A woman’s word has never been proof.

If you thought altering your nose or augmenting your breasts was a private, individual decision, think again. In a paper published in the July issue of the Journal of Evolution & Technology and discussed yesterday on the New York Times “Idea of the Day” blog, doctoral candidate Kristi Scott argues that undergoing cosmetic plastic surgery — nose jobs, boob jobs, chin augmentation and the like — allows us to “cheat our naturally predetermined appearances.” This is to say, “what we see on the outside is not necessary what we are going to get on the inside, genetically speaking.” The problem with this kind of genetic subterfuge boils down, as Social Darwinism always does, to the question of survival of the fittest (or unfittest, as the case may be): “Without these self-identified unwanted physical attributes,” Scott writes, “people who otherwise might not have been perceived as desirable mates for procreation” — the genetic untouchables — “allow themselves to be perceived as desirable enough to pass on their genes.” The genetically flawed but surgically corrected person may mate and reproduce, passing on an “undesirable’ attribute” — small breasts, say, or enormous ears, drooping eyelids or a crooked nose. Without surgery, this person may have been too ugly to attract a partner, and the altered attribute would likely not have been replicated.

Because drunken Brits have surpassed all other drunks in the World Olympics of Vulgarity, it’s always comical when one of them goes up in flames, but when he’s openly waggling the wurst in such a manner as to allow for a woman douse it with Sabucco and then flick her Bic at it, and that woman goes on to become a national hero, that’s gold, baby, gold.