In these tough economic times you might be looking around to see what you can sell and how much you can get for it. Well, here’s an option that few may have considered. Remember, you’re not a renewable resource, so once you’re gone, that’s it.

How much is my body worth?

You’re worth more than you think!

A great number of people have spent a great deal of human and financial resources calculating the composition of, prior to the decomposition of, and the worth, or worthlessness of, the human body.

When we total the monetary value of the elements in our bodies and the value of the average person’s skin, we arrive at a net worth of $4.50!

This value is, however, subject to change, due to stock market fluctuations. Since the studies leading to this conclusion were conducted by the U.S. and by Japan respectively, it might be wise to consult the New York Stock Exchange and the Nikkei Index before deciding when to sell!

The U.S. Bureau of Chemistry and Soils invested many a hard-earned tax dollar in calculating the chemical and mineral composition of the human body, which breaks down as follows:

• 65% Oxygen
• 18% Carbon
• 10% Hydrogen
• 3% Nitrogen
• 1.5% Calcium
• 1% Phosphorous
• 0.35% Potassium
• 0.25% Sulfur
• 0.15% Sodium
• 0.15% Chlorine
• 0.05% Magnesium
• 0.0004% Iron
• 0.00004% Iodine

Additionally, it was discovered that our bodies contain trace quantities of fluorine, silicon, manganese, zinc, copper, aluminum, and arsenic. Together, all of the above amounts to less than one dollar!

Our most valuable asset is our skin, which the Japanese invested their time and money in measuring. The method the Imperial State Institute for Nutrition at Tokyo developed for measuring the amount of a person’s skin is to take a naked person, and to apply a strong, thin paper to every surface of his body. After the paper dries, they carefully remove it, cut it into small pieces, and painstakingly total the person’s measurements. Cut and dried, the average person is the proud owner of fourteen to eighteen square feet of skin, with the variables in this figure being height, weight, and breast size. Basing the skin’s value on the selling price of cowhide, which is approximately $.25 per square foot, the value of an average person’s skin is about $3.50.

How does caffeine affect us?

Caffeine is an addictive drug, affecting 90% of all Americans, which alters the brain’s natural state, and stimulates it in a manner similar to the amphetamines cocaine and heroin.

The mechanisms employed by caffeine, cocaine, and heroin, are to close blood vessels in the brain, so the brain and body cannot sleep, to cause the release of adrenaline into the body, so the body remains active and alert, and to manipulate dopamine production in the brain, so the person experiences a temporary “high.”

Caffeine may be found in its natural state in many plants, including tea leaves, coffee beans, and cocoa nuts. The pure form of caffeine is a bitter, white, crystalline powder derived from the decaffeinating process of coffee and tea. The vast number of products in which caffeine comes, range from coffee, to tea, to colas, to milk chocolate, and to pain relievers, just to mention a few.

Most people are unaware of caffeine’s addictive properties. Those who consume 300 mg. or more per day, suffer from withdrawal symptoms if they abruptly cut off their caffeine supply. Most users will suffer from symptoms of fatigue and depression, irritability, tremors, jumpiness, deprivation of deep sleep, and vascular headaches, as the blood vessels in the brain dilate. Caffeine, however, can be medically useful as a cardiac stimulant, and also as a mild diuretic used to flush the system.

One of the mechanisms that caffeine addiction, cocaine addiction, and heroin addiction share, is that they block an adenosine’s ability to slow the nerve cells’ activity in preparation for sleep, and instead increase the speed of their activity and of the neuron firing in the brain. The caffeine causes the blood vessels in the brain to constrict, because it has blocked the adenosine’s ability to open them to allow sleep. The ability of caffeine to close the blood vessels is why many pain relievers contain caffeine. If a person has a vascular headache, the caffeine in the medicine will shut down the blood vessels, thus easing the pain.

The increased neuron firing in the brain triggers the pituitary glands to release hormones that tell the adrenal glands to produce adrenaline, also known as epinephrine. Adrenaline, the “fight-or-flight” hormone, gives the user’s body a boost, and heightens the person’s alertness.

One final mechanism caffeine, cocaine, and heroin share, is their ability to manipulate dopamine production. Dopamine, a neurotransmitter, activates the “pleasure centers” in certain parts of the brain, and simply makes a person feel good. Naturally, the pleasurable effect produced by dopamine manipulation plays a prominent role in caffeine addiction.

