A distressed student recently asked my opinion on claims that men are more intelligent than women. I advised her to view such claims with skepticism, since definitions of intelligence are so subjective and tests are so artificial. For example, the Stanford-Binet IQ test was deliberately altered to keep girls from outscoring boys:

"On the first Stanford-Binet, girls were judged to be higher than boys in IQ by 2 to 4 percent at every age; in subsequent revisions of this and many other tests, the types of items were manipulated so as to try to bring about equal averages for females and males" [Block and Dworkin, pp. 461-462].

Many of the original proponents of IQ tests were eugenecists and racists. As recently at 1960,

"the Stanford-Binet [IQ Test] show[ed] four-year-olds three pairs of pictures, asking Which one is prettier? In all cases, the 'correct' picture has the classic Anglo-Saxon features, while the 'incorrect' one has features common to other ethnic groups, e.g., a wide, flat nose and thick lips in two cases, and a hooked nose in the last case" [Block and Dworkin, p. 461].

If one needs any more reasons to distrust IQ tests, consider that Marilyn vos Savant holds the record for highest IQ. Is this woman, who has described herself as the world's smartest person, a scientist or other leading thinker? No. Her best known accomplishment is writing a weekly column for Parade magazine.

For more on intelligence testing, see:

• The Mismeasure of Man by Stephen Jay Gould, W. W. Norton & Company, 1996.
• Mismeasure of Women: Why Women are not the Better Sex, the Inferior Sex, or the Opposite Sex by Carol Tavris, Touchstone, 1993.
• The IQ Controversy, ed. by Ned Block and Gerald Dworkin, Pantheon Books, 1976. Quotes above are from the chapter "IQ, Heritability, and Inequality" by Block and Dworkin. The above pictures are from p. 353.
• None of the Above by David Owen, Houghton Mifflin, 1985.

I'll also have more to say on men, women, and intelligence in later entries.

My recent use of scare quotes ("patriot") reminded me of some work I did a while back on automatic recognition of insulting messages. I believe I was the first person to write (or at least publish about) flame recognition software. For a humorous account, see "Of Flames, Fan Mail, and Software That Can Tell the Difference" (published in The Chronicle of Higher Education). I'm proud to say the work was also mentioned in Maledicta: The International Journal of Verbal Aggression.

For the boring technical details, see:

"Smokey: Automatic Recognition of Hostile Messages", Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI) '97.

Tom Cruise's denials of being gay have inspired some very witty commentary. Back in 2001, Cruise sued people and publications that claimed he was gay and flaunted his affair with Penelope Cruz. Writer Jeff Stryker responded in the San Francisco Chronicle by pointing out that "Tom Cruise and his girlfriend Penelope Cruz are flamboyant homophones". As far as I know, Cruise hasn't sued Stryker for this claim.

More recently, a panelist on Wait Wait -- Don't Tell Me! remarked that, every few years, Tom Cruise remakes himself, showing up with a new beard or sometimes facial hair. (Don't get it? See the Urban Dictionary.)

(I'm a strong supporter of sexual minorities and normally wouldn't mock people by suggesting they're gay, but I think a public figure who flaunts his love life and repeatedly comments on his sexuality is fair game. I also feel free to target possible hypocrisy. I once alarmed my young niece by announcing that hypocrites weren't welcome in our house. She's a Harry Potter fan and thought I said "hippogriffs".)

I recently bought a container of Dannon yogurt whose label cheerfully proclaimed: "Room in every cup for your favorite mix-in". Apparently, they now put 6 instead of 8 ounces of yogurt in the same-sized container for the same price. It never ceases to amaze and amuse me how marketers tout shortcomings as features.

I guess I shouldn't complain, since my own industry launched the phrase, "That's not a bug -- it's a feature" [definition 6]. Consider the iPod Shuffle advertising, which presents the lack of an LCD screen as a feature (supporting randomness). (If you'd like to reduce randomness and are a computer scientist, try the Martin Shuffle.)

