Are You "Of the Body" Brother? Have You Found Landru?

Al Fin has scored another coup, in interviewing a true believing follower of Landru. Yes, of course we know that Dr. McCoy is dead--no, we are referring to a more recently absorbed believer. We refer to Al Gore, prophet of the true faith, prophet of Landru.

Al Fin: Thank you for speaking with me today, Mr. Gore . . .

A.G.: Please, brother, call me brother. Are you of the body?

Al Fin: Well, (clears throat), brother, not really.

A.G.: You must go to Landru, and be absorbed. The survival of the earth depends on it.

Al Fin: Yes, uh, brother, but I wondered . . .

A.G.: You may not call me brother until you are absorbed into the body of Landru. You must go at once.

Al Fin: Yes, of course, Mr. Gore, certainly. First I would like for you to answer a few questions about your recent motion picture. Some blogs have reacted negatively to your picture, and the Washington Post printed an article featuring global warming skeptics. How do you feel about this opposition?

A.G.: The same way I feel about any moron who contradic--er, I mean to say, you will understand everything once you are of the body. Why are you still here? Why do you not go at once to Landru?

Al Fin: By all means, Mr. Gore, in a moment. Mr. Gore, some people are likening your film and your activities in the climate change movement to a propaganda campaign of religious proportions. Some feel that you are like a huckster revivalist, cynically using ordinary people's vague fears about the environment, and amplifying them to a revivalist frenzy last seen in the days of McCarthyism, and before that, the witch hunters.

A.G.: Son, I have friends who could make you disap--er, what I'm trying to say is, I am a true servant of Landru. If you do not go to Landru immediately for absorption, I'll be forced to call the Climate Police to take you directly to Landru. Once you are absorbed, all questions will be answered, and you will understand the peace of the body in Landru.

Al Fin: (looking around, notices guards closing in from three directions) Thank you very much, Mr. Gore. My readers will be very enlightened by this interview (runs in the one direction not occupied by guards).

Brave Feminists Rage, Rage, Against the Testicle!

Recent news stories about finding stem cells in the testicles of mice and humans has prompted a backlash from courageous feminist professors of Women's Studies at Balwynne College. Dr. Letisha Snotsberry and Dr. Nadine Bulsnort have graciously agreed to be interviewed by Al Fin, on this important issue.

AF: Thank you for speaking with me today. I wonder if you can each summarize your objections to the latest stem cell news, starting with Dr. Snotsberry.

LS: The issue is very simple, Al. Feminism in the western world is based upon the fact that all bad things in the world come from the human testicle. Testosterone is the maker of war, the source of domestic abuse, and the reason for the subjugation of women everywhere . . .

NB: . . . Not only that, but the testicle produces sperm, and sperm causes pregnancy which stops many women from achieving their potential. You have no idea how many women drop out of school, or even careers, just to have a sniveling little baby. It's uncivilized.

AF: But surely you can see the necessity of propagating the species, after all if there were no babies, the entire human race would . . . .

NB: . . . Don't give me that nonsense, Al. If women stopped allowing men to use them as babymakers, men would have to invent another way to have babies. Women are just too convenient . . .

LS: . . . Getting back to the topic of the human testicle, I think it's pretty clear that it already had two strikes against it. Now with the news of stem cells being derived from the human testicle--well it's simply too much! The testicle simply contains too many things--it could lead us all back to the patriarchy again.

AF: Excuse me, you are saying that because the human testicle is turning out to be the Swiss Army Knife of human organs, it should be downgraded somehow?

LS: Well, obviously, Al. For one thing, why do all men have two testicles?

NB: Exactly, Tish! It's total overkill. One testicle is plenty--maybe even too much. We've had discussions in national committee about a "Testicles-Optional Policy", or TOP for short. All newborn males would come under the policy, all overseen by a Bioethics Committee staffed by professors of Women's Studies from the local college or university.

AF: Wait a minute, Doctor. Are you suggesting neutering baby boys when they are born?

LS: Let me answer that. No, Al, you are making it sound worse than it is. The informed consent would clearly give the option of retaining one testicle or none. The parents are given a vote in the matter, along with each member of the Bioethics Committee. It is all quite democratic.

AF: But what would be done with the testicles that are removed?

The two professors exchange a quick glance, then check their watches for the time.

LS: Oh dear, Al, it seems to be getting quite late. We have another appointment--if you'll please excuse us . . .

NB: . . . Yes, we're in a big hurry Al, sorry.

AF: But surely you have some plans for the little boys' testicles?

NB: You're making too much of a big deal out of this, Al. We already told you that testicles are the source of everything bad in the world. What would we want with testicles? You seem to be insinuating . . .

