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Steven Cook worries that Egypt is dangerously close to defaulting on its debt:

This might sound surprising to the casual observer of Egypt.  The economy was a subject of intense coverage in the months preceding the July 3, 2013 coup, but has receded from view as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Kuwait stepped in with an initial $12 billion infusion of aid that was followed recently with another $8 billion.  The money from the Gulfies was supposed to stabilize the Egyptian economy, but the numbers do not lie.  The country’s foreign currency reserves—between $16-$17 billion—are close to where they were in late 2012 and the first half of 2013, which means Egypt is hovering just above the critical minimum threshold defined as three months of reserves to purchase critical goods.  A portion of those reserves are not liquid and with a burn rate estimated to be $1.5 billion per month, it is easy to understand why Egypt is one exogenous shock—think Ukraine, which is a major producer of wheat and Egypt is the world’s largest importer of it—or political crisis away from default.

What this would mean:

An economic problem the magnitude of a solvency crisis will only intensify the pathologies that Egypt is already experiencing—violence, political tumult, and general uncertainty.  Economic decline would create a debilitating feedback loop of more political instability, violence, and further economic deterioration. It’s a scary scenario that deserves attention and preparedness, but there does not seem to be much urgency to try to address it anywhere.  Gulf money appears to have lulled people into the sense that the Saudis, Emiratis, and Kuwaitis will stave off disaster.  It’s a false sense of security.

Monica Potts examines what critics of pay equity must ignore to make their case:

Some argue that the motherhood penalty can be explained by the fact that women are choosing to have children, and are often taking some amount of time off work to take care of them when they’re young. The question of why there’s no fatherhood gap, or why men rarely choose to take time off to care for young children, remains unexplained.

The other component is that women dominate in college majors leading to fields with relatively low salaries, like early childhood education, while men dominate in the high-paying ones, like engineering. All of these things, however, ignore the fact that choices aren’t made in a vacuum, and pretend as though the only real gender discrimination happens when a manager sits in his dark office poring over ledgers, dutifully subtracting 23 cents per dollar from every worker in the female column. Discrimination is more complicated and often internalized, in everything from little girls picking up subtle cues they’re bad at math or building things, to pregnant women seeing their hours cut at work even when they haven’t asked for such a change or don’t want it. It also doesn’t account for an odd distinction made between “women’s” and “men’s” fields. Call yourself a janitor, and you make about $3,000 more dollars a year than if you are a maid or a housekeeper.

Considering the “motherhood penalty”, Marjorie Romeyn-Sanabria advocates more parent-friendly work policies:

The fact that the U.S. is the only industrialized country that does not offer paid parental leave punishes women who participate in the natural experience of having a child. With the rising costs of childcare, and without the security of regular wages, the message that employers are sending women is that they are no longer valuable once they become pregnant.

We don’t need to close the wage gap; we need to remove the stigma that treats pregnant women and new mothers like pariahs, and the economic structures that punish childbearing.

Meanwhile, Evan Soltas notices occupations like manufacturing reverting to their men-only status:

Economists explain away about a third of the pay gap according to workers’ choices of occupation and industry. Implicit in their framework, though, is the idea that men and women fully choose their career. A retrenchment of the “man’s job” world weighs against the view that much progress has been made. … Women made up 32 percent of manufacturing workers in 1990; as of last month, that figure had fallen to 27 percent, lower than in any year since 1971. In the information sector, which includes computer engineering, telecommunications and traditional publishing, women’s share of jobs has dropped to the lowest on record: 40 percent, down from 49 percent in 1990.

The social concept of a “man’s job” or a “woman’s job,” that is, has sharply reasserted itself over the last two decades. Industrial change — such as technology replacing workers in manufacturing — is pushing out women more so than men.

Recent Dish on pay equity, from both sides of the debate, here and here.

