It shouldn't take a genius like myself to explain why peeps wear jewelry. Jewelry is meant to make the wearer look better. But any ugly mug is still ugly even with the Hope diamond strapped on the forehead; so what do we mean by "better"? All y'all with a bit of evolution learnin' or especially with knowledge of sociobiology know that by "look better" we really mean "demonstrate reproductive value." An easier way to say that is to say that we look more rich. (There is certainly an element of style separate from monetary value of said jewelry, but this is a further demonstration of the same principle. Someone with "class" and "style" will know to wear appropriately classy and stylish adornments, as class and style are defined by whatever group of jerks that someone wants to impress. But the idea applies almost identically, so I'm just gonna talk about the value of jewelry as reflected by its monetary value. If you don't like that, go suck an egg.)
Some folks, and I won't say who, might take umbrage at the idea that jewelry is worn to make one look more rich and that one wishes to look more rich so that the desired sex will want to make whoopee with the jewel-adorned one in question.* To this I say, nuts. It should be clear enough that the more expensive a piece of jewelry is, the more attractive it is considered. "Tasteful" jewelry simply depends upon the social group (to whom the adorned will be trying to appear more attractive) and that group's definition of taste.
So who's still with me? Anyone? I'm going on anyway.
The interesting way to demonstrate this is to take a gander at the different types of jewelry worn by men and women. (The specifics to follow are necessarily for heterosexuals only, and in western culture only. The Homosexual angle on this is the same at the core, of course, but the particulars are naturally a little different. And frankly I'm not sure what jewelry the hermaphrodites are wearing these days. As for other cultures, the dynamics are again the same, but the jewelry is different and hence the details get a little muddy if I try to include everyone. Sorry, Laos.) There is a noticeable difference in the adornment of men and women. Men like fancy watches, pinky rings, and perhaps a thick necklace with something important on the end of it. Some men also like earrings, especially the younger men and also salty pirates. For men, the metal is quite important. Whether the dude in question prefers white or yellow gold, the chosen precious metal is more oft than not on prominent display. Women tend to go for more elegant and more bejeweled pieces - they like their sparklies. Certainly the precious metal that the jewel is set in is important, but less so than the actual jewel(s) itself. What does this tell us?
If you haven't been offended yet, just keep readin!
Demonstrating high reproductive value takes different paths for men and for women because reproduction is different for each sex, or so I'm told. A primary selling point for a man is the demonstration of personally accrued wealth. It is perfectly common for a female to seek out a financially successful man as he will be a better provider than a guy living in his parent's basement. Jewelry is a simple way that a male can demonstrate his worth as a provider (not to mention his apparent genetic fitness). Thusly the jewelry of males is more focused upon a display of precious metals and perhaps diamonds (but rarely any other stone). With women a demonstration of reproductive worth, according to biological science, is primarily focused upon her fertility. This is most clearly communicated by the woman's physical appearance, hence the cultural importance placed upon woman to be pretty. While one can argue that woman's jewelry is meant to enhance her beauty by making her a more valuable "prize" implying that women are property to be won or perhaps earned, I'm not going to argue that. Why I'm not even going to mention it. Try this on for size instead - the purpose of a females adornments is to draw attention to the female in question. Females compete with one another for male attention, and the more sparkly a lady is the more she will be noticed. To summerize all this - men wear jewelry for when someone looks at them while women wear jewelry so that someone looks at them.
*It is quite important to note that lookin' sexy ain't the only reason for some bling. There is also an important social demonstration of importance. This is still tied to demonstrating reproductive value, as social authority is primarily (according to sociobiology and neo-darwinism) if not universally based in...well, lookin' sexy. Heterosexual men will wear expensive watches and whatnot to impress one another. The ladies will wear all sorts of crazy shit to impress (see: upstage**) each other. These demonstrations of social worth are defined by a show of reproductive worth. If you don't believe me - nuts.
**Just a joke, ladies. Don't get your panties in a bunch.***
***Like now. See what I mean?****
****Nuts.
Sunday, March 9, 2008
Friday, March 7, 2008
Why aren't there big monsters anymore?
There was a time when dinosaurs ruled the Earth. They were truly king poo of the poo pile. But aside from the Rolling Stones, there aren't any of them left. In Australia and southeast Asia the probable source for the legendary raptor The Roc was a massive carnivorous bird. Do you know what The Roc was cookin? Us until we wiped the poor birdie out. There were once creatures in the sea that could eat small cars and would have, except that cars aren't fish flavored and also there were none. But they could have! There were insects as large as a burrito that's as large as your head. There were once rats big enough that they could be ridden around and shown off at 4H. There were centipedes as big as snakes. Even the snakes were bigger than snakes.
Now all we've got are whales and elephants and they're slowly going the way of the dodo. Why aren't there any big cool monsters anymore to terrorize Japan or that we can put in an ill fated amusement park only to learn an important lesson about trying to play God. (Important lesson: God would have a backup generator for the electric fences.) We've still got giant squid, but they don't attack our submarines near as much as we'd all like. The Earth used to be teeming with huge freakish monsters of yore. Dragons, dragons everywhere. Rodents of unusual size. Man eating mantises. Now we've got some of their bones, but none of them. Why don't monsters ever make it long on the evolutionary time scale?
There is something unusual and unique in the development of big friggin monsters. They are always highly specialized to their environments. They must be because of their massive dietary needs. Also they have trouble hiding from predators, which is why nonpredatory monsters (elephants, brontosauruses most likely) travel in herds and not individually as say a jaguar shark would. But it is more their high level of specialization that makes them vulnerable to environmental shifts. Big animals are always at the top of the food chain. Once the chain is disrupted by disease, pollution, armed rednecks, whathaveyou then the top of the chain is always wiped out.
