Greetings, earthlings. Dr. Clark and I hope that everyone has had a great week so far and that our American brothers and sisters are looking forward to a great holiday weekend. As for the rest of the world — enjoy working tomorrow, suckers!

This week on a lil’ program we like call Stuff You Should Know, compasshead and I discussed earthquakes and something called hypermiling. Earthquakes is a pretty cool topic, but there’s a lot to it. Neither one of our strong suits is geology, so I hope we got most of it right. We’ve had a couple of corrections trickle in so far from some experts, which we love. Fact of the day — there’s an earthquake every 11 seconds, we just don’t feel many of them. Groovy.

Hypermiling is a driving technique that allows you to get better gas mileage than you could ever imagine. Thing is, it’s not great if you’re ever in a hurry. Some things you can do as a driver are:

• No jack rabbit starts
• No hard breaking
• Coast down hills
• Cut your engine if you’re going to idle for more than seven seconds

Just these few tips alone can help you get more bang for your petroleum buck. We also talked about how gas mileage is calculated and why the advertised number is rarely what you see in real world driving. Prettyyyyyy cool.

Have a great weekend and if you’re celebrating our country’s independence, please do so safely. Throw some ribs on the grill, kick back with a frosty beverage and enjoy some time with the ones you love.

Thanks to Dr. Kodachrome for this week’s image, which happens to be Josh’s favorite thus far. What’s more American than Willie Nelson, me in diapers and Josh wearing a five-gallon cowboy hat?

Read — I command you:
What is hypermiling?
How accurate are gas mileage monitors?
How to Survive an Earthquake