Why do....

indeed it did, it's in there with other 'facts' about animals (spiders go bald if stroked and Koala bears have fingerprints so similar to humans that they could easily be mistaken for them at the scene of a crime, to name but two). I found the dvd very good and laughed a lot at it and I've watched it several times now.

I'd have to say that I agree with Paul. Firstly the concept of rape is a modern one and it is far too simplistic to say that there's a gene or any set of genes 'for rape'. As Dawkins himself argues, humans are a species which can go beyond their genetic programming because we have thought and reason. The strong tendencies which survive in the human population are child-rearing, because those who have it tend to procreate and continue in the gene pool, and self-preservation because without it you don't get to live to breeding age. Secondly, there are just too many fallacious arguments in the original assertion. Many groups would dispute that rape has all that much to do with sex, never mind creating babies. Man has the facility to go out and impregnate a different woman each day, but no individual men actually choose to do this. The Dawkins chapters on mating strategies set out why this is - because if your genes interest is in disseminating copies of themselves, it is more genetically sensible to ensure that the children you produce grow up to reproduce themselves, and a stable model for this generally is that the male and female cooperate in child-rearing. And finally, even if there were a gene 'for rape' and the rapist acted out his strategy, the remainder of the gene pool is not passive - in the same way as insects and germs develop over time resistance to chemicals intended to kill them, there would be different strategies and possible genetic traits emerge in the rest of the population that would have the effect of controlling the rogue 'rapist' gene. For example, society might decide that the non-rapist males should put to death a rapist. The evolutionary risk in forcible mating is that the victim or another person would kill you in the attempt. In short, I don't agree with Dublindian's original premise, or his arguments, but you can do this without having a slanging match. That's the point of debate.

Regards bubbles (sorry). Assuming bubbles are incompresable (a fudge but not a big one) the upward force is equal to the weight of beer displaced, this will vary linearly with depth, and the force, therefore the acceleration, will decrease as the bubble rises. This is not important if we assume all bubbles are the same size and start from the same point (which seems reasonable). Velocity becomes a function of position. We can also assume that the terminal velocity of a small bubble through beer is not reached, therefore the velocity always increases with decreasing depth. Consider two bubbles, bubble1 is higher than bubble2. Bubble1 is therefore moving faster than bubble 2. In the time it takes for bubble2 to reach the position of bubble1, bubble1 will have moved further than bubble2. Ergo an increasing distance between the two bubbles. The effect is also visible (and simpler to caclulate) on drips falling from taps. What I cannot explain, why do girls continue to wear short skirts right into winter, do they not have nerve endings in their legs.

I never was any good at physics ;-)

Dan - this seems reminiscent to me of Zeno's paradox on movement. Jude said this on the bubble issue ' I guess that the amount of beer above the bubble is decreasing the higher up the bubble is accounting for the increase in acceleration' - it has been a long, long time since I did physics, but is that what you're saying in more technical language Dan? And why doesn't that work for Guinness then?

Why do policemen no longer ride bicycles...It would save taxpayers money on cars and keep them fit?

I don't think it's the same as Zeno's paradox, but all I know of that I learnt from Terry Pratchett novels. It's generally ignored in classical mechanics, otherwise pretty much nothing would work. Actually the bubbles *are* going up in guiness. But the liquid is so viscous it gets dragged up with them. This creates a cycle where guiness flows upwards in the center of the glass (where you can't see it) then flows back down at the edge where (again because it is so viscous) it drags the smaller bubbles down with it. Some lucky sod actually worked this out for a phd thesus, I suspect it involved many hours of careful anaysis. I'm off home. Hopefully I will arrive in a finite amount of time.

The trick, Dan, is not to try to get halfway home... that's when you find that motion is an illusion, because you can't get to halfway point A before getting halfway THERE and so on.

"In short, I don't agree with Dublindian's original premise, or his arguments, but you can do this without having a slanging match. That's the point of debate." I know, I was being very civil, right up to point when someone accused me of not being well-read enough to be considered worthy of his/her debating circle, just because he/she had no answer to my arguments. Thanks for putting him/her straight on the "I'm-cleverer" namedrop - Dawkins - not a huge area of my expertise I must confess.

Social discourse isn't your strongest hand either, is it dicko?

bubbles jus wante be free! Wuldn you go fasster wen ycould see t'finishin line???

Halfway home is where the pub is (thinking about it halfway between that pub and home is another pub, and then another halfway from there, but that's it). Problems Zeno never considered. Apparently he was a favourite of Marcus Antonines, although this was not considered at the opening battle of Gladiator ("In three weeks I will be halfway home and bringing in the crops, think of where you will be halfway to and it will never be so...")

