SMART car comes to Houston - sort of

This past weekend while tooling around town inside the Loop (It is so cool living inside the loop!) I spotted a SMART car.

I couldn't believe the Lilliputian coupe so popular in European capitols like Paris and Rome was actually jockeying for position on Buffalo Speedway alongside Hummers, Mercedes and Ford F-150s. But there it was.

If you're interested in the micro machine that's EPA-rated at 40 miles to the gallon and starts at $25,000, it won't be easy to get one. Turns out, there's still no dealership in Texas.

But ZAP -- which stands for Zero Air Pollution -- the Santa Rosa, Calif.-based company that's importing the ultra-compact cars, wants to change that.

"The goal is to have a dealer in every major market. We're working on it," spokesman Alex Campbell said.

Currently there are only eight ZAP dealerships in the U.S., including two in Reno as well as outlets in Phoenix, Pittsburgh, West Palm Beach, Seattle, Colorado Springs and Exeter, N.H.

People who just have to have one are picking the closest retailer and hightailing it across several states to buy SMART.

"Everybody loves a SMART car and, at the end of the day, I think everybody loves the idea of making cars cleaner and more efficient," Campbell said, adding that ZAP has been in business for 11 years selling electric cars, scooters and all-terrain vehicles.

DaimlerChrysler actually manufactures the SMART car, which runs on regular unleaded, but the company won't sell the two-man vehicles here even though they're sold in every other major market from Malaysia to Mexico.

The scuttlebutt as to why ranges from DaimlerChrysler not wanting to erode its luxury brand name in the USA to simply not wanting to make a bad business decision. In Europe and Asia consumers often buy into the aesthetic that less is more. But, generally, in the States, more is more.

At just eight feet in length, two SMART cars can park bumper to bumper in a single parking space. Eurofiles find them stylish. SUV devotees question whether they're really sensible transportation for this country's sprawling spaghetti bowl of highways.

One thing is a virtual certainty. With gasoline prices hoovering around $3 a gallon this summer....that might be mean more SMART cars in a neighborhood near you.

"Run on the Bank"

Too clumsy to exercise? Try the cordless jump-rope

If you think keeping fit is merely mind over matter, Lester Clancy has an invention for you -- a cordless jump-rope.

That's right, a jump-rope minus the rope. All that's left is two handles, so you jump over the pretend rope. Or if you are truly lazy, you can pretend to jump over the pretend rope.

And for that idea kicking around Clancy's head since 1988, the U.S. Patent Office this month awarded the 52-year-old Mansfield, Ohio, man a patent. Its number: 7037243.

What makes this invention work is the moving weights inside the handles. They simulate the feel of a rope moving, Clancy said. Well, it's only one handle so far because Clancy is waiting for financial backers before building its partner.

But why jump rope without a rope?

It's perfect for the clumsy, Clancy said. "If you are still jumping, you're still using your legs as well as your arms, and getting the cardiovascular workout. You just don't have to worry about tripping on the rope."

It is also good for mental institutions and prisons where rope is a suicide risk, said Clancy, who works as a laundry coordinator in a state prison. And low ceiling fans aren't a hazard any more, he said.

Daniel Wright, who features the cordless jump-rope on his Web site, can barely talk about Clancy's invention without laughing.

"What really grabbed me is the name," Wright said. "Take the cord out of the jump-rope, [he giggled] and that's what is the jump-rope."

The idea isn't all that crazy, said Mike Ernst, a professor of kinesiology at California State University in Dominguez Hills.

"I think it's silly but at the same time if somehow, some way it promotes physical activity, gets kids active, then I'm all for it," Ernst said.

The more he thought about it, the more Ernst said he could see the benefit, adding that the act of jumping, not the rope itself, is what provides exercise.

"Do you need to jump with a rope? You don't," Ernst said. "But I wouldn't buy the product, I can tell you that. I'm not an idiot."

High-tech handles aren't needed. You could even use toilet paper holders, Ernst said. On second thought, he wondered if he could patent that idea.

Interbreeding humans and chimps? Oh my.

I thought for sure this article on the complexity of the human-chimpanzee evolutionary split would generate a lot of news.

To my surprise, according to Google News, it appears to have passed quietly.

So I will summarize: The conventional view is that humans and chimps split off an evolutionary tree about 7 million years ago from a common ancestor, with no inbreeding. Science News picks up the story from there:

Previous work underestimated genetic similarities in people and chimps, the investigators say, and placed the evolutionary parting of these species about 1 million years too early.

Given the new genetic findings ... it's plausible that after a partial split, hominid interbreeding with chimps yielded fertile females and infertile males, Reich and his colleagues propose. Hybrid females would then have resorted to mating with fertile chimp or hominid males.

Because they would have produced fertile sons only when the mothers passed on X chromosomes mostly from one of the original species, this process eventually would have led to a final split.


Several anthropologists dispute this conclusion in the Science News article, which strikes me as a pretty radical shift in the prevailing views. Still, I have to believe we are just seeing the tip of the iceberg in terms of the power of genetics to illuminate the history of life.

Word smith

In the laupe, or the loup?

The laupe: I have no clue how to pronounce this word -- lawp? lowp? lope? low-pay? -- but I know a laupe when I see one.

Are you a laupe? Take the test and find out. You might be a laupe without even knowing it. In fact, if you are reading these words, you are almost certainly a laupe. And if you don't think so, you are just in denial.

Final Idol thoughts

Taylor sings his big song.

"I'm livin' the American Dream," he screams.

So we come back to the American Dream thing. Watching a lumpy, gray-haired, soul-singing dude win over an image-conscious country is really more than I could have hoped for from this show. When I first watched Taylor audition (when was that? three years ago?), I was impressed with his singing, but thought there was no way this guy would beat out all of the high-maintenance girls with their great abs and all of the pretty boys with their smoldering glances. Just no way.

This is an important moment. This is a win for every geeky, gangly, un-gorgeous person who loves music. I am proud to count myself as one of those people.

Beans for breakfast, beans for lunch...

It's bad enough when you get hemorrhoids and have to have surgery. Then this happens.

A seriously bad day for the poor guy.


"Flatulence is being blamed for bringing a hospital patient's operation to a fiery end.
The man suffered minor burns in a brief but "dramatic" operating theatre fire. He had gone into the Southern Cross Hospital in Invercargill to have hemorrhoids, or piles, removed and was singed in the "exceedingly rare" incident involving his own gas.
'This was thought to be flatus containing methane igniting,' a health source told the Weekend Herald. "There was a sort of flashfire and that was it, but it was fairly alarming at the time."