Happy New Year! I’d say it’ll be a great one, but there’s an election coming up so damn it all to hell.
I wrote two Insider pieces this week, one on the ethically-challenged Yankees trading for Aroldis Chapman and one on how obvious it should be that Trevor Hoffman is not a Hall of Famer.
My latest boardgame review for Paste covers the complex strategy game Orleans, which was one of two runners-up for the 2015 Kennerspiel des Jahres award.
And now, the links…
- Used bookstores are making an “unlikely” comeback. Were they ever really gone? I think the age of the independent new-book bookseller is over, but the used bookstore and the hybrid new-used model (like the wonderful Changing Hands in Tempe) are here to stay.
- Eater had Alton Brown on its podcast, with a transcript included in that link as well. I particularly enjoyed his comments on the way Starbucks changed the food game, and on how just loving food isn’t really enough to make it a career (as you could say the same about loving baseball).
- The moral of this story of a rather severe cooking injury is don’t grill in bare feet.
- Notes from reporting on the vaccine wars. I like the fundamental message: Good information can win out, even in the face of obstinate ignorance.
- A very powerful New Yorker profile of a female Iranian journalist and activist who has dared fight pockets of Sharia law in the Islamic theocracy, including sentences of stoning.
- This is wild but worth reading: should we cover the Sahara desert in solar panels?
- I always read everything I post here before I include a link, but I will admit that I couldn’t finish the highly-recommended ProPublica piece An Unbelievable Story of Rape, because it was so difficult and in parts so infuriating.
- Speaking of infuriating, hoops writer Chris Haynes writes about getting racially profiled by cops while standing across the street from his house. This bias is systemic – I don’t think it’s personal, where police departments are just hiring racists – and getting rid of it requires systemic solutions, like nation-wide training.
- A strong but too-short piece from Dave Zirin on the year of the woman in sports.
- Did you know there’s been a massive natural gas (which is mostly methane) leak going on outside Los Angeles for ten weeks now? Since methane is a potent contributor to climate change – the Environmental Defense Fund claims it’s 84 times as powerful as carbon dioxide – you’d think this would be 1) bigger news and 2) a national disaster.
- Boardgames in the classroom? It’s happening in some charter schools in New York.
- Goofy fun for geography nuts like me: mental_floss lists nine of the most isolated towns on the planet.
You’re right in noting Dave Zirin’s piece is far too short!
There was too little about the women’s soccer team, too little about Rhonda Rousey’s stunning rise to cultural icon and subsequent defeat, just barely enough regarding the all time greatness of Serena, and how about Lindsey Vonn winning four races so far this year and putting herself in the conversation for greatest ski racer of all time… man or woman? Vonn is just 15 victories from Ingemar Stenmark’s all time record. And unlike Stenmark’s, she’s done it in all the sports’s disciplines, from the technical events to the speed events, she’s won them all and at a time of much broader and deeper competition.
Or how about Becky Hammon shattering the glass ceiling in men’s sports by coaching on an NBA staff.
Or how about Jessica Mendoza breaking up the boys club in the broadcast booth?
There is so much more to the year that has been great for women in sports…
The ProPublica story is absolutely horrifying, both for what the (twice over) victim was forced to endure, and the police coercion at the heart of the injustice. And, unfortunately, these types of coerced confessions are not so uncommon as we might hope to believe.
It reminds me a bit of one of the two defendants in Netflix’s “Making A Murderer.”
Looks like comments are closed on your board game post. You mentioned interest in a game test group, I’d definitely be in for something like that. I’m up in NJ so not too far from you. Shoot me an e-mail any time if you’re looking for people, and I hope I’ll be able to say hi at a Thunder game this year.