“I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.” ——– Psalm 139:14
Despite thousands of years of medical science, the incredible and intricate complexity of the human body still baffles scientists, researchers, doctors, and even common folk such as you and me. Some say we humans arrived here by countless millions of “mistakes” (evolution) over millions of years. Is that likely? Not in my opinion … that belief requires too much faith. So, lets take a brief look at some random and interesting facts … some are well known, others not so much.
THE BRAIN: Above is the Tianhe-2, the world’s most powerful super-computer, executing 33.8 QUADRILLION instructions per second. Your brain is faster than that. It would take the computer about 30 minutes to simulate one second of brain activity. The storage capacity of the brain might be as high as 1,000 terabytes. To appreciate that number, consider this: over 900 years of history are stored in the National Archives of Britain …. taking up only 70 terabytes. Nerve impulses to and from the brain travel as fast as 170 miles per hour. While the brain only makes up about 2% of our body mass, it consumes 20% of the oxygen that enters your bloodstream. The brain is 80% water … so the next time you’re feeling dehydrated get a drink for your brain.
It’s scientifically proven that even a small dose of power changes how a person’s brain operates and diminishes empathy. Half of your genes describe the complex design of your brain, with the other half describing the organization of the other 98% of your body. A baby’s brain will use up to 50% of the body’s total glucose supply, which explains why babies need so much sleep. The brain releases so much dopamine during orgasms that a brain scan resembles that of someone on heroin. …… music also triggers the exact same “pleasure chemical” in the brain.
THE EYE: Eyes start developing within two weeks of conception. Eyes are the second most complex organ after the brain. An eye is composed of more than two million working parts. An eye cannot be transplanted because doctors cannot reconstruct the one million nerve fibers connecting each eye to the brain. 80% of our memories are determined by what we see.. Corneas are the only tissues that don’t have blood. If you have blue eyes, you share an ancestor with all other blue-eyed people across the world. Humans and dogs are the only species known to seek visual cues from another individual’s eyes, and dogs only do this when interacting with humans
Your eye can distinguish 50,000 shades of grey, and about 10 million colors …. BUT, your retinas cannot detect the color red!! Retinas do have green, blue, and red color receptors, but, the “red” receptor only detects yellow-green, and the green receptor detects blue-green. Your brain combines these signals and turns them into “red”! Speaking of the brain (again); retinas actually perceive the outside world as upside-down, and images arrive at your retina split in half and distorted. The brain flips, scrambles and combines these images to compose the whole picture you “see”.
The above image is simply amazing. Eyes are constantly making tiny jerking movements called “microsaccades”. This stops objects from fading from your vision. A process called “Troxler’s phenomenon” causes static objects in your gaze to disappear if you stare at them for too long. Microsaccades stop this from happening. In the above image, keep your eyes focuses on the center cross … and watch what happens. Cool!
THE HEART: In an average human lifetime the heart will beat 2.5 billion times, and pump one million barrels of blood. A kitchen faucet would need to be turned on full blast for 45 years to equal the amount of blood pumped in an average lifetime. Grab a tennis ball and squeeze it tightly: that’s how hard the beating heart works to pump blood. The power output of the heart ranges from 1-5 watts …. over 80 years that’s 2.5 gigajoules. While at rest it takes six seconds for blood to travel from the heart to the lungs and back, and about 16 seconds for it to reach the toes and travel back to the heart. Heart cancer is rare because heart cells stop dividing early in life. The “thump-thump” of a heartbeat is the sound made by the four valves opening and closing. The heart pumps oxygenated blood through the aorta at about 1 mile per hour … but, by the time blood reaches the capillaries, it is moving at around 43 inches per hour. Scientist have found that a horse’s heart rates often mirrors those of human subjects touching them.
Laughter IS good medicine! The heart will pump 20% more blood flowing through your body during a good belly laugh. A hard laugh causes the lining of blood vessel walls called endothelium to relax, increasing blood flow for up to 45 minutes after the laugh attack.
There IS such a thing as a “broken heart”; trauma triggers the release of stress hormones into the bloodstream that “stun” the heart, usually temporarily but, sometimes permanently.
