Today’s Jewcy

The Jewcer

Two guys and a girl. Izzy, Joey and I spar over women in science, Larry Summers, and a new Margaret Wertheim article in the Times about gender bias in academic hiring. Here’s Izzy: “In the end, it matters less which team has more physics-savant outliers, and more whether people with the talent to further scientific knowledge are being prevented from developing that talent to the fullest. Summers got into so much trouble because he was making excuses for his school's hiring practices. Wertheim, on the other hand, isn't standing up for a questionable status quo; she's explaining how it got that way, and she's doing it as a method of tearing it down.” [Daily Shvitz]

25 questions for a Jewish mother: Judy Gold’s acclaimed comedy show is in previews from Oct. 4 – 15. Go see it! St. Luke's Theater

308 W. 46th St. New York, NY 10019. Telecharge.com or call: 212-239-6200. [Events]

Wikipedia good for the Jews. Honeycombed collaborative knowledge trumps Jew-hatred on Google. Ask Joey. [Daily Shvitz]

The World

Johnny Appleseed, RIP: Legendary (legendary?) reporter R.W. Apple of the Times has died. Apparently, his tab at Elaine’s came due: “With his Dickensian byline, Churchillian brio and Falstaffian appetites, Mr. Apple, who was known as Johnny, was a singular presence at The Times almost from the moment he joined the metropolitan staff in 1963.” What, no “Trollopian fringe?” [NYT]

More good riddance, maybe: The new leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq may have been taken out today by a U.S. raid on Haditha. Let’s hope: “Maj. Gen. Hussein Kamal, deputy Interior Minister in Iraq, told al-Arabiya TV in a phone call from Baghdad that officials were awaiting DNA tests to determine if a man killed in a recent raid was the new leader, Abu Ayyub al-Masri.” [J-Post]

BHL ages well: The rock star philosophe with the hair gets more protective of the United States as Europeans get more hostile towards it. Bernard Henri-Levy likes unfashionable good causes: “‘I believe,’ he declares, ‘in the principles of the French revolution and human rights.’ And these are based on Kant’s insistence that there is a morality; that some acts, like Saddam Hussein’s genocide, are evil. And if you really object, morality compels you to intervene. If the reasons for war in Iraq had been given truthfully and the country put back together again, one suspects today’s special guest would have supported military action.” [The Times Online]

Good press for the Jews: The Sudanese head of state thinks the Jews are behind the anti-genocide Darfur rallies. Credit well worth taking, even if it’s undeserved: “Omar Al-Bashir in his feeble attempt to divert attention from the ongoing genocide in Darfur caused by his own regime action continued his Jewish conspiracy theory rant and said, ‘It is clear that there is a purpose behind the heavy propaganda and media campaigns … If we return to the last demonstrations in the United States, and the groups that organized the demonstrations, we find that they are all Jewish organizations’. [Sudan Tribune]