My predictions for 2017, including full standings, playoff stuff, and award winners. If you skipped the intro and got mad online about it, I’ll reiterate here: it’s just for fun. I do not run projections, and I will never beat a well-run model at the predictions game except as a fluke. I also wrote one post earlier in the week covering Cardinals, Tigers, and Atlanta prospects I saw while in Florida; there will be another post coming this weekend. I did not chat because I was in the car or at games all week.
My book is back from the printers! You can preorder my upcoming book, Smart Baseball, on amazon, or from other sites via the Harper-Collins page for the book. The book now has two positive reviews out, one from Kirkus Reviews and one from Publishers Weekly.
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And now, the links…
- This week’s big distraction was Mike Pence’s rule about declining to dine alone with a woman who isn’t his wife, a rule that employment lawyer Joanna L. Grossman says is probably illegal.
- The House “Science” Committee held a sham hearing on climate change that featured some of the dumbest anti-science questions you could possibly imagine. If any of these clowns is your representative, call his/her office on Monday and voice your support for actual science.
- There’s a wide measles outbreak in Romania, with children dying of the disease, thanks to lack of access to health services and idiot parents declining to vaccinate their children.
- How about real science? A new paper claims to have discovered the cause of obsessive-compulsive disorder. It’s a single protein that normally inhibits a particular pathway in the amygdala; when the protein is absent, the pathway becomes overactive and OCD results.
- Meanwhile, many states, all in the south and midwest, have at least seen bills introduced that would allow creationism or other anti-science crap to be taught in public schools.
- The Cayman Islands are moving forward with a plan to release genetically modified mosquitoes to combat the Zika virus. The mosquito species in question, Aedes aegypti, also spreads dengue, chikungunya, and yellow fever. This is distinct from efforts to use specific strains of the Wolbachia bacteria genus to make the mosquitoes resistant to these virii.
- This longread from The Chronicle of Higher Education dissects the ongoing troubles at Penn State – caused by Penn State in the aftermath of the school’s inaction on Jerry Sandusky.
- The glory of being on the road so much this week was that I missed the crazy mom who claimed human traffickers were stalking her kids at Ikea. This kind of mass hysteria mirrors the way anti-vaccine bullshit and right-wing fake news have spread online in recent years.
- Apple accepted, then rejected, an app that tracks US drone strikes. The decision is bizarre, as the app doesn’t appear to violate any of the App Store’s terms of service, and speaks to the problem with a closed format. Even if the company itself didn’t make these decisions, it would be too easy for a government agency to force them to do so.
- The two “activists” whose doctored videos at Planned Parenthood made it seem like PP employees were selling fetal body parts have been charged with 15 felonies for their actions. Their attorneys claim they’re “journalists,” but it’s clear by their actions – and lack of any respect for the law or journalistic ethics – that they’re not.
- Speaking of abortion rights, Iowa Republicans have proposed a bill that would let an unmarried woman’s parents prevent her from having the medical procedure, even if she were, say, 30 years old. Meanwhile, Arkansas, the one state I haven’t visited and clearly won’t any time soon, passed a law that forces doctors to investigate a patient’s reasons for having an abortion. Does it surprise you to know that Arkansas is also one of the worst states for vaccination rates?
- Why did Secretary of Labor nominee Alexander Acosta cut a sweetheart deal with wealthy child molester Jeffrey Epstein?
- I didn’t know what the Chinese dish jianbing, a sort of omelet folded into a crispy crepe-like crust, was before I saw this article on where to find it in New York, but I’m interested now.
- Texas Monthly barbecue editor Daniel Vaughn goes into the science of smoke, and how smoke can be dirty or clean.
- Fellow fans of Studio Ghibli might enjoy this news item on Ghibli-themed teas, available for sale in Japan. I bet those tins show up as collectibles even without the teas inside. It’s not a Ghibli title, but the critically-acclaimed animated film Your Name (Kimi no na wa) will be released on Friday in the U.S.
