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Girls! Girls! Girls!
Rich Galen Wednesday March 3, 2005
You've got to hand it to Larry Summers: He accepted a speech in which he was asked to be "provocative," he did it, in the words of the poet Robert Burns, "Not too wisely, but too well."
To review the bidding, Dr. Summers, who is the President of Harvard, more-or-less said that the gals just don't have the grey matter to compete with men in math or engineering.
Sharp-eyed readers will remember the cogent MULLINGS on the subject: Larry Summers or Larry Fine? from January 19, 2005.
More than a month after that speech, the debate roars on.
For instance, the cover of Time magazine, this week shows a woman, dressed in a lab coat, with a pair of calipers measuring her head. The stories regarding women and left-brained activities include:
- Who Says a Woman Can't Be Einstein?
- Steering Girls into Science; and
- The Iceland Exception: A Land Where Girls Rule in Math
SIDEBAR:
Ironically, on Time magazine's webpage - remember this is the Women-in-the-Sciences issue - there is a teaser for an on-line article titled, "Pretty Crafty: Women are sewing at home to make their own fashion statements" complete with links to websites named "getcrafty.com" and "craftster.org."
One wonders if the right brain knows what the left brain is doing over there at Time?
END SIDEBAR
Yesterday, the International Herald Tribune ran a piece by NY Times business writer Claudia H. Deutsch about a book by a guy named Warren Farrell.
Mr. Farrell's thesis is that women are paid less than men but it's their own fault. Farrell says that one of the reasons women make less is because they work less.
Women, Deutsch writes, "tend to put in fewer hours than men - no small point, he says, because people who work 44 hours a week make almost twice as much as those who work 34 hours and are more likely to be promoted."
The fault, dear Bruta, is not in our stars �
GOOFBALL ALERT
Yesterday Manning, Selvage & Lee colleague Ginny Wolfe (a girl who, I suspect, makes WAY more than me, as well she should) and I were supposed to be on the 7:20 AM flight from Washington Dulles airport to Spokane, Washington via Salt Lake City.
Unfortunately for us, I had thought - nay, I had insisted - that we were leaving from Reagan National where we rendezvoused at about 6:15 AM.
Fifty minutes and fifty-eight dollars later we stood at the Delta counter to check in for the next non-stop to Salt Lake at 3:05 PM. We could work out of the American Airlines Admirals Club (Delta has no Crown Room at Dulles), so it really was not that big a deal.
Except that Delta has a six-hour rule: You cannot check in for a flight more than six hours in advance. I asked how it was I could check in from my house - sitting by myself in my den - 24 hours ahead of time, but only six hours at the actual airport where a Delta employee can look at me, examine my picture ID, and decide whether I am, in fact, the person I said I was.
The counter agent didn't know the answer, but she did know the rule: "See you at 9:05."
So we sat - like refugees from one of those countries you're not certain actually exists and, if so, where - against the windows with our bags stacked around us for two hours.
Other refugees, thinking we must be landsman, began to gather around us, each with 73 cardboard valises held closed with twine.
Much singing and dancing, and the production of unidentifiable ethnic dishes over open campfires ensued until we, reluctantly, had to leave to take our places at the Delta do-it-yourself-check-in kiosks.
All right that last part, I made up, but as to the business of having gone to the wrong airport?
That's a guy thing.
On the Secret Decoder Ring page today: Links to Time magazine (with the magazine cover in question) and the International Herald Tribune articles; a short discussion of Brutus; a quick explanation of the right brain/left brain business, and the usual photos.
--END --
Copyright © 2005 Richard A. Galen
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