Entries for April 2007

The resignation in disgrace of Marilee Jones, Massachusetts Institute of Technology's admissions director, is a tragedy for several reasons not widely reported elsewhere.

Two reports out this week are sure to fire up the debate over the gender pay gap and whether women still face real discrimination in the workforce or are making personal choices that lower their pay when compared with that of men.

Bizarre as it may sound, women sometimes fare better under Middle Eastern dictators than under so-called democratic regimes in the region.

Several points on the impact of the Supreme Court's momentous late-term abortion decision. In the 5-to-4 Carhart decision handed down two days ago, the court's new conservative majority declared a certain late-term abortion procedure illegal even though it has no exception for the "health of the mother."

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat, said the handgun massacre at Virginia Tech should spur a dormant national debate about what she calls common-sense gun control laws. One can hope. But the only thing that distinguishes the mass murder in Blacksburg from what feels like an almost daily onslaught of news reports about single, double, and even triple murders by criminals or mentally unbalanced citizens with firearms is the magnitude of the death toll. And so far even that has failed to ignite such a debate.

I have seen the future of biotechnology and it is an animal-cruelty-free era. Over the weekend, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) gave its Henry J. Heimlich Award (he of the famed Heimlich maneuver) for Innovative Medicine to a researcher who spearheaded use of human tissue for drug testing and medical research.

I must admit I'm shocked both CBS Radio and MSNBC have fired Don Imus. Not that his reference to the Rutgers University women's basketball team in degrading terms wasn't reprehensible. But I believed down to my last axion and dendrite the networks would hang onto him as long as he made them money.