anti-science — Page 5

→ March 2, 2019
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 3/2/19.

For ESPN+ subscribers this week, I wrote three pieces, breaking down the Bryce Harper deal, ranking the top 30 prospects for this year’s draft, and offering scouting notes on players I saw in Texas, including Bobby Witt, Jr. I held a Klawchat on Thursday.

On the gaming front, I reviewed the Kennerspiel des Jahres-winning game The Quacks of Quedlinburg for Paste, and also reviewed the digital port of the game Evolution for Ars Technica.

I went on the Mighty 1090 in San Diego with Darren Smith to talk Manny Machado, Olive Garden, and the Oscars, and on TSN 1050 in Toronto to talk about Ross Atkins’ strange comments on Vlad Jr.. I also spoke to True Blue LA about Dodgers prospects, and joined the Sox Machine podcast to talk White Sox prospects.

I’m due for the next edition of my free email newsletter, so sign up now while the gettin’s good.

High Street on Market’s Sandwich Battles begin this Monday, with tickets available for $25. They’re my #1 restaurant in Philly, in large part because their breads are otherworldly.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: GQ has a length profile of the prolific and highly disturbed art thief Stéphane Breitwieser, who stole artworks valued at over $1 billion but never sold anything.
21st Century Fox was hit with a $179 million penalty by an arbitrator over a wide scheme to defraud the actors and producers of Bones of residuals from streaming on Hulu. Fox lied about the profits they were receiving from Hulu, of which Fox owns 30%, and at one point a Fox executive signed both sides of a deal between the two companies.
MLB.com’s Mike Petriello, who was a huge help to me when I was working on Smart Baseball, has a superb primer up on the Rapsodo and Edgetronic devices that are revolutionizing player development, especially in the area of ‘pitch design,’ where coaches and pitchers can work together to change or develop pitches by using real-time data that show how changes in grips or release points affect a pitch’s velocity and spin. Driveline Baseball, mentioned in Mike’s piece, has a blog post up on gaze research, or tracking how hitters see the ball. Technology has allowed teams and players to measure things that were either estimated by scouts/coaches in the past or that were simply brushed off as unmeasurable.
Little Falls, Minnesota, has found success in fighting opioid addiction by treating it as a disease, rather than as a crime or a personal failing. It’s an approach that has worked in other countries – Portugal is a paragon in this area – but goes against the Puritanical strain in American culture that sees addicts as degenerates.
What if climate change leads to enough cloud loss to further accelerate the warming of the planet? The odds of this are higher than we previously realized.
Why is California’s Attorney General refusing to release a list of cops convicted of crimes? Xavier Becerra, running for re-election this year, has even rejected public records requests from his own agency, which has led to lawsuits and would appear to violate open-records laws.
Marcela García writes in the Boston Globe how the should-have-won-Best Picture film Roma has exposed the deep racism within Mexican society.
A popular talking point among Republicans right now is that doctors are “killing babies” right after they’re born. The President said it in his State of the Union address, and it’s been repeated ad nauseam over the last month. Dr. Jen Gunter, an OBGYN who herself gave birth to a son so premature he could not survive, points out what a dangerous lie this line is.
Anti-vaxxer Forest Maready, who likes to depict people with autism as “tragedies,” has a new book coming out that resurfaces the debunked myth that vaccines cause autism. Amazon and Apple are planning to sell it, but I signed this petition asking them to pull the title from their stores. Meanwhile, an inquiry from Rep. Adam Schiff led amazon to pull six anti-vaccination “documentaries” from prime video.
Anti-vaxxer groups on Facebook are harassing pro-vaccine doctors by trashing their Yelp and Google ratings as well as flooding those doctors’ Facebook posts with comments. Facebook has done little to nothing to combat the problem. The Atlantic points out that the Facebook anti-vax community is quite small, just loud, and banning them would be easy for the platform.
WIRED argues that amazon’s anti-vaxxer problem is worse than Facebook’s.
A Nova Scotia chiropractor lost her license for spreading anti-vaccine information and making other unfounded claims. We should strive for the same kinds of laws around chiropractors, naturopaths, and even the rare medical doctor who embraces this sort of bullshit.
CNN also weighed in on tech outlets failing to police the anti-vaxx bullshit on their platforms.
The Washington Post looks at how anti-vaxxers are responding to the overdue public backlash against their efforts, as well as bills in various state legislatures to end religious and/or philosophical exemptions to mandatory vaccination requirements.
Scientific American presents public policies we can use to fight anti-vaxxer lunacy.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch‘s Kevin McDermott asks why so many Americans are rejecting science in the face of incontrovertible evidence.
Italian researchers used CRISPR to create a genetically modified version of a malaria-carrying mosquito; if released, it should lead to collapses of that specific species and thus reduce malaria transmissions.
Paste‘s Jacob Weindling noticed that CNN stacked its phony ‘town hall’ for Bernie Sanders with political operatives/lobbyists posing as regular folks.
LA Times movie critic Justin Chang wrote that Green Book is the worst Best Picture winner since Crash, calling the vapid white-savior film “an embarrassment,” “insultingly glib and hucksterish,” “a self-satisfied crock,” and a “palatable brand of godawful.”
Late Night with Seth Meyers rather perfectly sent up the film with their ‘trailer’ for White Savior.
And apparently Green Book producer sent critic Jenni Miller a condescending, tone-deaf email where he doesn’t even know the main character’s real name.
In a bit of things coming full circle, Pig Destroyer’s John Jarvis has formed a new baseball-themed grindcore band, Kolten Wong City, a name that alludes to Kowloon Walled City, whose bassist, Ian Miller, is part of baseball-themed grindcore band Puig Destroyer, whose name alludes to … well, you get it now.
Why are progressive artists still working with Morrissey despite his embrace of far-right causes and outright racist statements?
Talk Talk’s singer and main songwriter Mark Hollis died this week at age 64. His last release was a solo album in 1998, after which he retired from music to spend time with his family.
Splinter writer Samer Kalaf released an email exchange he had with conservative NY Times writer Bret Stephens, without Stephens’ permission, but I think Kalaf comes off far worse here than he realizes.
Roland’s Market, a collaboration between Chris Bianco and the couple behind Tacos Chiwas, closed without warning last month. The location will be converted into a larger outpost of Bianco’s Pane Bianco.
The former editor of the Rocky Mountain News writes of his fear that local journalism will continue to fade and die as newspapers are plundered by hedge-fund owners.
Charlotte Riley describes the game Patriarchy Chicken in a column subtitled “why I refuse to move out of the way for men.”
The FTC is finally cracking down on scammers who buy fake reviews on amazon, going after the seller of a bogus weight-loss ‘supplement.’
In board game news, Disney’s Villainous: Wicked to the Core hits Target tomorrow; it’s exclusive there for a month and will later roll out to other outlets. I’ve played it, and it’s as good as the original, but with rules that are much clearer for first-time players, enough that you might do better to start with this before going back to the first game. (This is a standalone expansion that you can combine with the original.)
Renegade Game Studios has Hex Roller, a new roll-and-write game that I haven’t seen yet, up for preorder.
Days of Wonder announced a few weeks ago that their next title will be Corinth, an update/retheme of the game Yspahan that alters some core rules and eliminates the caravan (which was a dominant strategy in Yspahan).

