baseball — Page 8

→ July 22, 2017
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 7/22/17.

With the trade deadline approaching, I’ve had a bit more Insider content than usual this week, including breakdowns of the Ryan Madson/Sean Doolittle trade, the David Robertson/Tommy Kahnle/Todd Frazier trade, and the Tyler O’Neill-Marco Gonzales trade. I also had a long post covering lots of prospects I’ve scouted in the last few weeks, including players from the Phillies, Nationals, Orioles, Red Sox, Atlanta, and Cleveland systems. I held a Klawchat on Friday.

My latest boardgame review for Paste covers the asymmetrical game Not Alone, which pits one player against anywhere from one to six opponents who work together, although we found the game really doesn’t work with just two players and is only slightly better with three.

Thanks to everyone who’s already bought Smart Baseball. I’ve got just a couple of additional book signings coming up:

* Chicago, Standard Club, July 28th, 11:30 am – this is a ticketed luncheon event
* Chicago, Volumes, July 28th, 7:30 pm
* GenCon (Indianapolis), August 17th-20th

And now, the links…

The President is mobilizing for war against the rule of law. He’s talking about overturning core pillars of our democracy, and as far as I can tell, the vast majority of Republicans back him.
The Administration also spent taxpayer money collected to encourage ACA enrollment on ads opposing the law.
A scientist who was reassigned out of his job in the Interior Department – which he says was because he worked on and spoke up about climate change – published an editorial ‘blowing the whistle’ on the Administration’s anti-science machinations. He’s also filed complaints under the Whistleblower Protection Act.
Reuters is publishing a long investigative report on how Philip Morris is marketing tobacco in the developing world in violation of international agreements.
I didn’t link to the New York piece on climate change that went viral last week, because it felt a bit like alarmism-porn to me, but I was pleased to see that climate scientists had some serious criticisms of the piece too.
That original article – the most-read post in New York‘s history – also prompted this response from the New York Times, looking at how Y2K preparations might also help us work to prepare for or combat climate change. The author, Farhad Manjoo, argues that the New York was right to present worst-case scenarios, because that’s the only way to spur skeptics and do-nothings to act.
Police in Alaska are fighting a law that would ban sexual contact between an officer and sex workers they’re going to arrest. Yes, you read that right: Cops want to be free to molest or have sex with sex workers during investigations.
A Jehovah’s Witness died after refusing a necessary blood transfusion (because it’s against their religion), and a Pennsylvania court has told her family to stop suing the hospital.
There’s something awful about the story here, but the headline is incredibly misleading: “My Daughter Was Murdered in a Mass Shooting. Then I Was Ordered to Pay Her Killer’s Gun Dealer.” It omits the part where the grieving mother sued the ammunition supplier, but that a federal law protects gun dealers from such lawsuits and requires plaintiffs to pay court costs. The problem here is that law, the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, and the power that the gun lobby has in our country.
Disney’s firing of longtime Muppeteer Steve Whitmire, the voice of Kermit the Frog since Jim Henson died in 1990, has gotten very ugly. (Disney owns ESPN, so I am a Disney employee.)
Speaking of Disney, Vulture – for whom I occasionally write as a freelancer – looks at why the company spent half a billion dollars building an Avatar-themed area in the Animal Kingdom theme park. It might be fun, but how about adding a section to Animal Kingdom based on the Australian movie Animal Kingdom?
It’s from February 2016, but this profile of Haitian-born Yankees prospect Estevan Florial, by Joel Sherman, is worth reading, especially now that Florial has broken out with his performance this year in low-A Charleston.
DigBoston looks at racism in Boston sports, especially at WEEI, which has a long history of racist, misogynist, and other bigoted commentary and behavior from hosts. I have refused to go on the station for several years.
A Republican Congressman from California asked a scientist during a public hearing if it was possible that there had once been an advanced civilization on Mars. We really do elect the worst people to govern us.
One new study finds 91% of plastic ends up as trash, not recycling. Buy less plastic and reuse what you have.
“Rape choreography” is an actual role now in film and TV production, but the process takes a toll on everyone involved, even those who are asked to keep the actors safe during filming. Hinted at a few times in that piece: There’s way too much rape in modern film and television.
I never played much PnP Dungeons & Dragons, but I know many of you did. Paste looks at a new app, D&D Beyond, that may revolutionize the game for DMs and players.
Still not sure if this New Yorker piece on avocado toast is serious, but I just want to say that I like avocado toast, as long as there’s a fried egg on it.
Oakland Raiders runningback Marshawn Lynch bought an Oakland soul food place to keep it from closing down. But will they serve biscuits and gravy?

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: baseball, climate change, disney, disneyworld, links, oakland, rpgs, stick to baseball

→ July 15, 2017
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 7/15/17.

For Insiders, I’ve got my midyear top 50 prospects update, a breakdown of the Jose Quintana trade, and a recap of Sunday’s MLB Futures Game, followed by a Klawchat Thursday afternoon where I focused on questions about the top 50.

MEL magazine’s Tim Grierson, whom you might know from his film reviews or his indispensable podcast with Will Leitch, interviewed me in a wide-ranging conversation that touched on Smart Baseball, pop culture, social media, and other non-baseball topics too.

