{"id":289,"date":"2006-05-12T14:21:19","date_gmt":"2006-05-12T19:21:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=289"},"modified":"2010-08-31T01:45:10","modified_gmt":"2010-08-31T05:45:10","slug":"testosterone-makes-people-stupid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=289","title":{"rendered":"Testosterone makes people stupid"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yes, testosterone makes people stupid.  No, I&#8217;m not talking about the men who secrete and metabolize it, I&#8217;m talking about the nervous old women of both sexes who pronounce upon it as though it were some sort of demonic drug.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Latest in this parade of absurdity is a study of the effect of handling guns on male testosterone.  Lurking behind the study is a clear agenda &mdash; the designers wanted to show that guns cause violence.  Jonah Goldberg rightly <a href='http:\/\/author.nationalreview.com\/latest\/?q=MjE5NQ=='>slams<\/a> this nonsense in National Review Online, reminding us that conservatives may after all be good for something.<\/p>\n<p>I read Jonah&#8217;s column while a shreddin&#8217; track from Joe Satriani&#8217;s new album <cite>Super Colossal<\/cite> poured out my speakers. Hearing what Satch does on a fretboard definitely raises my testosterone level.  Should we be banning electric guitars for their aggression-inciting effects, now?<\/p>\n<p>The study involved hot sauce, which I&#8217;m pretty sure <a href='http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=79'>raises mens&#8217; testosterone levels too<\/a>.  Are we to forbid the import of capsicum peppers on this account?<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s no end to this sort of silliness, short of recognizing that the people who propagate it are self-panickers who, if the entire planet turned into a brightly colored and harmless Nerf-world tomorrow, would fear their own shadows.<\/p>\n<p>The fault lies not in guitars or hot sauces or testosterone or firearms but in the self-panickers&#8217; tendermindedness and moral infantilism. It&#8217;s &#8220;Mommy!  Mommy! The bad thing made me do it!&#8221; amplified and projected on everyone else.<\/p>\n<p>To which the only counter is two words: <em>Grow up!<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yes, testosterone makes people stupid. No, I&#8217;m not talking about the men who secrete and metabolize it, I&#8217;m talking about the nervous old women of both sexes who pronounce upon it as though it were some sort of demonic drug.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-firearms","category-politics","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=289"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2505,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289\/revisions\/2505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}