Dan Lipka Web Log

There is a decent chance that Donald Trump will be legitimately elected President in 2024 (he barely lost several key electoral votes, voting laws in those states will benefit him in the future, and Biden will be a weaker candidate). Democrats have an opportunity to enact rules and change law to prevent Trump from an extreme manipulations of the system. The can exact exact stronger disclosure laws, they can have regulations that prevent "acting" secretaries from staying in a position indefinitely (which avoids the needs to ever get anyone confirmed by the Senate), they can enact more oversight etc. Perhaps, they are waiting until after the 2022 elections, but there is a decent chance they will lose control of the House and/or the Senate making it impossible to even get these things on the agenda. They need to act now.

Baseball is losing popularity only because it is long, but also because it is boring (compared to other sports). Here is how to make it better. Pitch count timer (20 seconds to pitch, or whatever seems reasonable). Pitchers can call 2 20-second timeouts each inning. Batters cannot call time for any reason.  Batters (playing at home) are encouraged to celebrate homeruns as creatively as possible, as long as they don't taught the other team. There is a time limit to get around the bases, but they can do backflips from base to base as long at it doesn't take too long.  Batters are not allowed to celebrate if they are still down by 4+ runs after the home run, or leading by 4+ runs.  Batters (playing away) can celebrate wildly only when hitting a home run to tie or take the lead, and after the 7th inning.  Anyone who intentional hits a batters with a pitch is suspended by 60 games. This includes any coaches or other players that call for a batter to get hit. It is assault and ridicu

Just a silly thought after a long time of not writing anyway. Last night, I watched the Cowboys-Bucs game and each quarterback was almost perfect, except each of them had a great pass that was dropped, leading to an interception. Just like baseball has earned and unearned runs; football should have earned interceptions. The NFL keeps track of "drops" already, so if a player drops the ball, and the defense intercepts it, it doesn't count as an earned interception. It wasn't a bad pass and therefore should not count as a bad stat. It's a really easy thing to enact.