TEST-DRIVING THE NISSAN LEAF. So as I mentioned the other day, the Nissan folks arranged for me to drive a Leaf for a couple of days to see how I liked it. The answer is that I did. It’s zippy, quiet, and fun to drive, and it’s well-suited as a commuter car, though it only a few urbanites would want it as their sole vehicle. Here are the details.

First, what about range anxiety? I can attest that it’s a real phenomenon. Part of that is the “miles remaining” display on the dash. When I picked the car up it wasn’t fully charged. The range display showed 83 miles, and the time-to-full-charge, even on the dealership’s 240v charger (which takes 6-8 hours for a full charge from empty) was about an hour. I didn’t have time to hang around that long, so I drove it to the Law School on Alcoa Highway, going about 55 mph. The distance is about 9 miles, and the display — which is based on a moving average of consumption — only dropped to 77. Driving home on back roads took it down to a further 67, but then driving around later, with headlights and climate control on, quickly dropped it to about 44. Because the display keeps changing, it’s better to look at the bar-display to its right, which shows the percentage charge of the battery. I’m sure Leaf owners quickly get used to this, but the way the display is configured probably produces excessive worry in newbies. Here’s a picture. The mileage display is on the right; the bar display on the left is battery temperature, which can matter a lot but usually doesn’t.

Instead of a gearshift, the Leaf has a simple forward/backward stick which, counterintuitively, goes forward for reverse, and reverse for forward. The button on the top sets the parking brake. Kind of an odd configuration, but easy enough to figure out and get used to.

The Leaf has lots of torque, as electric vehicles tend to, and merging into traffic is a snap. The smooth and near-silent acceleration is very cool. Cruising in the Leaf is also near-silent, with very little wind noise and only a modicum of tire noise from the low-rolling-resistance tires. Nissan clearly did a serious job of tightening up the interior, which is entirely free of squeaks and rattles. That must have been a chore, as there’s not the engine noise that would ordinarily mask them. The interior is nice, and an upgrade from the Versa whose chassis the Leaf uses. It’s not Infiniti-level, but it’s not econobox-level either. There’s plenty of room for the driver, even if, like me, you’re 6’3″ and over 200 pounds. Cornering is adequate, though the car feels a bit heavy, probably because of the battery weight.

There are some nice touches. The backup camera has a distance overlay, which is useful; if you’re turning while backing, the distance overlay curves to indicate your path. The car emits a low-level whine while driving at slow speeds, to warn pedestrians; I would prefer the Jetsons spaceship bleeble, but it’s not bad. The beeping sound it emits while backing up, however, is mildly annoying. The buttons for turning off the audio and climate control systems are a bit small and dark — again, not a problem when you’re used to the car, but not good design.

Once you get used to the idea of driving an electric car, it’s pretty uneventful. The range is such that it’s really only a commuter car, but it would easily accommodate 90% of my driving. When I got home I plugged it into the included 110v charger and by morning it was topped up to 100% and showed an indicated range of 111 miles. The charger inlet is in the front of the car and accommodates both 110v and 240v chargers in the right socket, and the still-scarce Level 3 chargers (which can charge the battery in half an hour) in the socket on the left.

Of course, the weather was perfect for maximum range as I didn’t have to make much use of the air conditioner or heat, both of which are (naturally) electric. Just turning on the A/C immediately drops the indicated range by over ten miles.

So is the Leaf worth it? The price is a bit steep — the car I drove, which had Nav, XM/Sirius, and assorted other bells and whistles, was priced at over $37K, which means that you’d be spending about $30,000 even after the $7500 federal tax credit. Is that worth it for a commuter car that never needs gas? Only if gas prices skyrocket — or if you follow the early adopter’s manifesto. But a lot of people do, and I can attest that the Leaf, which is surprisingly cute, did draw a lot of favorable attention as I drove it around. If you’re looking for a car that’s different, and plenty of people are willing to spend money for one of those, then this certainly fills the bill. It’s also pleasant to drive, and surprisingly comfortable.

(All photos taken with the Panasonic Lumix LX-5. Which did a nice job.)

REPLACING OIL AND GAS WITH A METHANOL ECONOMY? “Methanol can be made solely with water and carbon dioxide — available everywhere on Earth — and any energy source such as solar, wind, geothermal or safe nuclear energy.” Obviously we should be preparing by building more nuclear plants now.

ANTI-AGING UPDATE: Resveratrol In Humans: Results Of A Controlled Trial. “In conclusion, we demonstrate that 30 days of resveratrol supplementation induces metabolic changes in obese humans, mimicking the effects of calorie restriction.” Derek Lowe adds: “The effects in the human subjects were quite impressive. Not all the changes were huge, but they all seem to point in the same direction: mimicking the effects of caloric restriction and exercise. This is exactly the sort of thorough, well-controlled study this field has been needing, and it makes all the questions in it take on that much more urgency. What does resveratrol do in humans, on a molecular level? Are sirtuins involved, and to what extent? Can other compounds do the same thing, or even more? What are the long-term effects of such compounds on human morbidity and mortality? Do these effects only manifest themselves in obese subjects? How much would happen in people who are under less metabolic stress to start with? And so on. . .”

