Of all the NY Times stories about Summers's allegedly controversial remarks at that conference on Jan. 14, 2005, fewer than 10% either quoted him directly or paraphrased him accurately.

And of all the posts I've seen on discussion boards about the same remarks, the figure is closer to 0% -- none at all have either quoted him directly or parraphrased him accurately.

Just in case anyone might want to know what he actually said, here is the URL where the remarks were posted by Harvard in mid-Feb., 2005:

http://www.president.harvard.edu/speeches/2005/nber.html .

(No one present at the conference has questioned the accuracy of this transcript.)

Now, I shall paraphrase him accurately: He expressed concern about the dearth of women at the highest echelons of academia in math & science. He offered three possible reasons for this. These "hypotheses" (as he called them) are as follows:

1. Perhaps a smaller number of women than men are willing to hold down a high-pressure 80-hour-a-week job in academia and also take care of what they see as family responsibilities.

2. Perhaps men have -- on average -- a higher aptitude for the underlying skills used in math & science at the highest echelons of such professions. He did not discuss the influence of nature or nurture on this. Instead he cited a number of studies that concurred that the standard deviation of such skills among females was about 20% less than the standard deviation of men.

He pointed out that with a basic understanding of normal distributions, this would lead to a roughly 5-to-1 ratio of males to females at the highest skill levels (which he described as 3.5 to 4 standard deviations out). All he said about the *average* math & science skill level among all males or among all females was that it is debatable.

3. Perhaps women are a victim of prejudice in the workplace, and for this reason are not hired as often as males.

Summers's worst crime in these remarks was leaving himself open to be misquoted in such a way that he came across -- in the misquotations -- as a sexist pig.

If anyone wants to post a rebuttal that's based on facts and accurate quotations, please do.

Gotta say, the intense vitriol expressed in most of these letters suggests that their writers just found out, from this book review, that the U.S. has some people who are wealthier than they are -- and that such people sometimes write books. Such letters say far more about their posters than the book or its author.

Sounds to me that if you can put your hatred on hold, this book could be an interesting vicarious way to experience one person's significant transformation, and maybe even learn some useful things for oneself as a byproduct.

One more thing: A long time ago, I also had an experience that could only be of the very same kind as Elizabeth Gilbert describes, where she had an out-of-body experience where she seemed to comprise the whole universe, and where she experienced love so intense that she could never have imagined anything remotely like it. (In my case this had no connection to prayer or god -- I have always been entirely secular -- but it was as close to a religious experience as I've ever had. I still don't know what to make of it.)

This is Mr. Tennis's comment on the cited argument for practicing religion:

Note the circular reasoning of one of Buckner's relatives, i.e., "If you accept and practice Christianity and it is false you have essentially lost nothing. If you reject Christianity and it is true, then you have lost everything." This is astounding, is it not? It suggests that our nature is not to love truth and seek it, but to love comfort and to play the odds. Such a utilitarian view strikes at the heart of faith itself, which is powerful because it is real, not because it is utilitarian.

But this rationale for religion (or more accurately, belief in god) is usually atttributed to the French philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal (1623-1662). No it's not circular at all. It's a very convincing argument if you happen to believe that the choice of whether or not to practice religion may well mean the difference between eternal bliss or eternal damnation!

(The argument doesn't persuade me one bit, since I have no such belief at all. But the argument is a respectable one.)