Three new Insider pieces since last week: My annual season predictions post, a Grapefruit League scouting roundup (including Phils, Tigers, O’s, Rays, Pirates, and Atlanta prospects), and a draft blog post on three possible first rounders. No chat this past week, as I’m in North Carolina for the NHSI and am headed over to East Carolina today to see the two big bats for Wichita State.
Smart Baseball is now out in paperback, just in time to put one in every Easter basket you hand out this year.
And now, the links…
- Vox’s Ezra Klein dissects the insidious racism behind Sam Harris and Charles Murray’s claims that there are actual, inborn IQ differences between races. (There almost certainly aren’t.) Harris, perhaps more widely known for his atheist writings and advocacy, responded by throwing a tantrum where he revealed private emails between him and Klein that revealed Harris himself to be by turns intransigent and an expert goalpost-mover.
- The Guardian’s long read of the week is by a woman suing over her “dream” internship with the publication Monocle for unpaid wages.
- The Atlantic, an intellectual literary magazine with a progressive tradition that dates back well over 100 years, hired alt-right troll Kevin Williamson, who proposed hanging all women who’d had abortions and referred to a black kid as 3/5 of a person when he wasn’t referring to the kid’s “primate gestures.”
- A Stoneman-Douglas student writes in the NY Times that her efforts to be kind to mass murderer Nicholas Cruz did nothing to prevent him from shooting up the school.
- The Washington Post reports that the maker of Peeps is trying to end its pension, leading to a protracted fight with its union and an ongoing lawsuit.
- Senator James Lankford (R) of Oklahoma spoke to NPR of continuing effort by Russian troll farms to sow dissent online in the U.S., often by weighing in on both sides of hot-button issues.
- Indiana’s Republican government appears to wish to emulate other states to its south, first with the anti-LGBT bill of a few years ago and now with a new bill that stigmatizes any woman who’s had an abortion and later reports any physical or psychological problems related to it.
- The plastic residues from take-out food containers are polluting the world’s waterways, as these single-use items don’t biodegrade, but instead break down into smaller and smaller particles of plastic.
- More from the Washington Post – I subscribe, and I would recommend it to anyone interested in good journalism and current events – on how studies of the Paleocene Eocene Thermal Maximum give researchers more evidence to fuel projections of the damage climate change will do to the earth.
- Two great baseball articles this week, both connected to Nats players and authored by the Washington Post’s Chelsea Janes. The first is a superb profile of Bryce Harper as the young superstar begins his walk year before free agency. The second profiles Eireann Dolan and her husband Sean Doolittle, calling them baseball’s most ‘woke’ couple.
- Former New York Giants player Corey Widmer withdrew his name from Montana Football Hall of Fame consideration because of the sport’s link to concussions and CTE.
- Two-time Top Chef alum Mike Isabella is facing multiple sexual harassment accusations.
- Staring at tiny screens is ruining our eyes — and perhaps also making us pay less attention than ever to the world around us.
- Facebook’s ad-tracking scandal isn’t just limited to that site; Most online publishing relies on the technology, even the outlets who are busy writing about Facebook’s privacy ‘problem.’
- Cancer researchers discovered lung tumors with rudimentary digestive tracts, which probably isn’t as terrifying as it sounds but would make a good starting point for a sci-fi/horror film.
- Florida’s legislature just can’t stop making public education there worse, such as allowing creationism into classrooms and, now, through state lawmakers ignoring conflicts of interest in pushing school choice laws. The swamp you want to drain may be in Tallahassee.
- My friend Kelly Swails, an author of fantasy and YA fiction, wrote about changing her lifelong baseball rooting interest as a result of love, life, and being in the right ballpark at the right time.