The most recent 20 comments posted to Electrolite by Jess Nevins:

"If only 13 percent of Physics PhDs are female, as Physics Today claimed"

The particular article is "What Works for Women in Undergraduate Physics?," Physics Today, v56n9, Sept 2003.

A relevant quote which "Vox Day" somehow--coincidence, surely--neglected to mention:

"A "leaky pipeline" explains part of the problem. Judging from figure 1, women opt out of physics at every step up the academic ladder. Pacific University physicist Mary Fehrs and Roman Czujko, director of the Statistical Research Center of the American Institute of Physics, found that those women who chose not to remain in physics had performed on a par with their male colleagues who stayed in the field."

So it's not that women -can't- do physics, as "Vox Day" claimed. It's that they don't want to, which is something entirely different. No surprise to thinking human beings, naturally, but it may come as a revelation to "Vox Day."

(Why don't they women want to get the advanced degree in physics? Could it have something to do with male sexism in the higher sciences? Nature, May 22, 1997 has an article in which reviewers on peer review journals "persisted in overestimating male achievements and underestimating female performance," but that Journal Citation Reports (how often articles are cited and used by other authors, and a yardstick not dependent on the gender of the author) "found women to be virtually equal in productivity and creativity.")

I'd say that one of the things (in addition to all of the preceding) which makes Moore great and has informed the wonderfulness that has been Supreme, Top Ten, Tom Strong, Promethea and League is his knowledge of the pop culture archetypes and icons that lie at the root of superheroes. When Moore writes Tom Strong, he's taking the best concepts of the pulps and using them to make an evocative character. When Moore writes League, he takes characters from 19th century literature who we're all familiar with, on one level or another, and reimagines them in such a way that they're recognisable and faithful to the core texts, but they speak more to a current audience.

Leave aside the merits of the gun control argument for a moment.

Who says it would work?

When has prohibition of any kind worked in this country? It didn't work with alcohol, it isn't working with drugs, it's not working with kiddie porn--why would it suddenly work with guns?

Wouldn't the time and energy spent on fighting for gun control be better spent on issues which could actually be won?

(Note: I -want- to be wrong about this. I -want- to believe that gun control could work. But I don't).

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