One of the few television shows that broadcasts most of its material in English is the National Geographic channel (very similar to Discovery and Animal Planet).
Last night I was flipping between it and that incredibly awesome Sandra Bullock film: The Net.
Anyways, this episode on NG dealt with sexual selection in the age of cosmetic surgery. While I’m not saying you shouldn’t go under the knife, the researchers noted that because plastic surgeons alter us to look super sexy, the ugly genes are still passed on. (see: professor Randy Thornhill of the University of New Mexico in “An In-depth Look into Sexual Attractiveness in Humans”)
For instance, while not everyone in LA with fake boobs fell off the ugly tree, the secondary sexual traits (like big lips and mammaries) send a false positive to men. Because nature has trained us men to look at certain body parts for strong and healthy partners, the beauty is literally skin deep. As a result, the guys that end up fathering children with these unnatural beauties could ultimately create a generation of uglier than normal kids.
While cosmetic surgeons will certainly be able to tune their progeny up to snuff, everyone is going to have to wait until genetic engineers figure out a way to replace the fugly parts of the genome with the fantabulous.
Note: if you are debating whether or not to spend money to look extra sexy, I’d err on the side of sexiness. Jameson might be fake but she’s definitely not ugly.
See also: Heikegani crab
Some odd things I’ve seen and experienced here in Kaohsiung:
- Although the behavior can be found in most of the developing world, every day I see up to 5 people crammed on a little scooter. Talk about putting all eggs in one basket. With any luck the Tata Nano will help bring safety to families with modest budgets.
- A 20 story commercial building was unable to find any tenets, except a rock climbing entrepreneur. They turned the bottom 4 floors into dozens of gigantic climbing walls. While I’m hardly the expert in this area, I’ve climbed numerous walls in my day and many of these walls are creatively steep. Perhaps someone can turn the top floors into a urban paintball arena.
- Hair style is even nuttier than Seoul. Both guys and girls look as if they were electrocuted yet this is the super cool sexy look. Thus, clubs and bars are quite the sight to see for Westerners. Oh, and speaking of which, one of the more popular clubs (”Dreams“) has odd contests. For instance, two weeks ago they sponsored a club wide arm-wrestling match at around 2am. Weird. Then this last weekend they put together a huge lap dance competition. While I’m not complaining it is weird to see a normal hip hop club turn into something you might see in one of those sappy high school drama movies.
- I’ve woken up to several earthquakes. Not big ones, but I could feel my building sway back and forth. My girlfriend slept through one and thought I was making it up. But an observatory in HK recorded the same phenomenon.
- Feral dogs run around all over the place looking for food and they are surprisingly friendly, letting you pet them. They even get along with some of the monkeys up in the hills. It was kind of weird to see monkeys walking around hiking trails, but they are used to both humans and dogs as well. Here is a photo of what they look like (the place is on the west side near the straits and is called Monkey Mountain). Here is a video of some of the trails (fast forward 25 seconds).
- Here are some other observations I’ve written elsewhere: 1 2