Years ago, when shopping for a diamond with the man who is now my husband, I was amused to learn than a flaw in a diamond is called a feature. I hoped to see a diamond with a gnat on it, which would let me exclaim, "That's not a feature -- that's a bug".

I work and do research in social networks and thought I'd seen everything. Still, I wasn't sure whether I was reading satire or reality in the August Wired article about "aSmallWorld, the ultraexclusive social networking Web site favored by supermodels, celebutantes, and Eurotrash". The article describes the plight of user Talal Bin Laden who accidentally broke a rule and was shunted to the "nonexclusive sister site" aBigWorld, which he compares to being "evicted to hell".

(My previous favorite beyond-satire from social networks (that I'm allowed to talk about) was the orkut song [mp3], which will probably only be funny to you if you used orkut in its early months; otherwise, you can read useful background information at Wikipedia.)

Texan Larry Chad Northern has been arrested for allegedly driving his pickup truck over hundreds of grave markers at Camp Casey bearing the names of soldiers who died in the Iraq War. Northern is an Army veteran who was reportedly awarded a Purple Heart for his service in Vietnam, a Republican supporter, and president of a local gun club.

While I probably should be gleeful over a Republican getting such bad PR for his side, I am saddened.

Sources

• Photo by TexasLady and edited by patrioticliberal
• Army veteran arrested in destruction of soldier memorial (wacotrib.com)
• OfficialWire: Waco Man Arrested After Desecrating Memorial
• L. Jean Camp brought this story to my attention

So far, the focus of this site has been on politics and other websites. Those aren't the only areas I find beyond satire. I am, in no particular order:

• a professor
• a computer scientist
• a feminist
• a Jew
• a San Franciscan (for the past seven years)
• a wife
• a liberal

Despite (or perhaps because of) my membership in these groups, I plan to highlight egregious statements by my peers in each of these areas. Stay tuned!

[Note from Ellen: Phil is my father, and Sylvia is my mother. I'm proud of them.]

Last week, Sylvia came up with the idea that we should drive to Crawford, Texas where Cindy Sheehan, whose son was killed in Iraq, is seeking to meet with the President. I thought that it was a great suggestion and we drove there yesterday (Saturday).

As most of you must know, Ms. Sheehan has been camping outside of the President's ranch, he has refused to meet with her, she plans to stay for the rest of the month, she is gathering more and more supporters and this issue is receiving national news coverage.

Crawford is about 100 miles from Austin and it took us about two hours to drive there. Crawford has a population of about 700 and it is literally a one stoplight town. The town was probably heavily conservative even before the President came there and it certainly is now. At the corner with the stop light there is a large store selling GWB memorabalia.

Since most of the people were at the rally, we took a shuttle there and participated in the rally which had about 300 people. Several people made brief speeches, mainly people who had lost loved ones and felt that we have been lied to. There were a couple of performers. The second, Eliza Gilkyson sang an anti-war song which brought tears to my eyes. The song is called "Man of God", a sarcastic reference to President Bush.

I am most focused on the hypocrisy of the President on this, not to mention on so many other subjects. He is hunkered down on his ranch and will not meet with her. On Friday, he and his entourage drove past Camp Casey in a motorcade with tinted windows to a fundraiser at a neighboring ranch where they reportedly raised more than $2 million for Republican candidates. He has time to do this, but not to meet with a grieving mother who is seeking to ask him why we are at war.

On the July 25 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, host Bill O'Reilly said:

"The ACLU is also demanding that more pictures of the abuse at Abu Ghraib be released. The Defense Department is fighting that. Everybody knows those pictures incite violence against Americans. So why should more of them be fed to the press? We already know what happened at Abu Ghraib, and people are going to prison because of it. Clearly, more pictures of Abu Ghraib help the terrorists, as do Geneva Convention protections and civilian lawyers. So there is no question the ACLU and the judges who side with them are terror allies."

You can see the footage (which I first saw on The Daily Show) at http://mediamatters.org/items/200507260002.

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