DJBruce

Here are two fairly interesting pieces discussing the motivations behind date rape. The first paper tends to view the cause of date rape to be a mixture of our society's view on male gender roles, miscommunication between men and women, and men's insensitivity towards women: The second article focuses on the idea of whether or not rape is about power and dominance, or sexual gratification. The authors of this short article find that it is infact a mixutre of both of these things that motivate rapists: *As a slight disclaimer I could not find any real credientals for the second article, or the website it came from, however, it appears to care at least some legitimacy.

I agree completely when people break the rules by committing any of the things you say they should be punished in some way, and maybe slightly tighter moderation would help with stoping these things. Just out of curiosity is there currently any moderators specifically designated to work in the politics sections? I know Pangloss was very actively moderating the politics section, but I have not seen him around lately. I like this suggestion a lot, however, I wonder if it would just result in post political threads in other forums like the Lounge or something else.

You will eat bread.

So about 6 years ago Blike started a SFN Yearbook thread, but since it is a year book, and that thread is filled with pictures that no longer exist I figure it maybe time for a SFN Yearbook Vol. 2! So post your pictures!

I believe the issue with politics in general is unlike most topics in other areas politics can be, and very often is based on personal beliefs, and however much we may disagree with these often they are just as valid is our own opinions. This means that the area of politics is very difficult to moderate and will often contain discussions that include things that most people consider to be fairly radical and idiotic. So I guess in my opinion the best we can do is moderate the best we can, and except that some of the opinions and ideas said might to us be crazy.

Z So I doubted the OP's clam, but this graphic seems to lend it credence. However, it also shows that the in general the more religous a country is the poorer it is so it is not necessarily Islam itself.

I think you are being to black and white here. Yes, many rapes are driven by the desire to cause harm, and are not necessarily because of the rapists sex drive. However, I would contend there is a large number of rapes that are driven by the sexual urges of the rapist. The prime examples that come to my mind are the numerous rapes that occur on college campuses at bars, parties and frat houses where a man purposely intoxicates the women he wants to have sex with so that he knows he can "score" easier. I doubt that most of the frat stars and other students who do this are thinking I am going to get this girl drunk so that I can rape her to cause her harm. It would be much more likely that the man wants to have sex with the women, and wants to improve his chances.

World War I and World War II were incredibly beneficial for the United States in the sense that WWI turned the United States from a nation in debt to the nation people were in debt to, which dramatically shifted the USA's economic standing. WWII basically destroyed the manufacturing capacity of most of those countries in a position to compete with the United States, and so while most of Europe and Asia had to focus on rebuilding American could maintain economic dominance. Outside of the obvious benefits to US WWII certainly help accelerate the pass of most fields of science. Furthermore I would suggest that had WWII not happened Hitler may have been able to continue his horrible plans to completion.

Those are the first reasons that come to my mind as well John, however, I would also guess that it does have something with how our society looks at sex and gender roles in general. I would guess that the fact that our culture teaches men from a young age that sex is something that they should want, seek, and that they need to be the ones to initiate things in a relationship certainly plays some role in the mind set of rapists.

ajb, this may be too late to be of help, and it may not provide any help, but I find that I tend to fall into that category right now of knowing enough math to be bored and frustrated by main stream popularizations, but then not advanced enough to jump into the full details of a subject. My advice to you would be to try and give ample motivation behind things you do. Also to some extent I think theorems, proofs, or at least basic sketches of proofs are nice when they are communicated effectively. The only other tip I would recommend is be sure to explain any notation you are using. Its unbelievable frustrating to not understand what a certain thing is because there is very little way to look up symbols effectively, but if you tell your audience what you are doing they can then do some reading on what that operator, variable, or other thing is. As for writers I think do a good job with semi-technical writing I think of Spivak -although writing a textbook is different from writing an article, but he does a lovely job building upon things, giving counter-examples, and being fairly funny. I also think Keith Ball does a very job in his "An Introduction to Modern Convex Geometry".

I believe not. The court found Proposition 2 in conflict with the equal protection clause of the US Constitution. Here is the court's opinion.