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: 2018 movies, addiction, anti-science, art, baseball, board games, california, climate change, frauds, links, movies, oscars, pseudoscience, social media, stick to baseball, vaccines

→ August 17, 2017
→ By keith

Alan Levinovitz is, by day, a professor of philosophy and religion at James Madison University, focusing “primarily on the relationship between religion and literature, with particular attention to classical Chinese thought and comparative ethics,” according to his official bio. Yet he stepped way out of his lane in the best possible way with his 2015 book The Gluten Lie: And Other Myths About What We Eat, which dissects the history of fad diets and the misunderstandings or blatant falsehoods behind claims that foods like flour, sugar, and salt are “toxins” or otherwise harmful.

The gluten lie of the title is the first major food myth Levinovitz tackles, in part because it is so pervasive right now. While some people suffer from a real autoimmune disease triggered by ingesting gluten, known as celiac or celiac sprue, thousands of others have given up gluten for dubious reasons, including the belief in “gluten sensitivity,” a medical condition for the existence of which there is scant evidence. Gluten is not inherently harmful, but it’s blamed for all sorts of current health evils, from obesity to autism to heart disease to cancer to the quack favorite, “leaky gut syndrome,” which isn’t even real. Numerous books excoriating gluten, including Wheat Belly and Grain Brain, have become bestsellers based on questionable or nonexistent science, taking advantage of a gullible public eager for quick fixes and explanations for their health woes. (Here’s the answer no one wants to hear: obesity, autism, heart disease, and perhaps even cancer are at least partially explained by genetics, and there isn’t much you can do to alter that part of your system.)

Levinovitz starts out by giving the history of glutenphobia and the very real celiac disease, explaining along the way how some doctors refused to accept proof that gluten was the cause of celiacs’ illness, generally because it interfered with their profits. He details the criminal behavior of Walter Kempner, whose name is still easily found on Duke’s campus because his “rice diet” was popular even among celebrities, but who operated a de facto cult, convincing women to be his sex slaves and whipping other patients who didn’t adhere to the diet’s strict limits (around 1200 calories/day). He also covers Dr. Sidney Haas, who believed bananas had some magical cure for celiac disease, so that his patients would get better – until they later ate wheat again. Today’s charlatans may not be so violent or obstinate, but they are profiting off the science ignorance of the public by convincing people that one ingredient is making them sick, offering a quick-fix rather than the more difficult treatment of a healthful, balanced, calorie-limited diet and regular exercise. It’s much easier to just blame the bread.

Gluten isn’t the only enemy Levinovitz exonerates; the new food nemesis is sugar, and he describes the war on sucrose and fructose, along with the past wars on fat and salt, none of which was really based in sound science. (The research on sugar is nascent compared to that on the other fields, for political reasons as much as scientific ones, so I’m not quite ready to give sugar a complete acquittal yet – but he’s right that evidence against it is overstated.) The idea that salt is dangerous still persists across a broad swath of the population, especially those my age and older, because it was everywhere in the 1980s and 1990s, from warnings about salt intake to the prevalence of “salternative” products like NoSalt (which contains potassium chloride, safe in low doses but lethal in moderate ones) or Mrs. Dash (salt-free spice blends). The truth is that sodium is necessary for most people – salt is the only rock we eat, and we eat it because we need it – and only dangerous for a narrow subset of the population, like folks with high blood pressure, Meniere’s disease, or other rare disorders around the body’s homeostasis of sodium. It’s unlikely that you’re eating too much salt, and if you cook most of your food rather than eating out or buying it already prepared, it’s unthinkable.

The low-fat craze, which is also still with us albeit at a lower level of intensity, is based on some outdated science and a history of corporate interference and corruption that led to government condemnation of fat in its dietary recommendations. (Don’t eat what the USDA tells you to eat.) Again, your body needs fat; in fact, you may crave it. Fat contains 9 calories per gram, compared to 4 for proteins or carbohydrates. Humans evolved in environments of scarcity, and fat, typically animal fat, was the most calorie-dense food source available. Such cravings may be ‘hardwired’ in our genes – that is, humans carrying genes that rewarded them for eating fats and sugars fared better in natural selection, and thus craving those foods may now be innate.

The word “natural” in there draws special ire from Levinovitz, as most modern diet fads revolve around some misunderstanding of what a “natural” diet means. Some people simply assume anything artificial is bad, as if your body knows whether a molecule you consume was created in a forest or in a lab. The same applies to the fear of GMO foods. Paleo diets are based on a poor understanding of how early man lived and ate, demonizing foods that can be healthful (whole grains) just because Thag the Caveman no eat them. Others claim you should avoid dairy because it’s not “natural” to consume the milks produced by other species. Levinovitz goes after hucksters like the Food Babe and Joseph Mercola, who demonize harmless ingredients with scary names (and, in Mercola’s case, vaccines and real medicines) to convince you to buy their books and supplements.

Science-ignorance is rampant in our society; I find copious examples every week for my links roundup, and it particularly bothers me when it comes to our governments setting policies that put people’s health and lives at risk. The Gluten Lie aims a little lower; if anything, Levinovitz’s main goal seems to be protecting your wallet, and perhaps your taste buds, from falling prey to groupthink and con artists who’ll peddle what you want to hear in exchange for some of your money. If you want to lose weight, reduce your caloric intake. If you have other health problems, talk to your doctor. But don’t deny yourself the glory of Neapolitan pizza or fresh pasta just because someone on your internet told you that gluten was evil.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: anti-science, Food, food science, food writing, nutrition

→ August 16, 2017
→ By keith

Not a Scientist.

Dave Levitan’s 2017 book Not a Scientist: How Politicians Mistake, Misrepresent, and Utterly Mangle Science couldn’t have come at a better time … or a worse one, I guess, if you’re at all rational-minded and believe that science is real and should inform policy decisions on science. Levitan’s book looks at the various ways our elected officials – really, our elected Republican officials in nearly every example in this book – either ignore science to suit their goals or twist it to justify bad decisions. He wrote the book last year, but it was published this spring, so while our Dear Leader doesn’t figure much directly in the meat of the book, Levitan has added an introduction to at least address the topic of anti-science, which is only growing in importance as the United States continues to cede any leadership role on global issues like climate change and ocean acidification.

This quick read will be pleasant enough for right-minded people who accept facts as they are, but it won’t tell you much you don’t already know. Levitan identifies about a dozen different tricks pols use to ignore scientific realities that interfere with their plans, and you won’t be surprised at the names that appear or the topics under discussion. Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe – I’d identify these guys as Republicans, but you know they all are – makes various appearances for his climate denial, since he’s in the pocket of the oil and gas industries and gladly ignores the evidence that man-made activities are warming the planet or that fracking is harmful. Trump and Michelle Bachman both appear for their vaccine denialism. Marco Rubio and Mike Huckabee also appear on climate denial. Ted Cruz and Mitch McConnell both pushed the “global cooling” hoax – which was never a scientific consensus or proven hypothesis of any sort – as part of their denialism. Mo Brooks (Alabama) pushed some anti-science nonsense about immigrants spreading deadly diseases to justify his xenophobia. Rick Santorum appears for his bogus arguments against an EPA standard aimed at reducing mercury pollution in the water and air. George W. Bush gets quite a bit of ink here for the reasons he used for cutting funding for basic research. There are, to be fair, a couple of Democrats in here, including former DEA head Chuck Rosenberg, who threw out some serious bullshit on the topic of marijuana to try to rationalize the government’s treatment of it as a drug as dangerous as cocaine or meth. Even Barack Obama gets a little smackdown, although in his case, his error was overstating the benefits of a scientific endeavor, the Human Genome Project.

