You hear that, Colibri? He said you were horny.
Colibri, left out of your equation is the email reply variable. That refers to the fact that my email address is present with all my posts, thus, people can & do write me about questions/comments/flirtations/remind me to check back on certain posts, Etc…
Although, it appears a rather brilliant analysis, you know you can’t do that accurately without having the subject in front of you. Otherwise it’s all hypothetical.
What on earth is a ‘Colibri’?
My analysis was based on a random sample of the 11,100+ handies on the board. Admittedly I haven’t read them all, but it’s still a much larger sample size than most biologists (except entomologists) usually have to work with.
Colibris are also known as picaflores, chupaflores, and zumbadores.
Chronos, since algernon is equating post count with antler size, that implies that you are about five times hornier than I am - and handy is ten times hornier. The mind boggles.
You know, I never picked up on that either. I feel ashamed now for stealing all those hummingbird posts, way back when 
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Anyway, oh Mighty Master of the Trochilids, just wanted to say that your earlier analysis made me grin - Yer’ a clever fellow 
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- Tamerlane
I knew not a bird could post. They must get a peckerful (websters:1 : one that pecks) & thus. hornier than us all
Interesting. waterj2 was observing that as my shortcoming just the other day. He determined that my ratio of OPs to posts was less that one tenth of 1%, (although I think he may have exaggerated my OP count).
However, I might respond that some of us are simply K-selection species, as noted above. In our case, large post counts may be attributed to simply a long life with a very long reproductive period. Some of us have higher post counts than others, but that does nothing to indicate the quality of the posts. John W. Kennedy has fewer than 1200 posts (despite joining in April '99) and gets little recognition from the Teeming hordes (based on the voting of the fun poll that was conducted a year or so ago), but his post content is always excellent. (Hanging out strictly in the two “Comments on…” Fora, eschewing even General Questions, probably reduces both his output and his visibility/recognition–but it does not diminish his quality. It simply indicates that his species niche is narrow.)
In general, I’m not a big fan of looking at post counts. We’ve had some folks who have been able to hang out for a long while, without being either banned or chased off the MB, who have generally displayed ignorance and rudeness throughout their posting life. Many sharp people demonstrate their intelligence and wit beginning with their first post.
I will admit that someone who attacks the MB in some whiney Pit thread while displaying a post count of 2 is liable to provoke more mirth than consideration, but even there, a person may simply be expressing a long-pent frustration from having lurked awhile, and it is usually a better idea to respond to the content of their post than to their apparent newness.
Just to complete the discussion, I guess I should provide a comparative analysis of a K-selected Board organism. While there are many potential candidates, the Collounsbury may serve as a suitable example.
The Collounsbury is an excellent example of a K-selected organism. They are often very large: I have seen many 10 or more screens long, and even larger examples are rumored to inhabit some of the more impenetrable threads in GD. They clearly require considerable energy to produce, as they are usually heavily armored with links and citations. Parental care is intense, and if attacked they are defended tooth and nail. Collounsburies are notoriously prickly, and if sufficiently provoked by a particularly distasteful troll can become venomous. They are relatively specialized, pursuing their preferred prey, the Boneheaded Racemonger (Bigotus osteocephalus) mainly in threads in GQ and GD.[sup]1[/sup] (However, if a Collounsbury encounters a particularly slippery prey item that is too difficult to deal with in the restricted confines of these forums, it will drag it off to the Pit, where it can be dismembered more vigorously - eventually leaving only a few well-gnawed fragments of the larger bones.) Collounsburies have very a high carrying capacity, and can reach densities of dozens in threads with a heavy infestation of Racemongers. The Collounsbury has only two known weaknesses: a fondness for cheese and the inability to use the subjunctive correctly.
[sup]1[/sup][sub]They do seem to be expanding their niche however. Just last week, to my surprise I spotted one in Café Society. Predictably, though, it was on The Battle of Algiers rather than on the Powerpuff Girls as I had hoped.[/sub]
I think you have your Darwin backwards.
Life’s losers are here every day, to shrivel up.
The winners go out where people are, to live and prosper.
Hey, Collounsbury, care for a little snack?
Perhaps an even better example would be the David B, which was, at last count, the second-most populous species on the board (does anyone know if this is still true?). While having a rather more varied diet than the Collounsbury, preying on both fundies and pseudoscientists, the David B nonetheless has a far more restricted habitat, appearing almost exclusively in the jungles of GD. Like other K-selected organisms, the individuals are large and well-protected, both by family and by an assortment of barbs, armor, and venom.
Yes, the David B is indeed a formidable organism. However, it has been overtaken in population by the Coldfire, the tracer, the SPOOFE, the Ukelele Ike, and (barely) the Guinastasia. I leave it as an exercise for the student to determine if these creatures are r- or K-selected.
handy’s response to Colibri suggests the possibilities of disguise and plasticity. Whilst overt spinyness may deter, it can also exhaust. In this environment it can pay to appear fluffy whilst remaining prepared to strike. To bring it back to Collounsbury, Kurds don’t get time to make curds.
Psst, Colibri, how’d you get that info? Did you just think of some likely candidates and check their numbers? I can’t think of any easier ways…
Easy: I have been carrying out a long-term mark-recapture study of Board organisms, and simply used the Cormack-Jolly-Seber estimator to calculate expected population sizes from the data . . .
[sub](Actually, Kamandi provided most of the data here.)[/sub]