A team of scientists has successfully implanted lady-parts cultivated from stem cells into four women born without them:

The women, who were between 13 and 18 at the time of the surgery, were all born with a rare genetic condition called Mayer-Rokitansky-Kuster-Hauser syndrome (MRKH) — a condition that causes about one in 4,500 girls to be born with either an underdeveloped or absent vagina and uterus. The traditional treatment for women with MRKH involves reconstructive surgery or painful dilation procedures. These interventions can be quite traumatic — they have a complication rate of 75 percent in pediatric patients — so researchers wanted to find a way to avoid them altogether. That’s why they set out to engineer vaginas, described in a study published in The Lancet today, that would be compatible with each patient.

How they did it:

The vaginal organs were engineered with muscle and epithelial cells from biopsies of the women’s genitals. The cells were taken from the tissues, grown, and put into a biodegradable material that is then formed into the shape of a vagina and fit to each patient. When the vagina is placed into the bodies of the patients, the nerves and blood vessels help expand it into tissue. The biodegradable material is absorbed into the body, and cells form a new structure and organ.

The cultured cells were grown on scaffolds like this one:

Jason Koebler celebrates this triumph for medical science:

Besides how awesome this obviously is for those four women, it represents a huge win for regenerative medicine and a look at what could be the future of transplantation. Researchers in the United Kingdom are working on making lab-grown noses, ears, and blood vessels, but so far, implanting them back into humans has proven difficult. With the success of this experiment, Anthony Atala, who worked on the transplantation team, says things like this could one be the norm for people who are born with disorders or otherwise need a new organ.

It’s certainly an improvement over the mouse method:

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Moneybox debunks the viral story about the French banning work calls outside business hours:

Here’s what really happened.

Last week, two groups of employers signed an agreement with French unions outlining certain workers’ “obligation to disconnect.” The agreement followed several months of negotiation and serves as an update to one from 1999 that established the 35-hour workweek, among other things.

This “obligation to disconnect,” a vague-sounding phrase if we’ve ever heard one, would apply not to the 1 million people the companies involved represent, but to the roughly 25 percent of independent workers they employ. Unlike typical workers, these “forfait jour” contractors have flexible hours and are not governed by the 35-hour workweek or 10-hour-day limit. So, unlike other workers, they can end up putting in extremely long days. They are not, as the Guardian piece angrily suggests, “sipping sancerre and contemplating at least the second half of a cinq à sept” before clocking out.

Marie Telling notes that “French employees can still send professional emails after 6 p.m.”:

The text never specifies any precise time after which the employees are not to exchange work emails.

The Guardian may have based its assumption on the fact that many French workers working the traditional 35 hours a week get off work at 6 p.m. The only problem is that the employees affected by the deal work outside this time frame. They work longer hours and that’s precisely why this rule was made for them (they can work up to a maximum of 78 hours a week).

These employees won’t stop sending work emails after 6 p.m.

Willa Paskin is optimistic about Letterman’s replacement:

This has been a tumultuous time for late night: Leno just left to be replaced by Jimmy Fallon who was in turn replaced by Seth Meyers. ABC got serious about Jimmy Kimmel, and bumped him up a time slot. And not that long ago, Conan O’Brien moved to a whole new network. And yet through all this change, late-night network TV has remained remarkably static. None of the white men with their names in the title have seriously altered the monologue-desk-interview format. …

But Colbert is in a unique position to do something about all this sameness. He, unlike almost all the aforementioned gentleman, is starting in one essential way from scratch: Audiences don’t exactly know him. Stephen Colbert, the man, has had a long career doing things other than playing Stephen Colbert, the blowhard— you can see clips of him out of character here—but America is not particularly familiar with that first guy.

Emily Bazelon will miss duking it out with “Stephen Colbert”:

I’m excited for Colbert to remake network late night. But I’m also mourning, for a moment, the passing of his character. It was such a distinct performance, a lark that also took all of us, as viewers, on a deep dive into American politics. I never worry when people tell me their main sources of news are The Daily Show and The Colbert Report because we learn a ton while we laugh. And in fact, Colbert’s greatest skill is that he asks great questions. That part he’ll take with him.

