A Meeting with Sir Thomas Huxley, and the 10-90 Rule
By Korski

Yesterday afternoon and well into the humid evening, I had the most delightful time with Sir Thomas Huxley, a mind I must say that is more acute and wide-ranging than any I have had the pleasure of encountering in my nearly fifty years on this earth. Our conversations began with Sir Thomas’s many encounters with the incomparable Charles Darwin, and among his more fascinating monologues on this most dedicated and original of minds were Darwin’s many forms of hypochondria. That the great Darwin was able to produce so much and be so intently focused for so many years with such an infirmity is one of those genuinely baffling puzzles, and one, no doubt, that will intrigue the best students of the history of science for decades to come.

But it is not the wide ranging insights on the great Darwin that I wish to offer some notes for your attention on this day at my hilltop mansion in Phuket where I have lived for several years; no, what I wish to bring to the attention of those who would find the time to read my always meager and insubstantial words are some issues concerning this simple little 10-90 Rule, a rule that I am told by those more knowledgeable than me is presented in the most elementary classes in biology in universities everywhere.

I, for my part--never as educated as I would have hoped I would be five decades into my life and now feeling more humbled than usual in the presence of a man so great as Sir Thomas--was quite astonished to learn that it was he who anticipated the general applicability of this 10-90 Rule to human beauty in the year 1867. In the month of March, to be more precise, I found out yesterday. I do not put forth this year and this month without proof, for on this afternoon and evening that I spent with Sir Thomas (yesterday as I have noted)--this part of the conversation took place while enjoying a light meal of smoked salmon and boiled eggs and an enchanting asparagus salad with some fifteen year old white wines I had picked up on my recent trip to the vineyards north of Adelaide--he, Sir Thomas Huxley, had in his possession his very own unpublished notes on this Rule that I have noted. Now why Sir Thomas Huxley brought these particular notes to our meeting I do not know; though in complete fairness to the very distinguished gentleman it must be again noted for the record that alone among notable biologists who have come at my invitation and expense to my sprawling mansion by the bay here in southern Thailand to share their vast expertise and insights (to include, I must say in all modesty, J. B. S. Haldane, Gregor Mendel, Peter Medawar, Charles Darwin, Alexander von Humboldt, Alfred Russel Wallace, and the infamous iconoclastic K. R. Footloose), Sir Thomas Huxley is one of a kind when making an appearance at a debate, a dinner, an informal tea or a gathering of hundreds of admirers and critics. He never fails to have readily at hand proof, evidence, notebooks, and outlines of what he will say in order to secure every fine point in his always compelling arguments. And it for this reason that well more than a hundred years ago he found it so easy to so ardently defend Darwin and his Theory of Evolution. May there be a Bulldog for every century, every idea that suffers the most idiotic assaults!

I have not thus far mentioned that on this long afternoon and evening of yesterday when I found myself totally absorbed in every word that came from Sir Thomas’s mouth, Bobby Undertool made an unexpected appearance. And gracious as I try to be—very Thai, one might say, and a small point on which I pride myself--I invited Bobby to join us, not anticipating that for one difficult stretch of nearly forty minutes he would ramble on and on about his two devoted Thai girlfriends, Noy and Ahn, and the difficulties they were causing him of late, and then train off into the most sordid and embarrassing details of his yet to be finalized divorce from his philandering and consistently rude American wife. This mention of Bobby and his unexpected appearance may seem like an unnecessary digression on my part, but in fact what he is up to fits quite nicely into what Sir Thomas Huxley has had to say about this venerable 10-90 Rule.

The 10-90 or 90-10 Rule, then, at least as I understand it and how those of a professional biological inclination describe it, or what it means. It goes something like this: for every ten or 100 species that invade an alien habitat, ten percent of them will, on average, adapt, and perhaps quite well, to their new environment. Or put different, 90% will fail to do so. Now biologists who have collected enormous amounts of data in the last century have also discovered that from a human perspective ten percent of alien species that adapt well to a new environment will prove to be a “pest.” By pest, as I understand the matter and as explained to me by Sir Thomas, biologists mean a species that causes economic damage to crops, or those that disrupt the functioning of an ecosystem that has long been in dynamic equilibrium (my apologies to readers for not explaining all of these terms but my busy schedule precludes more detail than I am here providing and, frankly, not being a biologist I cannot give the kind of precision to these terms that Sir Thomas and a good modern day ecologist could).

