DrTom gets an official warning from Facebook

(I thought the fine print on this warning would thank me for my contributions to Facebook, but no such luck.)

Today I opened my email to find the following warning from the administrators of Facebook:

Hello,

You made one or more wall posts that violated our Terms of Use. Among other things, posts that are hateful, threatening, or obscene are not allowed. We also take down posts that attack an individual or group, or advertise a product or service. Continued misuse of Facebook's features could result in your account being disabled.

If you have any questions or concerns, you can visit our FAQ page at http://www.facebook.com/help/?topic=wposts.

The Facebook Team

I admit that I have been pushing the envelope on FB lately.  I found over 200 Fan Pages that I thought were relevant to items I am trying to sell on this site, so I placed blurbs about my stuff on those sites incessantly for the past few weeks: airline pages, travel pages, sites about dogs and hotels and cruise lines, etc.  I couldn't resist the tens of thousands of eyeballs on those pages (to get the number of people, divide by two).  I joined Fan Pages like "I Love Hugs", "Life With Dogs", " i love you. you love me. then why can't we be together?", and "Once you live in NEW DELHI u cannot live anywhere else in the world !!".  I  spammed the Fan Pages of Ellen deGeneres, The Mentalist, The Colbert Report, and other tv shows.  I placed "ads" on the Walls of The Ohio State University, Oregon State University, and Cornell.  I invaded various food channels and the Walls of many cities and countries found around the world.  In short, I was an aggressive advertiser, ambitious, assertive, and confident in my product.

Alas, I can report that all of that effort on my part has resulted in a big fat nothing.  Zilch.  No sales.  Nada.  No profits.  I accomplished very little with all that spamming, except the receipt of a warning from FB that they might disable my account.  I guess that was a blessing, because now I will have more time for direct contact with all my FB friends---to convince them to buy flowers (see cheery ad below) or designer cookies for your mother or wife.  But what does an aspiring capitalist have to do to make a buck in this world?

I realize fully that I was not trained to make money in this life.  I was educated as a scientist, a biologist, an ecologist, a conservationist.  Those people don't make money; they give of their life to try to understand and save the world and to teach others about all that.  But no one really listens to that message, because they are all out there making money.  In fact, the public thinks that conservationists don't need money because they know how to live off the land--to find wild edibles for food, to erect primitive shelters from hemlock boughs to get out of the rain and snow, to kill and skin wild animals to make clothing.  So you see, when we want to buy a new toaster oven or pay our electric bill, all we have are some beaver pelts or deer livers or hallucinogenic shrooms for those products or services.  Most of us have only seen a $100 bill when we visited the money collection at the Smithsonian Institution .  When we renegotiate our university contracts, we end up settling for an extra pound of acorns per month instead of a real salary increase.  We are so naive.

Given my friendly notice from the management at FB, I spent the past couple of hours hitting the "Unlike" button on about 150 Fan Pages where I was pumping my wares.  After all, what could I possibly have to say on the "Memphis" page if I weren't trying to get readers there to buy Cafe Britt coffee (see tiny micro bar ad above) or cigars from my site?  "Hey, anyone here seen Elvis lately?"  What could I contribute on the "Copenhagen" site other than wanting those Danes to come to my blog?  "Hvordan har De det?"  And what do I have in common with readers of the "Princess Cruises" site, unless I can get them to book their cruise on DrTom's Travel Shoppe?  (To be honest, I am really prone to motion sickness, so the thought of taking a cruise (see simple blue and orange ad below) with 5,000 strangers wearing plaid shorts makes me vomit for a couple of reasons. But I would gladly sell a cruise to anyone else.)

So, I am left with using my own Profile page on FB to entice potential customers to this site.  Just watch over the next month how clever I can be in getting my FB friends here.  Expect to see the following messages on my Wall soon.  "Would you like to be admitted to Cornell University and receive reduced tuition?  Then come to Life at DrTom's."  "Are you lonely and in need of a free companion dog?  .......DrTom's."  "Like to get rich quick?  Come to DrTom's for a list of FB Fan Pages that you can spam.  Results guaranteed!"  I am only limited by my own imagination.  And because people really do want to get rich quick, or they need a dog, they will be like putty in my hands.  Yea, that's the ticket.  I will just lie outright and promise the moon.  Then, after I make a big pile of money, maybe I'll take a cruise.  BLECK!

Natural mortality in deer: the inescapable comparison to humans

(An adult female Columbian white-tailed deer marked with an ear tag and a plastic collar for identification in the field.)

For my Ph.D. research I studied a population of white-tailed deer located on a national wildlife refuge in southwestern Washington.  The refuge was situated on the north bank of the mighty Columbia River and this particular subspecies of deer is called Columbian white-tailed deer.  They were placed on the Endangered Species List in the early 1970s, which led to my research project on this rare form of North American deer.  The only other form of white-tailed deer that is considered endangered is the diminutive Key Deer of Florida.

