StringJunky

I agree with CharonY. Until we understand all the important interconnecting relationships in our own weather system and can tinker with it purposefully and successfully, planetary terraforming is out of reach.

It seems that there is a Historical Method

I didn't choose anything because how can one confidently choose a point in a continuum and say "It starts here"?

You can't define a point in a continuum - which is what the development of an organism is - without it being arbitrary. Leave that definition to people that need to define it for the purposes of their argument or profession.

Yes, on that point it's not relevant.

I imagine quite a few feel empowered, thinking their anonymity and physical separation from their targets gives them immunity from retribution.

I was going to say that the US seems to be quite an anomaly amongst the general trend globally.

Will this do? There does seem to be an inverse correlation between wealth and religiosity from this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_religion

The OP was referring to Indian culture and my answer was specific to that but it is, as you say, manifest elsewhere. A lot of it and religious customs as well seems to stem from the collective male desire to keep women down a peg or two I agree.

From what I've read in the past, it's just a long-entrenched taboo that during this time women are dirty and should be avoided until they are finished. The sad fact is that the covert behaviours Indian women have to go through to deal with it means that their personal hygiene routines are likely much less than optimal which reinforces the idea that they are dirty.

Agreed, it's trying to crack the hard nuts that refines and consolidates our debating skills not the easy ones. We learn more from our failures than our successes. One thing we can do though is suggest to lock a thread when it clearly starts to become circular.

Seems odd that nobody thought of it before. I can see plenty of scope for arguing discussing the veracity, interpretation and timeline of past events.

I'm not seeing it that way. If we regarded everything we do as natural, with no distinction between our behaviours and that of other organisms, we are more likely to be indiscriminate and not caring about the footprints we make because it's "natural". On a personal level I empathise with your view but collectively I think it's a pipe dream. Here's an apt example of pipe dream I found: World peace and human equality are examples of pipe dreams because humans are more naturally inclined to kill off their competition than to cooperate.

'Madness' is a colloquial term. I doubt it's usage would be found in technical literature in a formal manner..

Our own continued existence as a species is why. We are becoming too big for the pond and the more there is of us the more we need to tiptoe carefully.

I can't find any scientific evidence, only anecdotal. MSDS sheets say that it may be absorbed through the skin is about as good as i can come up with. Possibly, more would have been ingested from handling the hats as one went about ones day. I can picture people fiddling with their hats, doffing their hats etc then transferring the mercury to their mouths via putting pipes in there mouth, handling/eating food etc. Yes, the association with Lewis Carroll's character doesn't seem to bear out on closer inspection.

I think that which is ‘natural’ is that which is unaffected by human intervention. I think using that word that way is our way of distinguishing two different lines of evolutionary progression; evolutionary in a general sense. Yeah, I think there's just too many of us now to think that we can assert our individual desires on our immediate environments and expect nature to absorb it and recycle our efforts when we are done.

I think quite a few now think that we are no longer puppets with our instincts our main masters and so are concerned about unduly and irreversibly altering the interconnected natural phenomena around them,which keeps this big machine called Earth going. It's called "unnatural" because we can pro-actively alter that which is natural to an irreversible degree. It's an artificial distinction but that is a good thing because it shows that we are collectively aware of the consequences of our actions on our environment and co-inhabitants.

Right ok. Got it now. I suspected it wasn't that simple.

IF x=2 then x+1=3. Is my conclusion invalid?

Cheers

I could well be wrong but if we sequentially take the cousin-line - first with first cousin, second with second etc - and each degree of separation results in 50% gene dilution, wouldn't it take about 15 degrees of separation for any relation to disappear? I assumed the human genome contains 25000 genes.

I couldn't follow your NCBI link and so I left it.