Reply #150: You're right about that, Pop/Ma. [View All]

I've thought critically for as long as I can remember; and my conclusions tend to be anything but mainstream conventional.

You, though, seem to have a touching faith in academic disciplines and empirical science; though admittedly, the academic scientific disciplines, by reason of their incremental methodologies and their rudimentary subject matters, tend to be less vulnerable to human folly than those of the Arts. Until the students get into the market place and have the directions of their research dictated by the almighty dollar, that is. Dr Mengele was doubtless a highly qualified scholar but no less a cretin for that, like many many others, living and dead.

You have completely missed my point, or rather the points made by the SAS officer. I once read that women are actually more efficient killers, and personally, I don't doubt that one bit. The top ace in the Russian airforce in WWII was a woman.

But, do you really doubt that the libido interferes with the more superficial rational thought, required in a battle situation?

And do you also think academic studies are needed to ascertain that, even if a woman were a top marathon runner, she would not be likely to have the corresponding physical strength in other departments; or vice versa? The number of *men* who get into the SAS, in relation to those who fail to make it, is tiny. If you think that men and women do not tend to have specialised strengths you are deluding yourself. Don't ask me what Skeat says on the subject.. oh, it's not Shakespeare is it?