This is just a quick alert to encourage you to check out a couple of interesting small stories elsewhere in The Times.

One is a report on the Wheels blog by my friend Jim Motavalli about the possible rebirth of the “air car,” a vehicle that runs on compressed air and a small amount of fuel to run a heater that boosts its range (it is said to get the equivalent of more than 100 miles per gallon when you account for the energy it takes to compress the air). There’s lots more at the link above and in a story on the pneumatic-car technology written by Jim in 2000.

Another is a story about tiny houses, which resonated particularly because on Tuesday night I went to an art show in Beacon, N.Y., organized by friends, including the sculptor Simon Draper, who are building tiny free-standing artists’ “habitats.”

The Times story, by Steven Kurutz, descrbes a growing “small house movement, whose adherents believe in minimizing one’s footprint — structural as well as carbon — by living in spaces that are smaller than 1,000 square feet and, in some cases, smaller than 100. Tiny houses have been a fringe curiosity for a decade or more, but devotees believe the concept’s time has finally arrived.”

Have a look and write a (small) comment. Below is a video showing Simon Draper building a tiny artist’s shed (set to music by the songwriter Dar Williams, for whom he’s also building a similar creative nook).