There have been seven mass extinctions in the history of the world and we're on the verge on the eighth. Each time all the big animals don't make it. It's the meek ones that inherit the Earth each time. We've managed to wipe out the majority of the big animals that were around when human civilization showed up on the scene and made everything into a whole new scene. There are a few left, but their days are numbered. The fun factoid to add to that prognostication is that us humans - relatively speaking - are some of the largest animals on the planet. Nothing our size has ever made it through a mass extinction. But then nothing our size ever had plastic wrap and air conditioners before, so we'll probably be fine.
A brief word bout the majestic shark. Some of you might be saying, "Ho down, whoa down, SLOW DOWN! Sharks done been round for eons and they ain't been changed none by Darwin and his Devil science. What do say to that Mr. Smarty Blog? Huh? What?" To which I agree that sharks have been around for a high number of years, so high a number that I don't know what it is. And the sharks that still exist (a few of them quite large) have undergone very little evolutionary development in the past bunch of years. And after ceding that agreement I say, kiss my ass, hypothetic question asker. There used to be sharks so big they'd make you turn white. There used to be sharks that were terrifying behemoths the likes of which would definitely kick Richard Dreyfuss's ass (alright, that's not much of a claim to badassery I suppose.) But these Krakens would eat Jaws for a snack and sadly they don't exist anymore. There is an outside chance that a few remain in the depths of the ocean, but the possibility is a vanishing one. Monster sharks are a thing of the past, despite the fact that the shark is one of the most effective creations of evolution. And the big boys didn't make it because of the shifting environments in the ocean. Probably the largest factor was the disappearance of all the big sea monsters that they could eat. But science has not conclusory ruled out the possibility that the monster sharks were taken away by alien visitors, or perhaps were the alien visitors themselves and one day will return to Earth to prove that they really can bite a VW in half.
Now all we've got are whales and elephants and they're slowly going the way of the dodo. Why aren't there any big cool monsters anymore to terrorize Japan or that we can put in an ill fated amusement park only to learn an important lesson about trying to play God. (Important lesson: God would have a backup generator for the electric fences.) We've still got giant squid, but they don't attack our submarines near as much as we'd all like. The Earth used to be teeming with huge freakish monsters of yore. Dragons, dragons everywhere. Rodents of unusual size. Man eating mantises. Now we've got some of their bones, but none of them. Why don't monsters ever make it long on the evolutionary time scale?
There is something unusual and unique in the development of big friggin monsters. They are always highly specialized to their environments. They must be because of their massive dietary needs. Also they have trouble hiding from predators, which is why nonpredatory monsters (elephants, brontosauruses most likely) travel in herds and not individually as say a jaguar shark would. But it is more their high level of specialization that makes them vulnerable to environmental shifts. Big animals are always at the top of the food chain. Once the chain is disrupted by disease, pollution, armed rednecks, whathaveyou then the top of the chain is always wiped out.
There have been seven mass extinctions in the history of the world and we're on the verge on the eighth. Each time all the big animals don't make it. It's the meek ones that inherit the Earth each time. We've managed to wipe out the majority of the big animals that were around when human civilization showed up on the scene and made everything into a whole new scene. There are a few left, but their days are numbered. The fun factoid to add to that prognostication is that us humans - relatively speaking - are some of the largest animals on the planet. Nothing our size has ever made it through a mass extinction. But then nothing our size ever had plastic wrap and air conditioners before, so we'll probably be fine.
A brief word bout the majestic shark. Some of you might be saying, "Ho down, whoa down, SLOW DOWN! Sharks done been round for eons and they ain't been changed none by Darwin and his Devil science. What do say to that Mr. Smarty Blog? Huh? What?" To which I agree that sharks have been around for a high number of years, so high a number that I don't know what it is. And the sharks that still exist (a few of them quite large) have undergone very little evolutionary development in the past bunch of years. And after ceding that agreement I say, kiss my ass, hypothetic question asker. There used to be sharks so big they'd make you turn white. There used to be sharks that were terrifying behemoths the likes of which would definitely kick Richard Dreyfuss's ass (alright, that's not much of a claim to badassery I suppose.) But these Krakens would eat Jaws for a snack and sadly they don't exist anymore. There is an outside chance that a few remain in the depths of the ocean, but the possibility is a vanishing one. Monster sharks are a thing of the past, despite the fact that the shark is one of the most effective creations of evolution. And the big boys didn't make it because of the shifting environments in the ocean. Probably the largest factor was the disappearance of all the big sea monsters that they could eat. But science has not conclusory ruled out the possibility that the monster sharks were taken away by alien visitors, or perhaps were the alien visitors themselves and one day will return to Earth to prove that they really can bite a VW in half.
Thursday, March 6, 2008
Why do we want to eat candy?
Have you ever had a bacon 'n french toast sandwich? Don't forget the syrup, but then what sort of philistine would? Mmmmm. Nummins. As tasty as can be, n'est pas? And yet this glorious epicurean menagerie is a harbinger of death. Newsweek shocked us all when it revealed that 1 out of 3 American women die of heart disease. (They decided not to run the far-too-shocking story that 3 out of 3 American women die of something or other.) And a number of men out of a another number also die when their heart pops because it's all sticky with high fructose corn syrup. And those numbers would be telling if I bothered to look them up.
