links — Page 35

→ September 17, 2016
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 9/17/16.

For Insiders this week I wrote about eight top 100 prospects who had down years in 2016; that’s not all prospects who had off years, just eight I chose to discuss. I held my usual Klawchat on Thursday. For Paste I reviewed the fun, family boardgame Saloon Tycoon, where players build across their boards and also add up to three levels as they build upward.

You can pre-order my book, Smart Baseball, ahead of its scheduled release on April 25, 2017. I promise I’ll have it written by then.

Several people I know have new books out recently, and while I haven’t read them yet, I wanted to highlight the titles here:
• Jessica Luther’s Unsportsmanlike Conduct: College Football and the Politics of Rape
• Alan Sepinwall’s TV (The Book): Two Experts Pick the Greatest American Shows of All Time (with Matt Zoller Seitz)
• Geoff Schwartz’s Eat My Schwartz: Our Story of NFL Football, Food, Family, and Faith (with his brother Mitch)

I’ve been sending out a weekly email newsletter with links to all of my content and some additional notes or thoughts that don’t fit anywhere else; you can sign up here if you just don’t have enough Klaw in your life.

And now, the links…

Scientific American asked the four remaining Presidential candidates to answer twenty questions on major topics in science and has published the answers of the three who responded. (Gary Johnson hasn’t deigned to reply.) My takeaway: Trump remains a terrifying anti-science candidate, particularly in his denial of climate change (note the scare quotes), while Stein comes off as a serious person here as opposed to the pandering crackpot she’s been playing on Twitter.
VICE’s Noisey site has an outstanding piece on the history and music of Homestar Runner, one of my favorite cartoons from any medium.
BuzzFeed is capable of some great investigative journalism (when they’re not stealing other people’s content on the Tasty or for their videos), like this piece on police departments “closing” rape cases without investigating them. They focus on Baltimore County, Maryland, where even men convicted of previous assaults were getting away with rapes because the cops couldn’t be bothered.
More great investigative journalism, this time from the Houston Chronicle: The backwater known as Texas has been denying special education services to special needs kids because they arbitrarily capped the rate of kids eliglible to receive those services at 8.5%.
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker stands accused of, but not charged with, taking cash for favors from large donors, according to court documents obtained by the Guardian despite a court’s irregular order that the documents be destroyed.
Mother Jones writers about the dwindling numbers of black teachers in urban areas and the potential impact on black students.
How did a young power couple in Afghanistan, including the youngest woman in that country’s nascent Parliament, end up in Nebraska? The Omaha World-Herald has their harrowing story, from death threats in their home country to entry-level jobs at McDonald’s and Home Depot as refugees here.
Experts on hate groups say white supremacists see Donald Trump as their “last stand.” Well, when he’s bragging about the 88 military advisors helping him, how could they think otherwise?
I don’t even know what to make of the story that Peter Thiel says Trump will nominate him to the Supreme Court if elected. Thiel is the billionaire who funded the lawsuits that took down Gawker and Nick Denton; perhaps he believes that, but as much as I find Trump as President a horrifying prospect, this seems like Thiel’s own fantasy.
Speaking of Gawker, Univision, the new owner of Gawker Media, chose to delete a handful of posts related to ongoing lawsuits (some baseless); the chief news officer at Univision agreed to a long conversation with Gizmodo about these decisions. It’s long and meandering but there’s a lot of meat in here, and while the deletions don’t look good at a glance, I think Univision is also offering some strong support for its writers going forward, too.
The Scientific Parent explains why the “too much, too soon” anti-vaxxer argument is wrong. It’s ignorant of basic science: Your kid is ingesting more pathogens in a typical day than s/he’ll get in all the vaccines s/he ever receives, and the metals that vaccine deniers freak out over are present in food, water, even breast milk.
Dr. Bob Sears, who’s been accused of ‘selling’ medical exemptions to California’s new mandatory schoolkid vaccination law, may lose his license for medical negligence instead. Whatever gets these charlatans out of the medical business is fine with me.
Meanwhile, nearly 10,000 New Jersey schoolkids skipped vaccinations this year. If you live there, call your state legislator and ask him or her to sponsor a bill eliminating non-medical exemptions.
Trump’s campaign claims he’s given “tens of millions of dollars” to charity but the Washington Post found no proof.
A writer for the National Review claims that the left is “weaponizing” sports, citing the NCAA’s decision to pull championship events from North Carolina as a result of that state passing Hate Bill 2. He drops the ball (!) in sentence two, however, since HB2’s biggest effect is that it local governments from making sexual orientation a protected status in any anti-discrimination ordinances. It’s not about bathrooms; it’s about saying you can’t be fired just because you’re gay.