The short-term effects resulting from caffeine consumption, such as alertness, renewed energy, and pleasure, may not necessarily outweigh the longer-term effects of caffeine addiction. Caffeine, despite its similarities to amphetamines, has side effects that are not nearly as severe, and withdrawal symptoms that are, generally, not life-threatening.

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The bears do it, the squirrels do it, and now we know the birds do it.  Do you wish you could do it? Check this out to see if you want to do it, too.

Why do some animals hibernate in the winter?

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Grizzly black bears, hummingbirds and squirrels hibernate in the winter because a long, chilly season of little food and warmth is no picnic for these animals.

Unlike the warm seasons of spring and summer that provide an unlimited amount of food for these critters, the winter season only provides a cold, frozen ground where food is extremely scarce.

In addition, the wintery days are frigid and short while the hours in the dark night seem to drag on for a chilly eternity. Searching for grub often leaves the stomachs of these animals empty because by the end of their search their bodies end up burning more calories than the animals get back from the food when and if any is found. So instead of starving or freezing to death, these animals decide to pack in all in for the long haul and hibernate during the winter months.

Hibernation helps these animals survive in the roughest and toughest conditions. By hibernating, an animal decreases its body.s energy needs to a bare minimum. Hibernation is a process of lowering an animals body temperature and slowing down its heartbeat into order to conserve energy during times of scarcity and stress.

Every animal hibernates in different ways. While squirrels can wake up every four days to grab a bite to eat and take a trip to the bathroom, black bears can stay dormant, or inactive, for up to seven months with no food, water, or visits to the bathroom.

Where Did Aspirin Come From?

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Got a headache? Read this article and give thanks.

Aspirin’s history is a lengthy one, from its discovery in the fifth century BC, to its use as a bartering tool in World War I, to its newly discovered benefits and uses.

A person could get a headache thinking about all of the detours aspirin has taken on the road to becoming today’s common, inexpensive, cure-all medication.

Aspirin’s roots are deep, and reach back to Hippocrates himself, the Greek father of modern medicine, who held the recipe for a pain reliever and fever reducer made from the bark and leaves of the willow tree. The key the Greek father of modern medicine held from sometime between 460 and 377 BC, was buried with him, and was not rediscovered until 1758 by an English clergyman.

Scientists, now aware of the pain relieving properties of willow bark, struggled to strip it down to the exact ingredient responsible for its powers, and finally did so in the 1820s. They narrowed their search to salicin, an early form of the family of drugs named salicylates, of which aspirin is a member.

Severe stomach upset from the salicylic acid extracted willow bark posed a problem for scientists. They attempted to remedy this side effect by combining the acid with sodium to neutralize the acid, but it failed to reduce the belly aching.

A French chemist, Charles Frederic Gerhardt put an end to the dilemma in 1853, by adding acetyl chloride to the sodium salicylate mixture. He published the results of his findings, but did not pursue his creation past this point, even though it upset the stomach less than the currently available compound. Mr. Gerhardt saw no future in the time-consuming preparation of his recipe, which he felt did not improve much upon the original medicine. His decision left people grabbing their guts, and stomaching the old standby, sodium salicylate.

Salvation came in 1897, in the person of an eager, young Felix Hoffman, who sought, and found, a drug to help relieve the painful symptoms of his father’s arthritis. This driven chemist, an employee of the Bayer Company, found and dusted off Gerhardt’s old publication, mixed a batch of the recipe, and discovered that it actually worked.

Hoffman used his connection with his employer to pitch his idea, and Bayer reluctantly agreed to produce the medicine they named Aspirin. They invented the name Aspirin by combining the initials A from acetyl chloride, the SPIR from the plant they extracted the salicylic acid from, Spirae ulmaria, and the IN, because it was the common ending for medications at that time. Bayer launched Aspirin in powder form and as a tablet in 1915. Aspirin was an instant success.

Aspirin’s success ended up costing the Bayer Company a great deal of money, when the U.S., England, France, and Russia forced it to surrender the trademark to them, as part of Germany’s war reparations at the close of World War I. Bayer gave up the trademark in 1919, as part of the Treaty of Versailles, which explains why the aspirin, stripped of its trademark, is now written in the lower case.