We love to eat fatty meats with complex carbohydrates all covered in sugar. If these foods are cardiac poison that pretty consistently kills us, why would we have evolved a tendency to enjoy them? Shouldn't the bacon and white-bread eating apes have all been easily defeated by the lean vegan-hippy apes leaving the world to their peaceful life-respecting organic ways? Maybe there is a God because, no, the vegans don't run anything significant and they certainly don't defeat anyone ever. The reason why we crave all that delicious candy can be blamed on farmers. Humans have had agriculture for nigh on 10,000 years and that is barely a mouse fart on an evolutionary time scale. Agriculture changed our world so fast that we haven't began to try to catch up with it yet. Back in the good ole days, when we were the Nomad Apes we occasionally hunted (not as much as shitty movies from the makers of Independence Day would have you think) but mostly gathered our food from the trees 'n the ground 'n caves 'n the occasional Doritos machine that had fallen into a time warp. In our gatherings we ate lots of vegetables cause that's what there was most of. It was rare that any of us would have the opportunity to munch on a pear or some Doritos, simply because they were very few and quite far between. The added boost of energy in fruit and specifically in the fruit's sugars, made it a much more highly valued food item both for its rarity and it's ability to sustain us for much longer than celery could. Meat and the very rare carbos contained even more potential energy for us. Nomad Apes would have loved bread, but all they could really hope for was once a year finding some wheat, a potato, or a bag of Cool Ranch from the year 2525 (if man is still alive). These foods are so chocked full-o-energy that they tasted great, but were available so rarely that they posed no detrimental health risks whatsoever. Agriculture facilitated human civilization, but only because these high-sugar and high-calorie foods could be mass produced allowing large numbers of people to live close together and wham - Pittsburgh. But at the cost of Pittsburgians (and rest of us in civilization) getting fat and dying of heart failure, not to mention with cavities in our teeth. The Nomad Apes lived most of their lives (which are estimated at only slightly shorter than ours) with no tooth decay and mostly never died of heart failure. 10,000 years of farmin' hasn't been enough time for us to affect millions of years of evolution. If you want a more detailed explanation of why we're fat and how agriculture is the plastic demon of the downfall of mankind, read Jared Diamond's excellent book The Third Chimpanzee.
We love to eat fatty meats with complex carbohydrates all covered in sugar. If these foods are cardiac poison that pretty consistently kills us, why would we have evolved a tendency to enjoy them? Shouldn't the bacon and white-bread eating apes have all been easily defeated by the lean vegan-hippy apes leaving the world to their peaceful life-respecting organic ways? Maybe there is a God because, no, the vegans don't run anything significant and they certainly don't defeat anyone ever. The reason why we crave all that delicious candy can be blamed on farmers. Humans have had agriculture for nigh on 10,000 years and that is barely a mouse fart on an evolutionary time scale. Agriculture changed our world so fast that we haven't began to try to catch up with it yet. Back in the good ole days, when we were the Nomad Apes we occasionally hunted (not as much as shitty movies from the makers of Independence Day would have you think) but mostly gathered our food from the trees 'n the ground 'n caves 'n the occasional Doritos machine that had fallen into a time warp. In our gatherings we ate lots of vegetables cause that's what there was most of. It was rare that any of us would have the opportunity to munch on a pear or some Doritos, simply because they were very few and quite far between. The added boost of energy in fruit and specifically in the fruit's sugars, made it a much more highly valued food item both for its rarity and it's ability to sustain us for much longer than celery could. Meat and the very rare carbos contained even more potential energy for us. Nomad Apes would have loved bread, but all they could really hope for was once a year finding some wheat, a potato, or a bag of Cool Ranch from the year 2525 (if man is still alive). These foods are so chocked full-o-energy that they tasted great, but were available so rarely that they posed no detrimental health risks whatsoever. Agriculture facilitated human civilization, but only because these high-sugar and high-calorie foods could be mass produced allowing large numbers of people to live close together and wham - Pittsburgh. But at the cost of Pittsburgians (and rest of us in civilization) getting fat and dying of heart failure, not to mention with cavities in our teeth. The Nomad Apes lived most of their lives (which are estimated at only slightly shorter than ours) with no tooth decay and mostly never died of heart failure. 10,000 years of farmin' hasn't been enough time for us to affect millions of years of evolution. If you want a more detailed explanation of why we're fat and how agriculture is the plastic demon of the downfall of mankind, read Jared Diamond's excellent book The Third Chimpanzee.
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Why do kids like playing in sand?
Many of us growing up in our idyllic, suburban childhoods filled with fresh baked apple pies and pre-9/11 carefree attitudes had the opportunity to occasionally enjoy a day on a beach or, if truly blessed, had a sandbox to call our own filled with endless possibilities of imagination and cat turds. What child couldn't spend hours sitting in a five by five box filled with sand? Why the child could dig or fill a bucket up with sand only to pour it out again. If Hot-wheels or My Little Ponies came into play, then the child could push them around and get sand jammed in the wheels or stuck in the pony hair. I recall once my pal Tad digging in his sandbox when I asked what he was looking for. Tad responded that he was digging for China. I asked what China was and Tad replied, "I think it's squishy."
Why should this be fun at all? Why do we instinctively know this to be fun? Why don't we question why plopping a kid down with some sand (especially wet sand, mind you) will amuse said kid? I mean, it's sand. It's like dirt but it washes off a little more easily. And if it's wet you can make lumps of things and then put sticks in those lumps, but when the waves come in just a little more - kiss your sticked lumps goodbye. I don't mean to degrade makin' sand sculptures, but we never really mind too much that however masterfully we've crafted them, the tide's gonna reduce them back to oblivion. And why would we mind? I mean it's just sand after all. But then why do we bother?