Firstly, apologies for snapping at Anne. I thought she was trying to send up my original post and not taking the point I was making very seriously, so I lost my rag a bit. Apparently her point was meant seriously, so my outburst was inappropriate. Secondly, I have to say I am dumbfounded by Andrew's post, because I don't really understand the key points he is making or see how they address my original point. Two comments he makes seem especially strange: "The concept of rape is a modern one ..." What can you possibly mean by that, Andrew? Surely you must have heard of the rape of the Sabine women, which even if it is a myth was still a story being told some 2,700 years ago. I also find extraordinary your statement: "Many groups would dispute that rape has all that much to do with sex" Of course I understand what you are saying - that many rapists do not rape for sexual gratification. But that has absolutely no bearing on the ponit I was making. Why men rape is irrelevant to my argument. The fact is they do, and the act of rape is a sexual act. In some cases, this sexual act results in the transfer of the rapist's genes into another human being. society might decide that the non-rapist males should put to death a rapist. The evolutionary risk in forcible mating is that the victim or another person would kill you in the attempt

ER.......Dub..............Annie is actually Paul Greco.

er.....Flash.......I have no problem with gender migration. My apology still stands. If Paul now prefers to be known as Anne I respect his/her right to make such a change.

why when you want to walk to the pub so you can get battered ... do you discover your lippy is in the car?

In evolutionary scales, 2700 years ago is still very much modern. If you look at the whole rape as procreation strategy mathematically, it makes more sense. Assume firstly that the rapist is a fertile man - as Paul has said earlier, the average rapist does not strike every night. Even once a month would be risky. The average woman is not fertile at all times, so only once in a while would the rapist happen to find a victim that was in a period of fertility. Even then, a fertile man mating with a fertile woman does not produce a baby on each occasion, the figures are quite low. In truth, a man mating on a regular basis with a female in a relationship is far, far more likely to produce a child than a one-off sexual encounter, consensual or not. You then have to consider whether the woman would nurture a baby that was the product of rape - this would probably be the case most of the time, but there would be a slight reduction compared to nurturing babies produced of a loving relationship. That is entirely excluding what I feel is your biggest fallacy, that there is a 'bundle' of rape genes that could be passed on. Consider homosexuality for a moment. Homosexuality is a genetic dead-end, it ought not to prosper in the gene pool. So, in order to explain it, either there is not a bundle of genes 'for homosexuality' and it is instead the product of choice, free-will or environment, or there is some genetic influence, but this is overcome by the above factors. Dawkins is very specific in his assertion that not all human behaviour can be explained by genes and that we are creatures who can transcend our genetic programming. If you've read Dawkins, I'm surprised that you are not aware of the extensive chapters on rogue strategies infiltrating groups. It is clear that rape would be such a rogue strategy and although it might flourish in the short term for individuals, the Evolutionary Stable Strategy of mating to rear children together would reassert itself in any pool of humans. Why? Because in a species where the baby is not independent for some years and requires care, more babies will survive to mating age if they are cared for by two parents (and two food-providers) than one. By their nature, babies sired by rape are more likely to have one care-giver and more likely not to survive to mating age. You need only look at the infant mortality rates in the relatively civilised Middle Ages to see that in prehistoric times, most children would have died in infancy. How would the pregnant rape victim, without a mate, have managed to feed herself in the latter stages of pregnancy? It is precisely because of Darwinism and Dawkins that rape is not an effective strategy for spreading ones genes, even if you assume that an acquired behaviour can be passed on... Rape is far less effective than mating in couples to produce children in the first place, and far, far less effective than mating in couples to produce children who will live long enough to mate. If there was a gene 'for raping', it would tend to dilute in the gene pool, not strengthen for precisely those two reasons.

Why do birds sing so gay And lovers await the break of day Why do they fall in love Why does the rain fall from up above Why do fools fall in love Why do they fall in love? [%sig%]

Birds sing so gay because birds have no ears lovers await the break of day so they can steal out of the house without waking the other person's spouse And fools fall in love, because they are bored with auditioning for The Weakest Link But I don't know why the rain falls from up above. Exept is something to do with gravity. And also would be annoying if rain fell from underneath and you were wearing a short skirt.........

why do the bubbles rising from a pint get further apart the higher they get (I know...I'm a scientist, I should know) Why does at least one person die in Holby casualty every day? (Once you're in "re-suc." that's it) Why DO old people think blue-rinses look anything other than completely ridiculous? Why is Sonia from Eastenders in love with the guy that got her up the duff and dumped her then killed her fiancee and more importantly why do scriptwriters think they can get away with such bollox?

and why is my bank account always empty at the end of the month, regarless of how much I earn?

