I don't subscribe to the local newspaper, being one of the newer hipper generation who finds it grossly inefficient to deliver the news in the form of several pounds of dead tree, most of which is news and advertisement you don't personally need.

I, of course, get most of my news from The Daily Show With Jon Stewart. But, since it seems impossible to avoid it, I do, several times a week, get The Baltimore Sun's free sampler. I don't usually read much more than the first page headline, but for whatever reason, I read the entire article today.

Close as I can work out, this was a reprint of an article more than two weeks old, so it's hidden from The Sun's free archives, but here's the Univerity of Maryland's faculty newspaper article on the same subject.

Quick Precis: A University of Maryland professor -- an efficiency expert no less, so I keep imagining him as Frank Gilbraith -- has, after four years of trying, finally got himself a street-legal Smart Car. That's the tiny little magic car you may have seen Inspector Clouseau driving in The Pink Panther.

But, and I realize that without the original article, it's going to be hard for you to follow along, I notice some strange things about this story:

• The reason it took him so long to get this car is that it doesn't meet emissions standards. If you've got a car that is amazingly fuel efficient, but it's not environmentally friendly, doesn't the one cancel out the other?
• Professor Robinson notes that the car does not come with a print manual, only a DVD, which will not play on his computer. My gut reaction: Damn you region encoding!
• But to me, here's the ultimate irony: This article about a car whose major selling point is that it's well tiny was Continued across five pages!