Uncategorized — Page 96

→ October 22, 2018
→ By keith

A Deepness in the Sky.

Vernor Vinge has won three Hugo Awards for Best Novel, including A Fire Upon the Deep, the first book in his so-called “Zones of Thought” series, as well as the cyberpunk-lite Rainbow’s End, but in both cases Vinge focused more on the hows of the science in his science fiction than on the story or characters. The third winner was his longest, A Deepness in the Sky, the second book in the Zones of Thought series but taking place hundreds of years before the preceding book, and despite its length and Vinge’s usual prolixity, for once he gives the reader a plot with some teeth and a few truly intriguing, three-dimensional characters. At a girthy 775 pages, it’s not for everyone and perhaps not worth the time investment, but compared at least to the other two Vinge novels I’ve read, it was the best and most enjoyable read.

The long and often confusing setup to the A Deepness in the Sky boils down to two storylines. Two human forces have both reached a new star system, with the star referred to as OnOff for its bizarre cycle of going dark every hundred years* or so, and with one planet occupied by a sentient non-human race known colloquially as Spiders. One force is the Qeng Ho band of interstellar traders, who also appear in A Fire Upon the Deep, while the other are the Emergents, a belligerent group unafraid to use violence or coercion and, as becomes clear a bit later in the book, willing to use humans as high-tech slaves by reprogramming their minds to Focus on specific tasks. The two sides agree to work together and almost immediately betray each other, with the Emergents coming out on top, leaving just a handful of Qeng Ho characters, including the mysterious old man Pham Trinli, the younger leader Ezr Vinh, and the precocious young Qiwi Lin Lisolet, who grows from annoying child to central character over the course of the novel, to try to free their side from the Emergents’ grip.

* Vinge is too clever by half with his way of telling time in the book, referring to everything in terms of seconds, so thus using Ksec (kiloseconds) or Msec (megaseconds) rather than weeks, months, or years. It may have some veneer of accuracy, since our definition of a year is tied specifically to this planet, but it is annoying as hell to read, and it’s not as if Vinge adheres to this idea of planet-independent language throughout the book.

Meanwhile, on the planet in question, the Spiders themselves are growing into a high-tech civilization, led by the eccentric polymath Sherkaner Underhill, who develops technologies that allow his specific country to survive the Dark years when their sun goes dim and the planet experiences a deadly deep freeze. Unaware that they’re being observed by aliens, Underhill and his colleagues are also pushing a cultural change that threatens the ‘natural’ order of things, defended by a right-wing religious group called the Kindred. The Emergents view the Spiders as a culture to be exploited, even more so when the Spiders discover a mineral that contains anti-gravity properties, while the remnants of the Qeng Ho hope to save themselves and the Spiders from that and the massacres that would precede the Emergents’ invasion.

Vinge’s specialty has always been his ability to conceive futuristic technologies and incorporate them thoroughly into his plots – although, again, that can work to the detriment of the story – and that’s especially true here of the “localizers,” a sort of smartdust tech that Pham Trinli trades to the Emergents, with an ulterior motive, and that allows the Emergent leader Tomas Nau to create a police state aboard their ships as they orbit the Spiders’ planet. These nanodevices, some floating and some embedded on people or objects, allow Nau and his sadistic enforcer Ritser Brughel to monitor everyone under their command and even to sense changes in mood or sentiment, including whether someone is lying to them. While slightly farfetched, the technology allows Vinge to ratchet up the tension within the story by creating a razor-thin margin for Trinli and Vinh to overthrow their leaders. The Focus technology is probably even less realistic, but introduces an advanced sort of slavery, one where the enslaved become obsessed with their specific task, losing their free will and their emotional selves but allowing the Emergents to solve bigger problems faster and thus push their civilization forward, creating philosophical conflicts within the story about the morality of such practices (although for the reader it’s hardly much of a debate).

There’s still no reason for Vinge to drone on as long as he does in A Deepness in the Sky, with maybe 500 pages of real story in a 775-page book, bloated again by descriptions of future tech and irrelevant asides, along with some subplots that just aren’t very interesting (Ezr’s attempts to save his former lover Trixia Bonsol from Focus are particularly weak). Vinge also isn’t great at creating female characters; the most prominent woman in the story, Qiwi, starts as a child, is manipulated by Nau into a not-really-consensual relationship, and only regains true agency in the last few pages of the book. It’s a sort of hard science fiction that has fallen somewhat out of favor today, with good reason, as we have more diverse voices writing in the space and an increased awareness that better prose and character development can work in genre fiction. If you’re looking to pick up a Vinge novel, this would be my pick of the three I’ve read, but I think sci-fi still has much more to offer than A Deepness in the Sky provides.

Next up: Mohsin Hamid’s Moth Smoke.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: american literature, hard science fiction, hugo award, science fiction

→ October 20, 2018
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 10/20/18.

My first dispatch from the Arizona Fall League went up for ESPN+ subscribers this week, covering Forrest Whitley, Vlad Guerrero Jr., Julio Pablo Martinez, and more. I’ll file another, likely longer report this weekend.

My latest board game review for Paste covers the Spiel des Jahres-nominated cooperative game The Mind, where all players have to try to play all their hand cards to the table in ascending order – but without communicating with each other at all.

I’ll be at the Manheim Library in Manheim, PA, on Monday, October 22nd, to talk about Smart Baseball and sign copies of the book (which will be available for purchase there too).

I sent out the latest edition of my free email newsletter on Friday night. If you don’t get it, you don’t know what you’re missing.

And now, the links…

The most important read of the week is the late Jamal Khashoggi’s final column for the Washington Post, on the need for more freedom of expression in the Arab world. He was killed by Saudi intelligence agents shortly after writing it.
Longreads (and longish reads): Graduate student Urmila Mahadev appears to have solved the verification problem in quantum computing, a major unsolved problem in the theoretical field where researchers lacked a method of knowing if a quantum computer had actually carried our your instructions.
Evangelical writer Jen Hatmaker has built a following through her books and popular blog on her faith and family. Her recent turn into political writing, on how Trump and his supporters are acting contrary to Christian beliefs and teachings, has earned her both praise and vitriol, including death threats.
Popular Mechanics spoke to nine scientists running for Congress this year across the country.
This obituary of a 30-year-old woman who died as a result of an opiate addiction, written by her parents, is crushing, and a good reminder of the humanity of people who fall prey to this increasingly common disease.
The two surviving members of the Beastie Boys, Michael Diamond and Adam Horovitz, have a new book coming out on the band’s history; Vulture has an excerpt on the mis-marketing of Paul’s Boutique.
CityLab examines why public transit works better outside the United States and tackles a few common myths. Most interesting to me: The example of Toronto’s supra-municipal authority considering the needs of the city and the suburbs when building mass transit, and the examples of European cities building bus or metro stations first and developing urban and suburban areas around them. Also, Nashville: WTF?
Sears filed for bankruptcy after its hedge-fund investor owner bled the company of most of its valuable assets, and his recovery plan signals that he’d like to continue to do so.
The Republican Party is coming after Social Security and Medicare as they try to solve the budget deficit, a crisis utterly of their own making due to tax cuts and military spending.
Racism drove white voters to switch to Trump, not economic anxiety. Try not to have a heart attack and die from not surprise.
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke failed to disclose his partial ownership of a weapons manufacturer, which creates several conflicts of interest with policy areas of his day job. You’d think that would get him removed from his post, but in this Administration, it’s just his way of fitting in.
Nevada Sen. Dean Heller (guess) pushed the VA to use an unproven and likely fraudulent ‘brain wave’ treatment for PTSD sufferers, because the company offering it has a connection to one of his senior aides.
Virginia Rep. Dave Brat (guess) told a recovering addict that he understood the latter’s troubles because he’s been targeted by negative campaign ads by his opponent. Totally the same thing.
Someone stole a Seattle homeless woman’s car, which was her only shelter at the time, after which it was found and towed. The towing company refused to return it to her, then sold it for $175, then bought it back on a judge’s order but charged her for storing it. She finally got it back after a year of fighting, although the towing company – which is the official towing company of the city of Seattle – claims she owes them over $21,000 in fees.
The conservative Weekly Standard asks why Iowans keep returning white nationalist Steve King to Congress. The Des Moines Register endorsed Democratic candidates across the state, arguing that Republicans have failed in their opportunities at the helms of our federal and state governments while obstructing attempts to stop corruption and collusion with foreign powers.
Coloradans concerned about the deleterious environmental effects of fracking should vote yes on Proposition 112, which would require a buffer zone between fracking sites and schools or water sources like underground aquifers. John Elway recorded a vague TV ad for the oil & gas companies fighting it.
Harvard Medical School and Brigham & Women’s Hospital have recommended 31 papers co-authored by a former lab director be retracted because he fabricated or falsified data.
Andrew Wakefield, whose fraudulent paper claiming a link between the MMR vaccine and autism has led to a twenty-year decline in vaccination rates, won this year’s Rusty Razor award for bad science. Indeed, the percentage of toddlers in the U.S. who have received zero vaccinations keeps rising.
The state of Arizona had to cancel a parent vaccination education course after negative feedback from about 120 parents, many of whom admitted they hadn’t even seen the course information. Vaccination levels are especially low among Arizona kindergarteners, to the point that the state’s schoolchildren are below herd immunity levels.
A pair of low-level Republican Party employees in Arizona tried to donate to state Democrats in the name of a fictional Communist party.
They’re not the only terrible people in the Arizona Republican Party: Debbie Lesko, who won a special election to replace Trent Franks in the House of Representatives this spring, is flat-out lying about her opponent, Dr. Hiral Tipirneni, in a new campaign ad. Lesko’s district includes a lot of retirees, who ought to be concerned about the GOP’s plans (mentioned above) to cut Social Security and Medicare.
A group of 21 Democratic lawmakers wants to know why the Administration is cozying up to the neo-Nazi government of Hungary, including cancelling a planned grant to support independent media in the former Soviet bloc nation, which has lurched to the right by electing an openly anti-Semitic leader.
Voter suppression in Georgia got more literal this week as county officials ordered 40 black senior citizens off a bus taking them to vote. Meanwhile, a Salon examination found that Secretary of State and current GOP gubernatorial candidate Brian Kemp has purged over 300,000 registered voters from Georgia’s rolls.
Kansas, seeing Georgia’s moves, said “hold my beer” and moved the lone polling station in Dodge City, which is 60% Latino to a location outside the city limits. It’s really amazing that I, a white American who has always lived in majority-white areas, have never had any difficulty finding a place to cast my ballots. So weird.
CAP Action found that Florida’s murder rate jumped after the state enacted a so-called ‘Stand Your Ground’ law in 2005.
A new study examines how easy it is to vote in all 50 states, with a ranking from 1 to 50. Oregon is first (easiest), while Mississippi, about 20 seconds removed from blowing up black churches, is 50th. I was most surprised to see three states in the Great Lakes region – Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio – all ranked in the 40s.
The Houston Chronicle endorsed Beto O’Rourke for Senate, saying his opponent, incumbent Ted Cruz, has shown “little interest in addressing the needs of his fellow Texans during his six years in office” while calling out Cruz’s unwillingness to serve as a check on the powers of the President.
Nature says that the biggest risk for a global pandemic comes from misinformation spread by denialists, such as “anti-vaxxers” and charlatans like Wakefield and others selling supplements to those made afraid of conventional medicine.
A reader sent along this link on the best new pizzerias in the state of New Jersey, some of which I will try to hit this winter.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: arizona, environment, frauds, guns, hip-hop, iowa, kansas, links, physics, rap, religion, stick to baseball, texas, the swamp, virginia, voter suppression