The House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology is chaired by an anti-science Republican and Christian Scientist, Lamar Smith (TX). Physicist Lawrence Krauss writes that Smith’s been politicizing scientific research, including that related to climate change and ocean acidification, in his little reign of terror, which will likely continue as long as Republicans control the House. And don’t be fooled by the religion’s name – Christian Science is about as anti-science as any cult can get, eschewing medicine and claiming that sickness is caused by an absence of “right thinking.”
Media Matters writes about ongoing criticism of the NY Times‘ perceived bias against Hillary Clinton. I’ve always thought of the Times as a clear, left-leaning publication, so their coverage of HRC’s campaign has surprised me this year.
Somalia is a failed state and has been without a real central government for a quarter century now. The northern section of the country calls itself Somaliland, and is seeking internal recognition of its independence. There are some recent examples in east Africa that argue against it, as Eritrea and South Sudan have been plagued by fighting and corruption since their secessions from Ethiopia and Sudan, respectively. Somaliland isn’t leaving a real country, however; there is no competing authority to their own bootstrapped government.
The U.S. ended sanctions on Myanmar, but it’s not clear Myanmar (ex-Burma) has actually earned this economic reward. Aung San Suu Kyi’s acquiescence has left many observers puzzled, and the linked piece from the BBC tries to explain it.
Author Lionel Shriver (We Need to Talk About Kevin)’s address to the Brisbane Writers Festival on cultural appropriation caused a substantial backlash against her claims that the term is the result of “runaway political correctness.”
The Washington Post‘s editorial board wrote that the Hillary Clinton email story is “out of control” relative to its actual importance. I agree; she made a mistake, a significant one, but one that pales in comparison to those of her opponent in this election, such as Trump calling again for Hillary’s assassination.
U.S. colleges continue to protect athlete rapists because sports. At UNC a rape victim went public to force the school and the county to stop delaying their investigation. Two women at the University of Richmond did the same, one revealing that a school administrator said the rapist had a right to “finish.”
New York Knicks guard Derrick Rose stands accused of gang-raping a woman, and Julie DiCaro writes for Fansided about the civil suit that’s going on right now – including his lawyers’ strange choice not to try to settle the case.
Mental Floss shows six math concepts demonstrated via crochet, with the first two (the hyperbolic plane and the Lorenz manifold) the most interesting.
Apple’s been getting killed – rightly so – for the iPhone 7’s lack of an analog headphone jack, but VICE’s Motherboard points out the iPhone 6+ has its own very serious engineering flaw.
Back in the 1960s, the sugar industry paid Harvard researchers for favorable results, part of a decades-long nutritional con that had us afraid of fat but thinking sugar was mostly harmless.
Colin Kaepernick’s protest is working, writes Josh Levin at Slate. Given the widespread conversation he started, I’d have to agree: He used a non-violent, non-disruptive act to make his point, and we’ve spent several weeks talking about all aspects of it, from race in America to the purpose of jingoistic displays at sporting events where many of the players aren’t even from the U.S.
Bayer’s pending acquisition of Monsanto has raised questions about Monsanto’s GM seeds business as some farmers find the returns don’t justify the higher costs. This piece from the WSJ is remarkably balanced, avoiding “frankenfoods!” hysteria and discussing pros and cons of genetically modified seeds. One point of note: Weeds that are or have evolved to become resistant to glyphosate have already started invading farms with GM seeds.
You’ve probably heard a lot about the Native Americans’ opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline, which will cross much of their land, but before this NPR piece I hadn’t heard much from the pipeline company’s side. For example, I didn’t know that this pipeline will cover the same route as an existing natural gas pipeline installed in 1982, or that the areas the tribes affected say are sacred may not be so.
Why did the Governor of Kentucky speak before a hate group and threaten armed sedition if Clinton wins? Why does nobody care about an elected official doing this?
Radiolab had a great podcast describing the ordeal of a girl who turned 18 without any documentation to prove she exists. It has taken her over a year just to acquire some of the things we take for granted, and she’s still fighting for a social security number.
A man in nearby Smyrna, Delaware, reports that this relaxing tea better fucking work, according to The Onion.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: anti-science, gmo, links, rape culture, science, stick to baseball, vaccines

→ 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

→ September 3, 2016
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 9/3/16.

