stick to baseball

→ June 18, 2016
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 6/18/16.

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

And now, the links:

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

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

→ June 12, 2016
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 6/12/16.

It’s been quite a week, but the draft is over, finally, so I have some thoughts and analysis on what happened:

• My round one notes
• My round two notes
• My NL team-by-team recaps

I’m still writing the AL recaps and will have those up by tomorrow.

I chatted before the draft and after the first five rounds.

Also, don’t forget to sign up for my newsletter.

And now, the links…

The judge who gave Stanford rapist Brock Turner six months, saying a longer sentence would have a “severe impact” on this sentient pile of shit, has been the target of threats after the ruling. Here’s the one threat I can get behind: an effort to recall Judge Persky, which I’d hope you would sign and back if you live in Santa Clara County.
Of course, it’s hard to get too optimistic when voters in Orange County re-elected a judge censured for having sex with two law students in chambers, as well as failing to recuse himself in a case where he had a conflict of interest.
There’s a new restaurant in LA called Birdies that sells fried chicken, donuts, and good coffee. Why eat anywhere else in LA?
The Appalachian tradition of salt-rising bread, fermented with Clostridium perfringens, a Gram-positive bacterium that causes food poisoning, is vanishing. Baking kills the bacteria, of course.
Angola’s bushmeat markets are alive and well, even though they’re illegal.
A Twitter user who was harassed by vaccine-denier assholes ended up having Twitter give them her home address as she tried to get the site to take down photos of her infant child that the harassers were using. (I looked up two of the main harassers; one I’d already blocked, the other had blocked me.)
Some actual good news on the vaccine front: researchers have developed the first vaccine for toxic shock syndrome, a dangerous type of staph infection, and the FDA has approved a new cholera vaccine for travelers to affected areas.
Also, we’re cranking up requirements for the meningitis B vaccine, which is particularly recommended for adolescents and college students. If you’ve got a kid going to college, make sure s/he has gotten this shot.
Donald Trump is being sued many times over for not paying tradesworkers and employees, as well as numerous other liens for back pay.
Japanese knotweed is the hot new ingredient in kitchens, and since it’s a destructive, invasive plant, no one has to worry about sustainability.
Some parenting anti-tips on how to teach your daughters that their consent doesn’t matter.
Scientists have found antibiotic-resistant “super bacteria” pretty much everywhere in Rio. These Olympics might be an all-time disaster, and no one who matters seems to be willing to entertain the possibility of moving or canceling the games. Money talks, even if we might get a global pandemic as a result.

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

→ June 4, 2016
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 6/4/16.

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

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

My latest monthly new music playlist went up Thursday morning.

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

And now, the links:

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

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

→ May 28, 2016
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 5/28/16.

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

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

And now, the links…

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

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

→ May 21, 2016
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 5/21/16.

My first attempt to project this year’s first-round picks went up on Wednesday; I’ll do this again three times before the draft, with the next one coming after Memorial Day. Earlier in the week, I did my annual ten-year lookback pieces, one on redrafting the 2006 first round and the other on the first-rounders from that year who didn’t work out.

I held my regular Klawchat on Thursday, and have a new game review up at Paste on the light family-friendly card game Zany Penguins.

Thanks to all of you who’ve signed up for my newsletter. I send a note more or less whenever I post new content somewhere, and usually add a little story or extra content too.

And now, the links…

A longtime reader of mine, Travis, has an unfortunate story that he shared with me: His newborn daughter is already in hospice care after a bout of meningitis that hit after she was born at 27 weeks. The full story is on their GoFundMe page; I donated and encourage you to do the same.
Amazing longread from the Atlantic on the false certainty we get from DNA results in criminal cases.
Great blog post on the challenges of fighting vaccine-denial propaganda. I guess the good news is that the film Vaxxed has gained no traction outside of its core, cult-like audience.
This piece on dating from a woman who does not want children has one really infuriating passage, about men who tried to impregnate her against her wishes. In the UK, that’s considered rape, but in the U.S. I don’t believe it is.
As yet another sports … uh, figure? … used the term “pansy” this week to describe baseball without broken limbs and bloody faces, I thought I’d link to The Pansy Project, in which a gay artist plants a single pansy at the sites of homophobic comments or attacks, joining with the recipient in a sort of show of strength. “Pansy,” by the way, has referred to either a gay man or an overly effeminate one for over a hundred years.
The Washington Post‘s oral history of the making of Run-DMC’s “Walk This Way” is a must read for anyone who remembers the impact that song had on the musical culture of the day. It’s surprising and disturbing for me to hear cries of racism at MTV; I grew up in about as white a town as you’ll find on the eastern seaboard, and when MTV aired anything by black artists that wasn’t adult contemporary crap, I devoured it. Rap, Prince and his various protegées, Living Colour, it didn’t matter. If it was novel, I was interested.
Also from WaPo, from March, the story of a violin prodigy who stole a Stradivarius.
An ethics professor at Yale and major figure in the social justice movement in academia stands credibly accused of sexual harassment. And Yale hasn’t done much to stop him.
The New Yorker takes a serious look at the buffoon James O’Keefe, and what his brand of negative campaigning means for both sides in the 2016 Presidential election. (Hint: Nothing good for democracy.)
Yes, it’s about a colleague, but I still enjoyed Josh Levin’s piece on why Zach Lowe is the best sportswriter in America.
A rare bit of positive news in the fight against antibiotic resistance, thanks to a five-year experiment in building such molecules from scratch rather than modifying existing ones.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: links, rap, science, stick to baseball

