Have you ever heard of Benz-onomics?

Have you ever heard of Benz-onomics? No? It's the theory that technology developed for luxury automobiles (like Mercedes-Benz) will, if enough people buy the new tech, trickle down to the mass-market grocery-runner type vehicles (such as Volkswagen and Chevy).

Benz-onomics as a catchy title has only been around since I wrote it this morning over breakfast. But the idea is decades old. Indeed, based on the past 125 years or so, it is pretty clear that most of the cool stuff we see debut on luxury cars does eventually make its way down the automotive food chain into cars and trucks with less prestigious pedigrees.

The reason for the top-down tech rollout is that fancy automobiles are always rolling testbeds for new technology. Fat-walleted customers demand the latest and greatest tech features, and carmakers try to meet those demands by innovating on seemingly every front. The result? Lots of head-smacking, what-will-they-think-of-next technology that gives the buyer a s sense of being special, and can, when it is really well thought-out, make life on the road safer, more exciting, and/or more comfortable for those who can afford the cars it's found in.

In some cases, it doesn't take long for tech to trickle down. For example, when the Mini Cooper was reintroduced to the world in 2002, it offered nearly every feature--at least as options--that came standard on the BMW 7-Series of the time (BMW owns MINI).

Oh, and for the record, technology also trickles up in some cases, and you'll find we've provided a couple of examples of that, too.

PGA Championship: Jason Dufner Wins Last 2013 Major, Holding Off Jim Furyk

PITTSFORD, N.Y. -- Equipped with a two-shot lead at the turn, still carrying a few scars from his PGA Championship collapse two years ago, Jason Dufner never showed signs of cracking.
No one expected anything else from a player whose popularity comes from his flat-line personality.
He merely waved to the gallery when he shot 63 in the second round to tie a major championship record. He didn't show much of a pulse Sunday as he matched scores with Jim Furyk at every hole on the back nine of Oak Hill. Only after Dufner tapped in for a bogey on the 18th hole to win the PGA Championship did he crack a smile, raise both arms and give a slight pump of the fist, saving all that emotion for a grand occasion.
Major champion.
Dufner can't think of any other athlete who plays with so little emotion.
"But those sports are a little more exciting - big plays in basketball, home runs in baseball, big plays in football. That will get you pumped up," he said. "For me, golf is a little bit more boring. I hit it in the fairway or I didn't. Usually I'm struggling with the putter, so there's not too much to get excited about with that."
His name on the Wanamaker Trophy?
That was worth a smile.
"Nobody can take that away from me," Dufner said after he closed with a 2-under 68 for a two-shot win over Furyk. "It's a great accomplishment for me, and I'm really excited about it."

Danny Bonaduce On What It Was Like To Be Homeless And Famous

Danny Bonaduce rose to fame as the wise-cracking, freckled face middle son on the 1970s television show "The Partridge Family." But, when the show ended in 1974, the then 15-year-old child star left home and was soon living on the streets of Hollywood and using drugs.

In his appearance on "Oprah: Where Are They Now?" Bonaduce talks about the unusual experience of being both homeless and famous at the same time. "I lived right behind this dumpster, but I lived in my car," he says.
Bonaduce recalls the sharp difference between his homeless lifestyle but still being treated as a revered celebrity. "I'd wake up, kind of wipe my eyes, and I'd go right through the little arch and I'd be in front of Grauman's Chinese Theater, where everybody's footprints are," he says. "I was still famous and people had no idea I lived behind the dumpster... I'd be taking pictures with people and signing autographs."
When he was finished posing with fans -- and sure that they wouldn't see him -- Bonaduce would then sneak back to his car. "It was totally embarrassing to be famous and homeless," he confesses.
Catch Bonaduce's full interview -- along with updates from Milli Vanilli's Fab Morvan and Donald Trump's ex Marla Maples -- on "Oprah: Where Are They Now?" airing Sunday, August 4, at 10 p.m. ET on OWN.

