pierced by a Gordian sewer ….

February 2, 2007

Well this extract from Neal Stephenson’s wonderful Cryptonomicon puts the human race firmly in in its place:

The room contained a few dozen living human bodies, each one a big sack of guts and fluids so highly compressed that it will squirt for a few yards when pierced. Each one is built around an armature of 206 bones connected to each other by notoriously fault-prone joints that are given to obnoxious creaking, grinding, and popping noises when they are in other than pristine condition. This structure is draped with throbbing steak, inflated with clenching air sacks, and pierced by a Gordian sewer filling with burbling acid and compressed gas and asquirt with vile enzymes and solvents produced by many dark, gamy nuggets of genetically programmed meat strung along its length. Slugs of dissolving food are forced down this sloppy labyrinth by sterilized convulsions, decaying into gas, liquid, and solid matter which must be regularly vented to the outside world lest the owner go toxic and drop dead. Spherical, gel packed cameras swivel in mucas-greased ball joints. Infinite phalanxes of cilia beat back invading particles, encapsulate them in goo for later disposal. In each body a centrally located muscle flails away at an external circulating torrent of pressurized gravity.

Now what does that say for intelligent design?

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