I had a couple of Insider pieces this week, on the trade of Jaime Garcia to Atlanta, the Cespedes contract, the trade of Alex Jackson to Atlanta, and my proposal for an international draft (written before the CBA negotiations ended). I also held a Klawchat on Thursday.
My latest boardgame review for Paste covers Grifters, a “deckbuilder without a deck” that I thought played a little too mechanically.
You can preorder my upcoming book, Smart Baseball, on amazon. Also, please sign up for my more-or-less weekly email newsletter.
And now, the links…
- An important longread from Scientific American: How factory farming is speeding antibiotic resistance, endangering animals and humans alike, while the government does virtually nothing to stop them. The best thing we can all do is buy only meat from animals raised without antibiotics – organic is not necessary for this but it does qualify – or just don’t eat meat. The article also details some of the oppressive conditions in the ‘contract growing’ business of raising animals for food.
- Another longread, this time from the Guardian, on Italy’s “ultras,” dangerous gangs of soccer fans who exert unusual control over the sport and are behind much of the violence that surrounds the sport.
- I linked to this on Twitter earlier in the week: Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen wrote about the disastrous policies of Henry Kissinger in Southeast Asia, which led to millions of civilian and military deaths.
- The House Science Committee is notoriously hostile to real science, something that became apparent again this week when its official account tweeted a link to a climate-denial article at a neo-Nazi site.
- The FTC finally did something good! They’re requiring so-called “homeopathic medicines” to include a label that says there’s no evidence they work. That’s because they can’t work. Homeopathy, like cupping and acupressure, is just woo.
- The Kansas government of Governor Sam Brownback has been an economic disaster, but it’s also been a test tube for voter-suppression tactics, like requiring proof that voters are Americans, even though the state could only identify three non-citizens who voted in the ten years before the law in question was passed.
- A junk study claiming a link between vaccines and autism has been pulled following heavy criticism. I doubt that’ll stop deniers from using it, though.
- And those same looney-toons think that Donald Trump will be an ally for their cause. Given his actions so far as President-Elect, I think he’ll throw them overboard the moment it’s politically expedient.
- A federal judge ruled that counties in Hawai’i can’t ban genetically modified crops because state law prohibits counties from legislating agricultural issues. It’s painted as a win for Big Ag, but it’s also a win for science.
- Research by the Pew Center finds that Americans don’t understand the meaning or import of organic or GMO food. Organic food is not more healthful to your body than conventionally-grown food, although it may be better for the soil, and GM food is not less healthful or more dangerous than non-GM food.
- Why are some Massachusetts district attorneys refusing to reveal lists of cases they’ve prosecuted, in violation of state public records laws? The Boston Globe‘s Spotlight team is suing to get those records opened. Real journalism still exists, and I think it will matter in the next four years more than it has in decades.
- The Daily Beast has a piece on Casey Affleck’s disturbing history of alleged harassment of women, including abusive behavior.
- This Washington Post feature on the effort by the San Bernadino terrorists’ siblings to adopt the killers’ infant daughter is heartbreaking.
- Rising ocean temperatures resulted in the worst bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef on record. Increasing carbon sequestration in the oceans raises the water temperature and lowers its pH. Both are bad for coral.
- I loved the short-lived animated TV series The Critic, especially its crazy movie parodies, so I was thrilled to read this UPROXX conversation with the two creators.
- News outlets are belatedly telling their writers not to use the term “alt-right” any longer, because it’s a euphemism for white nationalist, white supremacist, or neo-Nazi.
- Another white-nationalist type has started a blacklist website devoted to identifying left-wing college professors, and Emory University Professor George Yancy is having none of it.
- Miami Herald writer Armando Seguero absolutely lights up Colin Kaepernick for wearing a Fidel Castro shirt in a column published hours before the brutal, repressive Cuban dictator’s death was announced.
- Many folks weighed in on Joe Posnanski’s columns about the WAR discrepancy between Justin Verlander and Rick Porcello; I particularly enjoyed Phil Birnbaum’s explanation of why the Baseball-Reference approach makes sense. You should read Birnbaum’s post, but in essence, he says that we should deduce from Verlander’s performance that he was the beneficiary of help from his defense, even though Detroit’s defense on the whole was not good.