Thanks to everyone who’s already bought Smart Baseball. I’ve got book signings coming up:

* Harrisburg, Midtown Scholar, July 15th (today!) at 3 pm
* Berkeley, Books Inc., July 19th, 7 pm
* Chicago, Standard Club, July 28th, 11:30 am – this is a ticketed luncheon event
* Chicago, Volumes, July 28th, 7:30 pm
* GenCon (Indianapolis), August 17th-20th

And now, the links…

Longread: How tech startups like Airbnb are causing the spread of a similar, sterile, bland style aesthetic across the world, euphemistically referred to as “the harmonization of tastes,” less kindly described here as “Every coffee place looks the same.” (It’s my one complaint with Blue Bottle; I love their espresso, but I feel like I’m drinking it in a hospital waiting room.)
Bill Shaikin of the LA Times looked at the declining presence of people of color atop baseball organizations, an inevitable outcome of the industry trend of privileged young men with Ivy League or comparable backgrounds who can afford to take low-paying or unpaid entry-level jobs in front offices.
The Senate Judiciary committee advanced the nomination of John K. Bush, a judge who used the word “f—-t” and supported the Obama birther hoax, for a federal judgeship. He’s expected to win confirmation on the Senate floor, of course, but maybe call your Senator on Monday and express your feelings on whether someone who refers to gays by that term is suitable for the bench.
Arkansas, the only state I’ve never visited, has become increasingly hostile to women and to LGBT residents in the last few years, but this is a new low – a law that would require all women, even abuse or rape victims, to get the permission of the man who impregnated them before they could have an abortion. To be clear: A woman who got pregnant as the result of a rape would have to ask her rapist’s permission before she could abort the fetus.
Utility-industry lobbyists are rolling back laws designed to encourage rooftop solar panel installations.
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai is a former Verizon employee who wants to destroy net neutrality. Broadband Internet is a public utility; lacking access to it puts people at a significant economic disadvantage, especially in the job market.
The anti-GMO movement, which has put many academics in science on the wrong side of the facts, had an embarrassing moment this week when forty-five professors (and others) endorsed a letter criticizing a film they hadn’t seen, a letter whose author didn’t disclose her own relationships with anti-GMO organizations.
A new research paper published in the National Academy of Sciences’ journal shows a correlation between pertussis outbreaks and states that allow nonmedical vaccine exemptions. I worked with my state rep to tighten Delaware’s nonmedical exemption rules, although (according to him) the Republicans in our legislature wouldn’t approve eliminating religious exemptions entirely.
EPA Chief Scott Pruitt wants scientists to debate climate change on live TV. Yes, please.
Longtime Iowa baseball coach Marty Gehen is entering his final season at the helm as a hereditary disease robs him of his vision.
Gwyneth Paltrow’s woo site GOOP has become legend for selling overpriced bullshit to people who embrace the irrational, but even they sunk to a new low when they attacked an actual doctor who pointed out how dangerous their “vagina jade eggs” could be. GOOP may have gotten something right, though, if you want to credit them with the placebo effect.
The Denver Post looks at a group of loonies who claim they’re being persecuted for believing the earth is flat. I think the part that bothers me most is that they’re teaching kids this nonsense.
The headline is a little misleading but this National Review post does detail some real issues with organic foods that aren’t really organic. Knowing your farmer or source is more important than just buying something labelled “organic.”
Three Boston-area teenagers discovered that the Boston Garden has violated terms of the law that funded its construction and may owe the city hundreds of tens of dollars in restitution to help build public sports facilities the public can actually use.
TV critic and friend of the dish Alan Sepinwall wrote about the frustration of the “it gets better after six episodes” phenomenon of TV series in an era where none of us really has the time for that kind of investment.
The New York Times described the scourge of alternative Oreo flavors. There was nothing wrong with the original. Nothing.
Why do men remarry faster than women after the death of a spouse? This piece was spurred by the news that Patton Oswalt is engaged to actress Meredith Salenger, who, by the way, lived one floor up from me during my sophomore year in college.
A Montana woman who was targeted by neo-Nazis who called her house and left death threats is suing the man who runs the Daily Stormer website for launching the harassment campaign. Also weird: The guy who runs the white supremacist site claims he lives in Lagos, Nigeria, a city of 16 million-plus people, nearly all of whom are black Africans.
Airbnb, VRBO, and other online short-term rental companies are causing landlords to convert apartment buildings into de facto hotels, reducing the supply of housing for middle-class (and below) residents in many tourist towns.
The President keeps referring to his friend “Jim,” whom the AP reports may not even exist. I’m not really OK with a President who keeps and constantly refers to an imaginary friend as if he’s real.
An actual feel-good story: Beachgoers on the Florida panhandle formed a human chain to rescue a drowning family who’d been caught too far from shore.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: baseball, climate change, gmo, links, net neutrality, organic agriculture, stick to baseball, vaccines

→ June 17, 2017
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 6/17/17.

I recapped the drafts for all 15 NL teams and all 15 AL teams on Friday and Thursday, respectively, and previously had reactions to day one and day two of the draft, as well as a Klawchat during day two.

