Two Things That Make Me Grumpy
1.) Harvey C. Mansfield just wrote a book entitled "Manliness." It's all about . . . well, I'm not entirely sure. It seems to be about how 'I Sure Miss Those Good Old Days when Men were Men and Women were Women,' or something along those lines. Deborah Solomon interviewed him for the weekly New York Times article "Questions For . . . " Here is my favorite snippet.
Q: Were you sorry to see Harvard’s outgoing president, Lawrence Summers, attacked for saying that men and women may have different mental capacities?
A: He was taking seriously the notion that women, innately, have less capacity than men at the highest level of science. I think it’s probably true. It’s common sense if you just look at who the top scientists are.
Me: AAARRRRRGGGHHHHH ::implosion::
The NYT review of his book can be found here. The sarcastically edited text of the interview can be found here. The NYT makes you pay for its articles after a week; the only text I could find was on a grumpy feminist blog.
2.) The book Radical Evolution can be found on the shelves of the Science and Nature section of the bookstore I work at. While taking inventory yesterday, I took the book down and started to leaf through it. Out fell a religious tract, of the inflammatory, offensive, 'You, you unsaved sinner, are going to HELL' variety. This bothers me on a number of levels.
a) John's rant says it all.
b) Since when is belief in evolution evidence of lack of salvation? What the hell?
. . . and now, for the punchline . . .
c) The book isn't even about biological evolution. It's about futuristic technologies, from genetic engineering to nanotechnology, and how they might affect us as humans. It just happened to have the word 'evolution' in the title. Add 'downright stupid' to the list of adjectives describing whoever did this . . . Grrrrrrrrrrrrr.
Q: Were you sorry to see Harvard’s outgoing president, Lawrence Summers, attacked for saying that men and women may have different mental capacities?
A: He was taking seriously the notion that women, innately, have less capacity than men at the highest level of science. I think it’s probably true. It’s common sense if you just look at who the top scientists are.
Me: AAARRRRRGGGHHHHH ::implosion::
The NYT review of his book can be found here. The sarcastically edited text of the interview can be found here. The NYT makes you pay for its articles after a week; the only text I could find was on a grumpy feminist blog.
2.) The book Radical Evolution can be found on the shelves of the Science and Nature section of the bookstore I work at. While taking inventory yesterday, I took the book down and started to leaf through it. Out fell a religious tract, of the inflammatory, offensive, 'You, you unsaved sinner, are going to HELL' variety. This bothers me on a number of levels.
a) John's rant says it all.
b) Since when is belief in evolution evidence of lack of salvation? What the hell?
. . . and now, for the punchline . . .
c) The book isn't even about biological evolution. It's about futuristic technologies, from genetic engineering to nanotechnology, and how they might affect us as humans. It just happened to have the word 'evolution' in the title. Add 'downright stupid' to the list of adjectives describing whoever did this . . . Grrrrrrrrrrrrr.