Lastly, and perhaps best of all, the heart remembers! The heart contains about 40,000 neurons. Some scientists believe the heart can “speak” to and influence the brain. Others feel such ideas are nonsense – here; http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/brain-cells-in-the-heart/ Personally, I like the idea of the heart remembering and feeling … if only for romantic reasons.
CIRCULATORY SYSTEM: The arteries, capillaries and veins in an average adult, if laid end-to-end, stretch about about 60,000 miles. Capillaries, the smallest of the blood vessels, would make up about 80% of this length. (The Earth’s circumference is 25k miles. So an average person’s blood vessels could wrap around the planet approximately 2.5 times!). Some capillaries are so tiny (1/3000 inch) in diameter, that red blood cells must pass through them one cell at a time, and even then their shape is distorted in order to pass through
Unlike most other cells in the body, red blood cells have no nuclei … which allows more room to carry the oxygen the body needs. Without a nucleus, the cells cannot divide or synthesize new cellular components. So, a red blood cell will die from aging or damage after circulating for about 120 days … your body’s bone marrow comes to the rescue by constantly manufacturing new red blood cells to replace those that perish.
You do NOT have blue blood. After giving up its oxygen to your bodily tissues, your blood becomes dark red as it races back to your heart through your veins. The deceptive “blue” color results from the way different wavelengths of light penetrate your skin, are absorbed and reflect back to your eyes.
HAIR: In terms of tensile strength (how strong material is when being stretched) hair is stronger than steel. Hair is made out of protein which are great at tension and awful at compression (how well the substance resists being squished). Aside from fire, human hair is virtually indestructible. It decays at such a slow rate to be practically non-disintegrative. It won’t be destroyed by cold, change of climate, water, and other natural forces, and is resistant to many acids and corrosive chemicals. Our eyelashes contain tiny worm-like mites living in the follicles of eyelashes, and they feed on waste like sebum (an oily secretion of microscopic glands in the skin).
We have as much hair in our body as a chimpanzee, but in most parts of the body they are too fine to be seen. Scientific data proves that blondes have more hair than others. On an average the total amount of hairs is around 100,000, while blondes have an average number of 146,000. Redheads often are more prone to pain. Before you can see yourself getting bald, you have already lost at least 50% of your total hair. Hair is the fastest growing tissue in the human body next to bone marrow.
Hair does NOT continue to grow after death. After death, dehydration causes the skin and other soft tissues to shrink, while hair and nails remain the same length …. thus creating the optical illusion of growth.
THE LIVER: Well, you do the above every day of your life, even if you don’t eat at McShits. Smoke, pesticides, mold and mildew, parasites, paint fumes, air fresheners, cleaning supplies, bacteria, fungus, vaccines, aluminum, cookware, deodorant, cosmetics, toothpaste, dental fillings, alcohol ….. we are literally exposed on a daily basis to thousands of toxins – crap that is damaging to the body. Your liver takes care of all that. Even the medicines we take are toxic to the body, and are useless to the body in their n”as is” form. The liver breaks them down into a form the body can use.
In addition to detoxification, the liver extracts vitamins and nutrients from the food we eat, stocks them up and keeps supplying these nutrients to the body when we need them … such as storing iron and maintaining a constant supply of it to the body. In fact, the liver performs at least FIVE HUNDRED functions. You’ll be dead in less than a day if your liver stops functioning as it should.
It’s the second largest organ (skin is first), and the only organ that can regenerate …. making it possible for living people to donate half their liver. Our liver produces bile which is responsible for giving our stool its characteristic brown color. Soooo, if your poop ain’t brown, go see a doctor cuz something is wrong.
An interesting fact about liver is that it never uses sugar for energy. It only stores sugar. In reality, liver is the storehouse of any excess sugar that we consume. It stores this sugar in form of a compound known as glycogen. Between meals when our body needs sugar, the liver breaks down the glycogen to form glucose. This glucose is then used by the remaining body as energy fuel.