For those who are interested, I continue to take resveratrol myself. It’s not certain, but benefits appear to be likely, and risks appear to be low.

MARRIAGE: Couples That Save Together, Stay Together.

FASTER, PLEASE: Liberating Medicine’s New Frontier.

BOB OWENS IS GOBSMACKED: Touched: The Jerry Sandusky Story is a real book!

He adds: “The comments are every bit as vicious and sarcastic as you might expect.”

Plus: “What’s next, a Eric Holder book entitled, ‘Great Moments in Law Enforcement’?”

A NEGLECTED VACCINE. Older people need whooping cough vaccine too.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Students of Professor Who Didn’t Show Up Keep Their A’s and Get Refunds, Too.

MORE ON THE AWFUL “INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY” MOVES IN CONGRESS: New Government Attempts to Control and Stifle the Internet. It’s interesting that these are drawing so much fire from both left and right.

E-MAIL HELL: The Obama Administration’s E-Mail Trail. “There’s a reason why e-mail can be a treasure trove or a smoking gun, depending on your perspective, in litigation. But aside from the lack of appreciation for the potency of e-mail evidence, what is striking is the arrogance of power. One senses in these snippets of conversation that the participants think the public is either to be minimally humored or exploited for private gain.”

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: U.S. to China and Brazil: Take Up The White Man’s Burden.

THE COUNTRY’S IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: National Emergency Alert Test: Total Failure? “Did not air on any station in our cluster, or any TV station in the market. Callers with DirecTV report seeing Lady Gaga.”

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: “He Got Us Both Pregnant at the Same Time.”

AMERICAN THINKER: GOP’s “Weak Field” Strong Enough To Push Back Media.

Related: Campaign Crisis Tests Cain.

LAW SCHOOL DEAN JIM CHEN: Legal Education and the Heir of Slytherin. “There is no value in prestige or credentials. There is only performance, and those who have the wisdom to prize it.”

#OCCUPYFAIL: Police arrest man at Occupy Portland camp for throwing Molotov cocktail into stairwell at World Trade Center. That’s the WTC in Portland, not the one in NYC.

ANOTHER DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY LOAN SCANDAL: Are We Bailing Out Spain’s Solar Collapse?

BOMBSHELL DOCUMENT: Bombshell Doc: Obama’s NLRB Gears Up to Operate Without Any GOP Members (Update: Romney Slams NLRB).

#OCCUPYFAIL: Occupying The Onion, Part Deux.

WELL, THAT’LL CERTAINLY HAPPEN IF THE ADMINISTRATION’S POLICIES CONTINUE: On Our Radar: Viciously More Expensive Energy. I agree with the proposal for more nukes.

TODAY ONLY: 58% Off “Stanley Kubrick Collection” on DVD or Blu-ray. From Spartacus and Lolita to 2001 and Full Metal Jacket, among many others.

INSTAVISION: I talk with Michael Barone about what this week means, and what’s next. (Bumped).

And you might want to pick up a copy of his The Almanac of American Politics 2012 if you’re seriously interested in politics.

LEFTY MEDIA FALLS FOR anti-Cain hoax. The eponymous Crooks and Liars blog apologizes to its readers, but Prof. Jacobson asks, “How about apologizing to Herman Cain?”

MEGAN MCARDLE: The Financial Folly Of Fairness.

When I was a young and naive economics writer, I used to write about developing countries a fair amount. Time and again they would make these bizarre and pointless moves, like suddenly and for no apparent reason defaulting on a bunch of debt. They would engage in obviously, stupidly unsustainable fiscal practices that caused recurring crises. They would divert critical investment funds into social spending which was going to become unsustainable when underinvestment reduced government revenue. And the other journalists and I would cluck our tongues and say “Why can’t they do the right thing when it’s so . . . bleeding . . . obvious?”

Then we had our own financial crisis and it became suddenly, vividly clear: democratic governments cannot do even obvious right things if the public will not tolerate it. Even dictators have interest groups whose support they must buy.

This has come home to me forcefully several times over the last few years, but never more than now. . . . I am very much afraid that the euro zone is about to plunge us into phase two of the global financial crisis–and that as with the Great Depression, phase two may be even worse than the dismal years we’ve just endured. In search of fairness, we may all get a lot more justice than any of us really wants.

Read the whole thing. And beware those who talk of “fairness,” but evade justice.

UPDATE: Reader Clark Van Meter writes:

Implicit in Mrs. McArdle’s analysis is that there is some magic wand that can be waived to simply stop wealth from being destroyed. Your clue that she’s off the topic of economics is that she’s quoting Brad DeLong.

This situation is very simple- its the end of a credit boom. You go through a bust, you inflate or do some combination of both. The is no difference in the change in wealth under any of these choices, just how the pain is distributed and how long it takes to reset the system to where the price level, cash flow and debt load are in a manageable arrangement.

The idea that following the path Andrew Mellon suggested is somehow more destructive of wealth than sending the price of gold even higher just doesn’t pass the laugh test.

Ask a German.

It’s too bad Hoover pursued policies closer to Obama’s than to Andrew Mellon’s. It’s also too bad that Obama has pursued policies closer to Hoover’s than to Andrew Mellon’s . . . .