In the meantime, Ostrofsky has to take an online defensive driving course.

Thought so. Tell me that ain't a torque converter! :D

elon (EE-lahn) verb - to break the testing machine

Change the 'is' to an 'if' and it...well, it's still a dog's breakfast but at least it lands within earshot of the point, at least as I understand it.

You're not wrong. Winter tires are the first and most important part of proper inclement-weather preparations.

The first stick I ever drove was a friend's brother's beater of a Ranger back in the late 90s. The clutch was SHOT. I was the only person around who even knew what a clutch is, but I was all book-learnin' and no practical knowledge. Still, we needed that truck so I volunteered to bring it over. I think I stalled 2…

Same here. Ballaban's on a hot streak lately. Jalopnik Weekend Edition is crushing it.

The photographer caught him just as the paintball was impacting his face. It's a pretty amazing shot, in every sense.

Before you crap all over ncasolowork2, think back a little ways. Because believe it or not, there was once a time when you didn't know what a header was, either. What'd you do then? Did you ask somebody what it was and try to increase your knowledge? Did you go the 'fake it 'til you make it' approach and try to bluff…

It's tough to swap an F20C into anything, though - it spins the "wrong" way, so you need to replace the entire drivetrain, including the diff and the rear axle. Otherwise you end up with 5 reverse gears and 1 (very slow) forward gear.

Easy. Miata engine. The 1.8L. It's bulletproof, and stock it puts out just enough power to make a Sprite fun without ruining it by overpowering it with too much torque. Plus there's a huge aftermarket of bolt-on parts that lets you progressively increase the go-juice. PLUS it's small enough to fit in the bay without…

Can we confirm Hamilton Nolan's location during the incident in question? Has he got an alibi?

Occasionally you also get noteworthy non-Presidents like the Nimitz-class carriers USS John C. Stennis (named for a Senator who chaired the Senate Armed Services Committee and in so doing ensured the funding of many modern naval vessels) and the USS Carl Vinson (named for a member of the House who helped establish the…

I got profile-stopped while riding in a Crown Vic once. It was on the Pike, coming out of Boston. There were 4 teenage guys, just driving. Our driver was studiously obeying the speed limit because he'd gotten nailed for doing a buck-ten in his Corvette the year before and was on probation - one more ticket and they'd…

Another thing to bear in mind is that certain of the aircraft you guys are talking about - and I'm thinking here of the F-16 and the AV-8B in particular - have ticking clocks on them that are rapidly running out. A lot of those airframes are more than 30 years old and have seen hundreds or thousands of flying hours on…

@sp1nz1

...Provided it works. I think most of what I've ever read about the F-35s capabilities has come from press releases that could be traced right back to Lockheed Martin's Marketing department.

You forgot "the internet." ARPAnet was a DoD project. And even if you ignore sunk costs like hardware (i.e., anything with a chip and a screen) or infrastructure (such as fiber optic networks on land or, even more expensive, underwater) and you only count the dollars of lost productivity, the internet has got to be…

And not just our military. While the F-22 was designed to be the USAF's top dog that could blast any other nation's fifth-gen fighters out of the sky, the F-35 was always meant to be a multinational aircraft. It's like a big-budget action movie: it may not make its budget back in the domestic market, but then the real…