Jockstrip: The world as we know it

THINGS WE DON'T UNDERSTAND

Even if Major League Baseball players strike after Thursday night's games, angry fans will not stay away from the game for long.

Purdue University consumer expert Richard Feinberg says despite fan threats to quit the national pastime if there is a strike, they will return when the games begin again.

"Baseball is part of a small set of consumer products that we call sacred products," Feinberg says. He likens them to other sacred products -- Harley-Davidson motorcycles and the Super Bowl.

"Devotion to scared products is deeply rooted in spiritual and psychological forces that will only be affected for a short time if it is affected at all," Feinberg says.

NEWS OF OTHER LIFE FORMS

Male sperm whales have been known to ram and sink ships but University of Utah biologists say such aggressive behavior may have evolved through head butting when they fight over females.

"Herman Melville's 'Moby Dick' was based on the sinking of a real ship, the Essex, by a big sperm whale in 1820," says David Carrier, an associate professor of biology. "We believe this ability to sink ships is the result of whales evolving so that males could butt heads to compete for females."

The researchers now are trying to figure out how sperm whales are able to hit ships so much bigger than they are and swim away.

In species such as whales, in which individual males reproduce with a harem of females -- males compete for access to the females. The bigger the male-female size difference, the larger the harem, the more intense the competition among males and the larger the weapon used if a fight breaks out. The biggest males with the biggest weapons successfully reproduce and pass on their genes.

TODAY'S SIGN THE WORLD IS ENDING

The free James Traficant movement is up and running with its own Web site -- freetraficant.com.

Traficant, the former Democratic congressman from Ohio, is serving eight years in the federal pen after being convicted of demanding kickbacks and favors from his staff and accepting cash and other bribes from businessmen in exchange for using his influence on Capitol Hill. He also was kicked out of Congress.

Traficant pledges to run for Congress again -- from prison -- and his Web site says: "James Traficant's error wasn't committing fraud and taking money. His error was doing it old style.

"While other politicians had moved up to sophisticated methods including campaign donations, speaking fees, book advances and other hidden ways, Traficant stayed true to his suitcase full of cash roots," the Web site said.

AND FINALLY, TODAY'S UPLIFTING STORY

Two months shy of his 6th birthday this summer, Sam Helsley of Fort Worth, Texas, savors stepping up to bat for his T-ball team. Even if he doesn't get a hit, it's still a victory for him.

When he was 23 months old, he was diagnosed with an advanced-stage of a deadly childhood cancer -- a neuroblastoma -- which originates in the sympathetic nervous system.

UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas was conducting national pediatric drug trials to treat neuroblastoma with stem-cell transplants. Dr. Victor Aquino performed the first tandem stem-cell transplant for neuroblastoma in North Texas on Sam.

Cells were harvested from his bone marrow and treated with high-dose chemotherapy and radiation to destroy diseased cells. The healthy stem cells were returned to Sam to grow and reseed the marrow. For Sam, the therapy was successful. His cancer is in remission.