Posts Tagged Human

I Misspoke—What I Meant To Say Is ‘I Am Dumb As Dog Shit And I Am A Terrible Human Being’ | The Onion – America’s Finest News Source

Posted by Michael B. Calyn in GOP, Humor/Parody, The Onion on August 21, 2012


 

I Misspoke—What I Meant To Say Is ‘I Am Dumb As Dog Shit And I Am A Terrible Human Being’

BY REP. TODD AKIN (R-MO)
AUGUST 20, 2012  

As a politician, I often find myself in situations where, unfortunately, I express a certain thought or idea poorly, or find my words taken out of context. Indeed, that is what happened this weekend. Upon reviewing the impromptu remarks I made Sunday afternoon, I can now see that I used the wrong words in the wrong way. I would now like to set the record straight with the American people and clear up some confusion about what it was I intended to convey.

You see, what I said was, “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.” But what I meant to say was, “I am a worthless, moronic sack of shit and an utterly irredeemable human being who needs to shut up and go away forever.”

It is clear to me now that I did not choose my words with care and did not get across the point I was trying to convey. In hindsight, I guess instead of using the words “legitimate rape,” I should have used the words “I am an unforgivable, unrepentant, and unconscionable subhuman dickhead.” Or better yet, “I am an evil, fucked-up man who should never have been elected to the United States Congress, and anyone who would vote for me is probably a pretty big fucking dumbshit, too.” See how much more sense that makes? It’s amazing how a few key word changes can totally alter the meaning of a statement.

Because, of course, it’s all about context. And yes, when you take what I said out of context, I can see how it might sound like I’m denying that women can be impregnated via rape. This is, I assure you, not what I was trying to express at all. Such is the age we live in that one little sentence excerpted in a news report can come back to haunt a person in a pretty big hurry. But if you actually go back and look at the remarks closely, you’ll see that what I was actually trying to convey in my statement was that

(1) I am a big fucking idiot,

(2) I am a nauseating slug of a human being who doesn’t deserve to live, and

(3) I am essentially everything that’s wrong with this country and with humanity in general.

Honestly, that’s all I was trying to get across there. It was a simple misunderstanding, really.

It’s funny, because, in my head, I remember thinking very vividly, “I, Rep. Todd Akin, am a bigoted jackass who probably should not be alive, let alone in political office. People need to know what a terrible person I am so they will then remember to punch me in the face anytime they get the chance.” But when I opened my mouth and tried to articulate that thought, somehow I blurted out the thing about rape instead of just saying, in plain English, that I am awful, just purely and incontrovertibly awful.

Frankly, it’s hard not to make a mistake from time to time when you’re in the public eye as much as I am. I am constantly having to speak my mind in a public forum, and sometimes, when all I’m trying to say is something simple and inarguable, like, “Sweet Jesus, I am the worst person who has ever lived,” I wind up saying something completely different. It’s frustrating, really. Because I have a lot of very pertinent and very well-thought out things to say about how somebody should just smack me in the head with a goddamned cricket bat because of how brainless and insensitive I am, but instead my words just come out all jumbled.

I guess I just have a habit of putting my foot in my mouth! And for being the very worst that Western Civilization has to offer!

So let me take this opportunity to be very specific about what I meant Sunday, which was this: I am not a competent or respectable politician; I am, essentially, a subhuman monster of a prick, a prick as profoundly insensitive as he is monumentally unintelligent in every respect; somebody should apply dozens of layers of duct tape to my mouth every morning so that words are not able to exit my large, dumb, misogynist, imbecilic mouth at any point; I make the planet worse; I don’t know jack shit about any of the topics I spoke about in that interview, or about any topics at all, really; I should apologize every day to the women of the world, but doing so would most likely be an exercise in futility given my rock-bottom intellect and my complete and utter lack of human decency; I am, in no uncertain terms, not even worth the time it took you to read this.

That’s what I meant to say. Sorry for the confusion.

 I Misspoke—What I Meant To Say Is ‘I Am Dumb As Dog Shit And I Am A Terrible Human Being’ | The Onion – America’s Finest News Source.