I feel exactly the same way – and not just because I will miss my epic struggle with Neil DeGrasse Tyson to be the most booked guest ever on the show. I truly think “Stephen Colbert” is the best piece of political performance art since the Palin candidacy. To lose that mask will be a loss for all of us. Allahpundit expects Colbert’s parodic style to carry over into his new gig:

I don’t think he’s comfortable playing comedy any other way; I’d be surprised if his CBS show is any different. Instead of playing the faux-conservative, which works during Comedy Central’s 11 p.m. hour of right-bashing power for a millennial audience but might not work for an older, more diverse crowd on CBS, he’ll probably play the faux-late-night-host, mocking the conventions of the format. Which wouldn’t be terrible: After 50 years of the same crap, right down to the demographics of the various personalities, anything different at that hour is good.

James Poniewozik certainly hopes so:

What Colbert has done with The Colbert Report is, arguably, the greatest innovation in late night since Letterman launched NBC’s Late Night in 1982. The Report was a talk show, it was a satire, it was a real-time improv performance in character, week in and week out. But more than that, it was a creative work that didn’t end when the credits rolled; it was bigger than its time slot, bigger even than TV. He extended his parody to runs for office, to the White House Correspondents Dinner, to the American campaign finance system. He created a participatory performance, enlisting his Colbert Nation to vote in polls and to back charitable initiatives. …

Just please God, don’t let that thing be a middle-of-the-road, Hollywood-centric, let’s-roll-a-clip, something-for-everyone 11:35 p.m. talk show. Colbert is smart, quick, personable and likeable, but that likeability comes from—weird as this is to say about someone who’s hosted a show in character for nine years—authenticity. Colbert is specifically not for everyone; he’s geekily intelligent, blisteringly funny and has a distinct, often political, point of view. Take that away and you take away everything.

Alyssa agrees that Colbert’s politics are an essential part of his act:

One of the biggest fears about Colbert’s move to CBS seems to be a sense that he will have to drop the political angle of his show in order to appeal to a mass audience. But while Letterman’s overall audience is larger than the one Colbert draws on Comedy Central, the men draw roughly similar numbers of viewers in the coveted 18-49 demographic. If the rest of the show is going to move away from the crazed act that Colbert has sustained since 2005, why not let the politics stay? The portion of the show dedicated to politics overall and cable news in particular will probably have to shrink on CBS, where Colbert will be making a general-interest show rather than a very particularized critique. But the perspective can still be his, even if it’s expressed differently. And Colbert’s liberalism seems like a reasonably durable draw. CBS should have the guts to let him keep it.

But as Cillizza points out, we don’t know for sure what his real opinions are:

The assumption — among Democrats and most Republicans — is that the real Colbert is a Democrat, a perception largely due to his viciously biting satire of conservatism as “Stephen Colbert”.

But, Colbert himself is far more fuzzy about his own politics. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times in 2009, Colbert was asked about a  study out of Ohio State University that showed most conservatives believed he was one of them. “I’m thrilled by it!” he said. “From the very beginning, I wanted to jump back and forth over the line of meaning what I say, and the truth of the matter is I’m not on anyone’s side, I’m on my side.” In October 2012, he told “Meet the Press” host David Gregory: ”I’m interested in the news, so people often think that I’m an ideologue or that I have a political intent … But I comment on things that are in the news.” And, he told Foxnews.com in the fall of 2013: “I’m not trying to make a point; I’m trying to make a joke. Sometimes my personal views are what I am saying, but it is important to me that you never know when that is.”

Josh Dickey asks who will take Colbert’s slot on Comedy Central:

Current Daily Show correspondents Aasif Mandvi and Samantha Bee are established enough for a step up, and would be hailed among the diversity-first crowd, as would alum Wyatt Cenac, who built a following but left the show in late 2012. Larry Wilmore’s devastatingly droll schtick seems too narrow for a full broadcast, while Jessica Williams and Al Madrigal are still too green to be considered contenders. The network loves Amy Schumer, but her show is just getting off the ground; and with an opportunity to truly innovate, it’s unlikely that Comedy Central would just shuffle an existing show into Stewart’s lead-out.

From outside the Comedy Central bubble, Aisha Tyler and Aziz Ansari’s names have come up, while Chelsea Handler, once rumored for a CBS slot, seems an odd fit for the network’s stable — as well as the newsy formula that’s worked so well in that slot.

