Gucci Little Piggy

A pretty tepid defense by Dan Kois over at Slate for including Tamerlan Tsarnaev in their list of people killed by guns which was used at an event held by Mayors Against Illegal Guns.  “Of course” was their answer to the question of whether or not Tsarnaev should have been included on the list.  Here’s why:

The interactive includes a link to a news story about every death, so that anyone reading it can check the sourcing and see how the death happened. Tsarnaev makes the list because he was killed by gunfire—the linked story clearly explains that he was a bombing suspect killed by cops in a gunfight. The list also includes other wrongdoers killed by law enforcement, people who committed suicide, people who died in accidents, and people killed by criminals. And it includes Sean Collier, the MIT cop allegedly murdered by the Tsarnaevs.

Except we know the purpose of the list.  It is to make the number of scary gun deaths seem as high as possible in order to get the public to realize that we have a gun death problem.  The higher that reported number, Slate et al believe, the more the public will push back against gun ownership rights.  A better tally would just list the number of non-criminals and non-terrorists who were killed by gun.

And besides all of that, the group was seemingly a bunch of mayors against *illegal* guns which does not describe the guns used to fill Terrorist Tamerlan with bullet holes.

E.J. Graff thinks that pregnancy should be viewed as a disability.  This same person has also never worked a blue-collar job and had to pick up the slack for a pregnant woman who can’t do her fair share:

I know what you’re thinking: A bill expanding women’s rights on the job getting passed out of this Congress? Yeah, right. But the advocates have to start somewhere. As I’m sure Prospect readers will be shocked to realize, there are two tiers of workers in this country: The ones who have some power over their daily routine—the office workers, lawyers, engineers, professors, and others who can, for instance, go to the bathroom whenever we please—and the ones who do not, and who really can’t afford to take time off the job. The low-wage, low-power, low-control group doesn’t exactly have time or power to try to change the law. And so advocates’ work involves letting the rest of us know that women are losing their jobs for having to pee while pregnant.

I spoke with Amy Crosby, who worked at Tallahassee Memorial Hospital and told me that on a normal working day, she cleaned between 20 and 30 rooms. While she was pregnant, she started getting terrible shooting pains in her arm if she lifted things; at night the pain could wake her up, or keep her awake with her arm uncomfortably numb and tingling. Crosby’s doctor diagnosed her with a pregnancy-related carpal tunnel condition, and wrote her a note assigning her to light duty, lifting no more than 20 pounds. That meant, she said, she couldn’t lift the trash or linens—which could easily weigh between 30 and 50 pounds—but she could still sanitize the rooms and put fresh linens on beds, the bulk of her job. Or she could have temporarily been reassigned to fold laundry or do clerical work until she went out on maternity leave.

…

How many employees are we talking about who need, at any given time, to go to the bathroom more often than scheduled, or ask their coworkers to pick up the heavier trash, just for a few months? Very few. None of which makes it less outrageous that any pregnant woman has to choose between peeing when she needs to or keeping her job. But it does make accommodating those few a low-cost, low-impact proposition. So why not get it done?

I get pretty fired up on this topic given my occupation.  I’ve worked with dozens of pregnant women at the restaurant.  Some of those who are servers before becoming pregnant will give up at about 6 months and move to a lighter-duty role like hosting.  But some try to stick it out, and they’re a slight burden on everyone around them.  They can’t lift more than 25 pounds so the other servers have to carry their trays for them.  They walk slower so other people run their food for them or pick up the slack for the food that they are supposed to run for everyone else.  Their stomachs get in the way.

Graff continues:

A stool, a water bottle, a bathroom break, a little help lifting now and then. What’s so hard about that? It’s stunning that we need a law to enforce what is simply considerate: letting people take care of themselves when they don’t feel well.

The author waters down what she’s shaming us to accept.  She is correct that it isn’t “so hard” for employers and co-workers to accommodate pregnant women in the blue-collar jobs.  But what is so hard to accept is that there seems to be no acknowledgement of the imposition.  It’s like being cut off in traffic.  It really isn’t a big deal in the grand scheme of things.  But if you came along and told me that I should let you cut me off in traffic and not even get the least bit miffed by it, then you’ve baited me and then switched it up.  Now you’re telling me, at the restaurant, not that it’s really no skin off my back to do this extra work but that I should also not acknowledge this slight needling feeling of discontent that’s risen up inside of me.  This might be all good if some of the tips the pregnant server received were reallocated to the support staff she used to earn those tips (which are very often larger “sympathy tips”).  Now, if someone wants to come along and make that argument that, in principle, employers should allow pregnant women to keep their jobs while reallocating wages, I’d be cool with that.  But to come in all whiny-like and complain that pregnant women aren’t getting a fair shake because they can’t get special accommodations while still keeping their same pay and bennies – that’s the definition of free-riding.

