Category Archives: Science And Society

Political Commentary, Science And Society, Social Commentary, Space

Can Women Be Explorers?

9 Comments

Of course they can, despite this misreading of my exploration piece on Monday. History is replete with them, though there are far fewer of them than men (more now, with more opportunities for them). For instance, the “mountain men” who explored much of the west were, pretty much to a…man, men.

I recently received an email from someone who made an analogy between what I wrote and saying that a “white” boy could be an explorer as long as the school system didn’t “blacken” him. I find the analogy completely spurious. Briefly, race is not gender.

This was my point, and one that will no doubt set off a crowd of angry blank slaters who think that gender is purely a social construct charging up the hill to my mansion with pitchforks and torches.

There are such things as masculine and feminine traits. All people have some of both–they are androgynous to one degree or another. We define the two by noting that most men are (by definition) more masculine, and most women are more feminine, and viva la difference. So things that most men do, and few women do, are called masculine, and vice versa for feminine (and of course there is a wide range of things that are neither). When men cook, garden, sew, etc., (as I do, though I don’t sew much) they are indulging in their feminine side, and when women explore, go shooting, chainsaw trees, drive Indy cars (among other things) they are being sort of manly. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with either doing either. There’s plenty of femininity to Danica Patrick, from what I can see.

There are a number of evolutionary psychological reasons to think that an urge for exploration is more of a male trait, and the Economist piece gives one more. If such an urge is an attention-deficit issue, it’s indisputable that (at least as it’s currently diagnosed) the preponderance of occurrence of it is in boys. At least, it is they who are being medicated the most for it in the schools. There may be some girls who are being similarly abused who would also be good explorers, but girls can be good explorers even when they act like girls in the classroom, because it’s a lot easier for them to act like girls in the classroom (even if they have some male characteristics) because they are, well…girls. They still learn, but aren’t having their exploratory urges browbeaten out of them. So to the degree that we are inhibiting budding explorers with a misguided educational system which defines good behavior as feminized behavior, the boys are taking the brunt of it. I could have, when referring to the future Neil Armstrong, said “her,” instead of “him,” but it would have seemed a little strained in political correctness, not because Neil was a man, but because not that many girls are being diagnosed ADHD and getting Ritalin.

Media Criticism, Science And Society, Space

Rolling My Eyes

6 Comments

…at Keith’s brief “review” of my exploration piece:

The author of this article makes some odd, borderline misogynist, and mostly unsupportable claims (mixed with some valid points) as he rambles along trying to explain why people do or not explore. “Empirically obvious“? – Where’s the data to support this?

Where the support for the claim that it is “misogynist,” “borderline” or otherwise? Is he claiming that Cristina Hoff Sommers is misogynist?

What is “odd” about my claims?

And as for the data to support my claim, I provided it in the piece. Things for which there is an “innate human urge” are done by most, if not all humans. Most people don’t explore.

[Update a few minutes later]

One of the commenters over there gets it:

I didn’t see anything misogynist in Simberg’s piece – he’s just pointing out a potential cost of browbeating and drugging boys into behaving more like girls in school.

Exactly. If my piece was (mis)interpreted to imply that women cannot or should not be explorers, that’s absurd, and I would hope obviously so.

Science And Society, Social Commentary

Lust Is Blind

Is anyone surprised by this?

Research involving a group of male students found that their levels of the hormone testosterone increased to the same extent whether they were talking to a young woman they found attractive – or to one they didn’t fancy much at all.

After 300 seconds alone in the same room as a woman they had never met before, and in some cases did not find particularly attractive, the men’s testosterone levels of the hormone had shot up by an average of around eight per cent.

It reminds me of the wisdom of Billy Crystal’s character, Harry:

Sally: You’re saying I’m having sex with these men without my knowledge?
Harry: No, what I’m saying is they all want to have sex with you.
Sally: They do not.
Harry: Do too.
Sally: They do not.
Harry: Do too.
Sally: How do you know?
Harry: Because no man can be friends with a woman that he finds attractive. He always wants to have sex with her.
Sally: So you’re saying that a man can be friends with a woman he finds unattractive.
Harry: No, you pretty much want to nail them, too.

Science imitates art.

Philosophy, Science And Society, Technology and Society

An Effective Alzheimers Treatment?

9 Comments

Let’s hope so. Alzheimers is, to me, one of the worst diseases, because it steals not just your body, but your mind, to the point that you’re essentially dead while the empty husk metabolizes on. If it’s actually possible to reverse the progress of the disease, that’s huge news. But I wonder if in doing so, you’ve still lost some irretrievable memories? And if so, who are you?

Political Commentary, Science And Society

The APS Plot Thickens

24 Comments

The heretic Lord Monckton has a request today of the president of the American Physical Society:

The paper was duly published, immediately after a paper by other authors setting out the IPCC’s viewpoint. Some days later, however, without my knowledge or consent, the following appeared, in red, above the text of my paper as published on the website
of Physics and Society:

“The following article has not undergone any scientific peer review. Its conclusions are in disagreement with the overwhelming opinion of the world scientific community. The Council of the American Physical Society disagrees with this article’s conclusions.”

This seems discourteous. I had been invited to submit the paper; I had submitted it; an eminent Professor of Physics had then scientifically reviewed it in meticulous detail; I had revised it at all points requested, and in the manner requested; the editors had accepted and published the reviewed and revised draft (some 3000 words longer than the original) and I had expended considerable labor, without having been offered or having requested any honorarium.

Please either remove the offending red-flag text at once or let me have the name and qualifications of the member of the Council or advisor to it who considered my paper before the Council ordered the offending text to be posted above my paper; a copy of this rapporteur’s findings and ratio decidendi; the date of the Council meeting at which the findings were presented; a copy of the minutes of the discussion; and a copy of the text of the Council’s decision, together with the names of those present at the meeting. If the Council has not scientifically evaluated or formally considered my paper, may I ask with what credible scientific justification, and on whose authority, the offending text asserts primo, that the paper had not been scientifically reviewed when it had; secundo, that its conclusions disagree with what is said (on no evidence) to be the “overwhelming opinion of the world scientific community”; and, tertio, that “The Council of the American Physical Society disagrees with this article’s conclusions”? Which of my conclusions does the Council disagree with, and on what scientific grounds (if any)?

It will be interesting to see the response.