Today, aspirin holds the title of being the most widely used drug, one that is no longer solely used as a pain reliever and as a fever reducer. Physicians have shown aspirin to be effective in combating arthritis pain, in reducing the risk of heart disease, of death following a heart attack, of cancer, if taken two times weekly, and of developing preeclampsia during pregnancy. It is doubtful that aspirin will ever again be lost to the annals of history.

Did you know?

Bayer also held, and had to give up, its trademark to heroin at the end of World War I?

Neither!

Twelve midnight A.M. and twelve midnight P.M., or 00:00 A.M. and 00:00 P.M., mean nothing at all. They are simply the midpoints that divide the day into two equal halves.

Each and every day begins exactly at midnight, and each A.M. begins precisely thereafter. Similarly, each P.M. begins immediately after noon. No meaning can be assigned to 12:00 A.M. (00:00 A.M.), or to 12:00 P.M. (00:00 P.M.). They are merely reference points meant to simplify timetables for us.

Along the same line, the Universal Day, established by the International Convention in 1884 in Washington, D.C., U.S.A., operates according to World Time, or Universal Time at Greenwich, England. The logic regarding Midnight and Noon also applies to Greenwich Mean Time, commonly referred to as GMT or Zulu time; Midnight and Noon represent markers, or “page breaks” in the day and in the night, and may be represented by 00:00 o’clock.

Greenwich, England also holds the distinction of being at the point of zero longitude, where East meets West. The 1884 international agreement also recognized this line of zero degrees longitude as the prime meridian, a point from which all points on the earth’s surface are measured.

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The reasons we laugh, including “contagious” laughter, may be products of evolution.

Natural laughter is a two-part, spontaneous, response to humor, that has physiological, psychological, and physical benefits.

Most agree that we laugh when we find something to be humorous, yet different reasons exist for what we find to be humorous. Additionally, different things are humorous to us at different stages of life.

Laughter, a physiological response to humor, can be broken down into two parts.

The first is a set of gestures, and the second is the production of sound. The brain forces to conduct both responses simultaneously. From a physiological standpoint, a “sensor” in the brain responds to laughter by triggering other neural circuits in the brain, which, in turn, generate more laughter.

Oddly enough, laughter is an orderly response, and almost occurs “spontaneously” during pauses at the end of phrases, earning it the name the punctuation effect. Human beings are the only species capable of laughter, and the average adult does so approximately 17 times per day.

Good health is one of the many benefits of laughter. Laughter reduces our stress levels by reducing the level of stress hormones, and also helps us cope with serious illnesses.

Physiologically, laughter promotes healing, by lowering the blood pressure, and by increasing the vascular blood flow and the oxygenation of the blood.

Physical fitness stemming from laughter is a benefit known to few. Scientists estimate that laughing 100 times is equivalent to a 10-minute workout on a rowing machine, or to 15 minutes on a stationary exercise bike. The mere act of laughing exercises the diaphragm, as well as the abdominal, respiratory, facial, leg, and back muscles.

Another benefit of laughter is that it improves our over-all mental health. Pent up negative emotions, such as anger, fear, and sadness, can cause biochemical changes in our bodies that can produce a harmful effect.

Laughter provides a harmless outlet for these negative emotions, and provides a coping mechanism for dealing with difficult or stressful situations. 

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The quest for ways to ignite a fire began about 1.5 million years ago, when the caveman discovered that he could start a fire by rubbing two sticks together, and ended with the successful invention of the non-toxic matches we use today.

Today, approximately 500 billion matches are used each year and about 200 billion of these come from matchbooks.

In 1669, an alchemist, one who mistakenly believes that he can change base metals into gold, mixed up a batch of something which was, surprisingly, not gold, but a substance he named phosphorous. Since his recipe did not produce the gold he desired, he tossed it onto the heap of history.

Next was Robert Boyle, an English physicist, after whom Boyle’s Law was named. He cleverly coated a piece of paper with phosphorous and, armed with a splinter of sulfur-coated wood, bravely bulled the wood through the paper, which burst into flames.

