Wednesday, February 09, 2005

I'm Hoppe-ing [yawn] mad (or, Summers redux) 

The Left is particularly upset about Hans Hoppe, an economics professor at UNLV, who got himself into hot water for suggesting that homosexuals and heterosexuals might, on average, have different rates of time discount. Linkage provided by David Beito at Liberty and Power. Hoppe reportedly is being offered a chance to have everything dropped but to expect no increase in his salary for the next academic year and a written reprimand.

William Marina (also at L&P) provides a comparison between Hoppe's and Harvard President Larry Summers' cases, and offers a case of his own.

I am reminded of a comment I used to make over the years in some of my classes, especially in a course I taught on Socio-gEnetiXs and History.

There is some data indicating that men, for whatever reason, sleep on the average, about an hour less per night than women. If that is so, I suggested, then in terms of waking hours, over a life span, men actually live about as long a conscious time as do women. Even if one wanted to count "dream time," this tends to occur in a short period just after going to sleep, and just before waking, so that the amount of sleeping flex time in between is not very relevant.

That observation seemed to make a number of female students quite angry; as if I had somehow challenged the natural superiority of women. God forbid, anyone do that! Thankfully, I was never reported to either the Inquisition or the Thought
Police!

The Inquisition!

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