To explain why we play in sand requires some more controversial theory than usual. Us humans, this theory goes, are Aqua-Apes. Some small band of outsider rebel apes got separated from the rest of their apey kind and the earth trembled. This trembling caused the separation of these rebel apes onto a secret island from whence they could not escape. Now these apes feared the water - they could not swim, they could not catch fish, they were cold in the water, the palms of their hands weren't sensitive enough to locate stuff under the waves, their children and indeed even most of their adults would drown if submerged. What were they to do in their new watery/beachy hell that fate had damned them to? Were they going to give up? No, by tarnation! They were going to fight to survive! They were going to become the Aqua-Apes!! If this theory seems a little shaky to you, my fellow aqua-ape, you just haven't thought it all the way through. Thankfully Elaine Morgan has and she'll prove it to you in her books The Aquatic Ape and The Scars of Evolution.
"So, like, you're saying that we like playing in sand when we're kids, cause we were stuck on an evil island once and these apes came to save us? That's weird." No, you hypothetical jackass, you don't understand the dynamics of how human infants and children learn their social roles along with many life skills through their play. "Oh. Do the apes come from Atlantis? Is that where they get their powers?" When children play, they are learning how to become adults. Just as kittens and puppies rough-house with each other in their youth as training for defending themselves and hunting/killing prey, human kids learn to build sand-castles so they can become sand-brokers when they grow up. Or maybe it has something to do with ingraining the child to the environment so that they learn to operate in and around water as this was against the ape-child's nature. Perhaps its even more simple than that - perhaps while dad went fishing the kids had to be set in front of the TV so they wouldn't get into trouble and millions of years of sitting on beaches got us pretty bored so we learned to amuse ourselves by digging and making piles. It's probably a combination of the two, really. "So the space apes brought TVs with them from Atlantis and taught us all when we were children how to swim and how to commune with our fishy friends, so we can help Captain Planet defeat the villainous Looten Plunder and regain Neptune's scepter with the help of the sensitively-palmed Waterbearer hand given to us by the Lady of the Lake, right?" Right.
Why should this be fun at all? Why do we instinctively know this to be fun? Why don't we question why plopping a kid down with some sand (especially wet sand, mind you) will amuse said kid? I mean, it's sand. It's like dirt but it washes off a little more easily. And if it's wet you can make lumps of things and then put sticks in those lumps, but when the waves come in just a little more - kiss your sticked lumps goodbye. I don't mean to degrade makin' sand sculptures, but we never really mind too much that however masterfully we've crafted them, the tide's gonna reduce them back to oblivion. And why would we mind? I mean it's just sand after all. But then why do we bother?
To explain why we play in sand requires some more controversial theory than usual. Us humans, this theory goes, are Aqua-Apes. Some small band of outsider rebel apes got separated from the rest of their apey kind and the earth trembled. This trembling caused the separation of these rebel apes onto a secret island from whence they could not escape. Now these apes feared the water - they could not swim, they could not catch fish, they were cold in the water, the palms of their hands weren't sensitive enough to locate stuff under the waves, their children and indeed even most of their adults would drown if submerged. What were they to do in their new watery/beachy hell that fate had damned them to? Were they going to give up? No, by tarnation! They were going to fight to survive! They were going to become the Aqua-Apes!! If this theory seems a little shaky to you, my fellow aqua-ape, you just haven't thought it all the way through. Thankfully Elaine Morgan has and she'll prove it to you in her books The Aquatic Ape and The Scars of Evolution.
"So, like, you're saying that we like playing in sand when we're kids, cause we were stuck on an evil island once and these apes came to save us? That's weird." No, you hypothetical jackass, you don't understand the dynamics of how human infants and children learn their social roles along with many life skills through their play. "Oh. Do the apes come from Atlantis? Is that where they get their powers?" When children play, they are learning how to become adults. Just as kittens and puppies rough-house with each other in their youth as training for defending themselves and hunting/killing prey, human kids learn to build sand-castles so they can become sand-brokers when they grow up. Or maybe it has something to do with ingraining the child to the environment so that they learn to operate in and around water as this was against the ape-child's nature. Perhaps its even more simple than that - perhaps while dad went fishing the kids had to be set in front of the TV so they wouldn't get into trouble and millions of years of sitting on beaches got us pretty bored so we learned to amuse ourselves by digging and making piles. It's probably a combination of the two, really. "So the space apes brought TVs with them from Atlantis and taught us all when we were children how to swim and how to commune with our fishy friends, so we can help Captain Planet defeat the villainous Looten Plunder and regain Neptune's scepter with the help of the sensitively-palmed Waterbearer hand given to us by the Lady of the Lake, right?" Right.
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Why are products so cheaply made?
They don't make em like they used to. I've got a VCR from the mid eighties that still works great. The old bird's been playin' flicks for 20 years and shows no signs of stopping. Meanwhile I'm expecting Kleenex to come out with a DVD player soon as the six that I've owned in the past several years all barely made it past their pathetically short warranties. Clothing is mostly all made single-stitch these days - you've really got to shell out some loot to get the "fancy" double-stitching of days gone by. A drinking glass from IKEA will break if you look at it wrong. The furniture in most of our homes, once you strip back the faux leather is a flimsy construction of particle board, card board, and held together with cheap little nails and hope. For the third time my mechanic tells me that the flux capacitor has gone out on my Saturn and is going to have to be replaced again. Just about everything that a regular Joe can afford to buy these days seems to be pre-garbage - it's all ready to break and break fast. It didn't used to be like this - stuff used to be made to last and folks had brand loyalty because they knew that certain brands were well made. Why can't we pay a little more and get something that won't fall apart like grandpappy used to (and probably still does) have? Back in the 50's you didn't hear anyone complaining about having to get a new cell phone every few months.