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Nude Man Who Locked Self Out Of House Delivers Moving Treatise On Human Condition To Slowly Gathering Crowd | The Onion – America’s Finest News Source

Posted by Michael B. Calyn in Humor/Parody, The Onion on June 7, 2012


Nude Man Who Locked Self Out Of House Delivers Moving Treatise On Human Condition To Slowly Gathering Crowd

JUNE 7, 2012  

Fully nude man David Ronzo expounds at length on life’s frailty.

ST. CLOUD, MN—Shortly after discovering he had locked himself out of his suburban home, stark naked 43-year-old claims adjuster David Ronzo began to deliver a stirring and thought-provoking philosophical treatise on the frailty of the human condition to a slowly gathering crowd, deeply moved witnesses reported today.

Following a brief period during which he panicked—first running to his locked garage door and then scrambling back to pound frantically on his front door—the nude man reportedly stopped, turned to face two confused joggers, and started speaking from his porch in a loud, clear voice. Soon, rapt passersby were steadily thronging his yard.

“Yes, it’s true; I stand before you naked, exposed to the world—completely vulnerable and without recourse,” the nude man said as he calmly drew himself to his full height and looked purposefully at the gradually expanding crowd of his neighbors. “But should I feel deeply ashamed at my misfortune? Should I be the object of your ridicule and derision? I put it to you, dear people, that on all counts, the answer is emphatically no, I most certainly should not be! For who among you can argue that I do not now, stripped of all guile and pretense, represent the very essence of what, in truth, lies at the core of our very humanness, be we mighty kings or lowly claims adjusters?”

 

Witnesses say they were profoundly moved by the words of the nude man locked out of his house.

 

“I can see it in your faces; you know as well as I do that the only real difference between you and I is a gust of wind and the fact that my robe is still in the wash,” added Ronzo, later emphasizing that being a completely naked man locked outside his home in no way diminished his desire to be loved and understood.

According to those who stopped to hear him speak, Ronzo spent the next 35 minutes mounting an eloquent, heartfelt plea for his own humanity, for the humanity of all people everywhere, and, briefly, for the importance of keeping a spare key hidden somewhere near the front door of one’s home.

“Am I frightened? Do I feel confused, utterly abandoned, and left without a clear path forward? I would not be so arrogant as to say otherwise,” Ronzo said as those in the crowd nodded their heads in agreement, with some periodically glimpsing at Ronzo’s uncovered genitals. “But please, take a moment to look deep within yourselves and answer me honestly: Do you, the fully clothed, really feel any differently? Metaphorically speaking, we are from birth accidentally locked out of the safety and warmth of our respective houses, naked to creation, and, for the remainder of our all-too-brief lives, scared witless at having been thrust into a vast, seemingly indifferent universe of which we comprise a mind-bogglingly infinitesimal part and from which we struggle daily—and cruelly, at the very end, entirely alone—to glean even the simplest fundamental truths.”

“Debra? Debra? Can you hear me? I locked myself out of the house and I’m naked! Help!” Ronzo continued as he jiggled the door handle. “Debra!”

Ronzo reportedly went on to ponder the grim facts of mortality, but concluded his treatise with an uplifting message of faith in the indomitable nature of the human spirit.

Many witnesses later said they were moved to tears when, without pausing in his powerful oration, Ronzo resolutely refused a windbreaker offered to him by a man in the crowd.

“Please, take a long look and explore the many flaws inherent in the corporeal body; reflect for a moment on how quickly our trivial concerns are brushed aside by decay and change,” Ronzo said as he slowly twirled his pale form before the crowd. “Indeed, entropy and chaos constantly bear down on us at every second of every day. To think, at one moment you can be on your way to take a nice, hot shower, and the next your front door can slam behind you after you thought you heard the dog trying to get in. But do not take these simple facts as a curse; view them as an opportunity, as an affirmation of why it is so important to live, and to live lustily, with fire and passion in your hearts! So please, go home, hold your loved ones tightly, and take careful stock of those things that are truly important to you.”

After enthusiastically cheering and applauding Ronzo as he awkwardly climbed through an unlatched window into his den, several neighbors took time to reflect on the nude man’s sobering yet inspiring disquisition on questions central to the human experience.