→ October 16, 2018
→ By keith

Missing Person.

French author Patrick Modiano won the 2014 Nobel Prize in Literature, and his best-known work, at least outside of France, is his novel Missing Person (originally Rue des Boutiques Obscure, a real street in Rome on which Modiano once lived), which won the 1978 Prix Goncourt, the French equivalent to the Pulitzer or the National Book Award. Modiano’s works tend to be short and tersely written, with sparing prose not too dissimilar to Hemingway’s, and a constant distance maintained between the reader and the text. (This post is primarily about Missing Person, but this summer I also read Suspended Sentences, a collection of three novellas by Modiano, which informs my opinion of his style.)

The protagonist of Missing Person is an amnesiac detective whose boss of ten years is retiring, leaving him to try to solve the case of his own lost identity and history, based on scant clues and the need to talk to people who may not remember him, or want to talk, or even still be among the living. The short novel follows the character around Paris and France, and eventually to the South Pacific island of Bora Bora, as he tries to unroll the years he lost prior to whatever caused his amnesia. He uncovers a possible answer to his identity, although it’s far from certain, and the person he may once have been was himself a frequent changer of identities as he tried to flee from the occupying forces during World War II, eventually slipping across the Pyrennées into Spain.

Even that story, however, is of dubious veracity, and there’s a sense throughout the novel that the protagonist, who also narrates the work, is grasping at any straws he can find, overly eager to get an answer to his search without worrying enough whether it’s accurate. He has a photograph of someone who might have been him, but whenever he shows it to someone who might recognize him in that context, he’s quick to ask, “Don’t you think it looks like me?” — a leading question that elicits half-hearted agreement more than actual answers. Once the narrator has a story on to which he can latch on, he also seems to drop alternate theories, which seems contrary to his new identity as a private detective and apparently a successful one at that.

It’s impossible to read a story like this without also seeing it as a meditation on identity – on our need for a back story, for example, or how on the stories we tell ourselves to provide meaning to our lives, especially when there might be things in our own pasts we’d rather gloss over or forget entirely. It’s unclear whether the protagonist did things during the war of which he might not be proud now, and there’s a trap in his easy adoption of this particular identity: what if he finds he was a collaborator, not a resister, during World War II? Or simply betrayed people who were close to him? The farther he goes down this rabbit hole, trying to convince people to give him the answers he wanted, the greater the risk he exposes himself to a story he might have preferred to forget.

And if the narrator can’t solve the mystery of his identity and past, then what remains for him? Can he be satisfied living a life without a history, or knowing his real name (or, as it seems, one of his real names)? When the foundation of our self-identification is denied to us, how does that affect our ability to function in a society that is obsessed not just with who we are or where we came from, but with where our parents came from, or whether we come from certain stock or a high enough class? What does the lack of a personal history do to someone’s self-image? Is it better to have a satisfying myth than to have the unvarnished truth – especially if the latter is unflattering or even includes something shameful?

Modiano’s stories seem to lack firm conclusions; that is certainly true of Missing Person, where the Bora Bora lead doesn’t pan out, leaving the narrator with one last clue to try to unravel his personal history, with the novel ending with a brief thought from the narrator on his quixotic mission but no resolution. He might know who he was, but he’s not sure and it appears he might never receive that closure. Modiano asks if half an answer, of uncertain accuracy, would be better than having none at all, and leaves it to the reader to judge.

Next up: I’m halfway through Vernor Vinge’s mammoth Hugo-winning novel A Deepness in the Sky.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: detective novels, french literature, nobel prize, noir, prix goncourt

→ October 15, 2018
→ By keith

Hold the Dark.

The Netflix movie Hold the Dark, which was released briefly in theaters and debuted at the Toronto film festival, is a slow-burning mix of Jim Thompson-esque noir and psychological horror, set in the bleakest of American landscapes – a small Native American village somewhere in Alaska. Based on the novel by William Giraldi and directed by Jeremy Saulner (Green Room), the movie falls for a few cliches of the noir genre but keeps the tension high at virtually every point, eventually arriving at a climax that appears to have left many readers guessing at what it meant.

A writer and wolf expert Russell Core (Jeffrey Wright) gets a letter from an Alaska woman named Medora Sloane (Riley Keough), who says her son was kidnapped by wolves and asks Core to come find the wolf and kill it. He does, but things get weird almost immediately, when on his first night staying in her house, she appears nude, wearing a wolf mask, and lies down next to him while trying to get him to choke her. Her husband, Vernon (Alexander Skarsgård), is seen in graphic scenes of firefighting in Iraq, and is nearly killed, returning home to find his son dead and his wife by that point missing, which in turn sets off a string of violent shootings that envelop an unwilling Core in their web and the manhunt for Vernon that ensues. (Medora is the young woman who waits at home for her pirate captain lover Corrado on Verdi’s opera Il corsaro; she and Corrado both die at the end, because that’s just how things went in 19th century opera.)

Hold the Dark is decidedly, deliberately creepy, with barren white landscapes and wooden cabins with dark interiors, so that nearly all of the movie is a little hard on the eyes and leaves you unsettled regardless of what’s happening on the screen. Core is the central character, although the narrative does shift to follow Vernon on the lam, and much of the camera work tries to give you that same sense of dread and confusion that Core would be experiencing as he’s exploring the Sloanes’ basement or is caught in a firefight with cops and a suspect. There’s a lot of graphic violence – almost every shooting involves blood and flesh flying from the body, certainly more than anyone really needs to see here – but the most powerful on-screen deaths are the ones that occur with little or no warning. Core is a witness to nearly all of them, and his reactions, coupled with the trouble he has coping with the short daylight hours of the Alaskan winter (it’s near the solstice, so the days are just five or so hours long), infuse the film with a sense of permanent unease, like the world is spinning just a tick faster than normal and you can’t find your footing.

Wright is especially apt for his role, as the grey in his beard and his overall mien convey seriousness and an implacability that will be quickly tested by the events of the story, and he has the deep, sonorous voice that can work even as the characters are mumbling. There is a lot of mumbling, though, which struck me as a too-hard attempt to give the movie that noir feel – it’s all serious, we’re serious, a little violence won’t even change the cadence of our speech – when the plot itself should do that. This is dark noir, like Thompson or even some James Cain, where no character is safe and thus you don’t feel like you can anchor yourself to anyone in the film. Even Keough tries to join in, with a vacant, affect-less speech that makes her sound more strung-out than anything else (exacerbated by makeup that makes it look like she hasn’t slept in a long time – which would fit her character’s arc).

The sky and the dark are frequent themes and characters mention them several times, both as a metaphor for the psychosis that appears to have gripped some of the characters in the film and as a literal reference to the effect that the wide open spaces and pervasive darkness can have on people who are already living isolated lives. The wolf mask and several scenes with wolves acting in what appear to be counterintuitive ways speak to the fact that we are animals at heart, and the story seems to ask whether we are really all that able to suppress the animal instincts within us. There’s also a subtext here, never spelled out but to which the dialogue alludes a few times (and with one picture), that I shouldn’t mention for fear of spoiling the ending, although apparently this is clearer in the book (I did not think it was very clear), but it’s important to fully understand what Hold the Dark is trying to achieve. If you can stand the violence – and I would say this was on the edge of what I tolerate – it’s a really gripping, dark vision into humanity on the edge of civilization, and most of the film lives up to the tension of a good thriller.

