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):

“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?

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.

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.”

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.

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.

But fortune favors the prepared, and I have always understood that the brotherhood of arms ends at the first drink. Upstanding, highly disciplined soldiers can become leering fools under the influence of alcohol, and I know from hard experience that in off-duty social settings, it is best to drink lightly and leave early.

The reasons for the growing sexual assault problem in our military are complex and require serious investigation. Sexual assault is not confined to places and times when alcohol is consumed. But it has been known for years that alcohol abuse is a dominant factor in most military sexual assault cases. Most offenses occur in the barracks, most victims are junior enlisted personnel, and most perpetrators are their peers or noncommissioned officers. Nearly all recent high-profile cases of military sexual assault involved alcohol in some form.

• Turning the Naval Academy Preparatory School into an institution designed to enable academically weak athletes to scrape by at the Academy, a terrible turn from the original intent of the institution (all three academies have them), which was to give a leg up for deserving enlisted personnel who obtain an Academy appointment. This really stinks.
• Using football as a method for recruiting African-American midshipmen, all too many of whom have both academic and behavioral problems that would keep anybody but football players (regardless of race) out of the Academy, but are accepted into the Academy because of a culture that says the athlete can do no wrong. There is a really repulsive racist aura, that of the bigoted stereotype of physically strong but mentally weak black men, operating here. Furthermore, it discredits affirmative action to recruit minority midshipmen based on their potential to be good officers, not primarily good football players (emphasis added)

A black graduate of the Academy responded and Goldich replied to it.

Sailer wrote about the military’s “epidemic” the other day and pointed out that really the only evidence of the epidemic is an uptick in an extrapolated statistic from the year 2010 to 2012.  He also linked back to an op-ed by Bruce Fleming, a professor at the Naval Academy.  Fleming wrote in 2010:

Meanwhile, the academy’s former pursuit of excellence seems to have been pushed aside by the all-consuming desire to beat Notre Dame at football (as Navy did last year). To keep our teams in the top divisions of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, we fill officer-candidate slots with students who have been recruited primarily for their skills at big-time sports. That means we reject candidates with much higher predictors of military success (and, yes, athletic skills that are more pertinent to military service) in favor of players who, according to many midshipmen who speak candidly to me, often have little commitment to the military itself.

It’s no surprise that recruited athletes have been at the center of recent scandals, including a linebacker who was convicted of indecent assault on a female midshipman in 2007 and a quarterback who was accused of rape and dismissed from the academy for sexual misconduct in 2006. Sports stars are flattered on campus, avoid many of the onerous duties other midshipmen must perform, and know they’re not going to be thrown out. Instead of zero tolerance, we now push for zero attrition: we “remediate” honor code offenses.

Another program that is placing strain on the academies is an unofficial affirmative-action preference in admissions. While we can debate the merits of universities making diversity a priority in deciding which students to admit, how can one defend the use of race as a factor at taxpayer-financed academies — especially those whose purpose is to defend the Constitution? Yet, as I can confirm from the years I spent on the admissions board in 2002 and ’03 and from my conversations with more recent board members, if an applicant identifies himself or herself as non-white, the bar for qualification immediately drops.

The constrained view held by liberals in the face of these outcomes is perplexing.  They want to lower standards and drop barriers to entry, but they also complain about the consequences of lowering such a bar – either in terms of the quality of the education and training or in terms of crime which includes sexual assault.

-Laurie Shrage, a women’s studies professor, argues in the New York Times that it is unfair for fathers to be on the hook financially or otherwise for children that they did not want.  A true feminist argument, she says, would grant men choice as well.

-Joanna Schroeder writes at Good Men Project a piece with which I don’t fully agree, but she acknowledges that she believes that boys become boys with only minimal influence by parents.  She then says that “Boys will by boys” is not just harmful to girls, which is where the feminist focus usually stops, but also harmful to boys as well.

-A lesbian woman writes in to Slate XX and says she believes that women are biologically and not culturally designed to be passive, in general.