climate change — Page 12

→ September 10, 2016
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 9/10/16.

No Insider content this week, as I was working on my book – including an interview with an executive the other day that ran over two hours and took forever to transcribe – but I did hold a Klawchat because I’m such a nice guy.

My latest game review for Paste covers the five-minute card game 3 Wishes, a very fast-moving with a deck of just 18 cards in a similar vein to Love Letter or Coup.

And now, the links…

The best longread this week was in New York, which profiled a Sandy Hook victim’s father, who went from conspiracy believer to anti-hoax activist.
A close second goes to Vanity Fair for its the rise and fall of Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes.
And third place goes to the New Yorker for an incredible profile of NY Times restaurant critic Pete Wells.
A writer for Elle describes getting the call that her abusive, sociopathic father is dying. She doesn’t flinch from the painful parts.
Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo has some thoughts on my former colleague Curt Schilling.
We’re going to get genetically modified mosquitoes in Florida soon, and Mother Jones answers some questions on their safety and efficacy. An ongoing release in the Caymans is showing promise.
The “yield gap” between conventional and organic methods of agriculture is only partially true, and it appears that the dichotomy itself is a false one. Some crops fare better under organic methods, some worse. One question this article raised in my mind: What if a farm used truly organic practices, but was willing to use GM seeds to help raise yields in the absence of synthetic N and with minimal pesticide applications?
Climate change is already leading to coastal flooding in the U.S., and what’s worse, Congressional Republicans have opposed funding for plans to help these areas cope with rising sea levels.
I tweeted and posted on Instagram a photo of a cigarette ad I found in my dilapidated 1973 paperback copy of To Your Scattered Bodies Go. A reader sent along this NY Times piece on cigarette ads in books, which mentions the same ad I found for Kent cigarettes – including their asbestos filters.
This New Scientist piece is kind of garbage at the top, taking a single study to proclaim “There is now a sixth taste – and it explains why we love carbs.” No, there’s not definitely a sixth taste, but one study showed that some people identified a separate taste for carbohydrates independent of the five tastes we know exist.
Buried a bit in this advice column is a great answer to a parent asking about keeping her infant away from anti-vaxers.
A “global vaccine confidence survey” showed that the French are even dumber than we are on vaccines, with 41% of respondents in the hexagon saying vaccines were unsafe. (They aren’t.)
Dr. Bob Sears, a California doctor who has recommended delayed vaccinations and has been accused of (but not proven to have been) selling medical exemption letters to parents, is facing disciplinary action from the California medical board. This is extremely unusual, as these boards are often toothless, but this would send a very strong message to other quacks preaching vaccine denial.
The Harvard Medical School’s Health Blog has a great post arguing that we need to make it harder for parents to refuse to vaccinate their kids. Copout exemptions don’t even force parents to explain their choices to doctors – and hear rational, factual arguments why vaccination is not just smart but necessary.
Deadspin’s Tim Marchman dyslogizes Phyllis Schlafly, the conservative gadfly who preached hate – of gays, of non-Christians, of immigrants, of minorities – for a half-century. My favorite thing on Twitter this week was folks, myself included, posting Schlafly quotes, without adding any comments, and then being accused of speaking ill of the dead before the body was cold. Those were her words, genius. I didn’t have to make her look bad, because she did that all by herself.
A new catalyst might allow us to split water for less energy to get at the hydrogen as a fuel source. But did anyone else see this and think of those “run your car on water!” scams?
Roxanne Jones, who used to work for ESPN (but whom I don’t know), penned a strong op ed for CNN.com saying we need to stop ‘justifying’ men who rape. It doesn’t matter that he was a good kid or had a future or whatever. If you rape, then you are a rapist.
Charles Pierce starts with a quote from At Swim-Two-Birds in his dissection of that Matt Lauer-led farce this week, including a note on the climate change issue I mentioned above.
The corruption of Donald Trump – no surprise, given that he’s a fan of dictator Vladimir Putin – has been subsumed by unsubstantiated claims that Hillary Clinton is corrupt. He gave money to the Florida AG, who then dropped an investigation into Trump University; he gave $35,000 to Greg Abbott’s campaign after Abbott did the same as Texas AG. Vox covered the Florida story, yet somehow the New York Times – a left-leaning publication – couldn’t find room on its front page for this?
It’s probably worth mentioning, with Putin garnering all this praise from Trump (and, one would assume, earning admiration from Trump supporters), that 56 journalists have been killed in Russia since 1992 for reasons related to their work.
Kurt Eichenwald explains that Trump is lying about why he can’t release his tax returns. His tweetstorm on the Clinton Foundation not only claims that there is no scandal over the Foundation’s efforts, but also laments, hopelessly, the increasing irrelevance of facts in political discourse.
The Koch Brothers, who give millions to conservative candidates and causes, stand accused by a whistleblower of knowingly polluting an Arkansas town. This is just one side of the story, but the whistleblower claims to have some fairly damning evidence that the mill in question, run by Georgia Pacific, was dumping a lot of carcinogens and other potentially dangerous chemicals into places where they’d end up in groundwater, and that the mill’s operators knew this and tried to mask the dumping.
Have you seen the Dakota Access Pipeline protest stories? Many seem to focus on the climate-change aspect of the protests, or the use of dogs to fight with protestors, but this is really about Native American sovereignty and a company skirting the rules, doing so with the help of the Army Corps of Engineers until the Obama Administration put a halt to it on Friday.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: climate change, environment, hoaxes, links, organic agriculture, rape culture, stick to baseball, vaccines

