climate change

→ August 12, 2017
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 8/12/17.

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

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

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

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

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

And now, the links…

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

@keithlaw @Adam_Jacobi pic.twitter.com/ZGILMdp05j

— CJ Fogler (@cjzero) August 7, 2017

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

→ 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

→ July 8, 2017
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 7/8/17.

For Insiders this week, I previewed the Futures Game and broke down some of the worst omissions from the All-Star rosters. I held a Klawchat on Friday.

On the non-baseball front, I reviewed the high-strategy boardgame Great Western Trail for Paste this week. I also have a new piece up at Vulture looking at how the TV show Orphan Black has used boardgames as an integral part of several episodes.

Thanks to everyone who’s already bought Smart Baseball; sales spiked this month between Father’s Day and the positive review in the Wall Street Journal. I’ve got book signings coming up:

* Miami, Books and Books, today at 3 pm
* Harrisburg, Midtown Scholar, July 15th
* Berkeley, Books Inc., July 19th
* Chicago, Volumes, July 28th, 7:30 pm
* GenCon (Indianapolis), August 17th-20th

If you’re with an independent bookstore and would like to host a signing, please contact Danielle Bartlett at HarperCollins; we’re trying to accommodate everyone we can within my work schedule. I’m talking to one store about a signing/talk in Brooklyn (along with another author) in August or early September.

And now, the links…

The headline may be salacious, but the problem is serious: Antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea is spreading, due in large part to unprotected sex (including oral sex), resulting in some patients with untreatable cases. And given what we know about horizontal gene transfer in bacteria, this should terrify you even if you aren’t at risk of contracting this particular disease.
Longread of the week: Nathan Fenno, who wrote the definitive piece on Rays prospect turned accused murderer Brandon Martin, has another, similar piece, on former NFL player De’von Hall, who killed his mother during an argument, apparently after a quick decline into mental illness and homelessness.
Digg has a riveting first-person account of post-partum psychosis. The girl who grew up next door to me, two years my senior, took her own life about a decade ago a few days after giving birth, the result of post-partum psychosis.
James Beard winner Sean Brock, the celebrity chef behind Husk (Charleston, Nashville, and soon two more locations), opened up to the New York Times about getting sober after friends staged an intervention around his drinking.
Bloomberg profiled a strange, remote, popular hotel on Newfoundland’s Fogo Island in a piece from May of 2016. The photos are as incredible as the story.
WIRED looks at the unlikely rise of mathematician June Huh, who didn’t come to mathematics until college and is doing his best work now at age 34, well past the typical peak years of most mathematicians. Clearly we should be testing him for Proof Enhancing Drugs.
From Gizmodo, why people with implanted medical devices should fear automatic doors and the general rise of devices operating in the same frequency ranges as, say, brain implants or pacemakers.
Austin is a rare bastion of progressive thought and policy in Texas, a state with one of the country’s most reactionary governments, leading to conflict between the citizens of the state’s capital and the politicians working in it, particularly over “preemption laws,” whereby states tell cities and counties they can’t pass certain ordinances or enact policies that might run counter to what the state governments want.
A white man shot and killed an 18-year-old black woman in a road rage incident in Pennsylvania last week. It doesn’t appear their races played a role in the crime, but they seem to have affected the news coverage of the incident. David Desper had a permit for the 40-caliber semi-automatic he (is alleged to have) used to kill Bianca Robertson.
A Kenyan woman told the BBC how she missed her own wedding because she’d been abducted and gang-raped outside of Nairobi.
Flights in the southern US (and beyond) are increasingly facing high-heat delays due to climate change, which our current federal Administration still denies even exists.
John Le Carré gave a speech, transcribed in the Guardian, extolling the virtues of learning German in a post-Brexit world, although I think his points can apply to anyone learning any foreign language. Not only does it facilitate communication, but different languages can express different concepts and can give the speaker new perspectives.
Are humans insignificant in the cosmos, and if so, does life have meaning? A fellow of philosophy and epistemology examines a question often reserved for clergy and theologians.
Eighteen states are suing the Department of Education for delaying implementation of a rule aimed at helping students conned by for-profit universities. For-profit colleges aren’t necessarily bad, but the field is certainly ripe for scams, particularly since federal aid is so easy to come by.
The Guardian‘s editorial page also came out in favor of mandatory childhood vaccinations, while accurately comparing modern anti-vaccine movements to the religious fundamentalists – the article mentions the Taleban, but Christian Scientists have the same bad beliefs – who also oppose vaccinations.
Lindy West, who deleted her Twitter account in January due to the service’s refusal to deal with abusive trolls, writes about how the same class of trolls threatens free speech rights.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: charleston, climate change, links, math, stick to baseball, texas, vaccines

