B and B

Redistricting reform in Texas?

From the San Antonio Express-News editorial page, I see that Texas Senator Jeff Wentworth from San Antonio is going to once again try to reform the way redistricting works in Texas.  Yes, he is a Republican.  Yes, much to my disappointment, he went along with DeLay's slimy re-redistricting back in 2003.  But yes, he appears to still want to do redistricting the right way.

Sen. Jeff Wentworth, R-San Antonio, will carry legislation again this year to create a bipartisan redistricting commission that would wrest from the Legislature the power of redrawing political lines.

Wentworth has introduced a similar constitutional amendment in every legislative session since 1993. This year, however, he can count on an unexpected ally: The Terminator.

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed a similar measure in his state. Like Wentworth, he faces legislative opposition from Democrats and fellow Republicans, with members of both parties reluctant to give up the power of the gerrymander

I was wondering what bloggers more experienced with the ins and outs of Texas politics thought about this.  Via Technorati, I only found a couple of posts on this topic:

Kevin Whited at PubliusTX, who I am not very familiar with but who calls himself a conservative, doesn't like the idea.  But based on his argument, I'm not sure he recognizes the flaws with the current system.  He remarks that if voters don't like how legislators redistrict by gerrymander, then the voters should kick them out.  This neglects the heart of the problem, which is that gerrymandering allows legislators to choose their own voters, not vice versa.  With the gerrymandering system becoming more and more precise, the voters' alleged "power to hold elected officials accountable" is rapidly becoming a myth.

Charles Kuffner at Off the Kuff likes the idea, but rolls his eyes, in this post from January 31:

There's a reason things like this are called "quixotic". The Republican leadership didn't spend six months in 2003 carrying Tom DeLay's water so that Jeff Wentworth could undo it all.

That was my initial reaction as well, but given Schwarzenegger's new initiative in California, and the relatively strong interest around the country in reforming redistricting, the dynamic may well be different this year.  Or at least it has the potential to be if those of us who care make a stink about it.

Greg Wythe appears to have a similar opinion, although he has said very little about the fight in Texas.

While it almost certainly won't happen this year, perhaps we can build some momentum behind the effort to help make it a reality not too far down the road.  We certainly won't win this effort by giving up without even trying.  Are we in this for the long term or not?

Life on Mars? No evidence yet.

Remember last Wednesday's overblown article on Space.com about NASA scientists discovering evidence for present life on Mars?  It looks like many people had a similar reaction to mine to that report:  on Friday, NASA officially issued a total denial of any such finding.

News reports on February 16, 2005, that NASA scientists from Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., have found strong evidence that life may exist on Mars are incorrect.

NASA does not have any observational data from any current Mars missions that supports this claim. The work by the scientists mentioned in the reports cannot be used to directly infer anything about life on Mars, but may help formulate the strategy for how to search for martian life.

Their research concerns extreme environments on Earth as analogs of possible environments on Mars. No research paper has been submitted by them to any scientific journal asserting martian life.

My worry that the original article would be widely picked up by the major press proved to be unfounded, fortunately.  And NASA's relatively quick denial no doubt helped to quash the overhyped story.  But, based on Google News, it was indeed picked up by several minor U.S. press outlets, and at least one major one, MSNBC.  Many international outlets also picked it up.  MSNBC was quick to run the NASA denial on Friday:

NASA on Friday issued an unusual denial of a report that its researchers saw strong evidence for life's existence on present-day Mars, based in part on atmospheric methane readings. Other scientists involved in Mars research said the jury was still out on the meaning of Martian methane, but they agreed that the preliminary findings were well worth a follow-up.

In MSNBC's followup report, they tell us that the NASA scientists involved, while apparently not willing or not allowed to talk to the press, distributed an email to colleagues disputing the original Space.com report, claiming that it was based on "inaccurate hearsay," in MSNBC's words.  This is not surprising, of course, as the report did at least make clear that it was second-hand information being reported.  (See the update below for the full text of this email.)

Space.com also published a followup article Friday that reports NASA's denial while still doing their best to stand by their original report.  It is clear, though, that they got overexcited about this, and reported with no concrete information, and worse, used the overblown headline implying that this was a major breakthrough.  It turns out that there is not even a paper submitted to Nature for publication, as claimed in the original report.

