• Drivers would learn how cars work and would, of necessity, learn how to perform simple repairs.
• Using 35-year-old steel accomplishes the goal of recycling without the middlemen.
• The average trip would become shorter, partially because of the noise and discomfort.
• Texting and other dangerous distractions would disappear as drivers focused on operating manual transmissions.

Nevertheless, it goes. And stops. Isn't that all we really need?

When Hulk Hogan’s All-American persona in professional wrestling started to lose fan favor, he executed a classic good guy-to-bad guy switch, known in wrestling as “turning heel.” As “Hollywood Hogan,” he became part of the “New World Order” that vowed to overturn the powers that controlled the wrestling world. The change of character helped prolong Hogan’s career and enhanced his earnings.

This year, the Indianapolis Colts won game after game, often coming from behind and compiling the longest regular-season winning streak in league history. Yet Brett Favre had the season's glam and the experts alternately tagged the Vikings, the Giants and the Chargers as the best. This was not going to bring more more advertising opportunities for good-guy Colts quarterback Peyton Manning.

So what did the Colts do? They decided that winning the last couple of games didn’t matter, as long as they could keep home field advantage through the playoffs. They handed away a game to the Jets, which enraged their middle-American fans, who believe in the old college try. Then they decided that while winning a game didn’t matter, getting some fat statistics for their receivers did. So Manning dinked his way through three series at Buffalo, giving better records to Dallas Clark and Reggie Wayne before the Colts gave away the game to the Bills.

The result? Discussion of the Colts has dominated talk radio for two weeks. Colts President Bill Polian is cast as the great villain and Manning is seen as the one who, you might say, turned heel by mouthing the company line.

By the time of the Super Bowl, if the Colts make it, they may be the New World Order of the NFL. If so, it’ll be worth checking to see if Hulk Hogan is in the owner’s box.

“Peer-to-Peer lending” has a nice ring to it. The idea is that some folks have a little extra money and some folks need a little extra money and we’d all work together nicely if we could just keep the bankers out of it.

A year and a half in peer-to-peer lending makes me think there’s good reason to keep the bankers in it. After all, banking is essentially peer-to-peer lending with a bunch of fat cats and mahogany thrown in the middle. I don’t have their hard-nosed screening and money-management knowledge. The result is that I’m looking forward to breaking even on my lending experience. If I could punch out a couple of the borrowers who just plain lied, I might even feel good about it.

The bankers, by legend, are the evil ones who won’t lend money to the folks who need a little money and won’t pay the folks with a little extra money much to put that money to work.

So if Bob could spot Joe a C-note, he’d be happy to give it back to him over time with a little extra to thank him for his trouble. This all has a nice Woody Guthrie feel to it.

The problem is how Joe can find his Bob. Today’s default answer is the Internet. Several visionaries have created ways that small lenders can meet small borrowers online and earn some interest while helping the borrowers get over financial humps or make their entrepreneurial dreams come alive.

Best known among them are Lending Club and Prosper. Each works a little differently and both have had problems fitting their models within existing state and federal regulation of financial institutions. Prosper, for example, cannot accept money from lenders in 26 states, including Indiana. It can’t accept borrowers from Iowa, Maine and North Carolina.

At one time, however, Prosper could accept money from Indiana. I invested a little cash, trying to pick borrowers with care and a dash of Pete Seeger idealism. What I didn’t anticipate was that some of these borrowers saw Prosper as patsy-to-predator lending. Exhibit A was the owner of a quick service restaurant in San Juan Capistrano who said he wanted to expand his healthy operation into catering. He had a high Prosper rating, so I popped $50 into his $23,500 loan.

He made four payments, shut the restaurant (according to a friendly local newspaper reporter) and completed bankruptcy six months later. I fell for a plaintive plea from a young woman who borrowed $3,000 from a bunch of lenders (just a tiny bit from me), made two payments and went bankrupt.

About half of my borrowers have been diligent and punctual with their payments. That’s a record that clearly shows why we need bankers and why it’s best that I’m not one.

Meanwhile, in a recent presentation, Indianapolis Star Editor and Vice President Dennis R. Ryerson said his newspaper has stopped counting on advertisers to carry their traditional share of operating costs. He said the paper will institute changes to induce readers to buy the print product. He described the new direction for the Star as a "daily newsmagazine." The professional reporting, writing and editing of the product, he said, had to be supported by circulation revenue.

Both of these moves come as a response to the failure of advertisers to value online publications, at least those that are produced by traditional print newspapers. Both companies also are responding to the unsolved problem of free, unregulated online duplication of news produced by their employees. 


The Evening Standard's Russian owner, Alexander Lebdenev, seems to believe flooding the market with a free quality product will make his product indispensable to advertisers. Since the change, one other free newspaper in London has shut down.


