drugs are bad

see, i was ready to be blown away, or at least put deeper in thought from diamond's chapter on "Why Do We Smoke, Drink, and Use Dangerous Drugs," but i was actually kinda dissappointed.
i'll get to that in a second, but i think i will first throw out a couple of funny tidbits from the language section.

diamond did some fieldstudy in Papua New Guinea, where he met with some natives. damn near each tribe (if not all) have their own language that varies from the next tribe. so when the europeans came in their conquest of the world, a common language, lingua franca, was needed to help people communicate when plantations were built and whiteys wanted to throw out some orders.
so this pidgin was formed, that later became a creole and helped all native tribes communicate (maybe that's why it became a creole rather than remaining just pidgin, it was useful in more than just on the job, but with interactions between other peoples).

* Neo-Melanesian is the new language created in the 1800s by european and native interactions. if i remember correctly its roughly 80% english mixed with a few words from the natives and other outlying languages that got brought in to the interaction around Southeast Asia.

here was an advertisement that diamond saw while in New Guinea using Neo-Melanesian:

"Kam insait long stua bilong milpela--stua bilong salim olgeta samting--mipela i-ken helpim yu long kisim wanem samting yu laikim bikpela na liklik long gutpela prais. I-gat gutpela kain kago long baiim na i-gat stap long helpim yu na lukautim yu long taim yu kam insait long dispela stua."

here's the hints diamond gave.
F's are hard for Papuans to say, so they changed them to P's. so stap is staff and pela is fellow. pela is added to monosyllabic adjectives so, gutpela is actually just good, and bikpela is simply big.

here's the translation, you can see that some of it you may have actually caught:

"Come into our store--a store for selling everything--we can help you get whatever you want, big and small, at a good price. There are good types of goods for sale, and staff to help you and look after you when you visit the store."

now the silly part.
diamond explains how ages of women are denoted in this language.

banis bilong susu means bra in Neo-melanesian.
banis is fence, since Papuans do do F's well, and have troubles with double consonants like nc, it got a little modified.
Susu is Maylay for milk, or breast.
so the term above means a fence to keep the breast in.

for denoting women's age, it goes something like this:
i no gat susu bilong em -- prepubertal girl
susu i sanap [stand up] --adolescent girl
susu i pundaun pinis [fall down finish] -- aging woman

ha! diamond also talks about primates and monkeys having some sort of communication skills. chimps and gorillas with their sign-language or pointing to objects on a screen that will talk for them.
he also mentions vervet monkeys who have different "calls" to distinguish between approaching predators. one for an eagle/hawk where all the monkeys will then hide under a bush or in a tree and look upward, one for a lion/leopard where they will climb up a tree and survey the scene from there, and finally one for a snake where the monkeys will stand up to look around or be cautious of what is around them if they are near tall vegetation.

from this he ventures to say that our "Great Leap Forward" as he dubs it, where human cultural development around 40 thousand years ago began to flourish was from the aquisition of language, where neandertals did not have this ability and kept their universal tool kit that didn't change much over their existence and probably led to their eventual demise (diamond thinks there was no hybridization between neandertals and modern humans, which is the current dominant theory).

OH!
so with that aside we can move onto drinking and drugs!
actually, you might be kinda dissappointed, like i told you i was.
this too needs a backstory.

diamond starts out by giving examples of animals with odd features: birds of paradise with 3 foot-long tail feathers that have helped their adaptability in no way other than to allure females (a study was done where some dude cut the tail feathers off birds with those 3 foot-longers and glued them to other stubby birds of the same species. the stubbys then got the ladies, whereas the once-hung birds were no longer choice material).

diamond also comments on gazelle who exhibit "stotting". which means they prance and jump as high as they can when in sight and possible reach of their predators, namely lions.

diamond concludes that in order to attract women, to let them know that their genes are of superior quality, they need to flaunt the fact that they have a handicap. so birds with their unruly, longass feathers are saying that they're still pimps even though they gotta drag around this weight that may inhibit their maneuverability.
with the gazelles, their jumping is to prove that they aren't just full of shit. diamond's example was that fast gazelles could show they're quick by stamping at the ground like a bull, but then other slower gazelles could easily pick this up and ward off lions, who may or may not eventually figure out the bluff. stotting says that they are the true shit.

what does this have to do with us? and drugs and alcohol nonetheless?
well diamond believes that we consume and inhale to impress the ladies.
he takes adds for hard A, with a romantic setting and a man drinking his martini looking like he's about to get his.

diamond says that from the outside world, that would seem like a retarded way to get people to buy the alcohol. something that impairs your abilities and might make you temporarily impotent...
he thinks that this backward-ass thinking is just what is the allure.
that women want to see the fact that men can intake all these drugs and alcohol and still be able to function. kinda a macho thing.

as far as i can gather, this was his reasoning. personally, i don't drink for the ladies, i drink for me. it inhibits my restraint. it allows me to get more personal.
something i may have never said or done when sober now might 'slip' out.

because seriously. who ever wanted a drunkard or crackhead? only other drunkards and crackhead or people with low self esteem.
i enjoy his theory on the handicapped idea: where being able to have a handicap and still be able to survive with the best of them will draw the ladies.
but i just don't see how this works with drugs and liquor.