Part of an occasional, ridiculous series from Occam’s Razor: Now that Darlene’s finally headed off to the ScienceOnline2010 conference (thought she’d never leave), let me fill you in on some REAL science you can use. Science yesterday announced something that half the population of the world has suspected for a long time – men are evolving faster than women. I won’t bore you with the mumbo-jumbo, nor that scientists are distancing themselves from controversy by saying, “this does not mean that men are evolving faster than women.” The proof is in the research…and the research is so irrefutable, even a woman is reporting it! The study was headed up by one Jennifer Hughes, who, according to the internet (invented by a jolly green giant of a MAN – Al Gore), is most definitely a woman.
But has evolution started to bite back at we perfectly-formed males? A few months ago new research came out to challenge some understandings about natural selection. It has long been simple, common knowledge that the more muscular and “ripped,” the more athletic and strong, then the more attractive he is to females. It’s something the nerds of the world just had to accept. But…the nerds have struck back. The research in question suggests that weak, pasty, scrawny scientists, having holed themselves up in some dingy, drab, musty, Chanel-free lab at the University of Pittsburgh for years and years, have finally gotten the angle needed to extract at least some small piece of revenge. Muscular men get more attention, but also die at a younger age. The testosterone that makes them muscular, also apparently compromises their immune systems! Women take the genes from these men in their prime, and then as widows settle down to comfortable-if-boring lives with tenured professors.
Lacking an Adonis-like physique, this doesn’t concern me so much and I’m left to comfortably focus on my rapid evolution. In fact, I have been inspired to form my New Year’s resolutions around this new discovery. By the end of the year I plan to 1. evolve to the point that I can simultaneously and with equal facility do one-handed pushups while building a car engine and 2. bear an offspring with wings. Or at least wing-like nubs that he can then turn into larger nubs on his offspring, etc. etc. and with our rapid evolving I have no doubt that a flying Occam Jr. will be here by 2100…just in time to give scenic rides over the mostly-submerged coastal cities of the United States.
I eagerly shared this fast-evolution story with my wife, turning away briefly from the professional wrestling match I was watching and belching loudly before announcing man’s collective superiority, mildly annoying her that I interrupted the debate she was having with a girlfriend about the works of Hypatia of Alexandria. I then insisted that she’d been naturally selected to get me another beer, at which time she very tersely pointed out that were one to line up photos in chronological order of the women I’ve dated, one would observe that they gradually look less and less like an ape, until finally reaching her picture, refreshingly free of low, sloping forehead and prehensile tail. I’m not sure if that said more about the evolution of me or of women, but I’m pretty sure the verbal beat down directed toward me that followed not only somewhere made Charles Darwin cry.