Some attendees later had conflicting recollections about what exactly Stoker said about her plans to publish her research. While some said Stoker claimed she had submitted a paper to the journal Nature for publication in May, others said Stoker only mentioned that she was preparing a paper for submission to Nature.

Nature said it normally does not comment on whether a paper is under consideration for publication or has even been submitted. Carl Ziemelis, the physical sciences editor at Nature in London, said Feb. 18 that he was making an exception to that normal practice, telling Space News that the journal is not preparing to publish Stoker and Lemke’s research and that he first learned about their work from news reports.

Unfortunately, I can easily see this whole episode being leapt upon and distorted by the Mars/NASA conspiracy kooks, such as Richard Hoagland, to further their ludicrous claims that NASA is covering up all sorts of evidence of intelligent life on Mars.

On MSNBC science editor Alan Boyle's weblog Cosmic Log, a reader named Josh sums up my view succinctly:

"I think MSN needs to be careful about what they say on national news. You just don't go around telling people that there is life on Mars unless there is sufficient evidence to do so. That's just bad journalism!"

UPDATE:  Perusing astronomer Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy website, I notice that he was all over this non-story last week.  In fact, the day after Space.com's article appears and the day before NASA's official denial, Plait obtained the email from one of the scientists involved that MSNBC's article referenced the next day.  Here it is:

Dr. Carol Stoker wrote:

A story has appeared in Space.com which quotes us inaccurately and without permission.  The story is based on hearsay and is factually incorrect.

Here are the facts:

1. On Sunday night we were attending a private party of space exploration enthusiasts in which there was a discussion about the possible meaning of the results from recent Mars missions.  We engaged in the discussion and expressed thoughts and opinions as individual scientists  on our own time and did not represent ourselves as speaking for NASA.

2. No one at the party identified themselves as a reporter, and in fact no reporters were present.  This article is based on hearsay about what somebody at the party thought they heard us say. We think this represents extremely poor journalistic standards.

3. No Nature paper has been submitted with Rio Tinto results.  This claim is simply wrong and we did not make this claim.  The MARTE project has several papers in preparation that describe the work we are doing at Rio Tinto and the first results of that work, but nothing has been submitted yet.  Preliminary results have been published in abstract form at various scientific meetings. If you want to see what the MARTE team has actually said about results from Rio Tinto drilling and its relevance to life on Mars, go to www.marteproject.com  and click on publications.  All our REAL publications are posted there.

4. The work at Rio Tinto is relevant to finding life in a subsurface terrestrial environment  and can't be used to infer anything about life on Mars, directly. The Rio Tinto work by its very nature can't tell us if there is life on Mars, but certainly  helps formulate the strategy for how to search for life on Mars.  One approach to searching for extant life on Mars is by drilling. Partly for this reason, the MARTE project was selected for funding by NASA's ASTEP program, out of the Science Mission Directorate and is a joint project between NASA and Spain's Center for Astrobiology.

In my opinion, if they want to be viewed as a credible source, Space.com really should do a full-fledged retraction of their original story.

Adventures in backyard bird counting

Another year, another Great Backyard Bird Count.  Well, we actually hadn't participated in this volunteer science event since 1999, so we were excited about re-entering the fray.  Especially since all it entailed was identifying and counting the birds in the one area where we actually are familiar with the species present—our exurban back-yard, outside San Antonio, on the fringes of the Edwards Plateau.  For casual birders such as ourselves, this can make the difference between fun and frustration.

On Saturday, our event started with a bang, if a bit prematurely, as my idefatigable partner spotted, through the foggy mist, a huge flock of cedar waxwings leaving a live oak tree in our neighbor's front yard.  Three groups of thirty or forty birds each taking wing—around one hundred total.  Cedar waxwings, sleek, sharp-looking birds, are not a rarity in our neighborhood; yet they are far from a daily sight for us, and certainly not in numbers so large.  I was far down the street on my weekly jog and missed them.  But shortly afterwards, from our back yard, we both spotted what must have been part of the same flock, perching at the top of a live oak tree in our own front yard.  We counted at least twenty, even though they were fading into the mist even from that short distance.  Within a few minutes the rest of the huge flock flew overhead, and the waxwings in our yard left to join them, heading off towards the same neighbor's yard where my partner had originally spotted them.  We quickly ran down to the street and followed.

