Back when Marian and I were vacationing in Britain, I saw a surprising number of these cars:

It’s a Figaro, which looks like one of those cute postwar British cars that were manufactured in the gazillions—but obviously isn’t. For one thing, it’s made by Nissan. For another, it has a third brake light up in the rear window, which pegs it as a relatively recent make. So what is it?

I never found out, but today the New York Times reveals all. It turns out it’s an oddball car that, for some reason, Nissan manufactured only in 1991:

Nissan built the Figaro in pale shades of aqua, green, gray and taupe — one of a few idiosyncratic, limited-edition models the company made in that era.

The company originally planned to build just 8,000 Figaros, priced at about $8,300, and strictly for the Japanese market. Even before sales began, it was clear that demand would far exceed that figure, so Nissan held a lottery to choose its buyers. Celebrities were among those in the running, generating still more interest. Nissan expanded production to 20,000, but even so, most would-be buyers were turned away. Despite the unmet demand, the company stuck to its plan to make the car for just one year.

From early on, a very few appeared in Britain, as people visiting Japan — including Eric Clapton — bought Figaros and had them shipped home. The car required only minor modification to be street legal in Britain, and drivers here, as in Japan, sit on the right side of the car.

….More than 3,000 of the cars are registered as being in active use in Britain, but numbers are no longer rising, and the pipeline has slowed to a trickle. “There’s only so many, and they’ve been around awhile,” said Peter Pattemore, who drives a Figaro (named Jimmy), as does his wife, Sandra (hers is Sally). “But we’re going to keep them as long we can.”

The Figaro is now more than 25 years old, so it’s finally street legal if you want to buy one for use in the United States. Just don’t expect anyone to fit in the back seat.

Hilbert is being tail-bombed.

Two years ago a team of researchers at Duke University published a study of North Carolina’s “More at Four” pre-K program, a state-funded program for “high-risk 4-year-old children, with risk defined as annual family income at or below 75 percent of the state median, limited English proficiency, disability, chronic illness, or developmental need.” Here are the results:

The authors concluded that all the way up to grade 5, children continued to show benefits from the program (which has since been renamed “NC Pre-K”). Today, the lead researcher, Kenneth Dodge, reports that the benefits continue at least through middle school:

Our new analyses, about to be released as a working paper, show that the positive impacts of NC Pre-K … continue through grades 6, 7, and 8. There is no fadeout. In fact, the impact grows. By eighth grade, for children in counties with average funding, NC Pre-K has reduced the likelihood of placements into special education by over one third. We find positive impacts for every group of children we studied, including economically disadvantaged as well as advantaged children; African American, Hispanic, and white non-Hispanic children; and children whose mothers are well-educated as well as those whose mothers are less well-educated.

The findings are clear: The more funding that North Carolina invests for NC Pre-K, the better children will fare as they get older. The benefits from that investment will not fade out but will grow over the lives of these children.

A second program, “Smart Start,” which is targeted at providing services to children ages 0-4, also showed benefits, but they were much smaller. If these results hold up, it means that pre-K programs have yet another good program to model themselves after.

The real hurdle, of course, is high school, which is where the benefits of programs like this typically fade out. In another three or four years, we’ll have data on that too.

The Evil Dex is amazing stuff.¹ I swear, it has an atomic clock built in. I take it on Monday at about 8 am, and a whole series of side effects then starts to kick off on a very precise schedule. How precise? Well, the last side effect is a withdrawal crash, which happens at about 11 am on Thursday, give or take an hour.

Think about this. That’s 75 hours later, and it happens within an hour of the same time every week. For three consecutive days the dex churns through its side effects with an error rate of no more than 1 percent. That’s really impressive.

¹Dexamethasone, for those of you who haven’t been following along. I take it once a week to help control my multiple myeloma.

Alissa Wilkinson asks today why no one wants to host the Oscars these days. I’m here to help. Everyone loves Venn diagrams, so here’s the answer in the form of a Venn diagram:

It’s an impossible job. Half the country wants PG-13, the other half wants R. Half the country wants it to be all about diversity and inclusiveness, the other half just wants to see movie stars. Half the country wants Bob Hope, the other half wants Lenny Bruce.

You’re going to get hammered no matter what you do. It won’t help your career, it doesn’t pay much money, and it’s a pain in the ass to do it. The real question isn’t why no one wants to do it, it’s why it took so long for comedians to finally give up on the whole thing.

Hollandse-Hoogte via ZUMA

A few days ago National Security Advisor John Bolton said we wouldn’t be withdrawing from Syria until ISIS was defeated. Today we get this:

The U.S. military said Friday that it has begun withdrawing troops from Syria, initiating a drawdown that has blindsided allies and sparked a scramble for control of the areas that American troops will leave. U.S. forces have “begun the process of our deliberate withdrawal from Syria,” read a statement from the U.S.-led coalition. “Out of concern for operational security, we will not discuss specific timelines, locations or troop movements.”

I guess that’s, uh, good news, right? It means we’ve defeated ISIS. Or something?

From the Wall Street Journal:

The White House is searching for alternative routes, short of declaring a national emergency, for President Trump to obtain funding to build a border wall and end a nearly three-week partial government shutdown.

Finally! A compromise I can contribute to. My alternate route is shown below. I’m pretty sure funding would be no problem.

Nothing fancy to end this week’s collection of pictures, just a small hibiscus peeking out from behind a leaf at the LA Arboretum.

I was noodling around in some crime stats and ended up browsing through the FBI’s 2017 hate crimes report. Here are the numbers for the share of different demographic groups who are victims of hate crimes:

And here are the numbers for the share of different demographic groups who commit hate crimes:

Donald Trump wants to make something clear about his wall:

Well….

But who cares, really? Maybe Mexico will pay for the wall, maybe Putin will pay for it. Or maybe Trump will crowdsource it. Maybe Warren Buffett will write a check. Or better yet, Carlos Slim. He’s Mexican, isn’t he?

Whatever. It’s just words.