Dumb Remark du Jour

I've more or less ignored the royal birth -- I mean, royals have babies. That's what they do, when they're not cutting ribbons or waving at crowds. But this observation stopped me cold:

But on CNN, one contributor — CNN Royal Contributor Victoria Arbiter — took the celebration a bit too far, offering her own insights into the relative merits of the baby’s sex:

My first thought, I have to say, was this is how brilliant a royal Kate is. There are women throughout British royal family history that have panicked not being able to deliver a boy, and here we are, Kate did it first time. So it does mean, of course, the change in the next succession conversation is over for another 30 years or so, but we’re celebrating and thrilled that Kate has had a healthy, bouncing baby boy.

The succession issue has already been decided, as ThinkProgress points out, with the passage earlier this year of the 2013 Succession to the Crown Act -- the first-born, boy or girl, is the heir.

But that's not what elevates Arbiter's comment to the realm of once-in-a-lifetime ignorance. The father determines the sex of the child: women have two X chromosomes, so they contribute an X chromosome; men have an X and a Y, so they contribute one or the other. That's what decides the sex of the child.

That's high-school biology.