With a lot of races, the differences in top performance between men and women are small enough that you can chalk them to the fact that more men practice sports. For example, the 100 meter records are 9.6 for men and 10.5 for women. Not really that surprising. For most of human history large, fast predators have been abundant and firearms did not exist. Selective advantage for fast running would have been pretty much equal for both sexes and selective pressure exerted by predators strong and sustained.

Does anyone know how many Olympic sports there are where the best of the women are better than the worst of the men? Wouldn't that be a lot, or even most of them?

When I picked it, I never imagined that anyone would say it out loud. You didn't? Maybe my mind's just permanently lodged in the seventh grade, but "Majikthise" just can't sound like anything other than what it sounds like.

It’s touching that the gender that totes its gonads around in little bags outside of the body is so solicitous of the gender that keeps its family jewels stowed safely inside the abdomen. Being of the gender that keeps it's family jewels in a rather inconvenient external purse, I've envied mammals such as dolphins and manatees that stow theirs away internally. Spermatogenisis in mammals requires a lower temperature than that inside the body, but obviously there is an engineering fix: rete mirabile countercurrent heat exchangers that keep marine mammal's internal balls cool. Clearly, they, and not we men are the products of intelligent design. Even marsupials have a better design: their balls are in front of their penis, so they'll never sit on them. Some, like kangaroos can even retract them if they're in a situation (like fighting) where they might be injured. That's one beef I've got with the "intelligent" designer. Another is that if he can design the whole universe with all the cool and amazing things in it, couldn't he he/she have come up with a wipeless asshole?

Better cancel the tour de France. Men don't belong on bicycles for obvious reasons. Also men's gymnastics: parallel bars and pommel horse are just accidents waiting to happen.

My God. Here is yet another example of the kind of depravity we've come to expect from our horrible socialist neighbors to the north. Their womenfolk have become monsters! No doubt these slatternly canuks followed this ugly scene with the most debased, orgiastic goings-on imaginable, probably involving some sort of Canadian animals. Musk oxen perhaps. Pray for Canada.

Yeah, I thought it was touching how pilot/entrepreneur/musician/software engineer/economist/political philosopher Joe Stack provided so well for the future of his wife and kid. That bazillions of libertarian, tea-bagger, tax revolt patriots are all over the web lauding this fool as an “American hero” does not bode well for the rest of us in the reality-based community.

What I find rather more disgusting even than the cheesy “journalistic” subterfuge is the assumption on the part of everyone involved with this little piece of dreck, from Mr. O'Keefe and Ms. Giles to the 100% white audience it was intended for, that black people are all characters out of '70s era blaxploitation movies. Doubtless Mr. O'Keefe would have included the themes from Shaft or Superfly had he known who Isaak Hayes or Curtis Mayfield were but he's probably limited to patrio-kitsch C&W. We knew that Obama's election would bring the racists crawling out of their tea bag pupae. What's shocking is that they're getting thick as mosquitoes in muskeg.

Make Al Gore pay for it. Oh, let me guess. One nasty winter on the East Coast proves that there's no such thing as global warming, right? If America's government, financial center, and particularly, media hub were located in the Pacific Northwest we'd be inundated with stories about the bizarrely warm weather this year. We had our smowmageddon last year (the snow collapsed the awning on my house), and this year the winter here (Washington Cascades) has been more like that typical of the Northern California coast. Weather is one thing, climate another. But then what's the use trying to explain anything to “conservatives”.

I'm fine with cutting anyone off that happens to live where storms, earthquakes, fires, etc. occur. Provided we actually cut everyone off. We can start for instance with rich assholes who think they need vacation homes on barrier islands. http://marine.rutgers.edu/mrs/education/COAST05.htm

a pity Well yes. Having to fight for pathetically banal crumbs like being able to work in the Fort Benning motor pool or the Norfolk naval station commissary is pretty fucking sad. Not to mention gay marriage or gay vicars. Seriously, soldiery, marriage and priestcraft: the very antithesis of radical or progressive anything. Ridiculous.

It's time Obama just get on with it and do it. He's the C in C. Truman ordered racial integration of the armed forces and it was done. The military takes orders and carries them out. That's their job. They coped with Kaiser Wilhelm, Hitler, Tojo, Saddam Hussein, and the like - surely they won't be defeated by a few queers. If the Republicans don't like it, fuck 'em: no one owes them a thing, least of all the military whom the Republican armchair warriors have now saddled with two hopeless wars. In fact, if for no other reason, the armed forces should be integrated just to make the wingnut crybabies crap their diapers.

Mr. Angry Penis had better change his attitude if he wants to have Ms. Sugarwalls haul his ashes.

Phantom, you're not stupid, you're quite capable of forming your own opinion regarding global warming without the help of FOX News. The literature is out there, it has not been concealed. Virtually all peer reviewed publications that have any bearing on the matter can be accessed online. You may have to pay for the pdf files but the abstracts are free. Google scholar is an excellent literature search tool and you don't even have to get up out of bed to use it. You can find any book via WorldCat and have your local public library put it in your hands with interlibrary loan. If you have access to a university library or someone you know can lend you the off-campus password (yeah it's not exactly cricket) you can search with SCOPUS or ISI web of science or a dozen other search engines. A portal for climate change related technical literature is here: http://biblio.pacinst.org/biblio/index.php The National Science Foundation has some stuff on climate change: http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/climate/intro_background.jsp Think for yourself. The folks at FOX News might be right but you'll never know if you don't do some homework on your own.

