From your photo...
...It's gonna take a quite a few tubs of Haagen Daz to calm her down!
Post-reproductive female killer whales act as key "repositories of ecological knowledge" to younger family members, a new study has claimed. Menopause is a rare and mysterious phenomenon among animals on Earth. Only humans, resident killer whales and short-finned pilot whales are predisposed to outlive their reproductive years …
Do your writers and editors speak English? I have no idea why trick-cyclists (circus performers?) would have anything to do with Orcas or other aquatic species. Is trick-cyclist slang for something? And while we're at it, please stop using the word "boffin" to describe scientists. It may have been cute to call them that when you wore short pants in school, but now it's only irritating. Thank you. I expect you will implement these linguistic corrections immediately.
Although, I've not seen you around these parts before, so I may have been a tad hasty, but I do have a VERY SHORT (read nonexistent) fuse when it comes to people taking umbrage on behalf of others. Are YOU a scientist…?! No…?! Then quit all this pseudo-affrontery (that OUGHT to be a word, dammit!). This is The Register, not New Scientist, you appear to have mistaken it for a serious news site.
You won't find much - if any - support for your viewpoint here. Don't like it…? Don't read it.
You must be new around these parts. On El Reg, the word boffin is used to recognise true scientists (& engineers) from those who claim to know stuff but can't tell their arse from their elbow.
See this previous article for the background: www.theregister.co.uk/2014/06/11/damn_you_iel_regi_call_me_a_boffin_demands_enraged_boffin/.
Seems humans have grandparents to (1) pass on widsom on how to survive (2) help with child rearing, so that the young and fit, e.g. younger men and women, can gather and hunt. One of my grandfathers taught me how to fish, the other, to paint. One grandmother showed me how to scramble eggs, the other, how to do long division. I think we'd all agree that these are essential survival skills.
Sorry, kind of, if I offended. I thought after giving the world Monty Python and Absolutely Fabulous you might take my earlier comment in a light vein. And Sarah, my grad school was Stanford.
But please, honest question here: what is meant by trick-cyclists? Never heard the term before. I'm not out to insult the English, my efforts are needed more here in the US, where people live in trailers, eat squirrels, and can't find their own country on a map.
The Second Rule of Fight Club is...you do not appologise on a comments board...if Sarah is a bird then i'm an IT professional......goddamnit, where's your American Spunk?
PS, if you had used a search engine to look up the term first, then you wouldn't have got yourself in such a pickle, would you?....Stanford my arse!
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As a scientist, a menopausal woman and a Brit, I too was baffled by the term trick cyclist. Never having read The Register before and only coming here as this article was posted in a menopause group, I began to wonder if this was a joke site, like The Onion. After reading the comments, I am still not sure.
For those of you not experiencing menopause, please remember that we are fragile creatures dancing with our fluctuating hormones but many can at the drop of a top hat, enter the realms of trick cyclists nightmares. :)
As the older generation has a host of knowledge to impart to the younger, so the younger has a host of new knowledge and terminology to educate their elders with. Today I learned that trick cyclists are not just circus entertainers. What will you learn?
While taking the time to actually sign up to make this comment I realised that this site is mostly for IT people. Most menopausal women these days are at the age and experience that IT and its terminology (and modern slang) is a strange and mysterious universe. Have pity and understanding on us as one day you too will experience menopause or have a menopausal woman in your life. In internet marketing they advise making things as simple as your grandmother would be able to understand. While we menopausal women may not be old enough to be your grandmothers we are old enough to be your mothers. So might I ask that you treat any other menopausal women, who make comments here, with the respect that you would give your mother and grandmothers? Go on, I know you can do it :)