The readers who would really benefit from Not a Scientist are the folks least likely to read it: The politicians I just mentioned and all of the people who vote for them. Science is not subject to your personal approval. Vaccines work, life evolved from a single common ancestor, the climate is warming and it’s our fault, GMOs are safe, chemtrails are fake. You don’t get a vote on any of this – but you do get to vote every November, and many people (probably not many of you specifically) vote for candidates who publicly disavow or attempt to discredit settled science, all in the name of pursuing other policy goals. Their words and actions put everyone at risk – literally everyone, when it comes to climate change, and more than just humans, but coral reefs, tropical frogs, even many microorganisms whose roles in the global ecosystem we don’t even yet understand. This stuff matters, much more than whether two men living 2500 miles away from you get a piece of paper that says they’re married, but the Republican Party of 2017 has got everyone convinced that gays and ISIS are the real threats and climate change is some sort of progressive hoax. People who don’t get this, who vote for Inhofe and McConnell and Brooks and Rubio and of course the guy in the White House, need to read Not a Scientist. But they won’t, and their celebrations last November and this past January were just another nail in our collective coffins.

If this stuff bothers you as much as it does me, check out 314 Action, a new nonpartisan science-advocacy group that encourages more STEM professionals to run for political office so that we get voices in Washington DC and every state capital who speak out in favor of science and fact.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: anti-science, climate change, denialism, non-fiction, politics, science, vaccines

→ August 12, 2017
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 8/12/17.

I’m back from a week of vacation in Aruba, which was lovely, not least because I turned my phone off when we took off from BWI and didn’t turn it back on until we landed on US soil seven-plus days later. That means my last Insider posts were at the trade deadline, including breakdowns of the Yu Darvish trade, the Sonny Gray trade, and the Justin Wilson/Jeimer Candelario trade.

I’m back at Paste with a new boardgame review, this time of the two-player variant of Uwe Rosenberg’s massive Caverna, Caverna: Cave vs. Cave.

I appeared on the Ringer’s Achievement Oriented podcast, co-hosted by Ben Lindbergh, to discuss the current golden age of boardgames and how that might be affecting videogame funding. I also spoke with Jeff Krushell, who worked for the Blue Jays for some of the same years I did, about my book, Smart Baseball, and the role of analytics in the sport.

While I was away, the Washington Post ran a favorable review of Smart Baseball.

I’ll be at GenCon 50 in Indianapolis starting on Thursday, appearing on a few panels, signing copies of Smart Baseball on Friday at 2 pm (or if you see me walking around), and trying lots of new boardgames. I hope to see a bunch of you there.

And now, the links…

From Paste comes the ultimate breakdown of that insane SF Craigslist job posting. It has to be seen to be believed – and, for the record, I think the posting was serious and the authors possibly the least self-aware people outside of show business.
I mentioned the drop in videogame funding – specifically via Kickstarter – which Ben & co-host Jason pointed out to me via this link.
The headline for this piece, calling two-factor authentication “a mess,” is a bit overblown, but it’s true that 2FA isn’t the panacea it was promised to be. I use a hardware token for 2FA for some critical accounts.
The vaccine-denier lunatics traveling the US in a bus to show their bullshit movie Vaxxed tried to take their show to Australia, but the Aussies denied them entry and banned two of them from reentering Australia for three years. Australia is looking more and more like the sensible United States every day.
Trump’s anti-science proclamations have further energized the anti-vaccine movement, making it even more critical that those of us who support science – rational people, that is – are just as vocal about vaccines’ safety and efficacy.
There’s a bill likely to pass the House of Representatives with something like bipartisan support that uses the fight against sex trafficking as a cover for stripping liability protections for content providers. Imagine if Facebook was liable for copyright infringement every time a user posted a photo on the site without the copyright owner’s permission.
“Those with access to large amounts of money and raw power have been able to subvert all reason and fact in collective decision making.” Al Gore has a new documentary out and spoke to the Guardian about the pernicious influence of money on Western democracies.
Splinter looks at how that money has led the religious right to deny climate change.
It would be just fine with me if science-denier Jill Stein would just go away already.
Saudi Arabia, a so-called ally of the United States, has one of the most repressive regimes in the world when it comes to women’s rights (they have almost none), which is leading Saudi victims of domestic abuse to flee the country entirely.
“Clean” eating is codswallop, but it sells. The Guardian dives deep on why so many people swallowed this snake oil.
And speaking of snake oil, why don’t journalists question studies funded by advocacy groups the same way they question studies funded by industry?
Orphan Black is about to conclude its fifth and final season, which I’ve saved up on the DVR to binge after the minor league season ends. The show’s success has come in part due to its willingness to engage directly with fans online, including incorporating fan suggestions as details in actual episodes. It’s not a coincidence that I’ve been able to write about the show a few times, since I’ve been a vocal fan as well, ranking the clones for BBC America
and discussing the show’s use of boardgames in its stories.
Boardgamers in greater Philly: there’s a big boardgame convention, like GenCon, coming to the city in November. PAX Unplugged is dedicated to all things tabletop, and I’ll be there with bells on, signing books somewhere and walking the floor. Tickets (badges) are now available if you’re interested.
GIF-master CJ Fogler wins the Tweet of the Week with this feline/boardgame pun.

@keithlaw @Adam_Jacobi pic.twitter.com/ZGILMdp05j

— CJ Fogler (@cjzero) August 7, 2017

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: anti-science, boardgames, british television, climate change, food science, links, pseudoscience, stick to baseball

→ May 27, 2017
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 5/27/17.

My one Insider piece this week was on Luis Robert, his deal with the White Sox, and the poor history of Cuban position player free agents. I did not hold a Klawchat, and will have another mock draft up on Tuesday.

Smart Baseball continues to sell well and I am very grateful to all of you who purchased it. I have about 100 signed bookplates that I can send out to readers who’ve bought the book, and I’ll get that info to everyone soon – probably in my next email newsletter.

