err & a chain is exactly 20 metres Ten quare cahins, or ten chains square? err, again? Since a hectare is (very approx) 2 acres (actually a bit less than 2)
]]>How does that fit in with the massive drops in sexual violence in the USA over the last 20 odd years?
See http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/18/AR2006061800610.html for example.
]]>A hectare is 100 metres by 100 metres.
Or, if your statement that "a chain is exactly 20 metres" happened to be true, 5 chains by 5 chains. Which would be 25 square chains, or 2.5 acres.
Not "a bit less than 2".
It's actually 2.471 rather than 2.5, but that's because a chain is not exactly 20 metres. Or at least not in Imperial measures (there might be a metric chain, just as there's a metric foot).
]]>I dot NOT say she couldn't serve, just that it would be an easy target during a campaign. But she would be best service IMO if she got expert medical opinion as to what her concussion means to her long term mental abilities.
And, yes, if Reagan had the big A during his last year, he should have resigned. But we don't have any medical results to use to base a diagnosis. Just a lot of opinions. And in many cases the opinions seem be at least a little partisan based. Personally I suspect he was in the early stages but that's a totally uniformed opinion. And the big A is very hard to definitively diagnose in early stages, especially if the person being tested is recalcitrant about the entire issue.
]]>Alternatively 1 metre = 3ft 3.325" so 20 metres = 60 ft + 66.5" = 65.6ft = 22 yds - 7". Um
]]>Evolution doesn't work on such a short time scale.
I note that the overall thrust of your argument would tend to support a particular racist agenda specific to North American contemporary right wing culture ...
Males are bigger in the vast majority of mammal and bird species, including herbivorous and species known for his pacific behavior, like bonobos and orangutans. And in most carnivorous species both males and females hunt.
Actually the peacock's tail is so difficult to justify evolutionarily speaking that I have read some scientists explain it because it is detrimental: i.e., the peacock is announcing: Look, girls, I have survived in spite of this ridiculous, enormous, colorful, useless tail! The rest of me has to be of the finest quality, mate with me!
]]>"What you miss here is that human behaviours (a) can be copied from other individuals, and (b) may be applied inappropriately, i.e. the wrong behavioural model may be selected for dealing with the current prevailing circumstances."
No, I don't miss that at all... you seem to be assuming I conflate "natural" with "good". It's a common assumption but not one I made or believe in.
Certainly freezing when a vehicle is barreling towards you is a misapplied reflex that kills humans and animals alike. Sometimes they work out though, the reflex that sends insects towards lightbulbs probably serves mosquitoes rather well, even if it's not so good for moths.
As for what an instinctive behaviour actually is, Sapolski describes that after painstaking experiments they were able to determine that the instinct to peck at the ground to find their food in chicks is hardwired originally simply as a tendency to peck at their own toes. The animals then learn, through experience, that pecking at food is more rewarding and less painful. Evolution is blind and an instinct needs only to provide the barest direction even in such simple minded animals until their brains pick up the right pattern.
So in complex animals such as humans and baboons it's not surprising the "imitate what others are doing" drive is very strong and effective. Is a learned behaviour not instinctive if you have a strong instinct to learn behaviours? Bit of a puzzle.
My take on biological determinism, in the case of violence is: Say I punch some other guy. Did I do it because I am male and have testosterone? Or, at a lower level, because I'm human and I have fists and I saw Rocky when I was a kid. Not that I actually do punch people because I've found the behaviour to be counterproductive and ineffective in practice, of course.
Hypothesis: Probably the imitation instinct is gender aware. Girls imitate women, boys imitate men, thus accounting for the persist inertia of gender constructs.
This kind of thing probably has a real impact: http://www.lynseyaddario.com/contents/Afghanistan/Women%20at%20War/image-09_LA_WomenatWar_2/
]]>So there would be some general advantage in such imitation and a lot of memes (I can't think of a better label) which come along for the ride.
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