Guns, Testosterone, and General McCaffrey (ret)
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/09/health/09guns.html?_r=3&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
Ummmm. . . This one comes as a shock only to weenie academics that have never handled a firearm and to pasty-skinned lib'rul New York Times writers who think that only madmen would want to handle a firearm.
Of COURSE handling a firearm raises the testosterone level. I betcha if you had them break down, clean and lubricate a machine gun, and put some rounds downrange those college brats would be chugging the hotsauce straight.
This is, to quote Grim of Grim's Hall http://grimbeorn.blogspot.com/
"a feature, not a bug."
Guys are designed by God to defend the important people in a society--pregnant women and kids. Testosterone is a useful chemical to have in your bloodstream when you get ready to do that. So handling things that we as modern men have been programmed to associate with violence will get that little monkey brain ready to execute violence.
That is the same reason that women are attracted to men they describe as "dangerous." They know we can defend them when the going gets rough. Displays of testosterone are part of that. Many women (those not brainwashed by anti-violence weenies) like occasional displays of testosterone so long as it is appropriately directed and kept in check when not appropriate.
Example: My Beloved and I were driving from Texas to Atlanta. Along the way, we needed to get gas, and turned off the interstate somewhere in Birmingham, Alabama. Now, I've been in poor neighborhoods before, but this was a ghetto. It wasn't full of working class poor, it was full of ghetto thugs. My Beloved was driving. I pulled the .45, chambered a round, and told her to find a way back onto the Interstate time now. There's really no way to explain to someone who hasn't been in a firefight or three how I was feeling other than to say I had my 'game face' on. Nothing happened, but we didn't stop for any red lights either.
Decency prevent a description of what happened that evening in the motel room. :) Suffice it to say that side of me is something I only trot out once in a long while in the US. But knowing it is there is very attractive to her.
If these weenies would handle guns, maybe they would get laid often enough that they wouldn't have the energy to waste on stupid studies that give results I could have described in detail.
On a totally unrelated topic, General McCaffrey (ret) spent some time hanging out in Iraq last month. If you havn't got the PDF file, Jerry Pournelle has it in HTML on his website
http://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/Iraqreport.html
Or you can download it here:
http://www.cfr.org/publication/10643/iraq_observations.html
Compare with last year's trip report:
http://www.senate.gov/~foreign/testimony/2005/McCaffreyTestimony050718.pdf
And check out the Belmont Club's commentary here:
http://fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com/2006/05/mccaffrey-trip-report.html
Someone once asked back on LJ what two topics I had written about had to do with each other.
And the answer was nothing. I was thinking of the two, or thinking of one and found the others online, or whatever. I do not feel the need to remain on one topic per post. It's my blog and I'll engage in radical topic changes if I want to.
For instance, now I feel the urge to quote the Maliki jurist Ibn Abdun on the subject of Christians and Jews in Seville around 1100AD.
"No Jew or Christian may be allowed to wear the dress of an aristocrat, nor of a jurist, nor of a wealthy individual; on the contrary they must be detested and avoided. It is forbidden to [greet] them with the [expression] 'peace be upon you.' In effect, 'Satan has gained possession of them, and caused them to forget God's warning. They are the confederates of Satan's party; Satan's confederates will surely be the losers!' A distinctive sign must be imposed upon them in order that they may be recognized and this will be for them a form of disgrace."
Ummmm. . . This one comes as a shock only to weenie academics that have never handled a firearm and to pasty-skinned lib'rul New York Times writers who think that only madmen would want to handle a firearm.
Of COURSE handling a firearm raises the testosterone level. I betcha if you had them break down, clean and lubricate a machine gun, and put some rounds downrange those college brats would be chugging the hotsauce straight.
This is, to quote Grim of Grim's Hall http://grimbeorn.blogspot.com/
"a feature, not a bug."
Guys are designed by God to defend the important people in a society--pregnant women and kids. Testosterone is a useful chemical to have in your bloodstream when you get ready to do that. So handling things that we as modern men have been programmed to associate with violence will get that little monkey brain ready to execute violence.
That is the same reason that women are attracted to men they describe as "dangerous." They know we can defend them when the going gets rough. Displays of testosterone are part of that. Many women (those not brainwashed by anti-violence weenies) like occasional displays of testosterone so long as it is appropriately directed and kept in check when not appropriate.