I did manage to squeeze in a boardgame review for Paste, breaking down the family-level tile-laying game Bärenpark, which has a Tetris/Patchwork-like mechanic and plays well with four but needs a few rules tweaks to keep it fair.

Smart Baseball continues to sell well, according to my editors, so thank you all for buying, reading, and talking it up. I have signings coming up in Toronto (6/26), Miami (7/8), Harrisburg (7/15), Berkeley (7/19), Chicago (7/28, details to come), and at GenCon 50 in Indianapolis (August 17-20).

I was a bit busy this week, and was offline most of the day Thursday as we went strawberry picking, which means we now have jam and strawberry-rhubarb pie, so the list of links is pretty short. I should be back to normal next week.

Longread of the week: Ars Technica looks at the guy who says he invented email and is suing everyone who says he didn’t. No serious outlet agrees with his claim, but he has access to enough cash to fund these suits, one of which is threatening to shut down the site Techdirt because of the ruinous cost of defending itself against the suit. The soi-disant inventor is also a Trump supporter and announced that he’s running for the Massachusetts Senate seat occupied by Elizabeth Warren.
Two pieces this week found that baseball’s home run spike is at least partly the result of changes to the baseball. The first came from Ben Lindbergh and Mitchel Lichtman at The Ringer, and the second from Rob Arthur at FiveThirtyEight.
Want to get more done in a day? Manage your energy, not your time. That means embracing moments of “unfocus,” and ending the futile effort to be productive every minute of your workday. I wouldn’t say this is how I planned to work, but it is definitely how I do work.
Farhad Manjoo makes a rational argument against using Uber, at least until the company cleans up its act. I’ve switched to Lyft and taxis when I need a ride somewhere.
My adopted home state of Delaware took a major step to ensure a woman’s right to choose in the face of threats to abortion rights at the federal level, to say nothing of efforts in states with right-wing governments like Texas and Missouri to enact end-runs around Roe v. Wade.
Meanwhile, in Ohio, women protested that state’s bill to restrict abortion rights by appearing in costumes from The Handmaid’s Tale. I haven’t seen the series, but the book is a must-read.
Have you seen the list of doctors who claim to be vaccine skeptics? If you argue with anti-vaxers at all, this list inevitably comes up. SkepticalRaptor goes through the list and finds they’re not immunologists, and often aren’t doctors at all. What a shock. I’m in favor of any medical board pulling the license of a doctor who advises parents not to vaccinate their kids.
This GQ profile of LA chef Jordan Kahn and his new restaurant Vespertine seems extremely unflattering to me – not because the writer aimed to take down the subject, but because the entire undertaking seems so out of place. The friend who sent me this link called it “pretentious” and I’d go even farther; the article makes Vespertine sound like a chef’s ego trip around the world.
Puerto Rico voted for statehood, sort of, with an opposition boycott resulting in just 23% of voters casting ballots in the nonbinding referendum. The BBC looks at what statehood would mean for the commonwealth.
A lobbyist who represents “Russian interests” in Washington told the Guardian that he can contradict Jeff Sessions’ claims before Congress that the Attorney General never had contacts with any such people during the 2016 campaign.
Maryland and D.C. have sued the President, alleging a breach of the Constitution’s emoluments clause.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: baseball, links, puerto rico, right to choose, 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

→ April 30, 2017
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 4/30/17.

My book is out! You can find Smart Baseball absolutely everywhere – online, in bookstores, and even in some libraries. HarperCollins has links to various online vendors, but if you prefer to walk into a bookstore like it’s 1947 and buy the book directly, well, I like to do that too. I know thousands of you have already bought it, so my thanks to all of you.

I went to MLB Network on Friday and appeared on MLB Now, the show hosted by my friend and former ESPN colleague Brian Kenny. You can watch our discussion of the book. I talked to SI’s Richard Deitsch about baseball on TV and about not sticking to sports on social media. I also appeared on my good friend Will Leitch’s podcast to talk about the book and mock his hatred of Fletch.

I also discussed the book on over 50 radio shows this week; highlights included a long chat with WNYC’s Leonard Lopate, talking to Connell McShane on the Don Imus show, appearing on the Felske Files podcast, appearing on the Fantasy Focus Baseball podcast (with Karabell! But no bias cat), talking to WBAL’s Brett Hollander, and talking to WABC’s Sid Rosenberg.

I do have some upcoming appearances as well: May 8th at Pitch Talks Philadelphia, May 16th at The Georgia Center for the Book (in Decatur), and May 18th at Moon Palace Books in Minneapolis. There are further readings/events scheduled in Toronto, Miami, and Brooklyn for June and July.

My other writing from the past week included ranking the top 50 prospects for this year’s draft for ESPN Insiders, a list I’ll eventually expand to 100. It wasn’t easy getting to 50, though. For Paste I ran through the best new boardgames of 2017, including a few titles from the tail end of last year.