So five years ago Michigan passed Proposition 2, 58% to 42%, which was an iniative that amended Michigan's constitution to include among other things, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michigan_Civil_Rights_Initiative Recently, however, a federal appeals court found Proposition 2 unconstitutional believing that it violated the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment. http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jul/01/nation/la-na-michigan-ban-20110702 So this raises two questions in my mind: Should race, gender, ethnicity, etc be used in college admissions? Is Proposition 2 constitutional, and should a state be able to outlaw "affirmative action" policies?

I doubt that repealing the 17th amendment to the Constitution will greatly change how senators today act. Just as the electoral college really has fairly little effect on how the president acts. If senators were to be elected by state legislators it would come down to party lines like everything does now days, and so the parties and senators would just turn their campaigning to making sure their guys won the state senate. On a different note I kind of feel like you are a little rosy in your analysis of past senates. Don't get me wrong I do not think that our senate is anything special, but in 100 years I bet the outlook will be very different, and probably more positive. For example, you the statesmen you point to were very similar to current senators in that they often looked to patch problems with temporary solutions instead of looking for real solutions to the problems.

I think you are being slightly unfair here in that you are basically comparing the amount of time it will take a doctor to reach roughly their final career position to the amount of time it takes a academic to reach the beginning of their career. If you want a fair comparison I would say that you should compare the time it takes a doctor to finish his fellowship to the amount of time it takes a academic to reach a full tenured professorship. In which case the time commitment would be very similar.

Well, I recently finished my first year of university, and this summer I am: -Working to pay for tuition. -Attending leadership conferences. -Taking a spring course. -Doing research through an REU grant.

They are at times called Riemann harmonics, but you could try searching something like Fourier analysis and Riemann hypothesis. Here are two sites that discuss what you are interested in: http://modular.math.washington.edu/edu/2007/simuw07/notes/rh.pdf http://empslocal.ex.ac.uk/people/staff/mrwatkin/zeta/encoding2.htm

I believe so. Although there may not be a specific law for carrying knives, but I know with firearms that are not CCW they are supposed to be in a case in the back of the car, and I would assume similar logic comes into play with a larger knife. Regardless if there is a law or not I would recommend not carrying large knives on you when driving since my bet is that a cop would feel much more comfortable and be much less likely to ticket you if you knife was safely stored in the back in a place where you could not pull it on him.

ASFAIK there is no age restriction on knives. Also to be honest as long as you are being safe and respectful with your knife, and are respectful to the cops they will probably have no problem with you having them when you are fishing. Michigan is quite big into outdoor actives, and cops understand this.

Depends. The laws for caring knives in Michigan has to do with the purpose of which you are carrying the knife. For example, if you are caring it for fishing or hunting then you are ok, however, if you are caring it for "protection" or most other reasons then no its illegal. This actually goes for anything that can be classified as a "deadly weapon". For example, I know of people being pulled over and having a baseball bat in their car, and when questioned by the cop they say "they have it for protection", and then the cop gave them a ticket. However, if you keep it in the case and keep it in the back of your car in your fishing bag you should be fine. Just make sure to inform the police that you have the knife if you are pulled over by the police.

So for those of you who have identified a specialty how did you come to find that specialty? Did you find an interesting problem that then lead you to that field? Did you notice that your skills were more applicable to a certain area? Or did you just take a course that really interested you?

So a German Mathematician, Gerhard Opfe, released a pre-print in which he claims to have prove the veracity of the Collatz Conjecture. The paper has not yet been accepted for publication, but it is getting some notice on the internet. "An Analytic Approach to the Collatz 3n+1 Problem"

Personally I would love to learn Latin and German.

Besides not condoning it there is nothing a government can or should do. A government cannot dictate the emotions of people, and so all they should do is not condone the behavior. The more general question is will xenophobia always exist? In my opinion probably not.

Not really sure about the exact sure this, I just know that the phrase 36grit used is a common explanation in popular science books and shows. Completely at the OP. By no means meant you lemur; sorry that I was unclear there.