Fool
me once, shame on me; fool me twice, it must be April Fool's at
AskPatty. This week's carnival spans a broad assortment of topics from
taxes, carpools, the Michelin Man's 'spare tire,' Girl Scouts, paint
and much more. We're not fooling around here...
In an effort to encourage sales of new vehicles and jumpstart the auto
industry, State Rep. Terry Brown, D-Pigeon, announced a plan to let
Huron residents deduct the value of their trade-in on their taxes when
they buy a new vehicle. According to the Huron Daily Tribune, this will give consumers an incentive to buy new vehicles.
According to the Detroit Free Press,
Californians appear willing to pay $4,000 more for used
gasoline-electric hybrid vehicles that have state-issued carpool
stickers than for hybrids that don't, according to a sampling of prices
by Kelley Blue Book for USA Today. The stickers allow low-polluting
hybrids to use less-crowded, faster-moving carpool lanes, even if the
driver is alone in the car.
The Michelin Man Slims Down: Does the girth of Mr. Bibendum really affect how you feel about Michelin Tires? LearnedonWomen discusses
how the Michelin icon has symbolically slimmed down his "spare tire"
while Michelin touts how good tires and better cars can make fuel use
more efficient.
At the heart car buying is the "four-square" negotiation: a sheet of
paper divided into four boxes that cover your trade value, the purchase
price, down payment, and monthly payment. This is supposed to help you
and the dealership come to an agreement, but as The Consumerist shows, it's really more akin to three-card monte dealer's deck of cards.
With increasing numbers of women staying single longer, working outside
the home, and earning higher wages, more women are taking control of
the car-buying experience. Meredith Thorn of the St. Cloud Times reports on how today's women are taking the wheel in car buying
In case you haven't heard, the Girl Scouts are doing more than selling
cookies and weaving potholders these days. "You don't need to always
depend on a guy," says one Girl Scout. "Girls are very smart, sometimes
they're smarter than guys." According to the Roanoke Times,
the Virginia Skyline Girl Scout Council is focusing on giving girls
life and career skills training, with participants participating in
mock crime scene investigations, operating golf carts while wearing
"drunk" goggles, even teaching the teens how to check tire pressure and
fluid levels.
iMedia Wasteland evaluates Attik's "want2bsquare " website - an
interactive cubeworld that puts users in a surreal experience where
immersive Scion-related activities can earn them real swag. Each land
is interesting in its own way, with its own design, colors and style.
Peter Max may have inspired one; Lego likely inspired another.
According to a report at Edmunds.com's Inside Line,
Nissan Motor is working with research partners to formulate a new type
of paint that could make it easier for police to identify hit-and-run
drivers based on residue left at the accident scene. According to
Edmunds, eventually, your car's paint might have its own "fingerprint"
that could be easily traced.
That's it for this month!
Thank you for all of your submissions! Please remember to submit your
article next week using the online form
http://blogcarnival.com/bc/submit_464.html or by emailing Breanne at
Breanne@askpatty.com.
april
