By Chris King

Cloning. The ethical debate of the decade has provided us with countless new ideas and possibilities. One possibility of human cloning is that man would no longer be necessary for continuation of the human race. In fact, some crazed despotess could decide to clone only females in an insane plot to revert to an Amazonian society. A world ruled and walked by women without men is no longer an impossibility. Perhaps some women would consider this a good thing, but have they really thought about what the world would be like without men?

Without men, the world we live in would be a lot smaller than it is today. The Americas would not exist to Europeans, neither would the North Pole, and you can forget about Antarctica. Vast stretches of Scandinavia, Siberia, Africa and the Pacific would be unknown, uncharted and unexplored. No woman would recklessly pursue adventure if it meant climbing the Himalayas, crossing the Sahara or sailing to the edge of the world. The Explorers were all men who forsook safety and ignored their wives who said it couldn't be done.

Without men, most sports wouldn't exist. Hockey, football and wrestling all have too much pain involved to be sustained by women. Boxing would be something you do with your old knick-knacks. Many would argue that soccer and basketball would survive, but these would lack the appeal of the general populace. Bowling, for another, would not exist. Think about it: Would women seriously invent a game where you hurl a 16-pound orb down a narrow passageway, trying to knock as many pins down as possible? Hunting and fishing would not be sports, but instead only an undesirable means to sustenance. Sitting still in a boat for six hours does not appeal to girls, and neither does the thought of shooting and gutting a deer.

Without men, war would not be the same thing it is today. There would be no armies, because there would be no swords, canons or guns. In fact, war would not consist of any kind of bloodshed at all. War would consist of words, and its weapons would be gossip and slander. Its armies would shriek and slap instead of kill and wound. I almost hesitate to say which is scarier. Without men, women would have no one to write them poetry or sing them songs. That erases the sonnet, the ballad and just about the entire music industry. No Beatles, no Elvis, no Shakespeare.

Without men, dining rooms would grow, and garages would shrink. Sales in pickup trucks and SUVs would decrease, and sales in Mitsubishi Eclipses and Chevy Cavaliers would increase. Flowers would begin to dominate ties as the most popular gift.

Steakhouses would turn into Light Italian Saladhouses. Cars wouldn't be fast; they would simply smell nice.

Without men, the largest thing that the world would lack is danger. Danger is in the way we drive our cars and in the way we eat our food. We play games and sports dangerously, throwing caution to the wind and inhibition into left field. When we write music and sing songs, we are dangerously wearing our hearts our sleeves. We go to places we've never gone before even if the trail is dangerous, nay, because the trail is dangerous. A world without men might be safe, but it would also be boring.



By Rachel Martinez

Have you ever wondered what the world would be like if suddenly the female population mysteriously disappeared? Obviously, this would be a problem. Eventually the human race-or what's left of it-would soon become extinct. Yet worrying about such an important fact is really minute when considering that in reality, the possibility of the female gender vanishing is completely irrational. However, the concept is thought-provoking and rather amusing. Therefore, this is not a story about women, but a story without women.

For the sake of humanity, let's pretend for the moment that society could survive without women. I mean the earth was first just inhabited by one man. So, if God believed that man could live alone without perishing, then I suppose I have enough faith to trust in the likelihood of it being a possibility once again. However, I cannot justify any reasoning to assume that the world would stay the same.

Have you ever watched children play? While the girls are playing baby dolls and hop scotch, the guys are either glued to their Playstations in a death-defying stunt to win a game of Mortal Combat or they're shooting their BB guns at innocent sparrows. The key word is balance. In a world without women, civilization would lose symmetry. Who'd be the first to stop a fist fight amongst a couple of 10-year olds and encourage them to duke it out in a game of football? Who'd be on the sidelines nursing the wounded back to health? Who'd tell everyone to eat their vegetables? The world just wouldn't be the same.

If someone were to ever say, "I'm going to get a manicure," it would be a doctor talking about the "man he cured." Tanning salons would close in less than a week. The Boston Tea Party would have never happened because there wouldn't have been any tearooms for women to gossip about being overtaxed. Shopping malls and grocery stores would be practically nonexistent. What man needs to shop for supplies when he can weld it in his garage? And what man needs to buy food when they can hunt it? For all we know, mankind could lapse back into the primitive era. Ballet and ice-skating may have never become an art. I don't know any man in an all man's world who would volunteer to wear a tutu. Whitney Houston's top hit song "I Will Always Love You" would have never been written. Needless to say, neither would any romance songs, for romance would not exist.

Although men may not realize it, electricity and automobiles are products of women. Had there been no need to accommodate ladies from the traveling hardships that they endured in covered wagons and buggies, man would have never labored so intensely to fashion a more comfortable mode of transportation. As for women being accountable for electricity, what man wants to wait an hour or more for his wife to let her hair naturally dry?

So as one can see, a world without women would be a dreadful place. But if I don't have you convinced as to how different life here on earth would be without a lady's sense of style and femininity, then I must do the most horrid act of indecency and speak the unthinkable to further my analysis. Of all my findings my last one is by far the most crucial and disturbing. Upon my final observation, I came to realize that a world without women would mean a world without chocolate!

But don't worry; this is just a hypothesis. Next time I'll hypothesize on what the world would be like without men.

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