Preposterous Universe

 
The content of their character

The University of Chicago doesn't take the day off for Martin Luther King Day, but here at Preposterous we are an independent outfit and can take off whenever we please. So today we celebrate MLK's legacy by just quoting from other blogs.

Pharyngula, via feministing, points to an article in the Boston Globe about the opinions of the President of the World's Greatest University.

CAMBRIDGE -- The president of Harvard University, Lawrence H. Summers, sparked an uproar at an academic conference Friday when he said that innate differences between men and women might be one reason fewer women succeed in science and math careers. Summers also questioned how much of a role discrimination plays in the dearth of female professors in science and engineering at elite universities.

Nancy Hopkins, a biologist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, walked out on Summers' talk, saying later that if she hadn't left, ''I would've either blacked out or thrown up."

Among the highly rigorous studies quoted by Summers were his own observations of his daughter, who named her toy trucks "daddy truck" and "baby truck." That pretty much cinches the case for genetic determinism as far as I'm concerned.

Elsewhere, Wonkette fills us in on how they celebrate in Mississippi.

We are honoring Martin Luther King Day as we always do, by staying in bed until noon and starting drinking at one. In fact, we like to think of every day as Martin Luther King Day. The folks in Mississippi, on the other hand, prefer not to think about MLK day much at all! If you -- as reader J. did -- call the Mississippi tax commission today (601-923-7000), you'll find that the office is closed " in observance of Robert E Lee's and Martin Luther King's birthdays." We love this. We imagine it was floated as a way to get the bigots to observe a federal holiday and avoid being targeted by Chuck D -- a compromise about as meaningful as the Missouri one, really. If this is the case, we wonder what other kinds of intrastate racial tit-for-tat deals might be in the works. What about, "you can date our daughters as long as we can whip you for it after?"

NOTE: Really, no shit: That is the number of the Mississippi tax commission.

Okay. Well. Let's give the Reverend the last word:

We cannot walk alone. And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" we can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

~ posted by Sean Carroll at 3:07 PM ~ link ~ ~ ~