Monday, 17 April 2017

By on April 17th, 2017 in personal, science kits

08:54 – It was 55.4F (13C) when I took Colin out at 0700 this morning, bright and sunny. Barbara just left for the gym. Colin is barking like mad to let me know that the garbage truck just pulled up out front and is stealing our garbage.

We got all the science kit stuff that arrived Saturday checked in, inventoried, and packed away yesterday. Other big orders will be arriving this week and next week. I’m not sure where we’ll put it all. Yesterday, we pulled two cases of 500 15mL and 50mL centrifuge tubes and a case of 1,100 bottles down off the high storage shelves for use in building kits. The space that freed up on the shelves is now full again of the stuff that arrived Saturday.

The first class for the General Class ham radio license is coming up in a couple of weeks. I asked Barbara yesterday if she’d like to come along to meet everyone. She said she would, although I warned her that the class itself would probably not interest her. She pointed out that, in general, women attend such events with their husbands even if they have no interest in them, while husbands seldom attend such events with their wives if they’re not interested. I replied that that’s because women generally are social creatures while men generally are anti-social. That goes back to our hunter-gatherer days, when men were the hunters and women the gatherers. That’s also why men are tightly focused on the job at hand to the exclusion of all else and so don’t notice surrounding superficialities, while women are generally aware of their surrounding environments.

Or at least women used to be, due to genetic adaptations. A successful hunter had to maintain laser focus on finding and killing prey, while a successful gatherer had to be aware of the tiniest details in the area that surrounded her. Nowadays, most women have lost that situational awareness, although most men tend to maintain focus on the job at hand.

Although even men are changing. In times past, the vast majority of men were alphas, genetically, physically, and temperamentally suited to be hunters and warriors. There were a few betas, who became the artists and other wusses. Nowadays, that proportion is reversed. Alpha males are becoming rare, with betas, gammas, and even omegas commonplace. I suspect that very few young men nowadays have ever even thrown or taken a punch. Even our military men are becoming increasingly wussified.  All of that has resulted from 50 or 60 years’ worth of female teachers trying to convert little boys into little girls, unfortunately with a great deal of success.

 

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58 Comments and discussion on "Monday, 17 April 2017"

  1. MrAtoz says:

    There were a few betas, who became the artists and other wusses.

    lol! Sexist Pig!

    Keep up the good work!

    And

    I approve!

    Thompson 2020! “No more wusses!”

  2. Robert Bruce Thompson says:

    I should do a survey of how many of the men here have ever been in a fist-fight, hunted, shot competitively, fished, taken martial arts classes (for defense/attack, not just for exercise), and so on. My guess is that most of the guys here who are over 60 have done many or all of those things, with a much smaller percentage of those under 40 or even 50. Hell, a lot of them who are under 40 have probably never turned a wrench or sawed a board.

  3. Miles_Teg says:

    “Colin is barking like mad to let me know that the garbage truck just pulled up out front and is stealing our garbage.”

    Does he bark when USPS, UPS and FedEx steal packages you’ve inadvertantly left out the front?

  4. Robert Bruce Thompson says:

    We don’t leave anything out for pickup, other than envelopes in the mailbox, and Barbara doesn’t like to put those out until the morning.

  5. Clayton W. says:

    Let’s see, I haven’t got into a fight since 1982? Right after high school. I have shot, but not competitively, fished a little, no Martial Arts training. 52 years old. I was a SSBN Sailor for almost 10 years and had some Marine training as part of the Auxiliary Security Force.

    Fortunately I have managed to avoid fights. Most, it seems to me, fall under my “What would it matter in a year?” category.

    Not sure where that put’s me on your spectrum.

    Other news: A shooting last night less than 6 miles from home and 3 miles from work. Two black males fired 20-30 rounds into a crowd of ~200 people. Three victims with non-life threatening injuries. I need to get some range time soon. 🙁

  6. DadCooks says:

    “I should do a survey…”

    All of the above.

