Jacquie Phelan's Weblog

But being unable to speak, all the baboon could do was threat-grimace, fling feces at the scientist that injected him with “the clear” and wait for the ‘roid rage to wear off.

This winter I’ve dived into everything I can find by Robert Sapolsky, the renowned neurobiologist and author of such brilliant books as A Primate’s Memoir and Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers.

The former is an account of his life among African baboons, and the latter a very funny and excruciatingly well-explained guide to how stress (often self-inflicted) has re-shaped the kinds of illnesses we succumb to.

Now that’s a very un-Sapolskian sentence, inelegant and slightly fuzzy around the edges.

But hey, I’m not a genius.

I just leave their books around, hoping that some sort of contagion will infect me with scientific
know-how, wit and possibly even publishability.

Lately I’ve been stressing about Not Writing The Book, and so a chapter of the great Sapolsky re-ignites the flame, and a blog–not a book–erupts.

Then a headline like the one above makes me run for the camera, pen a note to the biologist (addressed simply to “Sapolsky, Stanford, CALIF”) raving about his great books, then run out of steam when I can ‘t get the picture to right itself.

Or worse: WordPress decides to do a (Shimano-style) total ‘improvement/overhaul’ of the inner workings of this template.. .and I’m unable to figure out how to put a picture on this, let alone rotate it.

To you my rider/readers, I wish a good weekend. And to me, a tailwind of talent, an invisible guiding hand to ease this new (until the next big ‘simplification’ of the system).

Thank you Dr. S and thank you anonymous baboon, I hope they let you out of the cage some day.

~ by jacquiephelan on April 5, 2008.

Posted in Cycling, Jacquie Phelan, The Book
Tags: baboon, doping, sapolsky