I wrote three pieces for Insiders this week, on the death of September callups, on Yoan Moncada, and on Alec Hansen (White Sox) and Alberto Tirado (Phillies). I also held a Klawchat on Thursday afternoon.

For Paste, I’m going to be reviewing a game a week for the rest of 2016. The latest review is of Mysterium, a fun cooperative game where one player is the ghost and must deliver clues in the form of “vision” cards to the other players. The base game is $36 on amazon, and there’s a new expansion called Hidden Signs that adds more cards.

And now, the links…

Donald Trump bribed the Florida AG to stop an investigation into Trump University, paying the IRS a penalty earlier this year for violating its rules on donations from charitable groups to political campaigns.
Forty years after questions first arose about its safety, triclosan (and similar antibacterial ingredients) have finally been banned by the FDA. How much damage have they already done in increasing antibiotic resistance or harming natural ecosystems that depend on bacterial activity?
The longread of the week is the L.A. Times‘ six-part series (part six runs tomorrow) on the absolutely bonkers story of the framing of a PTA mom. It has to be read to be believed.
Let’s talk Colin Kaepernick, shall we? The NY Times looked into the unnatural marriage of sports and patriotism. The Undefeated’s Domonique Foxworth argued such protests are inherently American. Bay Area sports columnist Marcus Thompson asks what Kaepernick’s critics have done to help veterans beyond standing? It’s a fair question; standing for an anthem or another song is as empty a gesture as you’ll find. And now the Santa Clara Police Union is threatening to stop working 49ers games unless the team puts Kaepernick in his place (my words, not theirs).
If you’ve played Pandemic: Legacy or Risk: Legacy, you have game designer Rob Daviau to thank for the new format. His latest game, Seafall, is the first standalone legacy game he’s designed, and it comes out next month. I met Rob at GenCon – he’s a Red Sox fan, by the way – and am hoping to get a longer demo from him at WashingCon next weekend if my schedule permits. The game looks stunning.
The Ringer is running a lot of content – I think a lot more than Grantland ever did – and quite a bit of it is must-reading. My favorite this week was the profile of deaf model, activist, and DWTS winner Nyle DiMarco, who is using his surprising fame to totally change the way deaf people interact with the rest of society (from both sides, that is).
I’ve enjoyed a lot of the content coming out of VICE lately too, but the Columbia Journalism Review wrote a scathing piece on VICE mistreating its freelancers, including a lot of not paying them.
WrkRiot, a Silicon Valley startup, has collapsed amid serious allegations that its founder committed fraud. What I find interesting about this is that anyone thought Silicon Valley would be immune to the kind of mountebanks that have populated startup-land since the internet bubble began twenty years ago.
I knew none of the history of California City, a planned metropolis that never came to be, before reading mental floss‘ article on the state of the never-lived-in town north of Lancaster and east of Bakersfield.
The College of St. Scholastica, a small Benedictine school in Minnesota, forbade one of its students to talk about her rape to classmates even though – or perhaps because – it happened in Ireland during a study abroad. The school also refused to help her deal with the Irish police. I’d like to know why her attacker wasn’t charged, something that isn’t mentioned in the article, which just implies that the Irish police dropped the ball (and maybe they did).