And now, the links…

Longread: Pro Publica exposes abusive working conditions at Case Farms, the chicken purveyor that provides meat to many major brands including KFC, Taco Bell, Popeye’s, and Boar’s Head. Skip those brands if you’re horrified by what you read here.
Another longread: The Guardian looks at the great London property squeeze, as affordable housing disappears from the metropolis. The same is happening in some American cities – New York and San Francisco come to mind – where many people who work in the city can’t afford to live in or even close to the city. I’m talking about people you expect to be there, like teachers, first responders, even the ‘invisible’ workers in restaurant kitchens and late-night cleaning crews. They need and deserve a place to live.
Make Michigan sick again! A Republican lawmaker there claims rules to let parents opt out of vaccination mandates hurt ‘parental rights,’ oblivious to the irony that it hurts the rights of those parents’ kids to avoid preventable diseases. All religious and philosophical exemptions for vaccinations should be eliminated, period. The science on this is as unequivocal as it gets.
The Washington Post‘s Dave Weigel explains how the Seth Rich conspiracy hoax shows how fake news still works, which was followed two days later by a piece from Rich’s parents asking these nutjobs to stop politicizing their son’s murder. Fox News blowhard Sean Hannequin has taken a “vacation” in the wake of his own reprehensible role in promulgating this insanity. If you want to see how incredibly stupid, gullible, and obstinate otherwise normal-seeming people can be, search Rich’s name on Twitter. But really, don’t do that.
The last 50 years of climate change have brought exceptional plant growth to Antarctica.
Actress-turned-loon Gwyneth Paltrow said recently that anyone who wants to “fuck with” her needs to “bring (their) A-game,” to which one scientist responds, we’re not fucking with you, we’re correcting you.
The NY Times looks at Twitter co-founder Evan Williams’ (@ev) quixotic quest to ‘fix’ the Internet by developing a new model for selling content. I don’t think it’s going to work.
A South African hunter was crushed to death by an elephant after it is fatally shot. I have just one question: Why the hell are we still shooting elephants?
A sociology professor from Occidental College (not the deliberate one) writes in TIME that all universities should ban fraternities. I think she gets half the argument right; what she misses is how such social ‘clubs’ can also serve to undermine institutional efforts to fight discrimination and allow wealthy kids to isolate themselves from less privileged classmates – and thus to reinforce the old boys’ network that came about when universities were limited to families who could afford the tuition up front. (That’s the main purpose of “finals clubs,” Harvard’s unofficial, not-exactly-banned alternatives to fraternities, which are under attack and yet have been defended by unlikely voices. I was not a member of any finals club.)
Gunning for Snowflake of the Year honors, Alabama’s Governor Kay Ivey (a Republican) signed a bill preventing local governments from removing Confederate monuments. Remember, this is the same GOP that preaches decentralizing power from the federal government to the states. It’s almost as if the Republican party’s core platform is based on self-interest rather than actual principle.
Not to be outdone, Ayatollah Greg Abbott of Texas joked about shooting reporters just two days after now Representative-elect Greg Gianforte physically assaulted a reporter who asked him about Trumpcare.
The City of Commerce, Texas, is under attack after its police chief illegally let his 14-year-old drive, then accosted and arrested a black woman for driving around them, calling her a “black bitch.” The City has denied the woman’s claim that Crews called her that term, but has offered no explanation for why she was forced to spend a night in jail; she claims it was because she refused to apologize to whoever called her that slur.
A Baltimore attorney was arrested this week for offering a rape victim $3000 to decline to testify, then threatening to deport her.
Morrissey (as in the Smiths) has outed himself as a bigot, especially when it comes to Islam.
An African-American student at Bowie State University was killed by a white University of Maryland student in what authorities are bizarrely not calling a hate crime even though the suspect was a member of a Facebook group that called itself “alt-Reich.”
Meanwhile, the man accused of killing two people on a Portland, Oregon, train is a well-known white supremacist in that area. The victims had tried to intervene when the killer was harassing two Muslim women on the vehicle.
Is the key to fighting superbugs ending our war on less harmful bacteria? In other words, does every bacterial infection need antibiotics? The more we dose ourselves (and our pets and our livestock) with such drugs, the faster we end up with bacteria our drugs can’t kill because we create a process of unnatural selection.
Our President is now actively hurting the U.S. dollar. Add to the list of things I thought Republicans would care about, but that they’re ignoring because it’s inconvenient.
More from Pro Publica: Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, is a landlord from hell.
Charles Blow wrote las week for the New York Times that there was blood in the water around this Presidency … and in five days it has already been lapped by new disclosures of the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia.
Could economic stratification and ecological strain lead to the collapse of western civilization? Of course, the United States is doing its best to find an even faster and more efficient way to achieve the same end.
A physician wrote about the potential disaster of the Administration’s anti-abortion views and proposed policies, which she says “are not grounded in reliable evidence.” The money quote, not just on reproductive rights but this entire Administration: “These appointments are a stunning example of what happens when willful ignorance gains a powerful platform.”

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: anti-science, chicken, climate change, environment, food safety, harvard, hoaxes, links, stick to baseball, vaccines

→ May 20, 2017
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 5/20/17.

My one baseball post this past week was the annual ranking of the Top 25 MLB players under 25, which causes more “read the intro” violations than anything else I write every year. I also held a Klawchat on Thursday while in Minneapolis; I will do a quick eats post from there soon, but I’m about six topics behind here due to travel and lack of sleep.

For Paste, I reviewed the new puzzle game Shahrazad, which has a solo version and a two-player mode, both pretty clever with fantastic artwork and very few rules to learn.

My book, Smart Baseball, came out on April 25th from HarperCollins in hardcover, ebook, and audiobook formats. I traveled to Atlanta and the Twin Cities for readings/signings this past week, and am very grateful to all of you who came out to buy the book, have yours signed, or just say hello; we had 50+ folks at each event and Moon Palace Books sold out of the book Thursday night. Smart Baseball also got a very positive review from an unexpected source, the political site The Federalist.

I’m still sending out my email newsletter when I can, and the last edition, about some recent troubles I’ve had with my anxiety disorder and the medication I take for it, got the strongest response yet – so many replies and comments, in fact, that I haven’t been able to respond to the majority of them. I did see them all, though, and I really appreciate all the kind words.

