Those who continue to toe the ev-pych line will find themselves increasingly trodden upon by the aforementioned well-heeled adherents. These are the times which try men's soles……

Mike Gene: But what is the adaptive significance of the frequent enemas?

Interesting. There might be a tie-in here with evolutionary psychology. What would the relation be between the driving evolutionary force behind frequent enemas, and the descriptive psychological personality type, "anal retentive"

Int J Psychoanal Psychother. 1977;6:323-37.

The evolution of a shoe fetish.

Hamilton JW.

This paper deals with clinical material gathered from the long-term, psychoanalytically-oriented treatment of a patient with a shoe fetish. Genetic and dynamic aspects of this problem are emphasized. The combination of a dominating mother and a passive and absent father, the sharing of a bed with an older sister until age eleven, and the receipt of frequent enemas contributed directly to the development of the fetish, the most crucial determinant being the commulative traumatic effect of the enemas. During adolescence, the patient also resorted to transvestism to deal with the intensification of castration fears. Becoming a husband and father threatened to disrupt his tenuous defenses and forced him to seek therapy for two years, during which he was able to gain sufficient insight to forego the fetish and to engage in heterosexual activity in reasonably conflict-free manner. Previous theorectical contributions on the subject are included and theorectical issues are dealt with, particularly the role of the core fantasy of the phallic woman in the perversions.

Of course, this raises a new twist to the story. The adaptive significance of sharing the bed with the sister is obvious "“ the mother would be better able to defend her children against predators if they were bundled together. And the absent father makes sense, as he was out hunting to increase the nutritional intake of the offspring. But what is the adaptive significance of the frequent enemas? Might this be a modern expression of grooming behavior, such that offspring lacking anal lice would be more likely to grow up and produce offspring of their own?

But when have the facts ever been a consideration for advocates of ID?

Krauze: When birds grow long and hindering tails, when gazelles leap high into the air in front of a predator, and when large grazers fight long and exhausting battles with each other, they're all signalling the fitness of their genes: "Look at me, I'm doing so well that I can spend my energy doing useless things."

Well, that would explain tanning salons and muscle magazines. But it still doesn't explain high heels, I'm afraid. "Me, Tarzan, you…Look out, Jane!! Run, Jane, Run!! Ooooo, Jane fall down. Me will miss Jane's feet."

"I never heard of "smelly feet" being a hindrance to survival."

You're ignoring the vast richness of evolutionary biology. Evolution is more than survival - it's also reproduction. Things like personal hygiene are used to assess the quality of potential mates. When birds grow long and hindering tails, when gazelles leap high into the air in front of a predator, and when large grazers fight long and exhausting battles with each other, they're all signalling the fitness of their genes: "Look at me, I'm doing so well that I can spend my energy doing useless things."

This is what the Israeli scientist Amotz Zahavi called the "handicap principle". It also explains why it's high heels, rather than comfortable shoes, that turns on a guy: Keeping your balance in a pair of six-inches is much harder, and thus signals higher health.