"For tyrannosaurs - love was a dangerous game"

Being a dinosaur has always had its drawbacks. The most prominent being early extinction, of course. And now here's this one about dying prematurely due to sex among all things!

As US and Canadian researchers have published it in Science, under the cryptic title of "Tyrannosaur Life Tables: An Example of Nonavian Dinosaur Population Biology", tyrannosaurs had trouble coping with midlife crisis. With their overaggressive lifestyle (rivalry for mates, constant abuse of lesser species, and the mandatory abuse socially aware father T-Rexes had to expose their child dinos to), excessive eating, and the occasional over-fasting while nesting all are among the causes of an increase in the mortality rate among those tyrannosaurs that enter the age of sexual maturity. So, when life finally becomes really interesting, you die.

"For tyrannosaurs - love was a dangerous game" states Gregory Erickson, "death awaited those entering the breeding population".

My contribution to today's science will be an extension of Erickson's statement: Love is a dangerous game. Period. No exception to this rule, no matter how idealized a view one holds about love. It sure bears a great deal of danger for all "those entering the breeding population". Just think about the black widow spider or the praying mantis from the animal kingdom. We have examples in great abundance among humans as well: Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII, Helen of Troy and Brad Pitt, or the Adam-Serpent-Eve triangle, for that matter.

For a summary of the article, go to:
http://bio.fsu.edu/~gerick/sciencemag/
Full article can be accessed at:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/313/5784/213

My roses in bloom

Charisma:

Golden showers:


Lavaglow:


Princess Margaret

Judo with Words: An Intelligent Way to Counter Verbal Attacks by Barbara Berckhan

Verbal attacks can cause injuries the same way physical attacks do, only without visible scars. Many of us are so dumbstruck when verbal attacks occur that we do not even find words to express our emotions. Only significantly later, when the attacker has already moved on to other, equally unsuspecting and vulnerable prey, can we recompose ourselves and find some of the words we could have or should have said. Others of us retaliate immediately thus entering the classic viscous spiral of escalating the conflict possibly even to the level of physical conflict.

As a student of Aikido (the classic non-resistant martial art) and other martial arts, I can fully appreciate what this little book can do for people who want to be better prepared in such situations. In this unassuming book (180 pages with minimalistic illustrations), Barbara Berckhan presents 12 basic tactics one can use in our everyday life when we find ourselves in a verbal attack situation. The book promises the reader to acquire self defense techniques to intelligently recognize the best way to stay out of a potentially escalating conflict, deflect and diffuse an obviously malevolent attack, or to stop a behaviour that if unchecked can resurface in increasingly hostile forms.

Even though the book will probably never earn its author the fame of being the most refined writer of the century (lots of vague statements and repetitions of trivialities), I still recommend it for those wishing to icrease their self confidence when attacked verbally. Some techniques may be a bit difficult to apply due to oversimplification.