Now researchers have documented what they call an Obama effect, showing that a performance gap between African-Americans and whites on a 20-question test administered before Mr. Obama’s nomination all but disappeared when the exam was administered after his acceptance speech and again after the presidential election.

Alexander Chancellor: According to new US research, modern parents praise and flatter their children to such an extent that they believe they are the cat's whiskers

“A Collection of Strange Beliefs, Amusing Deceptions, and Dangerous Delusions”

...women, who make up about half the online community, are singled out in more starkly sexually threatening terms -- a trend that was first evident in chat rooms in the early 1990s and is now moving to the blogosphere, experts and bloggers said.

One can appreciate the excitement and glamor of enchanting a member of the opposite sex, or watching another woman do so. But to mistake this for "power" reveals a profoundly androcentric view of the world.

There are many theories about prostitution. The theory devised by Marina Della Giusta, Maria Laura Di Tommaso and Steinar Strom is one of the few that involves partial differential equations.

And the women (like me) who try to ignore them. Or at least I did -- until the Kathy Sierra affair.

Gee, a tiny bit of the rampant bullshit that’s directed at women online finally makes the news. Maybe now all those idiots who tell us it’s not a problem and we shouldn’t let it bother us with get a clue?

The blogosphere is passionately debating Kathy Sierra’s death threats and misogynous bashing at the defunct meankids.org.

...each time women have become the most frequent users of a popular and brand new communication technology, narratives emerge in the mass media and eventually in the popular psyche about the dangers awaiting women who use technology alone.

A sociologist offers an anatomy of explanations. -malcolm gladwell

"We believe in a politics...dominated by evidence and argument. There is a big difference between a philosophy and an ideology on the right or the left. If you have a philosophy, it generally pushes you in a certain direction or another. But like all phil

From Inside Higher Ed, more on women in academia.

Slashdot has become the hub of the tech world. So why do many of its users seem like sexist dicks?

Lani Guinier on the 'meritocracy myth'

Malcolm Gladwell on generalizations