The answer to this query lies in the mechanics of how sexual traits spread. No, I don't mean that slapping a pair of breasts on a lamp makes it fall apart faster nor sell better (although the idea is intriguing.) Sexual traits are any trait that directly expedites the occurrence of the sex act. While this does include T & A, it also includes behavior patterns, demonstrations of social value, and all things akin to peacock feathers. Basically it includes (but is not completely exclusive to) all things shallow that make an organism more attractive. How does this apply to the boobie-lamp in question? First I'll mention that of course diapers and frying pans and computers don't have genes. But they do have memes. A meme is a a perfect metaphor for a gene, except that instead of being made of DNA it's made of ideas. Just as a gene is a packet of information so is a meme. (For a fully detailed description of memetic theory and its impact check out Richard Dawkin's excellent book The Extended Phenotype.) A toaster has a memetic code which is a basic descriptor of everything about that toaster upon its manufacture (birth), and the success of its sales (the sex act) dictate whether its memtic code will be passed on to further generations of toasters. Toasters thusly evolve like anything else - variations in its code get tested out at the store and in the home (the environment) and more successful ones get passed on to new generations which then in turn test out new variations and so on.
Back to talking about sex. Sexual traits in the case of our toaster are fundamentally the bells and whistles (I hate getting a cheap toaster whistle, don't you?): what the toaster looks like, it's neat-o-keen features, and lastly and most importantest - the price. Because sexual traits are directly involved with the most fundamental of all actions when it comes to passing on genes, these traits evolve faster than any other simple trait in a complex organism. With a product, the most fundamental of its actions in relation to its evolution is when we pick it up off a shelf in Mart-Mart and say to ourselves - "I don't really need a new toaster, but this one is red. And it has a bagel setting! My God! Yes! I must buy it!" The product being sold is its memetic equivalent of screwing (it's only coincidental that this often involves the consumer getting screwed as well.) Because sexual traits evolve so quickly, other traits will often fall by the way-side. Price being the most important facet of a product's attractiveness, the more cheaply a product can be sold, the more it will be sold. Once one company figures out that they can make their toaster a little more cheaply and thusly sell it more cheaply, the other companies quickly fall in line as the cheapest toaster that at least looks as good as the others will always outsell the others. Sadly quality in construction is not a sexual trait and has fallen by the wayside. In fact, poor quality in construction (as long as it's hard to detect) is in fact a positive trait for the product. If it breaks after a year, the consumer has to buy another one. Thus not only reenforcing the value (to the manufacturer, not to us poor forlorn masses) of making cheap products but also speeding the replication and thusly evolution of the product in question. This also explains why the manufacturing base has shifted out of the western world and into the third world - any company that doesn't add this trait to its product will have a less memetically successful product because of the added cost of paying human beings something beyond a slave wage to make their pieces of crap.
Well-made products still exist, of course, but they're few and far between. They'll never go away completely, as rare variations always remain in the environment in anticipation of environmental shifts. For the most part, however, the products of our lives are going to have perfectly round asses, pretty eyes and sexy voices, but be entirely irresponsible, disloyal, and unwilling to do much work once we take them home to meet mom. I leave you with words of wisdom from Mr. Waits - "The Large Print giveth, and the Small Print taketh away."
The answer to this query lies in the mechanics of how sexual traits spread. No, I don't mean that slapping a pair of breasts on a lamp makes it fall apart faster nor sell better (although the idea is intriguing.) Sexual traits are any trait that directly expedites the occurrence of the sex act. While this does include T & A, it also includes behavior patterns, demonstrations of social value, and all things akin to peacock feathers. Basically it includes (but is not completely exclusive to) all things shallow that make an organism more attractive. How does this apply to the boobie-lamp in question? First I'll mention that of course diapers and frying pans and computers don't have genes. But they do have memes. A meme is a a perfect metaphor for a gene, except that instead of being made of DNA it's made of ideas. Just as a gene is a packet of information so is a meme. (For a fully detailed description of memetic theory and its impact check out Richard Dawkin's excellent book The Extended Phenotype.) A toaster has a memetic code which is a basic descriptor of everything about that toaster upon its manufacture (birth), and the success of its sales (the sex act) dictate whether its memtic code will be passed on to further generations of toasters. Toasters thusly evolve like anything else - variations in its code get tested out at the store and in the home (the environment) and more successful ones get passed on to new generations which then in turn test out new variations and so on.
Back to talking about sex. Sexual traits in the case of our toaster are fundamentally the bells and whistles (I hate getting a cheap toaster whistle, don't you?): what the toaster looks like, it's neat-o-keen features, and lastly and most importantest - the price. Because sexual traits are directly involved with the most fundamental of all actions when it comes to passing on genes, these traits evolve faster than any other simple trait in a complex organism. With a product, the most fundamental of its actions in relation to its evolution is when we pick it up off a shelf in Mart-Mart and say to ourselves - "I don't really need a new toaster, but this one is red. And it has a bagel setting! My God! Yes! I must buy it!" The product being sold is its memetic equivalent of screwing (it's only coincidental that this often involves the consumer getting screwed as well.) Because sexual traits evolve so quickly, other traits will often fall by the way-side. Price being the most important facet of a product's attractiveness, the more cheaply a product can be sold, the more it will be sold. Once one company figures out that they can make their toaster a little more cheaply and thusly sell it more cheaply, the other companies quickly fall in line as the cheapest toaster that at least looks as good as the others will always outsell the others. Sadly quality in construction is not a sexual trait and has fallen by the wayside. In fact, poor quality in construction (as long as it's hard to detect) is in fact a positive trait for the product. If it breaks after a year, the consumer has to buy another one. Thus not only reenforcing the value (to the manufacturer, not to us poor forlorn masses) of making cheap products but also speeding the replication and thusly evolution of the product in question. This also explains why the manufacturing base has shifted out of the western world and into the third world - any company that doesn't add this trait to its product will have a less memetically successful product because of the added cost of paying human beings something beyond a slave wage to make their pieces of crap.