And now, the links…

I’ll start with a baseball article. Russell Carleton, whom I had the pleasure of meeting in Georgia on Tuesday night, wrote for Baseball Prospectus about why the increase in home runs doesn’t mean the ball is juiced. OK, but you’ll never convince me 1987 was legit.
How a paper purporting to prove ESP is real shows scientific research has a methodology problem. The credibility of much published research, especially in social sciences, is at stake.
If you live in Florida, Indiana, Alabama, or any state considering a so-called “academic freedom” bill, those are just backdoor creationism bills that would allow teachers the “freedom” to teach bullshit in science classes. Make yourself heard: these laws are wrong, damaging, and possibly unconstitutional.
Read about voters actually disenfranchised by voter ID laws in Wisconsin, along with quotes from sleazy politicians who blithely promised no registered voters would be denied their legal right to vote.
You probably saw The Atlantic article, published posthumously, called My Family’s Slave. You can put me in the camp of people who found the author’s tone and words troubling, and I recommend this Twitter thread for some well-articulated thoughts on the article’s many problems. Here’s my biggest one: Why didn’t he go to the police once he realized his parents were keeping Lola in involuntary servitude?
A new study shows that NSAIDs, including Advil (ibuprofen) and Aleve (naproxen), are correlated with a small but significant increase in heart attack risk, even with just moderate use.
You may have seen me refer to the Dunning-Kruger effect, especially when I’m talking to vaccine denialists on Twitter, saying that they suffer from this “illness.” Here’s a good lay piece on the phenomenon, which refers to people overestimating their knowledge or abilities under certain circumstances.
This USA Today profile of Chris Cornell, who took his own life this last week, was the best I found on the singer/songwriter.
A reader of mine sent along this post from a family member, a woman who was sexually assaulted at Case Western Reserve and who discovered that the university chose to settle a suit by her rapist that may allow him to return to campus.
Professor Lawrence Tribe of Harvard Law School wrote that Trump must be impeached … and that was May 13th, a full week ago, before the laundry list of revelations about his obstruction of investigations into his campaign’s ties to Russia.
Two days later, the Washington Post revealed that the President had revealed classified intelligence to Russian emissaries, which kicked off a cavalcade of revelations about POTUS and his cronies. The Lawfare blog had the best breakdown of that first story.
House Republicans are targeting programs that help disadvantaged Americans for budget cuts, including food stamps and benefits for veterans. I’d personally enjoy seeing the reaction from veterans’ groups to such a proposal.
A white lawyer in southern California is leading the charge to get people of color adequate representation on city councils. California may be among the most progressive states overall, but there’s a lot of garden-variety racism in local jurisdictions.
The Department of Justice is resorting to authoritarian tactics to get retribution against lawyers who helped fight their ill-conceived, xenophobic Muslim ban in January.
The FDA, a regulatory agency that suffers from serious mission creep, is considering a draft proposal that recommends quackery like acupuncture and chiropractic “medicine,” neither of which has any hard evidence proving efficacy.
Liberals, leftists, and just plain old never-Trumpers need to stop promoting bullshit conspiracy theories found on social media, promulgated by non-journalists and attention-seekers like Louise Mensch.
North Carolina Republicans are proving themselves to be the scum of American politics, between gerrymandering, voter disenfranchisement, a law that effectively legalized discrimination against LGBTQ residents, and now a 3 a.m. maneuver to strip education funding from Democrats’ districts. I used to love North Carolina and we thought several times about relocating there. Not any more.
New Jersey Representative Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-11) outed an activist in his district in a letter to her employer, a move that, while legal, is ethically questionable given his position. The weekly protests at his office saw a boost this week, and the seat is no longer considered safely Republican for 2018.
That last bit sounds great if you’re against Trump & Co., but the Democrats are struggling to win the three special elections coming up to fill House seats, clear opportunities to take advantage of the President’s historic unpopularity.
A NY Times editorial asks is it time to move to Norway?, but the headline doesn’t really do the piece justice.
The Chronicle of Higher Education profiles English Professor Seth Abramson and his crusade against Trump, along with explanation of how he’s promoted his content so aggressively, the mixed nature of his messages, and why Twitter is a poor venue to persuade others.
A research paper by a Harvard Professor of Public Policy found no evidence that Lebron James’ relocations helped the economies of Cleveland or Miami. In Miami, there was no evidence of any economic boost; in Cleveland, there was a statistically significant uptick, but only very close to the arena itself, not to the metro area as a whole (which may be substitution rather than actual economic growth).
Paper book sales are up and ebook sales are down, and The Guardian speculates that increased production quality in physical books is one reason.
The competition to create a vegan burger that looks and feels like meat is increasing with the new entry from Impossible Foods, a startup with nearly $200 million in venture backing. If one of the criticisms of beef is the environmental cost of raising cows, shouldn’t this article consider the cost of producing these fake-meats, which includes “producing vats of it in a lab by mixing genes in soybeans with yeast,” then adding “heme … to wheat and potato proteins with coconut oil.” That’s a lot of processing and probably a lot of energy input.
Here’s Illinois Representative Darin LaHood (R-18) blatantly lying about the Trumpcare bill’s treatment of preexisting conditions in a message to constituents:
This sculpture/art installation in Venice, designed to raise awareness of the dangers of climate change, just makes me think of some giant sea monster coming to kill us all.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: anti-science, baseball, books, environment, health, links, mental illness, science, vegan

→ May 13, 2017
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 5/13/17.

My one Insider post this week was my first ‘mock’ draft for 2017, although it’s really too early for that sort of exercise. And I held a Klawchat on Thursday.

Smart Baseball is out now in the U.S. and Canada; you can order it here or get it at any local bookstore. We are working on getting an ebook version out in some international markets, but I can’t promise anything there yet.

I have two signings/talks this week, for which I’m very excited (and a little anxious, to be honest). The first is in Decatur, Georgia (Atlanta area), at the Georgia Center for the Book on Tuesday at 7 pm, and the AJC was kind enough to lead their book events page with a note about my appearance. The second is in Minneapolis at Moon Palace Books on Thursday at 6:30 pm. I hope to meet many of you at these events, both of which are free to attend.

I’ve been asked by many of you about organizing other events. If a bookstore reaches out to Harper Collins to invite me, and I can work it into my schedule, I’m certainly open to doing more. I do have further events scheduled for Toronto, Miami (July 8th), and Berkeley (July 19th), plus am hoping to do signings at GenCon and PAX Unplugged later this year.

I spoke with SUNY-Oswego Professor of Digital Media Brian Moritz about the book, analytics in sports, and being a writer. I joined The Young Turks’ video show to discuss the book and media resistance to advanced stats. I also spoke with ESPN Radio in Dallas, with ESPN 1530 in Cincinnati, and with SI Now about the book & Mike Mussina’s Hall of Fame case.

And now, the links…

The best thing I heard this week was NPR’s half-hour program looking back at the riots in LA after the Rodney King verdict.
TIME is running a series on the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria that’s worth your time. I’ve said a few times that the #1 reason I buy organic dairy and eggs is to avoid contributing to the overuse of antibiotics in livestock.
A Nature editorial argues we need standardized language around antibiotic resistance to help combat the problem.
“Nobody dies because they don’t have access to health care,” said GOP Representative Raul Labrador in a quote that will one day go on his tombstone. But it turns out people with C. Difficile infections often don’t get medication because of lack of funds, even though the drug (vancomycin) is available as a generic. (Abstract only; article requires subscription.)
Dr. Chad Hayes explains why anti-vaxxers who demand double-blind studies are delusional, if not outright cruel. Such studies would violate basic medical ethics.
Norway is reopening a 46-year-old cold case around the murder of a still-unidentified woman who’d been traveling in the country with numerous passports and aliases.
The New York Times has been producing some great journalism this year … and some absolute trash, like an editorial by the head of an anti-abortion group that relied on pseudoscience and didn’t properly identify the author’s role with that organization, which runs “crisis pregnancy centers” that primarily exist to try to deter pregnant women from getting abortions, and has called abortion “the worst holocaust in human history.”
And then the Grey Lady comes back with Tim Egan’s strong editorial asking who will save our republic, a call to Republicans to stand up against the ongoing battle between the Administration and the Constitution.
A West Virginia journalist was arrested for yelling questions at HHS Secretary Tom Price. Did he break the law by trying to get past security? Or was this a violation of our right to a free press?
The failed state of Venezuela continues its downward spiral, a story with real implications for MLB and hundreds of players in organized baseball. The latest protest saw police pepper-spraying a “grandparents March” in Caracas.
VICE Sports goes back to how the Timberwolves drafted a 27-year-old player in Qatar over Isaiah Thomas, a bizarre story that reminded me of the old days of MLB teams giving large signing bonuses to Dominican players who’d faked their ages and even names.
Reading more books is good for your brain. I knew I wasn’t just wasting my time! This Quartz piece reviews seven tips to increase your reading output, although I’d say tips 1 and 2 are by far the most valuable. (Also, it’s cute that they hold up Bill Gates reading 50 books a year as amazing.)
A North Carolina reverend and political activist told NPR that the recent executive order on “religious freedom” is just thinly disguised religious bigotry.
Texas, continuing its own downward spiral, is now considering a bill that would allow adoption agencies to reject gay or non-Christian couples, even if they receive state funding, under the guise of “religious freedom.”
Iowa Republican Congressman Rod Blum walked out in the middle of a scheduled interview because he didn’t like the questions. He’s under fire for voting for the Trumpcare bill even though it appears his constituents don’t (or may not) support it.
Is American capitalism inherently anti-innovation? And are the ongoing cuts to government-funded research killing our economy’s capacity to innovate? I don’t know, although I wish the author hadn’t used Juicero as a jumping-off point for his arguments.
Can other countries replicate Germany’s success in retaining manufacturing jobs? The differences between their culture of innovation and skills development and ours are stark.
Three classic Atari videogames will be adapted as boardgames within the next year, although I’m not sure how these solo games will work in cardboard.
Goofy fun: mental floss looks at eleven bizarre international borders, including the famous Baarle-Nassau/Baarle-Hertog borders where a town is split between Belgium and the Netherlands, but not by anything resembling a straight line. (And yes, they flipped East & West Germany in one of the graphics.)

