There are many who have asked the question, whether coasting in neutral or engaging engine braking is more fuel efficient in coming to a stop. One such discussion led to the following top comments:

Engine braking. It shuts off fuel and lets the cars forwards motion turn the engine.
Coasting means you use fuel to keep the engine idling.
Next.

and

That assumes your car has deceleration fuel cut off.
But normally yeah, engine braking would technically use less fuel than idling/coasting.

Now I don’t know anything about cars but I do have a mental model of a mechanical engine. When no fuel is injected, engine braking should work by having the engine do mechanical work to compress and heat up air (then ejecting it). So RPM matters, as the higher the RPM the higher the energy absorbed per unit time.
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This is a good one, and this:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/04/AR2009050400027.html

At our Mountain View headquarters, we have some fields that we need to mow occasionally to clear weeds and brush to reduce fire hazard. This spring we decided to take a low-carbon approach: Instead of using noisy mowers that run on gasoline and pollute the air, we’ve rented some goats from California Grazing to do the job for us (we’re not “kidding”). A herder brings about 200 goats and they spend roughly a week with us at Google, eating the grass and fertilizing at the same time. The goats are herded with the help of Jen, a border collie. It costs us about the same as mowing, and goats are a lot cuter to watch than lawn mowers.

Right… Somebody already asked the question I had though:

Anthony – May 1st, 2009 at 11:53 am PDT
Who’s gonna pick up the poop?

A very important question indeed. Maybe these goats wore diapers.

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