And there we found them again:  many, many dozens of cedar waxwings, filling the large live oak tree to the brim, practically a bird on every branch.  We watched with our binoculars from about fifty feet away, not wanting to spook them.  The soupy air that morning dimmed the subtle colorings of the waxwings, but they were unmistakeable nonetheless.  I creeped closer, trying to eliminate as much of the fog in front of them as possible.  After a few minutes, the flock suddenly left the tree as one, and flew in a majestic circle around me, before returning to the same tree, with a smaller group breaking off and perching at the top of a leafless tree further away.  A few minutes after that, they again rose up as one, this time flying off down the street to another tree barely visible through the fog.  Watching the flock of waxwings in flight was hypnotic, as the large flock moved like a single organism, tightly grouped and swerving instantly and simultaneously.

The rest of the count that afternoon proved much more routine, as should probably be expected for a backyard bird count.  (More experienced birders would no doubt find the cedar waxwings mundane as well.)  We saw the usual robins (a large flock), chipping sparrows, tufted titmice, carolina chickadees, carolina wrens, northern cardinals, western scrub-jays, house finches, a northern mockingbird, and a golden-fronted woodpecker (by voice). 

Other than the cedar waxwings, the notable thing about our count was more about what we didn't see during our allotted time:  american goldfinches (which we see almost every day normally, and did indeed see later that day), and greater roadrunners (which we see routinely, though not even close to every day).  We did venture off into the cedar scrub adjacent to our house in search of a hermit thrush, but to no avail.  More persistent or skilled birders than us might have had more success, though, since we've spotted at least one out there before.

Sunday, my partner proved her indefatigable-ness, by spending another hour or so repeating our count.  No cedar waxwings this day, but she was treated to the sight of a red-shouldered hawk swooping down on our yard, disturbing the peaceful frolicking of all the titmice, chickadees, sparrows, wrens, and cardinals, who one instant were pigging out at and around the feeder and bathing themselves in the birdbath, and the next instant were cowering deep within the foliage of a large shrub.

In the end, after all our backyard bird counting adventures, we tallied up our counts, and submitted them to the website of the Great Backyard Bird Count, where they will go into the database of 35,368 similar counts from all across North America from Friday through Monday, and contribute to the scientific study of the winter distribution of bird populations across this continent.

From the depths of the Summers transcript

The anonymous blogger known as Bitch, Ph.D. has delved into the transcript of Harvard President Larry Summers' remarks on women in science and discovered that the press reports may actually have gone easy on him.

Cloudy Skies

Gregg Easterbrook is at it again.  On Wednesday, the New York Times published an op-ed that contains his usual apologia for Bush administration environmental policy.  Easterbrook has a long history of trying to pass himself off as an environmentalist, while also trying to claim that Bush's policies are actually good ideas for protecting the environment.  His latest work, "Clear Skies, No Lies," claims that Bush's proposal to modify the Clean Air Act, dubbed by Bush as the "Clear Skies" initiative, is "sound and deserves support."

Alas, Easterbook's argument is not sound, and given its prominent place of publication, it deserves close inspection.

Easterbrook claims that Bush's proposal has three highlights:  (1) It would cut pollution significantly and cheaply; (2) it would discourage lawsuits; (3) it would serve as a model for future regulation of greenhouse gases.  Let's examine his argument for each of these.

The first point is a red herring.  Bush's plan indeed cuts pollution, but by far less than current law calls for.  The primary argument against the Bush plan is that it represents a weakening of the current Clean Air Act—that if Bush's plan is implemented people will be breathing more pollution for a longer period of time, thus undermining public health and quality of life.

Easterbrook barely addresses these issues.  In fact, he appears to concede them grudgingly:

Opponents of Clear Skies rightly note that existing Clean Air Act language already mandates somewhat greater reductions than the Bush plan - for instance, a 93 percent cut in sulfur dioxide from the levels in 1970, versus Clear Skies' 90 percent - and that the reductions must be complete by 2012, rather than by 2018 as in Mr. Bush's bill.