In the climate change denialist minds there exist only two possibilities: 1. Mr. bin Laden is part of the global conspiratorial cabal of leftist scientists, unreconstructed Marxists, America haters, cap and trade profiteers. scaremongering journalists, Al Gore, and assorted other eco-pirates who are fully aware that there is no such thing as human caused climate change and are spreading the lie that there is for their own deeply cynical and loathsome purposes, or 2. Mr. Bin Laden is sincere and is part of the mob of whining dimwitted suckers, hippies, hand-wringing, chicken-little, tree-hugging eco-pansies who have bought the grift sold to them by group 1 above. The denialists are smarter than you or I. Their bullshit detectors are much more sensitive than ours. They know that worrywart “scientists” notwithstanding there is no evidence for nor reason for concern about global warming until the shores of the Arctic Ocean and the Antarctic continent are lined with cacti. Relax, turn up the thermostat, and tune back to FOX News. We're all going to be fine.

After the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building bombing in OK City and the events of 9/11/01 this sort of shit is no longer funny. I assume there is some sort of statute regarding misrepresentation when entering federal buildings that applies in this case. They should get the book thrown at them for that, if for nothing else. The innocent Nixon years of jolly Republican “ratfucking” pranks (google Donald Segretti) are over.

The "Li'l Buggers" would seem to have made a mistake quite befitting dim-witted Young Republican punks too callow and ignorant to recall the Committee to Re-elect the President (CREEP) swine from the Watergate incident. Or perhaps not- Charles “Chuck” Colson and G. Gordon Liddy parlayed their felonies into very successful careers as neofascist blowhards. These junior CREEPs are already heroes among the brain-eating zombie set that comprise your typical latter day “conservatives”. James O'Keefe struck pay dirt with his ACORN video. It was the ideal instrument to get the wingnut dogs baying. He shows us a chubby black woman ACORN employee with more cleavage than we need to see and enough knowledge of legal minutia to know how to perpetrate crime but stupid enough to advise a “pimp” on how to do so. You know, something like the colored fellow that's in the White House right now. Then Mr. O'Keefe throws some meat to the hounds, working them up to a racist frenzy, barking and slobbering from their flews, in the form of him prancing around in a pimp getup right out of 'Superfly'. James O'Keefe. Remember the name; he's a young man on the way up. He's got a real shot at the conservative pantheon.

CTD- Listening device can mean a lot of things. So you come home unexpectedly one afternoon to find your wife and some guy naked in your bed and you'll believe them when they say he's just the local gynecologist making a house call and that he usually works naked. Look, since you seem to be an honest guy I'll do you a favor: Contact me via Lindsay and I can get you a bridge going for a super low fire sale price.

Sadly, I'll second A. Marcotte. And I say sadly because I can't believe after all these years we're still fighting the same fucking battles with the same ghastly, "conservative" zombie armies. Jacksmith- Dude, seriously, H1N1 a weaponized influenza virus? I don't know where to start, but you might start with a basic epidemiology text.

Hey, New York tap water has to pass through old buildings' lead pipes. I've got water that tastes great but tests just under the legal limit for radon. I drink it all the time so I should be well protected against fallout in the event of nuclear war. Another point of the campaign: the UK government, through the National Health Service (NHS) actually pays for homeopathy. Which is why health care is, and should be, (the horror!) rationed. Some cures are are hopelessly expensive or are, for one reason or another, just plain hopeless. Insurance companies ration the care they pay for and so should any government plan. Duh.

I didn't really know what homeopathy was, so I had to look it up. Jesus. Industrial strength stupid. When I hear "alternative medicine" I pretty much turn to any other subject, figuring I'm not here on earth nearly long enough to waste time with woo. So I wikipedia the thing and sure enough there's a whole trainload of goo-goo bullshit there which I'm not going to read all the way through because it isn't worth the time even if I knew I were going to live to be older than Methuselah. Enjoy your glass of New York City tap water which as I recall, is very good. If there actually were anything to homeopathy, the nasty effluvia that passes for tap water in many western cities, e.g. San Diego, should make those places disease-free zones.

What a cute idea! We should go further and, in the spirit of chalking messages to Tojo and Hitler on bombs, we should stamp little crosses on U.S. force's bullets so that the dirty little Muslim rug riders get the idea. The Israeli army could put little stars of David on theirs, and the Taliban, Hamas, etc., could put little Arabic inscriptions on their bullets, like for instance: "In the name of God, the Merciful the Compassionate eat lead, Christian pig eaters". I have no particular objection to credulous religious fanatics killing each other with weapons inscribed with atavistic magical incantations. Unfortunately however, religious wars are generally waged with excessive ferocity and those of us who don't share the various zealot's enthusiasms for their very special Sky Fairies are often killed in the crossfire. The Bible explains this world better than anything else, how we squash God's image and quench our consciences with sin, and how God's gracious redemptive plan unfolded through history. Why is it that true believers can use ordinary language for normal stuff like say, explaining how to bake a pie or replace a fan belt, but go into orbit with mumbo-jumbo turkey gobbling when they get on the subject of religion?

the two most offensive words in this culture - Jesus Christ You're playing the martyr card. That's getting old. Like about 2000 years too old.

What's really sad is the fact that the observation that anyone who has skin any darker than your typical Italian and has any trace of African-American English in his/her idiolect can't be elected for higher office, is in fact banal and unremarkable. White politicians crank up the Southern accent until they're almost unintelligible and it's a mark of a proud heritage, while outside black-dominated congressional districts a black politician using any conspicuously “black” speech pattern will be mocked for using “eubonics” and lose any chance of winning an election. It's particularly sad because the one group of people in the United States that was (and in many ways still is) denied access to written language developed exceptionally rich traditions of spoken language. Black American English is part of the common heritage of all Americans and in a sense of all English speakers. If black American English is somehow debased language, what are we supposed to make of the impoverished tongue-tied twang our last president tried to communicate with?

Make that "heart of hearts".