#51: The insurance company could have at least sold that stuff on eBay, or found some deal with Mazda to credit back the resale value of the parts. Nothing was recycled.

eBay? Really? "That stuff" is 4700 cars, man, do you know the scale of man power that it'd take to strip 4700 cars of useful parts? The space that would be required to house said parts, the administrative man power required to track, distribute, handle payment for, shipment of, and customer service for that many parts? And how many people need a CD player for a Mazda 3? I can see the eBay listing now:

"CD player for 2006 Mazda 3, Quantity available: 4700" So then not only do they have the cost of actually getting that CD player up on eBay, and the infrastructure required to sell it, but then they STILL have to pay to throw away the 4500 that don't sell.

There is NO feasible way to completely recycle 4700 automobiles at once. To those who have suggested keeping them around for "off road use", I promise you that those cars would end up in Mexico, South America, and elsewhere, perhaps to kill someone there. To those who have treated it as if the only factor here is that the vehicles were at an extreme angle for a long time, also keep in mind that they were at that angle in the middle of the ocean. Salt = corrosion = structural steel failure.

I just... I really have a hard time faulting Mazda for this. They could have helped a few people out, and then low-income-Joe is driving down the highway and a corroded ball joint fails and the car goes sailing in to on-coming traffic.

They looked and smelled like new cars. Don't forget that. They weren't swamped, they weren't obviously destroyed. If they got in to the wild, they would co-mingle so easily with any other new-ish Mazda, only who knows what kind of death traps they could be?

4,000 cars is a LOT of cars to be letting loose on the unsuspecting public. It's not just about brand imagery, it's about corporate responsibility and as an advocate of consumer rights and a car enthusiast, I'm glad to know that there is no way that any of these cars can make it out in to the world and potentially kill someone.

And now CNN just says, "Send in your cell phone footage!"

I quietly dream of being the guy who invents the world's first time machine so that I can send my cell phone back to the '60s to some engineer's desk at Bell or PARC or MIT, then see how the present changes.

"Backpack, eh? Can you play Tetris on it? No? Well, I can. Well I can for 45 seconds until the demo runs up, I'll be damned if I'm paying 8 bucks for cell phone Tetris..." And on and on...

Is it sad that I find this so depraved that I almost enjoy reading things like this? Wondering what kind of superb lunacy that these nut-jobs are going to come up with next?

I have no problem with sponsorship at all. I have had no problem with the sponsorship (that I've noticed) on here, either.

I thought the wording of the "Note: We would like to thank" was highly obnoxious and counter to the entire BoingBoing atmosphere. It's like opening up your favorite magazine and finding a pleasant little thank you to Microsoft Word for allowing an article to be written.

First of all, Microsoft Windows Mobile is a product, not a person, you can't thank it. Second, congratulations on suddenly gaining the ability to blog with mobility. Maybe you could put that in a separate post, explaining that blogging capabilities will be handled with Windows Mobile, rather than giving MS a big ol' smooch on the butt right smack in the middle of the post content?

The thing about web advertising is, when it's done what I would consider to be correctly, you can ignore it. It's easy to ignore that [lame] little Windows Mobile badge at the bottom of the article. It's insulting to have such a "Thank you" statement stuck right in the middle of the post's content. Bad form.

Oh thank you, thank you Windows Mobile, for allowing me to see a blurry camera phone photo of hamster-related human food the instant it was taken, rather than forcing me to wait until the person who snapped the photo got back to home/office. I don't know what I'd do without you, Windows Mobile, you are quickly beginning to replace air and water.

So three tons of non-biodegradable, neon colored, fur covered, plastic balls are better than three tons of compostable peaches?

Well, you can put those back in cans and use them later, for making wannabe art installations for other companies.

Really love your peaches, wanna' shake your tree?

But seriously, art for corporations' sake seems even worse when it's a waste of perfectly good food.

I would box it up and send it to Apple with a note to Mr. Jobs:

"Dear sir, this product is much more thick than the MacBook Air that you demonstrated on stage in January. I would like my money back, please."

Which would probably result in never seeing machine nor money ever again, but it would at least be interesting.

Where can you pick up a refrigerator box? The back of your favorite appliance store should have more than a couple.

When I was a kid, my dad would always stop and pick up a box or two for me, and eventually I had created a pretty good (for a second grader) recreation of the corridors of the USS Enterprise (the space one, not the ocean one.) Such battles were waged from the decks of my cardboard flagship.

And God forbid that a BoingBoing audience finds anything fun in the absurd...

Kit Cars got expensive, unfortunately. Also, factory cars became too complicated for most basic DIY folks to convert with kits (case in point, the popular Pontiac Fiero -> Ferrari 328 conversion http://home.nycap.rr.com/wwilliams/Ferrari.html )

But there is a LOT of home-grown engineering going on in automobiles that is in a far, far different league from the dudes and dudettes who go to AutoZone and load up with every stick-on light, chrome shift knob, and cheap stereo component that you can buy.

Engine management tuning is HUGE and while there are people who know what they're doing and those who are just poking buttons, it takes a great deal of knowledge and creativity to build a car that will be wild on a drag strip or road course, and manageable around town. If you're really in to "comprehensive engineering", check out the build-it-yourself (modify it too) Megasquirt fuel injection system:

http://www.megasquirt.info/