    Just one story for now, I’ll save the rest for later 😉
    Snapped a bully’s arm (as in broke) after I bloodied his nose then used a “martial arts” move I had just learned. He bullied no more and he got a one-week in-school suspension which meant he spent all-day with the PE Teacher, Mr. Reek a Marine Veteran (ran a rut into the track). I got an Atta-Boy from the Principal and a date with the girl he was bullying, she was very grateful 🙂 🙂 The 60s were the end of an era.

  7. nick flandrey says:

    I get a wary ‘side eye’ from my dog when I clean up the yard. I’m sure he thinks of me as “The Poop Thief.”

    n

  8. Spook says:

    ”’… never turned a wrench or sawed a board.”’

    Turned a wench or saw a broad?

  9. Robert Bruce Thompson says:

    Typo.

  10. nick flandrey says:

    “Turned a wench or saw a broad?”

    those are ok on the manliness list too.

    n

  11. Harold says:

    That goes back to our hunter-gatherer days, when men were the hunters and women the gatherers. That’s also why men are tightly focused on the job at hand to the exclusion of all else and so don’t notice surrounding superficialities, while women are generally aware of their surrounding environments.

    Back in the late 90’s, my wife and I attended the one man play “Defending the Caveman” performed by Rob Becker in London. It covered EXACTLY those items with humor and examples. Loved it.

  12. SteveF says:

    The 60s were the end of an era.

    Yah, you bastards screwed it up for those of us who came after. You had the Swinging Sixties, with the pill and a cure for syphilis and free love everywhere. I got the Oh Shit Eighties, where if you slut around AIDS will kill you.* Thanks for nothing.

    * Plus the upsurge of the Moral Majority, but fuck them. They’re idiots.

    Turned a wench or saw a broad?

    I never tuned a wench but I did tune a fish.

    “The Poop Thief.”

    Just showed that to my daughter and she found it very funny.

    As for RBT’s list, I’ve done all except maybe the competitive shooting. I don’t enter tournaments or other competitions. I find the rules artificial and constraining, and I have no need to measure myself that way. As for hunting and fishing, meh. I’ve done it, found it boring. (Who was it, Hemingway who said that once you’ve hunted man you lose the taste for other game? It’s true. Having hunted armed men who were hunting me, going after Peter Cottontail just don’t cut it.)

  13. Miles_Teg says:

    Haven’t touched a gun since 1970, when I was 12. Got bullied a bit in school, and, ironically in church, where a guy my age broke a tooth with one punch to the face. At the end of Year 10 in high school I escaped the bullying by taking mainly “hard” subjects and getting into one of the three Year 11 classes with quiet, studious kids.

    Nowadays I wish I’d gone bunto and put some of the bullies in hospital, which I could have done, but I was quite passive and quietly spoken back then.

  14. Miles_Teg says:

    DadCooks wrote:

    “I got an Atta-Boy from the Principal and a date with the girl he was bullying, she was very grateful”

    I hope you and Hillary used a rubber. Who knows what might have eventuated otherwise… 🙂

  15. Dave Hardy says:

    Manly manliness things: usual fistfights during skool daze and in at least a couple of those I got knocked on my ass. But one learns, and also one grows, so not much of that after age twelve. Ran track, played soccer and football. Tried hard to get laid and failed repeatedly. (thank God!) Drank manly beer (Budweiser tall boys in steel cans) and skipped skool and either drove with somebody who had a car or hitch-hiked into Boston.

    Manly military service ensued for nine years. Followed by manly street cop gigs.

    No martial arts classes, per se, but lotsa mil-spec and cop training classes in self-defense and various SUT stuff and chit-loads of ammo expended between Texas and Thailand.

    But uh-oh, I got sucked into poetry and other literature…back there somewhere…I’d always been a truly psycho reader (like wife) but it was as though a light bulb got flicked on in the fall of 1980 when a professor teaching English poetry showed us how it was done. Mil-spec service finally over, leaves turning colors under a brilliant and frosty blue sky, and getting laid regularly again, oh my.