OK, finally, let’s get to some links:

Longread of the week: Nathan Fenno of the LA Times looks at how Rays prospect Brandon Martin went from first-rounder to accused murderer. Martin was a legit prospect, briefly, but cocaine use and what sounds like undiagnosed mental illness led him to murder three people, including his own father.
Another great longread: Buzzfeed looks at the twice-convicted fraudster who has access to Trump via Mar-a-Lago because the con artist’s wife is the guest reception manager there.
The Senate Intelligence Committee investigation into Russian interference in our 2016 election is an understaffed, underequipped joke.
I’ll be watching the STARZ adaptation of American Gods tonight; in advance of that, Pacific Standard interviewed author Neil Gaiman about the series and its unexpected political relevance.
SNL insiders consider Kenan Thompson, now in his 14th year on the show, its most important cast member. I thought the quotes from castmates, writers, and producers were interesting given Thompson’s limited profile beyond the show.
A woman who briefly worked for Fyre Festival says it was always going to be a disaster.
Scientists claim to have created a fluid with “negative mass.” What I, a non-scientist, couldn’t grasp here is whether they actually did that, or created a supercooled fluid that behaved the way we would expect a fluid with negative mass to behave. Those aren’t the same thing, I think.
Mina Caputo, the longtime lead singer of metal band Life of Agony (with some interruptions), discussed coming out as transgender in the metal community with Rolling Stone.
I know you’re shocked, but our dear leader didn’t think through that whole border wall plan, since the land on which it would be built can’t support it.
Mother Jones proposes an alternate, “ecotopia” wall zone between the countries, which is really a rather witty troll job.
Under President Turnip’s tax plan, most of us would be better off becoming LLCs rather than individuals. The plan to cut the tax rate on corporations would allow the highest earners to register (and work) as LLCs and drop their marginal rate from 39% to 15%. Also, the real money quote: “After Kansas eliminated its state tax on pass-through income, the number of people taking advantage of the exemption soared, leading to hundreds of millions of dollars in lost revenue for state coffers.” Kansas is run by idiots, which doesn’t say much for the people who voted them into office.
North Carolina Republicans, not satisfied with blocking legal protections for LGBT residents, have pushed through multiple bills aimed at suppressing the vote. If you live there, and any of your state reps are Republicans, you should be calling them daily.
Meanwhile, in Virginia, Governor Terry McAuliffe has restored the voting rights of over 150,000 felons – rights they would never have lost in many other states.
The governor of Kentucky won’t say who owns the house where he lives, a property that was sold in March for a price below its assessed value. The lack of disclosure mirrors the current federal Administration’s refusal to reveal potential conflicts of interest.
I won’t even pretend I followed this entire argument/spat over the “hot hand” theory in sports, although I think the 49/99 argument therein is merely a fancier application of the gambler’s fallacy. (The argument goes, if we expect a coin to turn up heads on 50 out of 100 flips, and the first flip is heads, then the expectation for the remaining 99 flips should be 49, not 49.5. I don’t agree with this, but given the behavior of some of this spat’s participants, I’m staying right here in my safe space.)
My alma mater’s Harvard Business Review has a strange piece arguing everyone should have at least two careers. On the one hand, yes, you can build and use your network to find untapped applications for your skills or even develop new ones. On the other hand, how many people have this kind of free time?
If you’ve ever used the site or app unroll.me, stop immediately because they’re selling your private data to Uber.
PBS Frontline aired a new documentary on what fish you should eat if you care about both your health and eating sustainable species. It’s not an easy question, and as the author and star of the documentary says, we need to find an answer if we expect to feed the planet.
The UN named Saudi Arabia, a country where women can’t drive and have fewer civil rights than a field mouse, the chair of its Women’s Rights Commission.
This is from 2013, but I stumbled across it last week: Allen Barra, who has also written quite a bit about baseball, wrote a piece in The Atlantic in praise of the novel At Swim-Two-Birds, one of my favorite novels ever.
Fortune profiles a startup that uses a spray made from discarded food that claims to keep fresh produce from spoiling, at least long enough to get it to distant markets. I would think that, if it works, this could also allow farmers in areas with less access to modern transportation to sell to export markets.
This tweet from a climate researcher went viral this past week:

Why I cancelled my @nytimes subscription. @BretStephensNYT pic.twitter.com/A3lFZNJdhY

— Stefan Rahmstorf (@rahmstorf) April 27, 2017

I am a NY Times digital subscriber, but I can’t say I see any value in including a science-denier in the name of “balance.” The Washington Post‘s Erik Wemple is similarly unimpressed.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: baseball, fish, links, metal, physics, smart baseball, stick to baseball, tv

→ December 3, 2016
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 12/3/16.

I had a couple of Insider pieces this week, on the trade of Jaime Garcia to Atlanta, the Cespedes contract, the trade of Alex Jackson to Atlanta, and my proposal for an international draft (written before the CBA negotiations ended). I also held a Klawchat on Thursday.

My latest boardgame review for Paste covers Grifters, a “deckbuilder without a deck” that I thought played a little too mechanically.

You can preorder my upcoming book, Smart Baseball, on amazon. Also, please sign up for my more-or-less weekly email newsletter.

