Pease porridge hot - Pease porridge cold

That might sum up the reaction to a speech I attended today by Allan Pease, Australian author of "Why Men Don't Listen and Women Can't Read Maps: How We're Different and What to Do About It."

Although some of his lines could work in a late-night comedy routine, they fall a little flat when delivered to a mixed gender group of technical professionals from various parts of the world. Pease's claim that physical brain differences between the sexes account for the low rate of women working as flight engineers, air traffic controllers, and other scientific or daredevil roles should remain the stuff of comedy not science.

In between the jokes, I couldn't help but notice more than a few lines that simply didn't go over well -- like women are more suited to go into human resources than engineering.

The objection to Pease is not that he pointed out some observable differences between men and women. Clearly there are many. It's that he accounted for the suitabality of women for specific roles based on the science of the brain. If you took that at face value, some would use it to justify the under-representation of women in all manner of careers.

I took a look at some of the reviews of his book on Amazon. The first one (deemed the "most helpful") was crtical: Pease "offers strained and not-very-funny examples under the guise of pseudo-science, and -- worse yet -- doesn't offer any substantive insight or very useful recommendations."

Another reviewer wrote "Just read it with an open mind and have fun - don't take it too seriously!" That's probably good advice if you choose to read the book.

Not that he just picked on women. Men are an easy target too. There are some issues, though, that are still raw to the touch and should be left off the comedy cards. Pease seems to think it's funny that of the UN weapons inspectors who went to Iraq, all were men with an average age of 50. He went on to say that men cannot be relied on to find a stick of butter in a household refrigerator. So what were they doing in the desert looking for WMD? His mother could have found WMDs in no time at all, he joked.

It reminds me of Bush's tasteless joke about trying to find WMDs in the Oval Office, as shown in this video. Bush is actually pretty funny in the parts of this video that don't concern WMDs.  Still, at best, the Bush administration didn't ask enough questions before opting to wage war. At worst, the falsehood of WMDs was deliberately planted and perpetuated.

Pease is funny too. But his time has passed. As the next line in the nursery rhyme goes -- "Peas porridge in the pot nine days old." Pease, is your porridge getting a little old?