Well-made products still exist, of course, but they're few and far between. They'll never go away completely, as rare variations always remain in the environment in anticipation of environmental shifts. For the most part, however, the products of our lives are going to have perfectly round asses, pretty eyes and sexy voices, but be entirely irresponsible, disloyal, and unwilling to do much work once we take them home to meet mom. I leave you with words of wisdom from Mr. Waits - "The Large Print giveth, and the Small Print taketh away."
Saturday, December 15, 2007
Why do women love and men lust?
Of course there are exceptions, but in general the ladies are more interested in long term romance and the gents in making woopie. Women want Mr. Right and men want Miss Right Now. As I just said, there are plenty of exceptions. Plenty of guys want to find that perfect woman to settle down with a marry and snuggle with for all eternity, and some (I wouldn't say plenty) women are interesting in horizontal mamboing and little else - not to mention those guys interested in finding Mr. Right and those women looking for Miss Right Now. But as far as statistical majorities go - women look for more love and men for more booty.
This is very easy to explain with the cold, soulless mathematics of evolutionary theory. Searching for amour and being overly amorous are two different replication strategies. At the core of the Darwinian algorithm is this concept - any replication vehicle will behave in such a way as to maximize the potential replications of its replications. In plainspeak this means that people (or indeed, all organisms) act in such a way so that they can have the most babies that will in turn grow up, make woopie in their due time, and have more babies. It is often a mistake to think that evolution simply drives organisms to procreate as much as possible. This does the organisms in question no genetic good if their offspring do not also reach maturity and pass on their genes as well. How does this explain that females are more inclined towards monogamous love while males lean towards polygamous philandering? Females can only have 1.33 pregnancies per year, while a male can cause potentially 1000s of pregnancies in the same time, albeit he runs an awful risk of chafing at that point. Added to that is the fact that females must invest a great deal of care and resources to bring a child to term, whereas a male can be a jerkwad and skip town after his tiny investment. It is because of this simple dichotomy that females have evolved much stronger tendencies towards pair-bonding (monogamy) while males have evolved to opposite strategy of gettin' some whenever possible. Thusly women are genetically inclined towards romance and true love and males are inclined towards being a ship passing in the night. For a more in-depth explanation of the genetic theory behind this, there's piles of reading that can be done. Two excellent examples are Jared Diamond's Why is Sex Fun? and the more scientifically rigorous but more disturbing A Natural History of Rape by Randy Thornhill and Craig Palmer. That second one is a superb scientific study, but can be a bit off-putting. It does talk about chipmunk rape, and that's about the most lighthearted subject in the book.
There are other strategies as well; those two are simply the most common overarching ones. Darwinian theory can easily explain the use of each strategy for the opposite sex, although they come with certain qualifiers which make them less common. A sex-crazed man will do the dirty deed with a wide variety of willing gals, whereas the sex-crazed lady seeks out a specific kind of male - specifically the most successful sex-crazed man (i.e. "the bad boy") often referred to in evolution literature as the genetic Superman, although this one does not stand for truth or justice, but arguably might for the American Way. The romantically inclined monogamous male is apt to be more responsible and have more solid familial foundations, and thusly seeks out a similar woman so they can mate for life just like swans (although if you read more about swans, you'll find out that they're actually about as monogamous as...well...humans - if you read more about human monogamy that is. Which can be little surprising considering that we have "fine" institutions like Promise Keepers to show us all how we should behave.*)
For those that would still argue that women are equally as obsessed with sex as men are, I offer the spot-on wisdom of thespian Larry Miller spouting about the idea that women think about sex as much as men do - "It's like the difference between throwing a bullet and shooting it. If women had any idea, even for a second, of how we really looked at them, they would never stop slapping us."
*We should keep promises is their gist, I believe. Oh yeah, and women should do what they're told to by their men. Or at least promise to.
This is very easy to explain with the cold, soulless mathematics of evolutionary theory. Searching for amour and being overly amorous are two different replication strategies. At the core of the Darwinian algorithm is this concept - any replication vehicle will behave in such a way as to maximize the potential replications of its replications. In plainspeak this means that people (or indeed, all organisms) act in such a way so that they can have the most babies that will in turn grow up, make woopie in their due time, and have more babies. It is often a mistake to think that evolution simply drives organisms to procreate as much as possible. This does the organisms in question no genetic good if their offspring do not also reach maturity and pass on their genes as well. How does this explain that females are more inclined towards monogamous love while males lean towards polygamous philandering? Females can only have 1.33 pregnancies per year, while a male can cause potentially 1000s of pregnancies in the same time, albeit he runs an awful risk of chafing at that point. Added to that is the fact that females must invest a great deal of care and resources to bring a child to term, whereas a male can be a jerkwad and skip town after his tiny investment. It is because of this simple dichotomy that females have evolved much stronger tendencies towards pair-bonding (monogamy) while males have evolved to opposite strategy of gettin' some whenever possible. Thusly women are genetically inclined towards romance and true love and males are inclined towards being a ship passing in the night. For a more in-depth explanation of the genetic theory behind this, there's piles of reading that can be done. Two excellent examples are Jared Diamond's Why is Sex Fun? and the more scientifically rigorous but more disturbing A Natural History of Rape by Randy Thornhill and Craig Palmer. That second one is a superb scientific study, but can be a bit off-putting. It does talk about chipmunk rape, and that's about the most lighthearted subject in the book.