→ July 1, 2017
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 7/1/17.

Couple of Insider posts this week – one with reactions to the initial rosters for the Futures Game and one on top prospects for tomorrow’s international free agent signing period. I also held a Klawchat on Friday afternoon en route to Lakewood from Bristol.

My latest boardgame review for Paste is the two-player game Santorini, which has some light chess/Othello elements to it but is played on a smaller board (5×5) that keeps the games a bit shorter.

Thanks to everyone who’s already bought Smart Baseball; sales spiked this month between Father’s Day and the positive review in the Wall Street Journal. I’ve got book signings coming up:

* Miami, Books and Books, July 8th
* Harrisburg, Midtown Scholar, July 15th
* Berkeley, Books Inc., July 19th
* Chicago, Volumes, July 28th, 7:30 pm
* GenCon (Indianapolis), August 17th-20th

If you’re with an independent bookstore and would like to host a signing, please contact Danielle Bartlett at HarperCollins; we’re trying to accommodate everyone we can within my work schedule.

I also spoke with Sportsnet about the book, anxiety, and the 2017 Blue Jays.

And now, the links…

Russell Carleton looks at the utility of pickoff throws over at Baseball Prospectus.
This isn’t surprising if you follow Zack Greinke at all, but the pitcher told MLB.com’s Steve Gilbert how he used Statcast data to help turn his 2016 season around.
“The Time I Got Recruited to Collude with the Russians.” Long, and you may have seen it, but it seems like more evidence of wrongdoing from the Trump campaign last summer.
VICE details a planned (or, really, hypothetical) pay-for-play college basketball league that would focus on the Historically Black Colleges & Universities that have largely missed out on the financial windfall of modern college basketball.
The mother of an immune-compromised daughter who was hospitalized recently because she was exposed to chicken pox lashed out at vaccine deniers for putting her daughter’s life at risk. Your decision not to vaccinate your kids isn’t just about your own neglect, but potentially harms other vulnerable people in your community.
If you heard that a European Union court ruled against vaccine safety, well, not really.
A research paper in the New England Journal of Medicine looks at benefits of increased health insurance coverage under the ACA, including lower costs of reduction in mortality rates compared to other policies. (One of the authors is Dr. Atul Gawande, the author of Being Mortal and The Checklist Manifesto.)
Eater has a great profile of gelato maker Meredith Kurtzman, who recently retired after two decades in the NYC food scene, working at restaurants (notably at Mario Batali’s Otto) and earning plaudits from chefs and restaurateurs for her work. It’s a wonderful piece because it doesn’t shy away from the fact that Kurtzman isn’t a very engaging or even likable subject.
The NY Times is now charging for access to its cooking site, which … is fine, actually. I know there’s always a backlash when sites charge for content, but if you want good content, you’re going to have to start paying for it somewhere. I subscribe to their main site, the Washington Post, and Fine Cooking magazine, among others. However, charging for recipes is tricky because they can’t be copyrighted – you can copyright text, but not the specifics of a recipe – which makes this a little different than most subscriber walls.
The great BBC series Broadchurch just returned on Wednesday for its third and final season, and IndieWire ran a Q&A with star David Tennant that’s more insightful than the standard “actor talks about series he didn’t write but explains everything anyway” sort of piece.
The Koch Brothers plan to spend $400 million to help elect conservative Republican candidates in 2018. Repealing Obamacare and reducing taxes on the highest earners are two of their main policy priorities.
Daniel Vaughn’s latest list of the top 50 BBQ joints in Texas came out a few weeks ago for Texas Monthly, and if you’re visiting that state, it’s a great resource. (If you live there, well, I’m sorry.)
The new Presidential commission on so-called “voter fraud” – which does not actually exist on any significant scale – is really just an attack on voting rights. Even some GOP-led states are declining the requests for state voter information. Delaware hasn’t made any statement yet, but I have reached to the Secretary of State, asking them to refuse to comply.
Sen. Al Franken very calmly de-pantsed Energy Secretary Rick Perry on climate change, helped by Perry’s apparent lack of any knowledge on the subject whatsoever.
Whole Foods had long contributed to local farmers both in access to markets and in providing low-interest loans to help farmers ramp up operations to serve the chain. Now the farmers worry these programs will end after amazon’s purchase of the retailer.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: bbq, british television, climate change, gelato, links, Sports, stick to baseball, vaccines, whole foods

