Hot off the presses:

• Women prefer men in hybrids over Porsches. That’s the word from General Motors. Wired has the story:

So says a survey by General Motors that found nearly nine in 10 women would rather talk to a guy in a Prius than a Porsche. Dumping the SUV in favor of an econobox would make you more popular at parties, too. Eighty percent of respondents said they find people who drive fuel efficient cars more interesting than those that don’t.

• The trailer for the new A&E mini-series “The Andromeda Strain” has arrived. A journalist is the hero. Yep, mark this one down as sci-fi.

• And speaking of journalists, the politics of high school newspapers are apparently as catty as those of any other industry filled with people jockeying for public recognition. That’s what the 17-year-old star of the MTV series “The Paper” found out. From the N.Y. Times:

[The show] devoted ample screen time to behind-the-scenes conflicts among the students at The Circuit and the friendships that were tested or broken by its demanding environment. [Show star Amanda] Lorber came in for particularly rough treatment; her colleagues at the paper were frequently shown on camera making critical or nasty comments about her behind her back.

If other students want to participate in something like this, they should think long and hard about it, Ms. Lorber said in a telephone interview.

She said she was not surprised that The Paper placed so much emphasis on the in-fighting and unraveling of friendships, nor did she find it uncomfortable to relive these experiences when the show was broadcast. Once I’ve come to terms with everything that’s happened on the show, it’s not hard for me to think about other people seeing it, Ms. Lorber said. I agreed to broadcast my junior year and my senior year on camera. It comes with the territory.

• Al Franken is getting buffetted by bloggers in his quest for a U.S. senate seat from Minnesota. A local blogger, who writes from his kitchen table, has unearthed several stories that have put Franken on the defensive throughout the campaign. From the N.Y. Times:

[The blog] has dealt several blows to Mr. Franken’s campaign lately: revelations that he owed $25,000 to the State of New York for failing to pay workers’ compensation insurance and that his corporation was in forfeiture in California.

… The reports led Mr. Franken to hire a new team of financial advisers to review his finances. … [T]he campaign was clearly worried: it created an emergency phone bank one evening to call the more than 2,500 Democratic convention delegates and alternates and deliver the news before it came out the next day in the newspapers.

• And finally, Ben Stein, our favorite economist/actor/T.V. show host/former-economic-advisor-to-Richard Nixon … phew! … muses about the relevance of the Mad Max movies in connection with $5 gallons of gas.

AS I watch the drama about gasoline and oil prices play out on the streets and in the news media, some images and memories come to mind.

… There are also scenes from the great Mad Max movies. In one of them, Australia has been reduced to chaos amid a cruel shortage of oil and gasoline. Men will kill in an instant for a few drops of precious gasoline to power their motorcycles, and life as we know it has stopped because of a deficiency of that magnificent stuff.