dinoiii
October 27th, 2006, 05:51 PM
Dinoiii's Rant IX: Vaccination Proclamation
Note: Rants stem from the sick, twisted depths of what I like to call the human mind. Contorted as such sometimes, they have been given high praise.
Introduction
Kurt Vnnegut give a definition from his childhood of a "twerp" as someone who wears false teeth between the cheeks of his ass. Vonnegut asks why anyone would wear false teeth between the cheeks of his backside. He answers that they're worn to bite the buttons off the back seats in taxi cabs. Then he gets asked, "what buttons?"
"Ahh, see how successful they have been?" is the answer. Like the smallpox vaccine has done for smallpox, the twerps have successfully eradicated their targets from the face of the earth. But children are still vaccinated against smallpox, even though there is next to no chance of anyone's being exposed to it. It seems prudent to purchase the insurance a vaccination provides when its cost is so low and the incurrance of a loss is so devastating.
And there are still twerps. Is there a danger of a recurrence of taxi-seat buttons? Not a serious one surely.
Significance
In the spirit of a later day Darwin, one may ask what is the adaptive significance of twerps in the face of the loss of their apparent purpose, their environmental niche? Perhaps the answer lies in the boradening of the niche to include buttons other than those in the back seats of taxi cabs.
I've researched this hypothesis and find that manufacturers put buttons in on the seats of many conveyances. For example, their sewn into golf carts, and politicians' limosines are studded with them as they come from the factory.
A lawyer can't buy a car without spare buttons, else, he'll chew right through to the pavement. The Bar Association and the Highway Department both require it.
Extra buttons are a "perk" along with well-windowed and furnished corner offices, reserved parking spaces, and protective secretaries for those who reach the highest rungs of university and other administrations.
You probably have your own candidates. Check their seats. Come to think of it, my car doesn't have any buttons. Did it ever, I wonder? What are those little dimples?
The Supplement Industry Connection
We have many products that come and go and/or are fast-replaced or made better - at a point giving way to complete eradication of its immediate predecessor.
Take the replacement of glutamine with glutamine peptides, for instance or even the fancier ethyl ester.
Then there's the very infamous creatine monohydrate that evolved to give us Di- and Tri- Creatine Malate forms to be later succeeded by the Kre-Alkalines and Titrate varieties and finally ending up a familiar end product - the ethyl ester once again.
The question that remains is whether or not the earlier forms are truly inferior to the subsequent evolved product or whether this simply represents the business-savvy product life cycle demands being met by various supplement companies? Unfortuantely, the answer to this age-old question, I can not give you because the muscle mass promised by ad campaigns for such products too has seemingly wound up vanquished from millions of users - and so it goes the way of buttons on the seats of taxi-cabs.
I will live to rant again
D_
Note: Rants stem from the sick, twisted depths of what I like to call the human mind. Contorted as such sometimes, they have been given high praise.
Introduction
Kurt Vnnegut give a definition from his childhood of a "twerp" as someone who wears false teeth between the cheeks of his ass. Vonnegut asks why anyone would wear false teeth between the cheeks of his backside. He answers that they're worn to bite the buttons off the back seats in taxi cabs. Then he gets asked, "what buttons?"
"Ahh, see how successful they have been?" is the answer. Like the smallpox vaccine has done for smallpox, the twerps have successfully eradicated their targets from the face of the earth. But children are still vaccinated against smallpox, even though there is next to no chance of anyone's being exposed to it. It seems prudent to purchase the insurance a vaccination provides when its cost is so low and the incurrance of a loss is so devastating.
And there are still twerps. Is there a danger of a recurrence of taxi-seat buttons? Not a serious one surely.
Significance
In the spirit of a later day Darwin, one may ask what is the adaptive significance of twerps in the face of the loss of their apparent purpose, their environmental niche? Perhaps the answer lies in the boradening of the niche to include buttons other than those in the back seats of taxi cabs.
I've researched this hypothesis and find that manufacturers put buttons in on the seats of many conveyances. For example, their sewn into golf carts, and politicians' limosines are studded with them as they come from the factory.
A lawyer can't buy a car without spare buttons, else, he'll chew right through to the pavement. The Bar Association and the Highway Department both require it.
Extra buttons are a "perk" along with well-windowed and furnished corner offices, reserved parking spaces, and protective secretaries for those who reach the highest rungs of university and other administrations.
You probably have your own candidates. Check their seats. Come to think of it, my car doesn't have any buttons. Did it ever, I wonder? What are those little dimples?
The Supplement Industry Connection
We have many products that come and go and/or are fast-replaced or made better - at a point giving way to complete eradication of its immediate predecessor.
Take the replacement of glutamine with glutamine peptides, for instance or even the fancier ethyl ester.
Then there's the very infamous creatine monohydrate that evolved to give us Di- and Tri- Creatine Malate forms to be later succeeded by the Kre-Alkalines and Titrate varieties and finally ending up a familiar end product - the ethyl ester once again.
The question that remains is whether or not the earlier forms are truly inferior to the subsequent evolved product or whether this simply represents the business-savvy product life cycle demands being met by various supplement companies? Unfortuantely, the answer to this age-old question, I can not give you because the muscle mass promised by ad campaigns for such products too has seemingly wound up vanquished from millions of users - and so it goes the way of buttons on the seats of taxi-cabs.
I will live to rant again
D_