{"id":6744,"date":"2018-07-07T12:34:12","date_gmt":"2018-07-07T16:34:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/?p=6744"},"modified":"2018-07-07T12:34:12","modified_gmt":"2018-07-07T16:34:12","slug":"stick-to-baseball-7-7-18","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2018\/07\/07\/stick-to-baseball-7-7-18\/","title":{"rendered":"Stick to baseball, 7\/7\/18."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I had two new posts for Insiders this week, one on the <a href=\"https:\/\/klaw.me\/2udGllg\" target=\"_blank\">Futures Game rosters, which were announced on Friday<\/a>; and a post of scouting notes <a href=\"https:\/\/klaw.me\/2KyYDIO\" target=\"_blank\">on Orioles, Phillies, Rangers, White Sox, and Royals prospects<\/a> I&#8217;ve seen in the last few weeks. That Futures Game column included Houston&#8217;s Forrest Whitley, but he was removed from his last start with &#8220;left oblique discomfort,&#8221; so I&#8217;m expecting him to be replaced on the roster before game day.<\/p>\n<p>I have two book signings for <em>Smart Baseball<\/em> coming up this month. Next Saturday, July 14th, I&#8217;ll be at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politics-prose.com\/event\/book\/keith-law-smart-baseball-jay-jaffe-cooperstown-casebook\" target=\"_blank\">Politics &#038; Prose in Washington, DC<\/a>, signing books and talking baseball with Jay Jaffe; and I&#8217;ll be at the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.silverunicornbooks.com\/\/?q=h.calevent&#038;eid=3092\" target=\"_blank\">Silver Unicorn Bookstore in Acton, Massachusetts, on July 28th<\/a>, hosted by store owner and former Fangraphs\/Hardball Times writer Paul Swydan.<\/p>\n<p>And now, the links\u2026<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The best thing I read this week was this massive essay from author\/comedian Sara Benincasa called <a href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/s\/story\/reading-joan-didion-in-california-restaurants-5a92abafb80c\" target=\"_blank\">Reading Joan Didion in California Restaurants<\/a>, although it&#8217;s really a meandering set of observations on her life that is by turns funny and poignant. Her line about one of the joys of sharing one&#8217;s art with the world is spot on. I do wonder if her family&#8217;s name was Dahomeycasa before they changed it, though.<\/li>\n<li>From April 2017, the <em>Atlantic<\/em> predicted that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/health\/archive\/2017\/04\/the-next-gluten\/523686\/\" target=\"_blank\">plant proteins called lectins would be the next health boogeyman for idiots<\/a>. I found this because a friend suggested a book that blames lectins, without real evidence, for a panoply of health problems. <\/li>\n<li>Henderson Island, an uninhabited island in the south Pacific with a raised coral atoll and a unique, diverse native ecosystem, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.scientificamerican.com\/article\/uninhabited-island-reveals-scope-of-the-worlds-plastic-problem\/\" target=\"_blank\">is also covered with around 18 metric tons of trash, mostly plastic<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Several locations on the planet <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/news\/capital-weather-gang\/wp\/2018\/07\/03\/hot-planet-all-time-heat-records-have-been-set-all-over-the-world-in-last-week\/?utm_term=.ff18bb9e141f\" target=\"_blank\">set all-time heat records last week<\/a>, more proof that the Chinese will stop at nothing to perpetrate this elaborate &#8216;climate change&#8217; hoax.<\/li>\n<li>Progessives in the U.S. often point to Scandinavian economies as exemplars of their proposed policies, but Denmark is heading in the opposite direction, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2018\/07\/01\/world\/europe\/denmark-immigrant-ghettos.html\" target=\"_blank\">with strict laws aimed at forcing immigrants to assimilate<\/a> into Danish society more quickly, including mandatory instruction for children in &#8220;Danish values.&#8221; The quotes from Danish natives sound an awful lot like those of white American voters who support Trump.<\/li>\n<li>Timothy Geithner served as Treasury Secretary under Obama, where he condemned predatory lenders who charged usurious interest rates on loans to the poor. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/business\/economy\/a-way-of-monetizing-poor-people-how-private-equity-firms-make-money-offering-loans-to-cash-strapped-americans\/2018\/07\/01\/5f7e2670-5dee-11e8-9ee3-49d6d4814c4c_story.html?utm_term=.6e52ca670d98\" target=\"_blank\">Now he runs one<\/a> via the private equity firm of which he&#8217;s President.