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: anti-science, boardgames, Economics, links, science, stick to baseball, vaccines

→ April 8, 2017
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 4/8/17.

I had one Insider post this week, on the most prospect-packed minor league rosters to open the season. I have already filed a draft blog post on last night’s outing by Hunter Greene, with additional notes on a half-dozen other draft prospects, including Brendan McKay and Austin Beck. (EDIT: It’s up now.) I held my regular Klawchat on Thursday.

I resumed boardgame reviews for Paste this week with a look at the reissue of Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective, specifically the Jack the Ripper & West End Cases set, but found it more like a solitaire puzzle than a cooperative game.

You can preorder my upcoming book, Smart Baseball, on amazon, or from other sites via the Harper-Collins page for the book. The book now has two positive reviews out, one from Kirkus Reviews and one from Publishers Weekly.

Also, please sign up for my more-or-less weekly email newsletter.

And now, the links…

Long reads first: “It is the obligation of every person born in a safer room to open the door when someone in danger knocks.” That’s from this must-read piece from Iranian-born professor Dina Nayeri, writing in The Guardian about the folly and danger of demanding that refugees be “grateful.”
How about the history of Pearl Jam to commemorate the band’s induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame? I was glad to see the band’s predecessor, Mother Love Bone, get a mention; Apple was an album ahead of its time lyrically and was full of great hooks.
From October: the New Yorker profiled Frauke Petry, the new star of Germany’s neo-Nazi right.
Delaware’s own Dogfish Head brewery has been aggressively suing competitors over trademark violations, incurring the wrath of smaller craft brewers and craft beer aficionados. While the owner is technically right that he has to defend the trademarks to protect them, why couldn’t he license certain terms, like Namaste, for a nominal fee instead?
What is Bashar al-Assad thinking by using chemical weapons in Syria’s civil war? I don’t know, but I would guess what he’s thinking now is that he’s discovered how far he can go without provoking a response. He can kill as many civilians as he likes, any way he wants, as long as he doesn’t use chemical weapons to do so.
Texas Republican Lamar Smith heads the House Committee on Science even though he’s among the worst science deniers in Washington. Now ER doctor Ryan Allen is trying to run against the popular Congressman.
With the ongoing call for reducing regulations as a whole, and specifically speeding new medications to market, NPR ran an editorial pointing out the drawbacks of this approach.
Why are Americans so in love with their own ignorance? Professor Tom Nichols attempts to answer this question in a Q&A with Maclean’s and in his new book, The Death of Expertise.
Parents goes for science in an op ed that explains Why I don’t feed my family organic food. I’m with the author on every point but the antibiotics: The concern about them isn’t that they end up on the plate, but that they’re used at all, and the organic label is one of the few ways to ensure that you’re not supporting the overuse of antibiotics by factory farming outfits.
There’s a new theory behind the cause of celiac disease – a group of scientists claims a virus is triggering it in people already genetically predisposed to the autoimmune disease. The real upshot: Eating processed, hybridized wheat is not what causes celiac, no matter what your local quack tells you.
An unvaccinated Laguna Beach High School student contracted measles and may have exposed other students. I hope they make his parents pay any associated medical costs if the highly contagious, dangerous disease spreads at all. You make that choice, you face the consequences.
Another consequence? Getting measles may weaken your immune system for up to three years after the infection. So, survive measles, die of something else!
A British court has ordered a loony-toon vegan “all-natural” mother to vaccinate her damn kids. Given the description of her parenting, she shouldn’t have custody at all.
An early fish biologist gives the case against eating fish. I would argue that this is the case for eating fish (and meat) far more judiciously than we do – knowing where it comes from, how it was raised or caught, and paying more attention to pollution and ocean acidification.
I got thrown out of a bar in New York City … but now a new one is opening, called Coup, with proceeds going to fight Donald Trump’s agenda. One of the bartenders/co-owners is Sother Teague of Amor & Amargo, a bitters-focused cocktail bar I enjoyed tremendously the one time I visited (including a chat with Mr. Teague himself).
Solar power is becoming cost-competitive with nonrenewable fuel sources in many markets, but hey, keep propping dirty coal, you fucking idiots.
The Kentucky Coal Museum is installing solar panels to reduce its energy costs.
Fox News has its moments of clarity, like when Chris Wallace just emasculated EPA chief and climate change denialist Scott Pruitt on air. Wallace did what journalists should do: set party aside and stick to the truth in the face of someone who continues to lie.
Spanish scientists have developed a new way of measuring a particle’s spin that appears to soften the limits set out in Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle.
Some Kansas high school students started asking questions about their new principals’ resume, eventually uncovering a fraud that led to her resignation.
A Washington Post editorial calls Mitch McConnell the man who broke America. Whatever he is, the people of Kentucky keep electing him and the GOP keeps giving him power.
An Iowa legislator has proposed a bill that would fine men for masturbating and require rectal exams before doctors could prescribe erectile dysfunction medications.
One in five Oklahoma school districts operates a four-day week for budgetary reasons. It’s hardly surprising that that state, which has produced some of the worst science-denying and anti-woman legislation in the last few years, puts education at the bottom of the priority list.
A woman writes about calling out the creep who took her picture in a bar without her permission. It’s on all of us to say something when we see this kind of behavior from men.
Jared Kushner went to Iraq and someone added children’s-book text to the pictures.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: anti-science, beer, cocktails, denialism, food safety, Music, organic agriculture, physics, stick to baseball, vaccines

→ March 19, 2017
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 3/18/17.

Two Insider posts this week from Arizona, one on Padres and Dodgers prospects and one on Dodgers, Reds, and Rangers prospects. I’ll have one more post coming from this trip. I did not chat this week because I was out at games every day. The trip also meant I didn’t get to review a boardgame this week either.

Also, please sign up for my more-or-less weekly email newsletter.

