The idea that autism is a uniquely masculine trait is the theory that served as the scientific foundation for the presentation Larry Summers made that outraged the women scientists and caused that huge scandal in the media.

Autism is genetic, autism is uniquely male, autistics often have freaky math ability, scientists need to be good at math, therefore women have a genetic inability to be successful in science.

That was Larry Summers exact chain of reasoning.

So if this discourse on autism and gender makes you feel victimized, perhaps you should take up your concerns with Larry Summers.

"Maybe the male nerds like Larry Summers will stop telling the female nerds that female nerds don't really exist, for example"

Please provide a reference for this BS statement.

Larry Summers based his argument that women are genetically incapable of being successful in science on the link between autism and masculine gender, combined with the link between autism and freaky math ability.

So Summers was telling an audience of female nerds that female nerds are pretty much ruled out by the genetics of autism.

Since I am a female nerd with freaky math ability and partly autistic, he was telling me that my existence is scientifically dubious.

Last year attended a dinner party with some male physicists who work at Caltech and I had this same kind of Larry Summers argument crammed down my throat by them.

If women can't do math, then either I don't exist, or I'm not a woman.

I taught myself differential geometry from a book, for fun. So it's a little late to claim that I can't do math.

That's the way I have experienced this demeaning debate.

Since I am partly autistic, I have had a real hard time dealing with it. A really, really, really hard time.

It's been traumatizing for me, literally.

Highly gifted kids share many traits of Asperger's, but they are not autistic. It takes someone familiar with both conditions to make an accurate diagnosis.

I took a test for Asperger's and I scored well within the range.

Maybe the autism researchers need to take a closer look at highly gifted kids.

And maybe you need to have a talk with Larry Summers.

I know a physicist whose son has severe autism. The physicist himself is highly gifted and shows even more traits of Asperger's than I show.

So it's very tempting to see autism as a continuum with some genetic relationship to extreme intellectual skills combined with a marked deficit of social skills.

Many of the women physicists I know who are as socially weird as I am also have autoimmune illnesses similar to mine.

I think that's kind of interesting. Someone smart should look into that, to see if there's a real correlation there.

Using caffeine before exercising quadruples your natural protection against skin cancer.

Salon could use a science reporter, I swear.

There's a lot of interesting science out there that has nothing to do with gender or global warming.

A place to find out about good TV. So far it looks very promising. Thank you.

I'm starting to understand why the subject of Pushtun nationalism only gets raised on the Daily Show by Musharraf and not by anyone else in any other venues.

Perhaps the "serious" people are afraid to bring it up. And I suppose it's way too complicated a topic for the American left, which is why Jon Stewart totally dropped the ball when Musharraf tossed it to him on the show.

By the way, I can't believe Obama has the nerve to hold a fund raiser in West Hollywood. He's the only Democratic candidate, to my knowledge, who has yet to promise to stop the DEA from raiding dispensaries.

If he's trying to position himself as the Democratic anti-medpot candidate, then perhaps his handlers should keep him OUT of places like West Hollywood, where a large fraction of the population would be dead without cannabis to keep down their HIV meds.

He should move his fundraiser to San Diego, where the local political leadership WANTS the DEA to come in.

I think he's just trying to prove he's a big man. He's trying to look dominating, that's all.

I don't believe he really understands what's going on in Afghanistan or Pakistan at all. I dount that he's never even cracked a single "serious" book on the subject.

And "Charlie Wilson's War" does NOT COUNT.

He's just trying to sound tough, and we've already had enough of that, I think.

So after careful consideration, my vote is split.

I do believe we're only going to be able to get Bin Laden by relieving Musharraf of any culpability in the process.

But I also support seriousness and scholarship, and I think Obama is putting on a big macho show without any real information to back it up.

You might think about making sure that your insistently nagging wine ads don't end up next to a domestic violence article.

Given the enormous extent to which alcohol contributes to domestic violence, you're kind of sending a mixed message.

Is the DARE generation going backwards when it comes to alcohol awareness?

I see a slight problem with feminism. Domestic violence is supposed to be a gender issue, so to make it behave as a gender issue, you have to downplay it as an alcohol issue.

For many people, alcohol is EXACTLY what it's about. That's another reason why people don't want to turn in their partners -- because it interrupts their co-dependency.