i wonder what else we're capable of? lately, going through all the wonderful, useless random facts on my droid x, i keep discovering things about our bodies that astound me.
for example, in a lifetime our hearts pump a hundred million gallons of blood. my god, this one pound mass of tissue, how does it do it? (seeing my heart beating on a screen took my breath away.) and we've 100,000 miles of capillaries and veins. strung end to end that part of us would encircle the earth four times! and the human heart beats roughly 35 million times a year, 3.5 billion in a lifetime.
add further complexity: half your body's red blood cells are replaced every seven days. each day 400 gallons of recycled blood are pumped through the kidneys. two million red blood cells die every second. the numbers become more and more boggling. 100 billion neurons in the brain? and the brain 80% water?
as i see it in advancing age, i keep wondering how the hell i survived so long, all this going on without me even knowing it! all of our "thinking" is done by electricity and chemicals . every three days a human stomach gets a new lining. no wonder the processes can be upset by alcohol, heavy metals, amphetamines. i never understood where cancer came from. we're in a constant state of renewal.
when all's said and done, your body the most complicated thing in the universe. what more can it do that we haven't even imagined?
well, i've been thinking about the wonders of inebriation. new pictures: www.pbase.com/wwp/drunk
There are 10 million bacteria at the place where you rest your hands at a desk. wow, we must be a lot tougher than we think.