Massachusetts prosecutors gave 19-year-old Ryan Crochetiere a plea deal where he’ll only get probation for sexually abusing an 11-year-old girl for a year. This came a day after another teenager in western Massachusetts got probation for sexually assaulting two unconscious classmates. What the fuck is wrong with prosecutors there? And is there any chance on earth that Crochetiere doesn’t reoffend?
Gabon, which has been ruled by one family since 1967 (first the father, now the son), rigged an election and bombed opposition headquarters this week. This matters because those are real people getting killed, and, fine, because Gabon produces a lot of oil.
That’s not the only African country in crisis; Burundi, located just south of Rwanda, is experiencing one of its own crises as its President is trying to turn himself into a dictator by evading term limits and violently suppressing the media. Not surprisingly, nearly 3% of the population has already fled to neighboring countries that are ill-equipped to handle the refugees.
The trends on vaccine refusal are terrifying, and now the American Academy for Pediatrics support doctors who refuse to treat such kids. I’m good with this, because I don’t want my daughter near kids who aren’t vaccinated. The simplest solution remains for more states to follow California’s lead and require all schoolkids to be vaccinated unless they have valid medical exemptions.
Bexar County – in Texas, of course – DA Nico LaHood outed himself as a vaccine-denier this week, citing Andrew Wakefield’s debunked study and fakeumentary Vaxxed in a rant LaHood posted on Facebook. It’s not LaHood’s first dive into conspiracy-theory bullshit as he had an even worse rant against Islam two months ago, calling it a “horrifically violent” religion and repeating the hoax that some Muslims tried to set up a “Sharia court” in Irving.
China’s military buildup in the South China Sea, including building artificial islands to enhance their claim of sovereignty, has caused significant environmental damage, especially to coral reefs already suffering from global ocean acidification.
Former NFL kicker Bjorn Nittmo has brain trauma from one devastating hit he suffered on the field, and is showing signs of CTE, living as a vagrant, abandoning his family years ago, and otherwise behaving irrationally. The NFL continues to deny the link between their sport and these traumatic brain injuries; NFL players suffered 199 concussions in 2015, and I assume NCAA and high school players suffered many more.
Donald Trump’s political stances led multiple chefs to withdraw from or avoid putting a restaurant in his DC hotel.
Trump spoke this past week about his desire to revive a program of mass deportation from the 1950s that was known – seriously – as Operation Wetback. He mentioned this in November as well, and at the time NPR broke down the real history of the deadly program, while Fusion gave even more grisly details. The New Republic‘s Jeet HEer went deeper on the topic in April. A subsequent Congressional investigation of the operation called conditions on the deportation vessels comparable to “an eighteenth-century slave ship.” I don’t agree with the call for mass deportations, but arguing for tighter immigration policies is a legitimate political stance. Wanting to starve, torture, or kill them, however, is not.
An academic and trauma survivor wrote an eloquent defense of trigger warnings in the classroom.
A McDonald’s employee in Needham, Massachusetts, got a wonderful sendoff after 32 years of working the fry station.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: africa, boardgames, environment, links, rape culture, stick to baseball, vaccines