Nobody really appreciates and LOVES their liver … the forgotten organ. Listen up!!! Eat more LEMONS!!!!!! Lemons stimulate the liver into making dozens of enzymes needed for optimal human health. There is no other food better for top liver health than a lemon. Lemons also kill cancer cells. Four or five times a week I put an entire lemon, including the skin, and some raw honey in my Vitamix … sometimes I add strawberries for color. It’s delicious and totally refreshing! I have one of the the nicest looking livers in New Jersey, and will send you a picture upon request.
FLATULENCE: Above is the look and attitude my beloved gives me EVERY time I give a Rectal Shoutout. She must have Alzheimer’s because each and every time is, to her, apparently the first time she’s ever heard it. And she’s so damned smug about it … claiming that the Anal Announcement is something she doesn’t do.
Oh, yeah, well, it’s like this: the biological function of digestion causes the body to release gases. EVERY person expels a Jersey Air Freshener about fourteen times a day. I’ve done the calculation. According to the length of time I’ve known Ms. Nofart, she has actually let yer rip 45,990 times!! This makes her the most blatantly dishonest person I know.
This is interesting … the Scented Scream carries germs! A microbiologist in Canberra – as recorded in the 2001 British Medical Journal‘ — asked a colleague to Trouser Cough directly onto two Petri dishes from a distance of 5 centimeters, first fully clothed, then with his trousers down. Then he observed what happened. Overnight, the second Petri dish sprouted visible lumps of two types of bacteria that are usually found only in the gut and on the skin. But the Kentucky Mating Call which had passed through clothing caused no bacteria to sprout … at least not in the petri dish. God only knows what resides in underwear that hasn’t been changed!
In China, “professional fart smellers” make up to $50,000 detecting Cornhole Odors to diagnose disease. The Yanomami tribe of South America uses Cheek Explosions as a means of saying hello.”Eproctophilia” is the official term for people who sexually aroused by Love Puffs.
For a rather funny classification of farts (seriously) see here —-> http://www.fartnames.com/
EARWAX: Earwax is another of our body’s mundane, under-appreciated, yet totally amazing protective devices. Like eyelashes and nose hair, earwax shields our body from outside invaders, including dust, bacteria, and other micro-organisms that can get in and irritate, inflame, or infect. Earwax lubricates our ears, in much the same way as tears lubricate our eyes. Without adequate amounts of earwax, our ears would feel dry and itchy.
Did you know you taste food with your ear? The chorda tympani is a branch of the facial nerve that originates from the taste buds in the front of the tongue, runs through the middle ear, and carries taste messages to the brain.
Like a Kentucky virgin’s hoo-hoo, your ear is strictly a No Insertion zone. Never, ever, stick anything in them … including those cotton tipped swabs. When you put something in your ear – to scratch an itch or to attempt to remove wax – you risk pushing wax further into the ear, where it can become blocked, and which then can lead to serious and painful issues. Believe it or not, for the most part the ear will clean itself out. Every movement of the lower jaw, whether it’s talking or chewing, pushes the wax toward the outside world — no cotton swab required. However, if you do mine some juicy slimy wax, rub it on your lips. In the past, it has been used as a lip balm and salve for puncture wounds.
BELLY BUTTONS: Above — obviously, what readers of this article do best. Belly buttons are amongst the grossest areas of the human body. Researchers analyzed skin samples from 66 men and women’s belly buttons. The disgusting results? The average belly button has 67 different species of bacteria living in it, and two samples tested positive for archea, a rare single-cell organism commonly found in hot springs and deep sea vents never before found on humans. However …
According to researchers at the University of Helsinki, a woman’s belly button may signal her genetic health. If her belly button is symmetrical and located in the center of her body, the odds of her having a healthy baby may be higher. Researchers believe that harmful mutations in your DNA also show up in your belly button’s position and size, making it a quick way to judge someone’s genetic health. So, if your woman doesn’t have a perfectly round pretty belly button …. dump her, now! Unfortunately ….
A woman’s belly button is the gateway to getting into her pants, according to some sexologist named Yvonne Fulbright. She says, “It’s a great place to test the waters in just how far south your lover is willing to let you go.” She suggests focusing on the treasure trail with nibbling and gentle pulling to bring her body to life. For added enhancement, you can cover her navel with whipped cream, and then lick it off before moving further down to Paradise. If you do this, I suggest that the next day you visit a germ doctor, or get your tongue cleaned at a car wash.
