michael Appleby
Edmonton, Alberta
Strategic Posture to Incentivize Alertness
Here's a trick you missed ("How to Stay Awake in Dull Meetings," issue 14.08). To keep from falling asleep – even during a paint-drying presentation after you've had a lunch of pizza and beer – stand up. Your brain is unwilling to let your body fall that far, and you'll stay awake. And if, as you rise, you deliver a question or comment, or approach the screen as if to get a better look at a particularly busy slide, no one will realize you narrowly avoided drooling on your sleeve. Plus, if you nod thoughtfully from time to time or assume an alert stance (don't lock your knees) with arms crossed, you may even intimidate the presenter into getting it the hell over with already.
Steve Oberlin
Hood River, Oregon
You Call That a Hack?
The hack-your-iPod story ("How to Recover Tunes From Your iPod," issue 14.08) is less "hacking" and more "dealing with the DRM nightmare that results from a hard drive crash." If you really want to hack an iPod to do cool things, like handle additional audio formats, allow gapless playback, support ReplayGain (volume normalization), display different graphical themes, and even play Doom, you should have a look at the Rockbox open source jukebox firmware.
Erik Reckase
Berthoud, Colorado
Late, Lost, and Sober
An important point was omitted in "How to Use a Wristwatch as a Compass" (issue 14.08). The trick works only when the watch is set for standard time, so if it's daylight savings time, you'll have to temporarily reset it. Imagine trying to meet friends for cocktails and arriving at the wrong bar an hour late.
Ron Bogdonov
Vancouver, British Columbia
Big in North Carolina
In your article on the Japanese band Dir en gray (Posts, "Japanese Invasion," issue 14.08), you say that they've had no airplay in the US.
Not quite. I'm DJ Kidna at WKNC in Raleigh, North Carolina, and the music director for a show called Made in Japan. I play Dir en gray quite often. In fact, I get requests for them all the time.
Christian Urena
Raleigh, North Carolina
Security Briefing
My car is easy to steal, and that's the way I like it. Insurance companies are just looking for reasons to screw you, and apparently, having a nice car is a good one ("Pinch My Ride," issue 14.08). Can companies please stop placing so much faith in a single security technology? The permanent solution is to keep coming up with new ways to secure valuables.
Jeremy Lyman
Silver Spring, Maryland
(Excerpted from dailyplacebo.com)
I was fascinated by the Honda Civic emergency brake cheat code. As I was explaining to my wife how the precise series of pushes and pulls bypasses the transponder, she interrupted, "You mean just like Nintendo: up-up-down-down-left-right-left-right?" Exactly!
Steven Stefanik
Cudahy, Wisconsin
Drivers Want It
Zero to 60 in four seconds and 130 miles per hour for $80,000 … from a US company ("Batteries Included," issue 14.08)? Wow! This is a first-generation tech product that can only get better and cheaper. It should have been the cover story.
Mark Tammany
Chicago, Illinois
Heroes Welcome
Whether or not comics featuring heroes of color take off in the US, they can still play an important role in pop culture (Start, "Heroes of Color," issue 14.08).
During my formative years – the late '70s and early '80s – I longed to see more people of color on television (besides pimps and hookers) and in magazines (outside of black-only publications like Jet and Ebony).
When I was 7, I remember turning the television on late Saturday morning because that was when Soul Train came on and – finally! – there were commercials with black patrons eating in McDonald's and buying shampoo in the drug store and driving Fords. In short, being just like everyone else.
It had an impact on me then, and I am thankful to see more positive inclusion of people of color in the media today.
__Holli Camylle Buck
Canton, Michigan __
No Laughing Matter
I must object to "The Sleazy Life and Nasty Death of Russia's Spam King" (issue 14.08). Everyone hates spam email, but the author seems to take pleasure in Vardan Kushnir's murder, as though it were proper payback for annoying so many people electronically. I enjoy Wired's rebel-tech attitude, but implying that death is a just reward for sending spam is too much. Whatever grim romance Brett Forrest meant to convey by writing about street justice in Moscow resulted only in the basic (and very snide) devaluation of human life.
Jonathan Schneider
Durham, North Carolina