And now, the links…

The best longread of the week comes from Patrick Hruby of Vice, on Wisconsin forward Nigel Hayes and his lawsuit against the NCAA, challenging the college cartel’s rules on amateurism.
Also great, although with some caveats: what is the fate of the critic in the “clickbait” age? There’s an underlying argument here about quality of content versus that clickbait mentality, but I think the author lapses into cultural elitism enough to undermine his point.
The world’s only grass-eating monkeys survive in one protected savannah in Ethiopia, but their habitat is under threat from humans and climate change. The photography in this National Geographic piece is stunning.
Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price, who belongs to a crackpot evangelical medical association called AAPS, said that states should decide on mandatory vaccination laws, and the Washington Post showed why this is a terrible idea, in graphical form. They also wrote about the AAPS’ “unorthodox” (read: bullshit) positions on science a month ago. It is absolutely insane that someone so virulently anti-science is running HHS.
An algal bloom in the Gulf of Oman is growing thanks to climate change, which our Clueless Leader says doesn’t exist and/or is a Chinese hoax.
Trump fired US Attorney Preet Bharara earlier this month, perhaps because Bharara was investigating Secretary Price’s stock trades for evidence of insider trading. The move may also benefit Friend of Trump Rupert Murdoch, whose Fox News was facing multiple investigations from Bharara’s office.
If you live in Georgia’s sixth district, formerly represented by Price, and are as outraged as I am over the anti-science, anti-civil liberties policies of the current administration, consider supporting Jon Ossoff in the upcoming special election on April 18th.
Congress is threatening to pass a national right-to-work law, which would deal the most serious blow to American unions since the Wagner Act guaranteed workers’ basic rights to organize. There is a legitimate debate to be had on unionization; closed shops can artificially restrict employment, and unionized labor forces can increase prices for consumers, to pick two issues that arise in industries with strong unions. Right-to-work laws circumvent the debate entirely, and serve no purpose but to help enrich employers.
Meanwhile, in Australia, the Rational United States, the Prime Minister has proposed banning unvaccinated children from childcare facilities.
The gluten-free fad may be a symptom of a bigger problem of patients forum-shopping and falling for quacks, like “naturopaths” or “allopathic” practitioners who con patients into submitting to expensive tests for conditions that can only be cured by those charlatans’ treatments.
Gwyneth Paltrow, who has become an expert of pseudoscience and woo, proposed a “goat milk therapy” for parasites that is both stupid and dangerous. Paltrow appears to have the biology knowledge of very small rocks, but that hasn’t stopped her from recommending all kinds of fake “treatments.”
The rise of Elijah Quashie, an amateur food critic in the UK known as the Chicken Connoisseur, led to this Eater piece asking who gets to be a food critic? Is it true, as Quashie said in this interview, that once you start being a critic, then you’re a critic, with no further credentials required? If not, then is criticism of food, art, fashion, etc., inherently elitist, available only to those who can afford the proper background or training?
A basketball player in Maryland was prevented from playing in the team’s first regional final game because she was wearing a hijab. The error was the referees’, not the district or state authorities.
The Guardian did an update and profile of Rachel Dolezal, the NAACP chapter head who was posing as a black woman until she was outed by her parents as white. The piece includes an excerpt from her upcoming memoir. I might have found a shred of sympathy for her after reading this, although I still think posing as a person of color and then comparing herself to transgender people was inexcusable.
Reader Stephanie K. passed along this Modern Farmer link from last June on how cold-pressed juice is bad for you and for the environment. Pro tip: eat whole fruit, rather than just drinking juice.
Reader Larry passed along this link from Vice on how lax regulations allow shady used-car dealers to sell cars they don’t own, which in turn become legal nightmares for the buyers.
I’d mentioned a few weeks ago that Kurt Eichenwald had gone after trolls who’d sent him images with the goal of triggering his epilepsy. One of them was just charged with cyberstalking in Texas.
Remember Srebrenica? The Bosnian town just elected a Serb mayor, reigniting long-simmering ethnic tensions in the village and in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina as a whole, where the three main ethnic groups are threatening to divide the country into yet smaller states along religious and linguistic lines.
Another reader recommendation (I apologize, I can’t find your tweet): Ars Technica explores some of the boardgames the CIA uses to train officers. I don’t think I’ll be reviewing Collection or Kingpin any time soon.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: anti-science, boardgames, links, ncaa, pseudoscience, stick to baseball, vaccines

→ February 5, 2017
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 2/5/17.

My organizational reports for all 30 teams, featuring at least ten prospects ranked for each club (and as many as 25), went up this past week for Insiders. You can find them all here on the landing pages for each division:

• American League East
• National League East
• American League Central
• National League Central
• American League West
• National League West

My list of thirty sleeper prospects, one for each MLB organization, for 2017 went up on Friday, wrapping up the prospect rankings package for the year. I also held a Klawchat on Friday.

For Paste, I reviewed the complex strategy game Forged in Steel, a citybuilder with some worker-placement and card management aspects that, once you get the first few moves underway, really gets going and manages to be both smart and fun.

You can preorder my upcoming book, Smart Baseball, on amazon, or from other sites via the Harper-Collins page for the book. Also, please sign up for my more-or-less weekly email newsletter.