There are other strategies as well; those two are simply the most common overarching ones. Darwinian theory can easily explain the use of each strategy for the opposite sex, although they come with certain qualifiers which make them less common. A sex-crazed man will do the dirty deed with a wide variety of willing gals, whereas the sex-crazed lady seeks out a specific kind of male - specifically the most successful sex-crazed man (i.e. "the bad boy") often referred to in evolution literature as the genetic Superman, although this one does not stand for truth or justice, but arguably might for the American Way. The romantically inclined monogamous male is apt to be more responsible and have more solid familial foundations, and thusly seeks out a similar woman so they can mate for life just like swans (although if you read more about swans, you'll find out that they're actually about as monogamous as...well...humans - if you read more about human monogamy that is. Which can be little surprising considering that we have "fine" institutions like Promise Keepers to show us all how we should behave.*)
For those that would still argue that women are equally as obsessed with sex as men are, I offer the spot-on wisdom of thespian Larry Miller spouting about the idea that women think about sex as much as men do - "It's like the difference between throwing a bullet and shooting it. If women had any idea, even for a second, of how we really looked at them, they would never stop slapping us."
*We should keep promises is their gist, I believe. Oh yeah, and women should do what they're told to by their men. Or at least promise to.
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Why do we sneeze?
As a young sprite, it occurred to me on one my visits to the family physician to ask, "Why do I cough when I'm sick? Does it help me get better?" To which he replied that, no coughing and sneezing does not help us get better when sick. Then I asked, "But all it does is spread the sick, right? Why would God make us do that when we're sick?" Dr. Keith was taken aback a little by this seemingly obvious and simple question. I don't remember his exact response, but I recall that his brushing away of my question that followed was the beginning of me realizing that doctors don't know as much about sickness as we, the untrained public, are lead to believe. Regardless of the incompetence of the medical profession, the question remains - why do we cough and sneeze when inflicted with a common virus? I have heard some postulate that it is a flawed attempt on our body's part to rid our system of the sickness - to expel as much of the virus in question as possible. Upon closer examination, this is obviously a silly answer. Our bodies do not in any way shape or form fight off an embedded illness by getting it out of our body. A disturbing scene comes to mind when one imagines a world in which blowing enough snot out will cure us: hospital wards and school nurses' offices filled with snot depositories where the ailed sit blasting mucus hours on end to rid themselves of their ailment. Indeed it is a disturbing world where the phrase "enough snot" has everyday parlance (although I think my sister would be happy, but I won't clarify that out of respect to her and common decency as well.)
But there is an answer, intrepid reader, and the rosetta stone of evolution offers it to us in its beautiful simplicity. It is a long standing debate as to whether viruses qualify as a form of life. There are unlike anything else in that they posses many traits held only by living things and yet are missing certain important qualifiers. This probably just reveals science's mistake in creating specific qualifiers to begin with - certainly if life sprung from non-life then something must exist between, and viruses are very likely the remaining spawn of some form of protolife. There are even now theories being advanced that viruses may be the ancient ancestors of all life as they do appear to be a potential missing link between the living and the inanimate. (For more on viruses as the source of life see The March 2006 issue of Discover magazine.) But my point being that viruses operate similarly to life are are clearly subject to the understood principles of evolution (in fact nonlife such as rocks and rock music are both subject to the same Darwinian principles, but more on that later.) Viruses have, without scientific argument, evolved their various traits and tendencies. But another word about snot before we go further.
Why do we produce snot at all? This I will explain only in brief. The body naturally produces mucus for two reasons: 1. for lubrication purposes (yes, yes, those lubrication purposes, wink, wink. And numerous other less filthy ones, you filthy minded filthy filths) and 2. to trap airborne dirt so that we don't breath it in nor ingest it. This is why when our allergies go haywire, lots of clear snot comes a-flowin out. Our body is overproducing mucus because it interprets the allergy in question as being a dangerous airborne nasty that it must stop with its garrison of boogers. So mucus is a good thing in the case of making certain things more slippery (Like the interior of our intestines. Why? What were you thinking of? Filthy filths.) and in catching, holding, and expelling dirt in the cleansing river that flows forth in the allergen-filled springtime or year-round should you be a smoker.
So why do we sneeze out buckets of snot not to mention sprays of virus-laden spit whenever we have a cold or flu? The answer is simple once one learns to look at it dynamically. Coughing and snotting all over the place when sick is NOT an adaptation that us humans have developed over the millennia to help cure ourselves. It IS an adaptation that viruses have gained to help themselves survive. Certain sicknesses trick our body into reacting in counterproductive ways so that the sickness can spread. Viruses, being extremely simple in makeup, can evolve faster than any multi-celled organism. Somewhere along the way, viruses discovered* this trait allowing them to spread and replicate far more efficiently than before. Everything (and I do mean everything) tries to create copies of itself one way or another. Life is in essence a big ebb and flow of various things trying to make more of themselves while competing with everything else trying to do the same. (Sheds some newly disturbing light on the Hasselhoffian Recusion, doesn't it?) Some virus way back in the days of yore mutated the ability to trick our mucus producing bodies into thinking that more mucus would help to get rid of the virus, when in fact all it does is spread the damnable thing. This simple behavioral trait is so effective that more and more viruses starting jumping on the snotty band wagon and surviving and replicating because of it.
