Excellent parody from The Onion on the video game violence debate.
Tag: Violence
Robert Heinlein Quote on Human Violence
The capacity of the human mind for swallowing nonsense and spewing it forth in violent and repressive action has never yet been plumbed.
-Robert Heinlein, Revolt in 2100, 1953
Why Are Chimpanzees So Violent?
Interesting summary from Science Daily on a study published in Nature that examined what influences chimpanzees to engage in violence against other chimpanzees. Some researchers had speculated that destruction of chimpanzees’ natural habitat and other encroachments by humans was responsible for violence among chimpanzees, but the study in Nature contradicts this.
A team of 30 ape researchers assembled extensive data sets spanning five decades of research gathered from 18 chimpanzee communities experiencing varying degrees of human influence. In all, data included pattern analysis of 152 killings by chimpanzees. The key findings indicate that a majority of violent attackers and victims of attack are male chimpanzees, and the information is consistent with the theory that these acts of violence are driven by adaptive fitness benefits rather than human impacts.
“Wild chimpanzee communities are often divided into two broad categories depending on whether they exist in pristine or human disturbed environments,” explained [study co-author David] Morgan. “In reality, however, human disturbance can occur along a continuum and study sites included in this investigation spanned the spectrum. We found human impact did not predict the rate of killing among communities.
Lowered U.S. Life Expectancy, Part 1 – Violence
We know that those of us living in the United States have shorter life expectancy than those living in similar industrialized countries, such as in Europe. We also know that Americans are far more likely to be the victims of homicide than those who live in countries like ours, but how much does that increased risk of homicide impact life expectancy? How much longer would we be likely to live if we didn’t live in such a violent country?
The Associated Press looked at this question in its coverage of a recent report about health discrepancies between the United States and other industrialized nations. The report, U.S. Health in International Perspective: Shorter Lives, Poorer Health is available to read for free online.
First, lets look at just how big those life expectancy discrepancies are. The report looks at life expectancy of men and women in 17 similar countries in 2007. For women, the U.S. life expectancy rate in 2007 was 80.78 years. Japan led the world in life expectancy for women that year at 85.98 years. So U.S. women had a life expectancy 5.2 years lower than Japan.
For men, the U.S. life expectancy rate in 2007 was 75.64 years. Switzerland led the world in life expectancy for men in 2007 with an average of 79.33 years. So American men born in 2007 could expect to die 3.69 years sooner on average than men born in the same year in Switzerland.
The report estimates that homicide and suicide together account for up 25 percent of that disparity for U.S. men. So, compared to Switzerland, American men born in 2007 will on average die a little over 11 months earlier because of the combination of an extremely high homicide rate and relatively high suicide rate.