You see, his book is more than 500 pages long. I just made an experiment, and one page requires almost exactly 3 minutes of my time to read it attentively, in fact, even a bit more. Yes, sure, speed reading would help, but that’s not what you want reading a really good book. 500 pages to 3 minutes make 1500 minutes to read it just once cover to cover. If you floundered arithmetic classes in your elementary school, let me tell you, that’s 25 hours of your time. Or, more than 3 work days of intensive work without interruptions, not even bathroom breaks! In reality, that’s more like a week of work.

It’s really odd, but somehow the American public treats buying books the same way as buying beef, pork or potatoes – by the pound. Somehow, the thicker the book is, the better it sells and the higher price you can demand. Isn’t it odd?

Think about it. A 500 pages book requires a work week of my time. I don’t know about your income, so lets assume something average. According to the U.S. Census Bureau average (mean) personal income for both sexes age 25-64 is about $44K, or about $844/week. Tony Robbins’ book I mentioned above has a very moderate price of $16, but once you factor in the time you have to spend readings it, the cost of ownership goes up to $860. Really. $16 for the book and $844 for the time you spend reading it. That’s what an average employer pays to an average employee for a week of work. And you spend a week of work to read that book. That defines the real cost of the book.

Imagine that you can buy a book and magically instantly know everything that was in the book. Would it be worth $860? Still, when you buy a $16 book with 500 pages, that’s what your expectations are. Weird, isn’t it?

It’s odd, but when the public buys books by the pound, the publishers have no other way to go, but to comply and produce large books. The result? The market dominated by the “books by the pound”. The result? ROI (Return-On-Investment) for book readers falling down. The next result? Book reading is not treated socially as an attractive career proposition or real self-improvement.

If this trend will continue, the American public will become the least literate in the world (if it’s not already), and for good reason! It will be deprived of high quality literature by the invisible force of the market, so reading won’t bring the benefits anymore, it once did. Can something be done about it? I don’t know… When I write my books, I am conscious of readers’ time, and my books are on average 200 pages only. However, I can tell you first hand, if I’d want them to be successful, I’d have to beef them up at least twice or more before any established publisher will even consider it.

Actually, I won’t speak as much in the defense of it, as to criticize the critics of the intelligent design theory. After all, creationists are believers, for them their Faith is a good enough argument, but their critics pride themselves in being logical, and that’s not what they do when it comes to criticizing creationism and intelligent design.

Let’s see, when they argue against the intelligent design theory, their main argument is: “Look at human body! There are so many ultimately stupid design problems in it, that it’s simply incomprehensible that it may be designed by an intelligent being!”

Do you see the assumption here? The assumption here is that intelligent beings cannot create stupid design. Have you ever used PC software?

See? When things like that happen, it’s no use to speculate that maybe some program or operating system evolved from a random set of bytes. It’s much better just go and ask those who did that design, and in many cases, they may just tell you what was the reason for doing it that particular way. Right?

Right. So, without much further ado, let me pass the word to somebody, who is highly qualified to answer that simple question: “Why human body design sucks?”

Allow me to present interview with none the less but St. Peter himself. I know, it sounds crazy, but here is what I will do. I am writing the question on the screen, and then I’ll try to serve as a medium. Hopefully, he’ll come and answer by typing it on my notebook keyboard? So, here it is, let’s do it!

WHY HUMAN BODY DESIGN SUCKS?

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Hi, guys, Peter is here. I get it, you have a question to ask, glad to help. Just a fair note, I don’t have much time, so let’s get straight to it. So, here is the question: (reading) Why human body design… sucks???

Ok, let’s clear one thing first, we don’t use that kind of the language up there. And, let’s be fair, human body is not that bad, actually, it’s great. I bet most of you enjoy your bodies most of the time, right? Of course right.

And look at the history. You know, when we first created this product, we had a vision: “Human for every bedroom.” Actually, that time it was “every bedcave”, but we run out of caves almost instantly. It was a hit! Consider this: now you cannot build enough bedrooms for every human! It was a runaway product. We were so successful, we were sued by hell for monopoly! And, you know, they’ve got all the lawyers…

So, first thing first, I disagree. Human body design is great. However, I admit, it’s not perfect. Hey, nothing in this world is perfect. HE (pointing up) is perfect, nothing in this world is, human body design included. However, there is a good reason for that. Let’s check a couple of common complaints or problems.

You probably sit a lot, and when humans sit a lot, they get health problems: back problems, neck problems, digestive problems, eyesight problems… you name it! Yes, these are all legitimate and serious issues. But you know what? Sitting was never a customer scenario!

