tommyrot, I think the lawsuit is bullshit. Then again, I don't have much sympathy for the privacy of pedophiles.

ION, I have to read The Female Brain for work this summer. I'm really looking forward to it--should be a nice counterpoint to my beliefs about the impact of the environmental and social elements. Anyone read this book yet?

This is the sort of thing that keeps me reading Oliver Sacks.

His "Island of the Colorblind", read by him in his quirky, utterly unique voice, is one of my very favorite audiobooks. Fascinating.

They haven't got a mean, conniving, un-sweet bone in their bodies, and they're completely, physiologically incapable of imagining that any human being could ever wish harm on them or anyone else

One of the interesting things of that article is the connection between fear of other humans and social cues. Ordinarily I would not have said the ability to detect a faux pas and the ability to detect a murderer in one's midst had anything to do with one another; but they both hinge on threat-assessment, don't they? Just, in the case of the faux-pas, threat of something that's not directly physically harmful.

I'm also curious whether Williams Syndrome and Dostoevsky Syndrome have anything to do with one another -- both feature elfin faces (I think the latter is more distinctive); both feature hyperverbal abilities that at first mask serious mental retardation. But my google-fu is failing me on the latter term.

House: So does that mean no Cameron, Foreman or Chase, ever?

Anyone read this book yet?

Kristen, I know the Language Log writers -- linguists of various accredited stripes -- think Louann Brizendine is either an incredibly clever moron or a serious fraud. They've picked that book to pieces over the last year or so, bit by bit as they find things they dislike; the most damning one I can recall is instances of her making an assertion in the text and endnoting it, and then the endnote reference turning out not to support the assertion, or even necessarily be on the same topic.

[link]

That link will take you to all the times she's been mentioned on that blog.

Kristen, I know the Language Log writers -- linguists of various accredited stripes -- think Louann Brizendine is either an incredibly clever moron or a serious fraud. They've picked that book to pieces over the last year or so, bit by bit as they find things they dislike; the most damning one I can recall is instances of her making an assertion in the text and endnoting it, and then the endnote reference turning out not to support the assertion, or even necessarily be on the same topic.

Oh crap. Well I'm reading about it for school (it was one of the options for our mandatory book group when we get back), and I was hoping it might actually be interesting and plausible, even if controversial.

Sigh. Oh well, guess I'll read it with a bigger grain of salt than I'd planned.

Oh, here's a good summation/wrapup/disproof of the claim Birzendine is famous for making: that women communicate (speak more words, make more communicative gestures) than men. [link]

The top of the essay is experimental proof that she is talking out of her hat (or rather, sloppily citing others who are talking out of their hats); the bottom of the essay provides links to other specific Brizendine-unfriendly essays.

My parents are stuck at the airport, trying to go to New York. Two flights have been canceled on them.

Maybe NY has been sectioned off to make it a walled prison island.

Or did you mean the state?

I think it's raining. Not a prison.