And then one problem with Graff’s essay comparing pregnancy to a disability is that a pregnancy is not an end state.  It is a process from which the mother can and usually will benefit.  This isn’t at all true for the disabled or ill so Graff’s analogy is misguided and just flat out dumb.

1.  James Taranto is getting hounded for this article in which he argues that the military runs the risk of criminalizing male sexuality in its politicized drive to rid the military – a fallible institution like any other – of sexual assault.  Here’s a McClatchy article from 2011 discussing the pressure within the military to prosecute sexual assault cases that don’t  have much merit and that wouldn’t be prosecuted in the civilian world.  There’s a tipping point here, and being a huge institution with a huge target on its back for a myriad of reasons, the slope is extremely steep here.  It’s possible that we’ll go from, generally, turning a blind eye on military sexual assault to never blinking.

2.  Chris Hayes trolled fathers for Fathers’ Day by offering an ode to feminism.  Because of feminism, he argues, he gets to spend more time with his kids.

3.  Feminist hero Serena Williams says something about the Steubenville rape case that feminists don’t like.

4.  Via nydwracu, someone calls for the de-stigmatization of STDs.  Stigmatization of STDs is the biggest reason that (most) people try really hard to avoid getting STDs.

Sailer focuses on an article from the New York Times which discusses various strategies being entertaining by NCAA women’s basketball in order to boost its appeal to fans.  One of the guys leading the push has suggested:

As a further way to enhance competitive balance, Ackerman said that some of the coaches, athletic directors and conference commissioners she interviewed had advised reducing scholarships to 13 per team from 15. (The other two scholarships could be used to finance other women’s teams.)

Yes, a higher number of scholarships relative to men’s basketball mixed with a shallower pool of talent will tend to decrease the level of competition in the league.  That’s math, and it’s one limitation, among many, of Title IX.  It’s so much easier to build a dynasty or to remain at the top of the heap for longer periods of time when you have more scholarships with which to monopolize the talent.  The women’s game is more cartelized than the men’s game, and the entrenched power is difficult to overcome.  The lowest seed to ever make it to the Final Four in the women’s game is Arkansas, a #9 seed, in 1998.  There have been three #11 seeds make it to the Final Four in the men’s game and an 8 seed (Villanova, 1985) has won a championship.  Louisville, a #5, is the lowest to make it to the Finals, though they were blown out by perennial champ UConn by 33 points.

Sailer also looks at biological differences and how changes to the level of the rim and the size and weight of the basketball would benefit the women’s game:

The basketball is too big for women. I believe the official NCAA women’s ball is 29″ in circumference compared to 30″ for the men’s ball, and it weights 20 ounces versus 22 ounces. But women’s hands are not, on average, 29/30ths as large as men’s hands, and women don’t have 20/22nd of the upper body strength. A women’s basketball not much bigger than a volleyball, but a little denser so that it wouldn’t get buffeted about by air currents, would make for a more elegant game.

Women play with a Size 6 ball that’s almost as big as the Size 7 ball that men use, which seems pretty pointless. There’s also a Size 5 youth ball (27.5″) and a Size 4 kids ball (24.5″). I suspect the Size 4 ball would be about right for women.

I don’t know if this is what the women’s game is missing though.

If you’ve ever played ball on an 8 foot rim you may have realized that even at this lowered height it is hard to pull off some of the stunts that superior male athletes pull off even at the 10 foot level.  I think I might be able to do a 360 on an 8 foot rim, but it’s not all that pretty.  I can do it with a soccer ball and definitely a golf ball, but, like I said, it’s not winning any medals for finesse.  Along with finesse, though, there is also the power behind some of the basketball moves that titillate the crowd.  These are aspects of the women’s game that I don’t think scale down to fit their smaller, shorter frames.

By the way, the WNBA’s new theme song “I Love It” is an apt choice and interesting for the lyrics left out (full song here):

As the Zimmerman Frye hearing rolls on and as I maniacally focus on voice identification expert testimony, the AP has an article on another pseudoscience which has led to false convictions (h/t Slate):

“Bite mark evidence is the poster child of unreliable forensic science,” said Chris Fabricant, director of strategic litigation at the New York-based Innocence Project, which helps wrongfully convicted inmates win freedom through DNA testing.

