Glob-a-log

Human beings are endlessly creative. From atom bomb to zebra crossings, from Mickey Mouse to venereal diseases - if our brains can dream up stuff, our opposable thumbs can create it before same brains have had the time to think about the consequences of these actions. Which, more than occasionally, lands us in the soup faster than any Jewish mama can serve it.

Some of our inventions are quite harmless – for us, humans, that is. Rodents (and some Jack Russell dogs) might beg to differ, of course:

Once in a generation, an invention comes that is so brilliant, so farsighted, so utterly right, it changes the world and makes you believe that the future will be a sunny, happy and civilised place.

Sticky-backed mouse mats are pure genius. You peel off the paper and lay them like solitaire aces around the house and garden, and, in the morning, there are mice, glued in comically balletic positions.

But you have to get there before the dog. If you don’t, you have mouse stuck to mat stuck to Jack Russell face. It’s like the Tar Baby – both funny and disgusting. Then you just pop them in the bin, except, of course, you can’t dump a live mouse embossed on cardboard into the recycle bin bag.

The Blonde said: “Best to fold them in half and hit them hard with a frying pan.” Sometimes it’s useful having a South African round the house.

Other inventions are less benign. Humans have been dreaming up torture machines from the moment we left the relative safety of the African trees. When you look at the collective efforts of mankind it would seem that about half of the things we’ve invented have to do with all the various interesting ways we can cut up and prepare stuff to eat – while, for the rest, we’ve been racking our collective brains to come up with ever more inventive ways to cut up, maim and kill our fellow humans.

One of the more disgusting torture devices invented last century was, of course, the mobile phone. In the past it was always possible to put at least some distance between yourself and the incredible amount of obnoxious creatures that litter our long-suffering planet. ‘Thanks’ to the mobile phone this has become neigh impossible.

Now, it would seem, our bodies are starting to adapt to this cruel and unusual punishment. Not, as one might think – or at least hope – in rebellion, but in a gutless We obey, oh master˜ fashion:

NEW YORK - If your hipbone is connected to your BlackBerry or your thighbone is connected to your cellphone, those vibrations you’re feeling in the car, in your pajamas, in the shower, may be coming from your headbone.

Many mobile phone addicts and BlackBerry junkies report feeling vibrations when there are none, or feeling as if they’re wearing a cellphone when they’re not.

Anecdotal evidence suggests “people feel the phone is part of them” and “they’re not whole” without their phones, since the phones connect them to the world, said B.J. Fogg, director of research and design at Stanford University’s Persuasive Technology Lab.

“As human beings, we’re so tapped into our community, responsiveness to what’s going on, we’re so attuned to the threat of isolation and rejection, we’d rather make a mistake than miss a call,” he said. “Our brain is going to be scanning and scanning and scanning to see if we have to respond socially to someone.”

In certain circles, phantom vibrations are a point of pride.

Of course, with humans, you do have what is known as the iceberg principle. What you see is not always and not even remotely all of what you get. While half our visible efforts have to do with maiming and cutting up meat & veggies and the rest with doing so to other humans, there’s this huge and mostly invisible collective of efforts, culminating into inventions which, besides eating and killing, represent our third main driving force. Sex.

God (or the Texas police) knows how many different kinds of sex toys there already are in the world but it would probably not be far wrong to assume that they will be with us for longer – and in quite larger numbers – than the trees in the Amazone forests.

Mostly these toys are hidden from view – kept in drawers, or just kept in…

Which is something of a pity, because when they do, from time to time, make a public appearance the results are, more often than not, immensely satisfying…:

CHICAGO - Mardin Azad Amin found himself in a tight squeeze last week when security at O’Hare Airport discovered a suspicious-looking object in his luggage.

So Amin, 29, handled the delicate situation this way: He told security the object was a bomb, Cook County prosecutors said.

The security guard then asked Amin to repeat what he’d said to a supervisor. This time, Amin was chuckling as he spoke, prosecutors said.

In fact, Amin was trying to disguise the fact that the black object - resembling a grenade - was a component for a penis pump.

All the same, Amin was charged with felony disorderly conduct and faces up to three years in prison if convicted, said Andrew Conklin, a spokesman with the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office.

Amin is due in court Wednesday for a preliminary hearing, Conklin said.

Amin eventually told investigators he’d lied about the object’s true use because his mother was standing nearby when the object was discovered and he didn’t want her to know about it, Cook County assistant state’s attorney Lorraine Scaduto said during a bond hearing last week.

Sometimes though human inventiveness leads to pretty weird things – and while it’s true that most people might be more interested in mobile phones (or vibrators) than with saving the fore-mentioned Amazone forests, there are some pretty inventive eco-warriors about as well:

Super trees that suck up and destroy toxic chemicals from the air and water faster than regular trees are the latest creation by scientists at the University of Washington.

When the scientists stick a rabbit gene into poplar trees, the trees become dramatically better at eliminating a dozen kinds of pollutants commonly found on poisoned properties.

However, as I started saying: the human brain has this tendency to come up with things which are, to put it mildly, somewhat ill-considered – and that certainly seems to be the case with these so-called super trees.

For I really would love to ask these clever dick scientists if they truly believe there will be enough room on this planet for us humans…

… and a new kind of poplar trees that breed like bleeding rabbits!

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This entry was posted on Friday, October 26th, 2007 at 21:36 and is filed under Columns. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.