And now, the links…

An important longread from Scientific American: How factory farming is speeding antibiotic resistance, endangering animals and humans alike, while the government does virtually nothing to stop them. The best thing we can all do is buy only meat from animals raised without antibiotics – organic is not necessary for this but it does qualify – or just don’t eat meat. The article also details some of the oppressive conditions in the ‘contract growing’ business of raising animals for food.
Another longread, this time from the Guardian, on Italy’s “ultras,” dangerous gangs of soccer fans who exert unusual control over the sport and are behind much of the violence that surrounds the sport.
I linked to this on Twitter earlier in the week: Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen wrote about the disastrous policies of Henry Kissinger in Southeast Asia, which led to millions of civilian and military deaths.
The House Science Committee is notoriously hostile to real science, something that became apparent again this week when its official account tweeted a link to a climate-denial article at a neo-Nazi site.
The FTC finally did something good! They’re requiring so-called “homeopathic medicines” to include a label that says there’s no evidence they work. That’s because they can’t work. Homeopathy, like cupping and acupressure, is just woo.
The Kansas government of Governor Sam Brownback has been an economic disaster, but it’s also been a test tube for voter-suppression tactics, like requiring proof that voters are Americans, even though the state could only identify three non-citizens who voted in the ten years before the law in question was passed.
A junk study claiming a link between vaccines and autism has been pulled following heavy criticism. I doubt that’ll stop deniers from using it, though.
And those same looney-toons think that Donald Trump will be an ally for their cause. Given his actions so far as President-Elect, I think he’ll throw them overboard the moment it’s politically expedient.
A federal judge ruled that counties in Hawai’i can’t ban genetically modified crops because state law prohibits counties from legislating agricultural issues. It’s painted as a win for Big Ag, but it’s also a win for science.
Research by the Pew Center finds that Americans don’t understand the meaning or import of organic or GMO food. Organic food is not more healthful to your body than conventionally-grown food, although it may be better for the soil, and GM food is not less healthful or more dangerous than non-GM food.
Why are some Massachusetts district attorneys refusing to reveal lists of cases they’ve prosecuted, in violation of state public records laws? The Boston Globe‘s Spotlight team is suing to get those records opened. Real journalism still exists, and I think it will matter in the next four years more than it has in decades.
The Daily Beast has a piece on Casey Affleck’s disturbing history of alleged harassment of women, including abusive behavior.
This Washington Post feature on the effort by the San Bernadino terrorists’ siblings to adopt the killers’ infant daughter is heartbreaking.
Rising ocean temperatures resulted in the worst bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef on record. Increasing carbon sequestration in the oceans raises the water temperature and lowers its pH. Both are bad for coral.
I loved the short-lived animated TV series The Critic, especially its crazy movie parodies, so I was thrilled to read this UPROXX conversation with the two creators.
News outlets are belatedly telling their writers not to use the term “alt-right” any longer, because it’s a euphemism for white nationalist, white supremacist, or neo-Nazi.
Another white-nationalist type has started a blacklist website devoted to identifying left-wing college professors, and Emory University Professor George Yancy is having none of it.
Miami Herald writer Armando Seguero absolutely lights up Colin Kaepernick for wearing a Fidel Castro shirt in a column published hours before the brutal, repressive Cuban dictator’s death was announced.
Many folks weighed in on Joe Posnanski’s columns about the WAR discrepancy between Justin Verlander and Rick Porcello; I particularly enjoyed Phil Birnbaum’s explanation of why the Baseball-Reference approach makes sense. You should read Birnbaum’s post, but in essence, he says that we should deduce from Verlander’s performance that he was the beneficiary of help from his defense, even though Detroit’s defense on the whole was not good.
Is the Internet a “failed state” along the lines of Somalia or now Libya? This Guardian op ed argues that the increasing lawlessness online makes it so.
Bloomberg View/Gadfly executive editor Timothy L. O’Brien argues that Donald Trump’s business is not too big to sell, and the President-Elect needs to sell before he takes office.
Trump’s pick to head the Department of Health and Human Services is a member of a fringe, far-right, anti-science doctors’ group whose positions include opposition to mandatory vaccinations, opposition to abortion, opposition to stem cell research, and opposition to organ donations, and whose journal is “a repository for quackery.”
The Columbia Journalism Review profiles the overhaul and success of the Washington Post in a wide-ranging conversation with two of the digital media company’s leaders – although I think some of what they reveal is less flattering than they think.
Baltimore is attacking street violence by treating it as a public-health problem, not as a typical crime.
Let’s get to the Trump stuff: One potential pick to head NIH is opposed to stem-cell research and faces much opposition even within Republican circles.
His pick for Secretary of Education is a blow to our nation’s science health. She’s also a disaster for church-state separation, proposing more school-choice programs to allow parents to send kids to religious schools using government dollars, and with ties to the ‘intelligent design’ pseudoscience movement.
Reince Preibus confirmed that Trump’s default position on climate change is denial.
That Carrier deal? It shows Trump and Pence don’t understand the constant churn of jobs in our modern economy.
The NY Times editorial board published a blunt column on Trump’s flag-burning tweet saying Mr. Trump, meet the Constitution.
After Trump won the election, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors issued a (symbolic) resolution saying they would oppose much of what he and the GOP stand for. Of course, it’ll matter when they act, or take the feds to court, but I wish more local politicians were so vocal about their opposition.
From June, a great New Yorker piece on just what a colossal scam Trump University was.
Here are a few of the Senate Democrats who’ve spoken out against Trump so far.
A Texas town’s mayor and government just learned it has had an independent housing authority for the last 40 years, which means that department, which had two employees, has had essentially zero oversight and, of course, hasn’t been fulfilling its mission to maintain living conditions in public housing.
The BBC spoke to hyperglots, speakers of many languages, about how they learned and retained so many tongues and why some people seem better able to do so.
A Canadian town’s police department has threatened to force people arrested for driving drunk to listen to Nickelback.
A 19-year-old Guatemalan woman with Down Syndrome has started a clothing line for other women with the genetic disorder.
Tweet of the week:

