Half-Baked Ideas: How to Fix Formula One

I am a motor racing junkie. I came late to the sport, but it really put its hooks into me some years back. Since then, many valuable hours on summer Saturdays and Sundays have been spent watching races from all over the globe. I watch the big, well-known races (the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the Indianapolis and Daytona 500s), and also races that only those who have caught the racing bug watch (the Pau Grand Prix, Bathurst 1000, 12 Hours of Sebring). One racing league has captured my fascination more than any other, and that’s Formula One. Continue readingHalf-Baked Ideas: How to Fix Formula One”

Half-Baked Ideas: Baseball

Major League Baseball games are too long, especially during the postseason. Lengthy commercial breaks and players slowing down the game as the pressure mounts in later innings take the designed, leisurely pace of the game and grind it to a halt. Because of the very nature of the game, changing things to speed up the game is difficult without altering the game too much. How much is too much is up for debate, but baseball is more than just the sum of its rules. More than any other sport, baseball’s past is still relevant to players’ and fans’ senses of the sport. It is a game hostile to disruptions of its core elements, leading it to grow increasingly anachronistic as time goes on. It’s a sport ripe for some half-baked ideas. Continue readingHalf-Baked Ideas: Baseball”

Redefining Unacceptable Risk

This week, IndyCar driver Justin Wilson died one day after being struck in the helmet by a piece of debris. He was coming around turn 1 at Pocono Raceway after race leader Sage Karam lost control of his car and slammed into the outside wall. A large piece of Karam’s car broke off and tumbled down the track, bouncing and flipping over. Its final bounce put it into the path of Wilson’s car and he drove right into it. The debris caromed off of Wilson’s head with such force that it flew up into the air at twice the height of the catch fence on the outside of the track. It was a violent collision, the equivalent weight of two or three bowling balls bouncing off of Wilson’s helmet at a speed approaching 200 miles per hour (until data is released, it’s hard to tell as cars were slowing in response to Karam’s accident). Wilson lost consciousness immediately and never regained it. Continue reading “Redefining Unacceptable Risk”