My Insider pieces this week included a post on some Red Sox prospects, including Yoan Moncada; one on the Arizona/Atlanta trade involving Touki Toussaint; and a reaction to the release of the Futures Game rosters. I also held a Klawchat on Thursday.
My latest boardgame review for Paste covers the reissue of the modern classic Tigris & Euphrates, designer Reiner Knizia’s best game, now back in print with better graphics and clearer rules.
My good friend Molly Knight has a book coming out on the Dodgers, The Best Team Money Can Buy: The Los Angeles Dodgers’ Wild Struggle to Build a Baseball Powerhouse
And now, this week’s links…
- We’re getting so much closer to vaccine sanity, as California is set to end religious and philosophical exemptions to vaccinating school-age children. The science is clear and unequivocal, and making the wrong, anti-science decision can affect hundreds of others’ lives.
- A young widow’s heartrending letter to her late husband, who committed suicide a month ago after a long battle with depression.
- The Moringa oleifera tree may lead to an inexpensive process for purifying drinking water in developing countries.
- On a Tokyo coffee roasting master still roasting at age 100.
- A former president of the American Humanist Association writes in Psychology Today that anti-intellectualism is killing America. I’m not sure I agree with the premise, nor do I think such unreason as racial hatred is “anti-intellectualism” per se, but I still found it an interesting read.
- Roxane Gay wrote in the New York Times that she can’t forgive Dylan Roof, and why should she? Forgiveness means releasing your anger. If we forget to be angry, why would anything ever change?
- The first segment of Thursday’s episode of BBC Outlook, on Canada’s abused aboriginal children is harrowing listening, but also makes a superb case for “truth and reconciliation” commissions to address past historical wrongs.
- Common sense from VOX.com: People with mental illness are far more likely to be victims than perpetrators of violent crimes. Yet we don’t hear calls for greater mental health treatment options when the former is true, only the latter.
- A recent meta-study has found that the phenolic compounds found in olive oil may help prevent neurodegenerative diseases, although it would be nice to see empirical evidence (via clinical trials) to back this up. Still, olive oil is delicious and may be really good for you.
- The guys behind Animal and Son of a Gun have opened a pizzeria in LA, and it sounds amazing, of course.