The Dish

To help explain the starting-salary gap, a reader points to this WaPo piece on the “social cost of haggling”:

Another study quizzed graduating master’s degree students who had received job offers about whether they had simply accepted the offered starting salary or had tried to negotiate for more. Four times as many men — 51 percent of the men vs. 12.5 percent of the women — said they had pushed for a better deal. Not surprisingly, those who negotiated tended to be rewarded — they got 7.4 percent more, on average — compared with those who did not negotiate.

However, another study:

found that men and women get very different responses when they initiate negotiations. Although it may well be true that women often hurt themselves by not trying to negotiate, this study found that women’s reluctance was based on an entirely reasonable and accurate view of how they were likely to be treated if they did. Both men and women were more likely to subtly penalize women who asked for more — the perception was that women who asked for more were “less nice”.

And resort to some  

But the online parodists can't quite be foiled:

Except when a priest with a long record of child abuse in the seminary is ordained in Chicago in 2009.

Paul McAuley meditates on the plumes of smoke:

Eyjafjallajökull may have created all kinds of disruption to travellers, but compared to supervulcanism of the past, or to what might happen if the volcanic dome under Yellowstone Park lets go, it’s a mere blip. An inconvenience rather than a catastrophe. A useful reminder that the nemesis which may clobber us won’t necessarily be the product of our own hubris.

Incredible photos of the volcano in action here and here.

(Hat tip: Henry)

A reader writes:

Please keep prodding the mainstream news organizations on their total failure to vet Palin–not, as you say, because of her specifically, but because their incredibly, inexcusably timid practices are a real threat to democracy in America. If there's one thing l feel like I've realized after the Bush years, it's that there isn't much standing between us and the collapse of our way of political life. One of those things is supposed to be the press, which is why it was honored in the First Amendment. But the current practices of the press don't convince me that under the right circumstances they wouldn't basically (to use a Simpsons reference) "welcome our new [adjective] overlords" if it would win them sweeps week.

Because Abraham Lincoln was right when he called America the "last best hope," and we need to protect our democracy.

I will never forget the conversation I had with a leading journalist as I asked him about the Palin Trig story in the middle of the last election campaign. His view was that there were many unanswered questions but I should leave the matter be, because it would "hurt your reputation" to pursue it. This remains the prevailing narrative among Washington's MSM. They care much much more about their reputations and their money than with getting at the truth. And they know who they are.

Howard W. French has an engrossing piece on China's imperial encroachment into Africa:

Many African farmers, [World Bank chief economist Justin Yifu Lin] told me, “would strongly benefit from simple technology, like cheap diesel pumps to irrigate their fields.” Chinese involvement in agriculture, he believes, could make a big difference. Through investment and demonstration, Chinese farmers could serve as an important catalyst in an African economic takeoff, much as they did a generation ago in China itself.

But agricultural transformation is the most unlikely part of the Chinese project. Farming, of course, takes place in plain view, and foreign encroachment on fertile land raises passions; African governments are likely to find it easier and more profitable to sell oil and mineral rights.

But the Western approach to the continent is hardly an alternative:

“Between 1970 and 1998,” [economist Dambisa Moyo] writes, “when aid flows to Africa were at their peak, poverty in Africa rose from 11 percent to a staggering 66 percent.”

Subsidized lending, she says, encourages African governments to make sloppy, wasteful decisions. It breeds corruption, by allowing politicians to siphon off poorly monitored funds. And it forestalls national development, which she says begins with the building of a taxation system and the attraction of foreign commercial capital. In Moyo’s view, even the West’s “obsession with democracy” has been harmful. In poor countries, she writes, “democratic regimes find it difficult to push through economically beneficial legislation amid rival parties and jockeying interests.” Sustainable democracy, she feels, is possible only after a strong middle class has emerged.

Read the rest here.

State College, Pennsylvania, 4.25 pm

Michelle Geis points to a new report in Genetics in Medicine suggesting that "exclusive licensing of gene patents does more to block competition and decrease patients’ access to testing than it does to spur innovation." The Economist has more:

For example, where gene-testing monopolies do not accept the miserly reimbursements offered by Medicaid—the American government health scheme for the poor—the indigent suffer. Furthermore, the lack of a rival provider of tests to get a second opinion makes it impossible to ensure that results are accurate.

Even more striking is the claim made by the Duke researchers that patent exclusivity is not necessary to spur innovation in genetic testing. Dr Cook-Deegan argues that testing, unlike pricey drug development, has low barriers to entry and is relatively cheap, so a monopoly is not required to lure investors. As evidence, he points to the case of cystic fibrosis: unlike breast cancer, no monopoly patent blocks access to the relevant gene, and dozens of rival testing companies flourish.

Tobias Barrington Wolff parses the Texas divorce case:

Say that two men, both native to Iowa, get married and later divorce. If one decides to skip out on his obligations under the divorce decree, he can simply relocate to a place like Texas and dare his ex to come after him. If the couple were straight, the Texas courts would be required to enforce the decree. But since they’re a same-sex couple, Texas can invoke DOMA and pretend that the decree doesn’t exist, undoing all the property rights that were settled by the divorce.

There is only one word for this type of discrimination: Nasty. Texas should be ashamed.

Since when has Texas ever felt "ashamed" about anything? Not since the Kennedy assassination, and even then …