Ten oz

Interesting example. What do people who go through that do? "Nearly one in five women surveyed said they had been raped or had experienced an attempted rape at some point, and one in four reported having been beaten by an intimate partner. One in six women have been stalked, according to the report." http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/15/health/nearly-1-in-5-women-in-us-survey-report-sexual-assault.html?_r=0 Considering the staggering numbers it would seem that the majority find a way to pick up the pieces and move on with their lives. No justice so to speak is ever had. Otherwise there would be tens of millions of men in prison for rape and/or assualt.

@ Basic Biology, let me first say that I deplore what we humans are doing to this planet. We have over exploited the planet and a lot life is now suffering as a result of that. With that said what is done is done. Habitats have changed. Only life capable of thriving in the modified environments will survive. Natural selection doesn't care that humans are to blame. We can work to reduce our impact on environments but that is about it. Picking and choosing which species to save off the endangered list is not simple. Are mammals more important than plants or birds more important than fish? Everything in an ecosystem has value. There is a natural balance. I don't think we can replicate that balance by moving animals around. It would merely be a game of saving one species at the expense of some other species.

@ the OP, as the environment changes the best chance any species has for survival is adaptation. Our (humans) ability to impact that should be focused on disrupting the environment little as possible. We should not transplant animals into different ecosystems any more than we should be destroying ecosystems. Climate change is happening but what that means changes as humans change. We can not reverse the weather but we can stop burning down rainforests, putting insane amounts carbon in the air, and killing endangered animals simply because we can. Transplanting polar bears increases our role in the equation at a time when we need to be finding ways to reduce our role.

I understand your point but can't entirely agree. Simply moving on is how many societies have gotten beyond any number atrocities. There has never been any sort of punishment or retribution that comes anywhere near the level of the massacre of natives and aboriginal people's in the Americas. Black people have not avenged slavery. Following the end of segregation in the United States south in the 60's no one was punished. Mayors, Govenors, Police, Judges, and etc who employed and supported segregation were not forced out or put on jail. The nation simple moved forward. Same goes for the British in India. They left and that was that. India's first act of independence was not to wage war against England in an effort to seek revenge. Just as Israel has not waged war against Germany. Society seems to seek revenge when it is easy to do so. Like a cheap emotional thrill. When revenge is hard or the atrocities were committed by the majority of people societies tend to just forgive and forget. Acknowledge that something bad happened and move on. Europeans living in the Americas and Australia get to keep their blood soaked stolen land, German today is again one of the strongest and most influential in the world, and so on and so on. All we can do is look for ways to improve the future.

Can we start again? I apology if I have been unduly critical. I have been in many discussions about these type of issues over the years and have become fatigued. The result of that is impatiences. You have questions and I have been annoyed that you haven't or aren't researching the information yourself. However researching information doesn't necessarily provide context or perspective. So an honest question should be received as such and I haven't been doing that.

Thanks, I wasn't sure.

I am surprised there isn't a place here to talk sports. There are forums for religion, politics, speculations, general philosophy, and a lounge but no sports? Would it be oppropriate to start sports related discussions in the lounge?

@ Moontanman, As posted I do not believe the future should be used to avenge the past. I am a sports fan. In sports there is often talk of avenging a loss or getting revenge against a specific rival for something but ultimately the past is never altered and the present exists as it otherwise could've/would've anyways. If team "A" beats team "B" in a championship game and then the following year team "B" avenges the previous years loss and beats team "A" won't history still view both teams as champions? Team "B" can never erase their loss. Team "A" won that year and that is forever. Actions made today only effect today and perhaps the days after. The longer a person lugs around the past looking to avenge, revenge, make right, re-live, or otherwise retroactively influence the past the longer they aren't giving the here and now the attention it deserves. *****"deserves" be a very subjective word of course******

A board general statement. Perhaps an ill chosen one. As it applies to Ferguson; the rates of black people being stopped, searched, and arrested is undeniably disproportional. http://ago.mo.gov/VehicleStops/2013/reports/161.pdf As a matter of recorded fact those numbers carry more weight (are more important to this conversation) than speculations about people's attitudes, actions, or habits.

In my opinion justice doesn't apply to things that have past. A person can work toward a more equal, fair, safe, etc future but the same for past events can never be achieved. I think past events should be used as examples to help improve the future. The future should not be a platform to re-live or avenge the past. If a person is imprisoned it should be because they are a current or future threat to the safety and security of society. At the OP's example; killing the killer of ones father or that killer dying by other means may possibly make society more safe but would not provide justice so to speak. What happened can not be reserved or made different.

@ Professor Blue, in my opinion a big part of the problem is that a lot of people simple refuse to acknowledge that facts carry more weight than speculation or opinion. Whether it is obvious things evolution and climate change or social problems like unequal pay for women and high police interaction rates for blacks. The statistical information is clear. In the case of Ferguson people of color are disproportionately stopped, searched, and arrested at higher rates by a police force that itself is diproportionaley lacking in people of color. Unfortunately there is often a belief system driven by anecdotal personal experience that many people use to ignore the actual numbers. Speculations about aggression in the black community or challanges to individual character are made equal parts of the conversation as some people dismiss the actual statistics. In my opinion empirical statistics over time are far more telling than any individual event. I believe that when things constantly happen to a group of people over long periods of time it requires acknowledgement and change. After all doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result is insane. I also think it is the responsibility of a responsible gov't to look for legal & structural ways of resolving matters that are negatively impacting groups on people in their communities. BTW Cliven Bundy is in Neveda, not Montana.