(One warning: there’s a rape scene near the start of the movie that isn’t explicit but makes it very clear what’s happening. The scene is shot strangely anyway, but I thought a trigger warning was justified.)

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: 2018 movies, movies, noir, psychological thrillers

→ October 13, 2018
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 10/13/18.

No Insider content this week, but I’ll have at least two posts next week from the Arizona Fall League. I did hold a Klawchat on Thursday, and did a Periscope video chat Friday (in which I played a little guitar too).

I’m hoping to get another edition of my free email newsletter out before I fly to Arizona on Sunday, so feel free to sign up for my most random and disconnected thoughts.

If you live in east-central Pennsylvania, I’ll be at the Manheim Library in Manheim, PA, on October 22nd at 6:30 pm to talk Smart Baseball and whatever else you desire.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: The best and strangest thing I read this week is this account of Bir Tawil, a tiny patch of land in northeast Africa claimed by no country, which several westerners have tried to thus claim as their own. The author is one of those people, and describes the bizarre effort by an American father to claim the land so his daughter can be a princess.
Casino magnate Sheldon Adelson is pouring tens of millions of dollars into the midterms to protect the GOP majority and thus further advance his economic plans in east Asia, such as building a casino in Japan. Consider the odds of this billionaire’s personal agenda aligning with your own economic interests before voting. Meanwhile, President Trump appears to have done Adelson’s bidding by bringing up the latter’s plans in a recent meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Politico also documented Adelson’s massive cash layout, which is heading to PACs that will likely flood airwaves and mailboxes with attack ads in the next few weeks.
I’ve written about this a few times before, but there’s another piece, this one in WIRED, about how the Cavendish banana is threatened with extinction and only genetic modification might save it. All banana plants are genetically identical, clones of the original from decades ago (when the Gros Michel encountered a similar fate), and thus they are extremely vulnerable to disease because they lack the mechanisms of evolution to survive. I reviewed a book on the topic back in 2013.
Georgetown Professor Greg Afinogenov (an assistant professor, but I’m not sure how that would affect the honorific) writes in N Plus One about the bad faith practiced by the so-called Sokal Squared hoaxers, who claimed to have uncovered blind orthodoxy in so-called “grievance studies.”
I’m still not sure what to make of this BREAKER piece on the bitcoin industry’s many roots in Hungary, which has in turn failed to convert this tech base into meaningful economic growth.
The BBC World Service’s In the Studio podcast spoke to Pandemic/Forbidden Desert game creator Matt Leacock about season 3 of Pandemic Legacy, which Leacock tested at Gen Con this past August. Friend of the dish and onetime BBTN podcast guest Rob Daviau makes an appearance as well.
The American Conservative criticizes Ted Cruz for his ‘sellout’ on criminal justice reform and his attacks on opponent Beto O’Rourke over this issue.
The New York Times reports how the FBI “investigation” into Brett Kavanaugh’s history of sexual misconduct was always limited. People who say the FBI “cleared” Judge Beer are being more than a little disingenuous. One of Kavanaugh’s classmates at Yale Law writes that the investigation was “a joke” in the Indianapolis Star, after he contacted the FBI but his offer of information was rebuffed. The Washington Post‘s Jennifer Rubin argues that the GOP’s “spin” on Kavanaugh isn’t working with voters, but I’m not convinced. I think their supporters heard exactly what they wanted to hear.
Rewire.news looks at research that might explain why white women don’t believe Dr. Blasey Ford, just as they didn’t believe the women who accused Roy Moore of assaulting them.
Think the Kavanaugh fight was just over believing men? The Supreme Court just upheld a ruling that de facto disenfranchised hundreds or thousands of native Americans in North Dakota. That state has a voter-suppression law requiring voters to have a street address to register, but many native Americans living on reservations there only have P.O. Boxes for their addresses. I’m surprised SCOTUS didn’t also order Bismarck to deliver blankets full of smallpox to those residents.
George Will describes the United States’ hard and dangerous shift toward protectionism, which will ultimately harm and possibly even shrink our economy. It’s also not working: Our trade deficit with China hit a record high last month.
Georgia’s Republican nominee for governor, Brian Kemp, is currently its Secretary of State, which means he oversees elections and voter registration, so it’s a problem that his office is refusing to process over 53,000 registrations right now in the most blatant attempt at voter suppression we’ve seen from the GOP so far. His office has cancelled over 1.4 million registrations since 2012, and nearly 670,000 just last year, when Kemp knew he’d be running for the governor’s seat. The New York Times‘s Michelle Goldberg also called out Kemp’s fraudulent tactics. All that matters to the modern GOP is winning, regardless of whether the method is fair, free, or ethical.
For example, in Illinois, the Republican incumbent in Illinois’ 14th district is running a new ad accusing his opponent, Lauren Underwood, of holding policy positions she doesn’t support, such as a plan that would double some voters’ income tax liabilities. (In an ironic twist, the GOP candidate himself voted for the GOP tax bill last winter.)
A story from April reveals that Nevada Senator Dean Heller told supporters that suppressing Democratic turnout was key to holding his seat, allowing him to vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
Ted Cruz’s national security adviser previously worked for murderous Côte d’Ivoire dictator Lawrence Gbagbo, currently on trial at the Hague for crimes against humanity.
Ah, West Virginia, you ask not to be the butt of our jokes, and then a Supreme Court justice there won’t recuse himself from a case where his personal lawyer is representing one side.
Of course, Tennessee got jealous, so a highway patrol officer working security on the Democratic gubernatorial candidate’s campaign leaked info to his opponent claiming the candidate was at “a Muslim event” that turned out to be a meet-and-greet at a falafel restaurant.
Raleigh, North Carolina’s News and Observer endorsed Anita Earls for the state Supreme Court, who has been targeted by a series of laws passed by the GOP-controlled, gerrymandered-AF state legislature.
Thirsty Dice, a long-promised board game café in Philadelphia, is (probably) scheduled to open this upcoming week. If there’s interest, perhaps we can do an offseason gaming meetup there for dish readers.
Was the supposed comet ‘Oumuamua not actually a comet, and if not, what exactly was the interstellar visitor to our solar system?
I’m assuming everyone here saw the IPCC report on how bad climate change already is and how limited our chance is to slow or stop it; if not, Scientific American has a quick overview of the dire warnings it laid out.
Some videos: If you’re not on Twitter, you might have missed this wonderful little song from Texas singer-dancer-choreographer-artist Lynzy Lab called “A Scary Time.” Within days, she performed the same song on Jimmy Kimmel Live with a small chorus of women and young girls.
Riz Ahmed explained why he fights for representation rather than diversity.
And finally, director Richard Linklater (Boyhood, Everybody Wants Some!!, and the Before Sunrise trilogy) lent his skills to this ad against Ted Cruz in Texas:

NEW tonight: @fire_ted_cruz PAC ad, directed by Richard Linklater https://t.co/FebBWcegbd

— Evan Smith (@evanasmith) October 9, 2018

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: africa, climate change, gmo, links, metoo, north carolina, stick to baseball, tennessee, texas, the swamp, voter suppression, west virginia

→ October 11, 2018
→ By keith

Klawchat 10/11/18.

Keith Law: Try to click with whatcha got. Klawchat.

Devon: As a Braves fan, I was thinking recently about the weirdest trade I can remember and it always comes back to the Alex Wood for Hector Olivera fiasco. That trade was weird at the time and it’s aged poorly. Did it make any sense to you? What’s a trade you can think of that you read and said “Huh?”
Keith Law: That’s one of the weirdest, worst ones I can think of – Atlanta’s international guys loved Olivera as a free agent, and somehow that became the justification to trade for the guy even after he’d played a little in pro ball and people realized he wasn’t very good. And then they overestimated the odds of Wood getting hurt (which he did, but only after providing a lot of value). Of course, Coppolella was on the good end of the most lopsided deal I can remember in recent years – the Shelby Miller heist.

Gamecocks: You have mentioned in the past that you think Clarke Schmidt is a reliever. Have you heard or seen anything recently that changes your mind?
Keith Law: On the contrary, he made all of two appearances this year before getting hurt again. And it’s a high-risk delivery. I think he’s more likely to be a reliever than I did two years ago, not less.

Nate: Now that each player has a full season at the MLB level, how do you project Albies, Swanson, and Camargo? All average to slightly above? Major concerns?
Keith Law: Albies has the upside of a star, but he got so homer-happy after the hot start that he nuked his own value. He has to become more disciplined first, and then some power will arise as a natural result. Swanson average regular. Camargo somewhere around there too, maybe a shade below. He’s another guy who’s shown unexpected power thanks to the MLB ball, after showing none in the minors.

Dr. Bob: Though the Yanks won 100 games, did Aaron Boone’s lack of experience show in his bullpen usage this series? Or is that unfair?
Keith Law: I think it’s quite fair – and yes, he won 100 games, but he inherited a team that won 91, and the AL was more stratified this year so I don’t think his team faced as difficult a schedule.

Stats Novice: I saw on Twitter you mentioned Bogaerts being 2-25 against Severino is just randomness, and too small of a sample to be considered meaningful data. At what point, if ever, does data like that become meaningful? Is it still possible for a hitter to perform better/worse against a certain pitcher if the sample size is long enough?
Keith Law: By the time such a sample was meaningful, so much time would have elapsed that the players would have changed to the point that the early data have lost their utility.

