Mysteries 4 U ...

 Human Mysteries

  The Human Body is a treasure trove of mysteries, one that still confounds doctors and scientists about the details of its working. It's not an overstatement to say that every part of your body is a miracle.  Here are fifty facts about your body, some of which will leave you stunned...or... 

 1. It's possible for your body to survive without a surprisingly large fraction of its internal organs.   Even if you lose your stomach, your spleen, 75% of your liver, 80% of your intestines, one kidney, one lung, and virtually every organ from your pelvic and groin area, you wouldn't be very healthy, but you would live. 

 2.    During your lifetime, you will produce enough saliva to fill two swimming pools. Actually, Saliva is more important than you realize. If your saliva cannot dissolve something, you cannot taste it. 

 3.    The largest cell in the human body is the female egg and the smallest is the male sperm. The egg is actually the only cell in the body that is visible by the naked eye. 

 4.    The strongest muscle in the human body is the tongue and the hardest bone is the jawbone. 

 5.    Human feet have 52 bones, accounting for one quarter of all the human body's bones. 

 6.    Feet have 500,000 sweat glands and can produce more than a pint of sweat a day. 

 7.    The acid in your stomach is strong enough to dissolve razor blades. The reason it doesn't eat away at your stomach is that the cells of your stomach wall renew themselves so frequently that you get a new stomach lining every three to four days. 

 8.    The human lungs contain approximately 2,400 kilometers (1,500 mi) of airways and 300 to 500 million hollow cavities, having a total surface area of about 70 square meters,  roughly  the same area as one side of a tennis court. Furthermore, if all of the capillaries that surround the lung cavities were unwound and laid end to end, they would extend for about 992 kilometers. Also, your left lung is smaller than your right lung to make room for your heart. 

 9.  Sneezes regularly exceed 100 mph, while coughs clock in at about 60 mph. 

 10. Your body gives off enough heat in 30 minutes to bring half a gallon of water to a boil. 

 11. Your body has enough iron in it to make a nail 3 inches long. 

 12. Earwax production is necessary for good ear health.  It protects the delicate inner ear from bacteria, fungus, dirt and even insects. It also cleans and lubricates the ear canal. 

 13. Everyone has a unique smell, except for identical twins, who smell the same. 

 14. Your teeth start growing 6 months before you are born. This is why one out of every 2,000 newborn infants has a tooth when they are born 

 15. A baby's head is one-quarter of its total length, but by the age of  25 will only be one-eighth of its total length. This is because people's heads grow at a much slower rate than the rest of their bodies. 

 16. Babies are born with 300 bones, but by adulthood the number is reduced to 206. Some of the bones, like skull bones, get fused into each other, bringing down the total number. 

 17. It's not possible to tickle yourself. This is because when you attempt to tickle yourself you are totally aware of the exact time and manner in which the tickling will occur, unlike when someone else tickles you. 

 18. Less than one third of the human race has 20-20 vision. This means that two out of three people cannot see perfectly. 

 19. Your nose can remember 50,000 different scents. But if you are a woman, you are a better smeller than men, and will remain a better smeller throughout your life. 

 20. The human body is estimated to have 60,000 miles of blood vessels. 

 21. The three things pregnant women dream most of during their first trimester are frogs, worms and potted plants. Scientists have no idea why this is so, but attribute it to the growing imbalance of hormones in the body during pregnancy. 

 22. The life span of a human hair is 3 to 7 years on average. Every day the average person loses 60-100 strands of hair.  But don't worry, you must lose over 50% of your scalp hairs before it is apparent to anyone. 

 23. The human braincell can hold 5 times as much information as an encyclopedia.  Your brain uses 20% of the oxygen that enters your bloodstream, and is itself made up of 80% water. Though it interprets pain signals from the rest of the body, the brain itself cannot feel pain. 

