I just finished watching the Women's World Cup semifinal football match, USA versus France, and am currently preparing to watch Japan versus Sweden and an important difference is immediately noticeable about womens' matches compared to men's.

A lot less flopping.

If you are not up on complex technical sports jargon, flopping is when, after a minor collision, you fall down and grasp a body part with a look of excruciating pain on your face, milk the drama to see if it draws a penalty and then look indignantly at the opposing team while you bravely resume as if nothing was wrong.   If you don't watch soccer, think NBA.

I've long said that what NASA needs is not a James Webb Space Telescope but an actual James Webb for the 21st century.

Webb, if you are not familiar with NASA lore, was a bold leader rather than a bureaucrat tasked with perpetuating funding, and it was due to his leadership that NASA launched 75 missions into space, including putting a man on the Moon.

A Democratic president banned the use of federal money for human embryonic stem cell (hESC) research, a Republican president restricted federal hESC funding to existing lines and a Democratic president continues to limit federal money for hESC research.   Who is regarded as anti-science on this issue? Republicans.

I know, I know, Democrats are anti-science on plenty of other things - animal research, agriculture, vaccines and a whole list of others - but this is just about hESC research and there it is clearly just a Republican issue.   The mainstream media and science bloggers say so.   

It's rare that you will find me arguing for gender quotas.   Obviously I am not for discrimination but, at least in science, mandating representation - which is discrimination against the qualified in the interests of sex organs - does not lead to better science, it leads to equality at the expense of excellence.

Economics, however, is not science and some mandated equality might help.  Science says so.