Hard Sell

I was pointed to this article about a man in China claiming to have gotten lots of orders for his 'dead mosquitos' - ones that he kills personally.

Like 'hand made' is a selling point here.

I'll be the first to cast a skeptic eye over this and call this man's bluff. Especially at the prices he's selling them at. That's pretty much a dollar a mozzie.

But it got me thinking. What if 1% of my disbelief is wrong. Maybe this guy is onto the next big commodity.

After all, I'm sure 2,000 years ago, some of things we'd be doing now would be unstomachable to the common man.

Imagine you're a time traveller. You're in England 1,000 years ago. Your time travel machine has broken down so you're stranded and have taken to 'speaking' at street corners to eke out a living by telling passers-by about the future.

How hard would it be to convince the common man that future man eats raw fish ? Surely any idiot can make a fire with two sticks and a rock, but we still eat fish raw ?

Who would believe that we'd be travelling around in metal boxes powered by dead animals from millions of years ago ? Or that we'd be regular drinkers of a bitter, bad-tasting drink made from burnt beans ?

Or how about that a sizeable proportion of the population make a living sitting in front of a screen with flashing lights and press buttons all day.

So maybe there is some merit in dead mozzies after all. I mean, if scientists can get single cell organisms to poop oil, maybe we can get dead mozzies to perform broadway musicals.

Speaking of time and evolution, I've discovered that I've got a Darwin's Tubercle - something Charles Darwin identified as evidence that we're descended from apes. It's always been there but I never knew I was 'different' until I came across this term. Apparently, it's found in 10% of the population.

I celebrated the discovery by eating a banana.