My Insider posts this week covered:
* Masahiro Tanaka, Rafael Montero, and Mike Foltynewicz
* Potential #1 overall pick Dillon Tate
This week’s Klawchat transcript is up as well.
I’ve read a few books lately that I just won’t have the time or patience to review in full, but this seems like as good a place as any to mention them. I was very disappointed in Mahzarin Banaji and Anthony Greenwald’s Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People
I also read two anthologies in the last few weeks, one of which I recommend highly: The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2014
I was less entertained by The Best American Travel Writing 2014
Lots of links this week and this wasn’t even everything, just what I remembered to post:
- A mother in Australia describes the “Agony of seeing my girl fight for life after contracting whooping cough.”
- Meanwhile, some real science on the causes of autism: It’s not vaccines or GMOs or circumcision, but your genes.
- Thanks to some added rainfall, Costa Rica filled all its power needs for 75 days using only renewable energy sources. That’s not a poor country using tiny amounts of energy, either.
- Fans of The Wire will want to watch this conversation between show creator David Simon and President Obama about the drug war and the vicious cycle of incarcerating drug users.
- Six tips for using your slow cooker via Tasting Table. The yogurt-making idea definitely appealed to me, given how much of the stuff I eat.
- Following on my Paleofantasy review, here’s a similar op ed from the Guardian that calls the “paleo” diet a dangerous ideology. This is the money quote:
The paleo diet is premised on a false image of stasis and harmony projected from an entirely arbitrary point in the long history of human evolution.
When you also add in that the arbitrary point isn’t even historically accurate, you’ve got a weak foundation for massive dietary changes.
- Related: Eating whole grains may help you live longer. I hope so, since I consume a lot of oats and oat products.
- Andrew Zimmern interviewed chef John Mirabella on eating the invasive lionfish.
- A beautiful post from Smithsonian on Via Margutta in Rome, a tiny street that’s appeared in numerous films.
- I doubt the University of North Georgia meant for their 2015 catalog to reinforce how women and minorities still come up short in business. White Privilege Studies, anyone?
- Want to know why the “religious freedom restoration” acts aren’t really just about religious freedom? The site RFRA Perils tells you why, and how those laws go well beyond the First Amendment protections for freedom of worship. These laws were always bad policy, but it’s even more egregious today.
- The language here is very NSFW, and if you’re a gun owner you might not appreciate it, but I laughed often and loudly at Jim Jefferies’ routine on gun rights in America.
That RFRA site is a lot more overheated rhetoric than actual analysis. The best part is where the author defends the Supreme Court’s decision in Employment Division v Smith by denigrating the religious practices at issue. If anything, that supports the need for RFRA!
Anyway, the essential thing to understand about RFRA is that the government is permitted to burden the exercise of religion if there are no less restrictive alternatives and therefore I strongly doubt that the nightmare scenarios people envision — like discrimination in public accommodations like restaurants and stadiums — will occur and indeed why I haven’t seen examples of that occurring in the 30 or so states that have similar statutes.
The question is not whether such discrimination will occur, but whether the law permits it. If it does, it’s a bad law (and probably unconstitutional too). A law saying restaurants could ban Jews if they want may not result in anyone doing so, but it’s still a vile piece of legislation regardless.
is there any legal precedent that forces two parties to partake in voluntary commerce? How do you legally force someone to, like, bake a wedding cake? Doesn’t the law simply say that, should you decide to run your business in a dumb and bigoted way, you cannot be punished by the state?
If a florist doesn’t want to make a flower arrangement for a gay wedding, should the florist be fined or jailed?
I suppose the one example I can think of is mortgage lending and housing discrimination charges that banks faced in the 1990s. But even then, you’re talking about large and multi-national corporations, and about an issue (housing) that has a lot of externalities attached to it.
Forcing a small business to provide their goods or services is a pretty dicey and nuanced legal area.
By you logic, a small town diner shouldn’t have to serve black people if they don’t want, or a motel, a gas station, a tow truck driver, a mechanic, a doctor. And before you say there is no “religious” reason for doing any of those things, every argument these bigots use to fight against gay rights are the same used during the civil rights movement.
wow, this is a great takedown of the Civil Rights Act. you should actively promote its repeal.
Craig,
Fine. Eliminate “punished by the state”. But allow private individuals to suit the crap out of these people for violating anti-discrimination laws, which absolutely should extend to cover sexual orientation (as well as gender identity and other factors).
Keith, My point is *not* that the law could allow for discrimination but won’t result in discrimination in practice. Rather, my point is that RFRA does *not* allow for the type of discrimination I mentioned (and certainly not the vile example you pointed out) because (1) the government has a compelling interest in ensuring access to public accommodations and (2) it’s going to be very difficult for a restaurant owner, for example, to argue that merely serving a gay couple infringes on his/her religious beliefs. If the fear is that people are going to use religion as a pretext to discriminate, RFRA has safeguards.
