I resent the political powerfreaks telling me what to do as much as any true American, and I agree that forcing riders to wear helmets by law is about as helpful to society as outlawing the practice of chainsaw juggling. Just because something’s dangerous doesn’t mean it should be illegal. But let’s be clear, I don’t juggle chainsaws, and driving your bike without a helmet is dangerous.

I do know plenty of drivers with neon-fitted Hayabusas who say helmets just get in the way. “Helmets cause accidents”, they say. Which would be a valid argument if it were true, but it isn’t. Every study ever done on the subject indicates that riders who wear helmets crash less frequently and suffer fewer injuries and deaths if they do crash. So let’s just bury that ridiculous nugget of misinformation right now. You just need to decide what kind of helmet you want.

Be smart: pick one that you like and then wear it.

Double clutching is a method for downshifting that gives you smoother transitions and lowers the wear on your transmission. It’ll prolong your transmissions life and giving you an overall smoother ride. You will, of course, need a manual transmission.

Double-clutching is usually only used by truck drivers or race-car drivers, but if you have a manual transmission, you can double-clutch. It’s easy.

Everybody who grew up playing the original Nintendo Entertainment System knows the Konami Code: up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, start. It’s seared into my memory from years of Contra. Well most of us are now grown, and we’ve moved on to bigger, more expensive toys, like the Nissan GT-R. And the GT-R has a cool secret code of it’s own.

I’m beyond excited about the GT-R. It’s an ultimate performance machine on par, and better in some cases, with cars more than 5 times it’s price. I mean, $75,000 (plus almost $10k in dealer markups sometimes) for a history making supercar is a bloody steal. I didn’t think it could get any better, then I found out about the launch control system.

So you’re a geek and you want some geek gadgets for your car? I’m with you mang. Too long I’ve hidden my science and electronic loving ways. It’s time I wore my geek-itude on my sleeve, like some kind of sleeve based pocket protector for a pocket that’s on my sleeve. Right?

Whatever, here are the top five awesome whiz-bangs 4 your car:

Winter is on it’s way, and cold weather can be tough on cars. So here are a few simple steps you can take to help protect your car from the badness nature can inflict. They’re not all necessary, but they’re all helpful, so do what you can.

1. Change Your Oil and Oil Filter

Changing your oil is always number 1, it’s one of the most important and helpful things you can do as a car owner. You generally don’t need to change the type of oil you use for the winter unless you live in an area where it gets very cold, consistently 10 degrees F. In that case, you’d want to switch from the usual 10W30 to a thinner 5W30. Thinner oil will flow better cold weather, so that when you start your vehicle, the oil gets moving in the engine faster and more efficiently.

People love social networking, you can gossip and chat and share pictures of yourself drunk and naked with all your friends, it’s great stuff. And now you can even compare your gas mileage. Fuelly.com is a social network devoted to tracking, sharing and comparing gas mileage, and it’s actually really fun.

You can add friends based on their car type, gas mileage and odometer checks. It tracks everything, including what kind of car you’re driving, how much you’re spending, and even creates little charts to let you know whether your mileage is improving or declining over time.

It’s much harder to lease a vehicle these days. The price of used cars has dropped dramatically in recent months, and there are some pretty extreme credit-market pressures, so leasing just isn’t that economical for automakers right now. Your credit has to be near perfect, that is, if you can even get a lease at all (GM and Chrysler don’t offer them now).

Nevertheless, the lease is still an option for most car makes. So if you’re looking for a new car, you have to ask yourself what to go for, the finance deal or the lease?

So your car has been stolen and the police, as usual, are doing nothing about it. Dealing with insurance is a pain in the ass, and you just wish you could get your damn car back. Well, a company called StolenCarReports.com may be able to help you out. They provide a searchable online database of stolen cars and allow people to give tips and say when and where they saw the vehicle.

Last summer, I visited Mexico with a few friends. One of those friends was the internationally famous musical sensation Joshua Schulman from the band “Thunderbang!“. Josh was the driver and I was primarily the passenger. I sat back, drank Pernod, and took in the beautiful scenery and heavy aromas. I was also in charge of the radio, and bribing officials when we encountered trouble. Bring lots of extra cash to Mexico.

Now, driving in Mexico City is insane. We rented a car, a Nissan Tsuru (although we were given a Chrysler Town & Country), to visit the Toltec ruins in Tula, and on the way back had the misfortune of getting lost north of Mexico City’s historic district, where, among other mistakes, we drove through a market and almost killed a number of extended families.

Josh was nice enough to highlight some of the choice bits of driving wisdom he learned from this harrowing experience in Mexico City:

I love internet radio, it has more selection than satellite radio and it’s free. Granted most of its crap, but still, even if only 10% of internet radio stations are any good, they still have satellite beat. And remember: free. So why don’t we have it in our cars? The technology obviously exists, I can surf the internet on my tiny little phone. And cheaper manufacturing costs means it’s economically feasible, so whats up?

Most new cars already have small computers and some level of connectivity, but they’re still not interactive the way personal computers are. Microsoft has apparently come out with a new service called “Microsoft Live Search for Devices”, which would allow automakers to install localized search services on in-car navigation systems.