They are just children and selfish by nature

There's also a reading of my personal favorite, Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel.

It is a golden age for 10 year-old boys

One of the great things about kids, your own or somebody else's, is introducing them to things. Not in a skeezy priest way, I mean things like giving a kid their first lemon wedge or snow cone. It's even better when you have fond memories of the shared experience. The Princess Bride is popular in my house, and sharing that cross-generationally has been great.

All of that is to say, if you know a 10 year-old boy, they would enjoy the A-Team.

Take the ringer. I'll drive.

A member of the Bellman Nation just bought a late-model Ford Focus. A cute car in good repair, fairly described as a modestly priced receptacle. Nonetheless, there were two features that I hadn't experienced. One dashboard button activated cabin lights in the footwells and drink holders. The cool part is that the lights are in half a dozen colors, cycling to a new color each time the button is pressed. It's like a rave for your ankles.

The other feature of note is the car's bluetooth integration. After syncing a cell phone, a small text display on top of the dashboard will list caller ID information on inbound calls. It will also use a text-to-speech function to read incoming text messages through the stereo speakers. In that mode the radio tuning knob can be used to cycle through a list of canned responses.

It turns out the engineers did not include a reply for having the car robotically repeat "wax balls".

Laser-guided sazz wagon

I just got back from putting a couple thousand miles on a new rental car. As owner of a vintage automobile, I don't really keep up with the newer automotive conveniences. I know that tire pressure sensors are now required. Seatback DVD players are old news. Even heartbeat sensors and cars that park themselves are out there.

But I was entirely surprised to find that the car I was driving had autonomous cruise control. For the uninitiated, this type of system will automatically reduce your car's cruise control speed if you come up behind a slower moving vehicle. It will even brake or bring you to a complete stop if another vehicle enters the lane or stops in front of you. It turns out variations of this feature have been available on some cars for more than 10 years.

This got me thinking about what other features we may see on the way to the self-guided hover cars that are in undoubtedly our future. I for one hope that frame mounted paintball cannons become factory standard. There are a lot of drivers out there that need to be marked to alert other motorists.

Do the Bellman visioneers have any other ideas for Detroit?