Not exactly. If I have a trait to become infertile at a certain age, then other members of my kin group might also have that trait. If the trait causes more of my kin group to survive long enough to have their own offspring, then we outcompete the other members of the population that don’t have the trait.

But you get variability in a population via random mutation.

But men don’t have an off switch on their reproductive ability while they are still healthy adults, like women do. I’m post menopausal in my late forties, which is well short of being doddering and elderly. I’m going to spend the afternoon collecting soils samples with a hammer drill. I could certainly support…

As a post-menopausal woman who does not have any offspring, I could be seen as an evolutionary dead end. But I know that my success will affect the future success of my brother’s offspring. As a scientist, I understand the question they are trying to answer, and I’m always interested in the result. Menopause is weird,…

yep — I was just trying to point out that you have a reproductive impact even after you are reproducing.

But living past menopause does impact the survival of other people in your kin group, to the extent that you continue to eat food that could go to your offspring.

They didn’t study males because males continue to be reproductively viable, at some level, until the day they kick it, and women do not. From an evolutionary biology sense, there is a question there to answer. It doesn’t denigrate women — it actually implies that there is some very important function that supercedes…

Is there something wrong with her teeth? Why is everything liquid?

She doesn’t even seem to eat the lawn clippings. She would make an herbal infused shrub elixir of wild dandelion greens, maybe. But no eating.

**whoosh**

If we’re going to be technical, the Dakotas are in the Great Plains.

That happens sometimes with my cat.

The average temperature in December 1882-1887 in Toronto was 26.1F (-3.3C). God, I love the internet.

If your hair is white, there is no such thing as a temporary tint (sorry — white by 25, learned the hard way).

I’m old enough that we just got the PLO and the IRA as options.

Anybody who’s ever been in a women’s restroom knows that we’re all in stalls! You can’t tell what anybody is doing in any of them. Unless someone asks you to pass them some toilet paper so they can wipe their Y chromosome, you DON’T KNOW what they’re packing.

Oh man — of all the teams in the NL bracket, they were the ones I was most rooting for. Fellow small market team without the Cardinals baggage or the Cubs over-expectation. I love Andrew McCutchen, and if anyone deserves to get a big, honkin’ ring, it’s him.

reports are that 3 people were arrested.

For christ’s sake, I’m trying to give the METS credit. Your guys did so much better than expected this season. Your starting rotation is truly terrifying. The Mets didn’t piss away the World Series because they’re a bunch of hapless losers, in spite of whatever pity party narrative so many fans seem determined to…

Can’t argue with that. Those scouting reports also addressed Wright and the fact that his back problems meant that his throw to first would also be sidearmed and slow, further increasing the round-trip time.