Nate: Which of these 5 is in the Braves rotation at the end of next season (barring injury of course): Folty, Tehran, Gausman, Newk, Touki, Wright, Gohara, Fried, Wilson, other?
Keith Law: Folty, Gausman, Touki are the three I feel most confident in. Wilson could be back by year-end but I feel like they won’t rush him next spring. I still very much believe in Fried as a starter too.

de la: Hi, thanks as always. Which young starters would be best to build around: Borucki, BKeller, Peralta, DRodriguez or Suarez?
Keith Law: I don’t have any of those guys as long-term average starters. I’m sure one will be, because baseball, but as a portfolio of guys they’re all kind of in that back-end starter bucket. Borucki intrigues me the most.

Everyone: Obligatory Victor Mesa question: Is he (and his brother) worth the hype?
Keith Law: I have heard that they are less than the hype – great workout guys, maybe not such great players. I didn’t see their workout in Miami as it was closed to anyone but team personnel.

Ozzie Ozzie Albies Free: Reading post season updates to the Phillies farm and I don’t like what I see. Obviously they haven’t hit on any of their first round picks, could you explain why you think this is? Bad luck? Bad scouting? Bad philosophy? Thanks!
Keith Law: Their philosophy on first-round picks isn’t working out. They’ve done better with some later picks, and international continues to provide depth and length to the system. But they need a change of strategy for the first pick after three straight that appear not to have worked (not counting Bohm).

TF Fredrik: What is your best guess as to where pitching will go in ten years? I would assume that front offices have been running the numbers on every conceivable iteration of filling 9 innings that we could think of. With Rays leading the charge, has the dam broken? What would be best combination of filling innings, keeping pitchers happy, avoiding injuries, & getting highest level of performance?
Keith Law: I think using of pitchers for multiple innings with one to three days off between outings will become increasingly common as a way to balance effectiveness and health.

Bill: Phillies fans should probably be concerned about Sixto’s abrupt removal from the AFL roster right?
Keith Law: Guy hasn’t stayed healthy and apparently his conditioning isn’t so great right now. It’s a concern, yes. I haven’t heard that this is serious, though.

Tom: I was happy to see that the Mets were interviewing Chaim Bloom and considering Mike Chernoff. Guys from front offices that win while not spending money would seem to fit the Wilpon’s vision. Do you think either would be a good choice?
Keith Law: I do. Granted, I’m not sure Mets fans should resign themselves to life as a small-market team…

Eric: The Twins hiring David Ross would be __________.
Keith Law: Repeating a mistake.

PhillyJake: Did you register to vote?
Keith Law: Yes. I’ll be voting pro-science right down the line.

Adam: Does a Byron Buxton for Manuel Margot challenge trade make sense for the Twins and Padres, or does one team have to give up more than the other?
Keith Law: Bad deal for the Twins.

Ryan: braves sign harper?
Keith Law: Extremely unlikely.

Adam: Considering the sheer volume of players the Padres signed from the 2016 J2 class, how would you rate the results/progress from that group so far?
Keith Law: Excellent. Seems like every two months we hear about another guy popping from that class.

mike: what was the point of toronto sending Vlad Jr to Arizona?? He’s killing it as expected
Keith Law: Gotta work (snicker) on his (chortle) defense (GUFFAW).

Ben: Did I catch an Oasis quote in the opening line? What brought out such an old lyric (from my favorite band)?
Keith Law: I’ve been playing that song pretty much every day on the guitar.

Tim: Bone Spurs removed for Nick Senzel. Any reason to fret on this kind of surgery/injury for a position player? Thanks.
Keith Law: No, unless they find the spurs damaged the UCL (I don’t think they did).

Adam: If Manny Machado is the ceiling of Fernando Tatis Jr, is Trevor Story the realistic outcome?
Keith Law: I’d be floored if Tatis struck out with that frequency.

Nick: Who are some names I should I be excited to hear for the Mets GM search? Who are some names I should roll my eyes at that they’ll likely end up with?
Keith Law: The Mets need to hire someone who is comfortable with analytics. That can be someone of just about any age. It would not be, say, Ned Colletti. (Rinse and repeat for Baltimore.)

Jeff: Keith, thanks for your insight and wisdom. Regarding the Dodgers, if money is not a factor, would you consider signing Machado and trying to shuffle Seager or Turner to make room in the infield? What other priorities would you have in the offseason regardless of the playoff outcome?
Keith Law: I’ll answer with a question: What is Seager capable of doing after TJ? Is his arm affected at all, so that shortstop is no longer feasible? That may determine the correct strategy more than anything about Machado per se

A big dumb idiot: How popular would this chat be if your dad was a plumber from Poughkeepsie?
Keith Law: Good question. My dad was actually an electrical engineer from the Bronx, which I don’t know if it’s better or worse.

Adam: Are HS corner only bats undervalued in the draft?
Keith Law: Not in my opinion. Their floor is essentially zero and their failure rate is pretty high. I would not include HS 3B in that group, though – third base is a skill position, much more than the other three corner spots, and a HS player who can play third should be grouped with second basemen.

Hernando: In three years what do you envision from the following: Jarred Kelenic, Amed Rosario, Andres Giminez, David Peterson?
Keith Law: Star, above-average regular to star, regular, mid-rotation starter. I hate the Mets, by the way.

Guest: If you were Brian Cashman, would you: a) sign Manny Machado and move Andujar to the outfield or b) sign Bryce Harper and live with Andujar’s bad defence at 3rd?
Keith Law: If they want to sign Machado, Andujar isn’t a factor. That’s a four- to six-win upgrade at third. You sign Manny and figure the rest out later.

Asking4aFriend: Which prospects are you excited to see in the AFL?
Keith Law: All of them is a little facile .. but it’s my favorite trip of the year. Nate Pearson is one. Luis Robert is another. Lucius Fox. Hudson Potts. Forrest Whitley, of course. Taylor Trammell. Nico Hoerner, Jahmai Jones as a 2b. Jazz Chisholm. Juan Pablo Martinez. And there’s this big guy from the Jays who can rake…

Mike: Is there any reason to believe Gary Sanchez will ever become a league-average defensive catcher? It seems that his defensive struggles are getting worse: I’ve never seen a major league catcher react so poorly in trying to receivable “catchable” pitches.
Keith Law: He’s looked bad, although I feel like he catches a lot of guys who throw really hard with a lot of spin on everything. We’ve seen a lot of catchers get better once in the majors, so I hate to rule it out, but I do feel a bit like he’s regressing from where he was as a rookie or even in double-A when he finally seemed to have taken the defensive side of his game seriously.

Dr. Bob: Is the key for deciding starter/reliever the number of pitches he can command? 1 or 2 pitches = reliever? 3 or more pitches = starter?
Keith Law: Very few ML starters have only 2 average or better pitches. If you don’t have a change or split, you’re going to have a real platoon issue. If you don’t have a breaking ball, you may have a lot of trouble with same-side hitters.

AES: Would you start Price, or move him into a fireman’s role? 10 starts is tiny, but there are other viable options. . .
Keith Law: I don’t think his postseason data tell us anything, but I do worry that he’s not fully healthy.

Ed: If you’re the Cubs, do you pick up Hamels’ option for next year?
Keith Law: Absolutely – or, before that, I offer him something like 2/$35 million instead.

All Mets Fans: Do you think the Wilpons are financially capable of giving out a contract to Machado or Harper?
Keith Law: Whether or not they’re capable, they ain’t willing.

JL: Hi Keith, thanks for the chats. Apologies if this is too personal or you’ve covered this before. But my wife and I have an 11 month old and due to how difficult the pregnancy was on her with some health issues, he will likely be our only child and we are ok with this. Is there any unique advice you can share about having only one child? We try to focus on all of the positives of it! Thanks!
Keith Law: All the stuff we learned or heard about raising an only child turned out to be not that useful. I don’t think we ever did anything different because she was our only one. It was easier for us that she never wanted a sibling, too.

Steve: What did you see as the biggest change in Michael King? What would his upside be given 2018 success?
Keith Law: Addressed a few weeks ago in this column. Stat line is very misleading.

Taylor: Alek Thomas seems like a potential plus hit, plus defense, average power center fielder. What do you think of his potential? Is he a future star? Thank you!
Keith Law: Potential future star, yes. Thought he had first-round ability in the draft but had the downside of playing in the cold against weak competition.

Dana: If the Yanks sign Machado, do you think Andujar has the ability to become an OK first baseman?
Keith Law: Probably, if they’re willing to move on from Bird at that spot. But see above – the presence of Andujar shouldn’t affect their choice on Machado.

Taylor: Lots of rumors in the second half of Severino tipping his pitches…again now after his most recent start. As a scout, how difficult is it to notice when someone is tipping their pitches and do you think this actually happens often or is just a convenient excuse?
Keith Law: Occasionally true, usually an excuse. Here I think it’s an excuse. His command has been noticeably off in the second half.

addoeh: I was reading this book called Smart Baseball (the author’s name eludes me right now) and there were sections about high-spin fastballs and average spin rate fastballs. But what about the effect of below average spin rate fastballs? Is the effect of spin rate linear based on the spin rate or is it more of a curve?
Keith Law: More of a curve. Way worse to have average spin. Better to be near the extremes of the range.

Nate: Do you see Weigel ever factoring into the Braves plans, or did the lost time due to injury result in him being passed by too many other arms?
Keith Law: Oh I think he sees the majors next year. He apparently hit 99 in instructs last month. Just not sure how much he’ll be able to pitch in 2019, but he’s a future rotation piece too.

