Hitting Every Branch on the Way Down

I’m not an anthropologist nor did I stay in a Holiday Inn Express last night but I find the discipline, and all the related ones involving biology, botany, physiology, zoology and the like to be utterly fascinating. In fanciful moments I imagine myself pursuing one or more them as my hobby and making any number of earth-shaking breakthroughs.

Trouble is, of course, they all require a lot of knowledge (none of which I have) combined with a degree of acumen and intelligence both of which are a bridge too far for me. I’m unable to muster the wherewithal to fob off a Piltdown Man, and I’m more likely to offer you Encino Man.

And if you just responded with “well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle!” technically you are correct. And as my brother Kelly, the near-Pope, points out, if we evolved from apes, why are there still apes? And do they have an appendix, or just a foreword and a glossary?

I wonder anew about all of this after coming across this item, buried inside of a Google news feed over the weekend. All this time I’ve been blaming cosmic misfortune and genetic inheritance. And it turns out, it’s just good old-fashioned science. I’d ask for a kiss for luck, but I’ve misplaced my mouth guard.
-bill kenny