I was very interested in this story from NPR about girls achieving math parity with boys as far as test scores throughout high school. I have generally been dismayed by the roasting of Lawrence Summers for just leaving open the possibility of gender differences in academic areas of strength, and I think this response is much, much more helpful. You don’t have to kick the guy in the head for acknowledging that as one possible explanation; you have to do more research and find out whether that’s the reason or not.

But I’m also fascinated by this story because, for about seven years, I coached a high-school mock trial team made up entirely of girls. Girls don’t have the same reputation for lagging behind in debate skills that they do in math, but I do believe that they face powerful gender issues that I discussed with them quite often.

(If you don’t know how mock trial works, basically a team of students rehearses for a period of months, learning the facts and developing a presentation of a particular case (everybody on all teams works on the same case for the whole season) in which team members will eventually act as the “attorneys” and also the “witnesses” for one side or the other of the case. They then compete against other schools — everybody learns both sides of the case, because you wind up competing in multiple “rounds” in a tournament, and sometimes you’re on one side, and sometimes you’re on the other. For the attorneys, it’s a lot like debate; for the witnesses, it’s basically acting. It’s hard to explain if you’ve never seen it, but it relies most heavily on your ability to think on your feet and, in the case of attorneys, to know the case backwards and forwards and be extensively prepared to make objections, respond to objections, and so forth. Minnesota has a very strong state high school program, and the school where I coached had a very strong program with a very good reputation.)

Rounds are generally judged by local lawyers, and occasionally by local judges if you’re lucky. I cannot tell you how many times I saw competition judges — easily half of whom were women themselves — react with obvious distaste and dismay to strong, authoritative performances by girls. I’m not talking about being rude or snotty or overly aggressive or pushy; the philosophy of the school’s program was always very much against that, both because it sucks and because you don’t usually get anywhere. I’m talking about simply getting up and speaking persuasively in favor of your position. I actually listened to a judge, during a post-competition critique, accuse a seventeen-year-old girl of being “snippy” simply because she questioned witnesses with an authority and confidence that would be absolutely unremarkable in a boy her age. The girls’ team shirts that year said “Smart Not Snippy.”

(Oh, and the ones the first year I coached say — I still have mine — “Hard Work. Fair Play. World Domination.” Oh, I loooooooved that team. One of them’s currently taking the bar exam.) (You know the scene in Parenthood, where Steve Martin’s kid manages to catch the fly ball, and Steve Martin goes into this ridiculous dance around the field, where he’s waggling and rolling on the ground with his feet in the air, and he kind of knows he’s being ridiculous and overinvested but he can’t help indulging his moment of triumph? I had that moment with that team.)

Anyhoo, high-school teachers who work with a lot of girls will tell you that they disproportionately have the “I don’t know if this is right” syndrome. You ask them a question, and before they offer their answer, they say, “I don’t know if this is right, but…” Going from there to fiercely protecting a witness from objectionable questions from an opposing lawyer is really a tough shift.

My mom used to do a little experiment in her classes to demonstrate (or, really, to discover) girls’ tendency not to raise their hands in class. She would, without saying anything to the class, start calling on boys and girls, alternating between the two. Boy, girl. Boy, girl. Absolutely even. And every time she did it, it would take a very short time before somebody said, “How come all you’re doing is calling on girls?” Just having girls speaking half the time felt to the class like it was nothing but girls being called on.

I’m absolutely certain that boys disproportionately  have other issues in school, and I don’t know that one is easier and one is harder. But seven years teaching girls to stand up without apologizing, interrupt people to make objections without apologizing, stand up straight, speak with authority, and generally feel comfortable as debaters convinced me once and for all that it’s very much worth being aware of all these issues. If you look at that research on math skills, it makes you realize that without teachers who are aware of the stereotypes that girls can face, and their tendency — for reasons apparently not related to aptitude — to stop taking hard math classes in high school, they’d get nowhere.

Hard Work. Fair Play. World Domination. And lots and lots and lots of math and the rules of evidence.

