Animal rights activists have been trying to ban horse-drawn carriages in Central Park for several months now. (For some reason, they think the practice amounts to animal cruelty.) But now they've come up with an alternative: They're proposing that the city replace the horse-drawn buggies with replica of Model Ts. Tourists visiting from Iowa will still get to feel like they're stepping back in time, and because the vehicles will be powered by electricity, it'll be entirely eco-friendly, too! Aside from the grim aesthetic implications—"the sound of clopping hooves is one of the only aural pleasures available on the edge of the oasis that is Central Park," Michael Gross points out today—and the fact the proposal would put hundreds of carriage drivers out of work, PETA has managed to line up support from attention-loving City Councilmember Daniel Garodnick, who now says he plans to put the matter before the City Council this spring.

Islam Karimov is the autocratic leader of Uzbekistan and a man routinely described as one of the worst dictators on earth by the likes of Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. (The group Common Dreams once suggested he's so bad that he made Saddam "look good.") Since taking over the oil and gas-rich country in 1989, he's plundered billions, held fake elections to keep himself in power, censored the media, and tortured those who dare to challenge him, often using some of the most barbarian methods to do so, like submerging them in boiling water. And now he's coming to visit New York! Not really. But we wondered: What would happen if one of the most evil tyrants did decide to come to New York. Would he receive a warm welcome from the local political establishment? We wanted to know. So we did what you'd probably do in such a situation: We printed up some official-looking letterhead and sent out letters to various City Council members and local congressmen to see if they'd take the meeting. And guess what? Lots of influential politicos have no objection to sitting down with one of the worst men on earth. Details on the people we duped—with audio of their calls to Karimov's "office"—after the jump.