Weekend Links 1-24-20

A plethora of links for your weekend reading:

Meet the stewards of the James Bond film franchise: Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson. With Daniel Craig due to retire from the role following No Time To Die this spring, the producers will be looking for a new actor to take on the role. My suggestion would be to hire Anthony Horowitz to adapt his own Bond novel for the next film. It's an origin story of sorts and would work well as a screenplay especially since they will have to cast a new Bond anyway. Related: Daniel Craig pokes a little fun at his cinematic alter ego:


DeWolf Hopper made a name for himself on the vaudeville stage with his dramatic recitations of Ernest Thayer's poem Casey At The Bat. But it turns out that Hopper was quite the baseball fan.

Sometimes a seemingly small decision can pay big dividends: how a single mail order ad transformed a family owned business into a billion dollar enterprise.

Strange but true: Sesame Street was once banned in Mississippi.

A fascinating deep dive into the world of ghostwriting. It's a problem for readers when they don't know if the person whose name is on the cover is actually the one who wrote the book. It's a bigger problem than you might imagine.

Last year for the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11, the NASA History office tweeted out the mission in real time. This year for the 40th anniversary of Apollo 13 they are going to have the mission audio available in real time on their website.

Trivia buffs rejoice! Some fans have created the Jeopardy! question database featuring almost every answer (and question) contained in the last 36 seasons of the show.

Dr. Howard Conyers is on a mission to preserve the tradition of the whole hog barbecue. He also happens to be a rocket scientist.

Before there was Photoshop, the Soviets had mastered the method for removing people from photographs.

At one ski resort in Sweden after a day on the slopes you can ski right into McDonalds for a quick bite.

Weekend Links 1-17-2020

While you are waiting for me to get my act together and write some original stuff here are a few items of interest I ran across this week:

I am a traditionalist when it comes to the designated hitter rule in baseball. I am strongly opposed to it. If I were commissioner I would abolish it in an instant. However, I understand with the entrenchment of the DH in the American League it's only a matter of time before the National League adopts it. This proposal from Jayson Stark (subscription required) might be the best proposal yet:

Did you know the designated-hitter rule has been around in the American League for nearly 50 seasons now? So apparently, this isn’t going to be a short-term fad. In fact, it’s hard to find anyone in the game who doesn’t believe that one of these years — possibly as soon as 2022, once the new labor deal is done — every team will be writing a DH into its lineup. 

But wait! Here’s one possible wrinkle that has been kicked around in behind-the-scene brainstorming sessions: How about a rule that would allow teams to use their DH only as long as their starting pitcher remained in the game? Then, once the starting pitcher exited, that game would revert to old-school rules. The more we think about this idea, the more we like it. Starting pitchers would no longer hit, which would eliminate some teams’ injury paranoia. It would create incentives to keep starters in the game longer, which could lead to more offense. And it would preserve some elements of late-inning managerial strategy that fans of “NL rules” still love. 

 OK, so this part of the plan might never happen. But it’s at least worth having a long conversation about – even if it’s just a segment on “MLB Now.” 

There's lots more bold predictions about how baseball will change in next decade that are worth reading. Incidentally, I find The Athletic to be an outstanding source of sportswriting. It's well worth the cost of the subscription. 

Also at The Athletic, Molly Knight follows up on the sign stealing story from last weekend's post. Her solution is to abolish instant replay. (language warning) Emma Baccellieri adds her own thoughts. While I believe it's important to get calls right the whole system has done more harm than good.

I had no idea that Charles Schulz once worked as an art instructor. This is fun:

An instructor for the mail-away Art Instruction Schools in the late 1940s, Charles Schulz reminisced, “Those were days filled with hilarity...[We'd] receive drawings of thumbs, and...realized...a student had misunderstood the expression ‘making a thumbnail sketch.’" [📸 c.1949]. pic.twitter.com/u6eo3rZPPd

— Charles M. Schulz Museum (@SchulzMuseum) January 14, 2020

When No Time To Die premieres in April, it will mark Daniel Craig's last appearance as James Bond. Here are 10 things that his Bond did differently that the franchise should keep. Related: the recipe for James Bond's Vesper martini.

Solving life's important mysteries: why button down shirts have loops on the back.

An interesting observation:

Observation:

We tend to be political REALISTS with our FAVORED party or candidate (overlooking flaws, acknowledging the inevitably of compromise etc) and political IDEALISTS with our DISFAVORED party or candidate (condemning them on principle; noting inconsistencies etc).

— Jonathan Leeman (@JonathanLeeman) January 10, 2020