→ June 10, 2017
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 6/10/17.

I’ve been busy this week, with a top 100 draft prospects “Big Board” up for Insiders, and a free article profiling top draft prospect Hunter Greene, who gave me some really thoughtful answers on the topics of preparation, being a two-way player, and baseball’s declining African-American audience. I also held a Klawchat on Friday afternoon.

I’ll have a new mock draft up tomorrow (Sunday) and my editors and I will update that file until the draft begins Monday evening. I’m also planning to do a chat Monday afternoon as the draft gets closer.

In non-baseball content, BBC America asked me to to rank the main clones on the show Orphan Black, which returns for its fifth and final season tonight on the cable channel. The first four seasons are all available on Amazon Prime, and I highly recommend it.

Over at Paste, I reviewed the cooperative puzzle game Unlock!, which is actually a series of modules that mimic the escape-room experience by asking players to solve riddles on cards and enter codes into a free app on their phones. The publisher sent me four of the modules; I played three before the review, and they’re all difficult but worth playing. The fourth, The Island of Dr. Goorse, was too abstruse, and that’s not just my opinion but the opinion of all five of us who played, including my father, the (retired) electrical engineer and one of the smartest people I’ve ever met.

And now, the links…

Two longreads from the Atlantic: One on a new approach to treating psychopathy in children; and an educational if meandering longread on bitcoin, blockchain, and the myth of anarcho-currency.
The Royals have partnered with an anti-abortion group that’s known for misleading pregnant women who are considering terminating their pregnancies.
Venezuelan MLB players are facing retaliation for speaking out against their country’s failing government.
The Guardian agrees with me: Orphan Black is television’s smartest show.
mental_floss tells the story of how Monty Python sued ABC to prevent the network from airing their shows.
Bon Appetit looks at where we get all that firewood in restaurant kitchens as cooking over open flame has become trendy again. Two of my favorite meals in the last few years, at Cincinnati’s Sotto and San Francisco’s Cotogna, included food cooked in an open wood-fired-hearth – and in both cases I sat at the counter watching the whole process.
We waste a lot of food, and a huge portion of it is fresh produce. The article suggests buying frozen rather than fresh, which is fine, but we also need to think more about how to preserve what we buy – freezing, pickling, canning, or cooking. Got some firm veg about to turn? Slice it and pour a hot vinegar solution over it for quick pickles. Fruit on the verge? Make jam, or even bake it into a pie. Roast those red peppers and oven-dry those tomatoes. Slice the cabbage and make kimchi, which keeps for months. Most of these techniques are centuries old, but have been lost in the age of convenience and refrigeration.
A reader in my chat this week mentioned the Kooks Burrito controversy in Portland over whether food can be subject to cultural appropriation; Willamette Week asked local chefs, mostly non-white, for their opinions.
Vaccines aren’t just for kids; here are five vaccines adults should get.
Caffeine is showing up in California waterways, which is entirely the result of human activity.
A German think tank argues that climate change will fuel terrorism recruitment, because food and water shortages will create a vulnerable pool of young candidates.
NPR reports that two of its reporters killed in Afghanistan last year were specifically targeted, rather than victims of a random attack.
Massachusetts’ legislature is considering a bill banning schools from using Native American names and symbols as mascots.
Harvard withdrew acceptance offers for ten incoming students for sharing offensive memes in a group chat. I’m fine with this decision, but I understand the argument against such a hardline response, articulated towards the end of the piece.
If you live in North Carolina, well, you live in a state with a legislature as corrupt as those of African pseudo-democracies.
Into the swamp: Esquire‘s Charles Pierce writes that it’s time for Donald Trump to resign – or be forced out.
The President’s “raging” against Jeff Sessions resembles patterns common to autocratic leaders, according to history professors who’ve studied despots from around the world.
Meanwhile, the President and his son Eric appear to have funneled donations to their children’s cancer charity into the Trump business itself, which I kind of thought wasn’t legal.
A beautiful time-waster: Mic.com looks at the 101 most ‘influential’ tweets in history. Most of the tweets I expected to be there were on the list; two more I’d submit were dril’s budget tweet and David J. Roth’s things of that nature tweet. Sadly, eppur si muove didn’t make the cut.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: climate change, environment, food waste, harvard, links, tv, vaccines

→ May 27, 2017
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 5/27/17.

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

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

And now, the links…

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

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

→ April 1, 2017
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 4/1/17.

My predictions for 2017, including full standings, playoff stuff, and award winners. If you skipped the intro and got mad online about it, I’ll reiterate here: it’s just for fun. I do not run projections, and I will never beat a well-run model at the predictions game except as a fluke. I also wrote one post earlier in the week covering Cardinals, Tigers, and Atlanta prospects I saw while in Florida; there will be another post coming this weekend. I did not chat because I was in the car or at games all week.

