The immigration debate - a view from an immigrant

You could not have missed all the commotion surrounding the proposed immigration reform. Massive protests in all the major cities in the country have marked the occasion and a boycott of business by the "immigrant community" scheduled for tomorrow May 1, is purportedly intended to show the American public what life in America would be without immigrants.

To be swept up in the maelstrom of emotion surrounding this issue is to miss the point completely. The proposed reform is not in my opinion anti-immigrant. It is anti-illegal immigrant. Why is that so hard to understand?

By the way what's the deal with the euphemism "undocumented workers"? They came into the country illegally. They're illegal aliens. Let's call it what it is. If you don't like the moniker, leave.

Time for full disclosure. I came to this country as an immigrant. A legal one. I filled out the forms, went through the numerous steps and bore the inconvenience (some would say, the humiliation) of the wheels of bureaucracy grinding slow and grinding exceeding small. And in the end, after what seemed like an interminable delay, was admitted to the country.

I can honestly say that I have never encountered one instance of prejudice, or anti-immigrant bias in my 8 years in this country. Not one. Perhaps I choose to not look for bias where there is none.

In any event, the reason I went through the process and suffered the slings and arrows of the immigration process such as it is, is that I felt I could make a better life for myself and my family. I believe I have done that. That's the reason everyone comes to America.

Now, imagine my chagrin when I find out that all the while I've been waiting patiently in line outside the country, a few who have chosen to break the law and sneak into the country under cover of darkness in a container or in the trunk of a car, are comfortably ensconced in the country and are now agitating to make their status legal. And waving Mexican flags to make their point!!

Am I the only one that thinks that's adding insult to injury?

The proposed reforms allow actually give people who have been here more than five years illegally a path to citizenship. I think that's extraordinarily generous and so completely American.

To the people who don't get the concept, allow me to illustrate: It's a rainy day and you've waited in line to get a ticket to the movie. Your friends (or family) who met you at the theater are having their credentials checked and their tickets "processed".

You can't buy tickets for your friends, so having waited in line in the rain, you get your ticket and go into the theater. You find that a number of seats are taken up by people who have managed to sneak into the theater unobserved by the ushers. Fine. You take your seat and the show begins.

Meanwhile your friends are waiting in the rain for tickets. The usher finds the people who snuck in without tickets but allows them to continue to watch the show while he goes away to "process" their tickets. They aren't told to go out and get in the back of the line in the rain. They still get to watch the movie despite the fact that they broke the law. Meanwhile the law-abiding guys who chose not to sneak into the theater are getting soaked to the skin.

How is this even remotely fair?

So, Apesadumbrado mis amigos, but I don't agree. Get in line, go through the process and live the American dream. If you're here illegally, suck it up and face the music.

Meanwhile on May 1, I shall be at work to compensate for the slackers who are out waving Mexican flags. Somebody's got to work for the American Dream you know.

[Immigration]

Should Rumsfeld resign?

Say what you will about the US Armed Forces, but they are a well-trained and phenomenally well-equipped fighting machine. It is also an organization that prides itself on its traditions. In times of war it is these traditions that lend a sense of purpose and continuity to soldiers amidst the uncertainties of conflict. Not the least of the traditions of the Armed Forces is the fact that the uniformed brass unquestioningly follow the orders of their civilian political bosses.

That time-honored tradition is in serious danger of being kicked to the kerb. Six retired Generals according to a Slate story, have gone public with their outspoken criticism of Donald Rumsfeld. Regardless of their First Amendment rights to free speech, it is extremely unseemly for retired officers to speak disparagingly about their ex-boss. It may even be illegal to do so according to this excellent Slate article.

When job-seekers going to their interviews are repeatedly advised to not speak ill of their previous employers, is it too much to expect the same level of decorum from a group of senior military officers, in whose care we had reposed the safety and security of the nation?

