The Lord Works in Mysterious Ways

This little news item wasn't front page, second page or even tertiary page filler, but it is interesting, nevertheless. Everytime some calamity strikes an infidel nation (such as when the space shuttle broke apart over the US, with pieces coming down in Palestine, Texas), the Musilim media attempt to pole-vault over each ever-more-radical cleric to see god's hand in the disaster. Yet, when, on the last day of Hajj, the holiest activity that a Musilm can undertake, the rains become so great that a flood forms and takes the lives of 29 members of the faithful, well, we hear precisely...nothing. No Hand of God. No Spiteful Wrath. It was just a flood, they say. Did anyone tell the Commanders of the Faithful in Aceh that sometimes floods happen?

Another thing that has been on my mind recently is directly relevant to my own experience as an alumnus of the Big H. When the President of the Big H said that maybe women were underrepresented in the sciences because of biological differences, it created a firestorm (but you knew that). Some women were so angry that they left his off the record presentation (but you knew that too). What you might not have known is how pervasive this attitude is at Harvard. The motto could become "ridicule first, understand later" -- but only for perceived threats to the status quo. It's interesting that at Harvard, history is alive in a way that it is not in the wider culture. In a way, the place is almost the logical (bastard) extension of the claim that to forget history is to repeat it. There, history is constantly thrown against present reality to justify speech codes, tolerance codes, informal clique affiliations. I don't know if people there really fear a return of slavery or Joe McCarthy, but I know that they do fear a return of the 50's. Maybe that's the real reason that women were so scared of Summer's remarks, they fear that under Bush the country may once again become a place right out of Leave it to Beaver.

I don't believe it, but they do.