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

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

And now, the links…

This week’s big distraction was Mike Pence’s rule about declining to dine alone with a woman who isn’t his wife, a rule that employment lawyer Joanna L. Grossman says is probably illegal.
The House “Science” Committee held a sham hearing on climate change that featured some of the dumbest anti-science questions you could possibly imagine. If any of these clowns is your representative, call his/her office on Monday and voice your support for actual science.
There’s a wide measles outbreak in Romania, with children dying of the disease, thanks to lack of access to health services and idiot parents declining to vaccinate their children.
How about real science? A new paper claims to have discovered the cause of obsessive-compulsive disorder. It’s a single protein that normally inhibits a particular pathway in the amygdala; when the protein is absent, the pathway becomes overactive and OCD results.
Meanwhile, many states, all in the south and midwest, have at least seen bills introduced that would allow creationism or other anti-science crap to be taught in public schools.
The Cayman Islands are moving forward with a plan to release genetically modified mosquitoes to combat the Zika virus. The mosquito species in question, Aedes aegypti, also spreads dengue, chikungunya, and yellow fever. This is distinct from efforts to use specific strains of the Wolbachia bacteria genus to make the mosquitoes resistant to these virii.
This longread from The Chronicle of Higher Education dissects the ongoing troubles at Penn State – caused by Penn State in the aftermath of the school’s inaction on Jerry Sandusky.
The glory of being on the road so much this week was that I missed the crazy mom who claimed human traffickers were stalking her kids at Ikea. This kind of mass hysteria mirrors the way anti-vaccine bullshit and right-wing fake news have spread online in recent years.
Apple accepted, then rejected, an app that tracks US drone strikes. The decision is bizarre, as the app doesn’t appear to violate any of the App Store’s terms of service, and speaks to the problem with a closed format. Even if the company itself didn’t make these decisions, it would be too easy for a government agency to force them to do so.
The two “activists” whose doctored videos at Planned Parenthood made it seem like PP employees were selling fetal body parts have been charged with 15 felonies for their actions. Their attorneys claim they’re “journalists,” but it’s clear by their actions – and lack of any respect for the law or journalistic ethics – that they’re not.
Speaking of abortion rights, Iowa Republicans have proposed a bill that would let an unmarried woman’s parents prevent her from having the medical procedure, even if she were, say, 30 years old. Meanwhile, Arkansas, the one state I haven’t visited and clearly won’t any time soon, passed a law that forces doctors to investigate a patient’s reasons for having an abortion. Does it surprise you to know that Arkansas is also one of the worst states for vaccination rates?
Why did Secretary of Labor nominee Alexander Acosta cut a sweetheart deal with wealthy child molester Jeffrey Epstein?
I didn’t know what the Chinese dish jianbing, a sort of omelet folded into a crispy crepe-like crust, was before I saw this article on where to find it in New York, but I’m interested now.
Texas Monthly barbecue editor Daniel Vaughn goes into the science of smoke, and how smoke can be dirty or clean.
Fellow fans of Studio Ghibli might enjoy this news item on Ghibli-themed teas, available for sale in Japan. I bet those tins show up as collectibles even without the teas inside. It’s not a Ghibli title, but the critically-acclaimed animated film Your Name (Kimi no na wa) will be released on Friday in the U.S.
“Travel tips” posts tend to be useless, but I thought this list from Bizarre Foods host Andrew Zimmern, who travels the world to some seriously off-the-path places, was unusually informative.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: chinese cuisine, climate change, evolution, gmo, japanese films, links, vaccines

→ March 4, 2017
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 3/4/17.

No new Insider content this week, although I believe I’ll have a new piece up on Tuesday, assuming all goes to plan. I did hold a Klawchat on Thursday.

My latest boardgame review for Paste covers Mole Rats in Space, a cooperative game for kids from the designer of Pandemic and Forbidden Desert. It’s pretty fantastic, and I think if you play this you’ll never have to see Chutes and Ladders again.