→ August 20, 2016
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 8/20/16.

I discovered that my upcoming book has an amazon page for pre-orders! The tentative title is Smart Baseball (not #smrtbaseball, although we’re playing off that) and the tentative release date is April 27th. I suppose I need to finish writing it soon.

My main Insider piece this week covered the Reign of Error in Arizona under Tony La Russa and Dave Stewart, both of whom should be replaced now that their contracts are expiring. I held a Klawchat here on Thursday afternoon and discussed that piece a little more.

I was the guest host on the BBTN podcast this week, on Tuesday with Jayson Stark and WATERS singer Van Pierszalowski (a big Dodgers fan), Wednesday with Eric Karabell and Tim Kurkjian, and Thursday with Jerry Crasnick and Nick Piecoro.

I’ll be reviewing a boardgame a week for Paste through the end of the year, and the latest review is on Costa Rica, a light family game from the designer of Relic Runners and Elysium. It’s fun for the kids but I think too unbalanced for adults to play on their own.

And now, the links…

Juanita Broaddrick was the most credible of all of the women – and there were a lot – to accuse Bill Clinton of sexual improprieties; her accusation that the then-Governor of Arkansas raped her stood up to what scrutiny was possible twenty years after the incident. Buzzfeed talks to Broaddrick about her opposition to Hillary’s candidacy and asks why her case hasn’t gotten the attention today it deserves. (Hint: it might be because pretty much all non-right-wing media want Trump to lose.)
Florida’s Duval County prosecutor Angela Corey tried to charge a 12-year-old kid with second-degree murder while appearing to conspire with his public defender to coerce the kid into accepting it – then charging the same kid with molesting his 5-year-old brother after he rejected it. Corey and Jacksonville’s elected public defender, the delightfully-named Matt Shirk, appear to be crossing numerous ethical lines, including frequently charging minors as adults in felony cases. Corey is up for re-election this fall and if you live in Duval County you should examine her record.
Forget Zika or Ebola; yellow fever could be the next pandemic, and we are totally unprepared for it.
If you have young kids, when they turn 11 get them vaccinated against HPV. Just fucking do it.
A year ago it appeared that vaccination efforts had eradicated polio in Nigeria and thus in Africa as a whole, but it’s back thanks to Boko Haram. So vaccine deniers and murderous Islamists have something in common!
Why did NASA, an agency of the U.S. government, issue a $1 million grant to study theology? And why is it now refusing to reveal details of the grant?
You could see this coming a mile away: The Austin American-Statesman has run a redemption story for Paul Qui, the former Top Chef winner who was arrested for a domestic violence incident in March.
The Atlantic looks at the imminent climate change-induced demise of Kiribati after one of its weightlifters does a dance following a lift.
A new study published in Nature Communications found more evidence that neonic pesticides are harming bee populations. Neonics probably aren’t safe, and we should curtail their use until manufacturers can prove they are.
Gay BYU students who are victims of assault are disciplined for being gay when they try to report the crimes.
The 2016 Olympics haven’t had a major disaster, but the Guardian‘s Marina Hyde notes that they’re a disaster for the host country anyway. Her best point: arguing that the IOC itself should build a permanent home for the Games.
Arranged marriages are still common in many poorer parts of the world; NPR ran a fascinating story on one father’s campaign to free his daughter from a marriage he helped arrange.
Popular Mechanics explains that chemtrails aren’t real no matter what you read on tinfoilhat dot com.
“I’m 36 and not on Facebook. You probably shouldn’t be either.” doesn’t quite make the case the headline promises, and I don’t agree with the conclusion, but I think it’s a point worth considering especially as social media, especially Facebook, change the nature of friendships in my generation and those that follow.
WIRED endorsed Hillary Clinton for President, the first official endorsement of a Presidential candidate in the publication’s history.
Those of you aged 35 and up might remember the Gopher internet protocol, which eventually lost out to the world wide web despite some early promise as the first user-friendly way to access information on the Internet.
British physicist and professor Brian Cox took on a climate change denier politican from Australia on the ABC (Australia) TV show Q&A, where the politican came off pretty clearly as a conspiracy theorist loon.
Physicists at UC-Irvine, building on research by another group working in Hungary, found evidence of a new subatomic particle that may carry an unknown force. The standard model of physics has long held that there are four fundamental forces; three of them, the weak, strong, and electromagnetic forces, appear to have all been unified at the moment right after the Big Bang, but a solution unifying gravity with the other three has proven elusive. This particle, thirty times heavier than an electron, might carry a fifth force previously unknown and unaccounted for in standard or modern models.
The “proton radius puzzle,” where the measurements of that subatomic particle’s radius differ depending on what is orbiting the proton, was further confirmed in experiments using deuterium, a hydrogen isotope with an atomic weight of 2 due to the presence of a neutron in the atom’s nucleus.
An experimental physicist in Haifa, Israel, created an artificial black hole to test one of Stephen Hawking’s predictions, namely that black holes will emit a type of feeble radiation (now known as “Hawking radiation”) that, over time, will lead to the black holes shrinking and vanishing entirely – taking all information lost in those black holes over their existence with them. These are early results and incomplete ones at that, but the linked piece gets into Hawking’s predictions and the information paradox.
The Romanian soccer team recently donned uniforms with math equations instead of numbers to encourage kids learning math, with kids also getting soccer-themed math questions to work on.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: climate change, environment, gay rights, links, science, top chef, vaccines