Keith, have you read any of the scholarly support for RFRA? See this, from the leading 1st Amendment scholar in the country (also a strong supporter of LGBT rights).
http://m.greensburgdailynews.com/news/local_news/law-professor-religious-freedom-bill-widely-misunderstood/article_b05c5e86-7a67-5438-bbed-55b16687a6e3.html?mode=jqm
Also, Professor Hamilton’s views are far outside the legal mainstream. In two recent church/state US Supreme Court cases, she took a position that was unanimously rejected by the justices. Her view that the constitution protects a mere “right to worship” is perhaps her aspiration, but it does not remotely reflect the state of American law.
This will go much better if we skip the appeals to bogus authority; Conkle’s a legal scholar, but in no way “the leading 1st Amendment scholar in the country.” His own argument in that article undermines your point – the only way to truly prevent an RFRA claim from someone seeking to defend a choice to discriminate against LGBT citizens is to pass a separate law protecting equal rights for the LGBT community.
The Second Circuit upheld an RFRA defense used by a church against an employment discrimination claim in Hankins v. Lyght, so there is an actual legal precedent to the use of RFRA to defend actions that would otherwise be considered discriminatory.
It’s not bogus authority. I was referring to Laycock, not Conkle, and Laycock is indeed the Mike Trout of First Amendment religion law scholars. That doesn’t settle the argument, of course, and I’m not making a naked appeal to authority. I’m merely arguing that very serious people–and not just bigoted crazies, as you have repeatedly implied–think these laws are a good idea.
Laycock is a bigoted crazy in his own right, arguing (successfully) that corporations have religious rights too. I’ve been to church, but I’ve never shared a pew with an LLC. There’s no rational basis for arguing that secular businesses have religious rights – rights that would not extend to a business claiming secular grounds for a decision or policy.
You might think Laycock’s view (on a different issue) is crazy, but how the heck is that bigoted? (By the way, that would be laughable to anyone who knows him). Also, 7 members of the Supreme Court–including Justice Breyer–held that LLC’s have these rights in at least some cases. Again, not an appeal to authority, just to common sense…you think Justice Breyer is a bigoted crazy also?
Let me ask you plainly: do you believe that the only people who support Religious Freedom Restoration Acts are bigoted crazies?
“Let me ask you plainly: do you believe that the only people who support Religious Freedom Restoration Acts are bigoted crazies?”
Yes Tim, because Keith Law stated Laycock is a bigot, and fairly so, the logical conclusion you should draw is that he meant anyone who supported a legal decision he does not agree with is also a bigoted crazy. That’s exactly what is being stated here. You win the internet.
Not trying to win an argument here, much less the Internet. Sometimes logic *seems* to suggest “if this person believes A, it ineluctably follows that they must also believe B.” But a person might reasonably disagree that B ineluctably follows. So rather than ascribe a position to Keith that he may well not hold, I just thought I’d ask.
Re: autism
I am not an expert in the field, but as someone who has two degrees in early childhood education/development and has spent over a decade working with and observing young children, it has always seemed most likely to me that autism is indeed genetic. And I think the reason this is hard for people to grasp — and why they look for so many of the ready ’causes’ that they do (beyond the emotional component) — is that many of the signs of autism simply cannot be reliably observed in very young children. As a result, parents see their children as typically developing and then, all of a sudden, they are autistic and *something* must have happened to cause the change. Now, leaving aside the factor that many medical conditions we are genetically predisposed to do not necessarily manifest themselves at birth, autism is interesting in that many of the behaviors that most readily identify an individual as autistic are fairly typical behaviors for young children. Self-stimulation (including head hitting and hair pulling), a lack of eye contact, a failure to read facial/non-verbal/social cues, a lack of nuance, and many other behaviors that hint at autism in a 4-year-old and scream autism in a 7-year-old are fairly common in typically developing 2-year-olds. Add in that a common tool for diagnosing autism in young children (the M-CHAT test) relies on parent self-reporting (i.e., the observations of untrained individuals with a vested emotional interest in their child being “normal”) and you have an even greater likelihood of signs being ignored early in life before they eventually can’t be ignored any longer.
I haven’t read a ton on the subject, but I’ve never seen this particular angle explored but it seems sound to me. And even more so since I became a parent myself. My oldest son is almost 2. I know many of the symptoms to look for with regards to ASD in young children. So I was regularly asking my doctor about them. Rather than being in denial, I was convinced my son had autism and I wanted to know sooner rather than later. “He pulls at his hair!” “He bangs his head!” “He stares off into space!” “He’s not talking yet!” Normal, normal, normal, normal, and normal. At least, during the different time periods in which he exhibited those behaviors.
But, again, I’m looking at the situation differently than most parents. Most parents don’t know that those are possible signs of autism. So they say, “Oh, my toddler’s so goofy… pulling at his own hair.” Fast forward four years and the kid is still doing it and being evaluated for ASD and the parent doesn’t think, “Oh, man… he’s been this way forever.” They think, “But he was fine at 2! What happened to make him autistic!”