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

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

And now, the links…

Elizabeth Kolbert, who won the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction for her book The Sixth Extinction (my review), writes about why facts don’t change our minds, due to confirmation bias and the anchoring effect.
With charter schools in the news again, NPR has a useful primer on what “charter school” means .
It came up because Secretary of Education Betsy Dingbat decided to praise Jim Crow-spawned historically black colleges as examples of “school choice.”
Why were passengers on a domestic flight asked to show identification to CBP agents before they could deplane? The agency later claimed it was “voluntary” but didn’t communicate that to the passengers. If this happens to you, decline and leave the plane. The agents had no legal right to do what they did.
Some links on last Sunday’s Oscars and the ceremony’s totally bonkers finish: Will Leitch writes for The New Republic that it was the most insane ending ever.
ELLE has a balanced take on the potential impact of Casey Affleck’s win and rewarding men who abuse women, although I still think there’s a false analogy at work here when we compare Affleck’s crimes to those of Roman Polanski (drugged and raped a 13-year-old girl) or Woody Allen (molested his adopted daughter), especially since both are directors and have continued to get funding for movies after the allegations against them became well-known.
And then Cosmopolitan played the race card in a piece that starts by saying how Moonlight was robbed of its moment but somehow devolves into unsubstantiated arguments about white privilege and how we were just shocked that white people lost. I really don’t agree with anything in this piece, but you know, gotta hear both sides.
Top Chef Season 14 ended the other night, and Vulture interviewed the two finalists after the show aired, a Q&A that answers a couple of big questions I had while watching the finale.
Recent Top Chef alum Kwame Onwuachi opened a very expensive tasting-menu restaurant in DC’s Shaw district, but it closed earlier this year after just two and a half months. The Ringer chronicles its fall and talks to Onwuachi about what’s next.
Hugh Acheson is opening a sausage shack at Atlanta’s new ballpark. I’m hoping it’ll serve one called Boondoggle Bratwurst.
The Ringer also had a great piece on the ultimate, persistent failure of the current structure of the Olympics, where host cities build massive white elephants to host a two-week event that profits the IOC more than it does the host.
Did anyone catch the stupidity about the so-called “alt left” this week? The New Republic blows that one up in fine fashion, calling the original piece “bad writing in service of a bad argument.”
How about the claim that “300 scientists” have told the current administration that we should withdraw from the UN climate agreement? Well, that’s some bullshit too, as none appear to be climate scientists and some aren’t scientists at all. I hold an MS from Carnegie Mellon and I think I’d qualify for that list, even though my MS is in business (it was a quirk of the school at the time I was there, so my diploma says MS rather than MBA).
The current administration is also backing out of protecting America’s small streams and rivers, even though they’re a critical part of our ecosystem and probably more vulnerable to human disruption.
I will say something in favor of the current admin, though: I agree with the Washington Post‘s Chris Cillizza that the “Kellyanne on the couch” controversy was incredibly dumb. That’s the wrong thing to get outraged about, and it reeked of the casual sexism that those who oppose 45 like to accuse his supporters of showing.
This twitter thread argues that Trump’s businesses & associates are aiming to land billions of dollars in construction deals. I think the kleptocratic aspects of this administration are taking a backseat to our (justified) anger over the rollbacks in civil rights.
VP Mike Pence used private email for state business as Governor of Indiana, but that’s everywhere now. Less widely reported is that EPA head and climate change denier Scott Pruitt did the same thing while Attorney General of Oklahoma.
If you live in California, there’s a special election on Tuesday, and you should vote NO on Measure S.
