I don't know exactly how the Sarte GPS-based road trains make driving safer, lower gas usage, or make travel more efficient, but it sure is fun to imagine all of the things that could go wrong! This seems like a much better idea if the lead car is somehow not controlled by a human.

One of the keys to the study is finding a way to make travel more efficient and lower gas usage without spending the treasury on putting sensors in roads, or creating an entirely new standard of equipment. Also, using a lead vehicle that could take control of the vehicles behind – cars, trucks or buses – makes Sartre much more flexible since it can travel on any highway.

Thanks, Dave.

Not bad, not bad. Also, I hadn't heard this Hanukkah remake of "Hey, Ya". I like.

This Mental Floss post about the history of Black Friday has been making the rounds, with most people pointing to how Black Friday got its name. Apparently, Philadelphia was extra busy on the Friday after Thanksgiving which caused irritation. I haven't seen this thought mentioned anywhere else, but if the name really is derived from Philadelphia, isn't there just a tiny chance that it's race related? Maybe white cops didn't like dealing with African American residents on the day after Thanksgiving? That idea makes at least as much sense as complaining about all the activity caused by a Thursday holiday and a Saturday football game, doesn't it?

This is an uncomfortable post to write because race is not something we usually talk about here and I'm not anywhere close to being educated enough on the subject to discuss it intelligently (Blogging FTW!!). But seriously, people started calling it Black Friday because of how "irritating" the extra activity was? This makes perfect sense to everyone?

Why call it Black Friday? If you ask most people why the day after Thanksgiving is called Black Friday, they’ll explain that the name stems from retailers using the day’s huge receipts as their opportunity to “get in the black” and become profitable for the year. The first recorded uses of the term “Black Friday” are a bit less rosy, though.According to researchers, the name “Black Friday” dates back to Philadelphia in the mid-1960s. The Friday in question is nestled snugly between Thanksgiving and the traditional Army-Navy football game that’s played in Philadelphia on the following Saturday, so the City of Brotherly Love was always bustling with activity on that day. All of the people were great for retailers, but they were a huge pain for police officers, cab drivers, and anyone who had to negotiate the city’s streets. They started referring to the annual day of commercial bedlam as “Black Friday” to reflect how irritating it was.

I may have posted this Swedish Apple Pie recipe before, but it's Thanksgiving, or as I call it in my head Pietime. Anyway, here's the recipe for the best and dead simplest apple pie ever. I suggest making 2 of these pies at a time. You'll just be disappointed if there aren't any leftovers.

Pre-heat oven to 350.
Cut up and peel 4-6 pie apples into a pie plate.
Mix fist of sugar and a fist of cinnamon and sprinkle onto apples in pie plate.
Mix 1 cup flour with 1 cup sugar.
Mix sugar and flour with 1.5 sticks of butter and 1 egg.
Spread mixture evenly on top of apples.
Cook until golden brown (45-65 minutes).
Eat pie.
Eat leftover pie for breakfast.

This blog post, about Apple and Disposable Technology and how we buy iPods every 2 years now, has been written thousands of times, but I enjoyed Brendan Kelly's artful take on it and have been meaning to post this for 4 months.

Think about it. Apple really nailed this one. There’s an apple store here in Chicago, and I remember going in there only 2 years after the first ipods came out and there was a bin for ‘recycling your ipod’ right there in the store. There was a sign above it that said something like “it’s been good to you, now recycle it”. Dude? Are you fucking kidding me? Those things cost like 300 bucks! I hate to sound like a fucking grandpa, but back in my day shit that cost three hundred bucks wasn’t supposed to fucking die EVER. I mean, what kind of brass iBalls does this company have that they can sell this shit for so much money and then when you bring it in because it’s broken, they can smile smugly and say “hey, it’s not supposed to last much more than 2 years. It’s been good to you, right? Now recycle it and get another one.” Fuck. You. (and yeah, I’ll take another one…snivel)

A couple weeks ago, Jeff Jarvis picked up on a bit of the Howard Stern show where Stern mused about what could come next for him:

Tomorrow I could go on the internet and start my own channel with my own subscribers. You’d be able to click and watch us on TV, watch us in the studio live, streaming. You’d be able to listen to us streaming. You’d be able to get us on your iPhone. You’d be able to do everything right at the click of the internet. I wouldn’t even need to work for a company. I’d be my own company… So true it’s ridiculous

Jarvis then went on to say:

Entertainers (radio, music, comedy, books, columnists, even filmmakers) will have direct relationships with their audiences. Like Stern, they won’t have to work for companies or go through them for distribution. That’s already happening, of course, on the web for creation, distribution, and monetization...It returns to the age of patronage, only now the kings don’t fund the artists, the public does and less money is wasted on middlemen.

