Leftovers.

Cord Jefferson wrote a widely criticized piece for Gawker calling for a reconsideration of how we deal with pedophiles — criticized in large part because it seemed to pussyfoot around actually referring to the rape of children as “rape”. Jennifer Bleyer has a less ham-handed take on that idea over at Slate. “Fred Berlin, the founder of the Sexual Disorders Clinic at Johns Hopkins University, has studied pedophilia for more than four decades and is leading efforts to consider it a public health issue. ‘It appears likely that the percentage of people apprehended is just a fraction of those out there who have these attractions, or even act on them,’ he said. ‘We as a society do virtually nothing to reach out to them before the fact.’ (Trigger warnings, obvs.)

A new study found that voter ID laws will be a burden for 10 million Latin@s.

Clarence Thomas says he prefers law clerks from lower-tier institutions. “Isn’t that the antithesis of what this country is supposed to be about? Isn’t that the bias that we fought about on racial terms, or on terms of sex, or on terms of religion, etc.?… My new bias, which I now embrace, is that I don’t eliminate the Ivies in hiring, but I intentionally prefer kids from regular backgrounds and regular students.” The man is nothing if not consistent in his contempt for the elite. Thomas likes to tell a story about how he took his degree from Yale Law, slapped a 25-cent sticker on it, and tossed it somewhere in his basement. His feeling is that because he got into law school with the help of a race-based admissions policy, that his degree is next to worthless.)

Caperton over at Feministe laments the paucity of women panelists at science and tech conferences. Scientific American looks at a study showing that gender bias in science is very real: job applicants for a lab manager position who had female names were given lower scores on “competence” and lower starting salaries.

Robert Wright on the evolution of God.

What else should we be reading?

G.D.

G.D.

Gene "G.D." Demby is the founder and editor of PostBourgie. In his day job, he blogs and reports on race and ethnicity for NPR's Code Switch team.
G.D.