So I was kind of busy this week, writing these pieces for Insiders on the major trades leading up to Friday’s trade deadline.
• Yoenis Cespedes to the Mets
• Mike Leake to San Francisco
• Latos/Olivera/Wood three-team trade
• David Price to Toronto
• Joakim Soria to Pittsburgh
• Carlos Gomez/Mike Fiers to Houston
• Brandon Moss to St. Louis
• Cole Hamels to Texas
• Jonathan Papelbon to Washington
• Ben Zobrist to Kansas City
• Troy Tulowitzki to Toronto
• Tyler Clippard to the Mets
• Johnny Cueto to Kansas City
• Several smaller trades
• The Mets/Carlos Gomez trade that didn’t happen
I also have a scouting post up on some Mets and Yankees AA prospects.
And now, the links… 
- Earlier this month, a fan at a Brewers game was hit in the face by a line drive, severely injuring her and missing killing her by centimeters. There’s a fundraising page for her medical bills if you’d like to donate.
- Twitter is now hiding plagiarized jokes and other tweets if the original authors file complaints. It’s a minor issue compared to some of the abuse hurled at women and minorities on Twitter, but I’ll take any step toward greater editorial control on Twitter as a positive.
- Molly Knight talked to Lasorda’s Lair about her book on the Dodgers and her history of anxiety disorder. If you haven’t yet, you should buy her book
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- The Shreveport Times has a sharp opinion piece on how the Lafayette massacre won’t change anything. The piece specifically singles out Louisiana’s “weak and non-existent gun control.” It’s on us, though; you vote for candidates who take money from the NRA, this is what you get. If you don’t like it, get out there and campaign for the other side.
- Is the song “Happy Birthday” still protected by copyright? It appears it may not be, although we’ll need the judge’s ruling to be sure. There’s a big fight coming in 2018 over expiring copyrights, one that puts me (in favor of putting many older works in the public domain) on the opposite side from my employer (Disney, which has a fair concern about Mickey Mouse falling into p.d.).
- The Fibonacci shelf takes the mathematical sequence and turns it into stackable furniture. I want this.
- Three “next-level” recipes for rum punch. That first one, a planter’s punch with homemade grenadine, sounds right up my alley; planter’s punch is the first strong (may I say “grown-up?”) cocktail I liked.
- Go ahead, be sarcastic, at least with people you know well: it can boost creative thinking, according to a new study by three business school professors.
- A fantastic profile of prodigy turned mathematician Terry Tao, considered (per the piece) “the finest mathematician of his generation,” and more broadly a piece on number theory. I share Tao’s love of the original computer game Civilization and the difficulty in putting it aside; it occupied a huge portion of the fall semester of my junior year of college, unfortunately. That said, it kills me that the article’s author felt that “prime number” required a definition. You shouldn’t be able to get to high school without knowing what that means.
Thanks for the recipes. Looking forward to trying them.
I’ve been enjoying this Philadelphia Fish House Punch recipe from Food and Wine this summer: http://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/philly-fish-house-punch
You may be scared of the peach schnapps, but it doesn’t overpower the other ingredients. I bet you could find a higher-quality peach-based Eau de Vie and make it even better if you want.
Why is a “kaffir” a racist epithet?
I’m not familiar and Wikipedia wasn’t that helpful. Those are marketed everywhere as kafir lines and I wasn’t aware it was a negative term.
Brian: Kaffir literally means ‘non-believer’ in Arabic, and has–in some places–taken on connotations of ‘outsider’ or ‘not one of us’ or ‘foreigner.” The lime acquired the name because it was “foreign;” over time the descriptor (when applied to people) tended to be used not to make an objective distinction, but instead to make a subjective and often hateful distinction. A rough English-language parallel would be ‘Oriental,’ which at one time just meant ‘not from the West,’ but took on connotations of ‘strange’/ ‘different’/’doesn’t fit in’, such that the word can no longer be used inoffensively to describe people, even though it can still be used to describe objects (i.e. Oriental rugs).
Keith: Have you tried the current version of Civ (Civ V)? It’s very good. Also, in a total non sequitur, are you going to be in Southern California at all this year?
Don’t you think it’s more of a mental health issue and not a gun control issue? They closed most state hospitals around the country. There has always been firearms but they used to lock up people with mental issues.
It’s both. But “locking up” people with “mental issues” isn’t the solution either.
I think the background check was the failure in the LA shooter. It should have flagged him but didn’t. Anyone who has worked in gov knows how poorly things are done so I can’t say I’m surprised. Still thinks is mental health issues more than gun one. The .45 auto has been popular since 1911. What has changed? Def not an easy issue to fix but I’m for less laws on people.
Easier and cheaper to acquire a whole arsenal today than in 1911 (or shortly thereafter)?
A 1911 pistol average price is around 1,000k. AR is similar avg. price. Really appreciate a civil discussion though. It’s an issue that no one on either side can talk about without name calling or worse.
Cheaper now, probably, but I’d say that has more to do with the average standard of living being higher.
In terms of ease, probably similar. They didn’t have armslist or facebook groups to facilitate face to face sales (though I’m sure plenty of guns were sold between coworkers, neighbors, friends, etc.). On the other hand, prior to 1968 one could legally order guns by mail order and have them shipped direct to your home.
In fairness to the author of the Tao article, there’s a fair chance it was an editor who insisted on the definition of prime number. That’s exactly the sort of thing that a certain type of editor tends to do.