The Star's Gannett ownership seems to believe that advertisers, with many options, will never again foot the bill for news operations. A good, local news product, they are saying, should be a marketable item.


There are differences between the U.S. and British television systems, which alter the calculations, but it's hard to imagine that both of these moves can be right at the same time. If London is wrong, the Evening Standard will flame out. If Indianapolis is wrong, the Star will start spiraling into a smaller and smaller niche. Let's hope at least one of them has found the answer.

Driving back from Kokomo on Wednesday, I saw a driver almost knucklehead himself into a bad accident. We were stopped at a traffic light at a complex intersection. When crossing cars appeared to stop, he drove into the intersection with an assumption our light was turning green. He got to the middle before he realized a left-turning car was about to plow into him. How could he be so oblivious?

He was talking on the cell phone at his ear.

Heading south near Butler University last week, I stopped for a 4-way stop sign and let a car cross in front of mine. Then I started up to take my turn. The driver behind the first car paused and then barreled into the intersection in front of me. I thought she just was being too aggressive.

Then I saw she had a phone at her left ear. Perhaps she didn't see me at all.

On  Monday, I waited for a crosswalk signal and started walking across Illinois Street at Ohio Street. A man driving an SUV made a right turn that forced me to push myself off his car door to get out of his way.

He had a cell phone at his right ear.

Six states now ban use of handheld cell phones by drivers. Eighteen states ban texting by drivers. Indiana's ban, passed this year, applies only to drivers under 18. It did not apply to the three distracted drivers above.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has been following the issue of distracted driving for some time. It estimates that more than 5,870 traffic fatalities and more than 515,000 injuries last year were caused by distracted driving. See the findings here.

State Rep. Vanessa Summers of Indianapolis has introduced a bill to ban the use of hand-held mobile telephones by all drivers (except in emergencies) for the past eight years.

Help her pass that bill this year. Save the knuckleheads.

I could not say this better than Bristol Editor.

The morning after the Colts' exhilarating Monday Night Football victory over the Miami Dolphins, the drive-time ESPN radio team of Mike Greenberg and Mike Golic devoted much of their four-hour stint to the game. It's sports-talk formula that people want to hear about what they saw and Monday Night Football is what every fan sees.

For those in Indianapolis who wanted to hear about what they saw,  it would have been smart to skip Mike and Mike and tune in the next time slot on 1070TheFan: the Dan Dakich Show.

With a game that offered much to discuss: the "wildcat" offense, the Dolphins' clock management, the Colts' lack of run defense and Peyton Manning's magic audibles, Greenberg and Golic focused on one cockeyed point: is Manning a better Colts quarterback than the late Johnny Unitas? Despite the fact that Unitas played his last game in 1973, before many of the listeners were born, and that he never played in Indianapolis, the two Mikes went through "best quarterback" lists and belabored the question through live interviews. The simple answer is that the two football eras cannot easily be compared and they both will be remembered as among the best.

That simple answer did not suffice, because Mike and Mike regularly reduce every sporting accomplishment to a "best" list.  Quarterbacks, pitchers, tennis players, coaches, shortstops. The question of whether Derek Jeter is better than Cal Ripken can be counted on to produce email and fit neatly into a short morning drive segment.

Dan Dakich doesn't have to worry about short segments. On the air now for nearly a year, Dakich runs his three hours like the family patriarch at Thanksgiving dinner. He's patient with kids, prickly with blowhards and lets guests and callers expound a viewpoint without confrontation or condescension.

When Emmis Broadcasting gave the 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. weekday slot to Dakich, some in the industry scratched their heads. Why move ESPN's national Colin Cowherd show out of its live slot to the afternoon for an old basketball coach who'd never done radio? The other sports radio stations in Indianapolis rely on their networks for mid-morning material.  While Dakich spent 16 years as a player and coach at Indiana University, he'd been in Ohio for most of the previous ten years as the coach at Bowling Green University. He came back to IU during the Kelvin Sampson years and served as the interim head coach after Sampson was fired.

How long could Coach Dakich endure knucklehead listeners? Would every show devolve into a debate about Bob Knight? What if he had to talk about something other than basketball?

What's happened is that listeners have helped Dakich shape his show into something approaching a sports-talk salon. The games and schtick are minimal. The show keeps a moderate pace and and an Indiana center. Like most coaches, Dakich seems to be interested in all sports. Almost every coach you meet seems to be a fan of baseball and a player of golf. Pro football is the national sport; Dakich has baskeball covered and is the kind of guy who scans his car radio for high school games.

The morning after the Colts defeated the Dolphins, those who had the good fortune to tune in Dan Dakitch learned about the problems with the Indianapolis run defense and running attack, the former critics of Dallas Clark, the wisdom of "wildcat" and much more.

It's not formula radio. It may not survive. But for those with the time to listen, it's better than you would expect.