As you all know, most populations of deer in North America are subjected to sport hunting every fall.  Historically, hunts allowed for male-only kills, but this has been greatly liberalized in recent decades to allow hunting of females to reduce the size of this now abundant (= too abundant) species.  One of the demographic observations about deer populations is the sex ratio of adults---it almost always favors females significantly.  Sex ratios among adult deer typically are 3-4 females for every male, and this is generally attributed to the fact that males are hunted and females are not.  That is, more males were removed from the herd every year due to legal hunting than were females, and this resulted in a skewed sex ratio favoring females.  Reproductively speaking, this is not a problem because most species of cervids (which include elk, moose, and caribou) have a promiscuous breeding system, where each male breeds with as many females as possible.  An adult male white-tailed deer can breed with 10 or more females during a single breeding season in the fall, so the skewed sex ratio does not inhibit reproduction at all.  Essentially, all females get pregnant every year regardless of the sex ratio.  Larger, older, and more experienced males probably obtain more copulations than younger, smaller, and less experienced males and, therefore, the larger bucks sire more offspring.

So, I had at my fingertips a non-hunted refuge population of deer to study, and I was free to choose the research questions that were of interest to me.  I decided that this was an opportunity to study natural mortality and demography in this population of about 200 deer found on a somewhat contained (i.e., surrounded by water or habitat not used by whitetails) piece of land of about 2,000 acres.  I lived on the refuge and worked on the population daily for two years.  At the end, an interesting demographic pattern emerged, which informed my view of what makes male mammals tick.

My primary method of studying this phenomenon was to systematically search the refuge with my assistant, Bill Half Moon, for dead deer.  When we found a carcass, I estimated the month in which it had died, its location on the refuge, and I collected the skull for later analysis.  This analysis involved removing a tooth, and staining and sectioning the tooth to reveal cementum annuli that can be counted to determine the age of the animal at time of death.  It is sort of like counting tree rings.  Of course, the sex of the deer was easily determined from the skull as well.  If the carcass was fresh enough, I took it to Oregon State University to be necropsied, and to determine the cause of death.  I also cracked open a femur to examine the bone marrow, which can be scored subjectively for fat content, which is a crude method of evaluating the nutritional health of the deer at time of death.

It turned out that in this population the sex ratio among adults was still 3-4 females for every male.  However, we knew that the sex ratio at birth was nearly 1:1; in fact, there were probably slightly more males born than females, a typical pattern in mammals.  That is, the sex ratio started out about equal, but by the time males and females were two years old or older, there were many more females than males in the population.  We knew that males were not leaving the refuge, or emigrating, so the only other explanation for the skewed sex ratio was mortality.  Between birth and adulthood, males died at a younger age than females.    Males, on average, were living about 3.5 years, while females were living an average of about 6.5 years.  The oldest male skull I recovered was 7.5 years old; the oldest female skull was 13 years old.  In other words, males were cycling through the population at a faster rate than were females.

To put it bluntly, males are just more reckless than females. They get hit my cars, they get caught in barbed wire fences, and they drown in ponds more often than females.  But the most common cause of death in males was their poor physical condition immediately after the rut, or breeding season.  In this population, the rut began in November and lasted about two months.  At the end of the rut, we are in the middle of winter when conditions are not conducive to recovering body condition, and males paid the price.  It is known that adult male deer spend so much time and energy locating and tending females in heat during the rut that they lose significant body weight.  They increase physical activity during this important process and they decrease the time they spend feeding.  The result is that males are worn out and emaciated come January, all because they want to make love to as many females as possible.  In fact, you could say that many males literally mate themselves to death.

The similarities to other mammals including humans is inescapable.  The mortality rate of male humans is higher than females, especially among those just entering age of reproduction.  Males take dangerous chances, largely in an attempt to increase their status in the eyes of females, whether they know it or not.  The winners can win big, with multiple mates during their life and the possibility of siring many offspring.  Of course, modern contraception has changed the outcome of this male behavior somewhat, but our behavioral tendencies produced over the past 4 million years of human evolution continue to play out regardless.

(See full citation and an Abstract of the monograph produced from this research.)

Is your life's path determined at 17?

(The choices that young people need to make are daunting, and possibly made too early.)

When we were kids, I distinctly remember asking my younger brother what he wanted to be when he grew up.  We were sitting on the basement stairs at the time, so he looked around the basement, and answered: "A clothes dryer".  I laughed at him, and attempted to explain that was impossible.  He was a young human being and when he grew up he would just be an older human being, but what would he do for a job as an adult?  I'm sure he didn't understand my logic at the time.  But I have often wondered at the perspective that allowed this young boy to think that he could become a mechanical, inanimate object later in life.

Last night, I had a drink with four of my former undergrad students, all of whom will be graduating in May.  The conversation focused mostly on what they would be doing after graduation.  They are all very bright students and they had been applying to various grad schools around the country.  Should I work on population ecology modeling with Professor X at Penn State or on a topic somewhat less mathematical with Professor Y at University of Georgia?  Should I study fish management at Oregon State or do a study on white-tailed deer at Ohio State?  Should I work on obtaining a M.S. degree now, or go straight for the Ph.D.?  Should I become a clothes dryer or an upright vacuum sweeper?  The conversation with my brother from more than 50 years ago came streaming back into my head.  Was the topic of last night really all that different?

