Stick to baseball, 8/18/18.

My biggest piece this week was my annual Gen Con wrap-up for Paste, covering the 20 best games I got to play, demo, or just watch at the convention, and discussing pretty much everything else I saw too.

For Insiders, I wrote up what Shane Baz’s inclusion means for the Chris Archer trade, with scouting notes on Adam Haseley, Nolan Jones, and some pitching prospects. I also held a Klawchat on Thursday.

I sent out the latest edition of my free email newsletter on Friday. Feel free to sign up for more of my ramblings, plus links to all of my content.

And now, the links…

Comments

  1. Right or not, amazing how we live in a time where the story about impeached judges can be so quickly headlined in pure political terms without mention of the underlying abuses of the taxpayer’s dime. The thought of a $32,000 couch in my living room is still cracking me up.

    • I agree with you. The judges should be sanctioned, assuming the allegations are true. I don’t know what the sanctions would be in WV. The timing is what’s political about it.

    • The Dude Abides

      Yes, the timing is what’s political. A Democratic member of the legislature introduced impeachment proceedings last February, but the GOP majority stalled until the mid-August deadline for new elections of the justices on the court, which will now let the GOP governor appoint the entire court to serve for two full years.

    • A GOP majority stalling on something regarding a Supreme Court so a GOP executive could make a pick? Surely, you jest!

  2. A Salty Scientist

    The main problem here is that you can pretty much never say what caused someone’s cancer; we can make educated guesses, of course, but cancer is aberrant cell division, and can happen without any apparent external cause.

    While this is true, I think it’s important to make clear that there is at best weak evidence (based on a multitude of studies) that glyphosate can cause cancer. The tobacco companies escaped litigation for years because nobody could *prove* that any individual lung cancer case was caused by cigarettes. They ultimately got nailed because states could show that smoking causes a large increase in cancer risk at a population level (80-90% of lung cancer cases are smokers), which can be used to estimate financial burden. There is no clear health risk for glyphosate use, and it has undoubtedly decreased agricultural costs.

    • There is no clear health risk for glyphosate use, and it has undoubtedly decreased agricultural costs.

      And decreased food costs to the consumer, no? There’s societal value in that.

    • A Salty Scientist

      Yes, it very likely has decreased food costs. To clarify, my argument is that even if there are minor occupational health risks associated with glyphosate, there are net societal benefits. I would argue that there are no societal benefits to tobacco use, only costs.

    • I dunno, tobacco generated a lot of jobs in Washington, DC, for a lot of years…

  3. Brian in ahwatukee

    I’ve been a fan of Melissa Lockhard for a long time and was really moved by her piece on her late husband. Serious bamf.

    Glad you shared that

  4. The irony of the “Neo-Confederates” having pages in Russian, Chinese, Japanese, and Spanish is pretty high. I can see some Russian developer telling them he would like with them and simply taking their money for little work. The Russians want big groups, like the NRA.

  5. Really nice list, Keith. The Melissa Lockhard piece was very hard to get through.

  6. I’m sorry but some times you can say what most likely caused someone’s cancer. Asbestos is one of very few things that can mesothelioma. The standard for a civil verdict is preponderance of the evidence. It’s pretty much more likely than not. The attorneys might be really good. But I haven’t heard the scientific evidence. I wasn’t at the trial. Maybe you have heard the evidence. But San Francisco juries are very educated, I am certain and 289 million tells me it was very likely compelling.

    • The standard for a civil verdict is preponderance of the evidence. It’s pretty much more likely than not.

      That’s not what a ‘preponderance’ means; if the jury decides side A is 51%, then they choose side A. In science, however, 51% is not sufficient evidence to prove a hypothesis. It’s not even close.

      As for the “compelling evidence” you haven’t seen, the American Council on Science and Health disagrees with the verdict, calling it a “hit job on science.”

      Your asbestos point is valid. That is a rare exception. Many cancers have possible causes, not silver bullets. Some cancers have no obvious causes at all. I knew a woman in her late 20s who never smoked, whose parents never smoked, and who had no other environmental risk factors for lung cancer, but died of the disease anyway.

    • A Salty Scientist

      Asbestos as a cause of mesothelioma is about as tight as tobacco causing lung cancer (i.e. 80% of cancer cases are linked to asbestos exposure). However, there are still cases of mesothelioma that have not been linked to environmental causes. You can come up with a probability that tobacco or asbestos caused an individual’s cancer, but you can never prove that those agents caused the particular mutations seen in a given cancer patient. For the case of glyphosate, the meta-analyses show either no effect or a low effect that may be confounded by other correlated variables. The chance that glyphosate exposure caused an individual’s cancer is either very low or nonexistent, in stark contrast to cancer patients that were exposed to tobacco or asbestos.

      The jury got this wrong. It also happens in non-scientific cases, but even forensic pseudoscience has put innocent people in prison or worse. In cases leading to harm and death, we want justice and someone or something to blame. Cancer sucks. One of its many reasons for sucking is its randomness. I know people who have taken exceptional care of themselves only to get cancer before 40, and others that smoked their whole lives a died of other causes past the age of 90.

  7. That is what preponderance means in law.

    See civil pattern jury charge 3.2 on burden of proof.

    http://www.lb5.uscourts.gov/juryinstructions/fifth/2014civil.pdf

  8. BTW – just having science in your name doesn’t mean you always have the right intentions. See this story from 2013 on the American Counsel on Science and Health and their methods of funding by Mother Jones.

    https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/10/american-council-science-health-leaked-documents-fundraising/

  9. Thanks for sharing that piece by Melissa Lockhard. As someone who lost an older brother to lung cancer (smomed for 30+ years, quit 7 years ago, but, still too late) this summer on almost the exact timeline- symptoms (pneumonia) in January, diagnosis in early June, passed on August 3, it really hit home & caused a lump in my throat. He was in the hospital for most of the last 40 days of his life & like Melissa & her husband, when I visited, we would watch/talk about baseball to have a diversion from the obvious.

  10. No biggie, but it’s Gillmor.

    A friend on Facebook turned me on to the Vox piece about friendship, and it rings true to me. We’re much more flexible in our youth, willing to stretch our bounds to try something new, make a new acquaintance in pursuit of friendship, date someone who’s quite different. And most people get set in their ways as they age, meaning it’s much easier to flake on people to stay home or choose not do something that challenges you or do your own thing. YMMV, of course, but it’s true in my case and I’ll try and challenge those comfort levels more often. Nothing great is achieved by staying at at room temperature.