I think he's exactly right about this and I think I've talked about this before. Another entertainer I figured might be heading towards this model is Bill Simmons, and 10 minutes after I read the Jarvis piece on Stern, I read this Huffington Post interview of the Sports Guy. Simmons and ESPN had a dust up a couple years ago when he had the opportunity to interview Obama during the primaries, only to have it nixed by ESPN. This lead to less frequent posting and a general 'work to rule' feel to his columns for a bit. Just last week, Simmons was told to stay off Twitter for two weeks after an impolitic comment about one of ESPN's partners. These wrist slaps, combined with his enthusiasm for and embrace of new media in the form of podcasts and (after some initial derision) Twitter, combined with the release and success of his new book combined with the below quotation lead me to think Bill Simmons is done with ESPN.

Part of me can't shake the temptation of being the underdog again -- like, launching my own sports site, hiring some talented writers and designers and trying to compete with the big guns. Like what Frank Deford did with the National. All right, the National lost $100 million. Bad example.

But I could see doing something crazy like that. I like taking chances, I am not afraid to fail, and beyond that, I am not afraid to fail violently and miserably. So anything is possible. A really good prediction would be, "Simmons is going to fail violently and miserably with a super-ambitious idea within the next five years." Lock it down.

He's either going to walk or make ESPN bend pretty hard to keep him. With the podcasts he's created another platform for himself, and Twitter allows a channel of communication to his fans independent of ESPN. He'll continue to grow his brand with or without ESPN.

Earlier this year, Adam Carolla's insanely popular morning show ended when the station he was changed formats. He decided to start a daily podcast, and because his contract ran until the end of this year, there were no ads or sponsors. It quickly became one of the top podcasts on iTunes, and he continued to attract guests that had appeared on his radio program.

Aside from Bill Simmons and Adam Carolla bringing podcasts mainstream, which is another post, they've also presented a pretty clear model for their future. Couldn't Stern, Simmons, and Carolla start an entertainment website next year with streaming shows, podcasts, sports columns, etc and charge users $2 a month for access? They couldn't get 500K - 1 million subscribers? New media, baby!

Echoing Joe, who was affirming someone else, Jimcarrey.com might be the best homepage on the internet. Who knew?

More than half-court, actually. Too bad iit didn't count.

Photo by Flickr user Keith Allison People in Boston have been spoiled by our sports teams this decade. The Red Sox have won 2 World Series, the Patriots have been dominant since 2001, and even the Celtics got involved in the world beating. The Patriots and the Red Sox have been so good that the phrases, "In Bill We Trust" and "In Theo We Trust" have been tossed around unironically regarding Bill Belichick and Theo Epstein of the Pats and Sox respectively.

Last Sunday, the Patriots beat the hell out of Peyton Manning and the Colts for about 50 minutes, up by 2 scores much of the game. And then with a little over 2 minutes left, they found themselves on the Colts' 28 yard-line on 4th down up by 6 points. Football teams punt here. Always. But Belichick sent the offense out to get the 2 yards and win the game. It's unclear if he was trying to send a message, or if he just wanted to keep the ball out of Manning's hands. In any case, this paragraph of cliches is over, the Pats didn't get the first down, the Colts scored and won the game.

Bill Belichick was right. I would have been OK with him punting, but I'm more than OK with him going for it, whatever the reason and the stats agree.

Statistically, the better decision would be to go for it, and by a good amount. However, these numbers are baselines for the league as a whole. You'd have to expect the Colts had a better than a 30% chance of scoring from their 34, and an accordingly higher chance to score from the Pats' 28. But any adjustment in their likelihood of scoring from either field position increases the advantage of going for it. You can play with the numbers any way you like, but it's pretty hard to come up with a realistic combination of numbers that make punting the better option. At best, you could make it a wash.

Here's a coach who never punts, ever. He also doesn't have his team return punts or kick off deep. The last time he punted was in 2007 when he was trying to be a good sport to a team he was destroying.

Phil Simms thinks that if Belichick had been able to challenge the call, he would have gotten a more favorable spot and gotten the first down.

Via a football newsletter Gareth gets (link unavailable):

Kevin Eikenberry, leader of Indianapolis-based consultant the Kevin Eikenberry Group: "Most of us in corporate leadership or executive leadership would profess that great leaders take risks, and yet, I'm guessing most of those same people who watched the game (especially in New England) feel like Belichick made a big mistake. We can't have it both ways. The longer I think about it from a leadership perspective, the more I applaud the coach's decision ... This is a real life example of a leader standing up and making a decision, one that in this case, didn't turn out in his favor."

Finally, Bill Simmons who has spent the entire year telling us Manning is unbeatable at night says Belichick should have punted. Aside from the fact that Simmons stopped killing Manning after he met him at the ESPY Awards a couple years ago, punting would have given Manning the opportunity to win the game. Getting the first down would have ended the game. I think I still like Bill Simmons, but I can't shake the feeling that what he's doing has gotten tired. I think he's going to move on ESPN eventually and do something new/big and that will be good for everyone. In this column, he's annoyingly playing homer contrarian, killing Belichick for a move he would have applauded had it worked, killing Belichick for a move he would have applauded a couple years ago, even if it hadn't.

In Bill We Trust

The Tampa Bay Rays Executive VP Andrew Friedman doesn't have a contract for some reason. Thanks, Dave!