Jax: Conforto had a great ending to the season. You think he’s primed to have a career year in 2019?
Keith Law: Yes, strictly because I think he’s healthy, and he would have had that season this year had he been so.

Mike: When will America realize that the only tangible form of voter fraud going on is voter suppression, which is primarily perpetrated by Republicans against people of color?
Keith Law: I would say 30% or more of American voters are completely fine with voter suppression. By the way, if you live in Georgia and haven’t called the State House and your state rep and senator to scream about Brian Kemp abusing his power to try to suppress votes for his opponent, you should be doing so today.

Jennyfer: Isn’t there a psychological component to knowing that you’ve had great success against a certain pitcher or have failed miserably against them? That’s not to say you can’t have success, but sometimes I feel like you ignore the mental aspect of the game because it’s not quantifiable across a broad spectrum.
Keith Law: If it exists it has been either too small to measure or too hard to detect in the tiny samples with which we have to work. The result in either case is that it shouldn’t affect our decision-making.
Keith Law: Also, I tend to think that players who are that vulnerable wash out before they reach the majors. The pressure on these guys to reach the top of the pyramid is already tremendous.

Archie: If you were hired to run the Giants, would you consider pursuing Goldy?
Keith Law: No. I don’t think they have the prospects for it, and that roster needs to be turned over, not propped up like Weekend at Posey’s.

Bryce Harper: Should the Nationals sign me for $300M over 8 with an opt-out for me or sign Corbin and a 2B or C instead?
Keith Law: Probably better to do the latter, as much as I believe in Harper returning to stardom. I also think Robles is a stud, and they’d extract more value from their money by playing him and Soto every day, then spending the way you suggested.

Billy: What do you think of the Dbacks potential firesale? To me, I think it’s absolutely necessary. What say you?
Keith Law: Same.

Jim Nantz: Any thoughts on candidates for the next Rangers job? I remember you were high on Cora for a few years and that’s obviously worked out well. Who’s the next guy on your list?
Keith Law: I saw Jayce Tingler’s name come up in some local media coverage and I think he’d be excellent.

addoeh: If Vlad Gurrero Jr’s dad were an undertaker from Uusikaupunki, would he still be a top-10 prospect?
Keith Law: He’d be #1 on my best prospects in pesäpallo rankings.

Rick C: I think you sell Camargo short. Sure, the ball is probably helping him, but he’s also gotten bigger and stronger, and improved his approach at the plate.
Keith Law: Bigger and stronger I buy. I don’t think his approach is actually that good.

Cooper: The Dbacks may have four first round picks and 5 of the top 50 in this upcoming draft. Is this a solid enough draft that Dbacks fans should get really excited about this potential haul?
Keith Law: It’s not a good draft but five of the top 50 is still good enough to make some noise.

Chris: Thinking of heading down to the AFL in a week or two for the first time. What are a couple things to do nearby?
Keith Law: Other than eating? I didn’t do a ton of touristy stuff while living there but the Zoo and Botanical Gardens are both great, the Science Museum is solid, and there’s a lot of good hiking in the metro area.

Steven: Do you feel vindicated at all by Alex Cora’s success? I remember you being a bit annoyed that he hadn’t been given a chance to manage before this.
Keith Law: More relieved to see him get the chance, because I knew he’d do well and respect him tremendously, and because I think it may further open the door for people of color to get legitimate interviews and chances to manage.

Kevin: Give us a conspiracy theory you give the best chance of being true. Use as loose of a definition for conspiracy theory as you need.
Keith Law: MLB knew the ball was juiced.

Steve: Does Loaisiga have a shot to be full time rotation guy next season? Showed flashes in few appearances.
Keith Law: If healthy, which he has almost never been for a full season.

Brian: Have you watched Kyler Murray at all on a football field? Even if you aren’t a fan of the sport his athleticism on the field is jaw dropping. He runs like he has a turbo button.
Keith Law: I’ve seen highlights of him running. I also think he looks kind of small even among college players.

Steve: Blake Snell is the only pitcher in history with 20+ wins, an ERA -2.00 and ave 11+ Ks in a season. Not Johnson, Grove, Koufax etc How can he not win the Cy Young?
Keith Law: Strikeouts are at an all-time high in the game right now. That’s really a bad comparison.

Jack: I know you said last year that the Braves should trade Ender (rightfully, in my opinion) and caught a lot of slack for it. Should the Braves explore that option this summer and what kind of return could they expect?
Keith Law: Yes, I still think so, but the return might be half what it would have been last winter. With Acuna there and Pache’s glove already major-league ready, trading Inciarte still makes sense. He’s a starter for a lot of teams and underpaid, so you might get two decent prospects for him.

Mike: Keith, I like the “pro-science-down-the-line” voting philosophy. Do you know if there is a site that tracks candidates based on their views on science-related issues, or are there a few “litmus test” issues you use to evaluate candidates?
Keith Law: 314action.org is a good resource. Climate change and evolution (teaching it in schools, without fantasies alongside them) are my two main tests – you’ll usually find a quick split with those two alone.

Chris: Some people have floated the narrative that Scott Boras is pissed at the Cubs for manipulating Kris Bryant’s service time by not promoting him until May in 2015 and as a result he would not only dissuade Bryant from signing a long-term contract before he hits free agency, but steer him away from the Cubs once he does. How stupid is that claim? Money talks, no?
Keith Law: It’s more likely that Bryant is still pissed than Boras is. Boras might advise his client not to take a deal, but if the client says “take it,” then they will.

Jake: Any interest in the Giants job? You could love the a very progressive city and run a team with a massive payroll, but has been slapped in the face recently due to their reliance on overpaid, older players. Seems like it could be a solid fix-it-up project.
Keith Law: I’m not on any team’s longlist, but that is a very appealing job for a qualified candidate, for the reasons you said, a longstanding analytics presence, some very good longtime scouts, and an unbelievable local food and coffee scene within walking distance of the ballpark.

Dusty: Any thoughts you have on Wander Javier coming into the 2019 season? Can he shoot his way back into the top 100?
Keith Law: He wasn’t in my top 100 before so that’s a no.

James: If pitcher vs hitter data is not useful on a 1 to 1 basis (1 hitter vs 1 specific pitcher), do you think we’ll get to the point where a pitcher can be grouped into a bucket (power pitcher, command pitcher) and a hitter’s splits against that TYPE of pitcher will be useful? For example, hitter X struggles against hard thrower with a slider, but is better against a hard thrower with a curveball? Is there value to extract from that? Presumably teams are already doing it?
Keith Law: We already do that. That’s what platoon split data are.

Diego: Any thoughts on why LaCava and Cherington would decline to interview for Mets GM job?
Keith Law: Cherington declined, as did Levine. I don’t know if Lacava declined or wasn’t asked. I think the industry impression of that job is negative – that you’re being asked to win while your hands are tied by a low payroll and meddlesome ownership.

Joules: Why would Machado insist on SS suddenly? Top 2 3B in baseball, pretty rough at SS. Is this possibly coming from his agent?
Keith Law: Maybe, but also, I wonder if this is just to open up his market further.

PD: Do you know the typical thresholds for when the P Value becomes significant for batter versus pitcher match ups? It’s dependent upon the current results wouldn’t a .050 BA over 50 or 100 PA for example be enough to say that a certain batter does not bat as well against a pitcher has he would on average?
Keith Law: It’s never. The best answer is never. I’m amazed by how often people want to come up with some number where the data are meaningful. If a batter faced the same pitcher every day for a year, maybe we could talk.

Dr. Bob: When my boys played in Little League, I noticed boys who were better than the others not be better a couple of years later. Some develop earlier than others. That must make scouting high school players tough. Some may have already peaked.
Keith Law: It’s why I ignore any list that pretends to rank high school prospects for any draft beyond the current cycle. Remember how Drew Ward was supposed to be the best player in his class? He ended up a bad pick in the third round. He was 16 as a high school freshman and huge for his age. When the other players caught up physically it turned out that had been his only advantage.

jimmyb: I know you have nothing to do with the selection of ads on the Baseball Tonight podcast, but do you find it odd (or perhaps, concerning) that ESPN is running ads for Juul, given the issues associated with specifically targeting minors?
Keith Law: I don’t actually know what that is.

Fred: Do Execs ever ask you your opinions on prospects in other orgs?
Keith Law: Of course. Now, whether they take those opinions seriously is another question…

JR: You think we get a WS rematch? I think we do.
Keith Law: Yeah, that’s my prediction. Dodgers in 6, Astros in 6. I think I’d rather see Boston get there from the AL for a different mix of players (especially getting Mookie Betts on TV all those games), and of course Milwaukee making it for the second time in franchise history (first in 35 years) would be an amazing story, but I don’t think that happens.

Chris: On a Prospects Live podcast, you were singled out as someone who was down on Andres Gimenez hitting ability because you hadn’t seen him in a while. Has he improved or is he still not an impact bat?
Keith Law: Sounds like a mistake. I just saw him this summer.

andy: If the Rockies make an earnest attempt to extend Arenado and he says no and chooses to enter the year without an extension in place, what would you do were you in Bridich’s shoes? Would you trade him or ‘go for it’ with him on an expiring deal, knowing you might end up losing him for just a comp pick?
Keith Law: No, I’d trade him. You’re talking about a team that barely made the playoffs this year – the odds of them doing so again aren’t so high that I’d value retaining him knowing we might only get that draft pick.

