Strange but true

Question: Astrology buffs, during which month or months of the year would you expect the best soccer players to have birthdays? And a related question, are top players born or are they made?

Answer: Astrology has nothing to do with soccer talent, but time of year born does, going by a finding reported by Philip Ross in "Scientific American."

When researchers looked at pro players in Germany, Brazil, Japan and Australia, there was a strong tendency for them to have birthdays in the first quarter of the year after the cutoff for youth soccer leagues: 30 percent, 30 percent, 38 percent, 38 percent for the four countries. These numbers compare with roughly 25 percent birthdays during the quarter for the general population. So, why?

Because these players were older than the other kids when they joined the leagues, they enjoyed advantages in size and strength, allowing them to handle the ball better and score more often. These early successes would have motivated them to keep on improving, thus explaining their disproportionate representation in the pro ranks.

Intense motivation and training also help explain the feats of famous child prodigies such as composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and golfer Tiger Woods. In other words, says Ross, "training trumps talent." To get really good, hang in there!

Question: For helping maintain fish populations, how effective is the old angler policy of chasing the big ones and letting the tiddlers go?

Answer: It's counterproductive — a wrong-headed approach, says Stephen Leahy in "New Scientist" magazine. A female's fecundity increases dramatically with size: A 60-cm red snapper, for example, produces 200+ times as many eggs as females two-thirds her size; larvae from older and larger black rockfish are bigger, grow faster and survive longer without food. Moreover, in some species older fish teach younger ones the route to spawning areas.

Depleting the largest individuals also favors fish that grow slowly and stay small. Of 338 species studied, overfishing was the biggest danger, followed by accidental "by-catch."

So it's those trophy fish taken home and bragged about that make catching the next trophy fish even tougher.

Angler policies aside, the best way to prevent overexploitation is to set up protected marine areas where fishing is banned, say researchers at Hopkins Marine Station of Stanford University. Currently, national parks cover 10 percent of the planet's land area, whereas only about 0.1 percent of the world's oceans are protected.

Question: In the English language, who are the true "sitting ducks" so easy to take a pot shot at that they take hit after hit and don't talk back?