- “Travel tips” posts tend to be useless, but I thought this list from Bizarre Foods host Andrew Zimmern, who travels the world to some seriously off-the-path places, was unusually informative.
Just when Penn State makes me think they can move forward, they just continue to do stupid things.
Your intro did not clearly indicate that your 2017 predictions, as well as your prospects comments on the Cards and Tigers were only for Insiders. No big deal, but you should indicate that in the linking paragraph. Keep up the great work.
All of my espn content is for Insiders.
FYI, that’s not 100% true. Occasionally, as an incentive or a teaser or whatever, they put your items in front of the paywall. For example:
http://www.espn.com/blog/keith-law/insider/post/_/id/5283/five-players-who-belong-on-all-star-roster-and-five-who-dont
The URL says “insider” but the piece is definitely free.
They tried an experiment last summer, putting a few Insider pieces outside the wall, but as far as I know that’s over now. The one true exception was the Jose Reyes op ed I wrote last year, since that was an important social topic and atypical of my ESPN writing.
In the last 20 years, how much has the public contributed to new or renovated NFL stadiums? $6.7 billion. This includes $750 million Nevada/Las Vegas will contribute for the Raiders new stadium. It would have been nice to have a info-graphic detailing how much the public has contributed to each stadium. At least Dolphins owner Stephen Ross laments how much the public is contributing to these stadiums. His stadium was recently renovated with private money, as was the Patriots, Giants/Jets, and Rams/Chargers stadiums. I don’t have a lot of confidence his fellow owners will listen.
http://www.espn.com/blog/nflnation/post/_/id/234573/with-6700000000-in-public-money-nfl-stadium-era-closes
Hi Keith,
Good article on Jianbing. Seriouseats had a good one back in 2015.
Thanks for the weekly posts, which contain so many good and relevant links for people who think and care. My wife signed up and I’m going to ask my two college student kids to sign up too. Very appreciated.
Once a week a Jianbing food truck serves lunch right next to the MLB offices in New York. Its pretty good.
Illegal*
Come on, Keith. It besmirches the validity of the underlying proposition (i.e., illegal practice when in an employment setting) when you let the overbroad headline carry.
This is a pedantic argument, and I don’t engage in those. If you have a comment on the linked piece, great. I’m happy to discuss that and I’m sure others here would be too.
Keith – I like reading your blog because your opinions are often different than mine, but they are well-reasoned. But, your Arkansas post leaves me baffled. I am anti-abortion. I am anti-death penalty. I believe – and this has nothing to do with religion, just my view of common sense – that “thou shalt not kill” is a great way to live. Equating abortion with anti-vaccination is absurd to me, as I don’t see that the two have any connection whatsoever. Vaccination is common sense. It saves lives. Abortion is killing a living being before it’s out of the womb. If anyone wants to be pro-abortion, I will disagree with them vehemently, and I have friends that I do that with. (Please note they are still friends – reasonable discussion of touchy subjects is still possible.) Connecting abortion with vaccination in the same paragraph makes no sense to me.
This strikes me as an easily answerable point. To start, you may be anti-DP and anti-abortion, but you must be aware that is not the usual combination among the general public. And just as pro-DP and anti-abortion often tend to correlate, so to do anti-abortion and anti-vax.
More broadly, there are absolutely commonalities between anti-vax and anti-abortion. Both tend to be rooted in faith more than science, and both are products of a willingness to impose one’s beliefs on others, at the expense of those others’ health and well-being.
Abortion is killing a living being before it’s out of the womb.
That’s an assertion, not a fact.
Drew–not trying to be difficult, but I have trouble understanding how someone who believes abortion is murder could possibly support a bill that, under that formulation, allows murder where the woman’s parents consent? I’m pro-choice, so this is not a quandary for me–I just find the recent spate of consent of (parents/father of child, etc.) bills to be less about preventing murder and more about making/keeping women as second class citizens unable to make decisions for themselves.
I think both sides of the abortion issue need to deal with some conflicting realities, and I think these conflicts lead both sides to some inconsistent positions.