Steve: I realize “fairness” isn’t exactly the best word, so I’ll try this instead. Do you think the MLB postseason offers the best possible outcomes? So many games played for a potential one and done or blip over a 5 game series seems, well, unfair, especially given that the performance is used as a sign of success. Do you think there’s a may to make the postseason more meritocratic?
Keith Law: I don’t, nor do I think that’s the point. We can argue over who’s the best team after the regular season. The postseason is just a tournament for a trophy. It’ll never determine who’s best – it determines who gets the trophy. I think most fans are good with this split, as am I.

Michael K : Hi Keith. I’m a huge fan of the Giants. I haven’t heard any real rumors of who they are talking to regarding their open GM/Head of Baseball ops. Have you?
Keith Law: Not many. One name I did hear was Jason McLeod of the Cubs, who’d be excellent and has the background from working there and in Boston, in scouting and player development for two orgs with strong analytics departments. I haven’t checked to see if there’s anything to it, but he’s the right prototype for the Giants, who have been and should commit to remaining a strong scouting organization.

Deke: Have you heard of CBD gummies? They’re apparently gaining in popularity as a knockoff anxiety helper. Any opinion?
Keith Law: Heard of, there’s a little evidence that they work (it’s extremely hard to research anything related to marijuana because we live in Gilead), but I haven’t tried them.

Matt: A bit of a random question here, but do older pitchers tend to decline gradually or fall off cliffs without warning? The impetus for the question is Justin Verlander, who’s pitching as well as he ever has, but is nearly 36. I can’t help but continually worry that the next start is going to be the one where the wheels come off. Is this rational?
Keith Law: It’s rational, but also a bit irrational in that you should appreciate what he is right now in the present. We all go into that great good night eventually.

Ron: Keith- The talk going around that the Twins are looking at Ross and DeRosa just has to be that, right? I mean come on. Some younger guy with some experience and an analytical approach and rapport with the young players is needed. I hope Falvey and Levine are thinking the latter and not the former. Geeesh!
Keith Law: Again, still don’t understand the fixation with guys who’ve never managed. You have at least 120 guys managing in full-season minor leagues every year. Not one of them is qualified to even interview ahead of two guys who talk real good but have never so much as run a coat check stand?

Chuck: What is the Orioles problem with developing pitchers?
Keith Law: They have a poor track record of keeping them healthy. Getting at the root cause of that would require knowledge and access I do not have, but if I were GM there it would be my first priority, because they have good arms on the way again.

Matthew: You mentioned that Garrett Hampson might not have enough power to be an MLB regular. Do you see Myles Straw in the same light?
Keith Law: I do.

andy: How close is Brendan Rodgers to being ready? Do you think he could take DJ Lemahieu’s job starting next year?
Keith Law: I do.

Skippy : Cardinals just announced bringing Wainwright back for 2019 and Mo’s statement seems to indicate it will be pretty heavy incentive laden. Seems like a solid move? When he came back and said he actually felt healthy his k/9 and BB/9 were great. Cardinals probably didn’t *need* to bring him back but a small risk type scenario?
Keith Law: Yeah, I’m good with that. Low money, I presume, good for the clubhouse, good for the fans, nice tip of the cap to a player who’s been with the org since his debut.

Harvey: Voter fraud goes both ways. The motor voter laws in CA led to thousands of illegals being registered to vote when they picked up their drivers licenses. Both parties try to cheat their way to victory.
Keith Law: That’s not true. Also, can you get the FOH with that bothsidesism? Right now, the Republican candidate for Governor in Georgia is personally obstructing over 50,000 new voter registrations to improve his odds of winning. That is the problem TODAY. Do not give me your fetid bullshit about something that might have happened a year ago somewhere else. We solve today’s problem today. You see another problem? Good. Put it on the fucking list.

David: Hi Keith, thanks for the chats! Is Muncy’s bat worth moving Bellinger (and his strong defense) off of first to play center? Max seems adequate over there, but just curious your thoughts on the trade-offs.
Keith Law: No. I’m betting the under on Muncy repeating this next year.

DraftNut: Would draft pick trading help prevent tanking or encourage it?
Keith Law: I think it’ll help prevent it.

Lyle: The biggest voter suppression of all is closed primaries. If the parties want to have closed primaries, they should pay for them themselves. Otherwise, taxpaying voters should be allowed to vote.
Keith Law: I agree with that.

Mikey: Any chance Jake Locker could come back and play or has it been too long?
Keith Law: He has expressed zero interest in returning to baseball.

Brett: What are your thoughts on Corbin Burnes’s future with the Brewers? Does he end up as a starter next year? Can he be a No. 2 guy in their rotation? Thanks, Keith!
Keith Law: Yes to both questions.

Jd: I saw on deadspin that nobody looked good (including the heckler) in the Osuna incident. It feels fair game to rip a guy for beating his wife but are their limits other than the obvious about using bad language at the ballpark?
Keith Law: I don’t see why that’s not fair game and agree on the language used (you can easily be surrounded by kids there).

Re: Trading Ender: I understand the reasoning, but it seems hard to make the case if they don’t have a valid replacement. Say they don’t resign Markakis or anyone in FA. Then in the summer Pache is ready. I would much rather have an OF of Acuña, Pache, Ender than Acuña, Pache, Preston Tucker/Duvall. It only makes sense to me if they for sure have a For sure everyday LF/RF
Keith Law: I feel good about Anthopoulos finding a short-term replacement for Markakis.

Boa T.: I take it you don’t respect those that believe in God when you refer to it as “fantasies”
Keith Law: I referred to creationism and intelligent design as fantasies, because they are. We know that evolution happened and continues to happen, because we see it, and we are surrounded by evidence supporting it. You can “take it” however you want, but you’re just being an idiot here.

Pei: What are your thoughts on the analyses that suggest framing is worth as much as 20 runs above/below average in a single season, and therefore much more valuable of a skill than blocking/throwing? (obviously still nebulous about game calling)
Keith Law: Seems entirely valid, although I dislike that this is seen as a skill, and not stealing strikes from incompetent or merely incapable umpires.

Brett: Melania Trump recently said that she is the “most bullied person in the world.” [cleans spit-out coffee of desk]. Thoughts on who would be number 2?
Keith Law: How many people referred to her predecessor as FLOTUS as a man, or a simian, or some other animal on a regular basis?

Grover: juul is an e-cigarette I belive
Keith Law: Thank you. I wouldn’t read an ad for that, at least.

Grover: Thoughts on the Dodgers front office legal troubles?
Keith Law: I don’t know anything more than you guys do from the SI report and now the Daily Beast report on them failing to report a sexual assault allegation to MLB, but … not great, Bob.

Grover: If a team owner asked to meet with you to discuss a front office position, and asked to meet at an Olive Garden, do you immediately remove your name from consideration?
Keith Law: That’s a huge red flag for me.

John: Do you think it would help with getting rid of mascots and offensive names if writers would stop using them and instead defer to the city? Seems like outta sight outta mind might help those that can’t grasp institutional racism…
Keith Law: Maybe. Then again, I haven’t referred to the team in Cleveland by name in over a decade, and it hasn’t made a bit of difference.

Brady: You’ve given credit to a few of the ‘no-experience’ managers noting they had a strong support system from the front office and analytics team. Do you think some of these front offices want a manager that they can control, ie) have a say in making lineups, who plays where, how to use the bullpen, etc.? I’m not saying that’s right, but is it easier to accomplish that with someone who’s not had control over all the on-field decision making before?
Keith Law: Why not both? Why not hire someone with the experience to make better battlefield decisions and who’s also happy to work with R&D before and between games?

Jackie: You want voter suppression? 3 million Puerto Ricans get zero senators, 35 million Californians get two senators, and 1.5 million Dakotans get four senators. That’s how you get Kavanaughed.
Keith Law: And 700,000 residents of Washington DC, almost half of them African-American, get zero voting representation in Congress. And I think we know why.

Pat D: My sister just gave birth to her fourth child, second son. He has an older brother who is not quite 2. When should I start getting them to play baseball?
Keith Law: You haven’t started yet?

DEF: Board game question for you: Our family loves to play games, but we’re having a hard time coming up with a game that the entire family can play: my 10 year-old is handling fairly complex games pretty easily, but my 7 year old is developmentally delayed – he’s tired of snakes and ladders and candyland and the like. Got any recommendations for something with a little bit of depth that is also pretty simple/straightforward?
Keith Law: More randomness tends to mean more skill levels can play. I don’t know where your 7-year-old might fall on the skill scale, but games I call low complexity or ‘gateway’ games might be perfect – Ticket to Ride is one that’s easy to learn, has some light strategy, but can still entertain adults and older kids.

Nelson: Do you drink flavored seltzer? And if so, are you worried about the report that came out on Lacroix and some of the ingredients it contains?
Keith Law: I don’t. I drink plain sparkling water. The report and lawsuit are basically just chemophobia in a nice suit, though.
Keith Law: That’s all for this week. I’m heading to Arizona next week and will be at games Monday through Friday, so I don’t know when the next chat will be, but I do expect to have at least two updates while I’m there for ESPN+ subscribers. Thank you all as always for reading and for all of your questions!

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: klawchat

→ October 10, 2018
→ By keith

Sabrina.

