March 18, 2012

Creating Homo maritimus

THE TIME HAS COME to create a new species — a species of sailors.  And to this end I must insist that all you existing sailors cease having sex with landlubbers.

Here's the point: According to Guy Murchie, author of that extraordinary book The Seven Mysteries of Life (Mariner Books), mankind as a species is about to die out. He states: "Out of billions of species estimated to have foliated Earth in her five million years of evolution to date, only a couple of million exist at any one time because each lasts hardly a fleeting million years before it finally branches, withers, or in some way loses its identity."


In fact, 99.9 percent of all the species who ever lived on Earth have already disappeared, leaving only the most meager fossilized traces to prove it.


Now it just so happens that it is about one million years ago that man became definable as a separate species. Homo sapiens was just learning how to talk and solve such problems as how to keep a fire lit. "His numbers were small," says Murchie, "somewhere around 100,000 inquisitive furry creatures . . ."  Our numbers have increased many times since then, but the writing is on the wall.  Our time is up.  We've had our million years of fun. If we don't wither, we'll blow ourselves out of existence with nuclear bombs.


However, it occurred to me that a species is  a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring. If we can start a new species of sailors, Homo maritimus, say, we will have another million years to play with while the landlubbers wither away into oblivion.


The mistake sailors made in the past was to mingle with the doomed landlubbers. That needs to cease immediately. So stop having sex with non-sailors. Nature will then work her magic and find a way to prevent your wasting your superior seed on non-sailors, and, in turn, prevent them from forcing their inferior seed on us during their declining days. The time will come when fading landlubbers will no longer be able to breed with the brave new species of Homo maritimus, just as the mule is no longer able to breed with the horse or the donkey, the very species that produced him.


It is your job to save mankind from the kind of fate Mr. Murchie anticipates.  It is, indeed, your task to foster a new, improved species of mankind while the old, inferior one completes its fleeting million years. And the way you do this is to stop having sex with landlubbers. Instead, find a fellow sailor and make love to him.  Or her. There should be no resistance once you've explained that the future of mankind is at stake.


Today's Thought
Sex, a great and mysterious motive force in human life, has indisputably been a subject of absorbing interest to mankind through the ages.
— William J. Brennan,  former Associate Justice, U.S. Supreme Court 


Tailpiece
"Good morning, madam, can I help you?"
"Don't you call me madam my good man. I'm a miss. And as for the goodness of the morning, I didn't come here to waste the day in idle prattle with a loudmouth like you. I came here to purchase rat poison."
"Yes, madam. Shall I wrap it or will you eat it now?"

(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

5 comments:

  1. I'm doing my part. Held out on marriage until I found a sailoress. =)

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  2. A couple of things. First, anotomically modern humans only go back about 100,000 years. But even if we were older, extinction isn't a matter of timing, as if every species had a clock ticking away inside it; it's simply that, amid all the changes and chances of life, something is bound to get you eventually. Whose to say that Homo maritimus wouldn't go first?

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  3. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  4. I wish I had been enlighten to this some years ago. It seems I've been and walked on the dark side for years and unfortunately it's too late for me. But, I will pass the word along!

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  5. Sorry Jack, I deleted your original comment by accident. Finger trouble combined with brain trouble. But here it is again.
    John V.

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