→ August 13, 2016
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 8/13/16.

I wrote one Insider piece this week, on the decline and fall of Yasiel Puig as a hitter, not as a clubhouse problem or social media superstar. I also held a long Klawchat on Thursday.

I attended GenCon for the first time last week and wrote three pieces about it for Paste, including the top ten new games I saw, the summary of every other interesting title, and an essay on the experience of attending for the first time.

And now, the links:

This piece on Twitter’s ongoing failure to deal with harassment sheds much light on how and why the site has allowed abuse to flourish. Lack of diversity in company leadership has been one major problem.
Vox advances the thesis that NBC’s coverage of the Olympics is terrible because they view the games as entertainment, not sports. I find their broadcasts unwatchable; we record them and fast-forward through maybe 90% of the content, including every recorded feature they’ve prepared on the athletes, because all I’m interested in is certain events.
Deadly bacteria, like the one that causes cholera, are spreading as ocean temperatures rise. Climate-change deniers tend to focus on air temperatures, but I’ve yet to find one who can rationalize away our warming and increasingly acidic oceans.
A woman who was sexually assaulted while a student at Harvard Law School explains why the school needs to apologize, part of the “just say sorry” campaign for schools to at least accept that modicum of responsibility. I’m ashamed to read the details of how HLS mishandled her case, including the subsequent readmission of her rapist and the actions of 19 professors who have defended him and participated in shaming her.
Anita Hill spoke to NPR about progress in workplace since her sexual harassment claim, which became a story in 1991 but never really threatened the Supreme Court nomination of Clarence Thomas. If a nominee today were accused of doing what Hill said Thomas did – and I see no reason to disbelieve her – would he sail through to the bench as Thomas did?
Amazon is quietly eliminating list prices in response to a number of complaints, including lawsuits over misleading discounts off prices that never really existed.
Three student-scientists at Stanford believe they’ve developed proteins that will kill antibiotic-resistant bacteria. They’re seeking investors and aren’t disclosing the details – which I hope isn’t too similar to Elizabeth Holmes’ history – but this could be very good news in what is about to become a huge public-health crisis.
Clay Shirky explains why there’s no such thing as a protest vote. I happen to agree, and I have in fact cast such a vote in the past – but won’t this year.
On the other hand, Reason has an op ed on why Republicans voting for Trump would be wasting their votes, although the author is really just arguing that Trump is not a conservative and that he’d be a disastrous president … but I believe he’s arguing conservatives should vote for Gary Johnson instead.
Texas, which has executed more prisoners since 1976 than 45 other states combined, is about to execute a convict who didn’t kill anybody. He was in the getaway car when his partner in the planned robbery killed the store employee.
So far, the Rio Olympics have not led to any of the disasters predicted for them. That doesn’t mean giving Brazil the Olympics was a good idea; the economic harm done to the country could be long-lasting, such as wasting $62 million on Olympic posters to hide a favela from public view.
The pseudonymous surgeon and scientist Orac weighs in on the latest Medscape survey on vaccine-refusing or hesitant patients, with some prescriptions for the best strategies in dealing with them. He also notes that the media (hi!) have become less tolerant of anti-vax bullshit over the last few years.
The DoJ report excoriating the Baltimore police department included a note where a prosecutor called a woman who reported a rape a “conniving little whore.” Much of the coverage has focused on the department’s problems with racial bias, but the BPD has an abysmal record at investigating rapes, too.
Vanity Fair has a longread on the Bill Cosby rape case(s), explaining how this one particular incident reached a courtroom and opened the gates for fifty-nine other victims to come forward.
A judge in Louisville, Kentucky, has gotten some positive attention on social media for two cases where she showed some human decency. The first case, of a female defendant who appeared to have been seriously mistreated by jailers, is about much more than just a judge showing compassion.
Australia has a large detention center for asylum seekers on the remote Pacific island of Nauru – a functionally insolvent island state that depends on the center and foreign aid for its economic survival – and a Guardian investigative report found widespread abuse of children in the camp.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: climate change, links, olympics, rape culture, twitter, vaccines

