What's cooking?

Scandal brewing as it was suggested that some ‘family recipes’ ascribed to Cindy McCain on the website of her husband, Republican presidential nominee John McCain, may have been lifted from a popular food website. Which raises questions, not so much about plagiarism, but why potential presidential wives are expected to prove their cookery credentials. It's a reminder of the fuss in 1992, when Hillary Clinton stated that she was not one to bake cookies, causing such a backlash that she was soon taking part in a cookie "bake-off" with Barbara Bush. If McCain's recipes prove to have been copied, fingers crossed they'll just be taken down, and that she isn't collared into any desperate displays of culinary prowess, eh?

Boys will be boys

Last week, it was reported that one of the roots of the financial crisis could well be the male sex hormone, testosterone, which, according to an academic study, can lead to dangerous risk-taking. "It would be good for the financial system," says the study's author, John M Coates, "if we had more women and older men in the markets." Hear, hear. And, as he could have added, in politics, the judiciary, the police force ...

Kira Cochrane (The Guardian)