Chaff & Grain Together

If You Fix This, You Fix a Big Piece of the Climate Puzzle 

A Theory Strikes Out: Weighted Bats Don’t Quicken the Swing

Warming up with the 24-ounce weight is supposed to increase bat speed in a sport where a split second can mean the difference between a hit and a whiff. 

But swinging a loaded bat like Mike Trout or a bunch of bats at once like Babe Ruth or a sledgehammer like Willie Stargell or a steel rod like Frank Thomas, or really, anything other than a normal game bat, probably isn’t helping a batter’s swing, and may be hurting it. 

Studies conducted over several decades have concluded that the ritual popular among professionals and emulated by amateurs doesn’t increase bat speed. It may actually slow it down. 

“I’m meeting my boss later,” my patient said. “I’m worried she’s going to tell me I’m not pulling my weight, and that I should volunteer to work more hours to show my commitment.”

This tension had been building at her job for months, and she feared that there would be a tacit threat in this meeting: work longer hours, uncompensated, or we will push you out. She was already finding it hard to spend so much time away from home. But she couldn’t afford to risk unemployment.

“What am I supposed to tell my children?” she asked, breaking down.

A Giant Picture of Snow Cover across the United States in February 2015. 

The American political debate has transformed radically over the last month.

The recovery is not complete — wages remain stubbornly suppressed — but this fact itself suggests an upside: The absence of higher pay is also the absence of any kind of inflationary pressure that might cause the Federal Reserve to apply the brakes to the recovery. This in turn suggests job growth is not finished. The 2016 elections could well take place against a backdrop of full employment. The entire predicate of the Republican argument since 2009 — that Obama’s massive expansion of spending, taxes, and regulation has snuffed out job creators’ incentive or ability to work their capitalistic magic — will be moot.

In 1996, the recovery was still embryonic enough that Bob Dole could lamely assert that Americans were suffering from “the Clinton crunch.” Four years later, George W. Bush had to acknowledge widespread prosperity, while casting himself as the ideological heir to Clinton’s moderate policies and running on “honor and dignity.” That is the sort of reversal currently under way.