Welcome to a mixed Top 10 of the David Letterman's
Top Ten List (more or less)for January 1, 1999
(and maybe including rejected jokes)

        Top Ten Things Overheard in Times
                     Square


         10.
             "Attention; Please - for your safety; vomiting is
             restricted to 43rd Street only." 
         9.
             "It's so cold the rat on my donut just froze." 
         8.
             "Wasn't it nice of that man to park our car for
             us?" 
         7.
             "I hear that one of the Giants wide receivers
             offered to drop the New Years ball." 
         6.
             "Of course the countdown confuses me -- I went
             to a New York City public high school." 
         5.
             "1999 is only a half hour old and already I've
             been groped, mugged, and pistol-whipped." 
         4.
             "Who knew Mayor Giuliani could look so cute in
              a diaper and top hat?" 
         3.
            "If only there were some sort of cheap novelty
             hats available." 
         2.
            "Dick Clark says there are a lot more people
             than were here for the 1899 drop." 
        xx. 
            "You're right, it is much better to stand out here
            in the cold for hours with no view than to watch
            the whole thing from the comfort of home."                   

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Bird�s eggs started to thin long before DDT

  By combining museum collections for old birds� eggs, 
a researcher has found that thrush eggshells in Great 
Britain were thinning by the turn of the century, 47 
years before DDT hit the market.
   The pesticide. now banned in most countries, caused 
such dramatic shell thinning that populations of 
peregrines, ospreys, and other top predators began to 
decline.
   Long before DDT was a glimmer in a farmer�s eye,  
some other menace as yet unknown, was sapping the 
strength of eggshells, claims Rhys E. Green of the 
Edinburgh office of the Royal society for the Protec-
tion of Birds in the April 22 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ROYAL
SOCIETY OF LONDON B, he describes long, slow shell 
declines.  Eggshell thinning may have been an early 
consequence of industrialization, Green speculates.  
Acids formed when pollutants belch out of coal 
furnaces and smokestacks may have changed soil and 
water chemistry enough to reduce the availability of 
calcium, which is critical for eggshells.  "Calcium 
can be a particularly bad pinch point," Green says.
  Other research has linked acidified soil to frail 
eggs, he notes.  J. Graveland of the Netherlands 
Institute of Ecology at Heteren reported in 1994, for 
example that great tits lay weaker eggs as calcium-
rich snails dwindle on acidified soils.
  In an unusually broad survey, Green measured three 
museums� collection of well-labeled eggshells gathered 
since 1850 from four thrush species in Great Britain.
...
  From the weight and dimensions of the shells, he 
calculated an index of thickness similar to those 
developed for monitoring DDT effects.  For two species,
he also measured shell thickness by fitting a thin probe 
through the hole made to remove the material inside the 
egg in preparation for museum storage.
  Both the index and the direct measurements show steady
declines.  Blackbirds (not the  U.S. blackbird but ... a 
cousin of the U.S. robin) have lost 7 to 10 percent on 
the shell index since 1850.  Eggs from song thrushes 
thinned 6 percent, mistle thrushes 4 percent and ring 
ouzels, 2 percent.  Only the ring ouzel leaves Great 
Britain for long migrations. ...
  I think he probably has something," says wildlife 
toxicologist D> Michael Fry, director of the Center for 
Avian Biology at the University of California, Davis.
"There�s a lot of scatter, but the trend is significant."
  Acidification as a threat to eggshells sounds plausible 
to Lloyd Kiff, now science director at the Peregrine 
Fund in Boise, Idaho.  More than 2 dozen recent studies 
show acid effects on songbirds abroad, but no research 
has been done in the United States, he says.  I don�t 
know why someone hasn�t picked it up and run with it,"
he adds, we have similar conditions here."


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