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: Congressional Reapportionment

There aren’t enough members of the House of Representatives here in the United States. I know that the idea that there are not enough politicians in Washington is anathema to the current American condition, but as the House is currently apportioned, some states have disproportionate representation. Continue readingHalf-Baked Ideas: Congressional Reapportionment”

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”