Samantha!

Tim Alberta covers it:

The conservatives’ exasperation with leadership is well known. And now, in discreet dinners at the Capitol Hill Club and in winding, hypothetical-laced email chains, they’re trying to figure out what to do about it. Some say it’s enough to coalesce behind—and start whipping votes for—a single conservative leadership candidate. Others want to cut a deal with Majority Leader Eric Cantor: We’ll back you for speaker if you promise to bring aboard a conservative lieutenant.

But there’s a more audacious option on the table, according to conservatives involved in the deliberations. They say between 40 and 50 members have already committed verbally to electing a new speaker. If those numbers hold, organizers say, they could force Boehner to step aside as speaker in late November, when the incoming GOP conference meets for the first time, by showing him that he won’t have the votes to be reelected in January.

Beutler is unsure the mutiny will succeed:

From my own reporting, I can confirm that these conversations are ongoing, and not even particularly hushed. I can also confirm that the rebel faction (such as it is) hasn’t found an heir apparent. It’s not even clear anyone who could feasibly be an heir apparent would want to participate in the rebellion. That doesn’t mean a dedicated group of disaffected conservatives couldn’t deny Boehner the speakership. But without a prospective replacement, it’s the kind of bluff Boehner could probably call if he wanted to.

Allahpundit wonders if “this is all just a bluff to scare Boehner into appointing more conservatives to key committee posts”:

If, say, there are only 20-25 conservatives committed to ousting him, not 40-50, then he might survive a new insurrection from the right in January. By making him think now that their numbers are greater than they really are, House conservatives might muscle him into quitting or at least making concessions to them. (First concession: No more voice votes.) The problem, highlighted by National Journal, is that no one wants to risk Boehner’s wrath by volunteering to be the insurgents’ nominee for leadership. Both Jeb Hensarling and Jim Jordan have reportedly refused, maybe because they really don’t want to be in leadership or maybe because they fear stepping on Boehner’s toes right now when his future is still undetermined.

Bernstein doubts replacing Boehner would solve anything:

As long as Republicans have a House majority and Barack Obama is in the White House, the only way to get any measure enacted is for the House Republican leadership to vote for something that will be signed by the president conservative talk-show hosts describe as a Kenyan socialist. And as long as there are must-pass bills, the speaker is going to be perceived as a RINO. Yet even for the most conservative Republicans — though not the irresponsible radicals — things such as keeping the government open, avoiding a default, and second-tier issues such as the so-called Medicare doc fix, are must-pass.

Anyone who replaces Boehner, no matter how much of a True Conservative he or she might be before taking over, will end up in exactly the same position, and anyone in a position to be the next speaker knows it. Which is why they’ll want Boehner to stay at least two more years, when there is a possibility of a Republican president. It would be different if the main complaint against Boehner was that he is too willing to accommodate Obama.

Ryan Cooper suspects that Boehner’s job is secure:

The truth is that Boehner is probably the best speaker the ultras could reasonably ask for: he’s willing to indulge them to a seriously irresponsible degree, but not so much that they actually cause crippling damage to the nation. A true believer at the helm might actually allow the ultras to, say, default on the national debt for no reason. And that would keep them out of power for a long time.

In September 2012, historian Karen L. King of Harvard Divinity School unveiled a papyrus fragment she called “The Gospel of Jesus’s Wife,” which stirred debate because, well, that should be obvious. At the time readers sounded off on the discovery and I pondered its meaning at some length. In the intervening years the fragment has been rigorously tested to ascertain its age and authenticity, which some initially questioned. The results are in and, according to the HDS press release, they indicate it doesn’t seem to be a forgery:

Over the past two years, extensive testing of the papyrus and the carbon ink, as well as analysis of the handwriting and grammar, all indicate that the existing material fragment dates to between the sixth and ninth centuries CE. None of the testing has produced any evidence that the fragment is a modern fabrication or forgery.

