{"id":4613,"date":"2016-01-16T09:26:20","date_gmt":"2016-01-16T14:26:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/?p=4613"},"modified":"2016-01-16T09:26:20","modified_gmt":"2016-01-16T14:26:20","slug":"stick-to-baseball-11616","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2016\/01\/16\/stick-to-baseball-11616\/","title":{"rendered":"Stick to baseball, 1\/16\/16."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I traveled to Puerto Rico this week to see the MLB draft showcase in Cayey, featuring likely top-5 pick Delvin Perez, so I haven&#8217;t written much anywhere, with just one Insider post, on <a href=\"http:\/\/klaw.me\/1PV6JVh\" target=\"_blank\">the Wei-Yin Chen and Gerardo Parra signings<\/a>. Klawchats will resume this upcoming week, and no, I haven&#8217;t seen this week&#8217;s episode of Top Chef yet. I did finish <em>The Executioner&#8217;s Song<\/em> on the flight home, and that has to be one of the most addictive books I&#8217;ve ever read.<\/p>\n<p>And now, the links&#8230;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I tweeted this earlier in the week but it&#8217;s worth a repost: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2016\/01\/10\/magazine\/the-lawyer-who-became-duponts-worst-nightmare.html?_r=1\" target=\"_blank\">How one lawyer uncovered a massive Dupont chemical-dumping scheme<\/a>, one that has poisoned waterways all around the Ohio River basin and more. That chemical, PFOA, is in your bloodstream right now, even if you&#8217;re reading this from the South Georgia Islands.<\/li>\n<li>Lots of good pieces this week on the awfulness of state lotteries, although I thought ThinkProgress at least <a href=\"http:\/\/thinkprogress.org\/economy\/2016\/01\/11\/3737974\/powerball-lotteries\/\" target=\"_blank\">got right to the meat of it<\/a> by pointing out, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=9PK-netuhHA\" target=\"_blank\">as John Oliver did in 2014<\/a>, that the money lotteries raise doesn&#8217;t even necessarily go where they claim it does.<\/li>\n<li>FiveThirtyEight chimes up <a href=\"http:\/\/fivethirtyeight.com\/features\/how-msg-got-a-bad-rap-flawed-science-and-xenophobia\/?ex_cid=538twitter\" target=\"_blank\">in defense of MSG<\/a>. You may know it better as one of the quickest ways to add umami, the &#8220;fifth taste,&#8221; to a dish.<\/li>\n<li>It hasn&#8217;t been the best week for Ted Cruz \u2013 or maybe it has, if you feel like any publicity is indeed good publicity \u2013 starting with this striking editorial from the <em>New York Times<\/em> on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2016\/01\/12\/opinion\/the-brutalism-of-ted-cruz.html?action=click&#038;pgtype=Homepage&#038;clickSource=story-heading&#038;module=opinion-c-col-right-region&#038;region=opinion-c-col-right-region&#038;WT.nav=opinion-c-col-right-region&#038;_r=1\" target=\"_blank\">his &#8220;brutal&#8221; policies that seem at odds with the principles of his evangelical base<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>I would love to hear from the lawyers in the crowd about this piece from CNN that argues <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2016\/01\/13\/opinions\/amar-cruz-trump-natural-born-citizen\/\" target=\"_blank\">that Ted Cruz is indeed a &#8220;natural-born&#8221; citizen<\/a> and thus eligible to be President, because he was a citizen at birth under the law of the U.S. on the day when he was born.<\/li>\n<li>Dave Zirin weighs in on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thenation.com\/article\/who-killed-lawrence-phillips\/\" target=\"_blank\">the violent life and death of Lawrence Phillips<\/a>, with special ire for all of the enablers who sought only to profit from his football abilities.<\/li>\n<li>A &#8220;regulatory logjam&#8221; at the FDA is the likely cause of <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.sciencemag.org\/pipeline\/archives\/2016\/01\/13\/11025\" target=\"_blank\">generic drug shortages and price-gouging<\/a>. <\/li>\n<li>A congresswoman has made public <a href=\"http:\/\/mashable.com\/2016\/01\/12\/astronomy-professor-sexual-harassment-university-of-arizona\/#oabuAlIXxiqu\" target=\"_blank\">the cover-up of an astronomy professor&#8217;s history of sexual harassment<\/a>, asking why his previous employer did not disclose this to his current one.<\/li>\n<li>Top Chef winner Kevin Sbraga is holding a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.courierpostonline.com\/story\/entertainment\/dining\/eat-my-words\/2016\/01\/12\/top-chef-help-medford-family\/78679858\/\" target=\"_blank\">fundraising dinner on January 19th<\/a> for a Southampton, New Jersey, family whose children were struck by a motorist, killing two of them.<\/li>\n<li>Rapper and actor Mos Def appears to have lost his marbles, trying to leave South Africa, where he was staying on an expired visa, with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/world-africa-35330365\" target=\"_blank\">something he called a &#8220;world passport.&#8221;<\/a> I bet you can buy those from the same people who sell you the naming rights to stars.<\/li>\n<li>The University of Maryland absolutely shat all over its credibility with this corporate-sponsored &#8220;study&#8221; that claimed that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.vox.com\/2016\/1\/16\/10777050\/university-of-maryland-chocolate-milk\" target=\"_blank\">a particular brand of chocolate milk could help heal concussions<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Ridiculous story of the week: A Rhode Island official has resigned after <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bostonglobe.com\/metro\/2016\/01\/15\/official-resigns-after-using-man-dressed-woman-news-conference\/5aIVe3TIqpdmaLPHaQboNN\/story.html?event=event25\" target=\"_blank\">having a man dress up as a senior woman at a press conference<\/a>. <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I traveled to Puerto Rico this week to see the MLB draft showcase in Cayey, featuring likely top-5 pick Delvin Perez, so I haven&#8217;t written much anywhere, with just one Insider post, on the Wei-Yin Chen and Gerardo Parra signings. Klawchats will resume this upcoming week, and no, I haven&#8217;t seen this week&#8217;s episode of [&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":[113,874,190,870,875],"class_list":["post-4613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-environment","tag-junk-science","tag-links","tag-stick-to-baseball","tag-umami","entry"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4613","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=4613"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4613\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4614,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4613\/revisions\/4614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}