→ August 27, 2016
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 8/27/16.

This week, for Insiders, I ranked the MLB players with the best hitting tools, fielding and throwing tools, and pitching tools. I held my weekly Klawchat on Friday.

For Paste, I reviewed the upcoming boardgame Tak, which was designed based on the fictional depiction of the game in Patrick Rothfuss’s Kingkiller Chronicles novels.

My last run at the helm of the BBTN podcast for this year came on Monday’s show, with guests Jerry Crasnick and Joe Sheehan.

And now, the links…

TIME ran a thoughtful piece on how trolls are “ruining” the Internet, looking at why trolls troll and what we might do to combat the inevitable problem.
I linked to this on Twitter earlier in the week: Mylan hiked EpiPen prices when their competitor shut down production. It’s basic economics, and while I’m very pro-free market, we do have protections against certain monopoly conditions. This is one such case. Mylan’s PR team is on the attack, with this semi-sympathetic portrait of their CEO running in the NY Times, which also ran a more analytical look at why our healthcare system enables this kind of price gouging.
We’re preparing to fight Zika in south Florida by releasing genetically modified mosquitos into the wild. It’s the right move – doing the same in Africa could save millions of lives – but you can expect a lot of backlash.
Meanwhile, a new virus appears to break the known ‘rules’ of viral infections by breaking itself into multiple pieces; the virus, which infects mosquitos (seriously, fuck them already), only works in the bugs if several parts of it are present.
A teenager charged with multiple rapes and suspected of being a serial rapist was given probation by a Judge Thomas Estes because reasons. There’s another movement afoot to remove the judge from the bench, which I support because no one convicted of rape should avoid jail.
Meanwhile, a 14-year-old girl in Cleveland is in jail and may be charged as an adult for killing her abusive father. The system failed to protect her and her mother, and now she may pay the price for their failures.
The Canadian Medical Association has called for an end to nonmedical exemptions to childhood vaccinations, which is excellent because there is no good fucking reason on earth not to vaccinate your kids.
Dr. Donald Henderson, who helped lead the successful effort to eradicate smallpox, died last week at 87. Despite the end of smallpox, he thought efforts to eradicate more quickly-mutating viruses like polio might be futile.
Tom Scocca’s post mortem on Gawker makes the key point that only money can protect any journalistic outlet from the likes of Peter Thiel. Not the truth, just money.
Daniel Vaughn reviewed a legit barbecue joint in southern Sweden.
This New Yorker piece on a very exclusive restaurant in upstate New York is fascinating because it’s a portrait of food, a restaurant, and a chef who might be delusional.
Some Idaho hot-taker decided to take a few shots at Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Tyson responded with a huge mic-drop in the comments.
Amateurism is a word fart expelled after wolfing down a nothingburger, says Patrick Hruby in a piece for Vice on the gigantic farce that is the NCAA.
Also at Vice, on the unconscionable human disaster that was the 2016 Olympics. Everything described therein, including the massive wealth transfers from poor to rich, will continue until cities stop bidding for the games.
If you’re still stuck in the mindset that there are only two sexes, male and female, read about Olympic champion runner Stella Walsh, who was intersex. She lived as a woman, but after her death (she was murdered in a botched robberty) the coroner discovered that she had underdeveloped male gonads and no uterus due to a chromosomal abnormality. So, I ask Republicans in North Carolina and Mississippi, what bathroom would you have required her to use?
Why do just 2% of the counties in the United States account for more than half of its death-row inmates? Why do we even execute people, period? Only two countries in the western hemisphere actively use the death penalty, the U.S. and St. Kitts, which I believe has executed one person this century. The story features prosecutor Angela Corey, profiled in a link I posted here last week as perhaps the cruelest DA in the country.
Two posts on the University of Chicago “no safe spaces/trigger warnings” welcome letter: one that presents the letter with favorable comments, and this dismantling of its words and intent by Grand View University History Professor Kevin Gannon. I don’t think I like the ideas implied by safe spaces, but I speak without experience on that, and, hell, trigger warnings are just common courtesy, aren’t they?
A rather peculiar research study showed (or claimed to show) that reading literary fiction was better than pop fiction for boosting readers’ emotional skills. You’ll have to read the article to see what exactly they thought it proved and to determine whether you think it proves anything. I’ll be reading literary fiction.
We’re definitely an HGTV household, but not particularly fans of Flip or Flop. The stars of that show have loaned their likenesses to a real-estate education “seminar” that sure sounds like an old-fashioned scam to me.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: bbq, death penalty, links, olympics, science, 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

→ August 6, 2016
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 8/6/16.

Seems like it’s been a lot more than a week since my last links post, since I’ve traveled twice in the interim. Here are all of the Insider pieces I wrote in that span, all of which relate to the trade deadline:

• How the Yankees’ rebuild gives them a top 3 farm system
• The Liriano/Hutchison trade
• The Matt Moore trade
• The Jay Bruce trade
• The Lucroy trade
• The Will Smith and Zach Duke trades
• The Carlos Beltran trade
• The Reddick/Hill trade
• The Andrew Miller trade
• The Melancon trade

My review of Quadropolis, the fun new city-building game from Days of Wonder, is also up over at Paste. It’s a little more complex than Ticket to Ride (DoW’s biggest title), but my daughter, who’s now 10, loved it. There are many ways to score, so it’s a game of choosing two or three of those paths to focus on rather than trying to do a little of everything.

There was no chat this week due to travel, and I’ll be taking the beginning of this week off to work on my book, returning to ESPN duties on Thursday (and chatting as well).

