IT'S MORE FUN TO OBSERVE THE THROWBACKS. George Will has weighed in on one prominent academician's reaction to Harvard President Larry Summers suggesting that there might be sex differences in learning skills.

Is this the fruit of feminism? A woman at the peak of the academic pyramid becomes theatrically flurried by an unwelcome idea and, like a Victorian maiden exposed to male coarseness, suffers the vapors and collapses on the drawing room carpet in a heap of crinolines until revived by smelling salts and the offending brute's contrition.

OK, are we any closer to working the problem? Everybody feel better?

JMPP has done some more useful work, unearthing research linking sub-anemic iron deficiencies to diminished brain function. Perhaps there ought to be some new Popeye cartoons in which Olive Oyl eats the spinach and then dashes off a proof of the Fermat theorem that fits the margin of the page.