State College Downtown Rotary Weekly Newsletter, Paul Rutter-Editor

October 27, 2007 Fundraiser @ Beaver Stadium; vs. Ohio State 8:00PM (all openings taken)
November 1, 2007 Bryan Rodgers - Director, University Park Airport
November 3, 2007 Fundraiser @ Beaver Stadium; vs. Purdue TBA (all openings taken)
November 8, 2007 Club Assembly
November 9, 2007 Wine Tasting
November 10, 2007 Rotary Leadership Institute in Bedford
November 10, 2007 Rotary Foundation dinner in Bedford.
November 15, 2007 Dick Held - Rotary Foundation
November 22, 2007 (THANKSGIVING)
November 29, 2007 Trina Hess - Using Humor in Everyday Living
December 6, 2007

Visiting Rotarians:
Make-ups turned in:
Guests:
50/50: The pot is up to about $940.
Auction:

Hobart Kistler, son of Judge Kistler, spoke to the club about his trip to Costa Rica. Hobart is a junior at Penns Valley High School and spent his sophomore year abroad.

From the talk it seems as if he had a very interesting year with a great variety of living circumstances and food stuffs to try out.

Costa Rica (literally "Rich Coast"), officially the Republic of Costa Rica (Spanish: Costa Rica or República de Costa Rica, IPA: [re'pu?lika ðe 'kosta 'rrika]), is a Republic in Central America, bordered by Nicaragua to the north, Panama to the south-southeast, the Pacific Ocean to the west and south, and the Caribbean Sea to the east. Costa Rica was the first country in the world to constitutionally abolish its army.

Costa Rica is a democratic republic with a strong constitution. Although there are claims that the country has had more than 115 years of uninterrupted democracy, their presidential election history shows otherwise (see List of Presidents of Costa Rica). Nonetheless, the country has had at least fifty-nine years of uninterrupted democracy, which is by far the longest in Latin America, making it one of the most stable countries in the region. Costa Rica has avoided the violence that has plagued Central America.

Executive responsibilities are vested in a president, who is the country's center of power. There also are two vice presidents as well as a cabinet designated by the president. The president, vice presidents, and fifty-seven Legislative Assembly delegates are elected for four-year terms. A constitutional amendment approved in 1969 limited presidents and delegates to one term, although delegates were allowed to run again for an Assembly seat after sitting out a term.

In April 2003, the constitutional ban on presidential re-election was reversed, allowing Óscar Arias (Nobel Peace Prize laureate, 1987) to run for President for a second term. In 2006, Óscar Arias was re-elected in a tight and highly contested election, running on a platform of promoting free trade. He took office on May 8, 2006. Autonomous state agencies enjoy considerable operational independence; they include the telecommunications and electrical power monopoly, the nationalized commercial banks, the state insurance monopoly, and the social security agency. Costa Rica has no military by constitution but maintains domestic police forces for internal security. These include the Guardia Civil and the Guardia Rural.

Other current political issues include security, crime, and the limiting of large-scale emigration of people from Nicaragua.

Fetter, Oct 29th
(if I missed yours please email me and let the club secretary know too)

Reminders on makeup's:
All makeup's are good for credit toward meetings missed 14 days before or 14 days after the makeup. Makeup's made at other Rotary Club meetings also get a dues credit. Makeup's at service projects get attendance credit only. All makeup cards should be turned into the club secretary promptly. To find out where you can makeup, check the RI Club Directory, or District Web site.

Live fast, love hard, die young

Oct 18th 2007
From The Economist

Chasing females can take years off life

IN THE cause of equal rights, feminists have had much to complain about. But one striking piece of inequality has been conveniently overlooked: lifespan. In this area, women have the upper hand. All round the world, they live longer than men. Why they should do so is not immediately obvious. But the same is true in many other species. From lions to antelope and from sea lions to deer, males, for some reason, simply can't go the distance.

One theory is that males must compete for female attention. That means evolution is busy selecting for antlers, aggression and alloy wheels in males, at the expense of longevity. Females are not subject to such pressures. If this theory is correct, the effect will be especially noticeable in those species where males compete for the attention of lots of females. Conversely, it will be reduced or absent where they do not.

To test that idea, Tim Clutton-Brock of Cambridge University and Kavita Isvaran of the Indian Institute of Science in Bengalooru decided to compare monogamous and polygynous species (in the latter, a male monopolises a number of females). They wanted to find out whether polygynous males had lower survival rates and aged faster than those of monogamous species. To do so, they collected the relevant data for 35 species of long-lived birds and mammals.

As they report this week in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, the pattern was much as they expected. In 16 of the 19 polygynous species in their sample, males of all ages were much more likely to die during any given period than were females. Furthermore, the older they got, the bigger the mortality gap became. In other words, they aged faster. Males from monogamous species did not show these patterns.

The point about polygyny, according to Dr Clutton-Brock, is that if one male has exclusive access to, say, ten females, another nine males will be waiting to topple the harem master as soon as he shows the first sign of weakness. The intense competitive pressure means that individuals who succeed put all their efforts into one or two breeding seasons.

That obviously takes its toll directly. But a more subtle effect may also be at work. Most students of ageing agree that an animal's maximum lifespan is set by how long it can reasonably expect to escape predation, disease, accident and damaging aggression by others of its kind. If it will be killed quickly anyway, there is not much reason for evolution to divert scarce resources into keeping the machine in tip-top condition. Those resources should, instead, be devoted to reproduction. And the more threatening the outside world is, the shorter the maximum lifespan should be.

There is no reason why that logic should not work between the sexes as well as between species. And this is what Dr Clutton-Brock and Dr Isvaran seem to have found. The test is to identify a species that has made its environment so safe that most of its members die of old age, and see if the difference continues to exist. Fortunately, there is such a species: man.

Dr Clutton-Brock reckons that the sex difference in both human rates of ageing and in the usual age of death is an indicator that polygyny was the rule in humanity's evolutionary past—as it still is, in some places. That may not please some feminists, but it could be the price women have paid for outliving their menfolk.

Do you have anything to share? Email me (Paul) and chances are it will find its way here.

“If we only listen to those whom we already see eye to eye, we will never create better understanding, a concept that is at the core of Rotary.” -Martin G Molony, District 1160 Governor, Dublin Central, Ireland in The Rotarian, January 2006

“If we only listen to those whom we already see eye to eye, we will never create better understanding, a concept that is at the core of Rotary.”
-Martin G Molony, District 1160 Governor, Dublin Central, Ireland
in The Rotarian, January 2006