- Is the Internet a “failed state” along the lines of Somalia or now Libya? This Guardian op ed argues that the increasing lawlessness online makes it so.
- Bloomberg View/Gadfly executive editor Timothy L. O’Brien argues that Donald Trump’s business is not too big to sell, and the President-Elect needs to sell before he takes office.
- Trump’s pick to head the Department of Health and Human Services is a member of a fringe, far-right, anti-science doctors’ group whose positions include opposition to mandatory vaccinations, opposition to abortion, opposition to stem cell research, and opposition to organ donations, and whose journal is “a repository for quackery.”
- The Columbia Journalism Review profiles the overhaul and success of the Washington Post in a wide-ranging conversation with two of the digital media company’s leaders – although I think some of what they reveal is less flattering than they think.
- Baltimore is attacking street violence by treating it as a public-health problem, not as a typical crime.
- Let’s get to the Trump stuff: One potential pick to head NIH is opposed to stem-cell research and faces much opposition even within Republican circles.
- His pick for Secretary of Education is a blow to our nation’s science health. She’s also a disaster for church-state separation, proposing more school-choice programs to allow parents to send kids to religious schools using government dollars, and with ties to the ‘intelligent design’ pseudoscience movement.
- Reince Preibus confirmed that Trump’s default position on climate change is denial.
- That Carrier deal? It shows Trump and Pence don’t understand the constant churn of jobs in our modern economy.
- The NY Times editorial board published a blunt column on Trump’s flag-burning tweet saying Mr. Trump, meet the Constitution.
- After Trump won the election, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors issued a (symbolic) resolution saying they would oppose much of what he and the GOP stand for. Of course, it’ll matter when they act, or take the feds to court, but I wish more local politicians were so vocal about their opposition.
- From June, a great New Yorker piece on just what a colossal scam Trump University was.
- Here are a few of the Senate Democrats who’ve spoken out against Trump so far.
- A Texas town’s mayor and government just learned it has had an independent housing authority for the last 40 years, which means that department, which had two employees, has had essentially zero oversight and, of course, hasn’t been fulfilling its mission to maintain living conditions in public housing.
- The BBC spoke to hyperglots, speakers of many languages, about how they learned and retained so many tongues and why some people seem better able to do so.
- A Canadian town’s police department has threatened to force people arrested for driving drunk to listen to Nickelback.
- A 19-year-old Guatemalan woman with Down Syndrome has started a clothing line for other women with the genetic disorder.
- Tweet of the week:
Quick recap: the new ed secretary is anti-public schools, the new HUD sec'y is anti-Fair Housing, and the new AG is anti-Voting Rights Act.
— Alec MacGillis (@AlecMacGillis) November 28, 2016
But to that, you can add that the new HHS head is anti-science, and the potential Secretary of State is still on probation.
I’m a small Canadian dairy farmer so it was interesting to read your antibiotic resistant link. Basically it comes down to ventilation to prevent disease. Farms do recognized this and designed to have good ventilation since healthy animals are the most profitable. The weather is the hardest thing to control so when you get big swings in temperature and humidity that is when the animals are most susceptible.
On our farm the dairy cattle that are healthiest/less likely to get pneumonia are the ones that are housed in a open faced barn where they walk outside to eat at a bunk, it is because they are always getting fresh air it can be 35C or -25C and they are healthy but they can get shelter to stay out of the wind and sun. Unfortunately the youngest calves can’t handle the extreme cold so they stay in a closed barn with fans with a more controlled environment. And for the milking cows to be housed that way 12 months a year provides too many challenges so they are in a barn with tunnel ventilation when too hot/cold or wet.