Summer Bay Resort Sinking: Florida Resort Near Disney World Evacuated

CLERMONT, Fla. (AP) -- As glass broke, the ground shook and lights went out, vacationers evacuated a central Florida resort building before a sinkhole caused a section of the villa to partially collapse early Monday.
About 30 percent of the three-story structure collapsed around 3 a.m. Monday, Lake County Fire Rescue Battalion Chief Tony Cuellar said, and another section was sinking.
Witnesses told The Associated Press they could hear a cracking sound as the villa began sinking. A large crack was visible at the building's base.
Luis Perez, who was staying at a villa near the sinking one, said he was in his room when the lights went off around 11:30 p.m. He said he was on his way to the front desk to report the outage when he saw firefighters and police outside.
"I started walking toward where they were at and you could see the building leaning and you could see a big crack at the base of the building," said Perez, 54, of Berona, N.J.
Maggie Ghamry, a guest at the resort, said that when she first heard shaking and glass breaking, she thought it might be kids running down the hall.
"Next thing I know, people are yelling 'get out of the building, get out of the building,'" she said in an interview on ABC's "Good Morning America."
Paul Caldwell, the development's president, said 48 three-story units are a total loss. The resort has about 900 units spread over a large area about 10 miles west of Walt Disney World.
He said a window popped in one of the rooms about 10:30 p.m. Sunday. A woman ran outside and flagged down a security guard, who notified management. Another window then popped and a decision was made to immediately evacuate the building, Caldwell said. The process took 10 to 15 minutes, he said.
He said that the resort was built about 15 years ago and had undergone geologic testing at the time, showing the ground to be stable. He said that before Sunday, there were no signs that a sinkhole was developing. He said all the affected guests had been given other rooms.
The sinkhole comes five months after one elsewhere in Florida killed a man.
Monday's sinkhole, which is in the middle of the villa, is about 40 to 50 feet in diameter, Cuellar said. He said authorities think it was getting deeper but couldn't tell early Monday if it was growing outward. A nearby villa was also evacuated as a precaution and that there had been a sign of a gas leak, but the gas had been shut off.
Summer Bay is described on its website as a luxury resort with condominiums, two-bedroom villas and vacation houses in addition to standard rooms. The site touts a clubhouse, atrium and poolside bar, and says the resort is on a secluded 64-acre lake.
Florida has a long, ongoing problem with sinkholes, which cause millions of dollars in damage in the state annually. On March 1, a sinkhole underneath a house in Seffner, about 60 miles southwest of the Summer Bay Resort, swallowed a man who was in his bed. His body was never recovered.
But such fatalities and injuries are rare, and most sinkholes are small. Sinkholes can develop quickly or slowly over time.
They are caused by Florida's geology -- the state sits on limestone, a porous rock that easily dissolves in water, with a layer of clay on top. The clay is thicker in some locations making them even more prone to sinkholes.
Other states sit atop limestone in a similar way, but Florida has additional factors like extreme weather, development, aquifer pumping and construction.
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Associated Press writer Bernard McGhee in Atlanta contributed to this report.
Lake County Sheriff's Sgt. James Vachon says there's structural damage and that deputies have been assisting firefighters at the scene. No injuries have been reported.
Witnesses say they could hear a cracking sound as the villa sank. A large crack was visible at the building's base.
They say two other villas near the collapsing one have also been evacuated.

Stop And Frisk Violated Rights Of New Yorkers, Judge Rules

A judge has ruled that the NYPD's controversial use of the stop-and-frisk tactic violated the rights of thousands of New Yorkers, The New York Times reports. Judge Shira Scheindlin's decision Monday called for a federal monitor to watch over the police department to ensure cops are in compliance with the constitution.
From the Associated Press:
The New York Police Department deliberately violated the civil right of tens of thousands of New Yorkers with its contentious stop-and-frisk policy, and an independent monitor is needed to oversee major changes, a federal judge ruled Monday in a stinging rebuke for what the mayor and police commissioner have defended as a life-saving, crime-fighting tool. U.S. District Court Judge Shira Scheindlin said she was not putting an end to the policy, but rather was reforming it. She did not give specifics yet on how that would work but instead named an independent monitor who would develop an initial set of reforms to the policies, training, supervision, monitoring and discipline.
"The city's highest officials have turned a blind eye to the evidence that officers are conducting stops in a racially discriminatory manner," she wrote. "In their zeal to defend a policy that they believe to be effective, they have willfully ignored overwhelming proof that the policy of targeting "the right people" is racially discriminatory."
Police brass received warnings since at least 1999 that officers were violating rights, she said. "Despite this notice, they deliberately maintained and even escalated policies and practices that predictably resulted in even more widespread Fourth Amendment violations," she wrote in a lengthy opinion.
She also cited violations of the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure.
"Far too many people in New York City have been deprived of this basic freedom far too often," she said. "The NYPD's practice of making stops that lack individualized reasonable suspicion has been so pervasive and persistent as to become not only a part of the NYPD's standard operating procedure, but a fact of daily life in some New York City neighborhoods."
Four men sued the department in 2004, saying they were unfairly targeted because of their race. There have been about 5 million stops during the past decade, mostly black and Hispanic men. Scheindlin issued her ruling after a 10-week bench trial, which included testimony from top NYPD brass and a dozen people - 11 men and one woman - who said they were wrongly stopped because of their race.
Scheindlin concluded that the plaintiffs had "readily established that the NYPD implements its policies regarding stop and frisk in a manner that intentionally discriminates based on race."
She said, through paperwork alone, she determined at least 200,000 stops were made without reasonable suspicion, the necessary legal benchmark, lower than the standard of probable cause needed to justify an arrest.
The class-action lawsuit was the largest and most broad legal action against the policy at the nation's biggest police department, and it may have an effect on how other police departments make street stops, legal experts said. Lawmakers have also sought to create an independent monitor and make it easier for people to sue the department if they feel their civil rights were violated. Those bills are awaiting an override vote after the mayor vetoed the legislation.
The city had no immediate response to the ruling.
City lawyers argued the department does a good job policing itself with an internal affairs bureau, a civilian complaint board and quality assurance divisions.
She rejected their arguments. "The city and its highest officials believe that blacks and Hispanics should be stopped at the same rate as their proportion of the local criminal suspect population," she wrote. "But this reasoning is flawed because the stopped population is overwhelmingly innocent - not criminal."
Scheindlin appointed Peter L. Zimroth, the city's former lead attorney and previously a chief assistant district attorney, as the monitor. In both roles, Zimroth worked closely with the NYPD, the judge said. He did not respond to a call seeking comment.