Quick recap: the new ed secretary is anti-public schools, the new HUD sec'y is anti-Fair Housing, and the new AG is anti-Voting Rights Act.

— Alec MacGillis (@AlecMacGillis) November 28, 2016

But to that, you can add that the new HHS head is anti-science, and the potential Secretary of State is still on probation.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: anti-science, baseball, climate change, food safety, Languages, links, pseudoscience, stick to baseball, vaccines

→ July 30, 2016
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 7/30/16.

It’s been a busy week already and I assume the next 52 hours will be even more so; here are my three Insider posts on trades from the last seven days:

• The Aroldis Chapman trade
• The Texas/Atlanta trade and the Blue Jays’ two deals
• The Andrew Cashner and Eduardo Nunez trades

I also have a draft blog post up on last week’s Under Armour Game, and I held my regular Klawchat on Thursday.

I’ll be on ESPN’s trade deadline show on Monday from 1 to 4 pm ET, after which I’m taking a few days off to work on my book and on some other personal projects.

And now, the links…

Dr. Mike Sonne, an injury prevention researcher and a baseball fan, argues that pitch clocks may increase pitcher injury risk by reducing recovery time for fatiguing muscles. So maybe pace of game isn’t such a huge problem.
If you missed this on Twitter you really should read Eireann Dolan’s story about her autistic brother, from how he was bullied as a kid to the nightmare they all just went through with him.
Iowa Republican Steve King says racist stuff on a regular basis and keeps winning re-election. The Iowa Starting line blog looks at why.
As always, I’m nobody’s expert on these matters, but I feel like the rejection of state “vote fraud” laws, including this week’s invalidation of North Carolina’s law as racist, is the biggest story of this election cycle. One, with African-American voters favoring Clinton in historic proportions, it seems like striking down these laws could help her in several critical states, including the swing state of North Carolina. Two, killing these laws – based on the entirely fraudulent fear of fraudulent voting – will have an effect on many elections to come, and, one might hope, will slow efforts to disenfranchise entire demographic groups.
BuzzFeed political editor (and longtime reader of mine) Katherine Miller wrote a great longread on how Trump “broke” the conservative movement.
Trump has faced multiple allegations of sexual assault from women over the last several decades, including one from his ex-wife Ivana. Everyone dismissed such claims against Bill Clinton in 1991-92, but a quarter-century later, the climate around rape and sexual assault is, or seemed to be, much changed. Perhaps Hannibal Burress needs to joke about it before it’ll go anywhere.
A large Swedish study on the environmental impacts of organic agriculture versus conventional found differences in each direction, with neither side clearly favored. This is especially important for consumers, in that food labeled “organic” isn’t going to be more nutritious or necessarily better for the environment. But there’s a problem within the problem here – the term “organic” has itself been watered down (pun intended) from what the term meant when Lord Northbourne coined it in 1940. So-called “natural” pesticides aren’t going to automatically better for the environment, for example, and dumping organic fertilizers into the soil won’t have the same effect as using compost and working in crops (like clover or legumes) that increase nitrogen content in the soil.
Those “recyclable” disposable coffee cups aren’t recyclable at all, not unless you have access to one of the very few facilities capable of doing so. This means tons of cups end up in landfills every year, so why don’t we demand better?
Scientific American explains a card trick that relies on a simple cipher and the cooperation of a partner.
A tough longread on a 20-year-old unsolved missing persons case on the Isle of Wight. The police seem to have botched the earliest stages of the investigation, which may render the case unsolvable.
German scientists found a bacterium living inside human noses that produces a chemical toxic to Staphylococcus aureus, the bacterium that causes MRSA. Now if only it worked against gonorrhea, the bacterium behind which has evolved resistance to all known antibiotics.
Joe Biden has to acknowledge the LIQUID SWORDS tweet at some point, right? If I see him around here I’m going to ask him.
Why are police officers enforcing Trump’s ban on Washington Post reporters? They’re claiming it’s a security issue, but that’s clearly not the case.
I wrote about a year ago about an essay I read on the unsolved abc problem in mathematics and the abstruse proof offered by a Japanese mathematician, Shinichi Mochizuki, who created a whole new branch of math to solve it – which meant no one was sure if he actually had solved it at all. Scientific American offers an update and some new commentary, including criticism of Mochizuki’s unwillingness to travel or work with others on the proof.
In a new book, Innovation and its Enemies, Calestous Juma explains why people often hate new stuff, and talks about what variables affect adoption rates or drive opposition.
The National Post gave the fraudumentary Vaxxed zero stars and an admonition not to see it.
Speaking of fraud, anything that claims it can “boost your immune system” is lying and even they worked, it’s a terrible idea. If you pay for these “enhanced” water products, or for useless supplements like Airborne, you might as well flush your money down the toilet.
The elusive DC-area chef Peter Chang is opening what he calls the restaurant of his dreams in Bethesda. I’ve been to his place in Charlottesville, and I thought it was excellent but have very little history or knowledge of Sichuan cuisine to compare it to.
Congrats to Pizzeria Vetri, our favorite pizzeria in Philly and just one of our favorite restaurants there period, for winning Philly magazine’s Best Soft-Serve Ice Cream nod for 2016.
Seth Meyers on “Bernie or Bust” twits:

