If you've been following the real news, you'll recall that Max Mosley is the British Formula 1 racing president who is currently involved in a slight tiff over a video of him having an hours-long Nazi-themed orgy with five hookers. A bit embarrassing for him personally, yes. It's also caused some grumbling among the Formula 1 teams. And now, this sex scandal is reaching its absurd logical conclusion, as its ripples extend into the highest reaches of the world's corporations: BMW and Mercedes-Benz have jointly condemned Mosley's sexual taste as "disgraceful." [BBC]. Because they are the arbiters of morality in sexuality! They're also a bit sensitive about the whole Nazi angle, because, you know, they're from Germany themselves.

Early last month Sequoia Capital fired TokBox founder Serge Faguet as CEO. An engineer who spoke with Faguet for a job interview tells us his firing "comes as no surprise." The tipster, perhaps sore that his job interview didn't go so well, characterizes Faguet as "rude and arrogant" and argues that the original idea for TokBox came from cofounder Ron Hose. But mostly, our tipster objects to Faguet's car: a BMW 650i.

Today in Sacramento, the California Air Resources Board is planning to once again relax rules requiring automakers to produce more nonpolluting cars. Instead of demanding more zero-emission vehicles, the relaxed rules would call for more hybrids and higher fuel-efficiency standards, which would satisfy air-quality goals and save automakers $1.3 billion. The program originally called for ten percent of autos on California roads be emission-free by 2003. Tesla Motors is, of course, against the rules revision — but even former Secretary of State and San Francisco éminence grise George P. Shultz is in the awkward position of lobbying Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to intervene in favor of more stringent government regulation (PDF). What is the world coming to? Oh, right. (Photo by John M. Heller)

With a laptop tracking power and gas consumption and CO₂ emissions, Google.org's four plug-in Priuses serve as a test fleet for the charity's $10 million plug-in electric hybrid vehicle research program. And according to the stats, they're already outperforming the company's two regular Prius hybrids across the board. RechargIT.org is a fantastic PR stunt, but is it good science?

"My brother did 3 tours in Iraq so someone could drive around in this!?!?!!?" That's what Rebecca from Minneapolis wants to know about this stupid Hummer. So she flipped the bastard off! Luckily for her, there's a website called FUH2.com, devoted exclusively to pictures of people flipping off Hummers (H2 version only). We judge this to be a good thing. After the jump, five pictures illustrating the different styles that patriotic Americans have used to give the gas-guzzling monsters the one-finger salute. May this be the first step towards justice in the world!

In the greatest act of child bribery by a sitting governor since Bill Clinton withheld his 44th birthday cake from a young, broccoli-boycotting Chelsea, Arnold Schwarzenegger recently recalled his vintage M47 Army tank from its Ohio museum exile as an enticement to California's at-risk youths to just behave already, for Christ's sake.

· Somebody call Doc Brown, this is 1.21 jigga-WHATs of unabashed awesomeness. Keep your eyes peeled for the homey with the prosthetic leg; he puts Mucca to shame. [College Humor via AOTS]
· During the course of our day, we read a lot of truly shitty op-ed pieces. It's part of the job, we don't like to complain. While we normally shield these sorts of works from your eyes, we would like to share one of the more egregiously awful pieces we've read in eons with you now. Its title? "How utterly cool is Natalie Portman?" Barf. [MSNBC]
· "We've seen comebacks happen over and over again in the entertainment industry, whether it's John Travolta, the Spice Girls, or fictitious characters such as Indiana Jones or Rambo. Now it's Mr. T's time." So true. We pity the fools who don't read Mr. T's graphic novel! [Mohawk Media]
· We have to be honest, once we hit the 90-second mark in this video and realized that it's 22 minutes long, we stopped watching. That said, many tips have hit the Defamer inbox today telling us it's funny. So, there you go. Democracy in action. [Funny Or Die]
· And finally, we close the day with a bit of good news. The Elliott Smith wall on Sunset in Silver Lake has, thankfully, been untagged and restored to its pristine beauty. A tip of the cap to our friends at LAist. [LAist]

In Europe, Google's on a massive hiring binge for the Street View feature of Google Maps, where camera-equipped vehicles snap photos of streetscapes. It's bringing on 300 drivers for the Switzerland-based effort. But the project has been held up by the whim of a founder. Sergey Brin, we hear, is insisting that the project use hybrid Priuses, rather than the staid Saturn Astra it used in Australia, shown here, or the Chevrolet Cobalt Googlers drive in the U.S. Brin believes Toyota's gas-sipping Priuses are better for Google's image. Just one problem.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk joined egoblogger Robert Scoble and Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis for dinner last night. After, the trio took to the streets of Santa Monica for a little street racing. Scoble and Musk in a Tesla. Calacanis in a Corvette convertible. "The Tesla smoked the 'vette," Scoble reports on his blog. Jalopnik editor Ray Wert tells us this mostly speaks to Calacanis's inability to drive. Both Calacanis and Scoble took video, of course, and both streams are embedded below.