 24. The tooth is the only part of the human body that can't repair itself. 

 25. Your eyes are always the same size from birth but your nose and ears never stop growing. 

 26. By 60 years of age, 60% of men and 40% of women will snore. 

 27. We are about 1 cm taller in the morning than in the evening, because during normal activities during the day, the cartilage in our knees and other areas slowly compress. 

 28. The brain operates on the same amount of power as 10-watt light bulb, even while you are sleeping. In fact, the brain is much more active at night than during the day. 

 29. Nerve impulses to and from the brain travel as fast as 170 miles per hour. Neurons continue to grow throughout human life. Information travels at different speeds within different types of neurons. 

 30. It is a fact that people who dream more often and more vividly, on an average have a higher Intelligence Quotient. 

 31. The fastest growing nail is on the middle finger. 

 32. Facial hair grows faster than any other hair on the body. This is true for men as well as women.

 33. There are as many hairs per square inch on your body as a chimpanzee. 

 34. A human fetus acquires fingerprints at the age of three months. 

 35. By the age of 60, most people will have lost about half their taste buds. 

 36. About 32 million bacteria call every inch of your skin home. But don't worry, a majority of these are harmless or even helpful bacteria. 

 37. The colder the room you sleep in, the higher the chances are that you'll have a bad dream. 

 38. Human lips have a reddish color because of the great concentration of tiny capillaries just below the skin. 

 39. Three hundred million cells die in the human body every minute. 

 40. Like fingerprints, every individual has an unique tongue print that can be used for identification.

 41. A human head remains conscious for about 15 to 20 seconds after it has been decapitated. 

 42. It takes 17 muscles to smile and 43 to frown. 

 43. Humans can make do longer without food than sleep.  Provided there is water, the average human could survive a month to two months without food depending on their body fat and other factors.   Sleep deprived people, however, start experiencing radical personality and psychological changes after only a few sleepless days.  The longest recorded time anyone has ever gone without sleep is 11 days, at the end of which the experimenter 
 was awake, but stumbled over words, hallucinated and frequently forgot what he was doing. 

 44. The most common blood type in the world is Type O. The rarest blood type, A-H or Bombay blood, due to the location of its discovery, has been found in less than hundred people since it was discovered 

 45. Every human spent about half an hour after being conceived, as a single cell. Shortly afterward, the cells begin rapidly dividing and begin forming the components of a tiny embryo. 

 46. Right-handed people live, on average, nine years longer than left-handed people do. 

 47. Your ears secrete more earwax when you are afraid than when you aren't. 

 48. Koalas and primates are the only animals with unique fingerprints. 

 49. Humans are the only animals to produce emotional tears. 

 50. The human heart creates enough pressure to squirt blood 30 feet in the air.
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TOP 10 REASONS TO VOTE DEMOCRAT

 

TOP 10 REASONS TO VOTE DEMOCRAT

 

#10. I vote Democrat because I love the fact that I can now marry whoever I want. I’ve decided to marry my German Shepherd.

 

 #9. I vote Democrat because I believe oil companies' profits of 4% on
a gallon of gas are obscene, but the government taxing the same gallon at 15% isn’t.

 

#8. I vote Democrat because I believe the government will do a better
job of spending the money I earn than I would.

 

#7. I vote Democrat because Freedom of Speech is fine as long as
nobody is offended by it (or disagrees with it).
 
#6. I vote Democrat because I'm way too irresponsible to own a gun,
and I know that my local police are all I need to protect me from
murderers and thieves. I am also thankful that we have a 911 service
that get police to your home in order to identify your body after a
home invasion.

 

#5. I vote Democrat because I'm not concerned about millions of babies being aborted so long as we keep all death row inmates alive and comfy.

 

#4. I vote Democrat because I think illegal aliens have a right to free health care, education, and Social Security benefits, and we
should take away Social Security from those who paid into it.

 

#3. I vote Democrat because I believe that businesses should not be
allowed to make profits for themselves. They need to break even and
give the rest away to the government for redistribution as the
Democrat Party sees fit.

