I visited the Dominican Republic for the first time this week, and saw Eddy Julio Martinez, six other Cuban defectors, and a handful of Dominican teenagers who will be eligible to sign in 2016 and 2017; Insiders can read all of my scouting notes on those players. I also wrote some preview/notes pieces on the American League and National League Division Series, although my Blue Jays in four prediction is already dead.
I held my regular Klawchat here on Thursday. I think the new software, despite some tiny glitches, is working out well; if nothing else it works far faster on my end.
And now, the links…
- The United Nations – the one joke that makes everyone in the world laugh – caved to Saudi Arabia by removing LGBT rights from its “sustainable development goals” list. Why anyone would listen to a repressive dictatorship that still refuses to grant its women basic human rights is beyond me. Of course, the Saudis have a seat on the UN’s Council on Human Rights, which shows you how well that whole idea works.
- NPR has a sad, brutal story on girls dying and disappearing in El Salvador.
- Can’t make this up: Vaccine denial group Safe Minds is mad that a study they funded showed no link between vaccines and autism. Science is beautiful.
- Texas 14-year-old falls pregnant after getting a flu shot. Go ahead and read it. I’ll wait here.
- Joe Posnanski is a national treasure and he lays waste to the Hall of Fame’s “Segregation Era” Committee in a post for NBC Sports.
- Los Angeles has enacted the nation’s strictest ban on plastic microbeads, which appear in many shampoos and other soap products but pass through industrial filtration of water waste.
- The Atlantic asks what happens to digital content we’ve bought if the sellers should go out of business? Those Kindle e-books you “bought” aren’t quite yours, not the way a physical book would be.
- The BBC reports that 2015 has been a very bad year for coral, which is undergoing a massive global bleaching as a result of the ocean acidification from our overproduction of carbon dioxide and deforestation.
- Also from the BBC, a very entertaining podcast that discusses the science in science fiction, especially movies. Is accuracy necessary, or even better?
- The New Yorker looks more at the daily fantasy sports “scandal” that has, in my view, received disproportionate news coverage. The so-called “insider trading” is far less of an issue than the firms’ insistence that regular joes are signing up and winning money when the bulk of the winnings go to a small number of sharks instead.
- MIT Technology Review looks at the successes and challenges of implanting electrodes in the brain to treat neurological and mental illnesses.