This Is A Bit Much...

Traditionally 'boring as dirt' Audi has come up with ridiculousness on wheels. The new A8 is a veritable carnival of gadgets and nuttery.

The steering wheel is equipped with a vibration-canceling motor. The seats heat, cool, massage, and probably offer a happy ending. There are 19 speakers scattered around the Bang & Olufson sound system for a grand total of 1400 Watts of power. Considering the system will be perennially tuned to the "Nightly Business Report" and the oldies station, it seems a bit excessive. The interior is awash in customizable accent lighting, not only in the dash and doors, but also the headliner at the upper controls. The multimedia interface now features handwriting recognition, or more appropriately finger-writing recognition...

Via Jalopnik

Sorry Germans....leave it to Lexus to incorporate insane gadgets. They'll make it cheaper, and they'll work, and they'll last 300,000 miles. Watch for the Audi A8 to be the most unreliable car of 2011.

Snake Oil With Wheels

The Japanese were, in fact, a little worried. "We felt they had the opportunity to heal a lot of [GM's] wounds," recalls Gary Convis, a former senior U.S. manufacturing executive for Toyota, "and to be a very successful company." But when Honda engineers bought a Saturn and disassembled it, their fears abated. The dashboard had overlapping plastic panels that made it look cheap, and a harsh-sounding engine that stemmed from inferior motor mounts. The plastic-polymer doors, billed as a unique feature that wouldn't get dinged in parking lots, fit poorly. Again and again the surprised engineers exclaimed shinjirarinai, a term that means "unbelievable."

Newsweek-

Saturn is the ultimate example of a car company run by advertisers instead of engineers. Who gives a damn how great the car buying experience is if you're driving home a piece of garbage...What a sham.

Stoners Erupt In Anger Over Dr. Gupta's Weed Comments....Eat Cheetoes In Protest

You may recall Dr. Sanjay Gupta, the renaissance man who is probably most recognizable from CNN. He has recently been tapped by Barack Obama to be surgeon general and a Time article featuring him hit digg earlier. It's an article written by Dr. Gupta himself entitled Why I Would Vote No On Pot.

Naturally, the digg community is all up in arms about Dr. Gupta's dislike for marijuana for recreational use. If you ask me, I agree with him 1000%.

What do voters need to know before going to the polls?

The first is that marijuana isn't really very good for you. True, there are health benefits for some patients. Several recent studies, including a new one from the Scripps Research Institute, show that THC, the chemical in marijuana responsible for the high, can help slow the progress of Alzheimer's disease. (In fact, it seems to block the formation of disease-causing plaques better than several mainstream drugs.) Other studies have shown THC to be a very effective antinausea treatment for people--cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy, for example--for whom conventional medications aren't working. And medical cannabis has shown promise relieving pain in patients with multiple sclerosis and reducing intraocular pressure in glaucoma patients.

But I suspect that most of the people eager to vote yes on the new ballot measures aren't suffering from glaucoma, Alzheimer's or chemo-induced nausea. Many of them just want to get stoned legally. That's why I, like many other doctors, am unimpressed with the proposed legislation, which would legalize marijuana irrespective of any medical condition.

Personally, I'm a proponent of the decriminalization of certain drugs like marijuana, not the legalization. I think the courts are wasting huge amounts of time and energy on drug users and the system takes otherwise normal people and churns out actual criminals.

With that said, I'd like to call on folks to live honestly, all of the complete bullshit I read in the digg comments is so tired. I don't particularly care if people get high but don't pretend that it's anything more than wanting to sit on your ass and get stoned. It's a totally fucking useless activity. Again, I have nothing against useless activities, I engage in them often. But shut up about all this philosophical and conspiratorial bullshit. Dr. Gupta is a fucking brain surgeon and he knows what he's talking about.

'Ask A Ninja' Reviews Dead Man's Chest

I'd say it's pretty accurate.

**Thanks Michael...