→ June 18, 2016
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 6/18/16.

No new Insider content this week, although if you missed them you should check out my
American League draft recaps and National League draft recaps. No Federal League draft recaps, though, as the league folded in 1915. I held my weekly Klawchat on Thursday.

And now, the links:

Should pediatricians refuse to treat vaccine refusers? It’s not as easy a question as you might think – and while you (and I) would likely want our kids’ pediatricians to shun patients who might be carriers, there’s a larger social issue at play here.
Oh, hey, the Republican Presidential nominee is a vaccine denialist. Unlike the author of that post, I am a single-issue voter when it comes to science. I will not vote for a science-denier, period.
An Australian mum who went from anti-vax to pro-vax calls the vaccine-denier movement a sort of cult. Hard to dispute that, given the deniers’ clinging to false beliefs in the face of undeniable fact.
Other cult-like behavior from anti-vaxxers: harassing pro-vaccine activists by using sockpuppet social media accounts.
A reporter in Philadelphia – about 30 miles from me – bought an AR-15 assault rifle in seven minutes. No civilian has any need whatsoever for this kind of gun, yet they are legal and available with little to no restrictions in most states.
Oakland cops who were supposed to be working to fight sex trafficking themselves raped and trafficked an underaged sex worker. And that’s just the beginning of the accusations of crime and corruption in the Oakland PD.
My former colleague Bill Simmons gave a great interview to the Boston Globe‘s Chad Finn, who I should mention was one of my earliest supporters in the mainstream sports media, so I enjoyed this Q&A for a lot reasons.
A first-person account from a gay woman and her mother in Iran, where homosexuality is not just seen as a sin, but a crime, with a third offense punishable by death. And, if you were wondering, here’s a world map showing where being gay is illegal.
Oklahoma’s extreme right-wing governor and legislature want public schools to teach a pro-life curriculum. I see no way this is permissible under the First Amendment’s “establishment clause,” as teaching that life begins at conception is fundamentally a religious belief, not a scientific one.
The Brock Turner case highlighted how an entire justice system crafted and run by men fails to serve female victims of sexual assault.
One woman responded to an unsolicited dick pic by sending her harasser a barrage of pictures of penises and outing him. Of course, Facebook then froze her account for posting nudity. The actual back-and-forth exchange, along with this idiot’s comment that “you’re a girl so you should like it,” is posted here.
A US Marine who was working as a bouncer at Pulse nightclub in Orlando is credited with saving dozens of lives by keeping his head during the panic on Saturday night. His name, by the way, is Imran Yousuf.
Jessica Luther, who has done outstanding work covering the Baylor sexual assault epidemic and institutional coverup, writes on espnW about what the 30 for 30 OJ documentary doesn’t say about domestic violence.
More on Peter Thiel’s vendetta against Gawker and underlying attack on the free press: He’s bankrolled other, largely frivolous lawsuits, including a new one against Gawker over their investigative report on Donald Trump’s hair. Within this article is a note on Shiva Ayyadurai, a crackpot who erroneously claims to have invented email.
Still think Gawker had it coming? Read the Columbia Journalism Review on how billionaires are using money and intimidation to silence media critics and tell me you’re not concerned about the state of our free press.
Climate change has claimed its first mammal extinction, as a rodent that lived on a reef island off the coast of Queensland, Australia, has been declared extinct.
I thought this speech on the Orlando massacre by the Utah Lieutenant Governor was moving, well-written, and, I think, unusually sincere for any speech by a politician.
Jezebel interviewed a woman who had an abortion at 32 weeks because the fetus was nonviable. Remember that closing abortion clinics – or shooting at them or blowing them up or merely turning your back when others do so – affects a lot of people for a lot of different reasons.
I found this piece on growing up without the father who left the author when she was seven just heartbreaking from start to finish.
Basra, Iraq, a city run by Islamist politicians supported by Iran, has a rather remarkable Western-style shopping mall that has become a new cultural hub for the city. Where there is life – and commerce – there is hope.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: climate change, links, rape culture, stick to baseball, vaccines

