{"id":5907,"date":"2017-08-26T08:00:06","date_gmt":"2017-08-26T12:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/?p=5907"},"modified":"2017-08-26T10:31:02","modified_gmt":"2017-08-26T14:31:02","slug":"stick-to-baseball-82517","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2017\/08\/26\/stick-to-baseball-82517\/","title":{"rendered":"Stick to baseball, 8\/26\/17."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The big piece from me this week was about GenCon, the massive annual boardgaming convention held in Indianapolis; I went from Thursday to Sunday and my wrapup post <a href=\"http:\/\/klaw.me\/2vszuCY\" target=\"_blank\">covers every game I saw or tried, with a ranking of my top 20<\/a>. I even slipped in a mention of some upcoming boardgame apps of note.<\/p>\n<p>My latest piece for Insiders was a <a href=\"http:\/\/klaw.me\/2g9NTCh\" target=\"_blank\">minor league scouting notebook<\/a> covering prospects from Pittsburgh (Mitch Keller), Baltimore (Austin Hays), Philadelphia, and Colorado&#8217;s systems. I also did my annual rankings of the top tools in the majors: <a href=\"http:\/\/klaw.me\/2vXvD2S\" target=\"_blank\">the top hit, run, and power tools<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/klaw.me\/2x8PWdG\" target=\"_blank\">the best pitches of each type<\/a>, and the<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/klaw.me\/2veUVbw\" target=\"_blank\">top gloves and arms<\/a> for catchers, infielders, and outfielders. I don&#8217;t particularly love writing these pieces, but readers seem to enjoy them. And I held a <a href=\"http:\/\/klaw.me\/2vaukjP\" target=\"_blank\">Klawchat<\/a> on Thursday.<\/p>\n<p>I gave a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=NegZG8ICkmk\" target=\"_blank\">Talk at Google<\/a> last month, discussing my book <em>Smart Baseball<\/em>, which you should <a href=\"http:\/\/klaw.me\/2foenM8\" target=\"_blank\">definitely buy<\/a> if you haven&#8217;t already.<\/p>\n<p>And now, the links&#8230;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>My friend Will Leitch speaks sense when he says <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sportsonearth.com\/article\/250125546\/espn-robert-lee-virginia-football-broadcaster\" target=\"_blank\">the ESPN\/Robert Lee flap was &#8220;much ado about nothing.&#8221;<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Sam Miller described a trick play in a Rhode Island high school baseball game called <a href=\"http:\/\/www.espn.com\/mlb\/story\/_\/id\/20294816\/skunk-outfield-how-most-epic-trick-play-history-broke-baseball\" target=\"_blank\">skunk in the outfield<\/a>. The play took 2:32 to complete and includes former Red Sox prospect Ryan Westmoreland.<\/li>\n<li>Texas&#8217; Republican Party believes so much in suppressing the vote that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.esquire.com\/news-politics\/politics\/news\/a57199\/texas-redistricting-taxpayer-money\/\" target=\"_blank\">they&#8217;ve been wasting taxpayer money for six years fighting the courts<\/a> and repeatedly losing. If the current Administration gets to pick some more federal judges, however, such efforts may end up succeeding.<\/li>\n<li>The Interior Department <a href=\"https:\/\/mobile.nytimes.com\/2017\/08\/21\/climate\/coal-mining-health-study-is-halted-by-interior-department.html?referer=https:\/\/t.co\/jUjTvb3JhP?amp=1\" target=\"_blank\">has killed a study into the effects of coal mining on the miners<\/a>. Trump&#8217;s Administration is obsessed with coal, which is dirty, exhaustible, and not a part of our energy future.<\/li>\n<li>Gwyneth Paltrow&#8217;s pseudoscience site GOOP has <a href=\"https:\/\/www.buzzfeed.com\/amphtml\/stephaniemlee\/gwyneth-paltrows-goop-just-got-slammed-for-deceptive\" target=\"_blank\">been hit with formal complaints of deceptive advertising<\/a>, mostly because they claim their bullshit actually works.<\/li>\n<li>Stephan Neidenbach, a middle school teacher in Maryland and operator of the @welovegv (GMOs and Vaccines) twitter account, has used FOIA requests <a href=\"https:\/\/geneticliteracyproject.org\/2017\/08\/22\/using-freedom-information-act-target-biotech-scientists-boomerangs-anti-gmo-activists\/#.WZwvAbrgbaI.twitter\" target=\"_blank\">to find conflicts of interest and malfeasance from anti-GMO academics<\/a>. Genetically modified organisms are safe, and academics who attack them do so in contravention of the evidence on the topic to date.<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Poland Spring \u2026 coming to you <a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/business\/la-fi-poland-spring-20170822-story,amp.html\" target=\"_blank\">straight from the water main<\/a>.