{"id":4568,"date":"2015-12-26T08:00:50","date_gmt":"2015-12-26T13:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/?p=4568"},"modified":"2015-12-26T08:39:20","modified_gmt":"2015-12-26T13:39:20","slug":"stick-to-baseball-122615","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2015\/12\/26\/stick-to-baseball-122615\/","title":{"rendered":"Stick to baseball, 12\/26\/15."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I only wrote one new Insider piece this week, on <a href=\"http:\/\/klaw.me\/22o4joZ\" target=\"_blank\">Mike Leake contract with St. Louis<\/a>, although I got a nice response from readers on my 2009 article on <a href=\"http:\/\/klaw.me\/1J1594w\" target=\"_blank\">the shameful, insidious exclusion of Tim Raines from the Hall of Fame<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>And now, the links&#8230;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Lots of vaccine-denier bullshit out there this week, like the mom in Texas who hosted an infection &#8220;party&#8221; for unvaccinated kids and said the illness <a href=\"http:\/\/deadstate.org\/chicken-pox-party-anti-vaccination-mom-illness-is-meant-to-eliminate-the-weak\/\" target=\"_blank\">is &#8220;meant to eliminate the weak.&#8221;<\/a> Aside from how callous this is \u2013 one would presume she thinks her own kids are not among the weak \u2013 meant by <em>whom<\/em>, exactly? Did God send us the measles to wipe out a bunch of toddlers?<\/li>\n<li>Meanwhile, a nurse and other vaccine-deniers in Australia <a href=\"http:\/\/www.heraldsun.com.au\/news\/victoria\/outrage-as-antivaxxers-tear-down-hospital-vaccination-posters\/news-story\/5b5106207f86cb25411b399fbc2d1199\" target=\"_blank\">have been ripping down vaccination posters in hospitals<\/a>. If you catch someone doing this, stop them. Report them to security. Do whatever it takes. Idiocy like this breeds faster when rational people stay silent.<\/li>\n<li>Some vaccine-denier tried to &#8220;argue&#8221; with me by citing the so-called &#8220;fourteen studies&#8221; on vaccine safety, a site and claim that originates with Jenny McCarthy. Well, as you might have guessed, <a href=\"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/insolence\/2009\/04\/20\/generation-rescue-and-fourteen-studies\/\" target=\"_blank\">it&#8217;s science-denying doggerel<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>The <em>Washington Post<\/em> tried to name the country&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/sf\/style\/2015\/12\/21\/the-10-best-food-cities-in-america-ranked\/\" target=\"_blank\">ten best food cities<\/a> by sending its food critic to <s>30<\/s> <s>20<\/s> 13 cities this year. Yeah, I get that travel is expensive, but this would be like me listening to 108 songs and then giving you my top 100 for the year. Also, the list itself has a lot of very dubious opinions in it \u2013 the author goes out of his way to dump on New York City, which has about 8.5 million people in it, and dwarfs almost every other good food town in the country on sheer quantity. I asked the author on Twitter what he had at the amazing Cosme that didn&#8217;t impress him, but he hasn&#8217;t responded. If you don&#8217;t like Cosme&#8217;s food \u2013 the prices are another matter, but that&#8217;s Manhattan for you \u2013 I absolutely question your taste.<\/li>\n<li>Iceland has an awesome Christmas tradition: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/2012\/12\/25\/167537939\/literary-iceland-revels-in-its-annual-christmas-book-flood\" target=\"_blank\">giving and reading books<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>The title of this thinkpiece, &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/the-lighthouse\/we-are-all-martin-shkreli-c77ebad1de2a#.ux9se32ix\" target=\"_blank\">We Are All Martin Shrkeli<\/a>,&#8221; is rather clickbaity, but the message within, about how the modern pharmaceutical industry and its pricing structure deny critical medications to the poor and sick around the world.<\/li>\n<li>The new Netflix series <em>Master of None<\/em>, starring Aziz Ansari and co-created by Ansari and Alan Yang (&#8220;Junior&#8221; of FireJoeMorgan fame, and MouseRat&#8217;s bass player), is phenomenal: funny, sweet, insightful, and different. One episode dealt with racism in Hollywood, and Ansari penned an editorial last month <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2015\/11\/15\/arts\/television\/aziz-ansari-on-acting-race-and-hollywood.html?