I’ve said a few times that I’ve never been a fan of comic books, neither as a kid even when I had friends who liked them nor as an adult when longer versions of these, often called graphic novels, have crossed over somewhat into the mainstream and even earned critical acclaim. Alan Moore’s Watchmen is often cited as the greatest or one of the greatest graphic novels ever published, but I found it thin, clichéd, and very short on plot. The form itself isn’t conducive to great storytelling because so much real estate is dedicated to the images that pushing a narrative forward becomes secondary to the artwork, and creating a plot worthy of the term “novel” would require several hundred more pages and, I imagine, a substantial amount of additional work for the artist.

So when Nick Drnaso’s Sabrina showed up on the longlist for this year’s Man Booker Prize, becoming the first graphic novel to earn the honor, my immediate question was whether the work was worthy as a novel, or simply there because of the novelty of the format. (It didn’t make the six-title shortlist, announced a few weeks ago; this year’s winner will be announced next Tuesday.) I can at least say, however, that Sabrina uses the graphic novel’s form to enhance the underlying story, adding to the senses of dread, suspense, and isolation that affect its central characters, while also creating a jarring sensation of unease as Drnaso switches settings without visual or textual warnings. The story itself is also different, with three interlocking narratives stemming from a single source, telling a contemporary tale of our disastrous modern media environment and how it affects the psyches of vulnerable people.

Sabrina herself only appears in a few panels at the start of the book; her disappearance and the discovery of her murder at the hands of a stranger set off the three main threads of the plot. Her boyfriend Teddy, devastated and unmoored by these events, goes to stay with his friend Calvin, an Air Force serviceman stationed in Colorado who works a job that is socially and emotionally isolating, while Sabrina’s sister Sandra is left to try to cope with her loss and the detritus of Teddy’s life with her sister. After Sabrina’s death is discovered and someone leaks video the killer recorded of her murder (never shown or described in much detail, but implied to be highly graphic), the story becomes the focus of American news outlets for several days, after which the mainstream media moves on to the next murder, allowing conspiracy theorists to step in, claiming the murder was staged as a false flag event and that the three protagonists of the book are actually crisis actors. Teddy ends up listening to an Alex Jones clone on the radio while he’s holed up in Calvin’s house, refusing to leave, even though doing so furthers his isolation and essentially claims his grief is fraudulent, while Calvin and Sandra are doxxed and harassed by delusional randos (including a stand-in for the fired FAU professor James Tracy, himself a Sandy Hook hoaxer).

There’s more narrative depth here than you’d find in a short story, albeit probably less than you’d get even in a 200-page novel; there is only so much a writer-artist can do with the aforementioned problem of visual real estate. Drnaso compensates brilliantly by packing subtext into many panels, with or without dialogue, that support that ongoing sense of unease or psychological imbalance. When the characters don’t feel ‘right,’ it’s immediately apparent in the panels – with their facial expressions or posture, with the angles from which Drnaso depicts them, and even sometimes with his use of lighter or darker shading in specific panels.

Sabrina probably also benefits in the minds of critics and readers for how of the moment the story is. We are inundated with fake or slanted news reports from sources outside the mainstream who have gamed various algorithms to appear higher on social media feeds or search engine results – I’ve seen links to Daily Caller and Gateway Pundit, both alt-right blogs with minimal editorial controls or regard for veracity in their stories, appear in the first ten results of Google searches – and conspiracy theories follow every tragedy that hits the news. The effects of this, itself an extension of our increased alienation from each other as we spend more time online and less in the real world, on something as difficult and fundamental as grief, especially when processing the horrible and sudden death of a loved one, are enough fodder for a book this length and then some. Drnaso has taken a critical, timely subject, and presented it in a new way, both with his art and with his storycraft, to produce a work that is worthy of the praise it’s received.

Next up: I’m reading an Agatha Christie novel before diving into Vernor Vinge’s mammoth Hugo-winning novel A Deepness in the Sky.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: 2018 books, american literature, contemporary literature, graphic novels

→ October 9, 2018
→ By keith

Dark Money.

The documentary Dark Money, now airing free on PBS after it received very positive reviews at Sundance this spring, focuses primarily on a very specific case of electoral manipulation in Montana, where the Koch brothers used various 501(c)(4) front groups – “social welfare” nonprofits that don’t have to disclose their donors – to flood districts with misleading or fraudulent materials in the last 30 days before elections. Montana’s history of restrictive campaign finance laws and tradition of citizen legislators makes it the ideal environment to expose these methods, which are at least subversive and unethical even when they’re not illegal, but a system designed to thwart such manipulation still wasn’t enough to stop it or make it easier to detect or fight. And, as the filmmakers show throughout the story, what happened in Montana is increasingly happening elsewhere, with the Koch brothers in particular behind much of it in their fights to eliminate labor unions, demonize public education, and gut environmental regulations on businesses. It’s horrifying, and Dark Money makes it clear that we the people have few if any tools available to stop it.

Dark Money largely follows the work of an investigative reporter named John S. Adams, who was let go when the state’s largest newspaper group shuttered its office covering state affairs and decided to start working on this case on his own. In several elections for the state legislature, candidates found themselves targeted by mailers that included inflammatory and often false claims, but were unable to effectively respond to them because they arrived at voters’ houses so late – and because responding would have required campaign funds they didn’t have. These mailers came from ‘dark money’ groups, nonprofits with innocuous names who don’t have to disclose their funders’ identities and in many cases don’t exist beyond a PO Box. Adams, with the help of some of the targeted candidates (many of whom were Republicans who were primaried from the right by candidates aided by dark money groups) and eventually some volunteer attorneys who helped the state build its case against one legislator, did his best to follow the money, and with some good fortune was eventually able to show that the Koch group Americans for Prosperity was behind the mailers. The film follows one specific case, against Republican Art Wittich, for accepting illegal contributions from the National Right to Work Committee, which is largely funded by the Koch brothers. The group has even continued meddling in Montana elections past the court case and timeline covered in the documentary.

Filmmaker Kim Reed does a superb job generalizing the case to constituencies beyond Montana, including showing how the Koch brothers and affiliated groups helped rig the recall election of Scott Walker and stack the Wisconsin Supreme Court with allies who shut down a state investigation into the Walker campaign’s finances. The IRS regulation on 501(c)(4) groups, which are categorized as “social welfare” organizations, is one major obstacle to allowing voters to know who’s funding those mailers or donating to political candidates. Another is the emasculation of the Federal Election Commission that began under Don McGahn, who joined the FEC with two other Republicans and made a pact to always vote in a bloc that effectively prevented the Commission from doing anything, killing the group’s authority to adjudicate in cases of campaign finance violations. (The FEC, by design, is a six-member panel, with three commissioners from each party, and thus is prone to 3-3 ties along party lines.)

And the third, of course, is the 2010 Supreme Court ruling Citizens United v. FEC, where the Court ruled 5-4 that corporate donations to political campaigns were protected speech under the First Amendment – thus arguing that corporations, which are legal entities, have the same free speech rights as people. (Corporations primarily exist in law as a way to shield investors or owners from many forms of legal liability; they also enjoy different tax benefits from individuals, and also allow owners to gain from economies of scale not available to smaller entities. Corporations may act as individuals in the economic sphere, but they are not individual actors in the political space, or at least were not until Citizens United.) The rise of dark money also has created the possibility or even likelihood that foreign corporations or governments are funding American political campaigns; who’s to say that Chinese companies or the Russian or North Korean governments aren’t funding American Tradition Partnership or other front groups that support mostly conservative candidates who have agreed to reduce or eliminate regulations in exchange for campaign support?

There is so much to infuriate voters in Dark Money; even if you agree with these astroturfing groups’ policy aims, do you really agree with their methods? Should campaign funding be untraceable? Should there be consequences for sending out fliers with misleading or false statements against candidates? To what extent should corporate money be involved in politics when, as described in the documentary, those candidates will in turn vote on matters like environmental regulations where the interests of the companies funding candidates do not align with those of voters (assuming voters like clean water)? One of the many examples in the film that serves as a microcosm for the increasingly dirty, toxic atmosphere of our body politic is when the Montana branch of Americans for Prosperity holds a “town hall” meeting, promising voters they can ask a specific candidate why he’s supporting Obamacare or voting certain ways on issues … but didn’t invite the candidate himself, despite using his name and image on fliers advertising the event. The candidate shows up, and the group’s director, Zach Lahn (now involved in a Koch-funded primary school in Wichita, despite having no background in education) claims he left the candidate “two messages,” and then tells a voter that he didn’t lie about the event because he used a “different definition of town hall.” Our rights are at stake, and we don’t know who’s paying for the information that shows up in our mailboxes, or to whom the names on the ballot might be beholden once they’re elected. Even if you don’t care about the methods used to get the candidates you think you want in office elected, once they’re there, they may be voting for a lot of things you didn’t know they’d support. Dark Money is the ultimate cautionary tale as our republic’s foundations begin to crack.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: 2018 movies, american history, astroturfing, documentaries, montana, movies, politics

→ October 6, 2018
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 10/6/18.

My lone piece for ESPN+ subscribers this week was a trifle, a look at the top ten players under 25 on this year’s playoff rosters, focusing specifically on potential impact this month. I also held a Klawchat on Thursday.

I sent out another edition of my irregularly scheduled but free email newsletter earlier this week. Many thanks to the nearly five thousand of you who’ve subscribed already.