For Rumsfeld to resign now, would be to acknowledge and condone the behavior of the generals. This is not to say that the generals did not have valid arguments on their side. It just wasn't their place to voice those arguments.
[Rumsfeld]

Guns don't kill, smoking does!

To liberally paraphrase that slogan beloved of the NRA, guns kill mostly only when manned by people with murderous intent. However, smoking discriminates very little between people who actively spend their money to buy the sticks and inhale their noxious fumes into their lungs, and those who spend time in the company of smokers. Smoking is an equal opportunity destroyer of lives of both active and passive smokers.

The world at large seems to be getting the point. New York and Dublin banned smoking in public places quite a while ago. Lawmakers voted to ban smoking in pubs and restuarants all over Britain by the summer of 2007. The state of Colorado is considering banning smoking in all public places throughout the state. New Jersey is considering banning smoking in cars. California does not allow smoking anywhere in public.

Despite these strictures, it is absolutely astonishing that otherwise rational and informed people continue to smoke in the face of incontrovertible and overwhelming evidence about the effects of smoking. I struggle to think of the reasoning that smokers give themselves for their anti-social and self-destructive habit.

When I was 21, I saw my dad drop dead of a heart-attack at age 53, after smoking all his adult life. I have since seen friends and parents of friends succumb to emphysema, ischemia and lung cancer. I have watched as friends hack and wheeze their way though the day, unable to shake the habit, rushing out of a long haul flight into the airport terminal desperate to have that morale-restoring puff. Enough to make anyone blanche at the thought of lighting up.

While the fresh-faced young women in all the trendy clubs undoubtedly feel they look crushingly cool as they take another long languorous drag on a cigarette, I must confess there is nothing even remotely approaching cool in having your hair and clothes smell like burning leaves, and your breath smell like a particularly foul sewer.

Of course, even less cool is being laid out on a morgue slab at a cryingly young age, because you thought you were indestructible.

Anecdotally, it seems to me that more women than men smoke. Also, in the more traditional societies, smoking seems to be considered a sign of a woman's emancipation. If a woman smokes then she must have thrown off the yoke of male domination, and saying to her (male) oppressors "I am equal to you in every way". How ironic, that when a woman feels she is empowered to make her own decisions, she makes a decision that weakens her rather than making her strong.

But smoking bans and all the well-researched scientific evidence in the world is not going to stop the smokers in their tracks. Until popular opinion catches up with scientific evidence, people, especially young people, are doomed to keep killing themselves to look cool, stay thin or whatever lame excuse they may be giving themselves.

Why we need not fear China's ascendance

With Chinese President Hu Jin Tao's visit to the US, the mass hysteria has just got more shrill. The trade imbalance between the US and China has hit an all-time high and the Chinese economy now accounts for 7% of worldwide trade, up from a mere 1% just a few years ago.

Aside from this, the average savings rate in the US hit 0% and the average savings rate in China hit 23%. Said another way, the average Amercian whose family income is $40,000 per annum is saving none of it, while the average Chinese whose family income is closer to $1500 is saving 23% of it.

Those two facts are more inter-related than you might think. The reason the average American spends all the money he makes is because despite the deficit operated by the US Federal Government, interest rates in the US are still relatively low and credit plentiful. Joe Average can get as many credit cards as he wants and so long he keeps paying the interest charges and keeps making his minimum payments each month he can continue to rack up the credit.

This is possible because so long as China continues to buy and hold US Treasury Bills, they continue to finance American debt and keep a downward pressure on our interest rates. It would be fair to say that were the Chinese to stop buying US treasury bills (and therefore underwriting our debt) we would not be able to fight the war in Iraq and US interest rates would rise alarmingly resulting in bankruptcies and foreclosures all around.

The reason China continues to invest in America's debt is because it is financing it's biggest customer. Without the American appetite for Chinese goods (often made for American companies like Wal-Mart) China will lose its largest market and its economic miracle will grind to a halt. Also, investing in a (relatively) low interest currency like the US Dollar keeps the Chinese currency (relatively) weak against the dollar. This has the salutary effect of making Chinese exports cheap and US imports into China more expensive.

