I had two new posts for Insiders this week, one on the Futures Game rosters, which were announced on Friday; and a post of scouting notes on Orioles, Phillies, Rangers, White Sox, and Royals prospects I’ve seen in the last few weeks. That Futures Game column included Houston’s Forrest Whitley, but he was removed from his last start with “left oblique discomfort,” so I’m expecting him to be replaced on the roster before game day.
I have two book signings for Smart Baseball coming up this month. Next Saturday, July 14th, I’ll be at Politics & Prose in Washington, DC, signing books and talking baseball with Jay Jaffe; and I’ll be at the Silver Unicorn Bookstore in Acton, Massachusetts, on July 28th, hosted by store owner and former Fangraphs/Hardball Times writer Paul Swydan.
And now, the links…
- The best thing I read this week was this massive essay from author/comedian Sara Benincasa called Reading Joan Didion in California Restaurants, although it’s really a meandering set of observations on her life that is by turns funny and poignant. Her line about one of the joys of sharing one’s art with the world is spot on. I do wonder if her family’s name was Dahomeycasa before they changed it, though.
- From April 2017, the Atlantic predicted that plant proteins called lectins would be the next health boogeyman for idiots. I found this because a friend suggested a book that blames lectins, without real evidence, for a panoply of health problems.
- Henderson Island, an uninhabited island in the south Pacific with a raised coral atoll and a unique, diverse native ecosystem, is also covered with around 18 metric tons of trash, mostly plastic.
- Several locations on the planet set all-time heat records last week, more proof that the Chinese will stop at nothing to perpetrate this elaborate ‘climate change’ hoax.
- Progessives in the U.S. often point to Scandinavian economies as exemplars of their proposed policies, but Denmark is heading in the opposite direction, with strict laws aimed at forcing immigrants to assimilate into Danish society more quickly, including mandatory instruction for children in “Danish values.” The quotes from Danish natives sound an awful lot like those of white American voters who support Trump.
- Timothy Geithner served as Treasury Secretary under Obama, where he condemned predatory lenders who charged usurious interest rates on loans to the poor. Now he runs one via the private equity firm of which he’s President.
- Neshaminy High School in Langhorne, PA, a town between Philadelphia and Trenton, has a history of corruption and other controversies under Principal Rob McGee. The latest and most damning instance appeared in the student newspaper, which uncovered evidence that the school was deliberately hiding sexual harassment complaints against teachers and discouraging victims from reporting. The newspaper’s outgoing editor in chief also accused the administration of outing LGBTQ students who wrote critical articles in the paper. For all of this, McGee was recently promoted to an executive position that will pay him over $150,000 a year.
- Trump considered invading Venezuela. This seems like a terrible idea on so many levels, not least of which is that we’d end up with a lot of dead American soldiers in the process.
- Residents of an apartment complex in Riviera Beach, Florida, are organizing against their landlords over black mold and sewage leaks in their complex. The residents also accuse the city of failing to enforce fines for code violations.
- Conservative something-or-other Dinesh D’Souza tried the whole “Republicans are the party of civil rights!” argument on Twitter and got absolutely dunked on, repeatedly, by historians & writers.
- In North Carolina, an open white supremacist is running for the state legislature, and was running as a Republican until the party belatedly withdrew its support last week. (I don’t know how his name will appear on the ballot.)
- Daniel Radcliffe revealed in an interview recently that he has some very racist friends. So why wouldn’t he do something about it?
- The Phoenix New Times named its seven best new restaurants so far for 2018, of which I can vouch for three: Roland’s Market (a collaboration between Chris Bianco and the couple behind Tacos Chiwas), Starlite BBQ, and Taco Chelo. I’ll try to hit Osteria before an AFL game in Mesa this fall too.
So any/all assimilation attempts are bad? You don’t see any benefit? I don’t think Denmark has the perfect system but wouldn’t it make sense to at least encourage it enough that these families have a chance for success? Rather than discourage them from trying to learn the language and understand the culture due to some politically correct idea that any attempt to “fit in” with the culture and society in which you live is racist?
It’s one thing to encourage immigrants to learn the language and customs of their new home, but in this context assimilation has generally meant the replacement of one set of cultural values and beliefs with another. Particularly from looking at what at the article cites as law in Denmark, this seems more akin to the Indian Residential Schools (not sure how to make hyperlinks so https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Indian_boarding_schools ) which are generally considered to have been a nightmare for the students.
