The Week Magazine

My favorite magazine is The Week. In a half hour, I can get brief snippets of news from around the world. There's everything from foreign columns to business news to gossip. Personally, I find it more useful than a half hour browsing on the Internet because editors have curated the most important news stories and distilled them to their essence. It's a cliche, but the Internet is often a "rabbit hole," meandering down all sorts of links without an overall sense of direction. Don't get me wrong, I love the Internet, but I still find a place for print magazines. (Cue library soapbox here. Yes, I believe that there is also a place for collection development, carefully selecting a limited number of high-quality resources, in schools.)

Anyway, here's something neat from the May 18th edition.

A high school student in Grant City, MO., has come up with a dirt-cheap means of transport. Don Gibson, 18, bought a battered 1994 Geo Metro subcompact, yanked its engine, and put in an electric forklift engine he bought on eBay for $200. The car can go 62 mph and travel more than 30 miles between charges. Charging its 12 batteries costs Gibson around 25 cents, which means he can drive 200 miles for the price of a gallon of gas. 'If you live in a small community and you just need to drive around town, this is the most ideal vehicle you could drive.' he said.

(my first car)

My first car was a 1997 Geo Metro. You could go about 400 miles on a tank of gas, and gas was so cheap in high school, I would sometimes stop by for a dollar's worth. Even with gasoline, there was a roar in the engine well before it hit 62 mph, and I doubt the speedometer ever went higher than 70 mph. It celebrated its final days in 2009.