So China supplanting the US as the largest economy in the world, while predicted to occur by 2040 or so by some accounts, will not be necessarily in China's best interests.

All of this of course does not take into account one very important fact. Trend lines rarely always go straight up or straight down. There is always an unpredicted inflection point that requires the re-computation of previously assumed conclusions. The true test of a great economy and indeed of a great society is its ability to re-invent itself in the face of such an inflection. I believe there is no country with a greater ability to constantly re-invent itself than the US.

The fact that people have been coming to these shores for the last 250 years to find a better life for themselves and their children has ensured that there is always a supply of people willing to challenge accepted conventional wisdom and try new things. The American cultural bias towards individualism and rejection of authority which is baked into the national DNA, serves to make this country unique in its ability imbue its people with a sense of manifest destiny. The American Dream is real and exists in the minds of new immigrants and the roster of the 250,000 or so new millionaires that America creates every year.

The US Constitution is not a dusty document drawn up a long time ago with lofty aims, but relegated to unobserved obscurity. It is real and referred to every day. Daily actions of the police, the courts and individuals are routinely held up to the light and examined for constitutionality.

Contrast that with China. The country is governed by a coterie of unelected mandarins. There is no constitutionally guaranteed freedom of any kind. The government actively seeks to control the information the citizens have access to, including the internet. We need only think back to Tiananmen Square to remember the dire consequences of dissidence. Gender discrimination is rampant and reports of female infanticide are wide spread. According to some reports, due to the active gender preference practiced by parents and government pressures to limit family size, "the imbalance between the sexes is now so distorted that there are 111 million men in China - more than three times the population of Canada - who will not be able to find a wife."

Despite the remarkable strides made by China in becoming an economic powerhouse, approximately 250 million people or 20% of the population still lives below the poverty line.

So, as long as there is no elected government, giving people a say in the way they are governed, half the population is discriminated against because of their gender, and access to information and thought is controlled, China will not be a country of choice for people with a choice.

There are no lines forming outside Chinese embassies in the countries of the world, with people looking to emigrate and reside in China.

Without the freedom to speak, assemble and petition your goverment, you really don't have freedom to dream. And nothing worthwhile or lasting is created without a dream.

So presented with an inflection point in their growth will the Chinese be able to re-invent themselves? What happens when the current cadre of leaders fades away? Will their successors rule with the same level of openness or will they revert to the old ways of Communism?

Analysts who predict the dominance of China over the US risk the greatest ignominy that could befall a prognosticator - being spectacularly wrong.

Seals of (dis)approval

Canadians think of themselves as kinder, gentler and more polite than their brash and noisy American cousins. They say please and thank you, and obediently stand in line without anyone trying to jump the queue. Their respect for the environment is purportedly great.

However this alleged kindness and gentleness seems have deserted the Canadians in the matter of seal hunting. The annual Canadian seal hunt is approaching it's final and most gory phase where this year 234,000 harp seal pups will be clubbed to death on the ice floes off the coast of New Foundland.

Now, you're probably saying "What's the harm in a few seals being killed to reduce their population? After all we kill farm animals in slaughter-houses everyday". These seals are pups, and they are not shot. They are clubbed to death by guys in parkas and their blood stains the ice for yards around them.

Let's for a moment assume that harp seals are the greatest scourge affecting mankind - not famine, not pestilence, not any of the horsemen of the apocalypse. But harp seals. Let's say they and they alone are responsible for the end of civilization as we know it. Why would you club them to death while they howl piteously? Why not a humane bullet to the head? Or a quick whiff of a noxious gas?

But you would have a really difficult time convincing me that harp seals are what stand between me and the last morsel of food on earth. The last time I checked, Spago in Beverly Hills had not stopped serving their signature Smoked Salmon pizza because the harp seals had got all the salmon damn it!! So I don't buy the "uncontrolled growth of the harp seal population is harming us" argument.

