At MIT, efforts to recruit and retain female faculty have produced big gains. But now women face another obstacle: the perception that the school's trying too hard to help them.

The Times's John Tierney is the latest of several to take the Larry Summers tack of questioning women's natural aptitude for science. Here's what's wrong with this argument, in three easy points that even the simplest ladybrain can understand.

• A CBS poll shows that Sarah Palin is pretty unpopular. Unsurprisingly, only 7% of Democrats have a positive view of the former governor of Alaska, and 43% of Republicans can say the same.

• NBA Commissioner David Stern says in the next decade women may join the NBA: "I don't want to get into all kinds of arguments with players and coaches about the likelihood, but I really think it's a good possibility."

The state of women in science in the Western world may be less than encouraging, but there's cause for a little celebration elsewhere: 45-year-old rocket scientist Tessy Thomas has just been named project director for an "advanced version" of a medium-range missile defense system in India's Defence Research and…