And now, the links:

HTTPS is now now vulnerable to a new exploit. This is kind of a big deal because the “s” is supposed to mean that the connection is secure.
The Rio Olympics are probably going to be a disaster, and the IOC is a corrupt mess, but the inclusion of a separate team of athletes who are refugees was one of the IOC’s most noble decisions in ages. One of those ten athletes is a Syrian swimmer who swam for three hours to push her refugee boat to safety, saving the lives of 20 other refugees in the process.
This week, vaccines and the Presidential race collided in a big way, as delusional Green Party candidate Jill Stein continued to pander to the anti-vaxer movement with equivocations so broad the Porter in Macbeth thought she was overdoing it. She’s wrong, and so is snopes’ defense of her statements, according to the important pro-science (and anti-pseudoscience) blog Skeptical Raptor.
Stein’s moment of science denial means Hillary Clinton is the only one of the four candidates who hasn’t pandered to anti-vaxers. This is important, because if you think people who believe something so monumentally stupid as this anti-vaxer bullshit are a constituency you can and should capture, I’m not voting for you.
The Sacramento Bee, a paper in a state where I’d guess Stein has some support, also ran an op ed calling her view disingenuous.
On to the election … Meg Whitman, a politically active Republican who ran for governor of California on the GOP ticket, has chosen to support Hillary Clinton with her money and her time, because she views Trump as a dangerous demagogue, comparing him to Hitler and Mussolini and – the part I both liked and agree with – “warned that those who say that ‘it can’t happen here’ are being naïve. I connected the Sinclair Lewis book of that name to Trump back in March.
The former head of the CIA quit his job at CBS and endorsed Clinton, explaining why he believes she’s the right choice for our national security in this first-person op ed.
In the left-wing British newspaper The Guardian, columnist Nick Cohen writes that the cowardice of other Republicans has allowed Trump to get this far. This isn’t the GOP of Ronald Reagan, nor is it the GOP for whose candidates I have voted dozens of times in federal, state, and local elections since I first gained the vote in 1991.
I thought this was the best political-comedy tweet of the week:

Reporter: Some think NY has the best pizza
Trump: Many people say I am the best pizza
Reporter: You're not pizza
Trump: I'm TREMENDOUS pizza

— Gavin Speiller (@gavinspeiller) July 31, 2016
Let’s move on to food, including this piece from 2015 on how resting the meat improves barbecue, even when the resting time is a few hours.
I missed this outstanding piece from the New York Times when it first ran in October, on genetics Ph.D. and wheat breeder Stephen Jones, called Bread is Broken, which explains how our wheat and thus our bread has become so much less nutritious over the last two centuries, and how we might fix it.
I’ve saved this recipe for watermelon rind preserves with ginger and lemon to make the next time we buy a whole melon.
The nation’s third-largest poultry producer is defying rising concerns and even a CDC warning about prophylactic use of antibiotics in our food chain, even running ads bragging that they still use these drugs. Antibiotic resistance is as real as evolution – the latter causes the former, inevitably – and this is flat-out irresponsible. But I’m glad they’re outing themselves so I can try to avoid their products.
Remember when I was horribly sick in January with a fever of 101+ for six straight days? The drug that finally defeated the infection was Levoquin, part of a class of antibiotics called fluoroquinolones, but those drugs have some nasty side effects, including tendon damage. WHO considers these antibiotics an essential medicine, one of the most effective drugs against gram-negative bacteria, but more doctors need to reserve them, as my doctor did, until other safer antibiotics have failed.
Germany’s Condor Airlines has started a “book on board” program that grants travelers an extra kilogram of weight allowance if they show a sticker from their local bookseller.
Jess Luther has done great work on the systemic problem of coddling college athletes who rape women, especially the rampant corruption in Baylor’s football program. Her book on the topic is coming out this fall and here’s her first interview about it.
In a related story, the University of Florida appointed a booster of the football program to adjudicate a Title IX hearing on a rape case involving Gator football players.
Deadspin reports on the opening hostilies in the battle over the Texas Rangers’ new ballpark boondoggle. The City Council of Arlington approved the stadium proposal 7-0 despite no evidence whatsoever of economic benefit and some early signs of public dissent.
ISIS has become a hot-button term in our Presidential election, but that doesn’t change what they are, the evil the Daesh do in Syria and Lebanon, or their attempts to sow terror in Europe. This piece on how they’re kidnapping and training child soldiers will chill your soul.
House Speaker Paul Ryan is facing an opponent in the Republican primary for his seat. This wouldn’t be notable except that his opponent wondered aloud why we allow any Muslims to be in our country.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: bbq, bread, food safety, food science, links, recipes, stick to baseball, vaccine

→ July 30, 2016
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 7/30/16.