And Canada does not even have the death penalty!! Good law-abiding Canadian tax-payers cherish the fact that their kind and gentle peace-loving country only puts convicted child murderers like Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka behind bars and gives them a state funded education. No electric chair or lethal injection for the "Ken and Barbie of Murder". No that would be inhumane!

Regrettably the harp seals don't get the same courtesy. Perhaps their problem is that they didn't have the opportunity to cut a deal with the Crown Prosecution.

I'm not sure that the attention of Sir Paul McCartney and his wife Heather Mills will do anything to mitigate the fate of the harp seals, but I hope it has at least a salutary effect on Sir Paul's record sales. That dude needs a hit. What was the last one? "Ebony and Ivory" with Stevie?

This whole thing is enough to almost make make me turn in my Canadian passport. I said almost.

Global Warming - A lot of hot air?

It seems (at least to me) like there's always at least one anguished and earnest news item that seeks to inform, but instead creates alarm by pointing out that at the current rate of global warming islands in the South Pacific like Vanuatu risk becoming completely submerged in a relatively short space of time. Alaskan glaciers are calving at an alarming rate and soon there will be no polar ice cap. They point to green-house gas emissions and pollution as the primary reasons for global warming and warn that unless mankind mends its profligate ways, we shall all soon meet a watery end. The subtext to this story is that if we all rode bicycles to work and eschewed air-conditioning and deodorants, the earth could return to its pristine natural state.

I must confess though that the thought of being in the presence of someone who has just ridden briskly to work, and having sworn off air-conditioning is perspiring freely in a wholly natural way unencumbered by deodorants, is enough to make me wish for an early grave. Even a watery one.

All of this demagoguery, as is usual in these cases, misses one very critical point: The earth has been going through a cycle of gradual climate change through the ages and this change seems to continue even after the advent of man. There is plenty of evidence that there is a gradual warming of the earth's atmosphere that has been occuring since the early 1800s. There is however less evidence that this warming trend has been exacerbated by human activities. It is well documented by the US Environmental Protection Agency that organic decomposition and plant respiration account for 10 times the carbon dioxide released by human activities.

Looking at the rate of change of the earth's climate from before the Industrial Revolution to the present day is particularly illuminative. While there is a change in the climate (it is getting warmer), there seems to be no spike in the rate of change following the industrialization of some parts of the world. While it is true that cities are warmer than the surrounding countryside, the difference would appear to be imperceptible to all but the most sensitive instruments.

So why all the shrill ranting about the irreversible effects of climate change? Why the incessant hectoring by the radical left about the Kyoto accord? To state it simply, the Kyoto accord seeks among other things to reduce CO2 emissions by 10% by 2010 from the 1990 levels. There is a considerable amount of argument on both sides of the subject on whether this will actually have any effect on the temperature of the earth by 2010.

I suggest two very simple explanations for all this hysteria: (1) well-intentioned but mis-informed or uninformed people, and (2) the profit motive. Not that there's anything wrong with the profit motive. I like profits as much as the next guy - more even. Let's just call it what it is.

NGOs get grants by sensationalizing the problem. Manufacturers sell products by touting them as being somehow more environmentally friendly, never letting the truth get in the way of a sale. Read my blog "The Pious Prius Posse". As CNN reports "Global Warming is Good for Business".

With Earth Day just around the corner, expect to be bombarded by more such alarmist drivel.

Do cars have souls?

This happens to me a lot. Just last week I was in San Francisco, walking along Market Street in the twilight hours of the evening, when from behind me I hear the unmistakeable burble of a V8 barely at idle. As I turned and before my eyes could reach the source of the sound, I knew what I was about to see.

And it was a 1967 Pontiac GTO in Candy Apple Red with the optional Ram Air scoop on the hood that marked this example as the Hi-Output 360HP version with the 400 Cu in. engine. Now that's 6.5 litres of displacement, to you metrically inclined folks, and that engine powered this heavy car from standstill to 60mph in 6.6 secs. All you VW Golf GTi drivers may not think this is much.