Easterbrook's phrasing cleverly disguises the fact that, using his own numbers, Bush's plan would allow 40% more sulfur dioxide than the current Clean Air Act, and nearly doubles the timetable for achieving reductions from 7 years to 13 years.  Easterbrook also doesn't mention any numbers for mercury emissions, which Bush's plan relaxes caps on by a huge factor.  About mercury, the Sierra Club says:

The EPA estimates that enforcement of existing toxic air pollution protections in the Clean Air Act will limit mercury pollution to 5 tons per year by 2008. The Bush Administration’s plan weakens the limit to 26 tons per year by 2010 – allowing 520 percent more mercury pollution.

So, since Easterbrook knows his first point is not a good argument, he relies on his second—that the Bush plan will allegedly reduce lawsuits and thus improve the speed and cost with which emissions reductions are met:

But here's the rub: the existing Clean Air Act, though successful, is a complex set of rules that requires a case-by-case drawing up of plans for states, localities and even individual power plants. A raft of lawsuits often accompanies every Clean Air Act regulation - it is common for both industry and environmental organizations to sue to block the same set of rules. This is why, on average, it takes about a decade to complete a Clean Air Act rulemaking.

The Clear Skies plan would replace that case-by-case system with a streamlined "cap and trade" approach. This plan simply sets an overall reduction for the power industry as a whole, then leaves it up to companies and plant managers to decide for themselves how to meet the mandates, including by trading permits to one another.

In practice, cap-and-trade systems have proved faster, cheaper and less vulnerable to legal stalling tactics than the "command and control" premise of most of the Clean Air Act. For example, a pilot cap-and-trade system, for sulfur dioxide from coal-fired power plants, was enacted by Congress in 1990. Since then sulfur dioxide emissions have fallen by nearly a third (the reason you hear so little about acid rain these days is that the problem is declining - even though the amount of combustion of coal for electricity has risen.)

A pleasant surprise of that 1990 program was that market forces and lack of litigation rapidly drove down the predicted cost of acid-rain controls. Now Mr. Bush proposes to apply the same cap-and-trade approach to the entire power industry, in the hope that market forces and fewer lawsuits will lead to rapid, relatively inexpensive pollution cuts.

Alas, this argument is also a red herring.  Even if all these alleged benefits of a cap-and-trade approach were to be realized, the pollution reductions achieved under the Bush plan would be far less than under current law.  If cap-and-trade is so great, we should be implement it using the same emissions targets that the Clean Air Act calls for.  And if cap-and-trade is not so great, we should not replace the current system, that even Easterbrook acknowledges has been tremendously successful over the last few decades.

Of course,  the cap-and-trade system, even in an ideal case, has at least one severe drawback that Easterbrook fails to mention.  Again, the Sierra Club:

Even if the plan caused some net reductions in pollution, many communities would still be threatened by more pollution. Why should some local communities be left behind?

Easterbrook then brings up another hypothetical benefit of the Bush plan:

Here is the real beauty of the Clear Skies plan, something that even its backers may not see: many economists believe that the best tool for our next great environmental project, restraining greenhouse gases, will be a cap-and-trade system for carbon dioxide. Should President Bush's plan prove that the power industry as a whole can be subjected to a sweeping cap-and-trade rule without suffering economic harm or high costs, that would create a powerful case to impose similar regulation on carbon dioxide, too.

Here, Easterbrook goes completely off the deep end.  First, according to Easterbrook's earlier comment, the cap-and-trade approach has already proven successful.  If so, why does it still need to be demonstrated?  Second, the power industry itself is a major backer of the current Bush cap-and-trade plan.  Yet they still want no part of any regulation, even by cap-and-trade, of carbon dioxide.   So this argument makes no sense, even in Easterbook's parallel universe where the Bush administration is dying to do something about greenhouse gases and where industry loves to happily go along with sweeping new regulations.

After going off the deep end, Easterbrook closes with distortion and deception:

Though you'd never know it from the press coverage, the administration's idea has respectable support - from the National Research Council, which is a wing of the National Academy of Sciences, and from the former Environmental Protection Agency administrator Christie Whitman, who since leaving the administration has become a leading critic of the Republican right.