 

#2. I vote Democrat because I believe liberal judges need to rewrite
the Constitution every few days to suit fringe kooks who would never
get their agendas past the voters.…

 

And the #1 reason I vote Democrat is because I think it's better to
pay $billions$ for oil to people who hate us, but not drill our own
because it might upset some endangered beetle, gopher or fish here in
America. We don't care about the beetles, gophers or fish in those
other countries.

 

 

Priceless! 2700 pages of Health Care explained in 1 paragraph No one can sum it up better than Donald Trump:

 

Priceless! 2700 pages of Health Care explained in 1 paragraph

No one can sum it up better than Donald Trump:

"Let me get this straight.... We're going to be "gifted" with a health care plan we are forced to purchase and fined if we don't, which purportedly covers at least ten million more people, without adding a single new doctor, but provides for16,000 new IRS agents, who have recently demonstrated their objective and professional integrity; written by a committee whose chairman says he doesn't understand it, passed by a Congress that didn't read it but exempted themselves from it, and signed by a President who smokes, with fundingadministered by a treasury chief who didn't pay his taxes, for which we're being taxed for four years before any benefits take effect, by a government which has already bankrupted Social Security and Medicare, Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac, and the Post Office, all to be overseen by a surgeon general who is obese, and financed by a country that's broke!!!!!

'What the hell could possibly go wrong?

 

The Sunni Ramadan Offensive and the Lessons of Tet

The Sunni Ramadan Offensive and the Lessons of Tet

Common Sense ...

 Obituary printed in the London Times.....Absolutely Dead Brilliant!!

Today we mourn the passing of a beloved old friend, Common Sense, who has been with us for many years. No one knows for sure how old he was, since his birth records were long ago lost in bureaucratic red tape. He will be remembered as having cultivated such valuable lessons as: 

- Knowing when to come in out of the rain; 
- Why the early bird gets the worm; 
- Life isn't always fair; 
- And maybe it was my fault. 

Common Sense lived by simple, sound financial policies (don't spend more than you can earn) and reliable strategies (adults, not children, are in charge).

His health began to deteriorate rapidly when well-intentioned but overbearing regulations were set in place. Reports of a 6-year-old boy charged with sexual harassment for kissing a classmate; teens suspended from school for using mouthwash after lunch; and a teacher fired for reprimanding an unruly student, only worsened his condition. 

Common Sense lost ground when parents attacked teachers for doing the job that they themselves had failed to do in disciplining their unruly children. 

It declined even further when schools were required to get parental consent to administer sun lotion or an aspirin to a student; but could not inform parents when a student became pregnant and wanted to have an abortion. 

Common Sense lost the will to live as the churches became businesses; and criminals received better treatment than their victims. 

Common Sense took a beating when you couldn't defend yourself from a burglar in your own home and the burglar could sue you for assault. 

Common Sense finally gave up the will to live, after a woman failed to realize that a steaming cup of coffee was hot. She spilled a little in her lap, and was promptly awarded a huge settlement. 

Common Sense was preceded in death,
-by his parents, Truth and Trust,
-by his wife, Discretion,
-by his daughter, Responsibility,
-and by his son, Reason. 

He is survived by his 5 stepbrothers; 
- I Know My Rights 
- I Want It Now 
- Someone Else Is To Blame 
- I'm A Victim
- Pay me for Doing Nothing 

Not many attended his funeral because so few realized he was gone. 

If you still remember him, pass this on. If not, join the majority and do nothing.

Obama's World Disorder by Victor Davis Hanson Tuesday, June 24, 2014

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Obama's World Disorder

by Victor Davis Hanson

Tuesday, June 24, 2014

Amid all the talk of the isolationism that supposedly characterizes the Obama administration’s foreign policy, we forget that since World War II, the global order has largely been determined by U.S. engagement. The historically rare state of prosperity and peace that defined the postwar world were due to past U.S. vigilance and sacrifice.  

