What are partly baked ideas? They're off-beat, off-the-wall, partly-formed, embryonic snippets of ideas, that might even be off-limits to your everyday thinking. Think of them as "idea-petizers." They're often weird - they make you stop and think for a second, and then all kinds of crazy connections start coming up in your mind.

Here’s another batch.


PBI #1. “Would you prefer cell-phone or non-cell-phone?”

Mark Twain said, “History does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme.”

Not so many years ago, restaurants, airplanes, buses, and other public spaces were divided into smoking and non-smoking sections. The 25% of Americans who were addicted to that socially acceptable drug habit had been gradually pushed into a corner, and many public spaces finally eliminated smoking altogether.

We’ll probably come to the point where the public space gets divided again, with 25% allocated to those addicted to cell phones, and the rest of the space cell-phone free.

There’s an interesting parallel. Long ago, smokers typically felt completely free to light up anywhere they liked, even though they were outnumbered three to one by those who didn’t smoke. Non-smokers suffered in silence, somehow convinced that it wasn’t worth making a scene while someone else was fouling the air they had to breathe. Today, cell-phone addicts seem to feel the same sense of privilege in the acoustic environment, completely oblivious to the dirty looks from those around them.

But eventually, the social pressure forced smokers into a one-down position, and their pleas that their civil rights were being violated didn’t sell. It seems pretty likely that cell-phone addicts are heading for the same destiny. One of my favorite restaurants is in a club patronized mostly by hard-charging business people, and it has a firm policy: no cell phones in the dining room.

I’m looking forward to the day…


PBI #2. How about organized shoot-outs, staged just for the wing-nuts?

Just about every week, somewhere in the US, some berserker decides to shoot a bunch of people and – usually – get killed in the process. That seems very inconsiderate to the people who get killed. Even if they knew the shooter well and even tormented him, it’s going to extremes. People who don’t get along with one another rarely shoot one another, so why should a few individuals be allowed to stage a massacre? If they want to kill somebody and get killed in the process, they could just as easily kill one another – we’d just have to organize it for them.

Picture the scene: a large open area, maybe a stadium parking lot or some similar place where swap meets, or concerts, or sporting events are held. Maybe the stadium itself. A crowd of people would gather on a Saturday, and buy tickets to watch. There would be trees, barriers, and various other obstacles to hide behind, and the protagonists could stalk one another. They would have signed up in advance, and they’d all be issued similar weapons. People could root for their favorite maniacs, and they could place bets on who’d get killed when. Businesses could buy advertising space on the backs of the shooters’ jackets; the shooters wouldn’t have to pay for anything. A huge scoreboard, video screens, an announcer – of course, it would be televised.

When they got down to the last man, the audience would decide, by thumbs up or thumbs down, whether he could go free. Thumbs down, and he gets the choice of shooting himself, or dying in a shoot-out with police officers (who would, of course get extra pay for the day).

Too shocking, too brutal, you say? Oh, come on – it has all the ingredients of our most popular forms of entertainment, packaged up neatly. There’s something in it for everybody. It’s the American Way of doing things.


PBI #3. Throw the bastard out?

Presidential elections in the US are extremely disruptive, and the political process becomes especially destructive when the occupant of the White House – and his political party – are trying to hang on for a second term. The country goes into an emotional tizzy while the two big power factions – having had three years to build up their war machines – figuratively fight to the death. Very little of significance gets accomplished by Congress or the White House during the year of the second election. Journalism degenerates to the level of a rugby match, and there’s little room in the electronic culture for the ideas and issues that really count.

There’s a better way: we can replace the four-year presidential term, and its optional second installment, with a single six-year term. One shot – that’s it. Make your mark and you’re out the door.

This is not a new idea; it’s been circulating for some time. All of the living ex-presidents favor a single six-year term. But curiously, the American press seems to show little interest in it. Maybe they anticipate that politics wouldn’t be as much fun to report on?


PBI #4. Get out an’ vote!

Australia is one of a few countries that have solved the problem of voter apathy and low turnout. They don’t have to worry about whether one political party is pandering to a particular self-interested segment of the population, or whether a skewed voter response could favor one political agenda over another.

For at least three decades, voter turnout in Australian national elections has never fallen below 90 percent, and usually averages about 95 percent.

How do they do it? Simple – voting is mandatory. If you don’t vote, you have to pay a fine. The fine isn’t very high, but it has helped to establish a nationwide habit pattern: everybody has to vote.

Think of what this would mean: an indisputably accurate measure of citizen preference. Gone would be all worries about whether any particular ethnic, social, or economic sub-group “stays home,” or is over-represented. How could a candidate ride into office on the vote of a particular special-interest cohort, when there are so many of them to be pandered to?

Suppose this system were adopted in America: how might the political process be different?


PBI #5. A nickel for your thoughts?

It’s probably time to phase out the American penny. It long ago outlived its usefulness as a denomination for small amounts of money. Now it’s just an historical holdover from a bygone day.

Here’s an interesting mental exercise: how many effects or impacts can you think of that might be caused by eliminating the penny? Here are a few to start with…