This week's sudden announcement that the women's professional league in the US was folding prompted a lot of discussion in the soccer world. A good analysis of the situation is at the LA times. While this piece on dailycamera.com hopes to silenece the folks who think this is a sign that soccer in the US is not viable.

I was at the inuagural WUSA game here in DC and also at one or two DC United/Freedom double headers. I'm sad not for the star players of the game, they'll still be playing on the National and Olympic teams, but for all the other middle and lower tiered players who were trying to make a go of it. I hope all of you find a spot in the game either coaching in college, running clinics, or in the WPSL and that the next first division women's league comes along real soon.

I'm not sure what I'm still doing up at this hour. I got hit by one of those coding frenzies wherre I just got on a roll for some web stats stuff at work and coudlnt' stop myself. Next thing I know, I'm learning jpgraph and its 3am in the morning. Haven't pulled one of these in a long time. Maybe I should have spent thsi time building a hurricane bunker instead. :) Good night

Seems that my old high school is been in the news for lack of diversity and admission bias leading to underrepresentation by minorities.

There are a couple of troubling quotes including:

"We need a different method of identifying students for Thomas Jefferson," she said at a luncheon of the Enterprises for Hispanic Youth Foundation. "Helping our youth is going to make their intellectual level competitive with their peers."\ Until 1998, Jefferson admitted some black and Latino students who didn't make it to the semifinal round but came very close and seemed otherwise qualified.\ Last year, Fairfax County Schools Superintendent Daniel A. Domenech proposed allowing 30 additional students into Jefferson from "underrepresented" middle schools -- those in less affluent and minority neighborhoods that typically send fewer students to Thomas Jefferson. Preferential treatment for minority students might not be allowed, he reasoned, but the law says nothing about geography.

Great! Please, make sure that there's always room to doubt whether a hispanic at TJ is there because of merit or tokenism. Every year, approximately 3000 students apply to be one of 400 students in each class. Has anyone checked how representative the application pool itself is of the wider community? Maybe a solution is NOT to ACCEPT more minority students by lowering standards but instead to get more minority students to APPLY in the first place?