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A Death OnlineMarking the boundaries of loss.

Compiled by Geoffrey Andersen
Updated Tuesday, Feb. 27, 2007, at 5:41 AM ET

(Continued from page 2)

Women multi-task better than men. Period. They are designed to do so, and that involves constantly dealing with pressures men don't. They listen and attend to family business, subordinates' business and shareholder business. Their success is very often founded upon a more collaborative model.

On the other hand, men who tend to be very successful in business are often pathological -- they ignore all cues from external forces in order to peruse something singlemindedly. They succeed by not listening. When this works, we admire their focus and call them brilliant. When it doesn't, we call them narrow-minded ignoramuses.

To summarize: it's insane to measure the capability of men or women under "pressure" when "pressure" is defined solely as competition. It's not the way the world works. There are a large number of factors which influence how men and women (as groups and individuals) perform on the job. To boil it down to this insipid tea is insulting to both genders.

NickD replies with an amusing evolutionary take on mens' and womens' relative abilities to handle stress. Auros-4 raises the question of nature vs. nuture, while RUGER seizes on Landsburg's study here to stir up a predictable polemic over "the age of feminism and liberal political correctness."

AnikaG questions the definition of stress used in the study:

In terms of women being "chokers" (a denigrating, sexist term that far surpassed the bounds of ethics as well as good taste), my question is: how is Landsburg defining pressure? Women across America hold down multiple high-stress jobs, head single-parent homes and work in dangerous and time-sensitive conditions. What is this if not pressure? By taking a tennis court and an artificial maze as a representative sample of "all walks of life," Landsburg conveniently ignores the empirical evidence: more young women than men attend college, more women than men head single-parent homes. What are these performances if not standing up under extreme pressure?

Finally, in this extended rebuttal, eolianwold criticizes Landsburg for being "taken in by such amateurish scholarship" based on "M. Daniele Paserman's research, which … is filled with sloppy thinking and poor applications of standard techniques." For a truly impressive point-by-point dissection of Paserman's "pseudoscientific analyses," read the post in its entirety in Everyday Economics Fray. AC … 1:10pm PT

Thursday, Feb. 8, 2007

Anne Applebaum's dismissal of the Kyoto Accords in favor of a global carbon tax gave scientists, economists, urban and family planners all something to talk about in Foreigners. Sure, the Fray had its share of negationists, but most were concerned with the specifics of Applebaum's proposal.

LuxLawyer considers the carbon tax's distributive effects:

[Applebaum's proposal] betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the concept of elasticity. If there are a "wealth of innovations," then the amount of revenue raised by the tax won't be that great. That, for example, is why a lot of people believe that the US's CAFE standards are a better approach than a gas tax to reducing gasoline use: demand is (short term) inelastic, so a tax just increases costs and raises revenue without changing behavior. And if that's true, it again means that there will be a significant increased cost to consumers, resulting in a more regressive tax system.

Similarly, Breaker criticizes the tax for its failure to be Pareto efficient by allocating "compensation … worldwide in proportion to the harm." Vepxistqaosani3 brings attentions to Third World contributions to the global carbon load. MicheleG takes issue with the focus on Europe, where high taxes on energy already incentivize consumers to be efficient. For Human, the current paralysis in solving the global warming crisis indicates the ultimate failure of nationalism: "Why would the Germans want to harm their economy by imposing a carbon tax that helps all the other, non-taxing countries just as much? ... The world is too interconnected now, economically, socially, and environmentally… International problems require international solutions, with international enforcement."

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Moira Redmond is a freelance writer and a former Slatester. You can e-mail her at .
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