    Never looked back and to this day, when not indulging in many other manly activities around the house here, like cleaning up cat puke and dawg poop, or running heavy wet laundry loads to the local laundromat’s industrial-level dryers, you’re likely to find me this week reading Proensa: An Anthology of Troubadour Poetry by the very late Paul Blackburn (translator), who was born right here in Saint Albans, and was a friend to the very late Ezra Pound. Or a book of the Psalms set to sonnet form by the extremely late Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke, and her brother, Sir Philip Sidney.

    All that and a big fat hardcover volume of Old English poetry.

    47 here and overcast; supposedly a sunny day tomorrow when I can do manly stuff outdoors in the yard and back porch, and rain the rest of the week, when I can do a lotta inside projects and work on online classes and assorted tax and financial paperwork. Is that manly? Being point man all the time?

  16. CowboySlim says:

    Fished in Lake Michigan in the ’40s, shot .22s in the Mojave Desert in the ’60s.
    Earned BSChEng before the Common Core and its fraud of STEM and critical thinking.

  17. MrAtoz says:

    Guilty of all the above except competitive shooting (I was Captain of the Aviation Rifle Team in The Big Red One as a 2d Looey, fired M16 in one competition).* Unless hunting partridge for years in Wisconsin counts. Those birds can be tricky. Fist fights ended in the mid-teens. The next closest would be Judo training with the grabbing and falling. Sparring (TKD) with full pads in college was exhausting. You learned that 3 minutes of full sparring would waste you physically. Pace yourself.

    I bet most of us here still build shit weekly. Tools!

  18. Harold says:

    Survey:
    > fist-fight – yes
    > hunted – yes
    > shot competitively – yes (long ago)
    > fished – yes
    > taken martial arts classes (for defense/attack, not just for exercise) – yes
    ETC ………………………
    > Skinned and tanned pelts
    > Fired on burglars attempting to run me down
    > Built improvised explosives from age 9 up
    > Chased a purse snatcher in NYC (he got away and I was held at gunpoint by NYCPD)
    > Broke into the Army MWR Travel office in DC as a part of an Industrial Espionage operation for Contential Airlines (incredibly easy)
    > Spent a most of a year bumming around the US on my Harley before college.

  19. Eugen (Romania) says:

    I’ve been in many “fights” which usually lasted for hours, with some quite “bloody”. Those happened during national chess tournaments.. Then I went to high-school and basically stopped playing chess..

  20. SteveF says:

    You learned that 3 minutes of full sparring would waste you physically. Pace yourself.

    No, exactly the opposite. Go all-out for the few seconds needed to put someone down hard.

  21. nick flandrey says:

    Apropos of nothing, I sure like my Yeti drink cup. It really does keep drinks hot/cold for a long time.

    n

  22. lynn says:

    Colin is barking like mad to let me know that the garbage truck just pulled up out front and is stealing our garbage.

    The older that I get, the more I appreciate that a couple of guys on a large truck are willing to show up twice a week to collect our trash for $17/month. My grandparents used to burn their trash in a burn barrel on their farm. Now that was a pain.

  23. Dave Hardy says:

    “Fired on burglars attempting to run me down.”

    Mr. Harold wins the Manliness Contest today! Wicked pissah! Didja get ’em?

    “Then I went to high-school and basically stopped playing chess..”

    And Mr. Eugen wins the innernet today! Had me goin’ there for a minute!

    “Go all-out for the few seconds needed to put someone down hard.” Pretty cool except when that other guy is also going all-out for those same few seconds. This is when you ventilate him with a 10mm Glock G40.

    “I sure like my Yeti drink cup. It really does keep drinks hot/cold for a long time.”

    I got one a couple of months ago and forgot I had it; gonna check it out this week accordingly. Noticed that the Gardener’s Supply store (local chain) wife and I were in last week had a big-ass display of Yeti products, including their coolers in various sizes.

  24. Ray Thompson says:

    I sure like my Yeti drink cup. It really does keep drinks hot/cold for a long time.