But remember, this was a car made 40 years ago. Even the exotics from Europe had trouble matching that performance back in the day. "The Goat" as the GTO was known in its day had Soul. The new 2007 GTO which is a rebadged Holden Monaro, while being wickedly powerful at 400HP does most emphatically not have Soul.

We don't need to go into how the Ford GT40 humbled Ferrari in the Le Mans 24 hour race in the 60s, but the GT40 had soul too. Not A soul perhaps, but certainly Soul. The current Ford GT while being quite attractive is decidedly derivative. The result of an intellectually bankrupt company raiding its history to breathe new life into its waning fortunes. No Soul.

Lest you think I am asserting that only powerful and fast cars have Soul, I would suggest to you that the original Mini designed by Alec Issigonis had Soul. The original VW Beetle had Soul. Neither of them were powerful. They were both built as popular plebian transport and a testament to their Soul-fulness is the fact that they were both built for over 30 years with only marginal changes and were beloved of millions.

The Citroen 2CV had Soul. Even though it had the most awful suspension and seats made of canvas stretched over pipe sections. The large Citroen DS had soul. Not least because the French called it the Goddess. (Diesse is Goddess in French, get it?). The current crop of Citroens are just crap French cars - including the C5.

And this is not just nostalgic melancholy about old cars. The new Aston Martin DB9 has great heaping ladlefulls of Soul. The current Mini has Soul. The Ferrari F430 has tons of it. The Enzo is riddled with it. The Porsche Carrera GT is Soul personified. But the Maserati Quattroporte has none.

The Lamborghini Miura had Soul. The brutally fast Diablo didn't. The angular Gallardo does.
The Morris Minor had Soul. The soporific Marina didn't.
The Porsche 911 in all its incarnations has had and always will have Soul. The Cayenne doesn't and never will.
The BMW 2002Ti had Soul. The 850 had Soul. All M3s have Soul. The current 5 Series is completely bereft of anything approaching Soul. The old (80s) 635 CSi had Soul. The new 645 with its swollen rump has none.

I could go on forever, but you get the point. Soul is that inexplicable, ineffable essence of the car that's either there or it isn't. And there's no point getting all meta-physical about it.You either feel it or you don't.

So the next time you're out and about see if you feel cars with Soul. Write me about what you felt.

I warn you, I will strangle with my bare hands anyone that suggests that the Pontiac Aztec has Soul.

The Pious Prius Posse

Are you one of those people who sneers at anyone neaderthal enough to drive an SUV, or that current favorite of the gangsta rapper - the Hummer H2? Do you feel oh-so ecologically correct driving your Toyota Prius gas-electric hybrid because you feel you're doing your bit to rid the world of harmful greenhouse gases and help the country kick the 'imported oil habit'?

Not so fast. While the Prius is the darling of the hollywood greenies from Larry David to Cameron Diaz, they may well be doing more harm to the environment than Arnold Schwarzenegger in his Hummer. Do I hear sharp intakes of breath and cries of "Heresy"?

Consider these facts:

1. All hybrid engines require batteries. Big honking ones that can store the energy required to power the car when it is on the electric cycle. These batteries are expensive. About $6800 for a Prius battery. So much so, that a hybrid car costs about $5,000 more than its conventially powered equivalent. Even with the current price of oil and given the average mileage driven by most people it would take more than 15 years for anyone to recoup the additional cost of the hybrid.
(Myth #1: Hybrids are cheaper to run: Exploded)

2. The average life expectancy of a battery such as the ones used in hybrid cars is 6 to 8 years. Less in colder climates. Nobody has yet figured out an environmentally friendly way to dispose of these batteries when they're dead. Since hybrids caught the attention of the eco-knuckleheads only about a couple of years ago, driving up production and sales, we are yet to come to the point when loads of hybrid cars are at the age where they need new batteries. That day is not far away, and when it comes - and come it will - we can expect to see tons of discarded hybrid batteries in our landfills leeching lead and acid into the earth.
(Myth #2: Hybrids are kinder to the earth: Exploded)