Distortion:  Christie Whitman supports the Bush plan?  I'm shocked, truly.  After all, she only worked for Bush for three years.  She is not the independent figure that Easterbooks tries to paint her as.

Deception:  I guess Easterbrook doesn't want us to examine press coverage of the National Research Council's viewpoints on this matter, but I did anyway and found an article from late January from Chemical & Engineering News.  The title: 'Clear Skies' A Dirtier Policy: NRC says President's plan unlikely to cut emissions as much as current law.  An excerpt:

President George W. Bush's plan to reduce air pollution would likely curb emissions less than current law does, an interim report by the National Research Council (NRC) says.

The report, released on Jan. 14, scrutinizes a part of the Clean Air Act that requires industry to install modern pollution controls when plants built before 1970 make renovations that increase emissions. That section of the law, called new source review (NSR), applies to chemical plants, utilities, and other industrial facilities.

NRC also examines Bush's proposed Clear Skies program, which is a cap-and-trade program for reducing sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and mercury emissions at coal-fired power plants. The report says it is "unlikely that Clear Skies would result in emission limits at individual sources that are tighter than those achieved when NSR is triggered at the same sources.

"In general, NSR provides more stringent emission limits" for industrial air pollution than do other programs, including the Bush initiative, it adds.

Truly pathetic that Easterbrook had such a hard time coming up with an independent supporter of Bush's plan that he had to resort to trying to mislead his readers.

Fortunately, despite the hackery of administration tools like Easterbrook, the Bush Cloudy Skies plan is not having an easy time of it in the Senate this week:

WASHINGTON -- Senate Republicans on Wednesday postponed for two weeks a key committee vote on the White House-backed "clear skies" bill after they realized that the divisive legislation would not be approved.

All eight of the Democrats on the 18-member Senate Environment and Public Works Committee had planned to vote against the bill. Sen. Lincoln Chafee, R-R.I., was expected to break ranks with his GOP colleagues to oppose the bill as well.

That would have killed the legislation on a 9-9 split and embarrassed President Bush, who has been pushing for the measure for more than two years.

I guess the GOP has some hopes of bullying Chafee or a solitary Dem on that committee over the next two weeks.  Here are the Senators we need to make sure hear from us on this matter:

Lincoln Chafee (R-RI)
James Jeffords (I-VT)
Max Baucus (D-MT)
Joe Leiberman (D-CT)
Barbard Boxer (D-CA)
Thomas Carper (D-DE)
Hillary Clinton (D-NY)
Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ)
Barack Obama (D-IL)

I like our chances of killing this bill.

Harvard President's "innate ability" comments aren't blowing over

Harvard President Larry Summers is still in hot water over his comments last month suggesting that innate differences between men and women may be a primary explanation for why so few women are in top science and mathematics jobs. Apparently there was a rather tense faculty meeting on Tuesday:

More than 250 professors crowded University Hall on Tuesday for what old hands described as the most heated staff meeting since the Vietnam War. It was closed to the press except for The Harvard Crimson, the student newspaper, and professors recounted their remarks to reporters outside.

“Many of your faculty are dismayed and alienated and demoralised. There is a legitimation crisis concerning your leadership and style of governance,” Arthur Kleinman, chairman of the anthropology department, told Dr Summers.

“I have heard several outstanding colleagues say it is time to leave Harvard. I don’t believe that, but I fear others do,” Professor Kleinman said. “I ask you then to think hard about how who you are as president has taken us to this dangerous moment.”

The New York Times writes today (buried in an article in the Books section):

For 90 minutes on Tuesday night, more than 250 members of the Harvard faculty confronted Dr. Summers, with a number of them stating that he had besmirched the reputation of the university through a series of intemperate remarks and had wielded his power in unseemly ways. One attendee told The Harvard Crimson that it was "likely" the faculty would give a vote of no confidence for Dr. Summers when they meet in an emergency session Tuesday.

Tonight, at long last, the transcript of Summers' remarks has finally been released.  I haven't had time to look it over yet, but based on the excerpts I've seen, it looks like he said pretty much what it was reported that he said. 

I wonder if this is one of the reasons why the transcript has suddenly appeared:

Some professors called on their boss to release a full transcript of his controversial remarks at the National Bureau for Economic Research seminar on January 14, and alluded to unconfirmed rumours that Dr Summers also raised questions about differences among the races.

