FlaSoxxJim

That says a lot about your basket! Way to go.

He's just a guy who happened to know someone before they became someone. A dorm-mate of mine back in college grew up in Dekalb and dated Cindy Crawford when they went to high school together. Of course noone believed him until he came up with prom photos. Man, he shoulda kept that relationship going...

addendum: Smoking, obeisity, etc., are not off the hook since they are potential sources of stress on an individual. Fat, out of breath people spend a larger percentage of their energy intake on metabolic maintenance and therefore have less surplus to spend on reproduction. Any prolonged stress on an individual (being a Sox Fan?) will take make that individual to sublethal disease (colds, etc.), and can eventually also take a toll on reproduction as well.

I don't know, but there is definately 'a small prick involved..'.

This was a trend accurately and perfectly presaged by ecologists more than 20 years ago. Health care professionals are going to look to smoking and obeisity, etc., as primary causes, but a population ecologist will tell you they are secondary factors at best. It more likely comes down to the realities of life tied to energy budgets and increasing stress in our daily lives. Compromized reproductive reproductive output is a regular occurrence in stressed populations. Imagine a nested set of 3 bell curves depicting threshold limits for survival, growth, and reproduction. Under the most stressful conditions, members of populations perish; under somewhat less stressful (sublethal) conditions, indivisuals survive but they do not grow. Under still more benign stress conditions, survival and growth occur but reproductive output suffers. basically, reproduction is a 'luxury item' in the biology of an organism and substantial energy will only be allocated toward reproduction when life's other energetic demans have been met. If you break an organism's energy budget into its component parts, you'll see that gross energy intake is spent on production (growth), cellular metabolism, and reproduction, while unassimilable matter is lost as egesta (feces) and unuseable metabolic end procucts like ammonia and carbon dioxide are lost as excreta (urine, exhaled carbon dioxide). Excreta and egesta are fixed terms, so dietary energy must be shuffled to meet the needs of cellular metabolism, growth, and then reproduction -- usually in that order although there are species life histories that at times sacrifice growth in favor of gonad/gamete production. Strong support for the stress/poor reproduction connection in humans comes from evidence citing that professionals in highly stressful jobs are most prone to showing decreased gemete production, other conditions being equal. OK, done. The teaching semester starts this week and I had to dust off the cobwebs.

Winner? That raging anti-Semite? Spewing love and junk from the Bible...? oh wait...

Cheers.

Did amyone recognize the droolin' Doctor as the Library Cop from the 'Tropic of Capricorn' Seinfeld episode? My prediction is that he never gets his anniversary present (Jegg will probably tag whoever he was eyeing), never does the part in the Producers, and somehow manages to get Ben Stiller to bail, too.

Very cool indeed. But we already screwed one of these up a while back so it's good we got this one right. Stupid English/Metric conversions...

I'm only pretending it's a cold January morning here, but I'm sipping an Irish coffee laced with Jameson's Crested Ten Whiskey. I warned my folks when they went to Ireland last summer that if they were considering coming back without a bottle of Crested Ten for me they might as well not bother coming back. Message recieved, I got me booze.

Happy Trail, Tovarich. P.S. What fake name will you be posting under now that you have "left"? Old SoxTalk posters never die you know, they just start to smell funny after a while

You're not allowed to combine the first three times you take the test, PA.

Cheers and Happy B-Day.

I don't believe Apu was the one who labeled Sharon a war criminal. According to the informative link CW posted, Belgium (among others) has already done that. You have to admit that with a past like Sharon has, electing him Prime Minister is not going to be seen by the world as evidence that there is an Israeli commitment to peace or justice. I believe in the seeking of reparations for past war crime offenses. I do not fault the families of Holocaust victims one bit for seeking some degree of justice through reparations. (I also believe American Indians have the same rights, but that's just me). Apu has clearly stated his disdain for Arafat, as we all have. He has done an admirable job in pointing out the catch 22 by which Arafat and the PA have their hands effectively cut off while at the same time it is demanded of them that they stop the suicide bombings and other terrorist attacks. The point through all of this is that many participants in this discussion feel that no side can clearly claim to hold the moral high ground since no side has tried to take the moral high road to get there. Violence begets violence, hate begets hate, evil begets evil. Evil means cannot be ethically justified as a way to an end even if the end is just or desired. It is indeed tragic that an apparently workable cease-fire was within reach just a few years ago. While it would be nice if all Palestinian fringe groups could have been forced to heed the call to disarm it is not realistic. Israel had a right to react but should have taken great pains to indicate that it understood that the despicable acts of fringe groups did not speak to the majority of Palestinian's sentiment or even the desire of the PA to try to adhere to the peace process. Too quickly, the moment that should have been seized on had slipped away, and that is the fault of both sides. I have never seen historical Zionists as entirely bad. Consider Eliza Greenblatt, Woody Guthrie's Father-in-law, who like Woody, was passionate about social justice, anti-fascism and union organizing. I like this story, that has nothing to do with the current debate. It talks about (non-Jew) Woody's little known Jewish music and called him am "Underground Railroad for Jewish boys" like Bobby Zimmerman and all. It also mentions Woody's philosphy on religion, which pretty much sums up how I feel on the issue: “Woody loved [all] spirituality,” she says. “He felt all religions sprang from the same well.” For me, I venture as far as saying that even if there is no Divine Agent, it does not invalidate the need and worth of the belief systems of the world at seeing the common denominator in all of it, our own humanity and human frailty. I agree that it is odd and unfortunate that 4ever can with a straight face sign off with 'Shalom' after admitting that he is looking forward to a ring-side seat when it hits the fan. I do not share his faith but I have a more legitimate claim on the word and the sprit of that word than he does (I'm also sure I have a way better Klezmer music collection than he does... so there! I'll be putting on some Klezmer All Stars on the Rio while I gut the grass today I think). And so... Shalom (really!) Peace, Love and Do What You Will

Fly to Vegas and put it all on Black 17 at the roulette wheel?

My fav Benchley quote: "It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous."

Is it true that those who fail history are doomed to repeat it?

That should help bridge the communication gap...

My name is Jim, and I'm a Soxaholic... I'm a 700-year old Jedi Night doing time on Florida's east coach as a faculty member and educational media developer at an oceanographic research institution. Like the curious emperor penguin, I enjoy regurgitating half-digested food into the mouths of my young and I think Alan Alda is swell.

I miss the mumbling too. Mostly, I liked the Stipe/Mike Mills melody/countermelody song structure that their best early stuff had. Fall On Me, Rotary 9, Driver 8, Radio-free Europe, 7 Chinese Brothers (near all of Reckoning, actually)... The truth was that the style is pretty damn easy from a compositional standpoint... OK, you go home and think of a melody to sing over this chord progression and I'll do the same, then we'll come back and sing them BOTH at the same time. Although they were the first I recall doing lot's of this, LOTS of college bands started copying it and it got done to death. Driving and Crying comes to mind as a tag-along example, among others.

But at least YOU'RE nice to puppies, right??

Yessiree, give me the Murmur/Reckoning/Fables/Document era REM any day and I'm happy. But stuff drom Green -- Pop Song 89, Crush, even Stand, still curl my toes when I hear them.

Just wait until he has to deal with Board War 2004...

You should be drinking Red Cap in stubbies, bro.

Usually undergraduate marine ecology and regional biodiversity. I've taught evolutionary ecology, statistics and experimental design, and a graduate benthic (marine bottom-community) ecology in the past as well. Very exciting stuff, right?