Have a ton of respect for Bernie and supporters but also have this msg for "or bust" crew https://t.co/3dQVrG6gqB

— Seth Meyers (@sethmeyers) July 27, 2016

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: baseball, environment, ice cream, links, math, organic agriculture, vaccines

→ July 9, 2016
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 7/9/16.

My annual top 25 MLB players under age 25 ranking went up this week for Insiders, and please read the intro while you’re there. I also wrote a non-Insider All-Star roster reaction piece, covering five glaring snubs and five guys who made it but shouldn’t have. I also held my usual Klawchat on Thursday.

My latest boardgame review for Paste covers the reissue of the Reiner Knizia game Ra.

Sign up for my newsletter! You’ll get occasional emails from me with links to my content and stray thoughts that didn’t fit anywhere else.

And now, the links…

U.S. Senior District Judge Henry Coke Morgan ruled this week that the federal government did not require a warrant to hack into a computer to get its IP address. I’m linking to that news story, which takes a broader view of the ruling than I got from reading it (note: I’m not a lawyer), because I’m soliciting your opinions. While I don’t like the ruling, I don’t think this just some idiot judge failing to understand the technology. The ruling instead says that a user has no reasonable expectation of privacy around his/her IP address (fair), and therefore the government did not need a warrant to do what it did here (unfair?).
Alberta prosecutors are appealing for a longer sentence against the anti-vaxxer parents who let their kid die of meningitis. The father in particular has dug in, failing to comply with a judge’s order to post the ruling on their “prayers for Ezekiel” page.
A study of 481 pitchers aged 9 to 14 found that pitching more than 100 innings in a year increased injury likelihood by 350%. The same study found no correlation between curveball usage and injury, and a statistically insignificant correlation between playing catcher and suffering injury.
Remember my post on how Suki Kim’s work of investigative journalism inside North Korea was tabbed a “memoir” over her objections? Well, the NY Times reviewed Hisham Matar’s latest book and wrote “It seems unfair to call Hisham Matar’s extraordinary new book a memoir, since it is so many other things besides.”
I tweeted about how people use the passive voice to avoid responsibility, at which point a reader sent this 2014 Washington Post story on exactly that topic in discussing police shootings.
The indie-rock band WAVVES, who appear quite frequently on my music playlists here, made … uh, waves this week when bandleader Nathan Williams banned racists, homophobes, rape apologists, and Trump supporters from their concerts.
A Jewish writer who works for Donald Trump’s son-in-law at The Observer wrote this open letter on the candidate’s anti-Semitic comments to her boss.
Macy’s apparently has a history of illegally detaining and extorting suspected shoplifters. This seems like something from a Philip K. Dick novel.
Some state agencies won’t forgive student loans even if the borrower dies. Our student loan industry is a giant disaster anyway, and it isn’t doing anything to make college more affordable. I’d love to see Sallie Mae and other analogous institutions shut down entirely, at which point colleges won’t be able to hike tuition indiscriminately any more.
You can be biased but still be right. Maybe I should send this to every whining fan accusing me of bias for or against every team.
Can organic farms be run on large spaces like so-called Big Ag? The regulatory answer is yes, but the practices of these farms probably don’t match what you think of as “organic.” I’ve been listening to the audio version of Blue Hill executive chef Dan Barber’s new book The Third Plate, and it’s quite clear that “organic” as a food label is quickly losing its meaning.
A longread from Foreign Policy about the murder of an American woman in Nepal touches on both the legally shady industry of couchsurfing (and similar businesses) and the possibility that an innocent man was tortured into a confession.
Tweet of the week:

Tell me again how the US improved their water and sanitation in 1995. #vaccines #vaccineswork pic.twitter.com/0CPeI0gnFv

— Doc Bastard (@DocBastard) July 8, 2016

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: baseball, cognitive psychology, links, organic agriculture, stick to baseball, vaccines

→ August 22, 2015
→ By keith

Saturday five, 8/21/15.

My short series on the best tools in baseball continued with my ranking of the players with the best hitting tools and the best fielding tools in the majors. I also had two draft blog posts, one on the Perfect Game All-American Classic and one on the Under Armour game.

I was the guest host of the Baseball Tonight podcast on Wednesday, with guests Tim Kurkjian and Alex Speier.

Chat is still down, so I did another Periscope video chat instead.