This bill was withdrawn since my last post, but if you live in the backwaters of North Carolina – the state willing to lose hundreds of millions of dollars in business just to make sure locals can safely discriminate against LGBT residents – the state House passed a bill that would let parents put their kids back into games after suffering concussions. You read that right.
The President’s pastor said former Jefferson Airplane/Starship singer Grace Slick has earned a “death sentence” for supporting LGBT charities. Seems like a nice guy.
I just learned of the newest effort to earn statehood for Washington, D.C. The city itself has a population just below that of Alaska, but you can bet the Republican Party will oppose giving two new Senate seats to the Democrats.
The Iowa lawmaker who was trying to force universities to hire equal numbers of conservative and liberal professors faked his resume, claiming a ‘certificate’ from working at Sizzler was a college degree. I can’t believe he’s still in office right now.
A bunch of Idaho teens assaulted a developmentally disabled black classmate, including pushing a coat hanger up his rectum, but the ringleader won’t serve any jail time because the white judge said the crime wasn’t racially motivated, despite evidence to the contrary. I wonder if he’s a member of one of nine recognized hate groups in the state.
Texas refuses to let transgender boy Mack Beggs compete with other boys in wrestling , so he just won the state girls title. I wonder if this changed any Texans’ minds about laws that limit transgender rights.
I mentioned in chat this week that the idea that there are just two biological sexes – which underpins these bigoted, ignorant ‘bathroom bills’ – was a fallacy. This primer on the six most common biological sexes in humans is quite useful and easy to follow, and also explains how a person’s chromosomes and brain may have different sexes. (If you’re confused about the two versus six part, here’s a real quick explanation: We all know about XX vs XY chromosome combinations from high school health. A fetus can also survive with other, less common combinations, with the four most common being X, XXY, XYY, and XXXY. The link doesn’t mention XXX, or trisomy X, perhaps because people born with this are biologically female.)
Pennsylvania introduced “philosophical exemptions” to mandatory vaccination rules a few years ago and uses of that loophole – which allows any parent to sign a form and skip these entirely safe and effective shots – have skyrocketed. Lancaster Online calls for the county and state to tighten these rules.
Google briefly delisted the pseudoscience/scam site Natural News, run by longtime con artist Mike Adams, for violating the search site’s rules, later relisting it after the site complied with Google’s demands. But that link also raises the question of how best to fight fake news and anti-science sites like NN or Mercola.
This excerpt from Leah Carroll’s upcoming memoir, titled “My Mother’s Murder,” was sad and gripping. The book is out on Tuesday from Hachette.
I’ve seen Islamophobes cite the story of Tanveer Ahmed’s murder of Asad Shah in Glasgow as an example of the dangers of letting in Muslim refugees, but naturally, it’s quite a bit more complicated than that. The real issue here is that he’s become an inspiration to hardliners in his native Pakistan for what they see as a justifiable murder on religious (blasphemy) grounds.
Norwegian mass murderer Anders Bering Breivik – a white right-wing extremist who killed 77 people in 2011 – lost his human rights claim against Norway, which has kept him mostly in solitary confinement in three “well-equipped” cells.
Three Burundian women who fled to neighboring Rwanda run a cafe in Kigali by day and report on Burundi’s crisis by night.
Two administrators at Harvard Law School have been accused of looting a fund for disabled students to buy themselves expensive electronic items and, uh, other stuff.
WAVVES singer/guitarist/songwriter Nathan Williams doesn’t mince any words when it comes to former label Warner Brothers. He’s since started his own record label, Ghost Ramp, and WAVVES’ next record, You’re Welcome, will come out on May 19th.
Thirteen-year-old phenom Grace Vanderwaal did a live session in Paste‘s studio that just underlines how talented she is.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: 2016 best picture nominees, climate change, cognitive psychology, gay rights, links, Music, top chef, vaccines