I wouldn’t be as worried about antibiotics resistance in dairy cattle vs poultry and pork and you don’t get the preventative use of antibiotics unless you count Monensin as one. Animals milk is thrown out if they are on antibiotics until their withdrawal time for example tetracycline is 72hrs for milk and 4 weeks for meat. One thing I’m surprised that there isn’t more objection to is “timed-ai” the use of synthetic hormones used to help get cows pregnant, not that it should be outright banned there is too much of a dependency on larger herds imo. The dairy industry is doing a good job now at breeding for health traits since they were previously overlooked in favour of production. Genomics has been a big help at increasing the genetic gain since they can identify which animals carry the desirable genes and aren’t dependent on waiting for bulls progeny to see how good a bull is.
I am glad to see the poultry industry to make a shift towards antibiotic free, there is a higher loss rate which is probably more then double vs conventional but it isn’t worth gain in efficiency.
One thing I’m surprised that there isn’t more objection to is “timed-ai” the use of synthetic hormones used to help get cows pregnant
What hormones are those? I’m curious if a consumer could choose to avoid such milk or meat without having to go all the way to organic.
Estrumate (brand name) is the main one a synthetic prostaglandin, when a cow has a CL (usually 10-14 days after previous heat on their 21 day cycle) they get that and 3.5 days later you breed them. Sometimes it is hard to detect natural hears in cows so that is why it is used. You could look up “Ovsynch program” so you can see how it works it also uses Fertiline (brand name) which is given 7 days prior to estrumate.
It would be hard to avoid I’m not sure if organic farms can use them also. Estruamate doesn’t have a milk or meat withdrawal. Fertiline does have a 7 day meat. If a cow gets one of those injections they wouldn’t be going to market for meat though because the farmer is trying to get them pregnant.
natural heats*
Regarding Trump’s education pick (and really, all of them, but that one specifically), to quote a prominent critic: It stinks!
Do you think it’s possible to be white nationalist without being white supremacist? It seems that someone who describes themselves that way (white nationalist but not supremacist) is just promoting “separate but equal,” which was obviously inherently unequal when actually practiced. Just something that’s been running through my mind as the discussion of the use of “alt-right” has come up.
I would say no, because separate is inherently unequal. And I think building an ideology around a racial or other demographic identity implies that the holder believes his/her identity is superior.
Why would someone want separateness if they didn’t feel that they were superior to the people that they want to be separated from?
My question would be what does nationalist mean to you. I want the best for my nation, even if it’s at the (reasonable) expense of other nations, but I don’t just want it for the Caucasian citizens. It would benefit me and my neighbors and other nations would have the agency to react to it as they will. I don’t think that makes me a supremacist, but maybe I’m misunderstanding what you mean by nationalist.
I might call you a patriot, Joe. If you were extreme about it, I might call you a jingoist, but what you expressed sounds like pride in one’s country. That’s not a “nationalist” to me, and of course you haven’t introduced the “white” modifier that turns the whole thing into bigotry.
‘Nationalist’ means two different things, which may be the source of confusion here.
One definition is “advocate for nationalism.” This meaning, as Keith suggests, is roughly equivalent to “patriot.”
The other definition is “one who desires a separate state.” For example, “Scottish nationalist” or “Irish nationalist” or “Basque nationalist.” This is the meaning that is being used in the phrase “white nationalist.”
Ergo, a white nationalist is an advocate of white separation and segregation. As it is unlikely someone would want to be segregated with those whom they regarded as inferior, it thus means they want to be segregated with those whom they regard as superior. So, “white nationalist” is implicitly an argument for white supremacy.
And really, isn’t this kind of an “angels dancing on the head of a pin” argument? Is there any doubt that white nationalists actually ARE racist, regardless of what you believe the word to mean?
Thanks for the reply Keith. I definitely was misunderstanding what you meant.
You’re welcome. We’re definitely living in bizarro world where words are getting redefined left and right, and I may (probably) have used the word incorrectly.
Speaking of looney-toons, this Pizzagate nonsense resulted in this happening up the street from me this afternoon…
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2016/12/04/d-c-police-respond-to-report-of-a-man-with-a-gun-at-comet-ping-pong-restaurant/
Fuck. This was a largely depressing series of links. It’s gonna be a rough ride.
But thanks for reminding me I need to rewatch The Critic! Underrated, short-lived classic.