I am personally responsible for making the ball Mookie Wilson hit go through Bill Buckner’s gimpy peg-legs.

There. Now the whole world knows.

Comes way too close to animal instinct, and a reminder that humans are basically animals, and not some godly race of super beings.

Sarcasm is the hardest form of humor to get right, but you know you’re close when some people believe you are serious…

BTW- I’ll stand in for the tar and featherin’. That sounds hot.

Yeah, for someone who complains about broad and useless generalizations, Amanda certainly does generate enough of them on her own.

I still find her to be worth reading, though.

I had a *great* time in Romania last summer. Seriously.

Yeah, I wouldn’t want to be reminded of my participation in those two steaming piles of crap either.

Lucky for me, I had nothing to do with them.

In short: she’s perfect.

That must be what you got your sainthood for!

Touche. Very, very touche.

That being said, I love Red Green.”

Brad, the solution is clear. Move to Canada, buy two sets of suspenders, mix ‘em up. Probbum solved!

(Speaking of reinforcing stereotypes, Cinder Calhoun- Amanda…No jokes, please. We’re feminists.)

Yeah, it’s a regular paradise being an elephant….

Typically, females form groups comprising a number of families consisting of a mother, and her offspring of different ages. These separate and reform depending on current resources. Adult males on the other hand, separate from these family herds, and spend most of their time in the “bull areas”, which family groups typically avoid. This is an area, infrequently visited by the breeding herds, where elephant bulls spend much of their leisure time building up strength and sorting out the bull hierarchy; a sort of men’s club. As the bull feels the urge, or the rumblings of an upcoming musth period, he leaves the bull area in search of the herds and any mating opportunities.

Within bull areas, males encounter each other, and fight over resources such as access to food and water. Bulls establish a dominance hierarchy based on size, with the larger bull being dominant over smaller ones. Musth males are more aggressive probably as a result of higher levels of testosterone, and most other males will avoid a musth bull. Musth changes an individual’s position in the hierarchy, and any bull that is in musth automatically becomes dominant to any bull that is not in musth. This is regardless of size, so that even a young bull can chase off a large patriarch. Musth bulls leave bull areas and move after female herds, seeking out a receptive female in oestrous. Receptive females are the ultimate resource and musth bulls encountering each other with the herd may fight to the death.

Elephant males are able to reproduce from around their eighteenth birthday. However, it would be an extremely unusual event for a bull younger than 30 to mate with a female at the height of her oestrus. At all times there would be at least one large adult musth male with the herd about who would displace any young pretenders. In fact, older bulls that are in musth actually suppress the musth cycle of less dominant younger bulls to the extent that they will fall out of musth a few days. This results in a stable hierarchy of bull elephants, with the older more experienced bulls coming into musth for a full period of three to five months a year, and less dominant bulls being in musth for relatively shorter periods. The most subordinate bulls would be those that have just left the breeding herd, and those will not come into musth at all. Joyce Poole found that Amboseli bulls only enter a sustained period of musth at about 30. Up until then, although they will start musth, and will show a lot of the symptoms, younger bulls will not achieve full musth. A consequence of this hierarchy is that when a bull does actually enter musth he has the experience to cope with the circumstance of being cock-full of testosterone in the presence of a group of receptive females, and in a bunch of like-minded guys.

Source: Musth and elephant SocietyArticle by: Rob Slotow and Gus van Dyk, University of Natal, Durban

Elephants did not just dream up the maternalistic culture described in one post above, it is in-born, not a set of normative practices passed from generation to generation. And by the way, notice how that poster relishes in being able to tell the young studs to bugger off, not very nice to them, think of their self-esteem issues.