→ February 18, 2017
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 2/18/17.

For Insiders, I ranked the top prospects for 2017 impact, although we later removed Alex Reyes from the list now that he’s out for the year. I held my regular Klawchat on Thursday.

On the boardgame front, I reviewed the light family-friendly game Imhotep for Paste this week; it was one of the runners-up for the Spiel des Jahres last year, losing to Isle of Skye. Last week, over at Vulture, I wrote about some of the best games for couples.

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

And now, the links…

Two great investigative reads this week from the New York Times. First, the already disastrous legacy of the Rio Olympics, which should serve as a warning to future bidders (but won’t). Brazil is still a poor country, and they’re poorer for the huge investments they made in now-useless infrastructure for the Games. Second, the growing water crisis in Mexico City, one of the world’s largest cities, which also happens to be sinking (as is the other contender for largest city, Shanghai).
Baseball and depression collide in this story on the life and suicide of Jake Eliopoulos, a former day-one draft pick of the Blue Jays who struggled with mental illness and took his own life on his fifth attempt.
Speaking of depression, is it possible that it has an actual purpose in evolutionary terms?
Thanks in part to decriminalizing many drug offenses, the Netherlands has a lot of empty prison cells, so they’re using some to help provide temporary housing to migrants and refugees. Our draconian drug laws and privatized prisons have done far more harm than good, and the Dutch and Portuguese present strong models if we ever want to change our policies.
Austin has a new boardgame bar and restaurant called Vigilante, and I need to visit this place, stat.
Phoenix eats news! The folks behind the wonderful Tacos Chiwas are opening a new tamale place right next door. They’re hoping to have it open around March 4th, just in time for spring training.
Claims about yogurt and other probiotic foods are likely overblown, as research indicates that consuming these foods doesn’t alter the makeup of your body’s microbiome. (They may still be good for you in other ways, of course.)
There’s a coffee shop in Brooklyn that sells an $18 cup of gesha coffee, sparking faux outrage over the price. The coffee costs that much because the beans themselves are hard to grow and of especially high quality. If you don’t want to spend that much, you have plenty of other options, from $4 pour-over cups of still-great coffee on down.
This story is from four months ago, but highlights how climate change seems to be causing a rise in ciguatera toxins’ presence in fish. The toxin can be fatal to humans, as it was in this case, and isn’t removed by cooking.
Meanwhile, a woman in Texas is suing Popeye’s, claiming she got a debilitating screwworm infection from their food. The suit may be baseless – as the article points out, food served at 165 or higher wouldn’t have the live parasites – but I posted it to point out that screwworm infections are almost unheard of in the U.S. now because of a government-run program of eradication using synthetic pesticides in the 1950s.
We might be getting closer to a dengue vaccine, according to that editorial by one of the scientists overseeing some of the trials, where he also explains why vaccine development takes so long. (Hint: One reason is that vaccines have to be incredibly safe to be approved.)