Example: My Beloved and I were driving from Texas to Atlanta. Along the way, we needed to get gas, and turned off the interstate somewhere in Birmingham, Alabama. Now, I've been in poor neighborhoods before, but this was a ghetto. It wasn't full of working class poor, it was full of ghetto thugs. My Beloved was driving. I pulled the .45, chambered a round, and told her to find a way back onto the Interstate time now. There's really no way to explain to someone who hasn't been in a firefight or three how I was feeling other than to say I had my 'game face' on. Nothing happened, but we didn't stop for any red lights either.
Decency prevent a description of what happened that evening in the motel room. :) Suffice it to say that side of me is something I only trot out once in a long while in the US. But knowing it is there is very attractive to her.
If these weenies would handle guns, maybe they would get laid often enough that they wouldn't have the energy to waste on stupid studies that give results I could have described in detail.
On a totally unrelated topic, General McCaffrey (ret) spent some time hanging out in Iraq last month. If you havn't got the PDF file, Jerry Pournelle has it in HTML on his website
http://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/Iraqreport.html
Or you can download it here:
http://www.cfr.org/publication/10643/iraq_observations.html
Compare with last year's trip report:
http://www.senate.gov/~foreign/testimony/2005/McCaffreyTestimony050718.pdf
And check out the Belmont Club's commentary here:
http://fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com/2006/05/mccaffrey-trip-report.html
Someone once asked back on LJ what two topics I had written about had to do with each other.
And the answer was nothing. I was thinking of the two, or thinking of one and found the others online, or whatever. I do not feel the need to remain on one topic per post. It's my blog and I'll engage in radical topic changes if I want to.
For instance, now I feel the urge to quote the Maliki jurist Ibn Abdun on the subject of Christians and Jews in Seville around 1100AD.
"No Jew or Christian may be allowed to wear the dress of an aristocrat, nor of a jurist, nor of a wealthy individual; on the contrary they must be detested and avoided. It is forbidden to [greet] them with the [expression] 'peace be upon you.' In effect, 'Satan has gained possession of them, and caused them to forget God's warning. They are the confederates of Satan's party; Satan's confederates will surely be the losers!' A distinctive sign must be imposed upon them in order that they may be recognized and this will be for them a form of disgrace."
posted by Just A Decurion at 5/11/2006 08:30:00 PM
13 Comments:
Any relation to SapperSgt?
Do you know how to use the Link button in the Create Post screen? First you copy the URL of wherever you want to link to, then highlight whatever text you want to be the frontend (that the viewer sees), click on the Link button in the toolbar of the Create Post screen, and paste the previously-copied URL into the field of the window which will appear.
It's easier than I make it sound and makes your posts much prettier.
Ah! I see.
But yes, I am one and the same. Check the old blog, you'll see why.
Just figured the link thingy out here myself. I've been using w.blogger to prepare posts off-line and hadn't seen the need.
You actually loaded a gun in CONUS? How DARE you!
Ha.
pihoYeah, I didn't know about it until somebody clued me in.
If you're posting by email, the linking option won't work for you, just from the Create Post. The thing is, if you just type in URLs, if they're long enough they can somehow push down everything in the sidebar below the posts.
Weird.
I was amused by the testosterone/gun study. During my Army days, we had the BAR (ever messed with one of them?) The guy who chose to break down one of them would have measured much higher in the noradrenaline (causes anxiety) level than on the testerosterone level. I wonder what reaction a sword, knife, or bow and arrow would have had?
A few years ago, a fellow from Ft. Lauderdale shot (&killed) a car-jacker on I-95 in Miami. When asked why he had a gun ready in his car he said "I always carry a gun when I come to Miami". Florida now has a sort of "one free shot" law which allows you to use deadly force if you feel threatened, no matter what the occasion.