Derek Medina Posts Photo Of Wife's Body, Murder Confession To Facebook

A horrifying crime scene in South Miami hit Facebook Thursday when a man posted a photo of his dead wife -- and a confession that he had killed her.
Derek Medina posted the photo some time around noon Thursday, with the words "Rip Jennifer Alfonso." The image shows his wife's leggings-clad body slumped backwards on the floor in what appears to be the couple's kitchen. Her face and left arm are covered in blood.
"You will see me in the news," reads a confessional status update posted minutes before the photo:

Im going to prison or death sentence for killing my wife love you guys miss you guys takecare Facebook people you will see me in the news" my wife was punching me and I am not going to stand anymore with the abuse so I did what I did I hope u understand me "

According to an arrest affidavit by Miami-Dade Police, Medina told investigators he and Alfonso had a verbal dispute around 10:00 a.m., during which he grabbed a gun from a closet and pointed it at his wife. She reportedly told Medina she was leaving him before the dispute moved downstairs.
There, Medina told police, Alfonso began punching him. He retrieved the gun from upstairs and again confronted his wife, prompting her to pick up a knife. He told detectives that when he took the knife away, his wife began hitting him again, at which point he shot her several times.
After first changing his clothes and making contact with relatives, according to investigators, Medina drove to the South Miami Police Department and turned himself in.
When officers responded to the home, they found Alfonso dead from apparent gunshot wounds.
They also found her 10-year-old daughter upstairs, physically unharmed. She was removed from the house covered in a blanket, according to WSVN.
Miami New Times reports Medina has authored a number of self-help e-books, including one titled "How I Saved Someone's Life and Marriage and Family Problems Thru Communication."
A neighbor told NBC6 that Medina "walks around with a concealed gun, so he tries to be the neighborhood watchguy."
"He's always there late night and he's weird to me," said Yoshi Dade. "He's always kind of looking around and trying to be a hero."
Medina's father told WSVN that the couple had a troubled relationship, and had remarried last year after previously getting a divorce.
Incredibly, Medina's grisly posts remained published on Facebook until just before 5 p.m. Thursday, when they appeared to have been removed.
"The content was reported to us," a Facebook spokeswoman told The Associated Press. "We took action on the profile -- removing the content and disabling the profile, and we reached out to law enforcement. We take action on all content that violates our terms, which are clearly laid out on our site."

Watch a semi-truck go airborne and explode on impact

Dash cams have caught some pretty amazing events on camera, as the unforgettable sights of the meteor that exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia proved in February. As another example, a trucker driving through Greensburg, Indiana, had his dash cam rolling when another semi truck caught major air over a freeway before crashing down in a ball of flames. (Some understandably foul language makes the video Not Safe For Work, so be sure to turn the volume down if you don't have headphones.) Fortunately, nobody died in the accident, and the crashed semi's occupants, 30-year-old Ryan Young and his seven-year-old son, were taken to the hospital with only minor injuries, ABC Action News reports.

According to the story, Young was about to cross under US 421 when another driver drifted into his lane, forcing him to make a quick decision. He swerved to avoid the car, ran up a hill and through a guardrail, and then caught enough Dukes Of Hazzard-style air to clear the freeway. When the semi hit the ground on the other side, the impact tore the fuel tank off and the fuel caught fire, causing the explosion. The accident remains under investigation.

While it's great news to hear nobody suffered major injuries, accidents that look this bad often have sad endings. Watch the video below, and consider it yet another reminder to drive safely.