{"id":4591,"date":"2016-01-02T08:00:58","date_gmt":"2016-01-02T13:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/?p=4591"},"modified":"2016-01-02T09:58:07","modified_gmt":"2016-01-02T14:58:07","slug":"stick-to-baseball-1216","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2016\/01\/02\/stick-to-baseball-1216\/","title":{"rendered":"Stick to baseball, 1\/2\/16."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Happy New Year! I&#8217;d say it&#8217;ll be a great one, but there&#8217;s an election coming up so damn it all to hell.<\/p>\n<p>I wrote two Insider pieces this week, one on <a href=\"http:\/\/klaw.me\/1Zy6nsb\" target=\"_blank\">the ethically-challenged Yankees trading for Aroldis Chapman<\/a> and one on <a href=\"http:\/\/klaw.me\/1NSNWqK\" target=\"_blank\">how obvious it should be that Trevor Hoffman is not a Hall of Famer<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>My latest boardgame review for <em>Paste<\/em> covers the <a href=\"http:\/\/klaw.me\/1Ueb86z\" target=\"_blank\">complex strategy game Orleans<\/a>, which was one of two runners-up for the 2015 Kennerspiel des Jahres award.<\/p>\n<p>And now, the links&#8230;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Used bookstores <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/local\/in-the-age-of-amazon-used-bookstores-are-making-an-unlikely-comeback\/2015\/12\/26\/06b20e48-abea-11e5-bff5-905b92f5f94b_story.html\" target=\"_blank\">are making an &#8220;unlikely&#8221; comeback<\/a>. Were they ever really gone? I think the age of the independent new-book bookseller is over, but the used bookstore and the hybrid new-used model (like the wonderful Changing Hands in Tempe) are here to stay.<\/li>\n<li>Eater had <a href=\"http:\/\/www.eater.com\/2015\/12\/21\/10633436\/alton-brown-interview\" target=\"_blank\">Alton Brown on its podcast<\/a>, with a transcript included in that link as well. I particularly enjoyed his comments on the way Starbucks changed the food game, and on how just loving food isn&#8217;t really enough to make it a career (as you could say the same about loving baseball).<\/li>\n<li>The moral of this story of a rather severe cooking injury is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theawl.com\/2015\/12\/lost-soles\" target=\"_blank\">don&#8217;t grill in bare feet<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Notes from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sacbee.com\/opinion\/california-forum\/article51933075.html\" target=\"_blank\">reporting on the vaccine wars<\/a>. I like the fundamental message: Good information can win out, even in the face of obstinate ignorance.<\/li>\n<li>A very powerful <em>New Yorker<\/em> profile of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/magazine\/2016\/01\/04\/war-of-words-annals-of-activism-laura-secor?mbid=social_twitter\" target=\"_blank\">a female Iranian journalist and activist<\/a> who has dared fight pockets of Sharia law in the Islamic theocracy, including sentences of stoning.<\/li>\n<li>This is wild but worth reading: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/science-environment-34987467?utm_medium=email&#038;utm_source=digg\" target=\"_blank\">should we cover the Sahara desert in solar panels<\/a>?<\/li>\n<li>I always read everything I post here before I include a link, but I will admit that I couldn&#8217;t finish the highly-recommended ProPublica piece <a href=\"https:\/\/www.propublica.org\/article\/false-rape-accusations-an-unbelievable-story\" target=\"_blank\">An Unbelievable Story of Rape<\/a>, because it was so difficult and in parts so infuriating.<\/li>\n<li>Speaking of infuriating, hoops writer Chris Haynes writes about getting <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cleveland.com\/cavs\/index.ssf\/2016\/01\/to_ask_lebron_james_to_sacrifi.html\" target=\"_blank\">racially profiled by cops while standing across the street from his house<\/a>. This bias is systemic \u2013 I don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s personal, where police departments are just hiring racists \u2013 and getting rid of it requires systemic solutions, like nation-wide training.<\/li>\n<li>A strong but too-short piece from Dave Zirin on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thenation.com\/article\/women-roar-the-story-of-the-year-at-the-intersection-of-sports-and-politics\/\" target=\"_blank\">the year of the woman in sports<\/a>. <\/li>\n<li>Did you know there&#8217;s been <a href=\"http:\/\/www.techinsider.io\/methane-gas-leak-los-angeles-2015-12\" target=\"_blank\">a massive natural gas (which is mostly methane) leak<\/a> going on outside Los Angeles for ten weeks now? Since methane is a potent contributor to climate change \u2013 the Environmental Defense Fund claims it&#8217;s 84 times as powerful as carbon dioxide \u2013 you&#8217;d think this would be 1) bigger news and 2) a national disaster.<\/li>\n<li>Boardgames in the classroom? It&#8217;s happening in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/pulse\/game-theory-how-play-fosters-real-learning-eva-moskowitz?trk=hb_ntf_MEGAPHONE_ARTICLE_POST\" target=\"_blank\">some charter schools in New York<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Goofy fun for geography nuts like me: mental_floss lists <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mentalfloss.com\/article\/72546\/9-most-isolated-towns-earth\" target=\"_blank\">nine of the most isolated towns on the planet<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Happy New Year! I&#8217;d say it&#8217;ll be a great one, but there&#8217;s an election coming up so damn it all to hell. I wrote two Insider pieces this week, one on the ethically-challenged Yankees trading for Aroldis Chapman and one on how obvious it should be that Trevor Hoffman is not a Hall of Famer. [&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":[190,870],"class_list":["post-4591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-links","tag-stick-to-baseball","entry"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4591","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=4591"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4591\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4593,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4591\/revisions\/4593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}