The human body is a miraculous machine, but it's not as finely engineered as you might think. In fact, from an engineering standpoint, it's kind of a mess. A good engineer eliminates anything useless or unnecessary to the design. But our bodies have things like the appendix — a wholly pointless organ that, in a best-case scenario, will simply go on being pointless rather than getting infected and trying to kill us.
You have to wonder, why would our bodies have these odd, ill-conceived imperfections?
The answer, of course, is history. The human body is both a machine and a laboratory, undergoing constant, incremental change from generation to generation in a grand genetic experiment. The results of that grand experiment are written on our faces and hidden under our skin. And even the hidden stuff shows up from time to time — in those odd imperfections, like the way a tendon sticks out from your wrist. Our ancestors are always with us, and you can see pieces of them if you know where to look.
It's not always kind — as the shine off my male pattern baldness can attest — but it's wonderfully human.
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