→ June 4, 2016
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 6/4/16.

My third mock draft went up Friday morning, without a ton of big changes from the last one. Feedback from club sources so far is that it’s reasonable other than the fact that I don’t have Mickey Moniak going in the top ten; I agree with them, and was very uncomfortable with where I had him, but as I said in yesterday’s Klawchat I didn’t have a clear indication of any teams on him other than Philly and Colorado. I can add a bonus tidbit here: Boston, at 12, is on Virginia catcher Matt Thaiss as well as the other names I’ve mentioned.

I also tweaked my my rankings of the top 100 prospects for the draft, again with the help of Eric Longenhagen.

My latest monthly new music playlist went up Thursday morning.

Thanks to all of you who’ve signed up for my newsletter – I’m well over a thousand subscribers already.

And now, the links:

I tweeted this link, but here it is again: The founder of the Take Back the Night charity relives how she used her own assault to tell the world about date rape. How she was treated may appall you, or you may think “rape culture” is just some bullshit that SJWs made up on social media. Also, I’m not going to lie – I skimmed through the details of the rape, for the same reason I fast-forwarded through that scene in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. I just can’t.
Brock Allen Turner, a former Stanford student who sexually assaulted an unconscious woman, received just six months in prison for raping an unconscious woman because the judge feared a longer sentence would have a “severe impact” on him. His victim read this statement about the “severe impact” his assault had on her at the sentencing hearing. I’m not sure what the terms are for recalling a judge in California, but this would seem to be a good reason for doing so.
The Ringer has already featured some great stuff, none better so far than Keith Olbermann’s tribute to Muhammad Ali.
There’s a deluge of great content today on the life of Ali, and I’ve only read a sliver of it, but I’ll also recommend David Remnick’s remembrance in the New Yorker.
The NY Times details the appearance of two indie coffee shops in the South Bronx. There’s a real question underneath here: what kinds of small businesses (or large ones, I guess) encourage urban renewal? Do we want a Starbucks or a Whole Foods in a blighted area to help drive economic growth, even if a side effect is some gentrification? I’d certainly vote yes.
The Big 12 conference won’t even let walk-ons transfer without sitting out a year. I mean, really, the NCAA should be broken up by the feds for all of these restrictions on athletes. It’s a cartel.
Alan Sepinwall looks back at twenty years of writing about watching television and how the medium – both media, really – have changed in that period.
Buzzfeed covers the bizarre story of how two bands toured as the Zombies in the 1960s even though neither was the real band.
Could psilocybin, the psychoactive chemical found in ‘magic mushrooms,’ help treat depression and/or anxiety? A pair of studies show some promise, although the mechanism is not yet understood.
The Nation offered an op ed slamming the Washington Post‘s poll on their NFL team’s nickname. I have some problems with that poll, especially the identification of respondents, but I think this focuses too much on the potential harm of the name and not enough on questioning the science behind the poll (if needed).
A chemist and a synthetic biologist (I didn’t know this was a thing) at Harvard have developed a “bionic leaf” that creates alcohol fuels from sun, water, and CO2. It’s still very early in the development process, but the possibilities – creating renewable fuels and plastics while reducing CO2 in the atmosphere – are huge.
This article on what questions quantum computers might best be able to solve reminded me of Lance Fortnow’s book on the P vs NP problem, The Golden Ticket. So-called “NP-hard” problems represent the most complex problems in computational theory, and quantum computers right now appear to offer the only possible way to solve them.
A deranged pediatrician in Nashville has stopped offering vaccinations, claiming they cause autism. Needless to say, if you live around there, don’t give him your business.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: climate change, coffee, rape culture, stick to baseball, vaccines

→ May 28, 2016
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 5/28/16.

