ninme

(I wonder if the title will get me letters.)

Times Online - Spoken like a man, by Bruce Anderson

Mr Anderson defends Larry Summers in much the same way I would, if I were a better writer. Highlights:

Mr Summers has made a powerful case. After a century of increasing female educational emancipation, women are running out of excuses for their failure to produce scientific geniuses. We know that they can do great novels. It may be that they cannot do great science.But this does not matter. Let us assume that the top 100 physicists and mathematicians will always be male. If so, so what? It tells us nothing about the educational attainment of the overwhelming majority of the human race, or about female success in other fields.

Margaret Thatcher studied science. Though she was good enough to be employed as a research chemist, no one has suggested that she might have won a Nobel prize. She had to make do with becoming one of the three or four most important statesmen in the civilised world during the 20th century.

To be fair to Mr Summers — poor fellow, he needs it — he is not suggesting that women should be discouraged from studying science. His opponents would have us believe that he would condemn all women to servile roles, such as interns in the Clinton White House. Not so. If any girl were to announce her intention of proving him wrong, he would applaud in encouragement.

A lot of Harvard academics would now like to treat him as the Inquisition treated Galileo. They are merely demonstrating that their brains — male, female or neuter — are unfit for intellectual activity of any sort.

They should be condemned to helping Bill Clinton with his cigars.

Oh, now that’s low. cough

I think the Maggie Thatcher point is a good one.

Of the five girls in my mother’s family, three of them, including my mother, studied science. The other two studied art (design and music, respectively). My mother ended up teaching a little but mostly raising kids, her younger sister switched tacks midway through her life and now teaches English as a second language in a little town in the mountains in BC, and her elder sister is the Chair of the Department of Biological Sciences of the University of Alberta (and raised three kids and remained married). So.