We sneeze, in other words, because the virus wants us to sneeze so it can have more hosts to make more virus babies. It's no wonder, then, that we've all evolved an extreme aversion to anyone else sneezing on us and an extreme disgust with the snot of others. We're not nearly as disgusted with our own snot because our own snot will only ever contain viruses and bacteria already in our system. (This is also very much the reason why other people's farts are nasty and horrid, where-as smelling our own really ain't too bad.) Non airborne viruses and bacterial infections have similar adaptations - you shouldn't scratch your chicken pox, because the scratching causes minor tears in the skin which allows the pox to spread into those tiny open wounds. Chicken pox have evolved the trait of making us itch because it allows chicken pox to spread and continue to survive. I would bet a dollar and a doughnut that certain venereal diseases (if not all of them) make us more horny thus allowing themselves to spread more, although research on this is a little wanting at the moment.
So now you know, and knowing is half the battle GI Joe told me as a kid. The other half, I always guessed involved shooting people but the cartoon never really went into that.
*When I say that the virus "discovered" something I don't mean that there was a little Italian virus sea captain that landed on some phlegmy shore, stuck a flag in the snotty beach and declared that it belonged to Her Majesty Ebola. I simply mean that through the natural process of replication, variations and mutations occur and at some point one of these variations cause the host body for the virus to produce a lil' bit of snot and cough a bit, allowing that virus to spread a lil' better and so on and so forth. The process of evolution helped the virus's RNA "discover" the aforementioned adaptive trait. Although I would like it better if the cells in our body were like the Mayans and had to fight of the Spanish Viruses in glorious mucus battles which could then be adapted into a movie called "Apocasnoto."
But there is an answer, intrepid reader, and the rosetta stone of evolution offers it to us in its beautiful simplicity. It is a long standing debate as to whether viruses qualify as a form of life. There are unlike anything else in that they posses many traits held only by living things and yet are missing certain important qualifiers. This probably just reveals science's mistake in creating specific qualifiers to begin with - certainly if life sprung from non-life then something must exist between, and viruses are very likely the remaining spawn of some form of protolife. There are even now theories being advanced that viruses may be the ancient ancestors of all life as they do appear to be a potential missing link between the living and the inanimate. (For more on viruses as the source of life see The March 2006 issue of Discover magazine.) But my point being that viruses operate similarly to life are are clearly subject to the understood principles of evolution (in fact nonlife such as rocks and rock music are both subject to the same Darwinian principles, but more on that later.) Viruses have, without scientific argument, evolved their various traits and tendencies. But another word about snot before we go further.
Why do we produce snot at all? This I will explain only in brief. The body naturally produces mucus for two reasons: 1. for lubrication purposes (yes, yes, those lubrication purposes, wink, wink. And numerous other less filthy ones, you filthy minded filthy filths) and 2. to trap airborne dirt so that we don't breath it in nor ingest it. This is why when our allergies go haywire, lots of clear snot comes a-flowin out. Our body is overproducing mucus because it interprets the allergy in question as being a dangerous airborne nasty that it must stop with its garrison of boogers. So mucus is a good thing in the case of making certain things more slippery (Like the interior of our intestines. Why? What were you thinking of? Filthy filths.) and in catching, holding, and expelling dirt in the cleansing river that flows forth in the allergen-filled springtime or year-round should you be a smoker.
So why do we sneeze out buckets of snot not to mention sprays of virus-laden spit whenever we have a cold or flu? The answer is simple once one learns to look at it dynamically. Coughing and snotting all over the place when sick is NOT an adaptation that us humans have developed over the millennia to help cure ourselves. It IS an adaptation that viruses have gained to help themselves survive. Certain sicknesses trick our body into reacting in counterproductive ways so that the sickness can spread. Viruses, being extremely simple in makeup, can evolve faster than any multi-celled organism. Somewhere along the way, viruses discovered* this trait allowing them to spread and replicate far more efficiently than before. Everything (and I do mean everything) tries to create copies of itself one way or another. Life is in essence a big ebb and flow of various things trying to make more of themselves while competing with everything else trying to do the same. (Sheds some newly disturbing light on the Hasselhoffian Recusion, doesn't it?) Some virus way back in the days of yore mutated the ability to trick our mucus producing bodies into thinking that more mucus would help to get rid of the virus, when in fact all it does is spread the damnable thing. This simple behavioral trait is so effective that more and more viruses starting jumping on the snotty band wagon and surviving and replicating because of it.
We sneeze, in other words, because the virus wants us to sneeze so it can have more hosts to make more virus babies. It's no wonder, then, that we've all evolved an extreme aversion to anyone else sneezing on us and an extreme disgust with the snot of others. We're not nearly as disgusted with our own snot because our own snot will only ever contain viruses and bacteria already in our system. (This is also very much the reason why other people's farts are nasty and horrid, where-as smelling our own really ain't too bad.) Non airborne viruses and bacterial infections have similar adaptations - you shouldn't scratch your chicken pox, because the scratching causes minor tears in the skin which allows the pox to spread into those tiny open wounds. Chicken pox have evolved the trait of making us itch because it allows chicken pox to spread and continue to survive. I would bet a dollar and a doughnut that certain venereal diseases (if not all of them) make us more horny thus allowing themselves to spread more, although research on this is a little wanting at the moment.
So now you know, and knowing is half the battle GI Joe told me as a kid. The other half, I always guessed involved shooting people but the cartoon never really went into that.
*When I say that the virus "discovered" something I don't mean that there was a little Italian virus sea captain that landed on some phlegmy shore, stuck a flag in the snotty beach and declared that it belonged to Her Majesty Ebola. I simply mean that through the natural process of replication, variations and mutations occur and at some point one of these variations cause the host body for the virus to produce a lil' bit of snot and cough a bit, allowing that virus to spread a lil' better and so on and so forth. The process of evolution helped the virus's RNA "discover" the aforementioned adaptive trait. Although I would like it better if the cells in our body were like the Mayans and had to fight of the Spanish Viruses in glorious mucus battles which could then be adapted into a movie called "Apocasnoto."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)