Supporters of the method, which involves comparing the teeth of possible suspects to bite mark patterns on victims, argue it has helped convict child murderers and other notorious criminals, including serial killer Ted Bundy. They say problems that have arisen are not about the method, but about the qualifications of those testifying, who can earn as much as $5,000 a case.

“The problem lies in the analyst or the bias,” said Dr. Frank Wright, a forensic dentist in Cincinnati. “So if the analyst is … not properly trained or introduces bias into their exam, sure, it’s going to be polluted, just like any other scientific investigation. It doesn’t mean bite mark evidence is bad.”

Similarly, the Zimmerman trial sheds light on the pseudoscience behind voice forensics analysis, and hopefully it will not be allowed at court.  But if the Zimmerman trial weren’t as prominent as it is – if Zimmerman couldn’t pay for a defense team to think of pushing hard for a Frye hearing and to call up several expert witnesses to combat the state’s witnesses – then who knows if a defendant in Zimmerman’s position would get a fair shake.  Plenty of them have not.

This also sheds light on the expert witness industry which is full of hucksters who have carved out whole industries in which expert witnesses learn how to “sell” their expertise to lawyers and juries.  A prime example who merits an investigative report of some kind is Tom Owen.  Owen will make thousands of dollars from his depositions and testimony for the Zimmerman trial.  He’s set to take the stand again for the last day of the Frye hearing on Wednesday.

The people who really want to see Zimmerman convicted fail to remember how this type of pseudoscience can be used to railroad all defendants.  As Ann Althouse wrote last year:

 I just want to say one thing. Those who are pushing for the prosecution and conviction of Zimmerman, who seize with glee upon the voice biometrician’s packaged conclusion, need to think about the use of this kind of expert opinion in all the other cases where prosecutors have more than one random recording of a person’s voice. Your enthusiasm level should be the same. How reliable is this kind of expert opinion?

An interesting article that dismantles the myth that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had an overwhelming impact on the rates of suicide among service members:

The most recent Pentagon data show that a slight majority — 52% — of troops who have committed suicide while on active duty were never assigned to Afghanistan or Iraq.

The numbers, from the years 2008 to 2011, upend the popular belief that a large increase in suicides over the last decade stems from the psychological toll of combat and repeated deployments to war.

To researchers trying to unravel the causes of the rise, the statistics suggest that the mental health and life circumstances of new recruits are at least as important — and possibly more so — than the pressures of being in the military. It is clear that some enter with a predisposition to suicide and that stressors other than war are pushing them over the edge, experts said.

“A lot of the risk for suicide in the military is the stuff they bring with them,” said Dr. Murray Stein, a psychiatrist at UC San Diego who is studying suicide in the Army.

The article suggests that the military serves as a final hope for many young men who may be depressed and wayward.  If the military doesn’t work out as they’d expected then they are left that much more wayward than before.  And just as moving from one city to another city searching for happiness is very often not the solution to a deeper problem, joining the military probably won’t help what ails these men.

The indirect impact of the wars may be that joining the service was a much more prominent option than during peacetime.  During peacetime, the people who join may have different goals and purposes in mind than the people who join during wartime.  A large proportion of the soldiers who ended their lives had recently ended romantic relationships.  Could be that they wanted to do something drastic – to bust out and get away from their previous situation.  People – men especially – do that in times of personal tribulation.  Combining that with the lowered recruiting standards, it’s not surprising that the suicide rate increased, but it is not attributable to direct conflict as much as it is to the military strategies and popular perceptions that surrounded large-scale conflict.

A belated Father’s Day post from me over at The Good Men Project about the time my dad and I got inspected by U.S. Border Patrol.  It was posted here a couple of years ago.  I have a slot over at GMP now, Mondays at 10:30 a.m. EST.

Of 29 people who’ve moved on to the second round of the jury selection process in the Zimmerman trial, 19 are white, 6 are black, 2 are Hispanic, and 1 is Asian.  Twenty are women.  Seminole County is 66% non-Hispanic white, 11% black, and 17% Hispanic.  So whites are represented among the potential jury pool in line with their county population; blacks are overrepresented by about ten percentage points, and Hispanics are underrepresented by about the same.

One possible explanation for the overrepresentation of blacks among the jury pool (news reporter Tony Pipitone noted that by his count 30% of the potential jurors present before questionnaires were turned in were black) is that blacks are much more interested in the trial than whites.  According to a Pew poll last year, 58% of blacks and 24% of whites were following the case closely.  The greater general interest may have translated into more blacks in the jury pool.