AF: . . . No, not at all. I am simply curious . . .

LS: Thank you so much, Al. We have both really enjoyed this.

The professors walk away whispering furiously to each other.

AF: Well, ladies and gentlemen, I certainly appreciate the professors' sharing their thoughts. Apparently the human testicle is more controversial than I had thought previously. Please stay tuned for further developments.

How Will They Know When It's Over--When There Are No More Fat Ladies To Sing?

A cure for obesity would have serious repercussions. What would society do with fewer fat women and more beautiful ones? Quite a quandry that, what? This provocative newsrelease suggests the possibility of the end of obesity--with implications for diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, and above all, love. Ciliary neurotrophic factor (CNTF) promises to move mountains.

....CNTF protects against some of the effects of obesity.

It does this by activating an enzyme, skeletal muscle AMP kinase, which increases the ability of the body to metabolize fat and sugar. This work may lead to new strategies to reduce the risk of metabolic abnormalities associated with excess weight.

Dr. Steinberg's research shows how CNTF activates similar pathways to those stimulated by exercise.

"While hormones such as leptin were initially thought to be the cure-all for weight loss, they were later found to be ineffective in obesity due to the presence of proteins which inhibit their ability to stimulate fat metabolism," says Dr. Steinberg, a Canadian researcher at the University of Melbourne, Australia. "Fortunately, CNTF's effects on fat burning are maintained."

Nearly half of all adult Canadians are overweight or obese and 26 per cent of Canadian children and adolescents aged two to 17 are overweight or obese. From 1985 to 2000, 57,000 deaths in Canada were associated with overweight and obesity.

"The incidence of obesity in Canada has more than doubled over the course of the last 20 years and is a major contributor to cardiovascular risk factors including diabetes and elevated blood fats," says Dr. Ruth McPherson, Heart and Stroke Foundation spokesperson and lipid expert. "Physical activity and healthy diet are important lifestyle factors in combating obesity. This study provides new clues on the regulation of skeletal muscle metabolism relevant to the treatment of obesity."
Source.

Exercise and wise nutritional choices are best, of course. But look at society. Children are taught to be tolerant of what should never be tolerated, and to have self-esteem when they have done nothing to earn it. Children are being taught to be ineffectual and indiscriminate consumers of the garbage that is fed to them by the pseudo-intellectuals in education and popular culture. Why should they not also be indiscriminate consumers of sugar and fat--so that their bodies become as fat-filled as their minds? Where is the drug that will cure that condition?

Only joking, of course. Go ahead, take a bite of that cookie. By the time you finish, you will be feeling right as rain.

Dump the Guy--You're Better Off Without Him

Many of you have read this article in today's issue of The Economist. The article is slick and provocative, an excellent example of modern journalism. (it may be necessary to view a short advertisement before viewing the premium content)

....Girls get better grades at school than boys, and in most developed countries more women than men go to university. Women will thus be better equipped for the new jobs of the 21st century, in which brains count a lot more than brawn. In Britain far more women than men are now training to become doctors. And women are more likely to provide sound advice on investing their parents' nest egg: surveys show that women consistently achieve higher financial returns than men do.

Furthermore, the increase in female employment in the rich world has been the main driving force of growth in the past couple of decades. Those women have contributed more to global GDP growth than have either new technology or the new giants, China and India.... It used to be said that women must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily that is not so difficult. Source.

It is fascinating to contemplate the continuing need for strong "affirmative action" programs for women in academia and the workplace, in the face of such obvious female superiority of achievement. But I digress.

I doubt if many readers here are privy to the triple ultra premium content of The Economist. Probably few would even know where to find it. Fortunately, we at Al Fin read all, so that you do not have to. Here are excerpts from the 3UPC edition of The Economist:

...In fact, the only reason men are tolerated at all, is that women scientists have not quite perfected cloning. There is still a need for human sperm, and for now, only human male testicles are capable of reliably supplying that need. Currently there are projects supported by UNESCO and the EU, which will allow scientists to create sperm-producing human testicles in the laboratory from male embryos....

....Some male scientists have suggested that male humans are overrepresented on the high end of cognitive ability, particularly in math and spatial abilities. Fortunately, Liz Spelke has totally refuted that bit of obsolete patriarchal folk psychology. Once the effects of millenia of prejudice are allowed to wear off, women will outperform men in math and spatial abilities, just as they have in all the other fields of human endeavor....

....In summary, men are a total waste of resources, if not for sperm. It should be a top priority to, in the short term, create alternate sources of sperm. In the intermediate term, the perfection of cloning will allow the total elimination of any need for men at all--in the long term.