Two radiocarbon tests were conducted to determine the date of the papyrus. In the first test, the sample size was too small and resulted in an unreliable date. A second test performed by Noreen Tuross at Harvard University in conjunction with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute produced a date of origination for the piece of papyrus from 659 to 859 CE. Other testing with FT-IR microspectroscopy at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) confirmed the homogeneous chemical composition of the papyrus and examined patterns of oxidation.

James Yardley, Senior Research Scientist in the Center for Integrated Science and Engineering, Columbia University, and Alexis Hagadorn, Head of Conservation at Columbia University Libraries, used a technique called micro-Raman spectroscopy to determine that the carbon character of the ink matched samples of other papyri that date from the first to eighth centuries CE.

Emma Green interviewed King about these results, and she reiterated what the text does – and doesn’t – tell us:

“The question that the broader public immediately grabbed onto is, ‘Does Jesus have a wife?'” King told me. Although that’s obviously an interesting topic, the more important question is historical: What does this text say about his early followers? “Early Christians were grappling with the question of whether you should get married and have children, or whether it’s better to be celibate and virgin,” she said. “This fragment seems to be the first case we have where a married Jesus appears to be affirming that women who are mothers and wives can be his disciples.” …

“There are so many questions this fragment can’t answer,” King said.

“Is Jesus talking about a real wife, or the church, or a sister-wife? Who is the Mary—his mother, his wife, or some other Mary entirely?” She says that rather than trying to answer those questions definitively, it’s more important to analyze what this text might say about the historical Jesus. “Was anybody talking about Jesus being married or not, and how was that question being used? Were people arguing about who’s worthy of discipleship or not?”

All this coincides with the release of a new issue of the Harvard Theological Review dedicated to the fragment’s meaning and the scientific testing done on it which can be read in its entirety here. One of the rebuttals to King’s take on the fragment comes from Leo Depuydt, an Egyptologist at Brown University and a skeptic about the fragment from the start, who still isn’t convinced:

I find nothing in these documents that could change in any way the fact that I am personally 100% certain that the Wife of Jesus Fragment is a forgery. I have otherwise never deemed ink or papyrus tests necessary or relevant in light of the evidence set forth below. I will make three brief observations, however.

First, the ink tests show chemical composition, in this case carbon-based “lamp black,” not age. Carbon-based ink is exactly the type that I would have used if I had been the forger. Second, as for the papyrus, nothing is more common than for forged paintings to be painted on an old piece of wood. And third, in a letter of July 19, 2013, accompanying his report, the principal investigator of the radiocarbon dating test, Professor Greg Hodgins, states that certain stable isotope measurements “[cast] doubt upon the validity of the radiocarbon date.”

Francis Watson argues (PDF) that the scientific data isn’t the main issue – it’s the fragment’s composition and construction that makes him believe it’s not the real deal:

In September 2012 I showed

that the text has been constructed out of small pieces – words or phrases – culled from the Coptic Gospel of Thomas (GTh), especially Sayings 30, 45, 101 and 1 14, and set in new contexts… The author has used a kind of “collage” technique to assemble the items selected from Thomas into a new composition. While this is a very unlikely way for an ancient author to compose a text, it’s what might be expected of a modern forger with limited facility in the Coptic language.

I do not see anything in Dr King’s response to cause me to retract that last sentence. Furthermore, I pointed out that the very first line of the fragment

begins in the middle of a word, at exactly the same place as in the equivalent passage in the one surviving Gospel of Thomas manuscript. And line 1 ends with the same ending as the following line in Thomas. This is quite a coincidence, and it suggests that the author of [the Jesus’ wife fragment] may have drawn his Thomas material from a modern printed edition.

Other scholars made equally damaging criticisms of the fragment following its initial publication. The question is whether there is anything in Harvard’s belated response to cause those of us who reacted negatively to the new papyrus fragment to think again. Perhaps there is. But it is not obvious how even the most scientifically rigorous investigations of the age of the papyrus or the composition of the ink take the debate forward.

A reader quotes me:

Yes, [Ayaan Ali Hirsi is] controversial. She has said some tough, tough things about Islam. But if she hasn’t earned the right to say those things, who has?