    I use a Smokey Mountain Growler’s cup. http://smokymountaingrowlers.com

    About the same as YETI but tends to be a little cheaper. You are correct about the YETI (and the Growler). They will keep ice water, with ice, for over 24 hours. I have a large 40 oz cup that I take with me to school. I also have a 30 oz tumbler that fits in my cup holder on my truck that I use for road trips. Stays ice cold all day.

  25. nick flandrey says:

    It’s nice when a product lives up to its hype.

    n

  26. Dave says:

    It’s nice when a product lives up to its hype.

    When I was in college (the 1980s), I used to say HP equipment was obnoxiously expensive and worth every penny.

  27. Dave Hardy says:

    As recently as 2006-07 when I was working at the financial services firm down in Woostah, MA, their dual monster HP production printers were the shit. They put out table-loads of printouts nightly w/o flaw for the demented fembat matriarchy that ran the place, and on the monthly runs, a truckload of the stuff. Hooked up to the VAX/VMS and HP-UX machines running COBOL. Yeah, 2006-07.

    As it is, all three running desktop/servers here are HP machines and my 17″ laptop running OpenBSD is an HP Workstation, with backlit keyboard.

  28. Harold says:

    RE: “Fired on burglars attempting to run me down.”
    In my early 20’s I stayed in an old (previously abandoned) house on my grandfathers property for free if I would look after his mansion (indoor pool, elevator, etc.) while he was away on frequent business trips. Every evening I would make the rounds just after sundown to verify everything was secure. One evening I found a van parked by the house with 4 late teens trying every door and window. I called out to them that they needed to leave ASAP. They started to get mouthy then recognized I had a holster on and decided to leave, pilling into the van. I was still carrying the replica 1847 Colt Walker that I had been practicing with earlier in the day. I stood in the middle of the drive and screamed at them to stop the van, pulling my old black powder pistol as I did. I didn’t have a plan at this point, just acting on adrenalin. Instead of slowing they accelerated. This was a tree lined drive so they didn’t have room to swerve around me. At that point I put 3 .44 Cal lead balls into the front of the van then jumped aside as they roared past. They zoomed out of sight in a cloud of gravel dust and I tried to calm down as I walked back to my house to call the sheriff. About an hour later, the sheriff arrived and said he had found the four walking down the road after abandoning the overheated van. Apparently the heavy lead balls didn’t hurt the engine but tore the radiator up pretty badly. Two of the four had outstanding warrants and the cops found loot from other rural burglaries in the van so all four were in jail. He laughed that if the van would have stopped on our property, I would have been able to claim title as there was a law in Oklahoma at the time that awarded title of any vehicle left on private property by criminals in the conduct of a crime.

  29. lynn says:

    _No Time For Mourning: Book Four in The Borrowed World Series (Volume 4)_ by Franklin Horton
    https://www.amazon.com/No-Time-Mourning-Borrowed-World/dp/1542715938/

    Book number four of a four book post apocalyptic series. There is another somewhat unrelated book in the BorrowedWorldVerse also. I read the POD (print on demand) trade paperback version. I will purchase further books in the series.

    One of the topics in the prepper community is WROL (without the rule of law) after an apocalyptic event. What happens when people try to defend their homes against other people moving in and seizing their property and supplies ? Horton explores this topic to the extreme and graphic degree.

    And yes, the Hatfields and McCoys comparison might be applicable here. When my former USMC son was serving in Iraq in the 2000s, they had a serious problem with people reporting their neighbors to the Marines as terrorists, trying to settle old scores.

    My rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    Amazon rating: 4.8 out of 5 stars (70 reviews)

  30. MrAtoz says:

    Doughboy up in NORKland is gonna get his ass handed to him. I just hope the Chicomms are the ones to do it. Although, we still have plenty of ageing ordnance to dispose of.

    During my tours in SOUK, every month a “black binder” would come around with the latest on the fat Kim’s. Tyrannical, ruthless, murdering scum. The whole lot. As bad as the Hussein’s, just not as publicized.

  31. SteveF says:

    just not as publicized.

    Sodumb Hussein’s “excesses” weren’t publicized until an excuse was needed for a US — oh, excuse me, I mean a coalition of the willing — attack.