Nice spread of info. Some I knew and some not so much. I swear every time I read something about the body or brain I wish I had gone to school for anatomy or neurology. I suppose it’ll just stay a hobby. Thanks Stucky.
I find it fascinating that people argue about the unknowable mind of a directly-involved architect, but still lack any of the intellect capable of imagining a system that spontaneously organizes to yield anything-but-random outcomes.
There are two kinds of questions (and a subset): Questions for which we know the answers and questions for which we don’t know the answers. The subset is, questions for which we think we know the answers, but actually what we think we know just ain’t so.
Religion exists to provide answers to questions for which we don’t have answers and assume we never will. Perhaps this is so, because it is impossible to definitively answer questions like, “where did we come from?” None of us was there at the time, and all data derived from inquiries is derivative by definition.
The biggest problem I have with religion(s) is that so far, no God mankind has discovered is actually a superior being. Could mice discuss the mind of a man? Could a paramecium? Given that no man or group of men could so much as produce a paramecium from scratch, as it were, the gulf between man and God would be indescribably larger than the gulf between a paramecium and man.
This makes all human discussions about God (the architect) so laughable to me that I simply don’t get it. Our minds simply don’t stretch that far, so all discussions of God appear, to me, to be simply tall tales that ascribe human motives and mentation to a presumed entity that so transcends us as to be unimaginable.
Disinterested architect? Steady source of guidance? Close enough to man as to appear for a time in human form?
It devolves entirely to faith, does it not?
If the map is not the territory, what does this mean if the territory being described and discussed is truly unknowable?
Having said that, it is clear that human minds require something in which to believe.
Belief is a necessary and integral part of the human mind; our senses carry only a fraction of available information toward our brains, and our MINDS filter all sensory information (including facts presented by experience or by other people) through our beliefs BEFORE they integrate into our minds.
The brain, as you know, may be the SEAT of the mind but the mind is something quite different and currently beyond our capacity to understand. We actually don’t understand our own minds in a fundamental sense.
Since people must have a belief system, I favor the more benign forms of Western Christianity because for numerous centuries it provided a rallying point for human devotion that was SEPARATE from secular power centers.
Mankind only thrives, socially, when there is competition between power centers for the individual’s devotion. We need, now more than ever, a power center to oppose the current theocracy (America’s Progressivist theocracy which is an open version of the Gnostic Heresy, and Europe’s Fabianist Utopian tyrannny which is America’s secular parallel) before the West rips itself to shreds and all of humanity is plunged into 500 years of strife and warfare.
The only system history has offered, so far, was Western Christendom.
Here is my problem with “evolution”.
Why should LIFE occur at all?
Isn’t it more “efficient” for the Universe to have perfectly organized orbital mechanics of life-less balls of rock, perhaps covered with some goo, revolving endlessly in galaxies, endlessly?
Why should LIFE always evolving to increasing complexity, diversity and beauty?
Isn’t it more “efficient” for Life to follow a single game plan, a single color scheme, a single purpose?
I dunno, mebbe it is all just quantum.
I’d be interested in hearing from anyone who has ever used earwax as a lip balm. TIA
My favorite tidbit is that humans can pretty much unanimously predict the future, if only a few seconds in the future at best.
The “lag time” between what we see and what occurs should be enough to make things like 90mph fastballs impossible to hit, and yet people do.
Of course, such a thing is not just the purview of humanity, but pretty much all macro-animals.
Some say anticipation, some think that animal instincts tap into the actual fabric of reality to make such insane impossibilities daily occurrences.
Who knows, but the senses and how we perceive them are some of life’s greatest mysteries.
In my first physical chemistry class, we were covering the force exerted by spindle fibers when a cell undergoes mitosis when I realized that I am not a smart man.
I could grasp the individual pieces of the puzzle, but slammed altogether into one picture I just couldn’t grasp it. (the calculus equations governing the physics of chemistry in a biological system)
I gave up, and quit. My brain is too complex for me to ever understand it, thats what I went and became an instrumentalist.
PS: I’m not trying to talk myself up here, there are people who can do that…..use math to describe such an insane situation. I’m just not one of them.
