The Fit is go!

That is, our two-for-one even trade on a new 2009 Honda Fit is (a) go! We love our orange 2008 Fit (which we’ve only had for about 8 months), but our 2000 Civic has been sitting in the garage untouched for about three months now. Clearly, despite juggling transportation for SLP’s job, kids in kindergarten and Montessori school, and my own freelance work, we are still a one-car family. Convenient access to the light rail and my own scheduling flexibility (and willingness to shuttle people around) definitely help in that regard.

So, with winter fast approaching and a single-car garage, we’ve decided it’s time for the Civic to go. It has served us well for nearly nine years, despite nearly meeting its maker (which the deer did, alas) about 4 years ago. But now, what can I say? We’ve moved on.

As I said, we love the Fit. So when I made the mental leap that a possible way to rid ourselves of the Civic would be to try to get an even trade of both cars for a new one, there was no doubt that the new one would also be a Fit. Honda’s made a few of our requested improvements (not that we actually requested them, but they must have read our minds) to the standard package this year, including a USB iPod interface, a passenger-side vanity mirror, and ten — count ’em, ten — drink holders. You wouldn’t think a car that seats five would need that many drink holders, but I can tell you, when you’ve got two kids in the car, the drinks-per-person ratio is higher than you might expect.

I checked Kelley Blue Book for the trade-in values on our cars, and determined that we should be able to pull off an even trade — zero dollars exchanged — including a few additional (entirely utilitarian) dealer add-on accessories. No clear coat though.

We went with Inver Grove Honda and were extremely happy with the whole process… and we got our deal! Our new red 2009 Fit will be arriving in a couple weeks.

The Internet President

As a “web guy,” I now have even more reason to like Barack Obama as a soon-to-be-president than I did already. His website was no small part of his extremely effective and well-organized campaign, and I am pleased to see that he plans to continue to use the Internet as a core component of his approach to governing once he takes office. To wit: Change.gov, the official site of the “Obama-Biden Transition Project.”

As I’ve been saying for the past couple weeks, in a to-the-point if less-than-genteel way, he’s got his shit together. And as they say in Australia, “good on him.” 2009 is going to be an interesting year.

Newsweek: Brains are back!

And not a moment too soon. A Newsweek article explores the return of intellect and reason to the White House after the shallow anti-intellectualism that has plagued our nation for (at least) eight years.

This may be the number-one reason I supported Obama as vigorously as I did. He is a thinker. He’s curious. He wants to know the truth, and he’s not afraid to question and challenge — or to be questioned and challenged himself. It’s about time!

And now… please… let’s put a few anti-intellectual ideas to bed:

1. Earth is not 6000 years old. We can be reasonably certain through carbon dating and other scientifically validated methods that it is approximately 4.5 billion years old.

2. Evolution is a fact. We can observe it — and we have — at the microscopic level (i.e. antibiotic-resistant bacteria) and in other species with short lifespans (like some insects), and it is a logically consistent explanation for the diversity of life we see on Earth today. Why can’t we witness it happening at the macro level, like in humans? See point number 1. The slice of Earth’s lifespan that your own represents is smaller than the division between Al Franken and Norm Coleman in this year’s Senate race. It’s the same reason we don’t see stalactites grow.

3. Global warming is caused by human activity. Sure, the overall temperature of the planet has fluctuated over the millennia, but the rate of increase in the last 150 years (coinciding with industrialization) is unprecedented.

4. Science is the quest for knowledge and understanding. It is a good thing that everyone should study. It does not preclude religious belief; the two are not mutually exclusive. You do not need to reject science to have faith, and you do not have to reject faith to believe in science. But faith, by definition, cannot be proven, and science can — in fact, that’s what makes it science, and it’s given us just about everything we have in the modern world.

Ahh… it feels good! Brains are back! Now, let’s stop arguing the validity of things we know to be true, and start doing something about them!

After a typo fix, the Coleman-Franken split is now just 236 votes

Yes, according to the Huffington Post, the vote totals between Norm Coleman and Al Franken are now separated by only 236 (although for some reason the StarTribune says 238), out of 2,860,224 votes cast. That’s a difference of 0.0083%. It’s not razor-thin, it’s atom-thin. I was going to draw a graph representing that slice of the pie, but if the “slice” were only one pixel wide, the chart would have a diameter of 53 inches. You’d need one of the largest commercially available plasma TVs just to look at it (and the top and bottom would still be cut off), and the “slice” would still be only about the thickness of your fingernail.

State law would require a recount even if the difference were as large as 14,301 votes, yet Coleman is still declaring himself the victor and calling on Franken to concede.

No way! I absolutely do not want a protracted 2000-style legal battle, but this is simply too close and it’s not even up to Franken whether or not the recount happens. Cool it, Norm!