My Mock Draft 2.0 Is now up for Insiders. You can also see my post from Tuesday ranking the top 25 prospects in pro ball. I’ll expand that list to 50 after the Futures Game in July.

I also held my usual Klawchat, this time on Friday morning on a flight from Birmingham to Baltimore.

And now, the links…

The wife of one of my readers penned this excellent piece on how protectionism will hurt the United States. With one Presidential candidate pushing a Hawley-Smoot vision of trade, and the other talking about using tariffs as a weapon, we may be on the verge of an entirely preventable hit to our economy.
Colistin-resistant bacteria have made their first appearance in the U.S. While health officials say there’s no current cause for alarm, this is very, very bad news. The most likely cause? China’s overuse of antibiotics in livestock.
Best news/opinion piece I saw on the Baylor debacle was this review and takedown from Texas Monthly‘s Jessica Luther and Dan Solomon.
Peter Thiel, billionaire founder of Paypal and Facebook board member, financed Hulk Hogan’s lawsuit against Gawker as part of his own personal vendetta. This is a very dangerous precedent for our legal system.
A Republican judge in Ohio ruled that a GOP-backed law violated the Voting Rights Act because its practical effect would be to suppress the black vote.
Ah, Mississippi, where gays are second-class citizens and a mentally ill man has been in jail for 11 years without a trial.
The Washington Post praised a speech in which Elizabeth Warren eviscerated Donald Trump, but does it matter? I feel like his base is impervious to this kind of criticism, and I’m not sure it will sway many of the undecided voters either, so this feels like either wishful thinking or some sort of cheerleading.
Four WaPo pieces this week. Their in-depth profile of a 13-year-old girl’s online social life disturbed me, the father of a 10-year-old girl who is sitting next to me with her iPad mini right now. Richard Deitsch pointed out online that this girl’s experience isn’t universal, though: she’s financially well off, certainly, and there’s probably a good companion piece to be written on a kid on the other side of the digital divide.
The best BBQ place in San Antonio has taken the egalitarian cuisine upscale. I’m a little disappointed I couldn’t fit a trip to see Forrest Whitley into my schedule so I could have eaten dinner at the Granary.
The World Bank issued a report warning of the water shortages that will come with climate change. It’s very cheery stuff.
A writer at The Mighty shares her story of depression and how we tend to overlook people who appear to be successful in life but may still have depression or anxiety disorder.
Why was the National Children’s Study cancelled after 14 years, over $1 billion in expenses, and no results? There are many answers, none very satisfying, provided in this look by Undark.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: bbq, climate change, links, mental illness, stick to baseball, vaccines

→ April 30, 2016
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 4/30/16.

No new Insider content this week, although I had a draft blog post last Saturday on Riley Pint, Joey Wentz, Braxton Garrett, and more players I saw. I held my usual Klawchat on Thursday.

And now, the links…

From my alma mater’s magazine, can gene editing lead to the end of malaria and other mosquito-borne diseases? What are the ecological consequences of wiping out a species to better humanity?
My friend Lindsey Adler wrote a heartbreaking piece about her past battle with anorexia.
A female state Senator in South Carolina has introduced a bill requiring counseling and a 24-hour waiting period for men to get a Viagra prescription to highlight the gender inequity in laws that restrict abortion access. No, it’s not an apt analogy, nor do I think Sen. Mia McLeod is trying to compare the two directly; she’s pointing out, correctly, that anti-abortion laws are largely passed by men and only affect women.
More evidence and arguments contradicting the allergen-avoidance strategy for new parents from the NY Times.
Nearly half of (self-described) conservative Republicans climate change is real, so why is the putative party of conservatives still in denial?
In Oklahoma, non-consensual oral sex isn’t rape if the victim is drunk, because Oklahoma law is still stuck in the 1800s.
The NY Times obituary of Ozzie Silna, former owner of the ABA’s Spirits of St. Louis, is an ebullient retelling of the saga of the greatest deal in sports history.
Memphis has six identified measles cases already, several infants plus one unvaccinated dipshit adult. A woman in Washington died of measles last year, so, you know, get the damn shot already.
I linked a few weeks ago to a story on Sci-Hub, the not-really-legal site where researchers can download copyrighted academic papers for free, and Science has a report on how everyone around the world is using it. Slate rips Science for an accompanying editorial defending the academic-journal paywall. Copyright law has a purpose, but providing huge economic rents on academic papers was not one.
Reader Ridley Kemp passed along this link after Thursday’s chat: Nature blows up the myth of gender as biologically binary.
FiveThirtyEight goes deep on the concept of universal basic income, a new and unproven way to address the income gap, poverty, and economic insecurity. It’s also very expensive and probably a political non-starter. My gut says it’s crazy.
There isn’t much new in the Brigham Young University honor code scandal, but this Guardian summary of the school’s absurd victim-crushing policies is a strong read. I still do not see why this school is receiving any federal funds at this point.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: climate change, rape culture, stick to baseball, vaccines

→ April 3, 2016
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 4/3/16.

