{"id":4345,"date":"2015-10-10T10:23:05","date_gmt":"2015-10-10T14:23:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/?p=4345"},"modified":"2015-10-10T10:23:05","modified_gmt":"2015-10-10T14:23:05","slug":"saturday-five-101015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2015\/10\/10\/saturday-five-101015\/","title":{"rendered":"Saturday five, 10\/10\/15."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>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 <a href=\"http:\/\/klaw.me\/1OoqPsL\" target=\"_blank\">all of my scouting notes on those players<\/a>. I also wrote some preview\/notes pieces on the <a href=\"http:\/\/klaw.me\/1hsTn5E\" target=\"_blank\">American League<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/klaw.me\/1huJKmY\" target=\"_blank\">National League<\/a> Division Series, although my Blue Jays in four prediction is already dead.<\/p>\n<p>I held my regular <a href=\"http:\/\/klaw.me\/1FUOqhY\" target=\"_blank\">Klawchat<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n<p>And now, the links&#8230;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\nThe United Nations \u2013 the one joke that makes everyone in the world laugh \u2013 caved to Saudi Arabia by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/news\/saudi-arabia-insists-un-keeps-lgbt-rights-out-of-its-development-goals-a6671526.html\" target=\"_blank\">removing LGBT rights from its &#8220;sustainable development goals&#8221; list<\/a>. 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&#8217;s Council on Human Rights, which shows you how well that whole idea works.<\/li>\n<li>NPR has a sad, brutal story on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/sections\/goatsandsoda\/2015\/10\/05\/445985671\/never-leave-your-house-survival-strategies-for-el-salvador-s-15girls\" target=\"_blank\">girls dying and disappearing in El Salvador<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Can&#8217;t make this up: Vaccine denial group Safe Minds is mad that a study they funded showed <a href=\"http:\/\/www.iflscience.com\/health-and-medicine\/anti-vaxxers-fund-study-finds-zero-link-between-vaccinations-and-autism\" target=\"_blank\">no link between vaccines and autism<\/a>. Science is beautiful.<\/li>\n<li>Texas 14-year-old <a href=\"http:\/\/worldnewsdailyreport.com\/texas-14-year-old-virgin-falls-pregnant-after-flu-shot\/\" target=\"_blank\">falls pregnant after getting a flu shot<\/a>. Go ahead and read it. I&#8217;ll wait here.<\/li>\n<li>Joe Posnanski is a national treasure and he lays waste to the <a href=\"http:\/\/joeposnanski.com\/pre-integration\/\" target=\"_blank\">Hall of Fame&#8217;s &#8220;Segregation Era&#8221; Committee<\/a> in a post for NBC Sports.<\/li>\n<li>Los Angeles has enacted <a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/local\/political\/la-me-pc-plastic-microbeads-ban-20151008-story.html\" target=\"_blank\">the nation&#8217;s strictest ban on plastic microbeads<\/a>, which appear in many shampoos and other soap products but pass through industrial filtration of water waste.<\/li>\n<li>The <i>Atlantic<\/i> asks <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/technology\/archive\/2015\/10\/when-amazon-dies\/409387\/\" target=\"_blank\">what happens to digital content we&#8217;ve bought<\/a> if the sellers should go out of business? Those Kindle e-books you &#8220;bought&#8221; aren&#8217;t quite yours, not the way a physical book would be.<\/li>\n<li>The BBC reports that 2015 has been <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/programmes\/p034p7xz?ocid=socialflow_twitter\" target=\"_blank\">a very bad year for coral<\/a>, which is undergoing a massive global bleaching as a result of the ocean acidification from our overproduction of carbon dioxide and deforestation.<\/li>\n<li>Also from the BBC, a very entertaining podcast that discusses <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/programmes\/p033v7cz\" target=\"_blank\">the science in science fiction, especially movies<\/a>. Is accuracy necessary, or even better? <\/li>\n<li>The <i>New Yorker<\/i> looks more at the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/business\/currency\/daily-fantasys-house-money-draft-kings\" target=\"_blank\">daily fantasy sports &#8220;scandal&#8221;<\/a> that has, in my view, received disproportionate news coverage. The so-called &#8220;insider trading&#8221; is far less of an issue than the firms&#8217; insistence that regular joes are signing up and winning money when the bulk of the winnings go to a small number of sharks instead.<\/li>\n<li><i>MIT Technology Review<\/i> looks at the successes and challenges of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.technologyreview.com\/featuredstory\/542176\/a-shocking-way-to-fix-the-brain\/?utm_medium=email&#038;utm_source=digg\" target=\"_blank\">implanting electrodes in the brain<\/a> to treat neurological and mental illnesses.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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 [&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":[828,190,861,660,524,807],"class_list":["post-4345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-climate-change","tag-links","tag-mental-illness","tag-saturday-five","tag-science-fiction","tag-vaccines","entry"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4345","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=4345"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4345\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4346,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4345\/revisions\/4346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}