As has been pointed out by many writers including Robert Heinlein, it probably wasn’t such a good idea to put the bathroom and the playground so close together.
That said, the whole problem with the human body is that it WASN’T designed, and that we still don’t understand how it works.
If we understood how it worked, sleep would be unnecessary and voluntary, eating would be recrational, and we’d be able to have any body shape we like, while eating and exercising as much or as little as we like. I give it about a century for all this tech to happen (except maybe the sleeping thing), and I’m frankly building in at least 50 years worth of fudge factor there.
Ah…err… well…I suspected I’d be called on that even as I hit submit…but it was really intended as hyperbole. I know it’s not half. Just numbers that would be shocking to your adverage cow or cat or baboon (I mean if their own design allowed for understanding of mortality rates).
As for the rest of your post I think we agree…standing up was the big mistake. That (and absurd crainal size) is just what lead to the the high mother/infant death rate. But like I said, that’s the price we pay for the brains and the hands.
I think you give too much credit to natural selection. It doesn’t select out for “poor design”. It selects out for fatal (ie non-reproductive) flaws. That’s all.
I get your point Lumpy but don’t ya think that MOST poorly designed is a bit strong. Surely there are worse designs that have been tried and I know I could design something far worse than the human body. Ever watch any Star-Trek? Now there’s some designs that just won’t work.
How about we swap our mouth and our ass?
That’d be a new design that’d probably fit some of the potty mouths around here. :wally
On second thought,
I don’t believe I’d want my nose that close to my ass. :dubious:
I damned sure don’t wanna have to look at that shit. :eek:
Maybe a penis that’d be like an elephant’s trunk.
As long as I didn’t have to breath through it. I’d have the women lined up.
Kinda like a giraffe’s tongue huh?
A foot and a half long and prehensile or so I’m told.
btw, that wally was directed at myself I figured I’d save y’all the trouble
For something that was consciously designed by an omnipotent, omniscient being, the human body pretty much sucks rocks.
For something that was thrown together over the course of billions of years, limited to rather small changes to the design specs in each generation (with their attendant flaws), the human body is a pretty wonderful, miraculous thing.
http://www.overflow.250x.com/diagnostics.htm
HICAS is Nissan’s version of four wheel steering. It is an acronym for High Capacity Actively Controlled Suspension. […]
The system is electro-hydraulic - the ECU in the boot directs a hydraulic actuator at the rear axle to steer the rear wheels using the rearmost suspension links. The result is usually no more than 0.4° of movement. HICAS gives a touch of counter steer before settling with the rear wheel pointing the same way as the front. (Maybe this explains why my Skyline feels so loose on high-speed gravel…) This results in sharp turn-in, and enhanced stability at medium to high speeds.
What gets me in oh, so many diatribes that only a cheesed on woman can, is why is it that women have to deal with the joys of menstration every (ha) bloody month, but guys don’t have the same reproductive problems.
Oh…
Wait…
They have Morning Wood. Nooner Wood. Driving Home From Work Wood. Time For Bed Wood. Would You Look At That Touch Down Wood. New Car Wood. Pretty Girl Wood. The Stapler Actually Worked For Me Today Wood…
Nevermind.
::::I enjoy being a girl:::::::::::::::::::::::
What really angers me about my body is that every single morning I have to pee, and pee bad. I can’t sleep in without having to get up around nine or so and hobbling off to the damned bathroom. We need to have bigger bladders, damnit.
Ugh, I experienced my first two kidney stones this summer. Two at a time. It was fabulous, let me tell you. One of them is gone, but the other is sitting in a fold in my kidney, getting bigger and more diabolical. Think that was my stomach growling? Guess again–that’s the evil laugh of my kidney stone. My urologist said it’s a centimeter in diameter. I can’t even watch the opening scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark without crying out for fear of what the future brings.
You can bet I’m getting that son of a bitch lithotripsied the moment I get home for Thanksgiving break.
As someone who is currently learning how dogs run (as part of my anatomy class), I can say that while they can run forever, there are a lots of muscles involved. And I don’t want to learn them (but I will).
Still, despite the muscles involved and the difficulty, I think bodies rock. Dogs, humans, horses, etc.
BTW, regarding muscles, is there any explanation why my neck, the most tense of all my back muscles, is also too sensitive for a massage? It really sucks not being able to get a massage from a friend.
I don’t know about dogs, but horses definately cannot run “forever”.
Humans can actually run longer due to the sheer fact that we mass less and can carry water and food with us. This thread was a bit of a train wreck, but it does offer conclusive evidence that humans can definately run longer than a horse. Pretty good “design” work I would say.
Well, it’s prob’ly too sensitive *because * it’s so tense. Really tense muscles hurt a lot when an amateur just goes in mashing stuff around. Tell her/him to start light. Really light. No, lighter. Like just barely touching your skin light. The warmth of his/her hand will start to trigger your muscle to relax a bit. Then just have him/her (OK, this is redic. Can I just say “him” and no one get a buggaboo, OK?) have him rest his hand on your neck. Then apply a little pressure, but no movement. No, scrunchiness, no kneading. When he can’t tell the difference in temperature between his skin and your skin, then he can start REALLY lightly running a hand from the nape or your neck down to your shoulder. Don’t go “across the grain” of the muscle fibers - stick to moving from nape to shoulder. Only go deeper when there’s no pain. There might be a delicious feeling of extreme sensation, but it should not cause more pain. If it does, he’s going to fast and needs to “back out” a little.
Take your time. Oil helps, too. It doesn’t have to be fancy, olive works just fine. But if you go slow and wait until your surface muscles “let him in” before going deep, your neck will thank you.
Cheers and Good Rubbin’,
WhyNot (your certified massage therapist, fully aware that the above directions also apply to hot boy-on-boy action. :rolleyes: )
For you, then, maybe it’s a great design. You’re lucky. Some other people, through the luck of the draw, don’t have bodies that work as well as yours, by no fault of their own. As the OP mentioned, those neck muscles can play hell with a person. Got me an arthritic section of the neck, along with hypermobility, and it’s a rare day it doesn’t hurt me. Along with that is my compressed disk (runs in the family-- my brother and uncle have ruptured the same L5 disk), that leaves me pretty much screwed in the spinal department, and I don’t have it nearly so bad as some people. I’m only 32 and there’s plenty of time for things to get worse, which they inevitably will. The human back fucking sucks, and you are in the very small minority if yours doesn’t cause you a notable amount of pain at some point in your life. That comes out of the mouth of my physical therapist, so it’s not just conjecture on my part.
I won’t even start in on knees and feet as crappy design, but I’m sure a lot of people who have problems with those can attest to how easily they can go south and fuck up your life. The human body does have many fine aspects to recommend it, but the whole spine/back/standing upright thing has some major kinks in it that have yet to be worked out.
It really sucks not being able to get a massage from a friend.