So far in any discussion of these various RFRAs (whether federal or in the many states where similar laws have been passed), I have not seen any disputed invocation of this law except in the case of family businesses not wanting to participate in providing their wedding-related services for gay weddings. (Other examples have been for Native Americans to perform their rituals, of which only the government previously stood in the way, no (R) or (D) is arguing against that freedom). Most of the reaction against RFRAs has stated that we’ll soon be posting signs on storefronts saying No Gays, Blacks, Jews, Women, etc. But the Federal RFRA has existed since 1993 and I’ve never heard of anyone claiming they were discriminated against by someone that later invoked the RFRA, except for the wedding thing. If all this is about is whether or not the government can force a few family bakers or photographers to work gay weddings I don’t see how this is “vile” or “outrageous” or something that causes the NCAA or the governor of Connecticut or Keith Law from boycotting Arizona or Indiana (or 28 other states or the entire USA, for that matter). Am I missing something?
Keith I see you mentioned Hankins vs Lyght, but that suit is much more about the ADEA and EEOC than the RFRA, and it seems quite slippery for that UMC to have invoked the RFRA. In fact, the conclusion includes: “The Religious Freedom and Restoration Act (“RFRA”) is not relevant to this dispute.” I’m not a law scholar, so I may be interpreting that suit incorrectly – but even if we add that one weird case it’s not indicative of overwhelming oppression and discrimination under the RFRA. I don’t foresee terrible things happening because of this extension of RFRA.
This sort of thing is not really productive but Prof. Hamilton — the author of the website that Keith cited to — has written that Hobby Lobby would have come out differently if there were fewer Catholics on the Supreme Court (https://verdict.justia.com/2014/06/30/whats-really-wrong-decisions-burwell-v-hobby-lobby-conestoga-wood-v-burwell).
Know you’re a food science fan, thought you might enjoy this:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/03/25/scientists-have-figured-out-a-simple-way-to-cook-rice-that-dramatically-cuts-the-calories/?tid=pm_business_pop_b
Paleo community has been hip to resistant starch for a while now. Too bad they are anti-science or something.
Another straw man!
Thanks, Garrett. Good stuff. I’d heard years ago that toasting any grain in fat would add flavor and improve its absorption of the cooking liquid. I wonder if this is related.
Another reply with no content!
For anyone who is actually curious, here is a prominent (perhaps the most well known) paleo writer* covering resistant starches (with numerous links to scholarly research) about a year ago:
http://www.marksdailyapple.com/the-definitive-guide-to-resistant-starch/
I do want to mention here (thought anyone who follows the above link would find this out) that resistant starch has a massive secondary health benefit: besides reducing the normal caloric content and blood sugar spikes of normal starches, it also feeds the gut bacteria that are critical to healthy digestive and immune function. The gut microbiome is not very well understood at this point (compared to other systems in the body) but much of the current research indicates a much more fundamental role in overall health than previously suspected, especially with regard to nutrition, metabolism, and the immune system (including autoimmune disease).
Yeesh, I’m embarrassed at the typos that persist when I don’t have the ability to edit them.
“thought anyone who follows…”
should read
“though anyone who follows…”
Too bad his site is full of garbage sales pitches, pushing crap like his Primal Whatever supplements and his books, while conflating “user anecdotes” (Oh, wow, one user said his thyroid worked better! But no one had to verify it!) with occasional dashes of science.
I think most people eat a fair amount of resistant starch without realizing it, just thinking of it as another form of fiber. There’s a lot of research on its effects – I found a 2002 paper in Trends in Food Science and Technology touting it – but I think increasing the average consumer’s intake has proven hard. I had read years ago (no source, I apologize) that it couldn’t survive reheating, but the link Garrett provided indicates that that’s not true.
Oh man, selling his books? What a fraud. That’s why I really appreciate Marlene Zuk offering her book free of charge as well as all of your free ESPN Insider articles.
I did like how you discounted anecdotal evidence in one sentence, then offered an unsupported personal opinion about how much resistant starch people eat in the next sentence.
Ah, the tu quoque fallacy – twice, in fact.
Keith:
I apologize for bringing this to your attention, but I have no faith that my outcry will be heard by IT and/or Design at the Network. I cannot read below #11 (for 1-50) or below the heading (on 51-100) of your top 100 prospects articles. Both articles do not scroll the way I presume they are meant to. (Before you ask: yes, I am logged in as an insider, and yes I have experienced the same problem on Chrome and IE.) (Before you ask again, IE, because I am at work.)
I imagine this problem runs in other corners of the site. It’s a shame that such fine and voluminous output cannot be read.
Thank you for all the great work here and at the Eye Chart.
This looks like a known issue with the new format at ESPN. I also see the issue with the January 2014 list, but the Summer 2014 list works just fine.
It is a known issue, I’m not happy about it, but I can’t do anything about it either.