Car Crash Test Videos: the Smart ForTwo (70mph, full head on) vs the Chery Amulet (don’t know speed, partial head on). The Smart comes off remarkably well, while the Chery completely collapses to the B pillar (i.e. a Bad Thing). (via) (bonus! A plane in a crash test against a wall completely disintegrating)

New favourite web comic of the week: We the Robots. It’s so very wrong, and yet so very, very good.

Howard lost! Can’t believe it’s finally happened. I mean, it’s been looking like it was going to happen for the last month for sure, even more so at the start of the week, but it was just like supporting the Indian cricket team - you look only through the cracks in your fingers, hoping against hope that the trend that is as plain as anything eventually turns into the result desired. You could never put it past Howard’s Coalition to pull one more rabbit out of the hat. ...

(Ed: backdated for lack of internet access) Perhaps the best demonstration that England was the place where the train was invented, pioneered, is the sheer number of lines and stations that criss cross the capital - the Underground aside, there is at least 10 ‘main line’ stations just within the Underground’s ‘Zone 1’, nominally the centre of the city. How is this proof? Only early on would the unplanned, disconnected system have been sensible - the better for the many nascent companies to compete; allowing our customers to change to a competitor simply a way of throwing money away. The evolution of thought is reflected in the ‘grand central’ stations of the colonies - Sydney Central, Melbourne’s Spencer St Southern Cross, Delhi Central, New York’s Grand Central - single stations marshalling points for the assorted destinations serviced. ...

[The Future of Reading (A Play in Six Acts)]: Mark Pilgrim’s insightful words on Amazon’s new Kindle device.