Wednesday, July 19, 2006

Newsweek explains the real reason why there are not more "women" in science... because all the really good female scientists deep down are really dudes.

So I get the mail this evening and there is the current edition of Newsweek magazine, (it was a gift subscription). In the "science" section is... I am not even sure how to even describe this mess of a story... Newsweek decides to do a story about discrimination in the fields of science... and the spoksperson to explain discrimination in science is a neuroscientist and tenured professor at Stanford, Ben Barres, who use to be "Barbara". Yes I am fairly sure this is Newsweek and not The Onion.

This all goes back to the Larry Summers gender gap in science debate.
In January 2005, Summers suggested at an economic conference that one reason there are fewer women than men in science and engineering professorships might be that fewer women than men had the very high levels of "intrinsic aptitude" that such jobs required. An attendee made his remarks public, and a firestorm followed in the national news media and on Harvard's campus.

The attendee was MIT biologist Nancy Hopkins who said "I felt I was going to be sick. My heart was pounding and my breath was shallow" she said. "I just couldn't breathe because this kind of bias makes me physically ill." If she had not bolted from the room, she "would've either blacked out or thrown up."

Nope... no intrinsic differences there. I am sure all the male MIT biologists get physically ill when someone say MAYBE there are differences between the sexes. Dr. Nancy should be exhibit 1 for Larry Summer's defense team.


Now possibly the best line in the Newsweek article is:
Barres slept on the floor in his office. Romance never held much appeal. OK, Barres has always loved Tom Cruise ("He's cute"). But he's never been strongly attracted to either sex.
So let me get this "straight", chick who deep inside is really a guy, in in love with Tom Cruise... Now that right there aspires to be a big fat softball just waiting to get hit out of the park. No sir, I am not even going to take a swing at that, way too easy.

So this is the proof the MSM came up with that women are discriminated against in science, a "female-to-male transgendered person".

Your honor, the defense would like to make this exhibit 2.

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