Just two ESPN.com posts from me this week, although there’s more coming up next week:

* A long post on Wilmington (Kansas City) and Myrtle Beach (Texas) prospects.
* This week’s Klawchat transcript.

Many of you are asking about Behind the Dish. I don’t have an answer for you yet. I’m sorry. Feel free to let ESPN know you want the show back soon.

And now, for this week’s five links of interest:

• The new whooping cough vaccine isn’t as good as the old one. Good job, good effort, guys. Meanwhile, the disease is spreading in countries where it had been mostly wiped out.
• Also from Science News, the tetraquark, a particle comprising four quarks – a charm, an anticharm, a down, and an anti-up. Got that?
• A reader suggestion: a NY Times piece on when journalists get too close to sources. I’m certainly friends with a lot of my sources in the industry, so this is something I grapple with regularly.
• The FDA might be backing off its latest anti-microbrewery regulation. The FDA wanted to effectively kill off the centuries-old process of breweries selling their spent grains to animal husbandry operations for feed. Craft breweries have fought back, and they might have won enough of a change in the regulation to matter. Two salient points: Spent grains apparently make great bread, and the FDA is a horrible waste of taxpayer money that should be overhauled or killed off entirely.
• Injectable oxygen particles? The discovery appears to be over a year old, but the impact would be enormous. I for one welcome our new anaerobic overlords.

My content from ESPN.com this week:

• Trenton-New Hampshire notes, including Aaron Sanchez and Bryan Mitchell.
• My list of the six most prospect-laden minor league teams this year.
• Opening Day assignments for all 300 prospects the organizational top ten rankings, compiled by Chris Crawford.
• This week’s Klawchat.
• My post from last week on Carlos Rodon and other draft prospects.

And the links … by the way, feel free to post or otherwise send (Twitter, FB, etc) links you think might be candidates for this section in a future week. I’m always looking for good reading material.

* From the BMJ (formerly the British Medical Journal), a study on how certain anti-anxiety drugs, including benzodiazepines, increase the risk of patient death, uncovered when researchers examined those patients over long periods.

* Cornmeal waffles with bourbon-banana syrup. Haven’t tried these yet, but, I mean, waffles and bananas and booze? I’m in.

* From the LA Times, Michael Hiltzik on why Brendan Eich’s ouster from Mozilla was justified – or, at least, why his First Amendment rights are irrelevant to this discussion.

* “Libertarian” is probably the best one-word description of my political beliefs, but the satirical piece Libertarian Police Department hits the mark square-on.

* And one you may already have seen, but if not, and you have the stomach for it, read Sports on Earth’s profile of Chad Curtis, convicted sexual predator. Is he a sociopath? A narcissist? I found his victim-blaming, right on through his attempts to manipulate the jury and then the writer here, terrifying.

I’ll be at Wilmington’s home opener on Tuesday, and probably the 10:30 am game (full of screaming kids) on Wednesday as well, so I hope to see many of you there.

My ESPN content from this past week:

• My predictions column for 2014.
• On Mike Trout’s contract.
• On Miguel Cabrera’s contract.
• On prep arms Touki Toussaint and Foster Griffin.
• On “divisive” fantasy players for 2014.
• My last spring training dispatch, on Matt Wisler and Neftali Feliz.

There will be a Carlos Rodon blog post at some point on Saturday as well. EDIT: Here’s the Rodon post, plus notes on Trea Turner and more prep bats from the NHSI.

This week’s five links of note…

* Intestinal flora are why dark chocolate is good for you. Not why it’s delicious, though.

* Big Brother is watching you eat. I don’t want the government in my kitchen any more than I want it in my bedroom.

* There’s a polio outbreak in Syria, and it might spread. By the way, you know who else hates vaccines, along with the ignorati here who think they cause autism? The Taliban and and Boko Haram. I’m sure they’d welcome Jay Cutler with open arms.

* Italy angered by foreigners’ mafia-themed food. It sounds funny, but it’s not, really. It’s a lot like my arguments about Native American-themed team nicknames – you’re playing on negative stereotypes that offend the people in question.

* From last July, how Detroit’s bankruptcy might impact its housing market, which I came across while writing the Cabrera reaction piece.

My ESPN content this week:

• Top 50 prospects for this year’s draft
• Breakout player picks for 2014
• Cubs A-ball prospects
• Julio Urias and other Dodgers prospects
• Scouting prep LHP Brady Aiken
• Scouting prep catcher Alex Jackson
• This week’s Klawchat

And now, five interesting links from my non-sports meanderings on the Internet this week:

* Doctors use 3-D printing to help a baby breathe. I’m not sure science fiction ever quite foresaw what 3-D printing allows us to do.

* Using Bayes’ Theorem to locate missing planes. Mostly linked because Bayes’ Theorem is awesome and not that well understood.

* 100 serial rapists identified after Detroit finally processes untested rape kits. How many victims could have been spared? Detroit isn’t alone in this problem, but it certainly doesn’t help its reputation as a third-world city within a first-world country.