The bubbles get further apart because they're accelerating. I also know why they appear to go down in guiness. I'm a beer expert me.

...people never send me emails on a Friday?

Agree with almost everything you say, Andrew. I'm not convinced homosexuality has to be a "genetic dead-end" if it is genetic. (Neither are you, it seems.) I've always wondered whether homosexuality is genetic. If it's caused by environmental factors, which ones? As gays come from very diverse backgrounds. Some point to the lack of a father figure, but it would be interesting to see some statistics on that. I'm not sure. But we know that gay people do get married and have children. So if there is some genetic influence, as you suggest, we ask ourselves: is it because of society's pressures to lead a "normal" life, or is it because homosexuality is actually a misnomer, for it doesn't necessarily preclude the desire to mate in the usual may also. I rather think the latter. As homosexuality becomes more accepted, one would think the pressure to marry and have a family is reduced. But numbers of gays aren't reducing. I suppose this is further confused by the fact that more gays, in these more liberal times, are coming out - maybe it just looks like numbers are increasing to the casual observer. Homosexuality is different to rape in that it exists in the jungle: monkeys have been watched bumming each other in the absence of females (prison syndrome) and a about six years ago a couple of gay swans were spotted! Considering the animal kingdom doesn't really have "nurture" and "environmental factors" in the way humans do, genetics have to be a possible reason. What do you think?

Yes but for them to get further apart the rate of acceleration has to increase as they rise

I guess that the amount of beer above the bubble is decreasing the higher up the bubble is accounting for the increase in acceleration

Why do I keep fantasising about carrot cake?

Touching on a current preoccupation in the forums, New Yorkers have also been recently watching gay penguins hold flippers and try to rear a rocky egg. I don't believe that there is a gene 'for homosexuality' - though the experiment on Sphexes is interesting - I'll discuss below. I think that it is a mistake to believe that genes control us in that specific a way - if we imagine that we are puppets of our genes, those strings are very long and by the time the twitch gets to the bottom of the string, it doesn't necessarily do what was intended. For example, it is in our nature to want to eat sweet foods, and fatty foods. This is very sensible genetic programming to keep us alive, but our genes can't now adjust to the fact that we live in an economy of plenty, whereby eating too much sweet and fatty foods reduces our life expectancy. It seems to me that there is very likely a programmed behaviour, influenced by genes, to say that 'if you do something which is sexually pleasurable, you ought to try to do that again'. Just as no amount of genetics can predict whether I will like or loathe films with foreign subtitles, I don't believe that genetics can predict or determine homosexuality. Indeed, the idea is a little abhorrent to me. I would prefer to think of sexuality as being a choice that we make, perhaps for reasons we can't understand, rather than us being slaves. It is the old argument of whether a human baby is a photograph waiting to be developed or a tabula rasa, a blank slate on which any life can be written. (But we are now arguing about free will and that's a much bigger subject) The Sphex experiment showed that in simple animals, such as a Sphex wasp, individual genes could control particular behaviours. The Sphex wasp burrows, and brings its kills back to the burrows. It always goes into the burrow to look for danger, then comes back out and grabs its food and takes it back in. What experimenters did, was to continually move the food three inches away while the wasp was in the burrow. The wasp would continue to repeat its usual approach, even though that wasn't getting the food into the burrow. It would drag the food, nip into the burrow, nip out to fetch the food, realise the food was three inches away, drag the food etc. Sphex wasps hatched in laboratories and utterly isolated from their species had exactly the same habit. So, it cannot be an acquired characteristic, or learned by imitation, it has to be hard-wired in. There's another one, involving a species I can't recall - I think some sort of ant. When the ants get diseased, another ant will drag away the corpse, dig a grave and then plug it up with wax. Experimenters managed to produce a breed of ant that could do the burying but not do the plugging, and a breed that could make the plugs, but had lost the burying instructions and thus did nothing, unless they were in the presence of another ant who had done the burying. So, specific behaviours CAN be dicatated by genes, but I would argue that not all specific behaviours can be reduced to the gene level of simplicity.

Why is my lunch never quite enough and Dinner always too much... Why have jeans never gone out of fashion? Why do I always pack too many or not enough clothes when I go on holiday?

WHY DO... Homeless people always ask for spare change for a cup of tea... don't any of them ever drink coffee? (question first posed by Adrian Mole!)