@Hope, Hi Hope!
Can’t it be both? I tend to think of it as both. @DC made some great comments that ring true with me, how could I, a mortal being with a lifespan not even close to the span of God’s breath, truly “understand?” anything? We only know what we think we know, someday we may find out we never knew a damned true thing. Kinda like how I feel about vaccinations, petroleum based antibiotics, GMOs, the Civil War and Lincoln.
Anyway, in the past couple months I’ve been studying/pondering on the state of consciousnesses. The place where humans starting acknowledging the wider world, their place in it, and their God(s). The only true thing that makes us different from other animal lifeforms. Because Genesis states that on the “first day God created light,” and it pretty much goes on and on a “day” at a time, I do not question the “truth” of it, what I question is our human interpretation of the actual length of immortal, never-ending time and what that “day” means to my God.
What if after he created the animals, including our DNA/genetic closely related ancestors, whom once they discovered saturated fat quickly (in a adaptive/evolutionary) grew their brains to the point that higher level thought was born? We are gathering scientific/archalogic proof that this is true, we started eating/preserving cooked meat, our brains grew rapidly, then society truly started to form.
So, what if what is meant by God made man in his own image, was actually God taking what he already made that developed so far all on its own and then He improved on it with consciousness and our finer features? Or are those are the result of the angels coming to earth and mating with man?
If God’s “day” is the millions/billions of years that I suspect it is, maybe he put in code that allowed all his creatures to grow and adapt and thrive, or not?
Anyway, just a thought that reconciles what we mere men have “proven” or found out, and the Word.
@bb, if a Christians main two jobs are loving God and loving his neighbor, or bringing Christ’s sacrifice and love to all, not just to all I like and agree with, and we Christians are held to account and some sort of atonement/acknowledgement takes place, what in the hell makes you think that spewing condemnation, hatred and stupidity brings souls to Christ and fulfills our sworn duty to him? Really, how do you justify spewing such venom and praising the God of sacrifice, love and forgiveness? I pray for you, and all those like you that use their belief ike a sword that judges, destroys and then practically guarantees that the sinner/victim forever and ever turns away from God.
I fall to my knees and beg forgiveness that if at anytime during my Science as God stage I managed to convince anyone to turn away from God and his son.
Meanwhile you support actually HARMING those that need Christ’s love and forgiveness the most. While truly believing this hatred and bigotry and negativity and judgment will be praised by the Man that was tortured and gave his freaking life so that we wouldn’t have to be judged and punished, living in pain and fear, anymore.
I don’t understand how so many just plain don’t get it. They drive more souls away, guaranteeing that those souls live lives full of pain and fear, instead of doing only what Jesus told his apostles to do. Did Jesus tell his disciples to go forth and make people feel worthless, guilty, set up judgements, courts and prisons, and most of all hurt others? Or did he tell them to go forth spreading love, healing and the truth of His Son?
Be a disciple BB, for now all you manage to do is drive more souls directly into the enemy’s embrace. What exactly do we, humanity, or even Jesus, win by that?
Peace @BB, I’m still praying for you.
“Peace @BB, I’m still praying for you.”
You are a better person than I.
Stuck – I was nly funning you. I had not forgotten the Indian nickel crack from recently.
Nice article.
Good one, Stucky. Really, really good one.
“Wow, is there anything that Stucky does not know something about?”
—-Archie
How about electrical engineering? That was the ONLY subject I really struggled with in college. Calculus, aeronautical engineering, astrophysics, organic chemistry, statistics, mechanical engineering, creative writing, etc – piece of cake. Double E = total nightmare. Today I gobble up anything cogent on nuclear power.
And you seem to be a bit silent on the Constitution. Am I right?
The brain function is mysterious. Despite being an engineer, I am really not all that gifted at math; sure I could understand it in school but would quickly forget it. My strength is newtonian physics. I can visualize it in my mind which means I can find ways to optimize energy conservation or to design new processes. The difficulty has been trying to explain it to other engineers; most need to see a working model, or proof that someone else as done it before or they cannot get their arms around it. As for things such as quantum mechanics, forget it. Someone else will have to invent warp drive.