_r=0\">expounding on the same topic<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li><em>Slate<\/em> has a somewhat scary piece <a href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/articles\/health_and_science\/science\/2015\/12\/anti_evolution_bills_to_teach_creationism_have_evolved.html\" target=\"_blank\">on the evolution of creationism bills in state legislatures<\/a>. If you live in a state where this garbage is legal, get active. Creationism and its Trojan horse of intelligent design are not science, and teaching them in any fashion in a public school violates the Establishment and Free Exercise clauses of the Constitution.<\/li>\n<li>Boy does the <em>Guardian<\/em> ever do a number on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/football\/2015\/dec\/21\/sepp-blatter-fifa-power-politics\" target=\"_blank\">Sepp Blatter and his corrupt fiefdom<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Speaking of corruption, the <em>Las Vegas Review-Journal<\/em> is embroiled in a scandal that combines <a href=\"http:\/\/www.courant.com\/news\/connecticut\/hc-new-britain-herald-aba-huffpost-1224-20151223-story.html\" target=\"_blank\">plagiarism<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/nation\/la-na-adelson-vegas-newspaper-20151223-story.html\" target=\"_blank\">a conflict of interest<\/a>, which has led to more than one situation like this, where <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/notes\/steve-majerus-collins\/why-i-quit-my-job-as-a-reporter-today\/10153327505887883?platform=hootsuite\" target=\"_Blank\">a longtime reporter has quit over these ethical violations<\/a>.\n<li>Another thinkpiece, but a worthwhile one: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.eater.com\/2015\/12\/23\/10657022\/what-the-mast-brothers-scandal-tells-us-about-ourselves\">What the Mast Brothers scandal really means to those of us reveling in it<\/a>. I&#8217;m only in agreement with the author to a point; even if the victims are rich, or stupid, or both, does that make a particular fraud any less of a crime? It may color our opinions of the people who perpetrated it, but the nature of the fraud itself \u2013 in this case, Mast Brothers&#8217; likely lie about how and where they sourced their chocolate \u2013 is unchanged.<\/li>\n<li>The <em>Atlantic<\/em> discusses <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/magazine\/archive\/2016\/01\/the-great-republican-revolt\/419118\/\" target=\"_blank\">the schism within the Republican Party<\/a> in a balanced way, without exulting in the party&#8217;s potential for self-immolation.<\/li>\n<li>The <em>New Yorker<\/em> looks at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/magazine\/2015\/11\/02\/the-rise-and-fall-of-for-profit-schools\" target=\"_blank\">the rise and ongoing fall of for-profit colleges<\/a>, which takes advantage of our already horribly broken student-loan system.<\/li>\n<li>Via a reader, Quartz gives us (and fixes) <a href=\"http:\/\/qz.com\/580859\/the-most-misleading-charts-of-2015-fixed\/?utm_source=atlfb\" target=\"_blank\">the most misleading charts and graphs of 2015<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>My adopted hometown of Wilmington <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2015\/12\/25\/us\/cdc-gun-violence-wilmington.html?_r=0\" target=\"_blank\">called in the CDC to help stem the gun violence epidemic<\/a>. Of course, the CDC&#8217;s ability to help is limited because the NRA has essentially bought budget clauses that prevent the CDC from researching this topic too heavily or promoting anything that might lead to tighter gun control.<\/li>\n<li>Tweet of the week \u2013 enjoy these fake yet highly credible thinkpiece titles:<br \/>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" lang=\"en\">\n<p lang=\"und\" dir=\"ltr\"><a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/y2KpPUncN0\">pic.twitter.com\/y2KpPUncN0<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Kill Tim Faust (@crulge) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/crulge\/status\/678281567504994304\">December 19, 2015<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I only wrote one new Insider piece this week, on Mike Leake contract with St. Louis, although I got a nice response from readers on my 2009 article on the shameful, insidious exclusion of Tim Raines from the Hall of Fame. And now, the links&#8230; Lots of vaccine-denier bullshit out there this week, like 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":[800,190,870,807],"class_list":["post-4568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-evolution","tag-links","tag-stick-to-baseball","tag-vaccines","entry"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4568","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=4568"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4568\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4574,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4568\/revisions\/4574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}