Germany in the last 150 years has been at the center of three European wars, winning one, losing another, and destroying much of Europe and itself in the third. Yet present-day Germany has the largest economy in Europe and the fourth largest in the world. It is a global leader in high technology and industrial craftsmanship. For seventy years Germany, even after its second historic unification in 1989, has not translated such economic preeminence into military power, much less aggression. In fact, the strategic status quo of postwar Europe—with Britain and France, and their relatively smaller and weaker economies, as the continent’s two sole nuclear powers—remains mostly unquestioned.

Image credit: 

Zoriah

That strange fact is due almost entirely to the U.S.-led NATO’s determination to protect the Eastern flank of Europe from potential enemies, to reassure Germany that it need not rearm to enjoy pan-European influence, and to quietly support the European nuclear monopolies of Britain and France. While the U.S. has always talked up the American-inspired United Nations, its first allegiance has always been to assure liberal democratic states in Europe of unshakeable American support. Any weakening of the latter might send Europe back into the tumultuous twentieth century.

A similar paradox exists in Asia. Pakistan and North Korea are two of the weakest economies and most unstable political systems in the region. Yet both nations are nuclear—despite rather than because of U.S.-led efforts at nonproliferation. In comparison, by any logical measure, far wealthier and more sophisticated states like Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Australia, and perhaps the Philippines should all be nuclear, given their expertise, dangerous locales, and the looming shadows of three proud, and sometime aggressive nations—China, India, and Russia—in their midst. Yet none have. That fact too is largely because of American security guarantees.

Why, then, has the Obama administration sought to negotiate nuclear arms reduction agreements solely with the Russians? The latter does not have any responsibilities resembling the host of American dependents and clients in Asia and Europe that could become nuclear, but choose not to, only because of U.S. guarantees of their strategic security.

Economically successful but non-nuclear Asian nations claim a portion of the U.S. deterrent force as critical to their own survival. Any failure to reassure our Asian and Pacific partners that our own nuclear forces are pledged to their survival would lead to a sizable increase in the world’s nuclear family.

In addition to protecting postwar Europe and the Pacific, the United States has traditionally sided with historically persecuted and vulnerable peoples, who, in the calculations of realpolitik, might not otherwise warrant such staunch friendship. U.S. security guarantees to Israel—a mere 7 million people, until recently without oil reserves, and surrounded by a host of more numerous and oil-wealthy enemies—for a half-century have assured the viability of the Jewish state.

For all the present acrimony over the Iraq War, we forget that one dividend was the emergence of a semi-autonomous and largely constitutional Kurdistan of some 7 million people, whose recent tragic history had been one of ethnic cleansing, gassing, and slaughter. Only prior liberation by and current support from America keep viable the small landlocked province.

The same is largely true of Taiwan. While the current security guarantees accorded Taiwan by the U.S. are nebulous, even such uncertainty for now continues to keep Taiwan autonomous amid constant Chinese pressure. Also consider tiny Greece, a country that has been alternately friendly and hostile to the United States. But its long unhappy history is a testament to the dangerous neighborhood of this country of 12 million inhabitants: the turmoil of the Arab spring is to its south, an ascendant Islamist and neo-Ottoman Turkey are to the east, and the ethnic powder keg in the Balkans lie to the North, capped by understandably unsympathetic European Union creditors. Only Greece’s NATO membership—a euphemism for an omnipresent American 6th fleet—has offered the Greek people both security and the opportunity to chafe at its dependence on U.S. arms.

In fact, there are a host of tiny moderate nations, which, while not formally allied with the U.S., count on American friendship in extremis, from Jordan and Kuwait to Chile and Colombia. Any American recessional puts at risk all such vulnerable states. The Obama administration’s policy of forcing concessions from the Israelis, pulling out all constabulary troops from an unstable postwar Iraq, and cozying up to an increasingly absolutist and Islamist Turkey makes no sense.

