Miljenko's Blog

For some time now I have been wondering how certain species managed to not become extinct when some of their "features" or ways of existing are so clearly sub-optimal. Earth in general is not a very hospitable place with something on the order of 95% of all species that ever existed being extinct by now. So how is it then that camels or salmon have managed to avoid that fate given some obvious, what should be fatal, flaws? Take camels for example. Yes, I know about their humps storing water or whatever that allows them to go a long time without food and water and all that. Seems like a useful evolutionary adaptation but you don't have to be a mechanical engineer to take one look at a camel walking or God forbid running to see that there is clearly something wrong with that basic design. If you tried to on purpose come up with a "design" of a quadruped animal that is maximally inefficient you would just about draw a camel. There is nothing graceful,fast or effort

I am getting a little bit tired of the whole "sex addiction" racket out there. Sex is not an addiction any more than skating backwards is. It may feel good to have air blowing up your behind (or to have sex) but that does not an addiction make. And if you feel you are addicted, just stop skating backwards! The problem is that calling it an "addiction" trivializes addictions which are real and substantive. The operative word being "substantive" meaning there is a substance involved (although this may not be the correct usage of the term substantive). With real addictions be it alcohol, drugs, nicotine or prescription drugs, there is always a substance at work which makes us feel a certain way ("good" or at least "better" than without it). From that emerges an addiction to that "feel good effect" and in that sense, yes, food can be an addiction also but sex cannot. Of course sex feels good, it is supposed to and without it feeli