Fragment: Anecdote on the Rise of Claustrophobia

Today's Hit and Run at Reason magazine describes the finally-released transcript of Harvard President Larry Summers' recent remarks, which became cannon-fodder in a strange symbolic war, which was good for symbolic journalists, and may or may not have had casualties. Apparently, the squabble is over what one concludes from "a greater variability in aptitude among men" on certain tests. In other words, what does it mean that men are less likely than women to be "normal" as these tests measure it? But--perhaps because this started in the Ivy League--nobody fighting the war is interested in the question of normal.