After all, Summers certainly doesn't want to fall in any deeper than he has already dug himself.

Another overeager press claim of evidence for life on Mars

Cover your eyes.  There's another overblown headline about life on Mars.  This one from Space.com:

Exclusive: NASA Researchers Claim Evidence of Present Life on Mars

Alas, don't believe it yet.  If you read the article, which, unlike the headline, is informative, you learn that this "evidence of present life" is nothing new, is indirect, and is still far from conclusive.  Furthermore, the reporter learned of this second-hand, and it concerns research that has not yet even been accepted for publication.  The author of the paper wouldn't comment to the reporter.  (Or else the reporter just wasn't patient enough to wait for her to return his call.)

The foundation for the claim is actually some very intriguing data that were released a few months back:  observations from a probe in orbit around Mars indicating that the presence of methane, water vapor, and water ice on Mars are geographically correlated.  Interesting stuff, but far, far from "evidence of present life on Mars."  The researchers in question apparently use this data, combined with their own recent studies of life in exotic locations on Earth, to argue that there may be life on Mars at this moment.  Since the paper is still under peer-review, however, we cannot judge the quality of their argument.  And more importantly, as far as I know, non-biological are not ruled out.

Given the explosiveness of the headline Space.com chose, this looks like another example of irresponsible science journalism.

Sadly, if this story gets picked up by the big news organizations, and I fear it will, people may start to get jaded by all these premature claims of discovering life on Mars.  The most famous recent example, of course, is the 1996 nationally-televised NASA press conference about the Martian meteorite that allegedly had fossil evidence of ancient life on Mars—a find that remains controversial to this day.

If the day comes when we actually do discover convincing, conclusive evidence that life exists or once existed on Mars, I'm afraid people will say, "So what?  Didn't we already know that?"  Or else, "Yeah right.  How many times have you tried to tell us that before?"

UPDATE (2-22-2005):  Two days later, NASA issues a flat denial.  I have a followup post here.

Bush Labor Department cuts Wal-Mart a deal on child labor violations

The Bush Department of Labor has given a sweetheart deal to Wal-Mart in a settlement of an investigation into child labor law violations.  The New York Times reported this story last weekend.  Wal-Mart pays a measly sum of $135K, and then gets a promise from the DoL of a 15-day warning in the event of any future investigations.

Fortunately, congressman George Miller (D-CA), has called for an investigation into this settlement:

"I am very concerned about this secret arrangement between Wal-Mart and the Bush Administration," said Miller, the senior Democrat on the House Education and the Workforce Committee. "This is a company that has been accused of a lengthy list of labor violations. Wal-Mart does not have the credibility to serve as an impartial investigator of accusations of labor violations against itself. I intend to find out how this arrangement was reached and, if appropriate, I will consider asking Congress to rescind the agreement if it cannot be justified."

Unfortunately, the Republicans who run Congress have shown no indication that they care to hold the Bush administration accountable for anything.

Nathan Newman and Labor Blog have more on this story here, here, here, and here.

19th Century attitudes in the 21st Century

The Los Angeles Times published an essay yesterday by Deborah Blum, "a Pulitzer Prize-winning science writer," revisiting the remarks by Harvard's president Larry Summers last month about the reasons for the relative lack of women in the sciences.  It deserves to be widely read, as she, unlike many others who have written about this subject over the past few weeks, gets right to the heart of the matter.

In Victorian times, scientists argued that women's brains were too small to be fully human. On the intelligence scale, researchers recommended classifying human females with gorillas.

The great 19th century neuroanatomist Paul Broca didn't see the situation as quite so dire, but he warned his colleagues that women were not capable of being as smart as men, "a difference that we should not exaggerate, but which is nonetheless real."

The president of Harvard University suggested that a lack of "innate ability" might help explain why women couldn't keep up with men in fields like math and science … oh, wait, that one happened just last month.

Hold for a minute — OK — while I dig out my corset and bustle.

If that sounds snotty, I mean it to be.

I, for one, am ready to leave the 19th century behind. Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers can apologize all he wants, but the fact is that — from a position of power — he felt comfortable speculating about women's inadequate intelligence and ignoring years worth of science that proved him wrong.

