but it'll take me a little while to get there. Be patient (or not); I found it interesting. I study kenpo karate, and was watching a belt test last week. One of the beginner students, testing for his first time, is a sort of cone-shaped guy, stands maybe 5'10" tops, but probably weighs 350#. He's in general sort of clumsy, but his stances and foot work were perfect - he has all the kenpo stances and foot moves down exactly.

I commented on this to our teacher, Rick Jeffcoate, who is both a very nice guy and an excellent teacher, and he responded with, "of course Will's stances are perfect - with his weight and build he doesn't have a choice, or he'll fall." So, the kenpo stances are the best way to keep your balance while doing a variety of things - that's interesting. But Rick went to add, he's seen other people with that conical build (although not as heavy as Will) who also moved perfectly - and the example he brought up was Babe Ruth - specifically the way Ruth twisted when he swung. Maximal delivery of power, with no wasteful feet-shuffling. Interesting, eh? Well, I thought so - and it does raise the question again of an earlier writer's remark about the hitch in Bond's swing.

I may be imagining things, but it seems the journals have become more and more consolidated over the last decade or so, and have resorted to a number of ways to protect their publications. My institution holds subscriptions to scores of journals, so I can readily access the online editions, but my specialty is an odd one in a medical institution (I'm an epidemiologist) so most of my journals I need to subscribe to myself. My tendency has become to more and more go to those journals that do offer electronic open editions. I find that those offer fuller versions of their articles than they would publish in print. One of my areas of interest in Parkinson's Disease, and my favorite resource for that is the journal Movement Disorders, where I both publish and review articles as well as simply reading the articles.

Copyright problems and payments for intellectual property I can understand but they have nothing to do with me personally. When we scientific writers publish, we sign over the copyright to the publisher and are paid nothing directly for our work. It "looks good on the cv", raises our scientific stature, helps with tenure and promotions, and raises the credibility of our applications for grant funding - but that's about it. So as far as I'm concerned, the more people can access my publications, the better.

..........................dan strickland

I'm a Quaker, have been since the mid-70s. One story of the origins of Mothers' Day in the US is that it began in an east coast Quaker Meeting. An elderly woman in my first Quaker Meeting, Seattle University Friends, always rose to speak during meeting on Mothers' Day when the children were in the room. She told a story that Mothers' Day originated long ago with all the mothers in a certain Friends Meeting choosing on that day to promise to each other that they would raise their sons in such a Light (Quaker jargon, here) that they would not kill other women's sons. I always liked that story, apocryphal or not.

and disappointing. Leopold has said, I believe on DU, that if the indictment story doesn't happen, he'll reveal his sources. His evasiveness with you, Tim, is cause for concern in that regard.

my sister's an AD (assistant director) who lives in Manhattan but usually works here in LA. She spent a good chunk of Feb & March making a pilot for a TV series that's all action, anti-terrorist, with a female protagonist. Lots of car chases, helicopters in downtown LA, and the like, and she says that a lot of similar pilots were being put together at the same time. Big demand for stunt drivers, stunt performers, and chopper pilots. And big fees for blocking off LA downtown streets, even if on Sunday morning. I think the title for her pilot was something like "PriMary".

I'd sure like to know a lot more specifics about how it works. And speaking for my daughter, who works as an emergency med tech, she'll be glad it's not another viagra-type product. Viagra is most useful for guys who have conditions like diabetes and who are older - the type of guys who also get angina and on occassion need nitro to stop the angina. So, daughter goes out on emergency call, patient is elderly guy with chest pain who has a prescription for nitro and has it available. She is allowed to give it, but first she has to ask, have you taken anything like viagra within the last 36 hours. If they have, the nitro will cause a drastic, possibly fatal drop in blood pressure. Not fun at all.

when I started teaching in a med school, in a conservative area of the midwest in 1990, the student body ran maybe a third women. By 2002, when I left there, it was pushing 60%. This place tends to lag culturally, so I'm sure other med schools were also going that direction, likely earlier. Women who want to go into medicine are, by god, going into medicine, not nursing. And this is changing both fields. The traditional view was the male doctor with the female nurse as his helper, and that is going quickly. Granted, the shift is right now working its way up through residents, fellows, and junior faculty, and there are still many more "traditional" specialties - but medicine will look very different in a few years - even one of the most regressive, sexist preserves of old boy bigots (can you guess? Ob/gyn!)