There's no day like a snow day.

Of course, today is only a snow day in the sense that it might snow. While this morning saw the icy fingers of a alberta clipper curling around the sunrise, destined to bring some flakes, I still found myself trudging toward the metro, staring madly through the air for the the first frozen fleck of white. Now I'm at work, and it can snow all it bloody likes, but it won't do me any good.

Tomorrow is the second Bush inauguration, and downtown DC is locked down tight. Not so tight, however, that traffic can't be heinously snarled by a lone lunatic with 15 gallons of gasoline and a detonator in a pickup truck. While I do find it upsetting that Bush would try to stick so much of the bill for his little party on DC, I don't begrudge him his party. He won reelection, and if we're going to usher ourselves into a new era of doublespeak and absurdity, then I suppose we ought to do it in style. For those who appreciate irony, these are heady times.

But, enough politics for now.

Poor, poor Larry Summers. I feel for the guy. One of the great public intellectual figures, one of the great Clinton economic architects, one of the smartest people in the world, and he keeps running afoul of the PC police. As a liberal democrat, my blood boils when the right treads on scientific or artistic freedom. As a smart person, I want to explode when the left does the same thing. The very people on the left who scream bloody murder when Georgia slaps a sticker on its textbooks shout for blood when Larry Summers says something that (gasp) just might be true. You'd have to be an idiot to say there aren't innate differences between men and women (or at least desperately in need of some alone time with a dirty magazine). Science has shown that there are clear differences in the way women listen, process memory, and socially interact. Why shouldn't there be differences in the way women reason? Maybe there aren't. Honestly, I haven't the slightest idea whether what Summers said is true or not, but what I do know is that he has an absolute right to say it, even in his role as Harvard president.

I know that when Greg Mankiw was crucified for saying that offshoring is a natural healthy economic process, Harvard faculty (at least those in the econ department), were livid at the intellectual illiteracy of the public (Mankiw is absolutely right). And when the Pentagon was castigated for considering a terror futures market (also a good idea), I'm sure many intellectuals felt frustrated by the inability of the masses to understand academic nuance. But, my heavens, when a professor makes a valid conjecture that treads on PC toes, well, bring out the gallows.

I still like you, Larry.