Who hasn't figured this out? Back in 2000, when I went looking for a car, mileage was my #1 priority, then tail-pipe emissions, then price. And there's a reason I bought a Hyundai Accent (and why I still have it). Anyone with eyes to read Consumer Reports can see this. Not to mention that the batteries hybrids use come with their own precious and daunting challenges -- like the shock potential in an collision extraction, and the amount of toxics inside that have to be reclaimed.

One of my best friends has a 4 year old Prius, and just had to do her first emissions test. We compared mine and hers when she got them back, and in every category but one (sulfur), my Hyundai beat her Prius (admittedly, by very fine margins -- photo finishes, all). I always beat her on mileage (I get 40 to 43, she gets 37 to 40), though again, I think this may be a difference in styles and perceived needs -- she uses her heat and AC all the time; I use my heat a little in winter and don't have AC; she carries enough stuff in her trunk to provision Wellington's Spanish Army for a month; I don't (my winter cache is a shovel, a phone, 2 pillar candles, a space blanket, a box of matches, 6 ramen bricks, a box of granola bars and a gallon of water). She's also blessed with lead feet and an automatic transmission; I row my own boat.

However, I haven't had a car payment in almost five years, and she's still looking at another year or so. I had full warranty service until early this year; she's been replacing parts out of pocket for over two years. In both environmental costs and cost of ownership, my small, light, CHEAP car comes out far ahead of hers.

I don't work for Hyundai, and their corporate culture has some questionable aspects. But so does every manufacturer of everything. For me, they produced the greenest vehicle I have ever owned. The only thing they don't have that I want is a diesel version.

I love Halloween and have since I was three and mum dressed me as a gypsy. It's the only holiday that's gotten better as I've gotten older -- Easter's religious significance overshadowed the far more entertaining sugar and protein fertility festival aspect; the winter holidays are all about cashing in for the big boxes, and even Memorial and Labor days are no longer really significant; merely excuses for white collars like me to legitimately skiv from work and for everyone else to be stuck dealing with us when we spend our day off spending. But Halloween is relatively low on the commercialized scale, the decor suits my morbid streak, and it's a festival of the dead and excess.

Freud wasn't the first to realize that there's a strong connection between sex, death and excess -- anyone who was ever on a battlefield or otherwise in danger knew that. It's hard-wired. So it's not surprising that a holiday about death and the excesses of harvest has also become a fertility rite of sorts.

Besides, we all need some paradigm shifting from time to time. So when my friends and I go out in our fractured fairy tales and mother goose costumes, we'll be reclaiming a female oral tradition, freeing Cinderella from the bonds of an oppressive marriage, escorting Red Riding Hood safely beyond the roads of pins and of needles, and looking good while we do so, because we DO look good. But we're doing it for ourselves, not for anyone else.

South Africa is using these reactors that cannot melt down (They're safe to walk inside within 12 hours of anything that causes an abort), that recycle their own waste significantly better than any 60's era reactor on line now, and that produce more energy from less fuel over all. Yes, there's waste, but as anyone who works with coal ash waste (as my company does) can tell you, it's equally radioactive and we produce a heck of a lot more of coal ash than we ever will spent nuclear fuel. (Remember, coal is carbon. And carbon is a lovely, excellent sink for all sorts of stray particles, especially the ones that come from the various cosmic rays... and coal is old. It's had a long time to suck up radiation.) Coal ash waste is nasty stuff, and coal plants give off thousands of times more radiation every year than the whole US nuclear power fleet combined.

Nuclear power is a stop-gap. It's methadone. It gets us over the oil and coal addiction while we downsize our energy needs, learn to use terrestrial wind and biomass, get solar power satellites in orbit (yes, these are very easy and very needed and this is why we pay for a space program) and sink geothermal wells. We won't be using it in a century, just like we won't be using oil and coal, either. But it's the energy we have now that's tons cleaner than coal, oil and gas, that can synch up with existing power distribution and gets us past this sickness we have now. We don't have to love it... but we are gonna have to use it.