and thoroughly repugnant in almst all circumstances. This is an opinion universally shared by all right-thinking people.

So I don't see the need for a separate criticism of lying in every circumstance it occurs, like the WP's article about wingmen. Just as, if the Washington Post described a ring of thieves, there would be no reason for it to mention "and stealing is wrong!" in such an article.

On the other hand, I'd guess there are plenty of honest teams of two guys who, *without using deception*, alternate in acting wingman for the other guy . And, I hasten to add, ditto for women. (But I don't really know, never having heard of wingmen before.)

The article doesn't seem to be focusing on the lying but rather on the very idea of two guys taking turns helping each other find dates. Horrors.

Toward the end, the article suggests, apparently sarcastically, "So, in the spirit of fairness, why not a four-page article on women's manipulation and objectification of men?"

I'd like to ask that of Broadsheet, without tongue in cheek at all: Why not an article highlighting women's bad behavior?

(I happen to think the whole "objectification" brouhaha that Broadsheet et al., and formerly Dworkin-MacKinnon, like to bring up is a Big Lie -- an enormous deliberate red herring -- or else why has none of these women so concerned over objectification once mentioned women's use of vibrators?)

(If I didn't know better, I might begin to suspect Broadsheet's constant emphasis on males' misbehavior is sexist.)

" . . . and lying she knew was a sin, a sin, and lying she knew was a sin."

--Tom Lehrer, "Rickety-Tickety-Tin"

Let's nip this sex-in-advertising thing in the bud, before it catches on!

Very few letters defended lying.

If you think that wingmen who don't use deception exemplify men's bad behavior, can you please explain why?

And also why if both men and women engage in similar bad behavior, it's not a glaring omission if Broadsheet focuses on the men and mentions nothing of the women?

Would that be because Broadsheet "is for" women? As in

its purpose is to point out bad behavior of men and good behavior of women?

If so, could you also explain why this is not the moral equivalent of lying?

Tracy Clark-Flory writes:

Harvard's new plan seems proof of why Summers' original comments are troubling: If the problem is women's brains, then what's the need for all these expensive and involved social changes?

Just like every other Broadsheet author who says anything about Summers's controversial Jan. 14., 2005 remarks, it is clear that Ms. Clark-Flory doesn't feel any need to know what she's talking about.

Summers presented three possible reasons for a smaller representation of women than men at the highest echelons of academia.

One was some women's feelings that taking care of family duties was not compatible with the 80-hour workweek required. One was prejudice against women in academia. And one was the fact that women have a significantly lower standard deviation on just about all tests of achievement or ability in math or science than men.

A little knowledge about the normal distribution, which is a good fit to almost all such test results, immediately leads to the conclusion that a lower standard deviation implies a lower representation in the extreme tails of the distribution -- by a factor of four or five in this case, according to Summers, and easily verifiable. Summers made a point of just quoting well-established test data without any attempt to give a reason for it.

But why bother learning anything about your subject when your editor is happy to let you blithely yammer away without knowledge or logic?

I just reread the paragraphs you mentioned.

I don't know if you're Melissa or Lisa or Janna or Gail or someone else. But either you're a bald-faced liar or you don't know a standard deviation from a hole in the ground.

How come everyone who thinks they know what Summers really meant by his remarks avoids quoting the offending passage(s)??? "another woman scientist" writes:

The reason that Summers's comments are so infuriating to the women on the high tail of the intelligence distribution is that it implies that if you make the choice to leave academia it is because you weren't smart enough, or you couldn't cut it.

SInce I've read Summers's comments umpteen times and don't recognize where they "imply" anything of the kind,

would you be willing to please quote where he implies this?

I didn't think so.

Obviously, any extremely limited profile of potential threats to an airplane's safe flight would lead to a simple way around it: Just find someone who doesn't fit the profile to do the dirty work.

But, at the same time, to ignore what we know about who is out to get us would be the height of foolishness.

Airport screening would ideally be applied to all passengers equally. But with limited resources it must target some kind of combination of passengers who fit some profiles and those who don't fit any profile at all.

As long as no one is mistreated, I say go for the optimal strategy irrespective of any considerations of "discrimination", since in this case maximum safety using available resources must trump all other considerations.

Funny, while reading the letter I found it quite moving. Upon beginning to read Mr. Tennis's response, I was annoyed that he seemed so callously sure the letter-writer was lying.

Then it finally dawned on me that the letter is almost certainly bogus. There are just too many things that strain credulity which, taken together, snap credulity in 10 places. (And if you believe that a string pulled too tight will snap in more than one place, you're as credulous as I.)

Yet the letter continues to resonate with me. Remove the melodrama, and the essence of the story -- a love lost a couple of decades ago through inadequate appreciation of the opportunity at the time -- is part of my own life that I'll always regret.

"No sadder words from tongue or pen than these: It might have been."