Now, as elementary students also learn (this too, believe it or not was anticipated by Sir Thomas Huxley, and it is there in the very yellow pages of Journal #19, pp. 41 to 43 that he brought with him), there is roughly a ninety percent loss of energy as one moves up trophic levels (herbivores to carnivores to higher order carnivores, etc.—again my apologies for not going into greater detail). I should note for the reader’s benefit that I have used words like “on average” and “roughly,” for as it happens nature is quite imperfect and just as imperfect are the data gathering methods of scientists and therefore it is not surprising that there is--Sir Thomas Huxley presciently predicted--about a three to five percent deviance (more in two well-known ecosystems) from a perfect fit to the 10-90 Rule.

I cannot help but briefly digress onto, of all things, Sir Thomas saying to me—shockingly so when I heard him—that God works in the most mysterious ways. Yes, God! That Sir Thomas Huxley would use such a word! Though, metaphorically, I am certain! Perhaps, too, as I now think about it, it was Sir Thomas’s way of provoking me, baiting me, egging me to get him off on a tangent about a Higher Being, a bait that I would not take—though why I do not know (well, I do know, but I am not at the moment in full confessional mode!) At any rate, this was a small aside by Sir Thomas Huxley meant to draw my attention to the idea that regularities are not merely human inventions, and they in fact exist in spite of the imperfections of natural selection and the vagaries of never-ending evolution.

Which leads me to yet another small digression, and that marvelous two days that I spent with J. B. S. Haldane in the rainy month of July in 2002. Ah, what a fine and stimulating mind he also has, and in fact my sole reason for inviting him was to hear in his very English accent those famous words: God has an inordinate fondness for beetles! I asked him to say these great eight words for me a second time, after washing down the first utterance with a fruity after dinner red I had picked up on my 2005 trip to Athens. Anyway, patient reader, it was that word God as much as Haldane’s precise appreciation of biological diversity and the enormous number of beetle species that I wanted to hear him utter those memorable words in his inimitable accent.

Yes, where was I? Please excuse my wandering, but there is so much to relate...ah, yes, this matter of Bobby Undertool and his good but rather incomplete understanding of the 10-90 Rule. And, no less, in a marvelous and enchanting country that I moved to a mere six years ago, after—if I don’t mind saying so—committing by proxy the perfect murder of my fourth wife (for the sum total of $5,000 that I paid to a Filipino in Subic Bay, who disposed of her the way all unwanted wives are disposed of in that part of the world—by burying her in cement beneath a newly constructed highway), a woman who held no interest for me whatsoever beyond the fortune she inherited and which now allows me to live in such luxury for the rest of my whoremongering days. One aspect of this luxury—how I have chosen to use it--is to invite to my hilltop mansion on a quite regular basis the great minds of recent centuries, all for the pleasure of bearing witness to how they so expertly articulate their profound ideas. Has any man ever born witness to the brilliance of recent centuries as I do now? Regularly! And thanks to Whitney, bless her lovely soul and the millions she brought into my life!

But back to Bobby. Bobby Undertool, the world traveler—Brazil, Mexico, India, Nepal, China, the whole of Europe, all the counties of Southeast Asia. Like me, and from an early age, a predator on women with money. Is there—honestly—any other reason for marrying a woman, I ask you? How great a gift to every man who has come to appreciate this truth! Allowing one (and as you readers know I am not alone!) to live so easily, and solely because I took the time to cultivate my dark sense of cunning, and to always be utterly merciless. But...enough of this partial confession; yes, I should return to Bobby, and this quite famous 10-90 Rule.

