Unless you live in a cave, you know that Lawrence Summers, the president and chief penitent, of Harvard, let it slip that he thinks men are innately better at math then women. It just might be, he said at an academic conference, that the sexes are wired differently
Writes Clyde Haberman: Mr. Summers has spent the better part of the last two weeks apologizing. Even so, his original comments - intended only to provoke discussion, he said - continued to resonate when Intel announced the 40 finalists in its prestigious science contest for high school students.
Women accounted for 15 of the 40. That is not a dazzling percentage, perhaps, but it's none too shabby, either.
The eye opener, though, was New York City, where four teenagers made the cutoff. Three - count 'em, three - were young women.
A scientist might caution against sweeping generalizations based on such a small sample. Still, the performance of these city kids suggests that women are more than able to strut their stuff in areas widely perceived as male domains.