I loved donating, and am also O+ but I tend toward vasovagal syncope (ie, I faint when my blood pressure changes rapidly) and after passing out in the recovery room a few times they moved me to half units and then a couple of times after that they started subtly encouraging me not to donate. I guess I was too much paperwork. :-(

former lab sample processor here - not CLT, but pre-test prep. For most tests you need serum, which is only about half the blood volume after centrifugation. Then it's poured off- by hand- into plastic sample vials. You lose some down the side of the tube, the tubes are wider than they need to be because human pour accuracy is bad which is more surplus, and the company always wants to keep at least one test's worth of serum as a backup in case a tube gets dropped or exposed to a contaminant or gets overheated or something, and because more often than you'd think doctors call up and say oh hey add these 40 tests to Bob's sample. Oh, and sample processors are expected to split well over 120 patient's orders an hour, usually into four or five tubes, sometimes a lot more.

A funny aside: some people have triglyceride levels so high that their blood serum is actually strawberry milkshake pink. Always impressive to see that.

same here, no hangovers thanks to generations of alcoholics pruning the family tree. Fortunately I find the feeling of being too-drunk an adequate deterrent.

I am _not_ offering samples as the process would be significantly more challenging and unpleasant for me than for fatphil here. :-)

I believe Babcox and Wilcox (the security contractor at Y-12) did in fact have their contract terminated and were replaced. I do not know who the replacement is.

I freely admit that I am average at best when driving.

It worked in ancient Athens, and with much the same rationale- you don't want anyone ruling you who would actually want the job.

to avoid cross contamination, of course.

I think perhaps you are projecting. I have in fact held some newborns, and they were far less aware of what was going on than my cats, and evinced fewer feelings. My cats, for example, can clearly demonstrate annoyance at one another; the babies I have been around seem to express only pleasure/displeasure and that in only the basest of manners, such as screaming and, oh, screaming. Something seems to change in them around five months, when one day you look in their eyes and there is actually someONE looking back at you.

The study I've seen most frequently cited as a refutation to the rape can't cause pregnancy argument is from 1996 and was in fact prospective.

PubMed; Am J Obstet Gynecol. 1996 Aug;175(2):320-4; discussion 324-5.

We're not all idiots, thanks. Some of us are even familiar with the Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Theo van Gogh thing.
-a biologist in Kentucky

As a "real" woman, I ask that you not speak for me. Rather, I demand it. Any woman who has committed herself to the years of rigorous effort required to pass as female, much less actually opted for surgery, is going to be taking so much estrogen and so many androgen blockers that we 'real' women will mop the freakin' floor with her unless she was already a gifted athlete in her prior life. And if she was, she deserves the right to compete and demonstrate that against her peers.

There are a few Olympic sports which are skill based rather than physical prowess, and a person with Kleinfelter Syndrome could easily be an Olympic-calibre archer or rifle marksman.

My sympathy for your loss.

The majority of Americans do, in fact, live in urban areas. The link includes a breakdown of various degrees of urbanity.

This is not actually true - the shape of one's breasts is far more closely related to genetics, nutrition, and number of children nursed. Especially nutrition - most of the effects of nursing are due to borderline nutritional quality during lactation. If all of your protein is going to making milk instead of maintaining your mammary ligaments your breasts will sag.

So you have birth control pills and improved farming practices to thank for perky breasts.