The new pope on women in politics?

Someone please tell me this didn’t really happen. (Seriously, if anyone knows more, please do say so in the comments.)

Women are naturally unfit for political office (…) The natural order and facts teach us that man is a politician par excellence, the Scriptures show us that woman is always the supporter of man, the thinker and doer, but nothing more than that.

From here and here (in Spanish), among other places — all seemingly in Spanish, so if you find it in English, please post that, too, in the comments.

UPDATE: This is probably not a real quote. The only reference I can find (until the last few days, that is) online is the one in the yahoo answer forum Kathryn linked below. My guess is that the comments here are correct, that the quote was fabricated in 2007, and is being picked up now. See swallerstein’s comments below for more pressing concerns regarding Pope Francis’s history.

Reader query: negative VS positive papers

A reader writes:

I have recently learned that some grad students in my department hold the following belief: journals are more likely to reject papers that advance a ‘negative’ argument and provide a response to some well-known view than a paper that advances a ‘positive’ account of some phenomenon. That is, even if editors receive a positive referee’s report that recommends publication of a (roughly put) response article, editors still frequently reject such articles in order to publish ones with a “positive” account. Thus, grad students have been put off from submitting papers to journals, as they have felt this to be futile: I don’t yet have a positive alternative account of x, so submitting a paper that discusses someone else’s a view of x is futile, because it’ll get rejected anyway.

Thinking so struck me as prima facie false. Plenty of response papers are published by top journals (my own work being a case in point). But hearing this also got me worried: is there something to this? I always advice my grad students to start by publishing ‘negative’ parts of their dissertations first, but if the above view has something to it, my practice may be misguided. Then again, if the above is false, grad students need to know that. What do you think?

2013 MAWM: Registration Open

I just got the below notice, and when I looked at the list of speakers, what do you know? An amazing line-up with lots of women!

On September 14-15, 2013 the University of Notre Dame will host the second Midwest Annual Workshop in Metaphysics (MAWM). We invite and encourage all interested parties to attend! MAWMs are targeted workshops for Midwestern faculty and graduate students working in metaphysics. Each MAWM features 5-7 invited speakers, the majority of whom come from Midwestern institutions. They provide a venue for sharing new research and building community among metaphysicians in the region. For more information and to register for the workshop, visit the website.