  32. MrAtoz says:

    It was cute watching Colonic Powell running around doing Boooosh’s bidding. I briefed Colonic several times during his tenure as CJCS. Something always seemed off about him. I never worked for him, but people didn’t seem to admire him. Ticket puncher was what I hear most often.

  33. Miles_Teg says:

    In 2003 I wasn’t adverse to attacking Iraq, but when I saw Powell at the UN with his “proofs” that Iraq had WMD I was completely unconvinced. I thought IS THAT IT?!?!?!?!?!

    I also didn’t like his endorsement of Obola in 2008/12.

  34. Dave Hardy says:

    Yeah, Powell is a long-time ticket puncher; and during the Mai Lai fiasco, he was in the chain of command and tried to cover stuff up.

    @Mr. Harold; nice work, sir; and with a black powder revolver, too! Outstanding! Hats off!

    I guess we might see this week what happens with the NORKs, one way or another.

  35. Dave Hardy says:

    Masked antifa assholes using all kinds of weaponized objects in their rioting:

    http://conservative-headlines.org/patriots-send-antifa-running-for-cover-in-berkeley-mayhem/#more-58165

    And they got THEIR asses handed to them. One solid punch to the face and these shitwads run for the hills.

  36. MrAtoz says:

    Yaaas, masked pussies. How long before shooster guns are brought. I’d lay money down the first shooting will be by a masked pussy antifa.

  37. Dave Hardy says:

    They’ll probably miss from three feet away and get blown away immediately. But these types of people, now that we think of it, are bushwhackers and backstabbers. Ya gotta do what the old-timey vets said, and frontier buggers way before that:

    “You got to bushwhack the folks what is aimin’ to bushwhack you.

    Just back from Selectboard meeting across the street; I’m now officially on the town’s Planning Commission, yay for me, more meatspace! and intel!

    They kicked us out as they went into “Executive Session.” Fine by me. Still messing with getting Nethserver apps loaded on the CentOS machine. And time for a snack!

  38. pcb_duffer says:

    I’ve got two of the stainless steel vacuum cups; one a Yeti and the other a brand called Rtic. Both do a great job. As to the ‘manly arts’ mentioned by our host:

    > fist-fight – yes, but not since high school
    > hunted – no. Dad didn’t hunt, so I never picked it up. He always said he’d done enough killing in Korea.
    > shot competitively – no, just for practice. And I more or less had to get rid of my pistol when my nephew got released from federal custody.
    > fished – yes, it’s almost mandatory when you grow up across the street from what another poster likes to call the world’s largest hot tub. The largest fish I’ve ever landed was an amberjack that was just a shade under 90# when we got it to the dock. For those of you who don’t know, that’s a tremendous game fish; one that size will leave you wiped out.
    > taken martial arts classes (for defense/attack, not just for exercise) – no, just not physically able. Bad knees, limited range of motion, long long story.
    > turned a wrench or sawed a board – yes from a very young age. Part and parcel of the family businesses. Basic electrician’s work is included in this.

  39. Spook says:

    Guess I should reply more completely to the survey…
    Yes, to everything except organized competition
    (of pretty much any type). No martial arts.
    Dug ditches, drove nails, roofed. Installed a clutch, etc.
    Nearly always drive a manual transmission!
    Camping, including lots of miles and nights by canoe.
    Fishing, including success with tiny fish in tiny creeks.
    Shot doves, rabbits, quail…
    Made good food out of various fish and game.
    Broke hearts, warped minds… Helped old ladies.
    Scared little kids (and maybe a few young punks).

  40. Eugen (Romania) says:

    “Masked antifa assholes using all kinds of weaponized objects in their rioting:

    http://conservative-headlines.org/patriots-send-antifa-running-for-cover-in-berkeley-mayhem/#more-58165

    FTA: “Despite a heavy police presence, law enforcement relegated themselves to the sidelines and refused to maintain order, resulting in a brouhaha of epic proportions.”

    If that would have happened in Romania, a huge scandal would happen with police chiefs fired and other measures like that.

