The Greeks were obsessed with the mathematically perfect body. But unfortunately for anyone chasing that ideal, we were designed not by Pygmalion, the mythical sculptor who carved a flawless woman, but by MacGyver. Evolution constructed our bodies with the biological equivalent of duct tape and lumber scraps. And the only way to refine the form (short of an asteroid strike or nuclear detonation to wipe clean the slate) is to jerry-rig the current model. "Evolution doesn't produce perfection," explains Alan Mann, a physical anthropologist at Princeton University. "It produces function."
With that in mind, I surveyed anatomists and biologists to compile a punch list for the human body, just as you'd do before buying a house. Get out your checkbook. This one's a fixer-upper.
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http://nautil.us/issue/24/error/top-10-design-flaws-in-the-human-body?
Tuesday, March 29, 2016
Monday, March 28, 2016
The perils of being manly - The Washington Post
A few years ago, I found myself in the emergency room. I had hurt my ankle playing basketball, and the pain was unbearable. I remember sitting there, waiting for someone to see me, thinking to myself that it must be broken, or fractured, or something similarly severe.
"I'm going touch your ankle in a few places," the doctor said shortly after I was brought in. "I want you to describe the pain on a scale from 1 to 10."
He pressed down onto various parts of my foot, each one more painful than the last. And yet, the numbers I uttered barely nudged, moving up from 5 to 5.5, and then from 5.5 to 6. I never said anything higher than that.
When the X-rays were in, the doctor showed them to me and told me two things. The first was that I had fractured my ankle. The second was that there was no way the pain was less than an 8. He joked that if I had sought medical care somewhere else, somewhere less precautionary in its practices, I might have been sent away with a prescription for a mild painkiller and a bag of ice.
Machismo, the driver of so many questionable decisions made by men, is a fickle thing. Sometimes, a little bit of it — a tinge of toughness — doesn't seem to hurt. In sport, for instance. Or maybe negotiation. Other times, it turns out, it can do more harm than good. Like, say, when it comes to caring for one's health.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/03/28/what-happens-when-a-manly-man-has-to-go-to-the-doctor/
"I'm going touch your ankle in a few places," the doctor said shortly after I was brought in. "I want you to describe the pain on a scale from 1 to 10."
He pressed down onto various parts of my foot, each one more painful than the last. And yet, the numbers I uttered barely nudged, moving up from 5 to 5.5, and then from 5.5 to 6. I never said anything higher than that.
When the X-rays were in, the doctor showed them to me and told me two things. The first was that I had fractured my ankle. The second was that there was no way the pain was less than an 8. He joked that if I had sought medical care somewhere else, somewhere less precautionary in its practices, I might have been sent away with a prescription for a mild painkiller and a bag of ice.
Machismo, the driver of so many questionable decisions made by men, is a fickle thing. Sometimes, a little bit of it — a tinge of toughness — doesn't seem to hurt. In sport, for instance. Or maybe negotiation. Other times, it turns out, it can do more harm than good. Like, say, when it comes to caring for one's health.
More ...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/03/28/what-happens-when-a-manly-man-has-to-go-to-the-doctor/
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