{"id":4065,"date":"2015-05-09T08:00:51","date_gmt":"2015-05-09T12:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/?p=4065"},"modified":"2015-05-09T00:11:39","modified_gmt":"2015-05-09T04:11:39","slug":"saturday-five-5915","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2015\/05\/09\/saturday-five-5915\/","title":{"rendered":"Saturday five, 5\/9\/15."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>My ranking of the <a href=http:\/\/klaw.me\/1DQU1O0>top 100 draft prospects for 2015<\/a> is now up for Insiders, and I held a <a href=http:\/\/klaw.me\/1PnChke>Klawchat<\/a> afterwards to answer questions about it. I&#8217;ll be at UConn&#8217;s game today (Saturday) against Cincinnati to see Ian Happ before I head home for Mother&#8217;s Day.<\/p>\n<p>And now, the links&#8230;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A grieving yet proud mother writes about <a href=http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/national\/health-science\/the-demons-got-my-beautiful-loving-daughter\/2015\/04\/20\/cdaaa338-dfc2-11e4-a1b8-2ed88bc190d2_story.html?tid=pm_national_pop_b>losing her 29-year-old daughter to mental illness<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>The <i>New Republic<\/i> offers a hopeful piece on the <a href=http:\/\/www.newrepublic.com\/article\/121704\/decline-pseudoscience?utm_source=digg&#038;utm_medium=email>imminent decline of pseudoscience<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>What&#8217;s the best way <a href=http:\/\/www.newsweek.com\/can-you-inoculate-against-science-denial-327245>to fight science denial<\/a>? This piece argues that it involves showing other pieces of science denial first.<\/li>\n<li>A thirty-year study by the Rodale Institute found that organic agriculture beat conventional methods <a href=http:\/\/foodtank.com\/news\/2015\/04\/organic-trumps-conventional-across-the-board>for energy efficiency, water quality, soil health<\/a>, and other important variables. Organic produce probably isn&#8217;t any more healthful than conventional, there&#8217;s limited evidence that it&#8217;s more nutritious (that seems to be a function of the soil itself), and there&#8217;s minimal risk from pesticides on conventional stuff. But organic ag is way better for the soil and the water, and it should use far less fossil fuels as well.<\/li>\n<li>From last week, a reader sent along <a href=http:\/\/www.cepr.net\/blogs\/beat-the-press\/correction-to-mankiw-economists-actually-agree-just-because-you-call-something-free-trade-doesn-t-make-it-free-trade>this rejoinder to the pro-TPP link<\/a> I included in that post.<\/li>\n<li>Kickstarter is behind lots of success stories, including many acclaimed boardgames, but <a href=http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2015\/05\/03\/magazine\/zpm-espresso-and-the-rage-of-the-jilted-crowdfunder.html>what happens when a crowdfunded startup goes south<\/a>?<\/li>\n<li>I haven&#8217;t followed football at all since the 1980s, but I couldn&#8217;t stop reading this <i>New York Times<\/i> \u201cwhere are they now?\u201d piece on <a href=http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/interactive\/2015\/04\/28\/sports\/football\/nfl-draft-class-1990.html?smid%3D=tw-nytsports&#038;_r=0>the first-round picks from the NFL&#8217;s 1990 draft<\/a>. <\/li>\n<li>Excellent piece from the <i>Washington Post<\/i> on <a href=http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/sf\/national\/2015\/05\/06\/the-long-drive-to-end-a-pregnancy\/>one woman&#8217;s 400-mile drive to end a pregnancy<\/a>. Women who seek abortions are not merely heartless babykillers, and reducing access to abortion services doesn&#8217;t do anything to reduce the demand, only to increase the hardships for women who need them.<\/li>\n<li>Scientists have found <a href=http:\/\/news.sciencemag.org\/paleontology\/2015\/05\/feathered-fossils-china-reveal-dawn-modern-birds>feathered fossils of birds from 130 million years ago<\/a>, about 5 million years older than the previous hypothesized date for the first birds to appear on earth. Those scientists, man. They keep doing stuff.<\/li>\n<li>You probably caught this one going around, but a school in Texas that taught abstinence-only sex education <a href=http:\/\/thinkprogress.org\/health\/2015\/05\/04\/3654650\/outbreak-texas-sex-ed\/>had a chlamydia outbreak<\/a>. I&#8217;m sympathetic to parents who believe the choice to teach kids about sexual morality should be theirs, not the school&#8217;s, but there&#8217;s a public health aspect to the question too, and, more importantly, a growing body of evidence that abstinence-only education doesn&#8217;t work.<\/li>\n<li>Turns out that getting vaccinated for the measles <a href=http:\/\/www.npr.org\/blogs\/goatsandsoda\/2015\/05\/07\/404963436\/scientists-crack-a-50-year-old-mystery-about-the-measles-vaccine?utm_source=twitter.com&#038;utm_campaign=science&#038;utm_medium=social&#038;utm_term=nprnews>reduces your susceptibility to a bunch of other illnesses<\/a> to which the measles would make you more vulnerable.<\/li>\n<li>They didn&#8217;t have this class when I was there: Harvard engineering students spent a semester building <a href=http:\/\/www.bostonglobe.com\/metro\/2015\/05\/05\/harvard-class-cooks-ultimate-bbq-smoker\/0O4fLQ0rbt9qMGsllPoTjK\/story.html?hootPostID=2799b5a3df8eadb6755a1a817167ef0e#>the ultimate brisket smoker<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Speaking of barbecue, Aaron Franklin of Franklin BBQ in Austin (and of those AmEx commercials) <a href=http:\/\/www.tmbbq.com\/a-james-beard-for-barbecue\/>became the first pitmaster to win a James Beard \u201cbest chef\u201d award<\/a>. If you&#8217;ve had his brisket, and <a href=http:\/\/klaw.me\/1zSDbOd>I have<\/a>, he deserves all the awards. Like, even the Nobel Prize for Economics, which is kind of a made-up thing anyway.\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My ranking of the top 100 draft prospects for 2015 is now up for Insiders, and I held a Klawchat afterwards to answer questions about it. I&#8217;ll be at UConn&#8217;s game today (Saturday) against Cincinnati to see Ian Happ before I head home for Mother&#8217;s Day. And now, the links&#8230; A grieving yet proud mother [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[50,800,118,190,824,660,807],"class_list":["post-4065","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bbq","tag-evolution","tag-experimental-cuisine","tag-links","tag-pseudoscience","tag-saturday-five","tag-vaccines","entry"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4065"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4065\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4066,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4065\/revisions\/4066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}