Does This Show Sound Familiar?

Networks this week are releasing the fall schedules, highlighting new shows and the continuation of series in front of advertisers. It’s all in a hope to get people interested in the new television year, as well as to driver advertising dollars towards their networks.

NBC, which has struggled this year, was the first to release its schedule. While NBC announced it was bringing back two of the three Law and Order shows, Criminal Intent moves to USA, and announced that the critically-acclaimed Friday Night Lights was renewed and move to, now get this, Friday night, it also announced a second Heroes, to capitalize on one of the few hits NBC had from its previous season.

But one show on the NBC schedule looks strangely familiar to a very popular NBC hit from the late 1980s. The show is called Journey Man, where the lead character goes into the past to help people through situations, ultimately running into his ex-fiancee, who died in a plane crash.

To me this sounds a lot like Quantum Leap, where Sam Beckett would travel into time to help people for the better, along with trusty sidekick Al.

Professor: Safer stock cars mean more accidents

A West Virginia University professor has released a study claiming that as NASCAR has implemented more safety regulations in an effort to prevent injuries, it has had the reverse the result of causing more accidents.

Russ Sobel, an economics professor, examined 21 years of data from the stock car industry and found that accidents have increased as well safety measures were implemented. This is increasingly relevant now as NASCAR has begun to implement, this year, the Car of Tomorrow concept - a new stock car designed aimed at reducing costs for teams as well as to provide more safety for the drivers.

Sobel’s paper will be released in the Southern Economic Journal and will be entitled “Automobile Safety Regulation and the Incentive to Drive Recklessly: Evidence from NASCAR.” The reason for the increase in accidents is that drivers are more willing to take risks driving with a car, they believe, to be safer.

Sobel, in a press release, said the same can be translated to regular driving.

“Obviously NASCAR drivers are different from regular motorists,” Sobel said. “On the other hand ask yourself this question: Would you drive more carefully if your car was less safe, say it had no seatbelts and a dagger protruding toward your heart from the steering wheel?”