A couple of interesting links I’ve read the last two days.
Bad Natitude? Some Montreal fans wish D.C. would leave their Expos alone – Tim Raines, the Montreal Expos Hall of Famer, was added to the Washington Nationals’ Ring of Honor Monday evening. Acknowledging the Nationals’ past as the Montreal Expos is controversial in the District. It turns out it’s also controversial in Montreal. For what it’s worth, I have no issue with the Nationals acknowledging their Expos past. The Washington Post
The Case for Eliminating the DH – It’s no secret that I prefer National League baseball to American League baseball. The reason is simple: pitchers should hit, the way the Baseball Gods intended. Now that there’s daily interleague play, there’s talk about doing something about the Designated Hitter because pitchers, as a class, are poor hitters and aren’t developed to be hitters. The Hardball Times argues for eliminating the Designated Hitter. I have a better idea. If the problem is developmental, then Minor League Baseball should apply the Majors’ rule on the use of the DH to the minors. Currently, pitchers only hit if both minor league teams are National League farm teams. Adopt a rule that if the parent club of the home team is a National League team then the visiting team’s pitchers will bat, regardless of the league affiliation of the visiting team’s parent club, and then there would be more emphasis on developing pitchers as hitters in the minors. The Hardball Times
Thousands of Rohingya people flee fighting in Myanmar for neighboring Bangladesh – Myanmar is a country with problems. Besides the military junta that has ruled the country for most of the last fifty years, a junta that has only partly relinquished power to Aung San Suu Kyi, there’s the human rights abuses of the Rohingya, a stateless Muslim population in the northern part of the country. The reason the Rohingya are stateless is that the Myanmar government says they can’t possibly be Burmese, even though they’ve lived there for hundreds of years, and so they’re denied civil rights and citizenship, and that statelessness has led to a brutal suppression that has involved beatings, burnt villages, even rape gangs. Some Rohingya have tried to flee to neighboring Bangladesh, where they’ve been unwelcome. Now, some Rohingya have taken up arms against the Myanmar government forces, and an already bad situation has turned far worse. PRI
I’m So Glad Jared And Ivanka Are Miserable In Washington D.C. – Good to know. This pleases me. 🙂 The Concourse
Young Yemeni Girl Is Sole Survivor After Airstrike Topples Her Home – A four-year-old girl, Buthaina Mansour, lost her entire family — parents, brothers, an uncle — when her apartment building suffered damage during a Saudi airstrike on Sa’naa. The war in Yemen continues. The New York Times
R+L=J: a comprehensive oral history of Game of Thrones’ ultimate fan theory – Vox tells you more than you probably ever wanted to know about how A Song of Ice and Fire fans saw Jon Snow’s parentage, from Rodrick Su’s original suggestion of R+L=J on rec.arts.sf.written in 1997 down to today. Vox
Header image “The National Mall” by Shella Thomson, licensed Creative Commons CC BY 2.0.