“Here I am, acting all high and mighty with my pants and shirt on, and tomorrow morning I could just as easily be grabbing the paper off the stoop and end up locked outdoors, naked as a jaybird,” visibly moved crowd member Chris Dawkins said. “This whole thing really makes you appreciate everything you have, and I know that I for one am not going to take anything for granted anymore.”

“That nude man changed my life,” Dawkins added.

 Nude Man Who Locked Self Out Of House Delivers Moving Treatise On Human Condition To Slowly Gathering Crowd | The Onion – America’s Finest News Source.

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Evolution has given humans a huge advantage over most other animals: middle age – The Washington Post

Posted by Michael B. Calyn in Humanitarian, Opinion, Perspective on April 21, 2012


Evolution has given humans a huge advantage over most other animals: middle age

By David Bainbridge, Published: March 26

As a 42-year-old man born in England, I can expect to live for about another 38 years. In other words, I can no longer claim to be young. I am, without doubt, middle-aged.

To some people that is a depressing realization. We are used to dismissing our fifth and sixth decades as a negative chapter in our lives, perhaps even a cause for crisis. But recent scientific findings have shown just how important middle age is for every one of us, and how crucial it has been to the success of our species. Middle age is not just about wrinkles and worry. It is not about getting old. It is an ancient, pivotal episode in the human life span, preprogrammed into us by natural selection, an exceptional characteristic of an exceptional species.

Compared with other animals, humans have a very unusual pattern to our lives. We take a very long time to grow up, we are long-lived, and most of us stop reproducing halfway through our life span. A few other species have some elements of this pattern, but only humans have distorted the course of their lives in such a dramatic way. Most of that distortion is caused by the evolution of middle age, which adds two decades that most other animals simply do not get.

An important clue that middle age isn’t just the start of a downward spiral is that it does not bear the hallmarks of general, passive decline. Most body systems deteriorate very little during this stage of life. Those that do, deteriorate in ways that are very distinctive, are rarely seen in other species and are often abrupt.

For example, our ability to focus on nearby objects declines in a predictable way: Farsightedness is rare at 35 but universal at 50. Skin elasticity also decreases reliably and often surprisingly abruptly in early middle age. Patterns of fat deposition change in predictable, stereotyped ways. Other systems, notably cognition, barely change.

Each of these changes can be explained in evolutionary terms. In general, it makes sense to invest in the repair and maintenance only of body systems that deliver an immediate fitness benefit — that is, those that help to propagate your genes. As people get older, they no longer need spectacular visual acuity or mate-attracting, unblemished skin. Yet they do need their brains, and that is why we still invest heavily in them during middle age.

As for fat — that wonderfully efficient energy store that saved the lives of many of our hard-pressed ancestors — its role changes when we are no longer gearing up to produce offspring, especially in women. As the years pass, less fat is stored in depots ready to meet the demands of reproduction — the breasts, hips and thighs — or under the skin, where it gives a smooth, youthful appearance. Once our babymaking days are over, fat is stored in larger quantities and also stored more centrally, where it is easiest to carry about. That way, if times get tough we can use it for our own survival, thus freeing up food for our younger relatives.

These changes strongly suggest that middle age is a controlled and preprogrammed process not of decline but of development.

A crowning achievement

When we think of human development, we usually think of the growth of a fetus or the maturation of a child into an adult. Yet the tightly choreographed transition into middle age is a later but equally important stage in which we are each recast into yet another novel form.

That form is one of the most remarkable of all: a resilient, healthy, energy-efficient and productive phase of life that has laid the foundations for our species’s success. Indeed, the multiple roles of middle-aged people in human societies are so complex and intertwined, it could be argued that they are the most impressive living things yet produced by natural selection.

The claim that middle age evolved faces one obvious objection. For any trait to evolve, natural selection has to act on it generation after generation. Yet we often think of prehistoric life as nasty, brutish and short. Surely too few of our ancestors lived beyond age 40 to allow features of modern-day middle age, such as the deposition of a spare tire around the middle, to have been selected for.