There you have it, the master plan. I would like to be able to provide links, but the triple ultra premium content is quadruple-encoded, preventing the use of ordinary links. I cannot help but think back to Al Fin's fascinating interview with two of the leading members of the movement referred to in the 3UPC article above.

For more detailed information on why men have become the disposable sex, consult Warren Farrel, Lionel Tiger, and Cristina Hoff Sommers.

Sex and Gender Differences in the Human Brain

While the scientific findings that male and female brains are anatomically and functionally different, statistically, is still quite controversial on a political level, on a purely scientific level it is becoming well established. Doreen Kimura is one of several prolific women cognitive scientists who are brave enough to buck the political storm in order to pursue scientific truth. Camilla Benbow is another.

In this article published in Sexualities, Evolution and Gender, Kimura plainly lays out the basic argument and evidence.

Many reliable anatomical brain differences have been found to differentiate men and women, from basic structures such as the hypothalamus, to differences in systems connecting the two hemispheres, such as the anterior commissure. Some of these have been reviewed in my book......We don’t yet know the significance of such differences for cognitive function, but to describe them as fiction is to deny the careful investigations of many respected scientists (e.g., Allen and Gorski 1990, 1991; Allen, Hines, Shryne and Gorski 1989; Allen, Richey, Chai and Gorski 1991). Although we now have a fair understanding of how brain systems work in mediating certain cognitive functions such as memory, language, and the like, we are still far from understanding how individual differences, the variation in such functions from one type of person to another, are mediated by the brain. However, it must follow that if two groups (such as males and females, left-handers and right-handers, or masculine and feminine gender types) differ reliably in some behaviour not simply dependent on physical differences, then their nervous systems must also differ in some way. Where else could the behavioural differences reside? This is just as true of learned as of unlearned behaviours. Brain differences underlying cognitive differences need not, however, be visible in simple structural features. They may take the form of differing organizational mechanisms not apparent by simply viewing the external brain.

This Scientific American article by Kimura presents the argument more methodically, and at greater length.

Men and women differ not only in their physical attributes and reproductive function but also in many other characteristics, including the way they solve intellectual problems. For the past few decades, it has been ideologically fashionable to insist that these behavioral differences are minimal and are the consequence of variations in experience during development before and after adolescence. Evidence accumulated more recently, however, suggests that the effects of sex hormones on brain organization occur so early in life that from the start the environment is acting on differently wired brains in boys and girls. Such effects make evaluating the role of experience, independent of physiological predisposition, a difficult if not dubious task. The biological bases of sex differences in brain and behavior have become much better known through increasing numbers of behavioral, neurological and endocrinological studies.

Read the entire article here, it is quite fascinating.

This is a brief list of scholarly research supporting the concept of "innate differences" in neuroanatomy and cognition in males and females. It is a very abbreviated list, but it serves to introduce the evidence. For a much longer list, consult this reference list from one of Kimura's articles. Scroll down to the list, and continue scrolling. There are 111 citations, and that list is far from complete.

I have posted on this topic before--here, here, and here.

The research continues, and the weight of research--new and old--points to significant cognitive sex differences, or if you prefer, gender differences or gender disparities.

Politically, this is not a popular topic, and politically inclined "scientists" will more easily cling to the political line. It is difficult to get funding for this type of research, and publishing in some mainstream journals is difficult. Even university presidents can fall from grace if they forget the politically correct stance, and deviate from it. This has not discouraged the very persistent women and men of cognitive science.

Neither men nor women are superior to the other as groups. Both groups have statistical strengths and weaknesses. A wise society will seek to understand its members, rather than try to sweep under the rug any scientific findings that are inconvenient to a dominant political viewpoint.

Addendum: This Guardian article by Simon Baron-Cohen contains a link to a test you can take to determine if you have a male brain or a female brain. Just looking at your genitalia or your chromosome map will not tell you that. Regardless of your chromosomes, your brain has a mind of its own, perhaps of a different gender than your body. Are you willing to find out?

Gender Gap and the Procrustean Bed

At the elite levels of sports and athletics, the gender gap is prominent and resists closure. There is an approximate 15 minutes difference in the best times of elite male marathoners, and elite female marathoners. Other sports show similar differences at the elite level.

Remember when it was predicted that intensive training for women in athletics would close the gender gap in performance? Some years ago, when the marathon was first becoming a competitive event for women, the rapid improvement in female times led some to predict that female performances would soon equal those of men in the marathon. This has not happened, and it won't. The current world record for women is 2:21, compared to 2:06:50 for the men, a difference in speed of about 10%. This same 10% gap is present across the distance running performance spectrum The reason for the performance gap is not that women don't train as hard as men. There are some important physiological differences between the sexes that can't be overlooked or overcome.