Come on.  I am an ardent defender of free speech (I worked at the ACLU for five years), but there is a difference between recognizing someone’s right to speak and honoring that person for what they’ve done and what they’ve said. Brandeis didn’t simply invite Ali to speak, they were going to give her one of the greatest honors a university can give.  That is an endorsement of someone.  And that inherently involves making judgments as to what and who is worthy of honoring.

Another reader:

How could you go through an entire post about Ali, Brandeis, The Left, and pc in general without any mention that Brandeis invited her join in an on-campus dialogue about the issues her work addresses? It may not be an adequate off-set, but it does indicate some openness to public discussion that your post implies is being murdered in the crib.

Another points to some of her most offensive views:

Below are snippets of Reason‘s interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Please link the article to your readers. I suspect quite a few don’t know what she really stands for.

These are not merely “provocative” ideas. She’s not challenging the religion of Islam as you wrote. These are very hateful anti-Muslim ideas. For goodness’ sake, she’s advocating war against Islam and Muslims. If you replace the words “Islam” and “Muslims” with “Christianity” and “Christians” or with “Judaism” and “Jews”, you could easily mistake her for a violent jihadist. How can you read those quotes (there are many more like them out there) and claim that she’s being unfairly characterized as a bigot by the so-called hard left? Her words speak for themselves. She is a bigot. A clearly deranged one too. Those are not a few quotes that you can just easily dismiss. They’re not out of context. They’re her beliefs. They represent who she is. Read the whole interview. See what she thinks about civil liberties and free speech. Oh the contradictions.

P.S. My name suggests I’m Muslim. I’m not. I’m an atheist with a Muslim background. So I’m not being tribal here. To reject and criticize Islam is one thing; to make a career promoting hate and advocating war against a religion and its 1.6 billion adherents is something else. You’re a very decent and admirable person. It’s disheartening to learn that you’re friends with such a vile character.

Reason: Should we acknowledge that organized religion has sometimes sparked precisely the kinds of emancipation movements that could lift Islam into modern times?…Do you think Islam could bring about similar social and political changes?

Hirsi Ali: Only if Islam is defeated.

Reason: Don’t you mean defeating radical Islam?

Hirsi Ali: No. Islam, period.

Reason: We have to crush the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims under our boot? In concrete terms, what does that mean, “defeat Islam”?

Hirsi Ali: I think that we are at war with Islam. And there’s no middle ground in wars. Islam can be defeated in many ways….There comes a moment when you crush your enemy.

Reason: Militarily?

Hirsi Ali: In all forms, and if you don’t do that, then you have to live with the consequence of being crushed.

Reason: So when even a hard-line critic of Islam such as Daniel Pipes says, “Radical Islam is the problem, but moderate Islam is the solution,” he’s wrong?

Hirsi Ali: He’s wrong. Sorry about that.

Reason: In Holland, you wanted to introduce a special permit system for Islamic schools, correct?

Hirsi Ali: I wanted to get rid of them. I wanted to have them all closed

Reason: Here in the United States, you’d advocate the abolition of—

Hirsi Ali: All Muslim schools. Close them down. Yeah, that sounds absolutist.

Unfiltered comments from readers are on our Facebook page. One of them:

I know plenty of Muslim women working in DV advocacy who owe Ayaan Hirsi Ali not a single goddam thing, and it’s not because they’re all inveterate leftists thoroughly marinated in their own victimology. Ayaan’s criticisms of Islam echo, and in fact reinforce, the most rank tropes of Islamophobia in the West. Yes, she has every right to criticize Islam from her own life experiences, but the logical endpoint of these critiques is the permanent marginalization of Muslims from the mainstream of Western society, not the empowerment and further integration of those already at the mainstream.

Hers is a drearily, irrelevantly euro-centric idea of how Muslims live in non-Muslim societies and that Brandeis – one of the institutional bulwarks of cultural Zionism and Jewish intellectual life in America – found her comments far beyond the pale is remarkable to me. Ayaan has a platform to make the type of sweeping generalizations about Muslims that no commentator in the States has been able to make about Catholics and Jews in a mainstream setting for decades now.