* Is Whole Foods America’s Temple of Pseudoscience, as this piece claims? I think the author is trying to make a broader point about which anti-science views we lambast and which we ignore, but he kind of glosses over how that section of the typical Whole Foods store takes up maybe 10% of the square footage. Linked within that piece: An actual “paleo” diet would be vegetarian. Eat what you want, as long as it’s good food, just don’t pretend this is somehow the “right” diet for our bodies.

* The Risk of Autism Is Not Increased by “Too Many Vaccines Too Soon”. Bookmark it the next time some idiot trots out this stupid anti-vaccine claim. It’s time to end non-medical exemptions for vaccination of schoolchildren, before we get a fresh measles or pertussis epidemic here.

Finally, I appreciate those of you who saw fit to smack down some whiners on the Cub prospect piece’s comment thread.

My recent posts at ESPN.com:

* David Dahl’s new look
* Dee Gordon still can’t hit
* Braden Shipley showed a plus curveball
* Jose Abreu has a great swing
* Tom Gordon’s son, Nick, is a first-rounder
* This week’s Klawchat

And now, for the proper Saturday five:

• On the merger of Chiquita and Fyffes and what it means for the extinction of the Cavendish banana, from al-Jazeera.
• On “bossy pants,” gender roles, abortion restrictions, and too many other topics to list. It’s more thought-provoking than it is a piece likely to change anyone’s views, but maybe that’s what a good op ed column is supposed to do?
• Roger Goodell met with Sen. Maria Cantwell about the Washington team name – and kept it secret. Can’t have anyone thinking they might be aware that the nickname is a racial slur, right?
• Ohio earthquakes linked to fracking. But did Chillicothe feel the earth move?
• Italian scientists launch cannoli into the stratosphere. Because they could, I guess?

My latest Insider post at ESPN.com covers games from Thursday and Friday, including young players from the Jays, Rays, Nats, and Atlanta. Previous posts from this week cover Astros & Tigers players and Tigers & Pirates.

• From last August, a BuzzFeed piece on the “notorious MSG”, the chemistry of umami, and how chefs like David Chang are experimenting with new ways to develop glutamates in food.
• Human Rights Watch: For-Profit Probation Tramples Rights of Poor. Debtors’ prison for the 21st century.
• Antivaccination Parents Dig In Heels Even after Receiving Medical Info. So don’t give them a choice: You want to send your kids to public school, you vaccinate them. You are not allowed to put others at risk through your own ignorance.
• Caffeine Boosts Memory—Really. I think I tweeted this link, but then I forgot.
• Oxadiazoles: New Class Of Antibiotics Discovered. I can’t wait till we give these to livestock and create a whole new class of superbugs too!

I’m heading to Arizona Monday evening, and should be able to hold a chat on Thursday at the usual time, the same morning the new Future Power Rankings are released on ESPN.com. As always, I’ll tweet the chat link that morning.

As most of you know by now, the ESPN Baseball Today podcast is ending. This Thursday’s episode, February 7th, marks the series finale, and I’ll be on with Eric to talk about my top 100 prospects and to personally strangle every remaining kitten in the studio.

• The Great Canadian Maple Syrup Heist. Need I say more?
• From mental_floss, 50 Collective Nouns to Bolster Your Vocabulary. Most of these have fallen into disuse, but I do have some favorites, like a business of ferrets, an exaltation of larks, a murder of crows, and a chass of Luddites.
• Guys, sticking your finger in that immersion blender blade’s path while it’s still plugged in is a bad idea, and the New York Times is on it.
• An amazing and sad story about the late-1970s encounter between Russian geologists and the Siberian family that had had no contact with outsiders for 40 years.
• Another NYT post, this one on food myths. I include this link not because I agree with it, but because it’s a good example of how the mainstream media often gives you only half the story on food-science questions. She mentions organic farming without discussing its environmental benefits, while hand-waving away the issue of pollutants in farmed salmon.

Five plus one this week, although the last one probably only matters if you have ties to Long Island.

* From The Atlantic, a look at from where post-election racist tweets emanated. There’s been a fair amount of debate over the practice of outing people, often kids, who say awful things on Twitter, but on this topic I subscribe to the thinking of Shakti Gawain, who said, “Evil is like a shadow – it has no real substance of its own, it is simply a lack of light… In order to cause a shadow to disappear, you must shine light on it.” And maybe we could make the morons who compound their ignorance by crying “freedom of speech!” after they’re exposed take a civics class to learn what the First Amendment actually means.

* Also from The Atlantic, a piece on the problem with “rape exceptions” in anti-abortion laws. The author makes a pretty compelling case that they’re worthless.

* Brandon Heipp’s piece at BP on the history of “replacement level” in baseball analysis was a great and timely read, given confusion over the term in the religious wars around the AL MVP contest.

* mental_floss delves into the secret lives of six spices. It quotes Giles Milton, whose book Nathaniel’s Nutmeg is one of my favorite non-fiction books on any subject.

* Bookmarked but unread, a short story recommended by Michael Ruhlman called “The End of Baseball.” It’s only accessible if you have Flash, as far as I can tell.

* I concede this is of interest to maybe a handful of people besides me, but this New York Times review of Kushi, a new sushi restaurant in Nesconset, caught my eye because it’s about a mile and a half from the house where I grew up, and which my parents just sold earlier this year. If anyone’s tried it, I’d love to hear how it is.