....The "typical" young untrained male will have an absolute VO2 max of 3.5 liters/min, while the typical same-age female will be about 2 liters/min. This is a 43% difference! Where does it come from? Well first, much of the difference is due to the fact that males are bigger, on average, than females. Us humans are all (sort of) geometrically similar, so heart size scales in proportion to lean body size . If we divide VO2 by bodyweight, the difference is diminished (45 ml/min/kg vs 38 ml/min/kg) to 15 to 20%, but not eliminated.

....It is important to make note of the fact that these differences are "on average". In reality, there are many women with significantly higher VO2max values than average men. However, if we look at the "best of the best", the differences persist. Using XC skiing as an example from here in Norway, the highest reliable values for VO2 max recorded in national team XC skiers are about 90 ml/min/kg. The very best Norwegian woman has been measured at 77 ml/min/kg, a 17% difference. So, while this woman will outperform 99.9% of all men, she will not out-perform the national team level males.

Read more here.

A number of studies have demonstrated that boys inherit a performance advantage in athletics, for both pre-puberty, and even more so in post-puberty.
The stopwatch does not lie, and whether in swimming, running, weightlifting, shot put, bicycling etc. the superior VO2 max and muscle mass of males prevents the gender gap in athletics from closing. The only way to narrow the gap is to train the elite athlete girls and confine the elite athlete boys in restraints to encourage muscle atrophy and loss of VO2 max.

In the cognitive realm, you see a similar phenomenon in the measures of spatial ability and mathematical ability at the elite levels. Although hope springs eternal that training will narrow the gap, as in athletics, sometimes it seems that the only way to narrow the gap is to train the elite girls and prevent the elite boys from training somehow.

One can be excused for wondering why all the excitement about male superiority in a small area of elite cognitive performance? The number of jobs involved is minimal. Certainly an intelligent businesswoman, female physician, or female lawyer, can make much more money than an elite mathematician, physicist, or engineer. What is all the near-hysteria about?

Average intelligence levels of men and women test virtually identical. A 1995 study examined the performance of more than 100,000 American adolescents on various mental tests. The study found that on average, females performed slightly better than males on tests of reading comprehension, writing, perceptual speed, and certain memory tasks. Males tended to perform slightly better than girls on tests of mathematics, science, and social studies. In almost all cases, the average sex differences were small.

And here is how developmental psychologist David C. Geary puts it:

There was no sex difference on the IQ test, but males showed significantly higher mean scores on the arithmetical computations, arithmetical reasoning, and spatial cognition measures. A series of structural equation models indicated that individual differences in arithmetical reasoning were related to individual differences in IQ, spatial abilities, and computational fluency. Moreover, the results suggested that the male advantage in arithmetical reasoning is mediated by the male advantages in both computational fluency and spatial cognition.

Women are graduating from schools of higher education at a rate of 6 to 4 vs. men. Women have achieved virtual parity in schools of medicine and law, and make up about 70% of graduate psychologists. Women are achieving phenomenally in the modern world, and if any gender should be worried about current trends, it is the males. A few men are holding on under siege, to a small sliver of cognitive excellence, and all that many psychologists can think of doing is to try to eliminate the small gap within that tiny sliver of cognitive performance.

It is a fascinating study in academic frustration--the data will simply not behave in a politically correct fashion. Many more research studies and outreach programs will be mandated, however, to erase that gap. But I can tell the gender psy-sers exactly how to erase the gap, and I will not charge for the valuable information. Simply prescribe pro-androgenic drugs that cross the placental barrier, to pregnant women in their second trimester, who are carrying female fetuses. Some additional androgenic supplementation may be necessary at different time periods after birth--and there will be potentially unpleasant side effects. Hirsutism, deep voice, skin blemishes, a certain manly aggressiveness, etc. But all of that would be a small price to pay to erase the gender gap in this one small remaining area of academics, no?

Just as there are elite women athletes who can defeat 99% of males in their sport, there are women mathematicians and physicists who are better at their trade than 99% of males. But they are not competing against those 99%. They are competing against the elite males, a very small number, but a significantly greater number than the number of elite females in those vocations. That is the hump that the gender Procrusteans are incapable of leveling. The relatively tiny number of male elites in a relatively tiny number of fields who will simply not go away.

Lawrence Summers paidwith his job, for making a very timid suggestion about possible biological gender or sex differences in that very small, elite sliver of academic professorship in a few top rank schools. The politics of this subject are absolutely deadly to anyone in a public position who lets down his guard for even a moment.

But why? I will deal with the real reasons for the excitement in a later posting.