Tag: design

I carry a small notebook everywhere I go.  I use it to jot things down.

It’s organized by topic and indexed with little tabs; one of those tabs reads: Things to Discuss with God.

You have to understand, I was a systems architect by profession, so a lot of my thoughts are about design, especially human design and over the years I have made notes on the good, the bad and the ugly in God’s work.

For instance, I give God high marks for employing redundancy.

Our basic configuration comes with two eyes, two ears, two nostrils and two kidneys. Very solid design, especially for a species as clumsy and violent as ours.

Other aspects of human design are not so well thought out. In this category, I place both pain and sex (two features that are all too frequently entwined).

At a basic level, pain is a good thing. It gets our attention and focuses our minds on things that are important (a real plus for procrastinators like me).

But how about an “off” switch?

Pain should go away as soon as you have made the call to the clinic or set up a dentist appointment. This is the kind of system integration I would love to talk to God about. I think I could be very helpful there.

Another area I would like to discuss with God is sex.

Ask a child about it and their reaction is  EEE-WWW!! As a system architect, I couldn’t put it any more succinctly.

Sex is the worst kind of hack. The whole thing reeks of novice design.  It is all high concept and zero analysis.

First off, what moron came up with the idea of dual use for sexual organs?

I think we all know exactly how that came to be. During a three hour power-point presentation, nature’s CFO snorted himself awake and with all eyes upon him, felt he had to come up with something brilliant.

“Let’s combine reproduction and bladder functions,” he said, “it’ll save a bundle, right?”

And as these things always go, no one objected because no one thought such a stupid idea could make it into production.

Well, it did.

Next, think about this: if we can’t trust a fourteen year old with cigarettes, alcohol and cars, why does nature arm them with fully loaded sexual organs?

Whose idea was that? Marketing? So how do we fix it?

This is what I’m going to suggest to God: a simple child-safety switch like what we have in our cars to lock the windows and doors. Just think how pleasant it would be to have all those teenage urges completely switched off. No more hormonal howling, no more weepy angst, no more unpleasant surprises.

Simple.

Now imagine this.  On the day when our kids leave home, after the last of their possessions have been loaded into their car and we have given them our final hug, we say, “Oh yeah, and one more thing – CLICK!”