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

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

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

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

And now, the links…

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

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

— Seth Meyers (@sethmeyers) July 27, 2016

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

→ July 23, 2016
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 7/22/16.

My one Insider piece this week ranked the top five farm systems in baseball, a list that may look different by August 2nd. I also held a Klawchat on Thursday, and reviewed the reissue of the boardgame Agricola for Paste.

And now, the links…

The co-producer of Vaxxed, the faux documentary that tries to whitewash Andrew Wakefield’s scientific fraud, encouraged vaccine denier parents to use guns to fight mandatory vaccinations. This sounds like a terrorism threat to me.
And the denialists’ production company is now trying to shut down critics of the film via legal threats, which won’t work, but still shows you their venality.
The Economist weighs in on the potential disaster of a Trump presidency, comparing it to the UK’s vote to leave the European Union.
Trump just can’t seem to tell the truth, and that piece is from before his acceptance speech in Cleveland.
Meanwhile, Politico covers the so-called shadow GOP convention in Cleveland, which seems to be planning for a Trump defeat that at least right now is far from certain.
I mentioned this in passing last week but it bears repeating: GOP Vice-Presidential candidate Mike Pence supports “gay conversion” therapy, which doesn’t work and is dangerous.
Alex Speier of the Boston Globe follows up on Brian Johnson’s return from a DL stint for anxiety disorder. The Red Sox seem to have been exemplary in their handling of Johnson’s request for help.
Panic attacks are like death. I agree.
The “Savvy Psychologist” discusses two big beliefs linked to anxiety with tips on how to counter them. The first one I’ve heard about before, as “catastrophic thinking,” while the second spins off that into a kind of “racing thoughts.” Whatever you call them, if you have anxiety, you’ll recognize them immediately.
The Ringer weighs in on Twitter getting half-serious about curbing abuse.
El Salvador scrapped its amnesty law, opening the door to prosecutions for crimes committed during the country’s civil war – which might lead to some unsavory revelations about the U.S.’s role in the conflict too.
What makes a knuckleball do that thing it does? Maybe it’s the seams, or maybe it’s “drag crisis,” per a new study. Our friend Alan Nathan (@pobguy) weighs in as well.
An interesting pair of recipes for smoked cashew salsa and guacamole with pistachios. The former is the one that made me include it here – that sounds like nothing I’ve ever eaten before.
Stella Parks, aka Brave Tart, shares her ultimate cherry pie recipe, which works for just about any fruit (it’s the same base 4:1 ratio I used for the blueberry-apricot-strawberry pie I photographed and shared earlier this week) and includes a link to her fast and easy pie dough recipe too.
A chemist accidentally creates a new blue dye, safer than cobalt versions. The story is reminiscent of chemist William Perkin’s discovery of aniline dye, which gave the world the color mauve, chronicled in an excellent book by Simon Garfield.
The gleeful bashing of Taylor Swift this week says a lot about how we view successful women. I’ve understood the enmity towards Swift; I don’t particularly like her music, but she’s a reasonably good role model for young girls, writes her own stuff, sticks to appropriate subject matter, and has enough of a feminist streak that I’m happy to have my daughter look up to her.
Forbes looks at the actual evidence on which mosquito repellents really work. Shorter version: DEET, IR3535, picaridin, and para-menthane-3,8-diol (distilled from oil of eucalyptus) work; citronella, geraniol, thiamine patches, and those stupid wristbands don’t. And that means that the Honest Company’s bug spray lies when they claim it works.
So many good Giuliani-meme tweets, but this was my favorite:

pic.twitter.com/Y30BaSL0JJ

— Tom Darby (@magicChopstick) July 19, 2016

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: anxiety, links, recipes, stick to baseball, vaccines

→ July 16, 2016
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 7/16/16.