I don't find that excusable. Period.

...

In fact, when allowed, women have done excellent science for decades, even since the corset-and-bustle days. The physicist Marie Curie won two Nobel prizes — in 1903 and 1911 — for her work in France with radioactive elements. As one Stanford University professor assured her audience last week, "clearly, girls are as capable" as boys.

No argument there from me except this one: Why does that have to be said at all? How well must women perform before the question of our competence gets taken off the table? How many times do we have to make the point before people actually believe it?

I wonder when it was that male academics last organized a conference to explain that their brains worked as well as those of their female colleagues. Perhaps they should have. At least, if more attention was given to the limits of male brain function, Summers might not have made quite such a fool of himself.

If that sounds like a cheap shot, I mean it to be.

...

Does it strike you, as it does me, that Summers missed the important question? The one that goes like this: If men and women are basically equal in ability, why is there not a more equal balance of power?

That's complicated terrain, perhaps more than he wanted to take on. Still, I'd like to propose this simple scenario: One gender gained the power position and has been really, really reluctant to share the space.

...

To return to Marie Curie, you should know that the year she won her second Nobel Prize, the French Academy of Sciences refused to admit her as a member. Why? She was a woman. Curie did finally get her recognition from France in 1995 — 61 years after her death from leukemia. They dug up her bones and reburied them with other national heroes in the Pantheon. What an honor, huh? I'll bet that meant a lot to her.

And if that sounds angry, I mean it to be.

Before we congratulate the L.A. Times, though, note that they also published an essay with a very different point of view.  Alas, this essay, by Catherine Seipp of National Review Online (a doctrinaire conservative publication), is an incoherent ramble.  It starts out by criticizing critics of Summers' remarks with archaic stereotypes, then criticizes an NSF program designed to promote gender equity in math and science, then criticizes an unnamed female professor.  After a brief foray into skepticism about past discrimination, columnist Seipp continues the critical tirade, with her next targets being her mother, science teaching, and science journalism, before finishing off with another swipe at the NSF.

About the only consistent line-of-thought in this dismal piece is a negative portrayal of women who study or work in math and science, including, believe it or not, the columnist's own mother:

Even in 1950, no one stopped my mother from studying science, although (as she always said later) maybe they should have. She spent her spare time reading Milton in the library but insisted on majoring in science, to be different. A silly reason, obviously. But I'm afraid the only other she ever offered wasn't any better. The University of Manitoba science department had the best sports "yell," she said. Years later she was still able to recite it verbatim: "Hot damn, holy hell, have you heard the science yell? We want, God knows, more beer, less clothes."

Perhaps someone should have stopped Ms. Seipp from trying to publish this embarrassing article for all the world to see.

High praise for Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid

I have not had the heart to pay close attention to recent happenings in Washington.  But via The Carpetbagger Report, I hear that Senator Harry Reid, the new Democratic Minority Leader after the defeat of Tom Daschle last November, is receiving high praise for his deft work as an opposition leader.  What has he done so far?

• He has "put in place a level of discipline and unity that has rarely been seen in recent years," according to Senate Democrats.
• He has vowed not to be cowed by the inevitable GOP attempts to smear him:  "They're not going to frighten me. You know, they call me an obstructionist -- they're destructionists."  And he added, "I'm going to continue [working for 'fair, reasonable' legislation], no matter what personal attacks they make on me."
• He has inspired the other Senate Democrats to stand up to defend him from the GOP's smear campaign.  As reported in the Washington Post, "Each of Reid's 43 Democratic colleagues, plus a Democratic-leaning independent, signed a letter to President Bush, urging him to halt the "counter-productive attacks" against Reid by the Republican National Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee."
• This week, according to Carpetbagger Report, he was extremely successful in generating media attention to his and other Democrats' reaction to the GOP attacks:  "But I'm amazed how much press Reid's earned this week with his hard-charging fight against the GOP attacks. You don't suppose this has anything to do with Reid's new war room, do you?"

Carpetbagger Report finishes with this: 

I've said it before and I'll say it again: I may not agree with Reid on every issue, but I think he's the best Senate Dem leader since LBJ.

After less than two months on the job, that is truly high praise.