→ May 14, 2016
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 5/14/16.

My first Big Board for the 2016 draft (assembled with an assist from Eric Longenhagen) went up for Insiders this week. I’ll have my 2006 redraft piece up Monday, and then my first mock (as in, an actual first-round projection) on Wednesday.

I also wrote a free news item on MLB’s investigation of the Red Sox’s July 2nd signings, and held my regular Klawchat on Thursday.

The Harvard Public Health Review published an editorial that made a clear, rational call for the Rio Olympics to be moved or cancelled due to the Zika outbreak. This virus is no joke, and I have to wonder if we might have stopped or slowed it had we taken various other mosquito-borne illnesses (malaria, dengue) that primarily affect poorer countries more seriously.
Ronan Farrow’s op ed on his father, Woody Allen, and the free pass the director gets on his child molestation allegations is a must-read for so many reasons. I particularly hope reporters interviewing the stars of Cafe Society ask one simple question: Why would you work with a man who stands accused of molesting his daughter?
If someone overdoses on drugs given to him/her by a friend, is the friend guilty of murder? Even if you favor decriminalization of drug use (as I do), this question isn’t so easy.
Don’t be shocked, but quack doctors in California, led by Dr. Bob Sears, are selling medical exemptions to the state’s tougher childhood vaccination law. The only real solution is to flood the state medical board – which, as the article states, is generally worthless – with complaints and hope they do something.
Ontario has it right: Parents who refuse to get their kids vaccinated may be forced to take a class on the science of immunization. Good. Let’s do it here, in every state.
Zika is coming, and it’s going to hit states in the deep south – states that have done their best to circumvent Roe v Wade and limit abortion rights – the hardest.
Difficult longread of the week: The Boston Globe‘s Spotlight team looks at sexual abuse and cover-ups in New England boarding schools.
Why is the Washington Post‘s science section touting the pseudoscience of acupuncture?
Speaking of junk science, Louisiana is all in, pushing the state’s Health Department to study the “abortion reversal” nonsense. It doesn’t work, it’s dangerous, and most of all, it’s more men legislating what women can do with their bodies.
Vox dives deep on the multitude of studies that contradict the conventional wisdom that you can lose weight by exercising. Note that it’s complicated, like science often is.
How oregano may help reduce cow belches and fight climate change.
Two silly stories from England: A British couple were told to restrain their cat by the Royal Mail because he’s grabbing the mail when the postman pushes it through their mail slot. Also, a different couple got a request for a larger wedding gift than the £100 check they gave in an email after the event.
The New Yorker takes a somewhat serious look at how Michael Jordan became fodder for a mocking meme.
Tweet of the week:

Um … so, a couple of things … https://t.co/S4mZqO3DnG

— Michael Cohen (@speechboy71) May 10, 2016

which referred to this quote:

.@HeidiSCruz compares her husband's journey to slavery: "It took 25 years to defeat slavery. That is a lot longer than four years."

— Patrick Svitek (@PatrickSvitek) May 10, 2016

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: stick to baseball, vaccines

→ May 7, 2016
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 5/5/16.

My one Insider piece this week was a draft blog post on Matt Manning, Nolan Jones, Blake Rutherford, and more, with all three of those guys possibly going in the top ten picks next month. Eric and I will post a top 100 ranking on Wednesday and my first mock will go up the following week. I also held my regular Klawchat on Thursday.

I’ve signed up for Tinyletter and you can subscribe to my newsletter – which I think will be mostly links to my work – via that link.