Tesla Motors delivered its first production all-electric car on Friday afternoon to company chairman Elon Musk (not pictured, but you know he's pumping his fists like that this very second.) In true Tesla form, the car arrived too late for a planned press event, screwing up the company's New York Times coverage. Helpful hint, guys: Next time schedule these things for Tuesday morning instead of Friday afternoons. You'll get much more media play that way, without relying on wannabe Car & Driver writers like me to carry the flag.

Someone named Brittney from Samantha Slaven Publicity in L.A. has written me to ask if Valleywag has a "green issue." Well, we're not a print magazine, Brittney, so that's plenty of trees, ink, and energy saved right there. But do we have a "green issue"? Oh boy, do we. Here's our green issue.

Tesla Motors founder Martin Eberhard, who was ousted from the company a month ago, lists the names and titles of 26 Tesla employees he claims have been fired following the installation of new management. The turnover came after the company missed its deadline to ship its first batch of 100 electric sports cars. Tesla's new management has attributed the delay to problems with the car's unique transmission. Asks Eberhard, "Is this really the right time for Tesla to be tightening its belt? Get the transmission working and ship the cars. No show stoppers here!" Tesla's VP of marketing, Darryl Siry, is a regular commenter at Jalopnik and Valleywag. Darryl, any comment? VentureBeat has more reporting.

We knew the end of the year would net a far bigger DUI fish than Boy Meets World's Topanga, and Swervy Claus has come through once again, crashing his sleigh into the side of Defamer HQ-2 with a newly booked Mischa Barton to put under our twinkling Christmas stump. True to their names, the girls at Hollyscoop were first on the scene:

U.S. automakers will shift a larger percentage of its multibillion-dollar advertising budget from television to online. GM is allowing regional dealers to choose how their ad dollars are being spent, but the company is encouraging them to spend it on the Internet. GM's data indicates that the Net is the first place potential shoppers go when looking for a car. Too bad the Internet can't just build them a car people want to drive! (Photo by AP/Paul Sancya)

Those few of you watching the commercials during Desperate Housewives last night might have been buoyed to spot Williamsburg hipster feeding trough Marlow and Sons, the home of the world's worst hipster date conversation ever. It was in a commercial for an SUV called Edge. So now it is confirmed that Marlow & Sons is where all the hipsters with $30K to drop on a SUV go for oysters and artisanal American cheese. Related: We hear that the creative director for J. Walter Thomspon, the ad firm that produced the spot, quit today!

Proving once again that his finger is firmly on the pulse of what is hot in other countries, in the decades before his network slid into fourth place, or at the multiplex three months ago, NBC's perfect TV executive storm Ben Silverman has made yet another bold programming move that should shame his overly cautious, Idol-dependent, Cavemen-greenlighting rivals: according to Variety, his Peacock is bringing back Knight Rider, preparing a two-hour backdoor pilot that will reintroduce audiences to an updated series about the love between a man and his sassy, wisecracking supercar.

Why does eBay subsidiary Skype have a Swedish military transport in its Estonian development center? Could it be preparing to take the fight for VOIP customers against new competitors like Ooma to a new battlefield? Read more.

Okay, okay. We don't know if Microsoft cofounder and tech-investing dilettante Paul Allen has actually moved into it. But the Dubai Luxury blog reports that he's shelled out $12 million on a yellow submarine. A 40-foot-long yellow submarine. You're a Beatles fan, Paul; we get it. But Paulie, baby, want to know why your net worth is only a third that of fellow Microsoftie Bill Gates? Dumbass purchases like this.

In just a few short hours, Michael Bay's Giant Fucking Robots will lay waste to Westwood Village for the L.A. Film Festival's orgiastic premiere of Transformers, but right here, right now in your browser window, Black 20's Cheap Fucking Robots are coming. Be afraid.

Remember that semiotically rich Ferrari that was parked outside our offices a couple weeks ago? We wondered, at the time, exactly what kind of man (of course, a man) drove it. What kind of man would drive around with a Sir Ivan CD and an old issue of Time? Well, today, coming back from lunch, we met that guy. He was dashing out of the building next to ours before a traffic cop gave him the ticket he so deservedly deserved. By now his Ferrari top was off and his passenger side seemed cleaner. Our eyes locked for a moment and in that instant I understood what it meant to wear flip flops and flared jeans, what it meant to let grayish-blond chest hair extrude from a striped shirt, what it meant to smell of Aqua Di Gio and drive a Ferrari. (It doesn't feel good.) And then he was gone. Fortunately, his face was etched into our memory forever.