And now, this week’s links…

Back in N.W.A.’s heyday, Dr. Dre severely beat female journalist Dee Barnes, and she’s not happy the NWA biopic omitted the incident.
The Guardian had the best op ed I saw this week on the controversy over Josh Ostrovsky, aka “the Fat Jew,” stealing jokes on social media.
Is it the beginning of the end for online comments? I tend to hope so. Most comment threads quickly devolve into digital septic tanks.
Major food-processing companies are fighting to reduce what you know about the food in their packages. Regardless of your views on genetic modification, organic versus conventional, and so on, any laws that reduce transparency are losses for all consumers.
The best longread of the week is from the New York Times, on how poor people get caught in a cycle of prison time for inability to pay their bail or other court fees.
San Francisco Giants scout Stan Saleski took his own life while advancing the Royals and Orioles for the World Series last year, and his daughter, Whitney, has turned her grief into a photo project to reduce the stigma around suicide.
The global populations of certain species of bats has been threatened by a fungal disease, but there’s a new treatment on the horizon. It matters to us because bats are one of a handful of species, along with bees and monarch butterflies, that helps pollinate crops essential to our food supply – and the populations of all of those species are declining.
A few weeks ago, I linked to an LA Times investigative piece on an antibiotic-resistant bacterium that hit the UCLA hospital due to a specific type of duodenoscope; well, it’s back, this time at a Pasadena hospital.
Climate change has made the current California drought 8% to 27% worse than it otherwise would have been. There’s no silver lining anywhere in this story: It’s conserve or die.
The New Yorker has a brief overview of the ongoing lawsuit challenging minor-league player compensation as illegal because they earn less than minimum wage. The real solution here is to end MLB’s antitrust exemption, but that would require an act of Congress.
Yet more evidence that we are hopelessly suggestible: Hong Kong restaurant patrons preferred dishes “explained” by the chef, even when those dishes had inferior ingredients. Maybe none of them wanted to seem to be a philistine.
If you’ve followed the Shaun King story at all, this piece from the Black Lives Matter activist is worth reading.
Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Motors, conceived a “hyperloop” sort of bullet train that would whisk passengers across a great distance via pneumatic tube; now it looks like construction of a hyperloop may start next year.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: baseball, climate change, food safety, hip-hop, links, saturday five, suicide

→ August 1, 2015
→ By keith

Saturday five, 8/1/15.

So I was kind of busy this week, writing these pieces for Insiders on the major trades leading up to Friday’s trade deadline.

• Yoenis Cespedes to the Mets
• Mike Leake to San Francisco
• Latos/Olivera/Wood three-team trade
• David Price to Toronto
• Joakim Soria to Pittsburgh
• Carlos Gomez/Mike Fiers to Houston
• Brandon Moss to St. Louis
• Cole Hamels to Texas
• Jonathan Papelbon to Washington
• Ben Zobrist to Kansas City
• Troy Tulowitzki to Toronto
• Tyler Clippard to the Mets
• Johnny Cueto to Kansas City
• Several smaller trades
• The Mets/Carlos Gomez trade that didn’t happen

I also have a scouting post up on some Mets and Yankees AA prospects.

And now, the links…

Earlier this month, a fan at a Brewers game was hit in the face by a line drive, severely injuring her and missing killing her by centimeters. There’s a fundraising page for her medical bills if you’d like to donate.
Twitter is now hiding plagiarized jokes and other tweets if the original authors file complaints. It’s a minor issue compared to some of the abuse hurled at women and minorities on Twitter, but I’ll take any step toward greater editorial control on Twitter as a positive.
Molly Knight talked to Lasorda’s Lair about her book on the Dodgers and her history of anxiety disorder. If you haven’t yet, you should buy her book.
The Shreveport Times has a sharp opinion piece on how the Lafayette massacre won’t change anything. The piece specifically singles out Louisiana’s “weak and non-existent gun control.” It’s on us, though; you vote for candidates who take money from the NRA, this is what you get. If you don’t like it, get out there and campaign for the other side.
Is the song “Happy Birthday” still protected by copyright? It appears it may not be, although we’ll need the judge’s ruling to be sure. There’s a big fight coming in 2018 over expiring copyrights, one that puts me (in favor of putting many older works in the public domain) on the opposite side from my employer (Disney, which has a fair concern about Mickey Mouse falling into p.d.).
The Fibonacci shelf takes the mathematical sequence and turns it into stackable furniture. I want this.
Three “next-level” recipes for rum punch. That first one, a planter’s punch with homemade grenadine, sounds right up my alley; planter’s punch is the first strong (may I say “grown-up?”) cocktail I liked.
Go ahead, be sarcastic, at least with people you know well: it can boost creative thinking, according to a new study by three business school professors.
A fantastic profile of prodigy turned mathematician Terry Tao, considered (per the piece) “the finest mathematician of his generation,” and more broadly a piece on number theory. I share Tao’s love of the original computer game Civilization and the difficulty in putting it aside; it occupied a huge portion of the fall semester of my junior year of college, unfortunately. That said, it kills me that the article’s author felt that “prime number” required a definition. You shouldn’t be able to get to high school without knowing what that means.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: anxiety, baseball, cocktails, links, math, saturday five

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