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While I agree with your stance on Manuals vs. Autos (my father made a point of teaching me on a manual first, with the express point being that if you can drive a manual, you can drive an auto with no problems), many of the newer euro cars are coming with electronically shifted manuals, or automatics that can be manually shifted. While the former is more rare than the latter, either can be a great deal of fun while allowing your significant other, who does not like manuals, to drive the car as well.

As an example, I just recently got a VW Beetle TDI with the Audi DSG trans in it. This is a manual (with two multi-plate clutches, allowing it to have two gears selected at the same time to make more efficent shifts) that normally is driven as an auto, but also includes a manual shift gate. It allows me to play around in manual mode, but when my wife drives, she can just put it in D and go.

So with that tangent completed, back to the discussion of a one-handed keyboard!

And don't think I haven't paid my share of taxes.

But who said anything about "the US auto industry?" Others might, so perhaps you're responding to them - I simply mentioned the auto industry. And in what world are Chevvy and Ford "US Auto companies?" Ford may have its headquarters in Dearborn and its earliest roots in Detroit, but it's an international corporation every bit as much as Wal-Mart, Nike, NEC and Nissan: there are ford and chevvy plants all over the world, and have been for decades. You haven't been able to buy a Falcon in the US since the 60's, but new ones are running all over Australia. Where are those Falcons made? They damn sure aren't made in the US.

There are auto plants in Mississippi and Alabama and Tennessee and Ohio and more locales are looking to bring them in. No, they're not all "US names" - so what? They're good paying jobs. Ford closed a plant in Flat Rock, Mi (just around the corner from my home town) when I was a kid and by the time I was old enough to work there was a shiny new Mazda (er, Ford/Mazda) plant there.

And BTW, those aren't Japanese cars I was talking about with the 400hp, either. 400hp is the oft touted number for the new Ford Mustang... that is, unless you get the Cobra. Buzz is that one will come with a 24 valve, 500HP, supercharged SOHC V8. (Yeesh, what a sickly american car!)

So, is that car American or Australian? Or is it British? Or German? Oh, wait, they're being assembled by 1,400 UAW workers in Flat Rock, Michigan... so I guess it must be a Japanese car after all.

Yeah, dat's da ticket.

What Gray is talking (mostly) about is what we used to call the "Roadmaster Scenario." When I worked for [a major electronics company], we had a data center in Dallas and a redundant site about 30 miles away in Lewisville. Every Sunday the entire IMS database was archived to mag tape and shipped to the other data center for a second level of redundancy. This begged the question, why not just copy them over the T1 lines (this was 1980) to the other site's tape drives directly? The answer, of course, was that it takes a helluva lot of bandwidth to outrun a Roadmaster full of mag tapes.

I loved the engineering on those 851-916s, but the look never really grabbed me. I can see why others liked them. Among the Cagiva era Ducatis I have a soft spot for the 1990 750S (a.k.a. the Nuevo Sport). I got a leftover one brand new for $6700 in 1993, but it was stolen several years ago. sniff.

When I was in college my local welder offered to sell me his near perfect Laverda 750 SFC for $1100. I happened to have exactly that much in the bank but stupidly chose to spend it on food and rent. Consequently, I ended up an old fart with a BMW R100S. But at least it has R90S paint, rear sets, a lightened flywheel, 40mm Del'Ortos and an R100S solo seat. There is hope for me yet.

Now that I think about it, I think the SFC is my favorite bike ever. From an asthetic standpoint anyway.

Looks like the bastard child of a VW Thing (link includes pictures from Playboy! click now!) and a Pontiac Aztec. Yuck.

Here is a 22 foot long monster. Sorry if I exagerated a bit, but I was pretty close...

What about my 1974 Plymouth Valiant Brougham?

It's old, it's rare, and it's my baby. And yet, you still occasionally see a Valiant (not a Brougham, though!) driving down the street.

Does that mean some bureaucrat is going to arbitrarily decide that, because it's not a restored 1956 Corvette, it's not worth anything, or that it will never run clean?

Does that mean that the witchhunt will exempt only those cars which are most commonly collected and restored, like Corvettes, Mustangs and Camaros? Wow. That would be nasty. Not just because I like cars that are more interesting that those, but because eventually some desk-bound halfwit might decide that because he's never heard of a Cord, the one sitting in a Van Nuys driveway can't be worth anything financially or historically.

If you don't have a current registration permit on your car - even if it's in your driveway and not on a public road - California can take it away from you.

So, what happens to my Valiant if I've got it all apart because I'm restoring it, and my registration expires in the process? Last time I checked, your engine needs to run to pass the dynamometer emissions test - kinda tough to do if your engine is in over 400 neatly labeled ZipLock baggies.

I'd be screwed. Outdated registration. Therefore, even with over $30,000 invested in restoring the car, I could come home from work one day and find that it's gone. Probably already been through the crusher by the time I track it down.

Wanna see someone go postal? Having the government steal my car off my property would be a good way to do it.

Now, how about the other cars? The cash for clunkers schemes are emptying out junkyards. Cars that have been abandoned in desert scrub land for decades are being crushed in the name of clean air. Gimme a break. These junkyards full of old cars are a valuable source of parts to those of us who love restoring and driving an old car. Where else are you going to get the taillight bezel for a 1957 Plymouth Belvedere?

How about the good, solid, rust-free southwestern sheet metal that is being exported to the snowbelt and Canada by the truckload? Large companies specialize in doing nothing but stripping front fenders and hoods and stuff off old cars so that they can sell them in snowy markets where rust tends to be a problem. What happens when the junkyards from which they source all these parts have been emptied out?

It's a little silly to crush a car that has been sitting in a junkyard for 10 years because that car may be causing air pollution. For Christ's sake, it's a hunk of steel. That's it. The air pollution comes with poor use of it.

As for the Topaz, fine. Annual emissions test. Okay. But power for the state to come and seize and destroy the vehicle? What if the owner has financial hardship and can't afford to re-register it? Then, after the vehicle is crushed, all the socialist tree-huggers are gonna have a real dilemma: they will have screwed a poor person to save the planet. That would be as conflicting to them as introducing Hitler to a blonde Jew.

Even so, this whole argument is stupid and moot. For the state to demand that your car pass reasonable emissions tests, fine. Roadside sniffers, I'm all for that. But to arbitrarily decide that any car made before 19xx is unclean, or that if your tags expire it must be because you're irresponsible and your car must be running dirty, is just ridiculous.

And it's a flagrant transgression of your rights to freedom from unreasonable search and seizure.

To return to the monitor analogy, you like a bigger monitor. Sure, we all do. But, I'm sure you could do everything you do with a 15" monitor. You pay for the electricity it uses. Your bill reflects its inefficiency, regardless of whether it's a power pig or not. So, do you really need a harried bureaucrat who works with typical government inefficiency to come into your home and decide for you what possessions you're allowed to have?

It's scary as all hell.