Tuesday, February 17, 2009

What do you sit on?

Have a look at your knees. Drop your drawers, hoist your skirt, lift your pant leg and inspect them. I’ll wait…

Scars, knobby, pointy, pudgy, knock-kneed, fading memories from nasty bike spills when you were a kid, hairy, bald, aching or sore? How many miles on those babies? They carry you up and down the stairs, in and out of the house, across the ice, down the hill, kicking, climbing, twisting, hopping, resting, running, crossing, standing. Had knee surgery (900,000 arthroscopic knee surgeries performed annually in North America are done as treatment for osteoarthritis)? Knees are an often overlooked, hardworking joint. Here’s what knees look like on the inside:



Take a close look at the intricacies of your knee joint. They are kind of like cars from back in the early days when everything was just a little simpler to fix. You could maintain your own car or truck, had the tools in your garage to do just about anything to ensure your ride, basic mechanics. As a joke you could simply unplug the coil wire so your buddy couldn’t start their vehicle (not that I’ve ever done that). Memories of a different time.

Knees, and other human joints, are pretty much the same, yep they may each have their own unique characteristics, just like Chevy’s and Ford’s, but really the mechanics are the same across the board. Just as the systems we house, cardiovascular, respiratory, digestive, nervous, immune, reproductive, urinary, lymphatic, vehicles too house systems; cooling, electrical, emission, break… you get the picture. We could compare the solar system, operating system, software system, organizational systems, information systems. The real question is, What would chairs look like if our knees bent the other way?

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