There’s quite a difference between policies that help enable assimilation vs. policies that make it compulsory. I would support funding for ESL programs for example, where people who are so inclined can take advantage. In the US, there is certainly a subset of people clamoring for assimilation that are exhibiting at least xenophobia if not overt racism. None of those people seem all that concerned about the lack of assimilation by the Amish or Mennonites.
So any/all assimilation attempts are bad is a strawman. I never said that, nor does the article say that. As others have already said for me, it’s the way in which Denmark is enforcing assimilation, often against parental wishes, with laws that discriminate via disparate impact (they differ by neighborhood, but the neighborhoods’ ethnic makeup is so different that the laws are de facto discriinatory), that is problematic.
The Republicans have at best done piss poor job vetting candidates that want to run as a representative of the party in elections, and at worst something much more sinister. In addition to Corey Stewart in Virginia, Arthur Jones in Illinois, and Russell Walker in North Carolina, there is also John Fitzgerald in California who is openly a Holocaust denier.
http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/395913-california-gop-congressional-candidate-runs-as-open-holocaust-denier
I don’t understand how record setting high temperatures in select locations are evidence enough for a snarky comment on climate change but record setting lows (https://weather.com/storms/winter/news/2018-01-09-coldest-first-week-of-january-on-record-east-2018) are evidence of localized weather and not global climate trends.
I’m sure that I misinterpreted the comment and that in some unknown way I was supposed to infer an entirely separate intent from the link, and me commenting back and on some level daring to criticize means that I am immediately lumped into the “stick to sports” crowd (which is akin to asking sportswriters to commit genocide), but I don’t know, for some reason I decided to do it anyway. Yes I know, the door is that way and because Keith has the platform he is inherently right and I am inherently wrong and only he should never have to see opinions or interpretations that differ from his where he doesn’t expect to see them.
I’ll see myself out.
Oh and thanks for the great baseball analysis, it’s one of maybe two or three reasons I still have ESPN Insider. Truly, great work.
Perhaps because there’s research that shows climate change may cause those record lows, by weakening the stratospheric polar vortex.
As for the second part of your post, I’m not sure what you expected to accomplish here. Nobody here says I’m inherently right, and differing opinions are welcome, as long as they’re not delivered with insults or other vitriol. Unfortunately, I get a lot of the latter here, and I’m not going to tolerate that on my own site. You can insult me somewhere else.
Well that link describes it influencing Eurasia, (Using hierarchical clustering, we show that over the last 37 years, the frequency of weak vortex states in mid- to late winter (January and February) has increased, which was accompanied by subsequent cold extremes in midlatitude Eurasia) not North America, which is what my link was referring to. But my point wasn’t that cold extremes can’t be caused by climate change, but that it’s argued repeatedly by mainstream sources (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/climate/trump-tweet-global-warming.html) that you shouldn’t look at localized weather extremes to make determinations about global climate change trends. Except when we’re supposed to, I guess.
I didn’t intend to accomplish anything, there is no accomplishing anything in these discussions. I will say that dismissal and name calling (snowflake) is usually how you respond to people who disagree with you, so I don’t know if that’s entirely true. My goal was mostly to vent frustration with the system that’s in place where sportswriters have their political opinions, share them, as is their right, choose mostly to respond to people who object in dumb or insulting ways, and that’s end of it. The platforms of twitter, and (mostly) baseball-related chats don’t lend themselves to thoughtful political back and forth between people who have well-researched and reasoned opinions or interpretations. And why should you or Bill Barnwell or any employee of The Ringer or Deadspin etc. etc. listen to me anyway, I’m a lowly entertainment industry assistant with 130 followers on Twitter, you have a massive platform that I’ll likely never have and it’s much easier to dismiss with snark and sarcasm anyway.
I’m sure me being frustrated with that system makes me a snowflake too, but it is what it is. And I was serious, I really value your opinions and analysis on baseball.
I think you’d need some real evidence to argue that climate effects in Eurasia are unique to Eurasia and don’t apply to the other hemisphere.
As for your second claim, it’s because climate change causes extreme highs, including heat waves. Thus, a week of extreme high temperatures in disparate locations may be further evidence that the planet is warming due to man’s effects on the climate. Again, I think your snark is misplaced.
As for dismissal and name-calling, that’s simply not true. If someone disagrees with me in a civil fashion, I’m happy to engage with him/her whatever the platform. When people become uncivil, I walk away – mute, block, ban, whatever. (You don’t even see the awfulness directed at me in chat questions I don’t post.) I have plenty of other readers who do want to engage with me in a civil manner, and I’d prefer to spend my time on them.