Wednesday, November 13, 2013
Dawkins honey trap
What happened was that Dicky attempted to board a flight with a pot of honey in his hand luggage. The pot was discovered in a search and confiscated on the grounds that it might have been used to make a bomb. This was obviously an overreaction. Dicky may be a scientist, but he knows next to nothing about explosives. If he tried to make a honey-bomb, he would struggle to get a fart noise out of it. Greatly cheesed off by the incident, he tweeted the following indignant message:
Bin Laden has won, in airports of the world every day. I had a little jar of honey, now thrown away by rule-bound dundridges. STUPID waste.
A lot of people then poured scorn on Dicky, pointing out that bin Laden was the instigator of more outrageous deeds than depriving an atheist of his honey. This loss, however regrettable, would not go down in the annals of jihad as a great victory over the infidel. Dicky attempted to justify himself in another truculent tweet, but no one was buying it. The stain of ignominy hung over his head like a purple toupee.
As an old friend of Dicky, I feel honour-bound to defend him. How would you like it if someone took your honey? Obtaining the heavenly syrup is no easy matter, because the bees who hoard it behave like maniacs if you nick some. The fear of being terrorised by those fanatical insects deters us gorillas from even trying to harvest wild honey. I get mine from a pot, like Dicky.
It follows that confiscating someone’s honey can be construed as a victory for bee terrorism. Bin Laden, to my knowledge, was never stung by a bee. He must have seen them as potential allies in his war against the West. I doubt any bees actually joined Al Qaeda, because most of them are female and would reject the idea of wearing a burka and playing second fiddle to the men. But tactical alliances between strange bedfellows can occur – never forget the Hitler-Stalin pact of 1939.
I don’t suppose my arguments will convince people who don’t like Dicky. A lot of his detractors will never forgive him for refuting their silly fairy tale about Adam and Eve. It’s clearly nonsense to suppose that the entire human race is descended from a pair of naked idiots who were deceived by a snake. Humans have inherited a natural wariness of those sly creatures from their ape ancestors, who never did anything on the advice of a serpent. Instead of sneering at Dicky for making an injudicious tweet, they should listen to his truthful words about the origins of humanity. And after doing that, they should grovel at his feet and sniff his toe-jam.
Labels: Adam and Eve, Bees, bin Laden, Dicky Dawkins, Honey, snakes
Wednesday, September 25, 2013
Only 10 scents
Scientists are claiming that the human nose is only capable of distinguishing 10 different smells. If you look at their list, you will find that “sweaty armpit” and “farty poo-poo” are curiously absent.
My gorilla nose grew finely attuned to human odours in my circus days. I remember inhaling the aromas of the all-girl acrobat team, hot and sweaty after a training session. They were eager to hit the showers, but I asked them to hang around for a minute so I could sniff them discreetly.
“You smell like female gorillas who’ve returned to camp after a hard day of baboon-wrestling,” I remarked. On seeing their disgruntled faces, I added: “which is a fragrance that brings rapture to my grateful nose.”
Pheromones were not much discussed in those days, so few women knew they gave off chemical signals that could make a man friskier than a billy goat. My friend Smacker Ramrod, the circus vet, was always keen to sniff the secretions of the women he romanced:
“I take them out dancing and we boogie until the witching hour,” he explained. “If a woman shakes her bottom for long enough, her natural scent will overwhelm any perfume she’s wearing.”
I had no reason to doubt his word on this matter.
Maybe a knowledge of pheromones would be useful to prostitutes in Switzerland who are offering their services in sex boxes along the highway. It seems their venture has had a “modest start”, which is business-speak for “Where are the ruddy customers?” Punters might be shunning them for reasons other than a lack of olfactory stimulation, of course. The boxes look very short of cover to me, and a prankster could easily stick his face into one at a critical moment, shouting an exhortation such as “Bravo Sir! Give it to her amidships!” I suspect this would dampen the biological urges of the most incorrigible whoremonger.
A man who ought to know something about biological urges is my friend Dicky Dawkins, the evolutionary theorist. I was delighted to discover that a new book of his has recently been published. This one is an autobiography of his early life, rather than the usual guff about selfish genes and the selection of the naturally fit. It is undoubtedly a literary masterpiece and I shall order a copy forthwith.
My only qualm is that the title of the book is “An Appetite for Wonder, The Makings of a Scientist”, which is ridiculously affected. People browsing in a bookshop might conclude, incorrectly, that the author is a pompous old fart. I blame the publisher. They should have insisted that the book was called “Young Dicky”, which I’m sure you’ll agree is a far catchier title than the one selected. This lack of marketing nous might reduce sales by half a million, which is not what Dicky needs with retirement looming. I think I’ll send him an email advising him to consult me before publishing a work intended for the mass market.
Labels: body odour, Dicky Dawkins, pheromones, prostitutes, sex boxes
Wednesday, June 01, 2011
Powerful women
Labels: Angela Merkel, Dicky Dawkins, Hillary Clinton, Julia Gillard
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
The Beijing thing
Everyone at the safari camp is following the Olympics on TV, but the whole thing leaves me cold. In the few events I’ve watched I couldn’t recognise a single face. How am I supposed to get excited about a bunch of nobodies competing against each other? It’s a bit like going to see an art-house movie with no big stars – you appreciate the skill of the director, but don’t really care what happens to the characters. Flags and national pride mean nothing to me.