Bobby Undertool, I must say with complete and unvarnished honest, is the most vile predatory philandering (and please excuse the language) pussy chaser I have ever known. That perhaps the world has ever known! Though it should be noted for the uninitiated and poorly traveled men of the world that my having met Bobby here in Phuket, Thailand is hardly an accident. For here in Phuket, a small downscale version of what one finds in Pattaya (a place I regret to say I have not had the please of visiting), there is no shortage of genuinely learned and brilliant men—from the Scandinavian countries, from Germany, from England and Scotland, from Australia, from the enlightened edges of Mumbai, and even from that country that I once called home—America (America the Beautiful! I would say often in my very Pollyanna youth). Yes, men who, it is fair to say, in their youth, and into middle age, were truly brilliant, innovative, loving and caring fathers and husbands, and men who far more often than not gave freely of their time to develop and improve the very communities in which they lived and raised their children and loved their wives—until it became time to bury them for all time (and run with their money if they were as perspicacious as I was!). There is not, as the Australians would say, a single ratbag among the whoremongering men of Phuket! They are good men, wholesome and whole-bodied men, and when they are not talking brilliant ideas sown and cultivated in their past lives, they are on the hunt to satisfy their most basic carnal needs. And that need (excuse me for again using the word): pussy in all of its many shapes and smells and possibilities brought to life in the act of fornication.

Bobby, if I have not already mentioned this, is one of these very unusual, insightful minds, and in fact it is Bobby who so ardently helps me arrange these marvelous one-of-a-kind visits by the great luminaries of the past, believed by many to be dead. Dead! Not on your life! I have proof in my own set of leather-bound notebooks that the men of which I speak, in body and flesh, live on! And not, let me make perfectly clear, solely in my mind!

Bobby, Bobby Undertool! This rake, this misanthrope, this faithless bastard, this liar, this philanderer who has no equal! He who pretty well understands that a rule so dear to biologists down through the ages and beginning with Sir Thomas Huxley’s applies equally to whoremongers.

Bobby knows the Rule, and Bobby will put it straight and simple to anyone who listens. Yes, the 10-90 Rule known to all whoremongers in Phuket and Pattaya and Bangkok, indeed the world over! Take ten girls from bars, or from go-go venues, or from the streets, and the result, averaged over enough cases, is that you will find that only one of them is going to be a 9 or 10: when she hugs you, and when she loves you, and when she washes you, and when she fucks you, and when she so graciously agrees to take whatever you decide to give her for the pleasures she has so willingly given you. Of course, to the discerning and brilliant whoremongers of Phuket, and of course Pattaya and Bangkok, it is the sum of all these attributes I have outlined that matter, and it is of no less importance to know mean, median and mode and standard deviation values before deciding whether or not a hooker has been a Genuine Ten Percenter.

Finally, I did want to say something about Noy and Ahn and how Bobby let me know in private yesterday afternoon exactly how he plans to get rid of these two latest “charmers” (as he is wont to say), both of whom last week were destined to be 9s or 10s and now, I am certain, are no longer viable candidates for the esteemed Ten Percent category. But, believe it or not, and here is another little point that I must elaborate on at a future date, Bobby is absolutely delighted that neither Noy nor Ahn will be among the esteemed Ten Percenters in his Phuket Book. For in his mind, this means that tomorrow or the next day his number will come up, and he will find himself with a Genuine Ten Percenter! A loving female animal who does whatever he commands for as long as he so needs her, and then Poof! she disappears as quickly as he blows out a candle, in her possession no more than whatever baht gift he decides to give her for her immeasurable services. That Bobby Undertool, alas, does not understand the Gambler’s Fallacy and how this figures into his interpretation of the 10-90 Rule is an issue I will address, dear reader, in my next set of notes, following, I should hope, a long awaited visit from Sir Ronald Fisher, who is not just one of the great biologists and statisticians of the twentieth century but a man who came forth with the idea of runaway selection, an idea more telling in the deliciously fertile and wicked minds of whoremongers than the 10-90 Rule.

Thai Dating, Singles and Personals

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Two submissions in a day where I just do not know what to say!

The author can be reached at korski1@cox.net.
 
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