dangerous

/ dave / arouet at winternet.com
Sat Sep 7 14:48:47 PDT 2002


Is this thread veering a bit off course? Comments that can't help but suggest the erotically-charged "dangerous woman" of yore, a classic, media-fueled cliche to be sure - the wayward, much-romanticized subject of innumerable dime paperback covers - versus the more real, and more immediately threatening/harmful, type of person that I thought Joanna was referring to? It seems like apples and oranges (hence casual indifference to Joanna's question), but maybe I missed something along the way.

Incidentally, last week's "This American Life" public radio program had some interesting segments on testosterone, and its absence/excess in various subjects. The story about the young woman who became a man, and the effect that the testosterone she was taking had on her attitudes and feelings toward others, was pretty interesting.

"Testosterone. Sure, testosterone carries some negative connotations: hyper-competitiveness, promiscuity, love of explosions, painted torsos at sporting events. Yet we all have it - men and women - and studies show that its effects are a lot stranger - and a lot more subtle - than you might think. This week, a man gets sick and loses his testosterone for four months, and his entire personality changes. A woman gets dosed with twice the testosterone men have, with some surprising effects. The pros and cons of the hormone of desire."

They have a real audio link here (scroll down a bit for last week's show):

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/

(Apropos of another thread, they also devoted an entire show to daily life onboard the USS John C. Stennis aircraft carrier back in March, touching on some of the issues that have come up in the discussion here - when their Navy "handlers" weren't around. Just search at the above link on "aircraft carrier" or something...)

--

/ dave /



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list