If I were in charge of the Olympics, I‘d invite Mr Becks to participate in a delegation of one. He could represent Toontown so all the kiddies would cheer him on. After the recent ego-massage he got from Eva Mendes, he ought to be on top form in the high jump. The pouting sex kitten admitted in a newspaper interview that she would fancy Becks if he smelled of “old socks and bad cheese”. I would have thought the aroma would suit him rather better than aftershave or cologne, but apparently many women have delicate olfactory organs. I can’t help wondering what Victoria Spice will make of this brazen attempt to seduce her husband. Gorilla Bananas is no agitator, but even he can sniff a catfight in the air. Perhaps the ladies should go to Beijing and settle their differences in the wrestling competition.
One group of athletes I will be watching closely is the female sprinters. In truth, their bodies fascinate me – tight bottoms, flat bellies and small breasts. Although these features are quite admirable from a certain angle, they’re not the ideal combination for producing children, and therein lies the quandary. Why would such traits have survived in the female stock if they were unsuitable for breeding? On first sight, it’s not something that chimes with the ideas of Charles Darwin, the great father of ape brotherhood.
The first thing I do, when faced with a puzzle like this, is send an e-mail to Professor Dawkins. If you’re wondering why he’d bother to answer my queries, please note that Dicky has been in my debt ever since I saved his life as he dangled precariously above the rapids of the Congo. He also knows that I visit England from time to time and might accost him in Oxford if he displeased me. I certainly wouldn’t rule out interrupting one of his lectures, if he started getting sniffy, and giving his head a good rub in front of his students.
So I fired off an e-mail and got a long reply from Dicky, which I won’t reproduce in full. The gist of his argument is that women haven’t evolved solely as baby machines – in order to reproduce successfully, they had to live long enough to bear a goodly brood and nurture them to adolescence. In the context of mankind’s ancestors in the African plains, this required skills like running away from predators at high speed, hence the advantage of the sprinter’s build. There’s no point trying to have babies if a lion has chewed your head off.
Had Dicky stopped there, I would have accepted the logic of his point and held my peace. But he then went on to create a second line of defence, arguing that even if having a small arse makes no sense in biological terms, humans can brainwash themselves with “memes”. These things are like computer viruses, he asserted, infecting the human brain and making people disobey their selfish genes. Thus a woman might come to believe that having a tight little tush was desirable for its own sake.
I don’t know about you, but this sounds suspiciously like a “get-out-of-gaol” card to me. He seems to be saying that even if natural selection doesn’t work, it’s all the fault of those wretched “memes” rather than the theory itself. I’m in two minds whether to send him a scornful e-mail or give his head a good rubbing the next time I’m in England. What do you think?
Labels: Dicky Dawkins, Eva Mendes, Female sprinters
Friday, September 14, 2007
A visit to the other side
A man at the safari camp recounts his near-death experience. As doctors work frantically to resuscitate him, he floats out of his body, hovering like a butterfly, watching them pound his chest. He re-enters through his navel and travels down a dark tunnel towards a bright light. It feels good, like the release of tension from a bowel movement. On arriving at his destination, he is welcomed by George Burns in a tuxedo, who introduces him to his deceased relatives and the Marx Brothers. They all sit down to a tea party in the balmy sunshine of a summer afternoon. The conversation sparkles and no one argues or is boring. Groucho is warm and sincere; Zeppo is funny; Harpo is not annoying.
A page boy then rushes to the table with a message for Mr Burns, who reads the note while puffing on his cigar.
“There’s been a mistake in the diary, kiddo.” says George. “You’re not due yet, so you’ll have to go back.”
Mr Burns blows a smoke ring and the man finds himself hurtling back down the tunnel. It feels bad, like the build up of tension from a suppository. He is re-united with his body at the very moment the doctors restore his pulse. He emerges from his coma a day later, with the memory of his experience intact.
The other guests are enthralled by his account.
“I wish I could have a near-death experience!” sighs a dewy-eyed woman.
The man smiles at her benignly. “After my trip to the other side I lost all fear of death,” he says. “It totally changed my life and made me a better person.”
I purse my lips and frown. There’s no harm in enjoying these mystical events, but I draw the line at encouraging others to flirt with the Grim Reaper. That often leads to an actual death experience, from which the possibilities of leading a better life on Earth are remote. I judge that a dose of scepticism would be in order.
“I’m sure it’s almost worth dying to experience such a thing,” I remark. “Many have done so, of course. Scientists say that the last flickerings of an expiring brain produce these effects. If so, it sounds like a most pleasant finale to one’s mortal existence.”
“Are you saying it was all a hallucination, Mr Bananas?” asks the man.
“Indeed not!” I reply. “We gorillas avoid metaphysical speculation. I’m just telling you what fellows like Dicky Dawkins think.”
“I wonder what Mr Dawkins would do if he were having a near-death experience,” muses the man with a chuckle.
“Knowing Dicky as I do, I expect he would stubbornly refuse to play along,” I answer. “They’d have to drag him along the tunnel and when he got to the tea party he’d make his excuses and leave before the whole thing vanished into oblivion.”
“It sounds as if I escaped from that heavenly place in the nick of time,” quips the man. “How long do you suppose one has before the afterlife is revealed as a hoax and the sky falls in?”
“That’s a very good question,” I remark, stroking my neck in reflection. “I’ll put it to Dicky the next time I see him.”
I return to the jungle next day, musing on the tea-party question. It does seem a bit odd that one minute you’d be happily chatting to the Marx brothers and the next minute everything disappears into nothingness. And how do we know that tea-party time moves at the same rate as Earth time? What if the final moment of Earthly life is experienced as an infinitely long tea party of bliss, if such a thing were possible? Dicky Dawkins must deal with these legitimate questions before fobbing people off with his half-baked theories.
Labels: Dicky Dawkins, Marx brothers, Near-death experience
