I’m still working on the top 100 prospects package, although at least I’ve got enough done that I’m not coiled up like a spring any more. The organization rankings piece will run on Wednesday, and the top 100 itself will run on Thursday, when I will also chat. The current plan is for one league’s top tens to run Thursday and the other Friday, but my editors haven’t finalized that.
And now, this week’s links…
- Longform piece from Vulture/NY Mag: Baohaus founder/chef Eddie Huang’s foul-mouthed tract on watching his memoir (and life) become a bowdlerized sitcom.
- From the increasingly indispensable British paper The Guardian why the modern world is bad for your brain. We think we can multitask, but we can’t.
- The Senate passed an amendment 98-1 affirming that climate change is not a hoax. What a world that we have to do this.
- Scientists slowed the speed of light. Of course, the particle theory of light is just a theory anyway.
- Munchies (at VICE) tackles the question of the California attempt to ban foie gras in a 41-minute video documentary. It’s remarkably calm and rational for a look at an issue that inspires more emotion than reason. I come down on the side of allowing foie gras production, because I don’t want any government body making choices about what I should and shouldn’t eat when I’m better capable of making those choices myself. Asking the government to stop antibioitic use in livestock is a matter of global health and safety; asking the government to protect ducks and geese who may not be suffering any harm imposes someone else’s views of animal rights on my plate.
John Burton, now the Chairman of the California Democratic Party, comes off worse than the ducks in this documentary, swearing at the interviewer at least twice, dismissing a very reasonable question as “stupid,” appearing to have little familiarity with the issue at hand, even proudly defending the fact that he never visited the farm that his bill put out of business. I’m not a Californian, but if I were a Democrat and lived there I’d be livid that this was the man at least nominally in charge of the state’s party. - Just because evolution is settled science doesn’t mean we’re no longer learning more about how it works. This week’s discovery: Evolution may be able to reverse itself, according to one study of the evolutionary process in birds.
- I tweeted this yesterday but it’s worth reposting – one chart that shows how effective and dangerous vaccine deniers’ efforts have been. And don’t believe them when they say it’s not a big deal, because getting the measles is horrible.
- Goofiness: How people in the small Swedish town of Ůmea say “yes.”