Obsidian Wings

Women in Professional Sports

by wj

A few days ago, the Economist had a post on their Game Theory blog entitled Playing with Pink Balls. The thumbnail photo (and it really is that small) showed someone with some kind of bat. The teaser read, in full, "Why has it taken so long to play the first...."

Having my own share of cultural mypoia, I figured this would be a story about the lack of women in Major League baseball. Wrongo! (It was actually about the challenges of trying to play cricket at night, and why they still haven't been met. The problem seems to be finding a color for the balls which provides equivalent visual characteristics.) But it would have been an interesting discussion, too.

Look at the three largest sports in the US. It is pretty clear why there are no women playing professional (American) football. The sport requires huge size and bulging muscles -- the sort you only get with the help of a big dose of testosterone. The only players who are anything like normal size are the kickers. And, indeed, occasionally a girl at the high school level, who has played soccer (football to the rest of the world), does play as a kicker. But that's all.

Similarly, basketball requires extreme height -- and women average substantially shorter than men. Plus, there are women's basketball teams (and leagues) in high school and college (and even professionally). So a tall woman will have spent years playing in that environment. Still, a very tall woman, even for women's basketball, who tried to play with the NBA would find herself suddenly much shorter than those around her.

But then there is baseball. The physical requirements for baseball are two: exceptionally fast reflexes and exceptionally keen eyesight -- typically in the neighborhood of 20/12 or 20/10. Neither of those are particularly sex-linked. Girls are common in Little League, and do quite well. So why no further?

In high school, boys play baseball, but girls are expected to play softball. There is no obvious reason why girls couldn't play high school baseball . . . but it doesn't happen. (And at the college level, I believe that the NCAA actually has a rule against it.) So there is nowhere to learn the game at an advanced level.

Actually, women do play professional baseball in Japan and in Europe. However, in the US there is no real path which would let them get the experience necessary to play professionally. (Which is probably the proximate cause for why it has taken so long for a woman to play Major League baseball.) But why not?

the persistence of culture

by russell

For the long holiday weekend, I offer a post that (one hopes) is devoid of rancorous partisan political content.

For a long time, I've been interested in (and made a sort of semi-desultory study of) the way in which certain elements of African music have found their way to, and found expression in, cultures and societies in other parts of the world.

Most, but not all, of this has followed the trajectory of the involuntary migration of Africans via the Atlantic slave trade.  But my topic is less the slave trade per se, and more the sheer persistence of culture - music, language, dress, food, cosmology, fundamental ideas of interest - across time and distance.

Here is American blues musician John Lee Hooker playing Boom Boom.

Here is Malian traditional musician Ali Farka Toure playing The River.

These guys could be on the same gig.

The connection between Malian music and American blues has been noticed by lots of folks, and guys like Corey Harris and Ry Cooder have made their journeys to Mali to hang with the cats and explore the roots of the music they have in common.

There are similar connections to be made for American bluegrass and English and Irish traditional music.  And about a million other examples folks could point to.

What are some from your world(s)?

Your Post-Antibiotic Era Open Thread of DOOM Open Thread!

by Ugh

This is discouraging.  

The world is on the cusp of a "post-antibiotic era", scientists have warned after finding bacteria resistant to drugs used when all other treatments have failed.

Eek.  Also, too, it seems ISIS understands what al Qaeda generally doesn't - or probably, now, didn't - which is that it doesn't take attacks on a 9/11/2001 scale to induce mass panic and bring out the worst in political leaders, particularly ones in the U.S.  Including the top contenders for the GOP Presidential nomination to be "leader" of the "free" world!  Hooray to you Messrs. Teh Donald and Rubio.  

Hell, they make George W. Bush look like serious and considered statesman on all things w/r/t Islam (and he wasn't half bad, I'll admit).

So, converse!  Please.  How about those Warriors and Patriots (he asks, to no one in particular...).

UPDATE!: I should say I have not read through all the comments in the prior thread so there may be some repetition above.  Even of things that do not bear repeating.  Carry on (or not).

Update the Second:  Brennan can bite me (yes I know that's very sophisticated).  How he still has his job after spying on Senate staffers is beyond me.

islamic state

by russell

The Islamic State has claimed responsibility for last night's attacks in Paris.  If they are responsible, that apparently represents an upping of the ante on their part, in terms both of the ambition of the attack and the effectiveness of its execution.

The IS is kind of a strange beast.  They don't appear to want to just be a state in the modern, post-Westphalian sense.  Per (among others) the Atlantic's Graeme Wood they appear to consider themselves an essential element in the playing out of some kind of apocalyptic end-times drama.

Another thoughtful discussion, from the NY Review of Books, whose author basically finds himself (or herself) gobsmacked by the phenomenon of IS.

Basically, IS appears to want to turn out the lights on modern life and the modern world, where for "modern", read "everything since about the year 700".  At least in social, legal, religious, and political terms, they seem to be fine with modern technology and arms.

I don't really know how you address something like that.  There doesn't seem to be any available room for the co-existence of IS and anyone who is not interested in living in, or subject to, an authoritarian theocratic totalitarian polity, run on the religious and social mores of the 7th C middle east.  

And, their vision has sufficient appeal that thousands of people have been willing to give up whatever lives they have been living - in many cases successful, comfortable, generally happy lives - in exchange for one-way tickets to a violent and absolutist version of the middle ages.

Even if we (or someone) were to achieve the decisive military defeat of IS and the eradication of whatever political organization they have in Syria and Iraq, I'm not sure that eliminate the dream of an apocalyptic caliphate that seems to motivate them.

What I should emphasize is that I do not conflate IS with Islam.  Islam is obviously a prominent element of their belief and motivations, but Islam is an enormously and overwhelming larger tent than the kind of bloodthirsty fanatical Wahhabism of IS.

It would be like equating, frex, Christianity with the KKK. 

No conclusions or grand plans on offer here, it just seemed like folks might want to discuss it.

On the University of Missouri

by liberal japonicus

From ObWi alumni Thomas Nephew's FB, this article is really great. A few quotes

About the recently resigned  University of Missouri President Tim Wolfe:

 In 2015, you cannot run a school while being blasé in the face of acts of racist harassment. 

About the power student athletes have:

Yet [student athletes] also have a power that if exercised can bring the powerful to their knees. So much of the political and social economy of state universities is tied to football, especially in big-money conferences like Southeastern Conference, where Mizzou plays...These conferences, particularly the Southeastern Conference, field teams that, in the words of sports sociologist Harry Edwards, “look like Ghana on the field and Sweden in the stands.” In other words, black football players in particular have a social power often unseen and not commented upon. It’s there all the same.

On the necessity for cooperative action:

 The protests of students and faculty members whose names the public does not know is what laid the groundwork for the players to showcase their courage. It’s like a stool: students, faculty, and athletes. When one leg on that stool isn’t there, this falls apart.

And the finale

 The administrators created this world where our universities revolve socially, politically and economically around the exploited labor of big time football. Now let them reap what they sow. 

Interesting stuff. 

A non-violent open thread

by liberal japonicus

Which is to say, let's take it down a bit. I'm hoping that no one has autoplay, as I'm putting this video above the fold, but I hope you can take a moment to watch it and relax.