As a Vim newb (well, ok I can use it, but I'm not well-versed in its more arcane elements), how do you select lines? C-<space> in emacs starts region selection, but I've never tried to select anything in Vim.

v starts standard visual(region selection) mode.

Shift-v starts line-by-line visual mode.

Ctrl-v starts visual column mode(which is both very cool and very useful)