{"id":4252,"date":"2015-08-29T08:00:59","date_gmt":"2015-08-29T12:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/?p=4252"},"modified":"2015-08-29T11:39:05","modified_gmt":"2015-08-29T15:39:05","slug":"saturday-five-82915","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2015\/08\/29\/saturday-five-82915\/","title":{"rendered":"Saturday five, 8\/29\/15."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>My main Insider piece this week was on <a href=\"http:\/\/klaw.me\/1EgiJPa\" target=\"_blank\">sustainable MLB breakthroughs in 2015<\/a>. I meant to include Rougned Odor on this list, and somehow just plain forgot him when I sat down to write the piece. Anyway, this is my mea culpa and statement that I believe his improvement at the plate is real, sustainable, and only the beginning for him.<\/p>\n<p>I also covered the Metropolitan Classic high school tournament that&#8217;s hosted and organized by the NY Mets, writing about <a href=\"http:\/\/klaw.me\/1KLCdrY\" target=\"_blank\">the top 2016 and 2017 draft prospects there<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>And now, this week&#8217;s links&#8230;<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/saturdayfive.png\" alt=\"saturdayfive\" width=\"74\" height=\"43\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-3812\" \/><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The nationwide rise in the popularity of authentic barbecue has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/magazine-33994947?ocid=socialflow_twitter\" target=\"_blank\">left black pitmasters behind<\/a>, even though that style of cooking has roots in African-American culture.<\/li>\n<li>An excellent longread from the BBC on the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/magazine-33962179\" target=\"_blank\">forced repatriation of Chinese sailors in the UK<\/a> after World War II, with the story of one woman whose biological father was one of those deported.<\/li>\n<li>Baseball is <a href=\"https:\/\/sports.vice.com\/en_us\/article\/a-potential-baseball-powerhouse-blossoms-in-uganda\" target=\"_blank\">on the rise in Uganda<\/a>, believe it or not. It&#8217;s a sport that requires a long gestation period when it manages to take hold in a new region or country, but it seems to be growing well in the small sub-Saharan African nation, where it&#8217;s still against the law to be gay.<\/li>\n<li>A <a href=\"http:\/\/cultureofchemistry.fieldofscience.com\/2015\/08\/a-chemistry-decoder.html\" target=\"_blank\">chemistry decoder<\/a> to send to that idiot friend from high school who keeps posting FoodBabe links on Facebook.<\/li>\n<li>A personal post from a woman whose son <a href=\"http:\/\/www.voicesforvaccines.org\/surviving-influenza-nathans-story\/\" target=\"_blank\">nearly died from the flu<\/a>. It&#8217;s just about flu shot season, too.<\/li>\n<li>Another sugar (sucrose) substitute, the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/sections\/thesalt\/2015\/08\/25\/434597445\/in-the-hunt-for-the-perfect-sugar-substitute-another-candidate-emerges\" target=\"_blank\">natural but uncommon sugar allulose<\/a>, may be moving toward the marketplace, but like sugar alcohols, it passes right through the upper GI tract and can cause some problems further on down the line.<\/li>\n<li>Kevin Folta, a scientist at the University of Florida, is under attack by the tin-foil hat crowd because <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gainesville.com\/article\/20150825\/OPINION01\/150829859?tc=ar\" target=\"_blank\">Monsanto provided $25,000 for an educational outreach program<\/a>, covering his travel costs. The personal nature of the attacks and the ignorance of how corporate funding actually works in academic research result in a deeply disturbing application of the genetic fallacy.<\/li>\n<li>Longtime reader Tom Hitchner has a good post up on <a href=\"https:\/\/tomhitchner.wordpress.com\/2015\/08\/21\/why-teams-get-away-with-public-financing-deals\/\" target=\"_blank\">why teams keep getting sweetheart government-funded stadium deals<\/a>. It&#8217;s happening in Milwaukee, and it&#8217;s happening in disgusting fashion in St. Louis, where a law prohibiting such deals was overturned by a judge as &#8220;too vague.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>TV critic extraordinaire Alan Sepinwall asks if <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hitfix.com\/whats-alan-watching\/peak-tv-in-america-is-there-really-too-much-good-scripted-television\" target=\"_blank\">there&#8217;s too much good television right now<\/a>. I say yes, there is, and I have little to no hope of watching most of it.<\/li>\n<li>U.S. tennis pro Mardy Fish had to quit the sport due to anxiety, but he&#8217;s back, and he&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/mardy-fishs-match-with-anxiety-1439747963\" target=\"_blank\">talking about his affliction<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Mental Floss assembled a group of <a href=\"http:\/\/mentalfloss.com\/article\/67178\/11-creative-flight-safety-videos-around-world\" target=\"_blank\">clever airline safety videos<\/a> from around the world. The two Delta ones are both funny and effective; the first time I saw each this year I had to put down my book to watch them.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My main Insider piece this week was on sustainable MLB breakthroughs in 2015. I meant to include Rougned Odor on this list, and somehow just plain forgot him when I sat down to write the piece. Anyway, this is my mea culpa and statement that I believe his improvement at the plate is real, sustainable, [&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":[821,50,190,660,807],"class_list":["post-4252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-anti-science","tag-bbq","tag-links","tag-saturday-five","tag-vaccines","entry"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4252","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=4252"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4252\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4255,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4252\/revisions\/4255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}