It occurs to me as I stand here shirtless in the blustery rain of late November that humankind is at risk of going the way of the dodo bird.

For those poor uneducated saps among you who don’t know the tragic history of this bird, allow me to illuminate the situation.

The dodo originated on Mauridius, a small island off the coast of Madagascar, and is a small, flightless bird most closely related to the modern-day pigeon.  On the island of Mauridius, the dodo had no predators.  As a result, it lived a threatless life, growing fat and passive, forfeiting its evolutionary advantage.  Without the benefit of natural selection, the dodo sacrificed all of its keys to survival.

Accordingly, when humans intervened, the dodo was left utterly defenceless.  It had never, in the entire existence of its species, come up against an exterior threat.  It didn’t know how to react, and was therefore the proverbial “sitting duck”.

How does this connect to humanity, you ask?  Well, in the last century, advances in medicine have caused in humankind the same results as the isolation of the dodo bird.  This technology has bought us a relatively peaceful existence, but we have also sacrificed the evolutionary advantage natural selection can provide.  Children who, us recently as forty years ago would not have made it out of infancy, are surviving to reproduce.  Obviously, it’s difficult to see this change as negative, and it isn’t, but when the aliens inevitably arrive, it’s something we may come to regret.

Just saying.

Slight change of subject, a bit of bad news: my pirating aspirations seem to have fallen through.  On a related note, I’m out $700,000, which is a bit of a bummer.

Well, this concludes today’s broadcast.  Until Monday.  Good luck in your endeavours, and may all that you survey become yours.

Fun Fact of the Day: A regulation gold ball has 336 dimples.  Now you know.