I read Gen. McCaffery's report and frankly it reminded me of a political speech, but then I'm skeptical of Generals anyhow ;-)
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
As regards the testosterone and guns thing, this is a commonplace of high-school biology, which presumably the NY Times columnist flunked. It is not just tools, symbols and situations of violence that produce raised testosterone levels either; simple competition with other males will do. A study of professional male tennis players showed that both players developed increased levels of testosterone in the lead-up to the match. After the match, the loser's levels dropped back to normal, while the winner's levels remained high, demonstrating no doubt the ancient and intimate connection between dominance, victory and reproductive success. This is sometimes referred to as the "Duke Of Marlborough Effect", from an entry in the first Duchess Of Marlborough's diary:
"His Grace returned from the wars today and pleasured me twice in his topboots."
No doubt this is why people "lock up their daughters" when soldiers come to town...
I think there might be a typo in the Ibn Abdun quotation. Should the first word be "No" rather than "Now"? It is an interesting passage by the way, reminding us that the Arab rulers of "al Andalus" were a good deal less tolerant of dhimmi (non-muslims) than is sometimes pretended. The most that can probably be said is that they were often less beastly to Jews, and "variant" Christians such as Arians and Cathars, than contemporary European rulers. The habit of insisting that Jews wear distinctive clothing and symbols was, alas, common to both.
In his topboots. . . I suppose His Grace can afford to ruin a set of sheets on occasion. My wife would likely object strenuously. :)
Indeed 'tis a typo. Shall be corrected. The point on Jews and distinctive clothing is well taken. When taking Muslims to task for their historical iniquities some care must be taken not to make the counter-claim that non-Muslims have be paragons of tolerance. All we can say is that we got better, but Sudan still practices traditional chattel slavery and mobs in Egypt murder Christians for giggles.
Welcome to the camp.
Presumably with his spurs on.
There is unquestionably a real Basic Value difference between Western Culture and that of the Arabs. I tend to think the Cultural Values tend to impact the religions rather than the reverse - that is, culture tends to influence how the religion is organized and the moral code it enforces - and indeed may account for the religious codes in the first place.
I don't know. I've known some Arab Christians who were good folks. And comparing Chingiz Khan with Timur highlights the differences in Mongol behavior before and after Islam. Both are right bastards, but Timur was downright genocidal.
Was Tamerlane (Timur) a Moslem? I thought he was the one fascinated with religion who attracted all kinds of religious leaders to Smarkand and allowed religious freedom, (in-as-much as he allowed any freedom). I do know his descendants (Moghul rulers of India) were Moslems.
I think it's hard to judge religion without looking at history. During the 10th-11th century, you could make the argument that the Moslems were more civilized than the Crusaders. Both groups comitted many atrocities in the name of their religion - they lived in a cruel time.
Western dealings with moslems after the Renaissance - up until the 20th century, were mostly from a position of power, which led the moslems to knuckle under and downplay the aggressive and violent part of their religion.
Since WW1, the Arab world has seen hope of dominance in their area once again (or at least parity) and they have become much more aggressive and intolerant.
They do seem to be slow learners and, I think, many of them do not understand how aggressive and domineering we can become when provoked. They see us (America and the West) as being weak-minded pushovers, despite evidence to the contrary.
That's probably one reason why they hate Israel so much, they can't figure out how a small nation, founded on a mix of ancient jewish and modern western values can repetedly kick the shit out of them.
The Iron Limper was indeed a Muslim. The Turkish chronicle malfuzat-i-Timuri puts these words into his mouth.
At this time there arose in my heart the desire to lead an expedition against the infidels and to become a ghazi; for it had reached my ears that the slayer of infidels is a ghazi and if he is slain he is a martyr.
And again,
My great object in invading Hindustan has been to wage a religious war against the infidel Hindus, and it now appeared to me that it was necessary to put down these Jats.
You can also see that when he took Sivas, all the Armenians and other Christians he buried alive, but all Muslims he spared.
I have heard the allegation made that Muslims were more civilized than the Franks, but have yet to see an example of Muslim civility.
And the Muslims were plenty aggressive after the Renaissance. You don't get a non-agressive strain of Islam until the 19th century, and only in places like India where the British wouldn't tolerate such nonsense. The Turks were gleefully practicing genocide on an occasional basis through the second decade of the 20th century--and taking the levy of children from the Christian subjects almost that late. Best known instances of outright massacre were Bulgaria in 1876, Armenians from 1902 onwards, and even today their relations with the Kurds are not of a tolerant nature.
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