That sounds like ev psych to me. Quick, shun him!

At any rate, the WaPo has now published a “tee-hee, it was only a JOKE, lighten up!” follow-up. The WaPo is either covering its butt, or doesn’t realize that if no-one laughs at your joke it’s not because they are poor sports, it’s because your joke ain’t funny.

“The investigators, who published their results in the July issue of Epidemiology, found that although teenage boys started off badly, with about 20 percent more crashes per mile driven than teenage girls, males and females between ages 20 and 35 were equally at risk of being involved in a crash, and after age 35 female drivers were at greater risk of a crash than their male counterparts.”

Note that the later category was (to the best of my knowledge—can’t find the original study) not broken down further. I would expect that the further up this age category you go, you get to the point in the demographics where women of that age/era were not routinely taught to drive when young, “since their fathers/boyfriends/husbands would do that”, at which point I would expect a significant difference to be found.

Finally, note that the folks who have actual $$s riding on the issue—that is, the insurance folks—seem to come down fairly firmly on the women’s side of the issue.

Though a relative newcomer to the bloogosphere, I have noticed that almost everywhere I go, any mooting of the idea that Group A is inherently superior to Group B very quickly draws the endorsement of an entity called “Steve Sailer.” But not here.

What is the explanation for this? Is garlic involved?

Some writers play against type, that’s true. But many others don’t. Some niches are filled. Many others aren’t.

Charlotte Perkins writes a piece about women are dumber than men, and she’s a woman. But William Saletan write a piece on why blacks are dumber than whites, and he’s white. So if there’s any larger trend involving the rehabilitation of noxious stereotypes, niche-filling ain’t it.

Sorry, there are no Marxist economists in US media, nor have I noticed any pacific Marines. There are also no Jews writing “OK, we really are greedy,” or insurance salesmen writing about why Social Security offers a better deal. The strong claim that niches tend to get filled is false, so that leaves us with the weak claim that the filled niches got filled. Is there any content to this post beyond that?