Perhaps the reason I feel somewhat apprehensive about the topic of our beer banter was because I am not at all sure that I would follow the same path again in my professional life, knowing what I know now.  I would likely not go into academia, would not get a Ph.D., and would not have focused so intently on wild animals and ecology as I did.  The details of my thinking will eventually end up in another blog; those details are not germane to my point here.  I have the benefit of hindsight, and these young people do not.  They are pursuing what they THINK will make them happy, but they can not possibly know for sure until after they have spent many more years working on degrees, getting a position, and working at that job for some time.  By then, they will be in their 40s, and it will be tough to turn back.  "You rolls the dice, and you takes your chances", as that old saying goes.

The problem is that these students haven't lived enough yet.  The world has so much to offer, and there are so many interesting challenges and opportunities.  They are bright enough and ambitious enough that they could choose any path they wanted, but they can't possibly know now about more than 1-2% of those potential paths.  They are following the logical direction based on what they chose as an undergraduate major at university.  Think about that.  A 17-year old high school senior picks a major for college based on what they think their interests are at that time, and it generally predicts their life's path for the next 40 years.  Astounding!

I'm even willing to wager my next Social Security check that if these four students did something else in the world for the next two years, that at least two of them would not proceed down the route they are now planning to take.  They might still decide to attend grad school, but the thesis topic they chose, or the major prof they selected, or the degree they pursued would be different than it will now be.  And then, their professional life would become different than it will now become.

Students who read this essay may be disturbed by these ideas, but I think they know there is some wisdom here somewhere.  And by reading this, it will probably only increase some doubts they already have.  I make no apology, because my role in life is largely to make people question.  I guess that is the teenage decision I made all those years ago.  My only advice is to realize that what you currently know or think is only a tiny fraction of all you could know or think, and you don't need to be a prisoner of those limited thoughts.  Perhaps, becoming a ball pene hammer would not be nearly as rewarding as becoming a 5/8 inch socket wrench, but you can't know the answer to that until you have tried them both.  My advice: take the time to explore, investigate, and experiment broadly before you Super Glue your life's map on your chest.

Does God watch the Rose Bowl?

(When you see military jets doing a fly-over during a football game, it should cause you to ask some questions.)

I watched the Rose Bowl yesterday, or as much of it as I could, because Ohio State University was in the game. I was an undergrad at OSU in the 60s, so I thought I had some sort of obligation to participate in the festivities. I watch almost no sports on tv whatsoever, but I made an exception for this one. I actually lettered for three years in tennis at OSU, so when they won the game, I guess my status ticked up a notch. I still have the scarlet and gray jacket to prove that I'm not just anti-sports.

But I was thinking about what I saw before and during the game. It is all very curious to me. We typically play the National Anthem before most high school, college, and professional sports. How did this custom ever come to be? What does this nationalistic/quasi-militaristic song have to do with sports? At about that same time yesterday in Pasadena, four military jets did a fly-over past the stadium, adding to the battlefield aura of the entire spectacle. (By the way, do the taxpayers pay for this flight time?)

And then, military veterans were prominent during the ceremonies, with the Wounded Warrior representatives in attendance. It reminded me of stories you hear about the early days of the Civil War, only in reverse. Apparently, citizens from the nearby town would come out with their picnic lunches to watch a real battle between the North and South from a hill overlooking the battlefield. Pass me a watercress sandwich, please.  But now, real soldiers come out to watch civilians battle it out on the gridiron.  (In fact, they kept referring to the game between Oregon State and University of Oregon to decide which team went to the Rose Bowl as a "civil war".)  Can it be that combat with an opposing force is so ingrained in our genetic code that we have to reenact a facsimile of it over and over again?

Religion is even incorporated into the pageantry of these sporting events. Each team, or many members of each team, usually pray to their god just before the game starts. I assume they are praying for victory over the other team. In the case of OSU and University of Oregon, I have to assume that they are each praying to the same god. Now, I don’t believe in an all-knowing, all-powerful god for one minute, but apparently these players do. Therefore, I find this pre-game prayer the most pretentious and selfish behavior I have ever seen. There are tens of millions of people on this planet struggling for survival every day of their lives, millions of babies starving to death each year, and millions more suffering from malaria, dysentery, tuberculosis, and water-borne parasitic diseases. If this god had the power to grant you the winning of a football game while he/she/it allows all this human suffering on earth, I would have to conclude that this deity was pretty sadistic.

I don’t really want to begin the new year by bashing an activity as American as a college football game. But the behaviors that humans display are not just some random actions that have no meaning or history. They all come from some place and they had, or still have, significance for us. We may have forgotten from whence they came, so this essay is simply a reminder to ponder what we see and hear. As I’ve said many times, human behavior is about as interesting as it gets. It ranks right up there with bobolinks.