    Nowadays in Romania, any clashes between group of people are strictly prevented by police forces. Here we might have only cases where protesters attack these forces. In this case, the forces usually acts calm to avoid escalation of conflict. Depends on the situation. They may try to early capture a few leaders, the most violent ones. Others will be found and arrested afterwards.

    If you are in the crowd masked and armed with fighting objects, you’ll be surely removed as early as possible, legitimized and fined/arrested. Also you’ll be removed if you just act drunk or violent.

  41. brad says:

    I suspect that there have never been that many “alpha” males. A human tribe will always have had more followers than leaders. Otherwise, civilization wouldn’t have gotten very far. You need a leader, but you need the cooperative hunting party even more. I’m not totally up on the terms, but I think that hunting party would have been “gammas” – competent males not chasing after the top spot.

    Vaguely on topic: We saw a puff piece on BBC yesterday about a gorilla that women are apparently swooning over. The woman reporter was visibly fighting an internal struggle, but finally said something like: we are apes too, and he embodies many of the things women are looking for, like strength, dominance, being a good father…

    That may explain the female psychology at work – fawning over an unobtainable image of an alpha male. Still, she’s going to take a lot of feminist abuse for noting that women want strong men, as opposed to metrosexuals.

    Meanwhile, a more scientific analysis pointed out that you can see the whites of the gorilla’s eyes. In the vast majority of gorillas, the “white” is pigmented brown. Hence, this gorilla’s eyes look a lot more human, and this is the likely reason that he is more attractive to people that his cohorts.

  42. brad says:

    I suspect that there have never been that many “alpha” males. A human tribe will always have had more followers than leaders. Otherwise, civilization wouldn’t have gotten very far. You need a leader, but you need the cooperative hunting party even more. Does that make them…deltas? Whatever you call competent males not actively chasing after the top spot.

    Vaguely on topic: We saw a puff piece on BBC yesterday about a gorilla that women are apparently swooning over. The woman reporter was visibly fighting an internal struggle, but finally said something like: we are apes too, and he embodies many of the things women are looking for, like strength, dominance, being a good father…

    That may explain the female psychology at work – fawning over an unobtainable image of an alpha male. Still, she’s going to take a lot of feminist abuse for noting that women want strong men, as opposed to metrosexuals.

    Meanwhile, a more scientific analysis pointed out that you can see the whites of the gorilla’s eyes. In the vast majority of gorillas, the “white” is pigmented brown. Hence, this gorilla’s eyes look a lot more human, and this is the likely reason that he is more attractive to people that his cohorts.

    (Posted this on Sunday by accident, deleted it, confused the server – if this appears, I guess the server likes me again)

    – – – – –

    I was a wimp in school – the classic bullied nerd. Only real “fight” in school, I lost instantly when the other guy got me in a chokehold.

    I detest fishing.

    As an adult, I eventually outgrew the problems (but I still hate fishing, that’s not a problem). Did a lot of judo; also taught it to kids. Wish I could still be doing it, but after getting a knee blown out, the doc convinced me otherwise. However, I was simply not fast and coordinated enough to compete.

    Practical skills, yes, but I learned them myself, mostly as an adult. My dad was seriously sickly (badly managed diabetes), and not really into that kind of thing.

  43. Eugen (Romania) says:

    And Romania will test on this week its sirens for alarming the population. The signal for disasters is composed of 5 signals of 16 seconds each with a pause of 10 seconds between them. And the signal that marks the end of the exercise/alert is a 2 minute continuous sound. At least this is what I’ve just read somewhere. Don’t know if there are other alarm signals.

    It is advertised just as a routine test that haven’t been done in years. No reason not to believe this.

  44. Eugen (Romania) says:

    WRT to the sirens test: almost nobody here knows if and where are the shelters. And if they are properly maintained. I don’t know that, and never knew or saw a sign to indicate a shelter..

  45. Robert Bruce Thompson says:

    “I suspect that there have never been that many “alpha” males. A human tribe will always have had more followers than leaders. Otherwise, civilization wouldn’t have gotten very far. You need a leader, but you need the cooperative hunting party even more. Does that make them…deltas? Whatever you call competent males not actively chasing after the top spot.”