A rather unproductive trip to Florida (thanks in no small part to rain and high school coach decisions) is over and I’m heading home before my first TV hit of the new season, on this week’s Wednesday Night Baseball Telecast of the Phillies at the Reds. I’ll be on roughly for innings four through six, discussing the teams’ farm systems and strategies as well as this year’s draft, in which the Phillies pick first and the Reds pick second.

I had three Insider pieces over the last eight days: my status updates on the top 50 prospects; my full standings and award winner predictions for 2016; and a scouting blog on Detroit and Atlanta prospects, led by Michael Fulmer.

I also held a Klawchat on Thursday.

And now, the links…

A North Korean defector describes growing up in one of the country’s prison camps, the mere existence of which Pyongyang has long denied. The Daesh gets the headlines right now, but among formal states in the world, is there any more dangerous than this one?
This Bloomberg BusinessWeek piece about an operative who claims to have rigged several Latin American elections is riveting and entirely disturbing, such as the claims about manipulating public opinion via social media sockpuppet accounts. He’s now in prison in Colombia. I know the Cold War CIA no longer exists, but one wonders if an unscrupulous government intelligence agency might find use for this hacker’s skills in disrupting elections in hostile states.
Nature discusses the black-hole collision that reshaped physics, because it produced gravitational waves that we could detect, thus providing direct observational evidence of Einstein’s theory of general relativity.
A charter school – of course – in California has reopened after an unvaccinated student caught the measles, but some stupid, selfish parents still won’t vaccinate their kids.
The Netherlands is going to have to close some prisons because they don’t have enough criminals to fill them. A focus on rehabilitation for nonviolent offenders plus decriminalization of personal drug use are factors behind the drop in crime.
Donald Trump and his now-charged campaign manager used classic victim-blaming language to try to evade the consequences of an assault caught on video.
Climate change – which is actually happening, and caused by man, no matter what every remaining GOP Presidential candidate tells you – is affecting the Antarctic ice shelf more than previously forecasted, which could lead to sea level rises of up to three feet by the end of the century. On the bright side, there’s an enormous financial opportunity right now in future beachfront property near the South Pole.
From last year in the New Yorker, can reading make you happier? I’d certainly argue yes; reading is my daily meditation, although I sometimes indulge in the more traditional breathing meditations as well.
Why do we teach young girls that it’s cute or even expected to be scared? I’m guilty of this too, although I might be equally guilty if I had a son. I’ve always tended to be a nervous person anyway.
This rant by author LaMonte M. Fowler comes unapologetically from the left side of the political spectrum, but his targets are those on the far right, so I imagine many of you will find at least some of his points amusing, as I did.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: climate change, heavy reading, links, stick to baseball, vaccines

→ December 19, 2015
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 12/19/15.

For Insiders this week, I wrote about the Giants signing Johnny Cueto and the Todd Frazier three-team trade. I also held my usual weekly Klawchat.

Here on the dish, I compiled lists of my top 100 songs of 2015 and my top 15 albums of 2015.

Folks have been asking about my year-end gift guides, so here they are, once more:

• Top 80 boardgames of all time
• My 2015 gift guide for cooks
• My updated cookbook recommendations
• My all-time top 100 novels (from February 2013)

