Boiled-frog idiocy goes Ivy League

A writer compares her experiences as a female athlete at Princeton with Harvard's new plan to have gym hours for Muslim women only*. (Update: the complaints were from Muslim women, but the request was merely for women-only hours, not Muslim-women only. Sorry) She makes some very good points -- but then wraps it all up in the most cliched and brainless way possible. Yes, you guessed it:

Harvard’s “Jim Crow” gym has moved America backwards not beyond. Its potential consequences are best represented in the story of the boiled frog.

Ever tried boiling a frog? You can’t do it by dropping a frog into a pot of boiling water. The frog will leap out, scalded perhaps, but very much alive. To successfully boil a frog, you must put the frog in a pan of nice, luke-warm water and slowly, ever so slowly, turn up the heat.

Before you know it you will have a boiled frog.

Maybe we really are suffering the Plague of Frogs. It's just coming in a different form this time: ruining people's minds and powers of original expression. We await the one who will lead us out of this wilderness. And in the meantime thanks to Carter Wood for this tip. (If somehow you've missed the previous 4,000 entries on this topic, this observation from a zoologist makes the point, well, pithily:

"The 'critical thermal maxima' of many species of frogs have been determined by several investigators. In this procedure, the water in which a frog is submerged is heated gradually at about 2 degrees Fahrenheit per minute. As the temperature of the water is gradually increased, the frog will eventually become more and more active in attempts to escape the heated water. If the container size and opening allow the frog to jump out, it will do so.)

This article available online at:

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2008/03/boiled-frog-idiocy-goes-ivy-league/7986/