&#8221; A lawsuit says it&#8217;s just tap water, not spring water as the company claims.<\/li>\n<li>Former Google engineer James Damore claims he was &#8220;fired for telling the truth,&#8221; but the truth is that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wired.com\/story\/the-pernicious-science-of-james-damores-google-memo\/\" target=\"_blank\">his now infamous memo was based on some seriously flawed beliefs about science<\/a>. <\/li>\n<li>Jess Luther exposes <a href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/@scATX\/maybe-we-should-stop-assuming-or-anticipating-that-football-coaches-know-anything-about-sexual-bfd66e1501e6\" target=\"_blank\">the deep ignorance of deposed University of Minnesota football coach Tracy Claeys<\/a>, who still doesn&#8217;t think he or his players did anything wrong.<\/li>\n<li>The <em>Washington Post<\/em> looks at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/news\/made-by-history\/wp\/2017\/08\/16\/who-are-the-antifa\/?utm_term=.7a6ce29266e1\" target=\"_blank\">what actual anti-fascist protestors, dubbed &#8220;antifa,&#8221; do and believe<\/a>. You&#8217;ll hear the alt-right\/neo-Nazi camp use &#8220;antifa&#8221; to try to draw some false equivalence between racist shitheads and those who oppose them. Don&#8217;t fall for it.<\/li>\n<li>A British prisoner is now in year 11 of what was supposed to be a 10-month jail term <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/av\/uk-40900691\/prisoner-suicidal-11-years-into-10-month-jail-term\" target=\"_blank\">under the bogus claim that it&#8217;s for his own protection<\/a>, as he has a history of self-harm. Family members are trying to get him released before he kills himself in custody.<\/li>\n<li>VICE&#8217;s Tonic has a first-person account from <a href=\"https:\/\/tonic.vice.com\/en_us\/article\/jm54q7\/i-picked-up-a-staph-infection-from-the-hospital\" target=\"_blank\">someone who got a staph infection from a hospital visit<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>The civil war in Yemen has been going on for 29 months, but is rarely in our news because there&#8217;s little oil there. A Saudi-led airstrike in the capital of Sana&#8217;a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/news\/2017\/08\/children-dead-fresh-air-strikes-hit-yemen-170825081935581.html\" target=\"_blank\">killed at least 14 civilians, including children<\/a>, but nobody seems to care.<\/li>\n<li>Angola, another country you never think about \u2013 John Oliver would do a map joke here \u2013 just <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/world-africa-41022404\" target=\"_blank\">elected its first new leader in 38 yeras<\/a>. It&#8217;s expected to be someone from the outgoing dictator&#8217;s party, and the elections have been anything but free. Still, it&#8217;s their first change in leadership since 1979, and given their atrocious economy and widespread poverty, any change has to seem like a chance for optimism.<\/li>\n<li><em>TIME<\/em> looks at <a href=\"http:\/\/time.com\/4913687\/how-kids-sports-became-15-billion-industry\/\" target=\"_blank\">how youth sports became a $15 billion industry<\/a>. If your kid has talent, s\/he doesn&#8217;t need to go pay to play at events for scouts or coaches. Save the cash and put it in a tax-deferred account for his\/her tuition instead.<\/li>\n<li>I&#8217;ll end with one feel-good story: The cloakroom girl at a British opera house had to step in when the soprano fell ill \u2013 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/news\/2017\/08\/15\/cloakroom-girl-wows-opera-critics-standing-soprano-last-minute\/\" target=\"_blank\">and wowed the audience<\/a>. <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The big piece from me this week was about GenCon, the massive annual boardgaming convention held in Indianapolis; I went from Thursday to Sunday and my wrapup post covers every game I saw or tried, with a ranking of my top 20. I even slipped in a mention of some upcoming boardgame apps of note. [&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":[899,921,859,190,952,824,855,870,937],"class_list":["post-5907","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-africa","tag-gender-issues","tag-gmo","tag-links","tag-middle-east","tag-pseudoscience","tag-sports","tag-stick-to-baseball","tag-voter-suppression","entry"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5907","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=5907"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5907\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5910,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5907\/revisions\/5910"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}