<\/li>\n<li>Neshaminy High School in Langhorne, PA, a town between Philadelphia and Trenton, has a history of corruption and other controversies under Principal Rob McGee. The latest and most damning instance appeared in the student newspaper, which uncovered evidence <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cjr.org\/q_and_a\/neshaminy-high-playwickian.php\" target=\"_blank\">that the school was deliberately hiding sexual harassment complaints against teachers<\/a> and discouraging victims from reporting. The newspaper&#8217;s outgoing editor in chief also accused the administration of outing LGBTQ students who wrote critical articles in the paper. For all of this, McGee was recently <a href=\"http:\/\/www.buckscountycouriertimes.com\/news\/20180426\/neshaminy-board-approves-major-administrative-hires-promotion\" target=\"_blank\">promoted<\/a> to an executive position that will pay him over $150,000 a year.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/2018\/7\/6\/17536908\/trump-venezuela-invade-military\" target=\"_blank\">Trump considered invading Venezuela<\/a>. This seems like a terrible idea on so many levels, not least of which is that we&#8217;d end up with a lot of dead American soldiers in the process.<\/li>\n<li>Residents of an apartment complex in Riviera Beach, Florida, <a href=\"https:\/\/itsgoingdown.org\/liberatestonybrook-floridas-own-water-crisis\/\" target=\"_blank\">are organizing against their landlords over black mold and sewage leaks in their complex<\/a>. The residents also <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wptv.com\/news\/region-c-palm-beach-county\/riviera-beach\/tenants-fed-up-with-conditions-at-riviera-beach-apartment-complex\" target=\"_blank\">accuse the city of failing to enforce fines for code violations<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Conservative something-or-other Dinesh D&#8217;Souza tried the whole &#8220;Republicans are the party of civil rights!&#8221; argument on Twitter <a href=\"https:\/\/newrepublic.com\/minutes\/149554\/dinesh-dsouza-gets-history-lesson-twitter\" target=\"_blank\">and got absolutely dunked on, repeatedly, by historians &#038; writers<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>In North Carolina, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.splcenter.org\/hatewatch\/2018\/06\/27\/state-house-candidate-north-carolina-claims-god-white-supremacist\" target=\"_blank\">an open white supremacist is running for the state legislature<\/a>, and was running as a Republican until the party belatedly withdrew its support last week. (I don&#8217;t know how his name will appear on the ballot.)<\/li>\n<li>Daniel Radcliffe revealed in an interview recently that he has some very racist friends. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/entry\/to-every-white-ally-who-has-racist-friends_us_57bb1191e4b03d5136896e9f\" target=\"_blank\">So why wouldn&#8217;t he do something about it?<\/a><\/li>\n<li>The <em>Phoenix New Times<\/em> named <a href=\"http:\/\/www.phoenixnewtimes.com\/restaurants\/best-restaurants-phoenix-2018-10555628\" target=\"_blank\">its seven best new restaurants so far for 2018<\/a>, of which I can vouch for three: Roland&#8217;s Market (a collaboration between Chris Bianco and the couple behind Tacos Chiwas), Starlite BBQ, and Taco Chelo. I&#8217;ll try to hit Osteria before an AFL game in Mesa this fall too.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I had two new posts for Insiders this week, one on the Futures Game rosters, which were announced on Friday; and a post of scouting notes on Orioles, Phillies, Rangers, White Sox, and Royals prospects I&#8217;ve seen in the last few weeks. That Futures Game column included Houston&#8217;s Forrest Whitley, but he was removed from [&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":[566,828,190,961,235,1023,870],"class_list":["post-6744","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-arizona","tag-climate-change","tag-links","tag-longreads","tag-phoenix","tag-pollution","tag-stick-to-baseball","entry"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6744","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=6744"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6744\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6745,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6744\/revisions\/6745"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}