For the pro-choice side (in which I firmly place myself), if we focus entirely on the woman’s choice, we have to address the conflict that, at some point, we would take away that choice. For example, I presume that most pro-choice proponents would agree that nine months in, perhaps the day before expected delivery, abortion would be akin to murder. The fetus is, at that point, clearly a viable person and abortion should not be permitted. Most would agree with this stance (I think), but then to speak only about choice is to ignore that reality. Once we accept it, we have to discuss not just choice, but at what point we take away choice. Science has a lot to say about the point (when is a fetus viable), but my point is this cannot purely be about “choice”.
For the anti-abortion side, as Sarah notes above, if they believe that there is NO point at which it is not murder, then accepting any abortions at all must be unacceptable. Obviously we would not permit a mother to end the life of her 6-month old child, even if that child was the product of rape. So why, if one believes a life to be created upon conception, should a mother be permitted to terminate a fetus that is the product of rape? Again, to be clear, this is not my position, but for intellectual honesty, I think the people who consider a life to be created on conception should be much more hard-line, because murder is murder. I recognize that some anti-abortion proponents do in fact take this position, and while I disagree with them, I think they’re at least being intellectually more consistent than those who take a more flexible approach.
I don’t have the solution – people do not seem to move on this position, no matter what argument is made – but I think it’s necessary to recognize these fundamental conflicts in both sides of the issue.
Sarah-I can’t profess to knowing details about consent bills. I was speaking more broadly, in that I simply base my position of being anti-abortion with the fact that if the woman doesn’t abort the fetus, she will give birth to a human being who will be able to live their life and eventually do things like reading and posting on internet blogs, if they so choose.
Keith’s tying abortion, which takes lives, to vaccination, which saves lives, didn’t make sense to me.
she will give birth to a human being who will be able to live their life and eventually do things like reading and posting on internet blogs, if they so choose.
Maybe. Or she may learn the fetus has an incurable neurodegenerative disease like Tay-Sachs and won’t live to see its second birthday, maybe not even its first. Or that the fetus won’t survive even a few days due to a chromosomal abnormality or other developmental problem.
I also agree with Matt’s point about these so-called “rape exceptions.” They’re nonsense anyway – does a woman have to prove she was raped to get an abortion? What constitutes proof, in that case? A conviction? – but also include exceptions for incest. So what’s the distinction there? We know children of incestual intercourse are much more likely to have serious developmental issues; it’s OK to abort such a fetus, but not to abort another fetus that has the same serious developmental issues? You can’t craft a prohibition on abortion with an exception for rape or incest that is intellectually consistent. Either, as Mark G (welcome back!) said, you oppose all feticide, or your view is internally inconsistent.
(I’ve omitted the possibility of a fetus that won’t survive till birth. I actually don’t know what anti-abortion adherents think of those cases.)
I don’t have the solution – people do not seem to move on this position, no matter what argument is made – but I think it’s necessary to recognize these fundamental conflicts in both sides of the issue.
I feel that one reason the abortion debate is so heated is there are two strongly engrained American rights that are perceived to be in conflict: the right to bodily autonomy (liberty) vs. the right to life. While I fall firmly in the pro-choice camp, I can understand how in the face of conflicting ideals people may hold intellectually inconsistent beliefs.
Matt —
Regarding your second point on the inconsistency of (some) pro-lifers.
I wonder if some of these people might be absolutist in their moral stance, but pragmatic in their methodology. What I mean is that perhaps they would agree that all abortion, even in cases of rape, is immoral, but that they are willing to accept a gradualist approach if they think it’s more likely to be successful.
Undoubtedly, some may just hold an inconsistent moral stance, but I wonder if the above might not explain much of the apparent inconsistency you are identifying.
That was a really good post, Matt. I have thought about my position on abortion for hours and hours, and I still cannot come to terms with the inconsistencies on both sides.
I feel like, on some level, we, as a society, have to make an arbitrary decision that terminating the life of a fetus up to a certain point is acceptable–even in the face of some substantial science and moral questions.