red neck
Is this a bad time to notice how ingenious and utterly impractical a human neck is? The neck allows our head to move a bit beyond the normal 180-degree semicircle (think a normal semicircle and distend it like a tin of rotten tomatoes) and connects the contents of the head to the rest of the body. Think in terms of tubes, you know? Spinal cord, windpipe, oesophagus, jugular. Etc.
But it is SUCH an easy place to grab hold of and snuff a person with. Get someone by the neck and he'll be very faithful to you until you let go. Shoot him there and he'll probably die. Break it and he'll die -- and that's the merciful version of what they say when someone is exhorted to be 'hung by the neck until he's dead'. Cut off blood flow there and he'll die. Cutting off the head takes place at the neck, and it's a good say to make sure that someone's really dead. Moreover, the neck is made of many little pieces, like bone discs and flexible segments and ligaments and cartilage, so that one malfunction could make the lucky person suffer immense pain. Not to mention incapacitation. Even if someone isn't actually doing it to you. Trip over a toy and try.
In light of all this one wonders, if the neck is so damn vulnerable, why people cannot just evolve to grow hair around it -- like wolves, or lions -- just to make it at least look less naked. Men have that option, but it's unhygenic and it's only exclusive to half the population. At the moment all that covers a young neck is a delicate little layer of skin and a similarly delicate little layer of fat (unless it's a fat layer of fat, on which I have no real comment). An old neck is even more vulnerable, especially those where you can see all the little tubes that connect the chin to the collarbone. While it's a good thing that survival in the big city doesn't depend quite so much on how physically safe your neck is compared to in the armpits of the Amazon, for example, if anyone thinks for a moment that I'm letting anything near my neck any time soon he'd better be careful about his own.
But it is SUCH an easy place to grab hold of and snuff a person with. Get someone by the neck and he'll be very faithful to you until you let go. Shoot him there and he'll probably die. Break it and he'll die -- and that's the merciful version of what they say when someone is exhorted to be 'hung by the neck until he's dead'. Cut off blood flow there and he'll die. Cutting off the head takes place at the neck, and it's a good say to make sure that someone's really dead. Moreover, the neck is made of many little pieces, like bone discs and flexible segments and ligaments and cartilage, so that one malfunction could make the lucky person suffer immense pain. Not to mention incapacitation. Even if someone isn't actually doing it to you. Trip over a toy and try.
In light of all this one wonders, if the neck is so damn vulnerable, why people cannot just evolve to grow hair around it -- like wolves, or lions -- just to make it at least look less naked. Men have that option, but it's unhygenic and it's only exclusive to half the population. At the moment all that covers a young neck is a delicate little layer of skin and a similarly delicate little layer of fat (unless it's a fat layer of fat, on which I have no real comment). An old neck is even more vulnerable, especially those where you can see all the little tubes that connect the chin to the collarbone. While it's a good thing that survival in the big city doesn't depend quite so much on how physically safe your neck is compared to in the armpits of the Amazon, for example, if anyone thinks for a moment that I'm letting anything near my neck any time soon he'd better be careful about his own.
posted by the zen thing at 10:10 am
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