And now, the links…

Thomas Friedman isn’t always my bag but his piece on the potential self-immolation of the Republican Party is measured and compelling, parceling out some blame to the other side as well.
OZY has a profile of geneticist Eric Vilain, who studies the relationship between our genes and our sexual orientations and identities. His conclusions are controversial and not always in line with the modern/progressive conventional wisdom, such as the claim that “while some gender-nonconforming boys later identify as trans women, the vast majority — more than 80 percent — outgrow their gender dysphoria by puberty, identifying as gay men.”
This is disturbing: A representative of the American Family Association, designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, said that they’re sending men into women’s restrooms at Target to “test” the store’s transfriendly bathroom policy, but the AFA issued a curiously-worded denial. It seems like they’re saying they’re not “encouraging men” to do this, but the statement doesn’t deny they’ve sent members into women’s bathrooms, right?
My friend and colleague John Buccigross was the subject of a NY Times profile that focuses on his #bucciovertimechallenge idea, which has already raised six figures for hockey-related charities. John also has excellent taste in music, by the way.
I’m actually not a fan of James Baldwin’s signature work, Go Tell It On the Mountain, but I still recommend this profile of the influential gay African-American writer and poet from the New York Review of Books.
Five things you can do to help your brain “stay young,” or at least to try to keep it plastic as you age.
The Las Vegas Review-Journal has become a farce of a newspaper, as the recent dismissal of Stephanie Grimes indicates.
I linked to this on Twitter in the aftermath of the Chiefs drafting Tyreek Hill, who beat and choked his pregnant girlfriend while at Oklahoma State, but it’s worth reposting: Women who’ve been strangled by their abusive partners are seven times more likely to end up homicide victims. Strangulation is not a felony crime in twelve states, including New Jersey and Pennsylvania; if you’re in one of those states, contact your local legislator and see if you can help get the law changed.
Meanwhile, two hosts at WHB 610 in Kansas City, including Danny Parkins (on whose show I’ve appeared many times), set up a fundraising page for a local domestic violence shelter that has already raised over $12K.
The U.S. Department of Transportation is starting a program to try to help communities isolated or left behind by infrastructure improvements in their areas. When communities aren’t adequately served by transportation systems, their local economies suffer.
This is fun for geography junkies: an interactive map of world regimes by type from 1816 to 2011. The good news is that the global trend toward greater democracy is still going strong. And if you look at the red (least free) countries, you’ll find several of the worst economies on earth, and maybe you’ll wonder why the fuck we’re sending $43 million a year in aid to Swaziland, especially since that country’s highly corrupt dictatorship has sold donated food for cash before.
A quality longread from the NY Times on whether prostitution should be a crime. It’s a difficult question even if you get beyond the morality of it, since prostitution is often less than consensual, but one thing that I think is clear is that the sex workers should not be charged with crimes for their actions, as they’re very often victims themselves.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: african-american literature, stick to baseball

→ April 30, 2016
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 4/30/16.

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

And now, the links…

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

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

→ April 23, 2016
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 4/23/16.

My latest draft blog post covers six top prospects I saw in the last week and a half, including Riley Pint, who hit 100 mph on my gun. ESPN also posted a free lookback at my old reports on Aaron Hicks. I held my regular Klawchat on Thursday, going about a half hour longer than usual.

And now, the links…

I’ve always thought the UN was worse than useless, but boy, does this take the cake: Their own Nepalese peacekeepers caused the ongoing Haitian cholera epidemic that has killed upwards of 10,000 people. And they’re covering it up, with help from our own federal government.
Thieves are stealing nuts from California farmers and it’s actually a serious problem.
The NY Times weighs in on transgender bathroom hysteria with an op ed that emphasizes two aspects of these hateful laws: They don’t make anyone safer, and they carry real economic consequences for states that pass them. Not mentioned is how such laws blatantly pander to the evangelical base of the right wing, and how such voters seem to fall for it.
Charles Pierce’s column on the two names we’ll be saying till the election was spot on and very entertaining to read.
This Slate piece on the fake Craigslist ad asking for a “feminism tutor” is super weird and creepy. The piece identifies the serial harasser as a Penn State student, but the school’s directory shows zero results in a search of his name.
Sarah Palin claimed that she’s as much a “scientist” as Bill Nye is, which is a bizarre sort of ad hominem attack.
The University of Georgia paid Ludacris $65K to perform before a spring football game but remember there’s no money to pay the players because amateurism.
I found this 2010 Science post called Things I Won’t Work With: Dioxygen Difluoride highly amusing.
The Onion reports what other news outlets won’t: Pharmaceutical Industry Reeling As More Moms Making Vaccines At Home.
The 1970 Miami High School baseball team was inducted into the school’s Hall of Fame this past week. “If it happened today — 24 innings thrown in one 346-pitch game by a high school junior — the coach likely would be fired or maybe even worse.” I don’t know if that pitcher, Alberto Zamora, was a major prospect before that outing, but he never made it to full-season ball.
Don’t believe positive reviews you see online, even if they seem well-written and specific. A Fusion write created a fake business and bought likes and reviews for $5 a pop.
The sister of the late Harris Wittels, Parks & Recreation writer and actor as well as creator of the Humblebrag, wrote a searing piece on the end of empathy and the awful shit people say online. Within her piece is a subpoint to which I can certainly relate: People will say awful things to total strangers when behind the comfort of a keyboard and a pseudonym. Someone came here the other day to say he disagreed with my comments on C.J. Nitkowski’s post and that he wouldn’t be a reader any more, and ended with “Fuck you.” He might have said the other stuff to my face. The last bit? I doubt it.
Millenials prefer straight cash to stupid office perks, and Bloomberg is on it.
Vox has a thoughtful piece on smugness in American liberalism; everything in there is at least somewhat accurate, but couldn’t you make the same points about any such community, especially online? Vaccine deniers, conspiracy theorists, evangelicals, atheists, vegetarians, Trump supporters – they all thrive in environments where they can limit their exposure to people with differing views, creating a feedback loop that further convinces them that they are right and everyone else is wrong. It’s human nature, and I don’t think it’s limited to any part of the political spectrum.
Finally, did you know I’m a “liberal firebrand?” I didn’t realize believing in flatter taxation, a balanced budget, and free markets made me a left-wing nut job. Or that believing in equal rights for everyone put me anywhere but with the majority.