Busy week for me over at the four-letter, with my updated ranking of the top 50 prospects in the minors going up on Thursday, four days after I watched and wrote about the Futures Game.

I wrote up Boston’s trade for Drew Pomeranz and their trades for Brad Ziegler and Aaron Hill. And I held a Klawchat.

I’m not writing up the Yuliesky Gurriel signing but Chris Crawford did, with a tiny bit of help from me.

I also appeared on Alex Speier’s 108 Stitches podcast, discussing the Pomeranz deal and the Red Sox’ farm system.

And now, the links…

There’s a measles outbreak in Arizona that started in a prison and spread because of unvaccinated employees. They’re a bunch of idiots. Vaccinate your kids, now. Vaccines are safe but measles kills.
The Hannah Poling case, long touted by anti-vaxxer morons as ‘proving’ something or other about vaccines being bad, does not afford any support to the notion that vaccinations can contribute to the causation of autism. Full stop. That’s from the Special Masters in the court who oversaw the decision.
The first major lawsuit against California’s eminently sensible, thoroughly constitutional mandatory vaccination law looks like a baseless hunk of garbage. Try not to have a heart attack and die from that surprise.
The Ringer – I swear I’ve heard of this site somewhere before – has an outstanding profile/history of the most important comic strip ever, Bloom County.
Turmeric is the trendy new ingredient, in part because it may some unproven anti-inflammatory properties. It can also irritate your stomach and cause heartburn, so, you know, don’t overdo it.
A superb piece from Roth Cornet, departing editor of Hitfix, on Finding Dory and her own experiences with dyslexia.
Turkey is in turmoil; here’s why the deposition of Recep Tayyip Erdogan isn’t a bad thing.
The Brickyard in St. Albans (in the UK) has a fantastic safety-first policy for female patrons posted behind the bar (although I assume they’d do the same if a male patron had a similar problem). Every bar or restaurant should have the same – perhaps even with a code word (ask for a specific name that would tip off the bartender that this is a distress call) to make it clear.
Writer and comedian Jessi Klein says pregnant women should just get the epidural and she’s right. The counterarguments are nearly all variations of the appeal to nature fallacy. Science is good. Medicine is good. Pain, though … pain sucks.
A deranged ex-soldier gets a gun, executes a bunch of cops sniper-style, and the NRA’s message is unchanged.
The great short story writer George Saunders went to Trump rallies and painted a real portrait of his base, without resorting to caricature or dismissal. They come off more as bad libertarians with a case of xenophobia.
Popular Science makes the case that Trump’s VP choice Mike Pence is strongly anti-science. Not mentioned is that Pence’s office opposed a state bill to try to increase Indiana’s vaccination rate against HPV, or that he supports so-called gay “conversion” therapy.
Speaking of which, Atul Gawande weighs in on the increasing mistrust of science, especially among conservatives.
Why are police all over the country arresting people for criticizing cops? Isn’t at least some of this protected speech?
A new study of hostile sexist behavior in video gaming shows men who harass women online are “low status” in the first place. In other words, they are literally the worst.
Phillips Exeter Academy punished a student who sexually assaulted another student by making him deliver bread to her once a week. Yeah.
Microfibers are poisoning the planet’s waters according to a study funded by Patagonia, the clothing manufacturer responsible for putting some of those microfibers into circulation.
Consumer demand for organic and non-GMO foods is leading Big Ag to pay farmers to go organic. This is sort of good; industrial organic is better than traditional industrial agriculture, but still isn’t as sustainable as what you might call “true” organic, which involves less spraying of anything and more focus on soil health. Organic farming can still include dumping a lot of chemicals on the soil, but they’re natural (e.g., no synthetic nitrogen from petroleum) so people assume they’re less harmful and/or the food is more healthful.
Baylor is burying its scandal by avoiding any paper trail. The important thing for us to do here is to make sure they can’t forget it by continuing to talk about it, for people like Jess Luther and Dan Solomon to keep investigating and reporting.
The show Roadies made a whole episode depicting sexual assault as funny. In 2016.
People with autism can, in fact, read emotions and feel empathy, contrary to the popular stereotype.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: anti-science, links, organic agriculture, rape culture, science, stick to baseball, vaccines

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