And now, the links…

The must-read piece of the week – actually published in early January – comes from British journalist Isabel Hardman, who wrote about how even England’s vaunted NHS doesn’t do justice to people with mental illnesses, although the piece itself also provides a great window into her own difficulties recognizing what was happening to her and getting properly treated.
It’s Super Bowl Sunday! If you wouldn’t let your kids play football because it’s dangerous (and has led to the premature deaths of many players), is it moral to still watch the NFL?
I thought this New Yorker profile of Evan McMullin, who has emerged as a major Trump critic from the center-right was both an excellent piece of balanced journalism and a good window into someone who, even though I disagree with him on a couple of major policy issues, speaks very clearly to my concern that the man in the Oval Office – well, that man, and the one pulling his strings – needs to be stopped.
The batshit insane people who claim Sandy Hook was a hoax believe Trump’s election furthers their cause. I’m just glad these hoaxers are facing legal consequences when they harass relatives of the deceased.
As if Betsy DeVos’ awful answers in her confirmation hearing and embrace of creationism and other anti-science bullshit weren’t enough to disqualify her from running the U.S. Department of Education in everyone’s eyes except, well, our President and 50 Senate Republicans, she’s also a major investor in an utterly useless pseudoscience business of neurofeedback that claims it can use brain waves to diagnose and treat autism, depression, and why are we even talking about this it is such obvious bullshit? If you have a U.S. Senator who is planning to vote for DeVos – that’s every Republican right now except Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Sue Collins (Maine) – get on the phone on Monday morning, or send a fax, or go to their offices and make it clear you want a no vote on DeVos. One more Republican will end her candidacy, and while we aren’t guaranteed that the next nominee will be better, I’m not sure they can find one who’s worse.
You want more about DeVos being delusional in her belief in anti-science folderol? Look at her use of code words for creationism. While her camp has hidden behind the federal law and court rulings that intelligent design can’t be taught in public schools – it’s religion, thinly disguised as pseudoscience – that opens the door for her to push to change such laws, or challenge the court rulings, to suit her own misguided beliefs.
The House Science Committee is something between a joke and a modern-day Spanish Inquisition, thanks to its science-denialist head, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas, where else?), and the new Holman Rule that allows House appropriations bills to target any federal employee and reduce his/her salary to $1. Boys, all you boys, you think you’re so American.
Is the white-supremacist (and possible fascist) Steve Bannon positioning himself to be the de facto President? Fifty Democratic Congresspersons have called for Bannon’s removal from the National Security Council, co-sponsoring a House bill that would ban political strategists from serving on the council. (Reports that the appointment requires Senate approval were false or at least incomplete.) Meanwhile, filings from Bannon’s second divorce include accusations that he failed to pay child support and was abusive toward his daughters.
I think this ProPublica piece has the wrong title. It’s not can the Democrats be as stubborn as Mitch McConnell, but will they? Of course they can, but so far, I see no signs that they well. Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley is prepared to lead a filibuster of Trump’s SCOTUS nominee Neil Gorusch, who’s filling a seat that should have been filled last year by Merrick Garland. (By the way, if you saw the claims that Gorusch had created a pro-fascism club while a student, those were false.)
Eric Trump’s business trip to Uruguay – that is, a trip to benefit the Trump family business, not on U.S. official business – cost the taxpayer over $97K in hotel bills. This is a good example of where the Democrats need to be obstructionist – Elizabeth Warren introduced a bill requiring him to divest, but even the Dems appear to have little interest in this fight.
How about that immigration order, now halted, that served as a de facto Muslim ban? The Archbishop of Chicago spoke out against it. The order stranded a Brooklyn doctor in the Sudan. VICE published a list of doctors and researchers thus barred from returning to the United States. Don’t you feel so much safer now?
Bloomberg published a short op ed that argues that Trump has failed his Wall Street and big business backers twice over, by putting all permanent resident employees at risk of deportation or refused re-entry, and by failing to repeal the Department of Labor’s fiduciary rule, which – get this – which requires financial advisers to act in the best interests of their clients in retirement accounts. I don’t know what’s worse: that Trump’s camp wanted to repeal the rule, or that the rule was ever necessary in the first place.
The farewell message from Tom Countryman (!), Assistant Secretary of State for International Security and Nonproliferation, who was summarily dismissed along with five other State Department lifers last week, is well worth your time.
Who’s behind the fake-news site CGS Monitor, which uses real experts’ names in bylines on articles they didn’t write? It could be Russia – I mean, of course it’s Russia, right? – although this piece speculates it could also come from Iranian interests.
This post from “The Jester” on Russia’s infiltration of our federal government pissed someone off enough that the site was hit with a DdoS attack a few hours after the article went up. Within it, he points out that the ex-KGB/FSB official suspected of helping MI6 agent Christopher Steele assemble that dossier on Donald Trump was found dead in his car on December 26th, and the the author accuses the Kremlin of orchestrating his murder.
Republicans are further trying to rig the electoral college system in their favor by pushing blue states to adopt “proportional” electoral voting, which, as that FiveThirtyEight piece explains, means that Clinton could have won the popular vote by five percentage points and still lost the election.
A new law in Arkansas allows rapists who impregnate their victims to stop the latter from getting abortions, or a husband to sue to prevent his wife from doing so, and so on. Even setting aside the clear infringement of religious belief into law here, this is as blatantly anti-woman as you can get. I’ve got one state left to visit to be able to say I’ve visited them all, but you know, I think any trips to Arkansas can wait until they start to treat women like actual people. UPDATE: Snopes has more details on the law, such as pointing out that rapists can’t sue for damages, and that the law delays rather than prevents the abortions. The ACLU is still planning lawsuits.
Abortion is an important, sometimes lifesaving medical procedure, and keeping it legal and available reduces deaths from unsafe abortions, while improving access to abortion and contraception reduces abortion rates overall. Again, women are actual people, and the infamous photo of Trump signing an anti-abortion executive order while surrounded by men sort of says it all – and that’s why the photo of the Swedish Prime Minister trolling Trump is such a thing of beauty.
Protesters plan to shadow Trump whenever he travels so he feels their dislike, an extension of the idea that he thrives on public adulation.
The apparently random murder of a woman walking on a Reykjavik street after dark has shaken the city, which is known for its low crime rate and 24-hour party culture.
I tweeted about this earlier in the week, but donors across the country are helping pay students’ lunch debts. It’s such a little thing, and so easy to do if you have any cash to donate. We called our daughter’s school, asked how much it would take to clear any outstanding tabs, and wrote them a check. You’ll make a lot of families’ lives easier, and will reduce the shame these kids feel for something that’s no fault of their own.
The Brits have all the legislative fun: A Labour MP held up a sign saying “He’s lying to you” behind Nigel Farage in a televised address by the far-right UKIP leader.
The University of Nevada joins the growing list of NCAA football programs reneging on scholarship offers weeks or even days before the official signing day. I’m no lawyer, so I’ll ask the crowd: at what point does such an oral agreement become binding on either party?
I’d never heard of the Chinese delicacy fat choy, a bacteria that grows long, noodle-like strands, but it turns out its farming is harmful to the environment, and the Chinese government is now cracking down on its production and sale.
Recode has a long, fascinating interview with my former colleague Bill Simmons on The Ringer, the rise and abrupt end of Grantland, the demise of his HBO TV show Any Given Wednesday, and much more. I’m still not sure I get the mission of The Ringer; they’ve mixed some great sports content with some head-scratchers where they offer advice to the movie or music industry. But it’s early in the site’s history, and I’m 100% behind any site that supports good journalism and pays its writers.
I’m linking here to a piece I saw on Google’s home page (I think) but that I really thought was trash: you could read 200 books a year in the time you waste on social media. There’s a lot wrong with this piece, but let me highlight two things. One, not everyone is wired for the kind of sustained attention required to read a lot of books, and no one should make someone feel bad because s/he isn’t a book reader. I love finding fellow bibliophiles, but if you don’t read books, you shouldn’t feel guilty about it. Two, his math suchs. He says “typical non-fiction books have ~50,000 words,” which is wrong; that’s under 200 pages, and even Smart Baseball, which I did not want to be too long, runs over 80,000 words. He also says he reads 400 words per minute and assumes that most Medium readers will too; I doubt he reads that fast unless he’s speed-reading, which doesn’t work (you don’t retain what you read as well), because reading 400 wpm would mean reading about 80 pages an hour, which I think would put anyone at the far-right end of the scale for reading speed … or means he’s reading books written for children. I read a lot, and I read fast, and I doubt I read 400 wpm unless it’s something simple and incredibly engrossing, like genre fiction or a Wodehouse novel. So, yeah, if you don’t read 200 books a year or 100 or even 20, don’t feel bad. This article was just stupid.
Is the hunt for paid editors tearing Wikipedia apart from the inside? That seems a bit dramatic, but I think the mere existence of paid editors is cause to retain or recover our skepticism about the reliability of information found on the site.
From McSweeney’s: The Rules of This Board Game Are Long, But Also Complicated. I don’t understand why this is supposed to be funny.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: anti-science, boardgames, chinese cuisine, evolution, football, hoaxes, links, muslim ban, ncaa

The Gluten Lie.

Not a Scientist.

Stick to baseball, 8/12/17.

Stick to baseball, 5/27/17.

Stick to baseball, 5/20/17.

Stick to baseball, 5/13/17.

Stick to baseball, 4/8/17.

Stick to baseball, 3/18/17.

Stick to baseball, 2/5/17.

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