And now, the links…

That $10 Mast Brothers chocolate bar you bought along with your single-origin pour-over coffee at Blue Bottle? Well, it’s bad chocolate and might not even be what they claim it is.
Restaurant chain Fig & Olive, which had a salmonella outbreak in the fall, was caught using previously frozen food prepared at a central “commissary” and shipped to their individual locations.
What kind of person calls a mass shooting a hoax? Fortunately, Florida Atlantic has moved to terminate that nutjob professor, who has to be suffering from some kind of mental illness to so thoroughly believe these delusions he preaches.
Ah, the National Review‘s climate change graph was a big joke, and the Washington Post gives a concise explanation of why. I reviewed a book called Proofiness in June that talks about how organizations like NRO distort and manipulate stats to mislead the public.
Meanwhile, the New Yorker talks about how not to talk about nuclear power and climate change. Nuclear power can be a big part of the solution to both climate change and ocean acidification, but it’s already under a renewed attack from people who should probably know better.
Hate crimes against Muslims are surging over the past few weeks. It would be nice if we didn’t have an entire traveling circus competing to demonize this entire demographic group.
This Times review of the new book Lactivism by Courtney Jung details how unscientific and aggressive the anti-formula movement has become. There are even “ban the bag” movements to try to force hospitals to stop supplying bottles and other free equipment to new mothers – even though there’s little to no evidence to say breast-feeding is better for the baby.
A wonderful piece from the Times on the founder of the company behind the Hinge dating app going after the one who got away before it’s too late. (I’m also fairly sure I went to college with the author’s sisters.)
CTE isn’t just a problem affecting NFL players – Vice has the story of a D2 college player who died of it at age 26. This is the crux of my argument over Brandon McIlwain’s decision to enroll early at South Carolina: Not only did he pass up a guaranteed payday in June – actually, he passed up the mere chance to have someone offer it to him – but he’s entering an extremely dangerous profession for which he will not be paid for the next three years of his labor.
This isn’t new, but I just came across it this week: McSweeney’s imagined letter from Comic Sans.
My former residence of Arizona may be shifting from red to blue, thanks to the Latino vote – although I imagine the influx of engineers to work at Intel will contribute as well.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: chocolate, climate change, links, stick to baseball

→ November 7, 2015
→ By keith

Saturday five, 11/6/15.

My annual ranking of the top 50 free agents this offseason is now up for Insiders, and I held my weekly Klawchat right after they were posted.

I reviewed the app version of Camel Up for Paste this week. Since I wrote that review, there’s been a minor update that cleaned up some of the issues I had with the graphics, notably the info available on screen to you. It’s available here for iOS devices or Android.

And now, the links…

Well this just sucks: Kevin Folta, scientist and advocate of genetic engineering of food crops and generally of the safety of food science, is removing himself from public debate. He’s been attacked by the FraudBabe and the dipshits at U.S. “Right to Know,” a group that uses the veneer of consumer rights to mask a blatant science-denial/anti-GMO policy. They’ve been using FOIA requests to try to scuttle legitimate research and discussion. The only solution I see is for more of us to speak up and out about science.
Peet’s Coffee has purchased a majority stake in Intelligentsia, their second such move into high-end craft coffee after their purchase of Stumptown. I don’t know what this means for the space; I don’t see a natural synergy here but fear it’s more a move to neutralize competition from a higher-margin competitor
We forget that the people pictured in certain memes are actual human beings, such as the skeptical Third World kid, so the BBC has done a story on that picture, finding the aid worker pictured but not the child.
Canada’s new government seems about as pro-science as it gets, including the creation of a new post, Minister of Science. Can you imagine any of the current Republican candidates for President doing such a thing? So many of them have staked out one or more denialist positions that this seems out of the question.
Some good sense from the Environmental Defense Blog on what the news about China’s coal consumption really means. Tip: Climate change is still real, and the CO₂ measurements aren’t affected.
Thanksgiving is coming and it’s never too early to start cooking, at least when it comes to preparing stock, as Michael Ruhlman explains. I actually make a brown chicken stock instead, since I always have chicken carcasses in the freezer (bones and necks, and sometimes wings) but rarely have turkey.
“Smile You Bitch: Being a Woman in 2015” lives up to its provocative title. Rape culture is everywhere, and it’s ingrained in many young men from childhood.
Speaking of treating women like navel lint, I give you the NFL’s attempt to hush up Greg Hardy’s domestic violence case.
So the demise of Grantland led to a lot of thinkpieces (and a few readers telling me they were canceling their Insider subs, which, to be perfectly honest, just punishes all the wrong people here), but one I liked was from Fortune, talking about its implications for the business of longform journalism. I didn’t read a lot of Grantland’s stuff, but I do believe their mission mattered, and I hope the end of that site is just a blip.
From Forbes, a good piece looking at the limited research to date on pediatricians who turn away vaccine-refusing parents. That’s a lot better than the nonsense hit piece on Bryce Harper the same publication ran earlier last week.
I’ve often wondered about whether linking to Spotify in my music posts was helping or hurting the artists in question, but Cameron from the band Superhumanoids told me in September that it was the former, and now FiveThirtyEight has a piece supporting this with data.
The long-running TV series Mythbusters is ending after its next season, and the NY Times offers an appreciation, crediting the show with rising interest in STEM education and careers.
New research on the lizards called tuataras supports the theory that the penis evolved just once for mammals and reptiles and has just, well, hung around.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: anti-science, climate change, coffee, evolution, gmo, links, saturday five, vaccines

Archives