I am not suspicious. I just find it odd that you ask questions about information that is public record, very easily researched, and links to have already been provided. I do not suspect this, that, or the other; I simply don't understand why you continue to question rather than read the creditable sources already given or research yourself.

Perhaps I should have said in addition to. I was adding on to your post. Did not mean to imply what your meaning was.

I also suspect that the actual data isn't meaningful to him. He has yet to pose a question regarding the data that he couldn't have found the answer to in 2 minutes or less on the internet.

WASHINGTON – The U.S. prison population declined 1.7 percent (or by 27,770 inmates) from 2011 to 2012, falling to an estimated 1,571,013 prisoners, the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) announced today. Nine states had a decrease of over 1,000 prisoners in 2012: California, Texas, North Carolina, Colorado, Arkansas, New York, Florida, Virginia and Maryland. This is the third consecutive year of a decline in the number of state prisoners, which represents a shift in the direction of incarceration practice in the states over the past 30 years. The prison population grew every year between 1978 and 2009, from 307,276 prisoners in 1978 to a high of 1,615,487 prisoners in 2009. http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/press/p12acpr.cfm Canada's Prison population: http://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/cnt/rsrcs/pblctns/2012-ccrs/index-eng.aspx

There was not a drop in 2000. www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/p10.pdf

WASHINGTON One area where the United States indisputably leads the world The United States has 2.3 million people behind bars, almost one in every 100 Americans. The U.S. prison population has more than doubled over the past 15 years, and one in nine black children has a parent in jail. Proportionally, the United States has four times as many prisoners as Israel, six times as many as Canada or China, eight times as many as Germany and 13 times as many as Japan. With just a little more than 4 percent of the worlds population, the United States accounts for a quarter of the planets prisoners and has more inmates than the leading 35 European countries combined. Almost all the other nations with high per capita prison rates are in the developing world. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/21/us/21iht-letter21.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

You are using getting "horny" as a standard of some sort and I don't understand what you mean. My cat get "horny" and attempts to have sex with my house shoes when I leave out. Many of dogs have gotten "horny" at first sight of my legs. The sensation of being horny is hormonal more than it is conscious.

There are a lot of different studies floating around that place the non paternity rate of fathers in Europe and Northern American low as 1-3% to high as 28-30 percent. http://www.isogg.org/wiki/Non-paternity_event What impact does this have on the child being raised by a non biological parent believed to be a biological one? Just as various types of stress affect hormones in children which alter development does exposure to a parent with specific shared genes alter the expression of those genes in biological children? For example; do I have my fathers nervous tick as result of emulating him, experiencing his tick trigger something in my genes, or as a matter of genetics I would've had the tick with or without him in my life? assuming any of the three examples are true is good or bad for society as a whole? Also if anyone has a link to reliable research on non paternity I would be interested in seeing it as I have been unable to locate any.

"Frequency of praying to God was dichotomized between seldom and never to distinguish prayers from non-prayers." Many Muslim pray multiple times a day. By that standard someone who prays 2-3 times a week "seldom" prays while someone who prays only during holidays may as well answer never. On my opinion the questioned asked provide no insight into what is actually believed. What is religion but a belief system?

How exacting of a universe we have is a matter of perspective and not matter of fact. However let's assume, for the sake of argument, I agree. How does the existence of a God/creator explain anything? In my opinion the concept of a God simply shifts questions but does not answer any. Questions like how was the universe was created still persist. Simply crediting God doesn't answer the question. By whom something was created and how something was created are different things. It that makes God an unimportant component in understand how. If you were trying to reverse engineer a piece of technology simply knowing the name of its inventor would be useless unless knowing the name allowed you insight to their research, methods, materials, tools, or etc. knowing God as the creator of the universe does not help our undertsanding of the universe. It does not provide insight to God's research, methods, materials, tools, or etc.

@ the OP, religion itself is purely environmental. The overwhelming majority of children born in a Muslim country to practicing Muslim parents will grow up Muslim. Just as the overwhelming majority of children born in Christian countries to practicing Christians will go up Christian. How religion is practiced and what is believed vary greatly. Polling twins about their religious beliefs without quantifying or defining a religious belief structure doesn't seem useful. A 5 foot 7 inch with shorter siblings might consider themselves tall while a 6 foot 2 inch person with taller sibling might consider themselves short. The study failed to quantify religion. What it means to "find comfort in god" or "finding strength" is very subjective. A person can think god is important without holding any traditional view of god. More direct questions would provide better insight. Questions like: do you believe you have a soul and that it will continue to live after you die or do you believe in god and that he/she/it is singularly responsible for all livings things and matter in the universe.

I do not see anything about "Evolution, Morphology and Exobiology" in the thread starter.

I think conceptually you are mistaken in trying to compare human sexuality directly against animal sexuality. Sex serves a slightly different purpose amongst all societies of animals and behaviors vary. A male Quoll for example savages multiple females during mating season. Many females die has a result. While an albatrosses practices peaceful courtships that lead to life long mating relationships. Human sexuality to Rams or any other animal's sexuality isn't an apples to apples comparison.

.....but that is not the standard. By the human definition many mammals are bisexual and few mate for life with an exclusive partner.