Then there is the rogue’s gallery. Just as Rome once put down nationalists, insurrectionists, and challengers of the Pax Romana, such as Ariovistus, Boudicca, Cleopatra, Jugurtha, Mithridates, Vercingetorix, and Zenobia, so too the United States has gone after state and non-state enemies of the postwar system, both during and after the Cold War. Sometimes authoritarians sent their armies across national borders or were guilty of genocide; at other times, unhinged nation-states and free-lancing zealots sponsored or committed acts of international terrorism. In response, the U.S.—sometimes successfully, sometimes not so much—has gone to war or at least gone after the likes of Moammar Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, Slobodan Milosevic, Ho Chi Minh, Manuel Noriega, Kim Il-sung, and the Taliban. Like it or not, only the United States can prevent the theocracy in Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, the Assad dictatorship from gassing its own people, or al Qaeda from staging another 9/11 attack.

The United States offered resistance to illiberal and autocratic regional powers that have at time challenged the protocols of the postwar order. And that pushback has allowed weaker nations—such as Poland or the Baltic States—to escape the orbit of post-Soviet Russia, while in the Pacific ensuring that an Australia, New Zealand, or the Philippines is not bullied into subservience by China

This strange postwar world ushered in the greatest advancement in prosperity amid the general absence of a cataclysmic world conflagration or continental war since the dawn of civilization. For the first time since the rise of the Greek city-state, most nations have been able both to prosper and to assume that their boundaries were inviolate and their populations mostly free from attack. A system of international communications, travel, commerce, and trade is predicated on the assumption that pirates cannot seize cargo ships, terrorists cannot hijack planes, and rogue nations cannot let off atomic bombs without a U.S. led coalition to stop them from threatening the international order.

For the U.S. to continue this exceptional role of preserving the postwar system in times of economic weakness and spiritual exhaustion, it is critical for the Obama administration to articulate to the American people exactly what the United States has accomplished, how the postwar order arose, and what precisely are the benefits that justify such enormous sacrifices in blood and treasure.

Unfortunately, it has not offered systematic defense of the world order it inherited. For all the grand talk of working with the United Nations, the Obama administration ignored it in Syria, vastly exceeded its no-fly-zone and humanitarian aid resolutions in Libya, and misled it when it asserted to the General Assembly that a video-maker had prompted the violence against U.S. facilities in Benghazi. Moreover, Obama’s foreign policy team has serially faulted the prior administration as unilateral, forgetting that it obtained UN resolutions to retaliate in Afghanistan, tried desperately to obtain them for the Iraq invasion, and then assembled a large and diverse group of allies.  

The Obama administration’s reset with Russia paid no attention to our Eastern European friends, who were eager to work with America on missile defense and integration within the West.  It also ignored that reset essentially undid the punishments accorded Vladimir Putin for his 2008 invasion of Georgia. Meanwhile, China is angry and confused that the U.S. suddenly warns it to behave in the Pacific, after turning a blind eye for five years as it bullied most of its neighbors.

After assembling a coalition to beef up sanctions again Iran, the U.S. eased them to begin new negotiations with the theocracy—without prior consultation with our allies. The Obama administration has gone after al Qaedists through drone attacks, but such terrorists have spread throughout the Mideast in the wake of U.S. retrenchment and a misguided and euphemistic outreach to radical Islam.

No one in Latin America knows to what degree, if any, the U.S. opposes the creeping spread of authoritarian Marxist governments. No one in the Middle East knows quite what the evolving American position is on Iranian nuclear proliferation. And no one quite knows whether the United States is distancing itself from Israel while gravitating toward its enemies.

The Obama administration declares climate change the chief global threat. That new inanimate target is welcome news to aggressive nations that had once feared that their own reckless behavior might have been so singled out.

Americans did not fully appreciate the costly postwar global order that the United States had established over the last seventy years. Maybe they will start to as they witness it vanish.

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VICTOR DAVIS HANSON

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