Why did I think that one piece of carrot cake would be enough?

why does no one in hackney buy cigarettes but me..... NO I HAVEN'T GOT A FUCKING SPARE CIGARETTE

why isn't 1 piece enough?

Why do beautiful young ladies go out with blokes who look like they were made from the left overs that made up Shrek?

Never is. Although why I had to eat 3 pieces, I don't know.

why do couriers only deliver between 9 and 5 when you are at work?

That's as question I often ask my youngest who has a predeliction for young men as described when she is constantly beset by offers of lurv from tasty hunks. She says the ugly ones are nicer people. It's so simple when you're 18.

I'ts the same with chocolate digestives. 3 is the minimum level.

Paul, there's a recent book called Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity by Bruce Bagemihl, which consider a lot of the points you raised. Click the link below to have a look at it on amazon.co.uk [%sig%]

Why did Hox have to mention chocolate digestives?

mmmmmmfffffffffffffff. Sorry.

I really enjoy Andrew's posts. They make me feel safe for some reason. Although the ants and wasps comparison to human behaviour - can't make that leap...sorry How did they know the penguins were homosexual, did they see them shagging? Taking care of a rock instead of an egg might just mean they're A)moron penguins, B) lonely penguins needing something to love, C) Good looking penguins and all the good looking lady penguins are only mating with the ugly ones, D) Too young to mate and just practising E) playing penguin football F) Trying to keep warm stress makes rats turn homosexual, not all of them, just some and never the females. [%sig%]

Why do I always phone people up when I'm drunk talking gibber, swear I'm never going to do it again then the next time...

Why do camels have humps? To stop them speeding. *apologises and runs away* [%sig%]

Thanks Mark, a book worthy of a gander for sure. When Andrew says "hard-wired" I'm reminded of my old border collie that used to chase after a football by rounding it much the same way his ancestors would round sheep. Though he'd barely seen a sheep. There's no reason homosexuality would be hard-wired. But I still have difficulty getting my head round the whole "environmental factors" argument.

Why do we have so few rapists? This is not a joke but a serious question. If you think about it, rapists are one of the groups of people who are most likely to pass on their genes to the next generation. After all they have a compulsive urge to impregnate as many women as possible. It seems likely that many male descendants of rapists will carry the 'rapist' gene, while many female descendants of rapists will give birth to sons who also carry this gene. And so the process will continue for generation after generation. All the rules of evolution suggest the 'rapist' gene is one that is highly likely to survive, multiply and spread. Yet in the modern world rapists are still, mercifully, only a tiny proportion of the population. Does anyone have an explanation?

rape is a moral choice (according to me the reverend - but even to a non-believer it is a conditioned behaviour) not an inherent disposition. If Lamarkism rather than Darwinism held true (Lamarck, Jean-Baptiste de Monet (b. Aug. 1, 1744, Bazentin-le-Petit, Picardy, France--d. Dec. 18, 1829, Paris) was the pioneer French biologist who is best known for his idea that acquired traits are inheritable, an idea known as Lamarckism, which is controverted by Darwinian theory. ) you would be right...it would be a conundrum.

Why do birds suddenly appear... ...everytime ...you are NEAR? The answer Karen Carpenter was looking for was: "Because you keep throwing your lunch away!" Okay, I've used that gag before, but I reserve the right to recycle in these wasteful times.

What are you on about Jude. I never mentioned acquired traits and what I'm talking about has 110% nothing to do with Lamarckism. Since you got all revved up you've been acting very strange.

"After all they have a compulsive urge to impregnate as many women as possible." Hmmm, they certainly have a compulsive urge to have sex with women, and maybe to feel power of them, but impregnate? Rapists have been known to wear condoms to avoid detection; then, the activity would be nothing to do with "a compulsive urge to impregnate". To be honest, somewhere deep down, probably all men have an innate desire to get a lady in the family way. We're a sexually reproductive species after all. What is "very strange" to me, is that Dub assumes a rapist has more unprotected sex than the average male. I don't think rapists go out and do it every night, Dub. Even notorious serial rapists don't usually manage more than about ten (reported, anyway) strikes in a year. My stats are guesswork, but I bet if you look into it, I'm righter than you are. Remember, don't misunderstand Darwin, and "survival of the fittest". This has nothing to do with sex (he assumed pretty much all members of all species get round to getting it on) it's about not being killed. The gene of a mutation which avoids death by prey will be passed on through generations, till they all have it, and - bumf - evolution. In the case of humans, the main character trait that kills us (not having much prey) is stupidity, which is why - I guess - our evolution has followed a pattern of increased intelligence.