I can tell you, there were three main customer scenarios for the human body.

Scenario #1: Human sleeping in African savanna, lying on the ground. Lying, not sitting. You know, there were no couches and chairs in African savanna that time, in fact, not that many couches are there today either.

Scenario #2: Human walks in African savanna picking up berries, insects and whatever he can eat. Again, walking, not sitting. And…

Scenario #3: Human tries to run from a jaguar in an African savanna. Again, running, not sitting.

Yes, yes, I know, jaguars are in Latin America, not in Africa. There is a good reason for that too. You see, the team that designed jaguar, frankly, kicked ass. So we just could not deploy both species in the same locale and had to push jaguars to another hemisphere.

Anyway, you see? There was a reason. Sitting was never a customer scenario! It was completely incomprehensible to think that you will be spending your lives sitting in front of those stupid electronic devices! Apparently, that’s what you do now, but that was not what you were supposed to do! And, yes, it creates problems, but what do you want us to do now? Guys, human body is now a legacy platform! Do you know what kind of compatibility problems will we have if we try to fix that now???

Another favorite example of evolutionists is that “eye thing” with the blind spot and nerves connected to the front of the photo-receptive surface instead of the back of it. Yes, it looks real stupid. But let me ask you one question: did you ever worked with a partner team? We did. We had one partner team delivering the photo-receptive surface, and another team delivering network cables. And you know what?

Network cable guys slipped their schedule!

So, what would you do in our place? It was a time driven release!

Yeah, the sixth day. We had to deliver human by the end of the day on Friday! Have you ever delivered anything intelligent by the end of the day on Friday?

Well, anyway, so we mounted the photo-receptive surface without the cables first, and then the test team found that the damn thing still cannot see! Then we pushed on the network cable guys, forced them to deliver, and then we’ve got a problem: how to connect all these cables without damaging the photo-receptive surface?

You should thank Gabriel. This guy is a genius! He put a small hole in the back of the eye and he wired all that cables through it without ever touching the photo-receptive surface! Thanks to him you have just one small blind spot in your eyesight, not a lot of elves’ footprints all over your vision area!

Oops… beeper, the duty calls, have to go. Anyway, really glad to help, love you guys, feel free to drop by any time… a-a… Actually, on a second thought, no hurry. See you in several decades, use them well!

* * *

Ok,… did I missed something? Oh, I see I did. Good! I hope you all see now why intelligent design is a completely plausible theory.

P.S. Kidding aside, I have a lot of respect to both believers and non-believers. IMHO, the noble quest of Christians to bring Love to people lives is only comparable to the noble quest of atheists to bring the Reason. We need both, we need both badly. Pity, both sides fail in their missions. Especially, when treating each other.

Surprisingly, the answer may lay in the writings of such an unexpected character as Carl Marx. No, no, not about exploitation and class struggle, though it feels pretty close when you get another rejection slip, but in his theory on economy. His theory is very much a Darwinian one: there are jobs, there are people; there are no jobs, there are no people. In XVII Century England there were a lot of “jobs” for peasants, so there were a lot of peasants. In XVIII century England there were no jobs for peasants, but a lot of jobs for industrial workers. So, a lot of peasants went from peasantry in the countryside to cities to become a proletariat, the new working class. Makes sense, doesn’t it? So, what kind of “jobs” are out there for writers?

Consider what any course on writing says today. “Think: What does the editor want? He wants you to entice readers to buy the magazine (that nobody really wants to read!) He wants you to attract the readers.” You see? If you are a “successful writer”, you are not exactly a writer. You are on the marketing team! Lord Byron and Leo Tolstoy were writing to people’s souls, and they put their souls into their writing, just like you do. The problem is, the editor is not you-know-who, and he does not want your soul. He wants to sell his magazine. He wants money!

So, essentially, when we say “writing”, we are talking about two completely different professions. One is about an ability to tell people what you want to tell and — the really important part — having something important to tell people. That’s Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Lord Byron, and Count Leo Tolstoy. Or, you are a freelancer, marketing consultant, expert at putting the words into a publication that make it sell. After it’s sold, it might as well hang from a nail in a restroom, it does not matter anymore. It does not matter as long as it sells.

So, what kind of an author are you? In the end, it’s your choice. By the way, if you consider the number of copies that Lord Byron sold in his lifetime… well, he would find a problem looking for a publisher today! What can I say? You are in good company.

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P.S. This is a repost of my March 2007 article from my old free blog on Blogger