Please explain, ESPN, why you fired conservative firebrand @gehrig38 for his opinions and allow liberal firebrand @keithlaw to express his?

— Dan Curry (@dancurry) April 21, 2016

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: stick to baseball

→ April 9, 2016
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 4/8/16.

My standings and awards predictions for 2016 went up last Saturday, in case you missed those. My one Insider piece since then was a draft blog post, co-authored with Eric Longenhagen, covering Jason Groome, Bryson Brigman, and more. We will have a top 50 draft prospect ranking up on Tuesday.

I held my usual Klawchat on Thursday, going a bit longer than normal because I was so busy answering your questions I lost track of time.

And now, the links…

Best longread of the week comes from the Guardian, which explains how nutrition scientists pushed low-fat advice and ignored science for decades, even to the point of destroying the career of the first scientist to sound the anti-sugar bell. A Harvard professor is cited within the piece as demanding the retraction of a peer-reviewed article published in BMJ on the topic; I exchanged emails with him, and he said that the author of the article, Ian Leslie, was “clearly not interested” in hearing a contrary opinion.
The NCAA isn’t just a group of corporate fat cats and millionaire coaches profiting off the unpaid physical labor of college athletes; it’s a giant wealth transfer from black to white.
Amy Schumer’s “plus-sized is okay but I am not plus-sized” imbroglio got thinkpieced to death this week … but the A/V Club did do the subject justice by pointing out the damage of labeling women at all. Men don’t really face this – there’s “big and tall,” but hell, tall is considered good for men. (I am not tall; I’m 5’6″, very short for an adult American male, and trust me, I’ve long heard how this is not a good thing.) Why do women have to be plus-sized or minus-sized or whatever-the-fuck-sized at all?
From the “look at this idiot” department: A vaccine-denier mom gave her newborn whooping cough. She regrets being an idiot now, apparently. If you think vaccines are not safe, you are wrong, and should listen to every reputable scientist and doctor in the world who says to vaccinate your kids.
Eephus is a new sports-themed online magazine (do I even have to say “online” any more?) and one of its first pieces was by my friend Will Leitch, who waxes nostalgic over baseball boardgames.
A great interview with culinary icon Alton Brown from Bitter Southerner.
A state senator in Virginia wants Beloved out of public schools because it’s “smut,”, and he told a high school English teacher that he knew better than she did. Read his emails to see his ignorance at work, as he calls the greatest American novel of the last 40 years “vile,” “smut,” and “moral sewage.”
Facebook now has a tool to report users who might be about to harm themselves and try to get them help.
All this talk about the various laws raising the minimum wage to $15/hour led me to this takedown of a WaPo editorial criticizing the laws, in which the author contends (among other things) that the rise in wages for the lowest income bracket will lead to greater increases in demand, because when you have very little money, you spend each additional dollar you get.
This JAMA editorial argues that we may be reaching the financial limits of pharmaceutical innovation. I think he’s half right, in that we are approaching that limit, but do not believe it will stop or even slow innovation, but must drive new price models. A fundamental problem of health care is that our demand for services that will improve, extend, or save our lives is essentially inelastic: You can raise the price and we’ll still want as much, and eventually we will simply pay everything we have if it means continuing to live.
The chefs at Nashville’s wonderful izakaya and ramen joint Two Ten Jack read and respond to negative reviews in this funny 90-second video. I brought a group of writers to TTJ in December (Jess Benefield came out to chat while we were there) and had an unbelievable and very reasonably priced meal.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: alton brown, Economics, science, stick to baseball, vaccines

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