To the commenter who turned me on to the idea of cold-brewing iced coffee: OH MY GOD. You have just changed my life. For those of you who loved iced coffee but struggle with making it at home, let me tell you about the unbelievably simple process I now favor.

Take a plastic pitcher, like a Rubbermaid or something — something with a lid. Dump two cups of ground coffee in the bottom. You can use cheap Maxwell House; it will turn out fine. Add about eight cups of water. This doesn’t have to be exact, but you’re shooting for about a four-to-one ratio of water to coffee. Now put the top on the pitcher and leave it on the counter for about twelve hours. (Overnight is good. It doesn’t have to be twelve hours. This recipe is incredibly forgiving.)

In the morning, strain it through a fine metal sieve. I just have a big metal strainer with a handle; that works fine.

(Note: I’ve heard people talk about straining it through a coffee filter; when I tried that, it seemed like it was going to take an extremely long time, and it just isn’t necessary for me. Using this method, you’ll get a little bit of sludge in the bottom, but if you’ve ever used a French press, it’s nothing you’re not used to. Anyway, I strain it twice — into a bowl, and then back into the pitcher, and with those two strainings, it works fine for me. If it bugs you, line the strainer with a coffee filter and strain it slowly through that.)

So on the first strain, I try to dump everything out, put the grounds into the strainer and press on them to try to get the water out. Then dump all the grounds out into the trash, wash out the pitcher, and strain the stuff back into the pitcher.

What you now have is basically concentrated coffee. You don’t really want to drink this straight. You want to cut it at least 50-50 with water or (as I like it) milk — I like 1% milk. You can definitely dilute it more than that, depending on the taste you like. Cut with about half 1% milk and about four ice cubes in a glass and a modest amount of sugar, it is a completely delightful, entirely satisfying iced coffee better than anything I achieved at home by chilling hot coffee. Using 1% is good, I think, because it helps it not turn watery, even with all the ice cubes. Anyway, this is absolutely awesome stuff, and if you are an iced-coffee drinker, I strongly recommend it. Yes, you spend money on ground coffee, but even with the milk, you’re paying much, much less than you will for iced coffee out, and I personally think this is actually better and richer. The cold brewing (I am told) makes the coffee more…rich and mellow, because it doesn’t bring out as much bitterness as hot brewing, which I suspect is why using cheap coffee matters much less.

In other news of triumphs, I HAVE FINALLY GOTTEN WHOLE WHEAT BREAD TO WORK.

My mom is a really, really good bread baker. She makes real, delicious, homemade bread that’s so good I could sit with a loaf of it and a stick of butter and not eat anything else for a day and a half. I’ve always really wanted to get better at doing that, but I’ve struggled mightily. My whole wheat bread tends to come out heavy and brick-like, no matter how hard I try. It seems to rise pretty well, but then when I bake it, it comes out in small, heavy slices that are okay, but they’re not like regular bread.

Today, I tried the recipe for Whole-Wheat Bread With Wheat Germ And Rye from The New Best Recipe, from the wonderful folks at America’s Test Kitchen. (Sup holla, as the orange people say on Project Runway, to TWT in-law Adam Ried.) And FOR ONCE, I actually successfully made wheat bread that rose brilliantly, baked perfectly, and tastes…a lot like something my mother might make. I put a little tiny bit of butter on a slice while it was still warm, and it was pretty pleasing to know I made it myself. There’s nothing magic about the recipe — the only thing I noticed that I don’t think I remember from previous efforts was that the hand-mixing instructions had you combine the wet ingredients and the salt and stuff with most, but not all, of the flour until it was like a very, very sticky dough, and then mix it with a wooden spoon for five minutes. That was surprisingly hard work. Five minutes is a long time to stir something that really doesn’t want to be stirred.

Something about christening a new house really feels complete when you bake bread. It’s maybe the most homey smell there is, and when the loaf just pops right out, and you get that nice hollow tapping noise on the bottom so you know it really is cooked just the way it’s supposed to be? That’s a nice feeling.

Iced coffee; The New Best Recipe bread. A good time is being had by all.

This week at The Law In Real Life, a look at Savana Redding, strip-searched for double-strength Advil. You cannot make this stuff up.