3. If hybrids get excellent gas mileage, it is because the gasoline powered internal combustion engine provides only part of the power. The battery-powered electric motor provides the rest. How are these batteries charged in the first place? By plugging them into a battery charger that is connected to the power grid. The hybrid battery requires a lot more energy to charge it since it's used to run the car, not just start it. So where's all this power coming from anyway? From power plants, which in the US are mostly fuelled by coal! Yes, that horrible black rock they dig out of the ground in West Virginia and other places. Places where people who dig the stuff out of the ground die because they get trapped underground. Yes the black stuff that when burned gives off carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and lots of sooty unburnt hydrocarbons in the from of thick black smoke. Not very pretty. Just because the smoke isn't coming out of your exhaust doesn't mean that an equivalent or greater amount of smoke isn't coming out of the smokestack of a power station that is generating the power to charge the battery in your hybrid.
(Myth # 3: Hybrids pollute less than gasoline powered engines: Exploded)

So what's a body to do? Here's my prescription: If you like cars and driving, buy the best car your money will get you, and then enjoy driving it. As for Larry David and Cameron Diaz, they both have enough money to go live in a bubble on the moon (maybe even together), when the earth becomes uninhabitable from their batteries.

Porsches and the art of going ack basswards

Let me state at the outset that I love Porsches. I love them so much that I have two 1/18th scale models (one of 996 S - the last of the aircooled 991s in the slightly tweaked S configuration, and one of the early Boxter before the Boxter S came out) which I keep close at hand to aid in my day-dreaming at work. I would have at least one of the full scale items were it not for the fact that my desires and aspirations far outstrip my financial wherewithall. Putting a kid through a good liberal arts education and unleashing a talented and educated writer on the world, has cost me the equivalent of a new Boxter every year. Worth every penny spent in my opinion.

I have for long admired Porsche's fluid lines and thrilled at the sound of their tappetty horizontally-opposed engines. Much ink has been spilt on the "iconic" nature of Porsches, and how the rear-engine, air-cooled configuration of the traditional Porsche power plant is the only one purists really respect. In recent years Porsche has made glacial progress to drag its design into the 20th century - moving the engine forward of the rear axle as in the case of the Boxter and the Cayman, and finally succumbing to the advantages of water cooling as in the newer 997 iteration of the 911. But we have already witnessed another fin de siecle.

But let's call it for what it is: Porsche had for long been a company that had grown fat dumb and happy on the outrageous prices it could extract from its legion of slavish followers who would pay any price to have that shield from Zuffenhausen on their hoods. Porsche did not innovate because they didn't have to. They served up essentially the same car for nearly 30 years from the early 70s to the early 2000s with minor changes - the headlights were sloping back, they sat up straight and then they went back to the reclining position. I exaggerate, but in essence that was the sum total of the changes that Porsche wrought on the 911 in the thirty years before it awakened Rip Van Winkle-like from its slumber. Oh wait..I forgot the whale tail that came and went.

But the thing that assails my sensibilities about Porschephiles is the fact they will accept the tail-happy handling dynamic of the 911 (even a GT3, which is as close as you can get to a full-on race car licensed for the road) as an endearing idiosyncracy in a $100,000 car. It is well documented that a vast proportion of 911s that crash, leave the road facing whence they came - in other words they exit stage backwards. This kind of behavior from a Subaru WRX STi costing amost exactly a third of the 911's price would be excusable, but what you get from that car is solid straight line traction with the 300HP from its horizontally opposed engine being fed to all of its four wheels. The Subaru even edged out the GT3 in the 2004 Car and Driver Best Car spot.