Patrick Bayer and Randi Hjalmarrson have a paper out that happened to look at how the racial makeup of jury pools influenced verdicts for white and black defendants.  They found in two Florida counties of relatively low black population (about 5%) that when no black jurors were present in the jury pool for felony charges that 81% of black defendants and 66% of white defendants were convicted.  When at least one black person was present in the pool there was a 71% conviction rate for blacks and a 73% conviction rate for whites.

Applying those findings to the Zimmerman trial (maybe not a wise move but this is for entertainment purposes only) it would seem that Zimmerman would get as fair (or unfair) a shake as anyone else.

Of course, there are other confounders in this case.  I asked Hjalmarrson whether we could make any inferences in cases of self-defense and where a non-black person claims to have killed a black person in self-defense.  Not surprisingly, no research has been done on this question though Hjalmarrson thinks it’s an interesting one worth future research.

One explanation Hjalmarrson had for the mechanism here, which she reminded is correlation and not causation, was that the presence of blacks in the jury pool has a direct effect for obvious reasons:  greater potential for black jurors.  But the presence of black jurors – or just one – has an indirect impact because attorneys might move to strike them during voir dire (not legal when based purely on race) thus throwing away one of their limited number of peremptory challenges aka lifelines.  The presence of black jurors in the pool can essentially skew the verdicts handed down, in general, when a black juror is merely present in the pool.

I didn’t ask, and I doubt there is research on this yet, the elasticity of the number of blacks in the jury pool.  If just one black pool juror has such a big effect, how much impact will 2, 5, 10 have on verdicts?

Kareem Jordan of the University of Central Florida has a paper out looking at the perceptions of whether or not race played a part in Zimmerman’s killing of Martin.  He found that whites and Hispanics were much less likely to believe that than did blacks.  It’s not surprising that blacks would feel that way, as Jordan and everyone else will note, but he was surprised that Hispanics didn’t feel the same way as blacks:

Unlike some previous studies examining crime and race, Hispanics didn’t overwhelmingly perceive that race played a role in the shooting. Their perceptions were more in line with whites.

As for why Hispanics differed when past studies have indicated they tend to align more with perceptions of blacks, Jordan wasn’t sure.

“It certainly is an area ripe for more research,” Jordan said. “The current immigration crisis may add to the perception of criminal injustice. Over time, that may lead to a decreased sense of procedural justice. If this happens, it is likely that Hispanic perceptions on killings such as Martin’s will become closer to the views of blacks. Only time will tell.”

1. An enjoyable takedown by Christopher Ryan of Hugo Schwyzer’s ongoing war against men who date younger women. Ryan points out that Schwyzer doesn’t know how to read academic research.  My take here.  (h/t John Durant)

2.  America’s first Japanese-born senator thinks that the immigration bill is unfair to women in other countries because the proposed points system favors men.  Goal post shifting and fast.

3.  The CEO of Carl’s Jr. on what Obamacare will do:

About 40% of Mr. Puzder’s employees are part-time and therefore exempt from ObamaCare’s coverage mandates. “That percentage of employees will probably go up. Everybody is hiring more part-time employees,” he says, though he is quick to add that “we’re not firing anyone to hire” part-time workers. “Through attrition, three full-time employees go away and you hire four part-time employees who basically have the same hours.”

Mr. Puzder also expects fast-food restaurants to deal with ObamaCare by replacing workers with kiosks. “You’re going to go into a fast-food restaurant and order on an iPad or tablet instead of talking to a person because we don’t have to pay benefits for any of those things.”

4.  Chicago’s Urban Prep is once again being touted for its 100% graduation/college placement rate.  It’s not all it’s cracked up to be.

5.  Inviting comment hate:  the new Daft Punk album is good.

Charles Blow draws from a group called Child Trends which compiles data on different outcomes and behaviors of high school kids.  Blow cherry picks from some of the stats and frames them as showing us in the midst of an epidemic of some sort.  “Depressing” is the term he uses.  As progressives often do, even as the stats indicate that high school kids are improving behaviorally in different ways Blow’s article has a panicky tone.

Child Trends seems to be a useful resource though.  Here’s a table showing trends in fighting in high school broken down by race and gender.

From Child Trends

Blow cites other categories like suicide ideation.  His fear is stagnation in the progress of these moving towards a perfect rate of 0.  But suicidal thoughts among high schoolers have decreased from 29% in 1991 to 19% in 2001 to 16% in 2011.  That number is up two percentage points from 2009.  Too, violent crime victimization is still on its downward trajectory of the past couple of decades.  Child maltreatement rates, also cited by Blow, have decreased over time as well.