Example from the above. Take a dual helical coil of pipe, like a dna molecule. Put two valves at the back end, operated by a cam so that one is open when the other is shut. Rotate it mechanically and meter the incoming liquid so that the pressure drop is equal to the radius of the coil. Now you can feed it with a dry product particulate and liquid in a pressurized, but continuous fashion. Half of the coil is filled with product/liquid and half with vapor. The valves and the rotation of the coil means that the vapor is forced through the coils in reverse direction to the liquid, but providing agitation to the particulates. The coil can be heated by direct steam injection or have a cooling or heating medium sprayed upon it with the heat transfer being through falling film. In some applications that require high heat, the coil could operate at temperatures higher than atmospheric as long as the liquid were cooled after the coil before the pressure is released, in the case of hydrating dry products such as beans, simply by injecting city water.
Yeah, I patented it for numerous applications. I could go on, but I won’t. Anyone following me? Thought not.
DC, you ask some deep questions. The idea of a Tarzan or Wolf boy, humans raised by animals, with no language of any sort, are interesting cases that seem to deny the case for a soul. For those of us who have consciousness and a conscience, the question is unnecessary, we know that we are gods, a higher life form than bacteria and have a connection with a spiritual being.
If we do not have this idea, we have no limitations of right and wrong and could kill, murder, maim and destroy other human beings without any feeling of guilt. Such monsters are called psychopaths or simply beasts, animals without a soul.
@dc.sunsets
— “The biggest problem I have with religion(s) is that so far, no God mankind has discovered is actually a superior being.”
Lossyness in attempts to document.
We can’t perfectly translate a dream into words or images… but we can read a description or look at an image and understand that it is merely a pale shadow of something that was real to the person attempting to document it.
We don’t look at a photograph of Rome and declare that to be Rome.
@dc.sunsets
— “Could mice discuss the mind of a man?”
No, but they can learn to recognize the shadows cast by a man and adjust their behavior accordingly.
— “Our minds simply don’t stretch that far…”
If you mean don’t stretch far enough to understand everything at once… no certainly not.
If however you mean don’t stretch far enough to be able to take a step back and recognize the shadows being cast by something and adjusting my behavior accordingly… well… mine has no problem doing so.
Translating that perception into something that survives the reduction to combinations of 26 letters and then back into the reading comprehension another… that is a bit of a stretch.
1. Most men need religion. Belief trumps all.
2. A successful society requires a shared belief system.
3. It doesn’t really matter to me what other people believe. I am surrounded by savages who metaphorically believe that we must all rub blue paint on our foreheads lest Angry Gods harm the tribe. What do I do? I say, “Please pass me the blue paint.”
I have my own rules. They begin with a recognition of what is required for men to live in harmony. From this grasp of the axioms, I have 14 defined rules to live by, starting with the most general of all: “The world is full of pain; try not to add to it.”
I don’t need to understand the science of the mind, or much else frankly, to live my life in a way that makes me proud to be me.
I have as much memory on my desktop as the National Archives? Something doesn’t add up here.
Just came here from a link on DollarCollapse in their “Off-Topic But Brilliant/Challenging/Infuriating” section. I think that seems a nice category for most of your work.
The article is excellent. 🙂
Where’s Stuck?
I had a VERY difficult day with my parents today.
razzle, Your comments are more in the vein of philosophy which is also quite interesting, very insightful.
Most of what folks call religion is really philosophy. Religion is the superstitious attempt to placate the gods. Worship is the faith-based attempt to communicate with God. Philosophy is an attempt to understand everything and it is the mother of the sciences.
I say all that because I keep reading comments folks make intending to reject religion when they are really rejecting philosophy. Folks who don’t question nature, the purpose of life, the origins of life, the universe and its laws, gravity and electrons, magnetic waves and the existence of light are folks with a poor imagination.
The Catholic church sought to suppress inquiry into the origins of the universe, considering it to be the private parts of the church. God says it is the privilege of kings to inquire into these things.
Stuck – that is what parents are for.
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Yep, parents, a blessing in your youth, a burden in their old age 🙂
Thanks for the article, very enjoyable, lots of material still available for a sequel…