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War will begin soon. It's just around the corner, is how it feels to me. The surprise will be how little it affects most people's lives, at least assuming The United States continues to have presidential elections and, eventually, abide by their results.

The people killed in the Iraq war won't be affected. Death is their quick and final end; even in Chicago they'll eventually be removed from the voter registration lists. Their families and friends won't ever forget it, though, you can pretty much count on that. And after reading Mary Anne Weaver's book on Pakistan, I sure don't have a good feeling about how a war in Iraq would influence Pakistan-American relations.

Have you been wondering about the significance of those 12 empty chemical warheads? Before you bring them up in a discussion with your friends, you might read this long and not-that-boring article about inspections.

Too, it's worth considering that Iraq hasn't been behaving like most nations undergoing disarmament, as Condoleeza Rice points out on today's NY Times opinion page, Why we know Iraq is lying.

The troops are there or on the way, our propaganda is all in place. From a tactical standpoint, why wait until the U.N. report on Jan 27th? Doesn't that just give Iraq more time to get ready?

The L.A. Auto Show is a major event and we never miss it. The manufacturers go all out here and at the Detroit show, which opens tomorrow. Only a few things missed Los Angeles because they are in Detroit instead.

Naturally, these were just what we wanted to see: The new Bentley GT coupe and the Volkswagen TDI turbo diesel engine in cutaway view were among the missing attractions that Detroiters will get to see, but we didn't.

Ok, I'll get a Honda, the Bentley was too wide for the narrow lane that leads up to the entrance to our summer estate. Speaking of Honda, we all saw the Honda Element, which we didn't adore, and the Scion prototype vehicle, which has a very nice center-mounted speedometer/tachometer gauge. The main purpose of the Scion seems to be a carrier for your custom audio equipment. That is, you get a Scion, and customize it with your audio equipment.

Scion instrument well

Maybach 57 rear seat (click to enlarge)

The Maybach 57, so named because it is 5.7 meters in length (perhaps in wheelbase) is the luxury car extraordinaire. Note, if you will, the champagne bucket with silver champagne flute, writing table, twin rear seat televisions, and full drivers instrument panel in the roof so that you don't have to peer over your chauffeur's shoulder to see whether she's speeding or not.

Two cool things: Mercedes has solved the problem of how to combine sport and luxury in one seat (this has been a perennial problem for me). How do they do it? "As lateral acceleration increases, so does lateral support, thanks to inflatable chambers in the backrest: superlative support on every curve." One of these seats positioned in front of a multimedia display was rigged to inflate on the appropriate side as the display showed you going around curves.

And BMW, not to be outdone, has an engineering solution for another recurring problem: the incompletely closed door. A hydraulic catch grabs the incompletely closed door, and smoothly eases it in to the fully-closed position. Heck, that's worth 2 bills right there. (I learned from one of the babes cruising the show that a "bill", in the vernacular, is a thousand dollars)

There were also a few nice concept vehicles, including the open-aired Saturn Sky (convertible, but no top in evidence: the concept still needs some work, but the lines of the car are v. clean), the Chrysler Crossfire, and the extremely seek yet somehow pointy Cadillac Condiment (not its real name). The well-armed James Bond 007(tm) cars were also well-represented bristling with guns and rockets (crossfire indeed!), and it being Los Angeles, Batman's Batmobile was also in evidence. Holy L.A., Batman! pools=XML, Blog, Ruby