Month: June 2013

Travis Waldron thinks so. He explains why the draft – held tonight – is more problematic for basketball than it is for football or baseball:

The NBA Draft traces its origins to 1947, when the Basketball Association of America formed, and it followed the worst-team-picks-first model the NFL had established more than a decade before. Now, though, it’s effect on limiting the bargaining power of athletes is perhaps even more pernicious than the other drafts, since a top draft pick in the NBA has much more potential to change the fortunes of an entire team than a top pick in football or baseball. A baseball player is just one of hundreds in his organization. A football player is one of 53 on a roster. A basketball player, though, is one of just 13 on each team in a sport where an individual can single-handedly change the complexion of an entire team. … A top draft pick in the NBA may not win a title on his own, but he can certainly put a team on the brink of a title far faster. That means he’s worth more money to teams that desire his services — and it means he loses more money in a draft system that prevents multiple teams from competing for those services.

Yglesias is on the same page:

[The draft] is a convenient way for veterans and owners to conspire together to depress the wages of young players, but in the name of “competitive balance” it also creates a constant open-ended bailout of mismanaged teams and prevents best practices from spreading. Teams like the San Antonio Spurs and Denver Nuggets, who manage to work their way into the playoffs year after year, are hobbled in their ability to retain fresh talent, while squads like the Orlando Magic and Cleveland Cavaliers, who plainly don’t know what they’re doing, engage in a goofy boom-and-bust cycle of occasionally picking up superstar talent on the cheap only to see the star fly the coop because management can’t get it together.

This is all rationalized through a baffling argument about the needs of small-market teams that completely ignores the fact that the teams that are most disadvantaged by the draft system are well-managed small-market teams, who are being systematically denied the fruits of effective talent evaluation.

Amanda Marcotte hopes that the revelation that “the majority of sexual assault in the military is male-on-male crime” will help move the discussion forward:

Part of the reason for this is that women are still a small minority in the military, representing only about 15 percent of service members. But what this astonishing number demonstrates is the truth of what feminists have been saying about sexual assault all along: It is not caused by an overabundance of sexual desire, but is an act of violence perpetrated by people who want to hurt and humiliate the victim, using sex as a weapon. … [L]est you think this male-on-male crime is the result of the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” Dao shows otherwise. As one male victim told Dao, “The people who perpetrated these crimes on me identify as heterosexual males,” which is frequently true of male-on-male rape.

Robert Knowles and Rachel Vanlandingham believe the military instituting affirmative action for women would help fix the problem:

Until women occupy the highest ranks in sufficient numbers, the sexual assault epidemic will likely persist. Studies show that institutions with a critical mass of women in leadership roles have far fewer instances of sexual harassment. When recruitment, promotion, and retention strategies lead to greater gender equality in the upper ranks, it will, in General Dempsey’s words, cause people to “treat each other equally.” In fact, such changes can have a far greater impact than in the civilian sector. The military’s culture, for all its flaws, prizes discipline and cohesiveness, which gives the armed services the unique ability to change quickly when they decide to do so.

Now that the Pentagon has lifted its ban on women in combat positions, extensive gender-based affirmative action should follow. As combat positions are the top springboard for advancement, more women must fill these positions now and female officers must be promoted at a much greater rate. This does not mean imposing fixed quotas or disregarding standards and merit. But integration goals should be especially aggressive for these positions, and commanders should consider the previous exclusion of women when assigning and promoting candidates.

Mary Roach traveled to Nagaland in north-eastern India to witness a chili-eating competition that tests participants’ ability to withstand capsaicin, the main active ingredient in hot peppers:

The event itself is surprisingly low-key. The mood is one of stoic grimness. No one is screaming in pain. No one will be scarred by the heat. That’s not how capsaicin works. It only feels hot. The human tongue has pain receptors that respond to a certain intensity of temperature or acid. These nerve fibers send a signal to the brain, which it forwards to your conscious self in the form of a burning sensation. Capsaicin lowers the threshold at which this happens. It registers “hot” at room temperature. “It trips the alarm,” says Bruce Bryant, a senior researcher at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia. “It says, ‘Get this out of your mouth right now!’” The chili pepper tricks you into setting it free.

The whole affair is beginning to seem like an anticlimax when I look up from my notes to see [member of Parliament in Myanmar and contest participant] Pu Zozam headed my way. I have seen people stagger in movies, but never for real directly in my sightline. Zozam’s legs buckle as he tries to keep walking. He goes down onto one knee and collapses sideways onto the floor. He rolls onto his back, arms splayed and palms up. He’s making sounds that are hard to transcribe. Mostly vowels.

After a minute he rolls back onto his side and raises his head to retch. A doctor prepares a hypodermic of dicyclomine. The drug is more typically administered to people with irritable bowel syndrome, to relieve cramping. Cramps and regurgitation are body responses to gastrointestinal irritation. (This is why people throw up when they drink too much, too fast; alcohol is an irritant.) “The cramp is quite severe,” Catherine Burns, the contestant from Liverpool, told me later. She recalls sitting cross-legged with her fellow contestants afterward. Not good enough, her body informed her. “I suddenly just had to recline.”

(Photo by Will Clayton)