Language Log's thorough razzing of Louann Brizendine is a good public service, but this is funnier: guy makes up new brain part to support boys-versus-girls theory. At least it would be funny if this guy weren't getting paid to address teachers.

I remember when I was in high school, the whole left brain vs. right brain thing had just arrived in the bad-pop-science hall of fame. Three or four of my teachers passed around various xeroxed quizzes for us to all find out if we were lefties or righties. One of them was a multiple-choice test where every "A" answer was clearly about a left-brained Mr. Spock type, and every "B" was a touchy-feely artist; just when you thought it couldn't get any dumber, there was this: "Are you (A) a cat person or (B) a dog person?"

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I didn't realize, until I wrote this, how much that crap really bothers me. The high-school thing just seemed like a waste of time, they didn't know what they were talking about, no harm done. But this Hodgins guy - especially if you look at his response at the end of that Language Log post - he's clearly a total crank, and a sloppy one ("the detailed part of the brain"? "frontal lope"?), and I'm sure he's not the only one cashing in on this schtick now all over the country, making up whatever contradictory bullshit will feed into people's preconceptions. Guys seem insensitive because they're so rational and they don't understand non-verbal communication! No wait, guys are slow learners because they only understand non-verbal communication! Conclusion always the same: classrooms are OK for girls, but we should put the boys somewhere better suited to their true natures (savage and antisocial, but in a lovable way since they can't help it) where we can figure out how to shoehorn some rules and technical skills into those Martian brains. Maybe a military academy would work.

Pop-science-speak comes and goes - "neuro" is this year's "cyber" - but in this one area, telling educators why Boys and Girls Are Not the Same, it's hit a really creepy social nerve that makes people turn off their thinkuses more than usual, and the schools have enough problems without that. I'm guessing that nerve has something to do with the poor besieged Mitchum Man... with a little sprinkling of leftover Bell Curve.