I’ll be at PAX Unplugged, the huge tabletop convention right here in Philadelphia, on November 30th-December 2nd, and the organizers just released their official schedule this week. It’s a great time with a ton of open gaming and many publishers showing off their latest releases.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: Esquire‘s Ryan Lizza looks at the dairy farm owned by the family of anti-immigration zealot Rep. Devin Nunes (R), who has taken pains to conceal the fact that the farm is in Iowa, not California, and appears to run primarily on the labor of undocumented immigrants. Nunes’ family members tailed and attempted to harass Lizza as he investigated the story.
ProPublica looks at how the negligence Texas hospitals and medical practices allowed an incompetent surgeon to keep practicing until rival doctors finally pushed hard enough to get him investigated and eventually convicted of aggravated assault for the deaths and injuries resulting from his surgeries. His employers appeared to know he had substance abuse problems, but didn’t report him to the appropriate national database.
The Kavanaugh controversy has provided some useful cover for the President after the New York Times reported on potentially illegal tax schemes he used, including “outright fraud,” that increased how much money he gained or inherited from his father’s real estate empire.
This memoir-ish post from writer Sarah Miller on how writing a review of The English Patient that she didn’t really believe altered her whole writing career is fascinating, including how it emphasizes the importance of writing for yourself, not to please others.
Voter rights activist Jason Kander, who had been running for Mayor of Kansas City, announced this week that he’s seeking treatment for his PTSD and depression and thus ending his campaign. He served in Afghanistan in the early 2000s and says he’s been living with the aftereffects ever since.
The economic data the Administration touts don’t actually tell the story they want you to believe: working Americans are worse off under Trump. Average earnings are rising faster than median earnings, because the gains are flowing to top earners, so those in the middle or below are losing ground relative to inflation.
The President and his son are pushing a narrative that women everywhere make up sexual assault claims to destroy men. The President and his son are lying, and the pernicious effects go beyond the Kavanaugh nomination: this will only further depress rates of women reporting rapes or assaults to authorities. It’s also worth remembering that a man is more likely to be a victim of an assault himself than to be falsely accused of committing one.
Here’s the Kavanaugh Corner, with all the links directly related to the case in one bullet point so you can skip them if you’re just exhausted by it all: The Intercept has a piece on how frequently and brazenly the candidate lied to the Senate committee; the dynamic duo of Mayer and Farrow write in the New Yorker how the FBI ignored relevant testimony from former classmates of the candidate, even when those classmates tried to contact the agency; WIRED has a long read on the disinformation network that pushed GamerGate, pizzagate, QAnon, and now is trying to exonerate Kavanaugh, using botnets, sock puppets, and useful idiots like Cernovich and Posobiec; Charles P. Pierce excoriates the vulgar talking yam yet again, this time for Trump openly mocking a sexual assault victim, to a cheering crowd of sycophants; and eight Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee signed a letter to Republican Chuck Grassley accusing him of misleading the public with tweets on the investigations into Brett Kavanaugh.
The city of Tulsa, Oklahoma, would like you to forget the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre that killed over 300 black residents and left over 10,000 homeless.
Vulture’s Mark Harris argues the SNL Kavanaugh sketch didn’t work, and that our political moment has made such attempts at comedy too difficult. I thought the sketch had plenty of great moments (starting with “WHAT?”), but at 12 minutes it ran on way too long, much like “The Big Ear Family.”
Alison Moyet, late of new wave duo Yaz, signed a letter criticizing the LGBT charity Stonewall for supporting trans rights.
A new study of existing evidence argues that withdrawal from SSRI antidepressants is more severe than commonly believed.
Anti-vaccine nuts are now trying to tie their irrational claims to the #MeToo movement against rape and sexual harassment.
Mercury, a bugbear of anti-vax loonies (even though neither elemental mercury nor the toxic methylmercury was ever in vaccines), is about to become more prevalent in our air and water as the Environmental ‘Protection’ Agency loosens rules on mercury emissions. It’s yet another futile attempt to bring back the coal industry even as the world moves beyond it.
If you missed it among the many worse news items this week, three scholars revealed a nearly year-long hoax where they got seven ridiculous papers published in the field of what they called “grievance studies,” largely journals aimed at gender studies or studies of sexual orientation. The Chronicle of Higher Education offers a balanced look at the controversy, now colloquially called “Sokal Squared,” with academics weighing in on both sides, arguing that this was a worthwhile takedown of fields of study that favor outrage over scholarship, or arguing that the scholars picked worthless targets while ignoring more serious problems in academic publishing (like p-hacking).
The Athletic’s Marc Carig and Eno Sarris looked at how the Yankees became one of the leading users of analytics in MLB (subscription required). They aren’t often named as such a team – critics love to trot out the A’s and Rays when bashing sabermetrics – but they’ve spent as much or more on the area as anyone.
A new rule in Scotland forbids mapmakers from putting the island of Shetland in a separate box.
This editorial cartoon on Kavanaugh and today’s Republican Party speaks volumes without a word.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

→ October 5, 2018
→ By keith

The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs.

If it seems like there’s a surfeit of information out there on dinosaurs for readers or viewers of all ages (“Dinosaur Traiiiiiiin…”), then you might share my surprise to see the publication this year of a new book, The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World, that covers similar ground. Providing an overarching history of the reign of the members of the Dinosauria clade from their rise prior to the end-Triassic extinction event, through the Jurassic era, until the Chicxulub meteor caused the K-Pg extinction event and wiped out all non-avian dinosaurs from the planet around 66 million years ago, the book works down from a high-level overview and then dives to the surface to provide more specific example. Author and paleontologist Steve Brusatte, who appears on the BBC program Walking with Dinosaurs, has managed to create a book for the mass market that doesn’t skimp on the science or on the sort of specific details that give texture and relevance to the broader story, while also drawing very specific parallels between the two extinction events that bookend the dinosaurs’ reign and the mass extinction event going on right now due to the actions of mankind.

(Full disclosure: This book was published by the William Morrow imprint of HarperCollins, which also published my book, Smart Baseball, and I received a copy of the book through my relationship with them after Mr. Brusatte reached out to me via Twitter.)

Brusatte provides two main recurring features in the book while telling a fairly linear history of dinosaurs, including why they ended up the dominant species after the Triassic-Jurassic extinction event (one caused by runaway global warming that was exacerbated by the release of methane trapped in glaciers and polar ice caps, which is exactly what anthropogenic climate change is threatening to do right now) and how they died off in rather quick fashion. One is that he profiles several of the best-known dinosaur species or genii, including Tyrannosaurus rex and Triceratops, in disciplined, fact-based fashion to try to counteract many of the myths that have grown up around various sauropods through the magic of fiction. (The demon spawn of Michael Crichton come in for special criticism throughout the book.)

The other feature is a series of concrete examples from the field, as Brusatte goes to dig sites and/or talks to other paleontologists who have done so and gives detailed descriptions of how new species are found, identified, and categorized. China is the hottest spot for new dinosaur finds, and he explains why that is in geological terms, as well as why T. rex was only king of some parts of the world. Understanding what we know directly from Jurassic era fossils and what we can infer from those bones but also where and how they were found helps the reader follow the scientists’ path towards a more accurate taxonomy of sauropods and of their timeline on the planet.

Near the end of the book are two chapters that stood out as fascinating enough to live on their own as excerpts or as something a reader who might not have the interest or the reading level to get through an entire book would enjoy. One, “Dinosaurs Take Flight,” explains that birds are indeed the descendants of dinosaurs – actually, they are dinosaurs, in Brusatte’s telling – and explains how and why they evolved. The idea of something as complex as an avian wing or an eyeball emerging from the process of evolution is often a stumbling block for those who choose to deny the facts of the matter, but Brusatte lays out the story in plain language, with examples, without detracting from the sheer interest level of what he’s describing. The other is the final chapter, “Dinosaurs Die Out,” which has one of the best pop histories I’ve seen of the discovery of the Chicxulub meteor impact and the Alvarez hypothesis, by the father and son team of Luis and Walter Alvarez. The pair did a bit of forensic geology to discover that the iridium layer in the world’s crust at the K-Pg boundary was too dense and too uniform to have originated on the planet, and thus must have come from an external source. They looked for an impact site from a large meteor or comet and eventually found it in the Yucatán peninsula of Mexico, a buried crater now known as Chicxulub, a nearby town. Brusatte leads the chapter with a fictional but probable rendition of what the day of impact looked like; the meteor hit at around 67,000 miles per hour, hitting with the force of over 100 trillion tons of TNT, causing earthquakes near 10 on the Richter scale and winds over 600 mph, killing everything within about 600 miles of the blast site.

Brusatte in turn credits Walter Alvarez’s book T. rex and the Crater of Doom as a source, calling it “one of the best pop-science books on paleontology ever written,” high praise as I think Brusatte himself may have written one too. I knew fairly little about dinosaurs coming into the book, other than what I might have learned 35 years ago (probably inaccurate) or learned more recently sitting alongside my daughter, so this book was right in my wheelhouse – a pop-science book that never talks down to the reader but also remembers to provide some fundamental knowledge before deep dives into the specifics. It’s fun, it’s interesting, and Brusatte also manages to make many of the scientists in the book seem like stars (google Jingmai O’Connor, whom he calls the world’s preeminent authority on avian dinosaurs, to see what a cool scientist is like). I’m glad Steve contacted me as the book would likely have slipped right past my radar otherwise.

Next up: I read Nick Drnaso’s Booker Prize-longlisted graphic novel Sabrina today, and just started Patrick Modiano’s novella Missing Person.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: climate change, dinosaurs, evolution, history of science, non-fiction, science

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