So for my money, would I buy three Subaru WRX STis or the one 911? I can drive only one car at a time, and since I don't wear Birkenstocks with socks as a rule, it'll have to be the Porsche for me. Oh, and did Steve McQueen drive a Subaru in LeMans? Not so much.

The ubiquity of idiocy

My friend Jim asserts that everyone he meets is "such an idiot". Now if we we are to parse that statement, there are many troubling things that emerge.

Let's take this down two lines of reasoning:
1. Everyone that Jim meets is an idiot.
2. Everyone that Jim meets is not really an idiot, but Jim merely thinks so.

Line of Reasoning 1: If everyone that Jim meets is really an idiot, Jim needs to meet new new people in the hope that he can find someone who is not an idiot. But Jim is not going to see 40 again, and he is a well travelled and sociable man. So Jim has in the course of his life, met a great many people. If every one of them has turned out to be an idiot, then one despairs for his chance to ever meet someone who is not an idiot, well into the afternoon of his life. So what should our Jim do? Give up the quest for the elusive non-idiot, or shun all social contact secure in the knowledge that everyone he meets will for certain, be an idiot?

Line of Reasoning 2: If everyone Jim meets is not really an idiot, but Jim merely thinks so, then this causes us to question Jim's veracity. Is this just hyperbole? Is Jim merely saying 'Everyone I meet is such an idiot' when he really doesn't mean everyone, but a lot of people. And when he says someone is an idiot, is he really saying that person is not really an idiot but rather just not synchronous with Jim's own sensibilities?
I cannot for a moment doubt that my friend Jim is saying anything other than that which he means.

So where is all this sophistry leading? Just to the fact that when we express ourselves, we tend to exaggerate to illustrate the point. Hyperbole. To take hyperbole literally is to miss the point.

In my earlier post on the Nikon vs. Canon DSLR Wars my intention was not to suggest that everyone was to go out and buy 3 Nikon cameras for every Canon EOS 5D, but rather to illustrate the relative price performance of the 5D to other cameras. Biased? Maybe. Insane? Not so much.

That said, why is everyone that Jim meets such an idiot? Have they all bought Canon cameras?

Does the world need a four-door Aston Martin?

I think Aston Martins are among the most beautiful cars in the world. All the way from the lascivious haunches of the DB2 to the curvaceous Vanquish and the DB9. So why the new four-door Rapide concept that Aston showed off at the Detroit Auto Show?

Yes, Maserati did the Quattroporte, Bentley has done the new Flying Spur, and of course Porsche is considering the Panamera - all four-door cars from vaunted super-car manufacturers. Let us say nothing of the execrable Maserati Biturbo, but I think stretching a sports car to accommodate two more doors for the sake of "brand extension" is akin to the folly of Volkswagen thinking that people would pay for a luxury car with a W12 engine called a Phaeton, from the one-time maker of conveyances for groupies of the Grateful Dead. Brand Extension. More like brand extinction if you ask me.

All of that doesn't alter the fact that Aston Martins are among the most beautiful cars on the planet. Even with four doors.

The Nikon vs. Canon DSLR wars

While the eternal leap-frog game between Nikon and Canon plays out in the photo enthusiast magazines, Nikon appears to have stolen a quiet march for now. The launch of the D200 has brought 'near-professional' capabilities to enthusiasts at a price point under $1700.

Although Canon sidestepped this particular salvo, the EOS 5D with its full frame sensor has got the Canon traditionalists crowing. A 12.8MP full frame camera for under (just) $3,300!! This is the end of Nikon, they cry! Spare a thought for the Canon hordes that hurtled headlong into buying loads of EF-S lenses that are strictly for the smaller APS-C sized sensor.

Has it escaped everyone that (assuming you have no brand loyalty or that you're not tied in to one or other brand due to a massive investment in lenses) you could get the Nikon D200, the D70S and the D50, and still have enough money left over for a nice SB 600 flash for the same money as the Canon 5D? But then what do I know?