This is a misconception. Although average life expectancy may sometimes have been very low, this does not mean that humans rarely reached the age of 40 during the past 100,000 years. Average life expectancy at birth can be a misleading measure; if infant mortality is high, then the average is skewed dramatically downward, even if people who survive to adulthood have a good chance of living a long, healthy life.

The evidence from skeletal remains suggests that our ancestors frequently lived well into middle age and beyond. Certainly many modern hunter-gatherers live well beyond 40.

The probable existence of lots of prehistoric middle-aged people means that natural selection had plenty to work on. Those with beneficial traits would have been more successful at nurturing their children to reproductive age and helping provide for their grandchildren, and hence would have passed on those traits to their descendants. As a result, modern middle age is the result of millennia of natural selection.

Lifelong learning

But why did it evolve as it did? In prehistory, and still today, human survival is entirely dependent on skilled gathering of rare, valuable resources. Humans cooperate, plan and innovate so they can extract what they need from their environment, be that roots to eat, hides to wear or rare metals to coat smartphone touch screens. We lead an energy-intensive, communication-driven, information-rich way of life, and it was the evolution of middle age that supported this.

For example, hunter-gatherer societies often have complex and difficult techniques for finding and processing food that take a long time to learn. There is evidence that many hunter-gatherers take decades to learn their craft and that their resource-acquiring abilities may not peak until they are older than 40.

Gathering sufficient calories is crucial for the success of a human community, especially since young humans take so long to grow up. Indeed, for the early years of life they devour calories without contributing many to the group themselves. Research suggests that a human child requires resources to be provided by multiple adults, almost certainly more than two young parents. For example, a recent study of two groups of South American hunter-gatherers suggested that each couple required the help of an additional 1.3 non-reproducing adults to provide for their children. Thus, middle-aged people may be seen as an essential human innovation, an elite caste of skilled, experienced super-providers on which the rest of us depend.

Culture conveyers

The other key role of middle age is the propagation of information. All animals inherit a great deal of information in their genes; some also learn more as they grow up. Humans have taken this second form of information transfer to a new level. We are born knowing and being able to do almost nothing. Each of us depends on a continuous infusion of skills, knowledge and customs, collectively known as culture, if we are to survive. And the main route by which culture is transferred is by middle-aged people showing and telling their children — as well as the young adults with whom they hunt and gather — what to do.

These two roles of middle-aged humans — as super-providers and master culture-conveyers — continue today. In offices, on construction sites and on sports fields around the world, we see middle-aged people advising and guiding younger adults and sometimes even ordering them about. Middle-aged people can do more, they earn more and, in short, they run the world.

This has left its mark on the human brain. As might be expected of people propagating complex skills, middle-aged people exhibit no dramatic cognitive deterioration. Changes do occur in our thinking abilities, but they are subtle. For example, response speeds slow down over the course of adulthood. However, speed isn’t everything, and it is still debated whether other abilities deteriorate at all.

To carry out their roles in society, middle-aged people need not necessarily think better than younger adults, but they may have to think differently. Indeed, functional brain imaging studies suggest that they sometimes use different brain regions than young people when performing the same tasks, raising the possibility that the nature of thought itself changes as we get older.

An elite club

A central and related feature of middle age is the many healthy years we enjoy after we have stopped reproducing. Female humans are especially unusual animals because they become infertile halfway through their lives, but male humans often also effectively “self-sterilize” by remaining with their post-menopausal partners. Almost no other species does this.

The possible benefits of menopause are not immediately obvious: After all, natural selection favors individuals who rear the most offspring. Yet there are other, rare examples of reproductive cessation in the animal kingdom that may provide some clues. Orcas also undergo menopause, and it is striking how much their lives mirror ours. They are long-lived, slow to develop, intelligent and vocally communicative. They invent and apply a complex array of techniques for communal food acquisition, and they are extremely widespread.

Thus, humans can be seen as members of an elite club of species in which adulthood has become so long and complicated that it can no longer all be given over to breeding. Just like farsightedness and inelastic skin, menopause now appears to be a coordinated, controlled process. It liberates women and their partners from the unremitting demands of producing children and gives them time to do what middle-aged people do best: live long and pamper.

 Evolution has given humans a huge advantage over most other animals: middle age – The Washington Post.

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