Now that I’m in the new place and have been on the wagon a while, I’m hoping to get a new publishing schedule running over at LTC, which you can check now for a workout update. This one’s for you, Miss Sarah Bunting. You can keep up with updates there with the RSS Feed widget over in the left column. I’ll probably move that up at some point, but for now, at least it’s there.

My new column at GetLegal.com, The Law In Real Life, kicks off with an explanation of why you can’t make a license plate proclaiming people’s faith in Christianity, SOUTH CAROLINA. I do like reminding myself that I still know what a constitution is.

Seriously, the reason I love this story is that there’s been a fight over which of two legal approaches should be taken to license plates, back through all that “Choose Life” stuff, and they managed to find a way to make a Christian plate that’s illegal either way. Bravo.

In one of my new cobalt blue glasses (on sale for seven dollars at Target for a set of sixteen!), this is iced coffee I pressed and chilled myself, with star-shaped frozen-coffee cubes, made in a silicon star-shaped ice tray from Ikea that I could not resist when I saw it. I was really unduly proud of this preposterously twee concoction, but I’m going to tell you: I hate it when I make iced coffee for myself and it gets all watery, and this is much, much better. The stars, though, are just me amusing myself.

First, understand that I come at this as a person who lived in Minnesota for about ten years. I’m used to booing Brett Favre kind of instinctively, not only because of where I lived but because my bestest friend is not only from Wisconsin, but one of those really weird Packer fans with (no lie) a giant pile of VHS tapes of old Packer games that are being saved for literally no reason except that they are tapes of Packer games, and you do not get rid of tapes of Packer games.

It was already a running joke between us before this most recent round of Brett Favre nonsense, the way he spent years playing the “maybe I will retire, and maybe I won’t” game, dicking around the team and the fans and enjoying — it seems to me — the constant attention generated by vaguely threatening to quit and then watching as everyone fretted about the possibility, and then doing the “well, twist my arm, ow, ow, okay!” dance, and watching everyone rejoice.

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Some of you may remember a couple of years ago when my friend Expat Mike was blogging from Amsterdam. Well, now he’s in Italy, and his blog is alive again, and it’s already wonderful. He’s settling in, but before you get to that, you can read about his adventures with Tina, the worst person to sit next to on the plane EVER:

Tina has a few health problems. She has diabetes, gout, severe asthma, sleep apnea, and fibromyalgia. She also suffers from claustrophobia, depression, and anxiety attacks. She has a pinched nerve, a ruptured disc, and a bunion. She is carrying medicines for all of these. We discuss each medicine in order and their associated side effects. I worry that in Italy I will be declared her common-law primary care physician.

For those of you who have never read his work, I think you will agree that Michael is wasting his talent as an academic. My ultimate goal is to harangue him into blogging even when he’s not traveling, so maybe if you doggedly follow his adventures, it will inspire him.

So…wow. Since the last time you saw me, I have spent an insane amount of time packing and unpacking boxes from various vehicles, and I have also spent an insane amount of time unpacking boxes in general. My kitchen is just about functional (it’s so huge! so very huge!), but the bedroom is still under construction and needs…furniture.

For the most part, my biggest challenge right now is that I seriously pared down my possessions while living in Brooklyn, and I don’t really have enough furniture for this place. I got rid of the couch, of course, but I also need to buy a new bed, and I just…yeah. I need stuff. Right now, the top thing on my list is trashcans.

I spent a lovely July Fourth watching the fireworks at the National Mall from the balcony of LTG’s place of employment, which was AWESOME. All the glory of the fireworks without any of the horrible crowding. I’ve already spent some time with my sister and with my friend Ames and with Music Stylist Stephen, and things are good.

I have also been writing. I wrote about wedding television for MSNBC.com, I’m at Vulture for another couple of days, and I wrote about the gay marriage decision for my pals at GetLegal. Hopefully, I have a couple of big projects launching in the next little while, now that I’m relocated, and soon, I will provide plenty of pictures in which I obsess about trying to get all the things that my substantially bigger apartment requires.