    I wasn’t using the term “alpha” to describe a single top-of-the-pile leader, but a man who is a man rather than a wimpish simulacrum of a man.

  46. nick flandrey says:

    We allowed our shelter system to fall into disrepair and abandonment. We actively encouraged our local Civil Defense organizations to disband and be replaced by distant bureaucrats. We have discouraged self reliance and encouraged reliance on an uncaring state machinery.

    When a previous head of our civilian disaster response and management agency (FEMA) recounted that everyone should have duct tape and plastic sheeting available in their disaster kit, he was roundly mocked in the press. This despite the fact that those are exactly the things you want to help air seal your home if you have to shelter in place for a chemical spill or attack, or radiological accident or attack, and this has been official policy for years.

    Our progressive left has been working to destroy our culture for decades. They have largely succeeded. The result is a fragile and dependent population, with little self control; self absorbed, and feeling a strong sense of entitlement.

    If a big disaster hits, they have almost guaranteed that the population will be reduced significantly (which is one of their goals from a long time ago) and will scream for more government. This is win-win for them.

    nick

    added- the human animal is still there, lurking in the background, and may have a chance to come to the fore in an event. Certainly some (possibly many) will find within themselves a strength they didn’t know they had. In the aftermath, I don’t expect those people to return to a life of dependency. That may be enough to monkey wrench the progressives’ plans.

  47. brad says:

    We also have regular alarm drills, as Eugen describes. Shelters used to be required in every new building, as part of the basement, but that was rescinded about 30 years ago. If there are local shelters? I also don’t know.

    I suppose, if we heard the alarms, we would check television or the internet to see what is happening, and what we are supposed to do. For most things, sheltering in place is likely to be the most sensible option anyway.

    Re the left: While I hardly want to see the US descend into violence, I am pleased to see the right fighting back against the leftists who want to shut down speech.

  48. DadCooks says:

    Who needs a shelter, I picked up 4 old 1950s era school desks many years ago. Everyone knows that they were designed to protect you from the Nuclear Armageddon.

    What I could never figure out is why did we go crouch in the hallway for a tornado when we had those perfectly good desks to crawl under.

  49. nick flandrey says:

    Mmm, think ‘shotgun blast’ with glass……..

    n

  50. nick flandrey says:

    And, the LOCKERS will protect you, right?

    n

  51. ech says:

    I’ve done all the list but competitive shooting, although I did get rifle and shotgun shooting merit badge in Boy Scouts.

  52. Robert Bruce Thompson says:

    Obviously, that wasn’t a comprehensive list, but merely examples of traditionally male pursuits. It’d actually be much easier to come up with a list of things that wussified males avoid, like serious physical exertion, personal risk, anything really competitive, anything involving a meritocracy, anything that requires the application of logic, etc.

  53. OFD says:

    Wussified males avoid:

    Most strenuous physical activity unless it involves adjusting the color scale on their pixel device.

    Most personal risk except for plugging in the coffee bean grinder that does the specially imported organic beans from a fair-use plantation in Sri Lanka.

    Anything really competitive other than comparing relative wispiness of facial hair follicles at the “open” work space of the arts collective.

    Meritocracy is so 20th-Century; Grandpa’s trust fund from the South African diamond mines will cover the rent and the Prius payments for decades.

    Logic? Isn’t that like what that weird character on those old sci-fi TV series used to use? Also a cis-hetero white male patriarchal hegemonic construct.

  54. SteveF says:

    Wussified males avoid:

    Haircuts that don’t make them look like a retard.

  55. nick flandrey says:

    Wussified males avoid:

    Normal pants

    n

  56. OFD says:

    Wussified males avoid:

    Firearms

  57. JimL says:

    I don’t like to fight.

    Doesn’t mean I never have – just that I don’t like it. When I have, I show who’s bigger, faster, stronger. Once you concede that, it’s over. But I don’t like it.

    It is what needs to be done.

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