Six Famous Thought Experiments

Hilarious!

Traffic peep!

Steven, I have become a big fan. You are truly one of the most creative people on the planet. I love reading your articles on Neatorama, they make me laugh and think, and I hope they continue for a long time to come.

Your "Mean Cars" prediction is very interesting. It definitely came to pass. I was recently reading something about how US consumers want a mean-looking vehicle, while consumers in Japan were more interested in friendly-looking ones. I would like to see what a friendly-looking car would be when projected to the proportions of a Hummer, or does being a friendly-looking product require that it also be diminutive?

In any case, keep up the great work!

If I had a traffic peep it would look like this.

http://www.plainjanegames.com/funstuff/images/missiletruck.jpg

OK. SUVs bad. Small cars good.

Got it.

What's the next bit of propaganda?

Lulu: If there is any "propaganda" in this blog, it is definitely not an argument in favor of small cars. It should have been obvious – and if it wasn't it's my fault for not stating it more clearly – that there are problems when tall, heavy vehicles occupy the same road system as small econocars. The disparities are too great! In a future blog I plan to offer ideas for separate thoroughfares that isolate vehicles based on their size and mass.

I always loved your Yogamobile design, myself!
Heck, I didn't even know what yoga was back then but I'd stare at that book page for hours imagining the fun of it.

My previous car (in the mid and late 90s) was a tiny Honda Civic hatchback, and several times in morning rush-hour traffic of the 405, I had fantasized about a periscope... Eventually however, I settled for the more available solution of the day - a Jeep!

Ingeniously innovative and quite hilarious solutions, as usual, Steve! :)

Girl: I usually design stuff – most of it silly – that I myself might like. The Yogamobile you refer to in WHAT THE WORLD NEEDS NOW is a car that I imagined I might like to ride in myself, even if I had not quite figured out what happens when you are sitting on a cushy rug in meditation posture and the driver brakes or accelerates suddenly!

This is absolutely hilarious! I love it! I have similar wild ideas, but — darn — I don't have the talent to draw.

I love this post so much, I'm linking to it in my next blog post: trafficfrustrationblog.com. On this blog, I discuss this and other frustrations with driving. Thanks for sharing these ideas with the world!