Unfortunately, the vaccine-denial movement is gaining traction, spurred on by President This-is-fine-dog’s open embrace of the debunked vaccine/autism claim. The same writer, Vox’s Julia Belluz, also exposed the bullshit agenda of RFK Jr. and Robert Deniro, who promised $100K to anyone who could prove vaccines are safe, which has already been proven. I’d like to see people skip Deniro’s film festival this year as long as he’s making public health threats like this one. (And, Bob, I’m sorry, but the most likely reason your son has autism is that the DNA in your old-man sperm was degraded.)
A new group called 314 Action is trying to get more scientists to run for elected office, because politicians who think they know more than scientists are dangerous. Remember that Republican Congressman Lamar Smith (Texas, where else?), chair of the House Committee on Science is a raging science denier, notably on climate change.
Texas is really pushing hard to turn the clock back a century or more, but their fight with the NFL over so-called “bathroom bills” that strip protections from LGBTQ citizens looks like a battle they can’t win. I’d like to see MLB step up on this one now that a state with major league teams is trying to pull the same crap North Carolina and Mississippi did.
Get ready for a nationwide, GOP-led assault on voting rights. If the majority won’t support your party – as demographic trends indicate is likely – then the way to retain power is to make it harder for opposing voters to cast their ballots. It’s on all of us to make sure that doesn’t happen.
Trump’s assault on the free press included credentialing a pro-Trump/white nationalist blog whose 28-year-old founder has promised to “troll” other media.
It appears that the White House’s failed travel ban, which they’re promising to reinstate, has already hurt American businesses by deterring international travel to the U.S.. Trump promised to create jobs, but his biggest move to date will likely destroy them.
Haaretz argues that Trump is an anti-Semite, and no Jewish person should support him.
Activist Attorneys General in left-leaning states represent one of the strongest arms of the anti-Trump movement, one that this Vanity Fair editorial argues he underestimated.
Author Kevin Birmingham, whose book The Most Dangerous Book, about the writing and publication of James Joyce’s Ulysses, was one of my favorite reads from 2016, spoke at length about the great shame of universities abusing “adjunct” professorships, using such de facto freelancers to keep costs down (even as tuition keeps rising, so where’s that money going?).
There was a very strange heist in London last week – thieves broke into a storage facility and stole over £2 million worth of rare books, including one of the original copies of Copernicus’ treatise on the movement of the sun and planets. No one can figure out why they did it, since such books would be impossible to fence, but there’s fascination over their daring way of getting into the building.
This BBC audio segment explores left-handedness’ prevalence and reasons it exists, as well as debunking “ambidextrousness” and explaining how we can be right-footed or left-eyed (like Lisa Lopes).
Alabama is embroiled in its own scandal, as the corrupt Governor appointed the Attorney General who was supposed to investigate him to Jeff Sessions’ vacated Senate seat.
The Oroville Dam evacuations created a temporary surge in refugees, and a local Sikh temple opened its doors to them, building new connections with their neighbors in the process.
Finally, this piece about why liberals are wrong about Trump is a must-read regardless of where you fall on the political spectrum.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: boardgames, climate change, coffee, food safety, links, stick to baseball, vaccines

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