Much later, in 1826, John Walker stumbled upon a chemical concoction that produced fire. After stirring together a mixture of chemicals, which did not contain phosphorous, John removed the stick he used, only to find a dried lump at its end. When he scraped the stick against the floor to rid it of the lump, the stick ignited. His mixture of antimony sulfide, potassium chlorate, gum, and starch could produce fire. In his rush to demonstrate his discovery to others, John bypassed the patent office.

In no time, a person at one of John’s demonstrations, Samuel Jones, spotted an overlooked, golden opportunity, and patented the invention under his name. Mr. Jones produced matches he named Lucifers, which produced phenomenal sales. The widespread availability of the matches actually led to a significant increase in smoking.

The dark side to Lucifers was their ungodly odor, and the fireworks display they gave when ignited. In fact, Lucifers carried a warning label stating that they, not the cigarettes they lit, were dangerous to one’s health!

In the 1830s, Charles Sauria, a French chemist, decided to improve upon the existing formula by adding white phosphorous to do away with the stench of the matches. What Mr. Sauria did not know, was that white phosphorous was lethal to those who came into contact with it.

Unknowingly, he created a deadly monster by adding the white phosphorous. The phosphorous was responsible for a nearly epidemic disease known as “phossy jaw,” match factory workers developed poisoned bones, and children who sucked on the matches developed infant skeletal deformities. Even the amount of white phosphorous contained in one pack of matches could kill a person, and actually did, through numerous suicides and murders.

Finally, by 1910, the general public’s awareness of the dangers of the white phosphorous in these matches led to a worldwide campaign to ban them. Thankfully, Diamond Match Company obtained an U.S. patent for the first nonpoisonous match, which used the harmless chemical sesquisulfide of phosphorous in place of the deadly white phosphorous.

So critical was Diamond Match Company’s discovery to public health, that U.S. President Taft made a public plea to the Company voluntarily to surrender their patent rights to the invention. Despite the enormous moneymaking potential of the patent, Diamond Match Company granted President Taft’s request on January 28, 1911. Congress followed suit by passing a law that raised the tax on white phosphorous matches to a level so high that their production soon ceased.

Discussion of the match would be incomplete without mention of the matchbook. John Pusey, in 1892, invented something he named the matchbook. He had the right idea, but had it backwards, as he placed the striking surface for the match on the inside of the book of 50 matches, so when one match was struck, the remaining 49 also ignited!

Once again, Diamond Match Company intervened and saved the day, by purchasing the patent to the matchbook, by moving the striking surface to the outside of the cover where it belonged, and by marketing the revamped match as the “safety match.”

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The igloo, a temporary winter hunting shelter to the Alaskan Eskimo does, in fact, melt inside, but not to a great extent.

The snowflakes falling outside of the igloo, in the harsh Alaskan winter, quickly melt when they land on its roof, and provide a replacement layer of insulation for the igloo. The ongoing freezing and re-freezing of the igloo, hardens it, and transforms the blocks of snow the Eskimos used in the construction process into a solid, icy, domed refuge. The igloo can now withstand the weight of a massive polar bear, should one happen along and have the urge to play “king of the mountain.”

The initial freezing and re-freezing of the igloo takes place at end of the igloo’s construction. First, the men must dig a trench into a fresh snow- drift, and, using their knives, cut blocks of snow from it that are specifically shaped to face inward when fully laid out. They then lay the blocks on their edges to form a circle, cutting them to size as they go, so that the end result will be a narrowing spiral. They cap the igloo by dropping a keystone, or block with edges cut wider above than below, into the remaining gap in the roof, and “grout” the gaps between blocks of snow with additional snow.

The men then call in the resident expert, the Eskimo woman, to put the finishing touches on the igloo. Armed with her whale blubber lamp, she enters the structure, lights her lamp to the highest possible setting, beats a hasty retreat, and seals the entrance with a block of ice. Inside the igloo, the snow on the roof begins to melt but, because of its domed design, the water melts down the sides of the igloo, and soaks the blocks of snow. When the blocks are almost completely saturated with water, the Eskimo woman returns, douses her blubber lamp, and allows the frigid outside air to rush in, transforming the fragile snow structure into one of hard, solid ice.

The igloo is now prepared for its temporary tenants, whose body heat, combined with the warmth of one to two blubber lamps, maintain its interior at approximately 55°F. Not until the winter ends, and the exterior temperature rises, does the igloo begin to melt. Hopefully, the Eskimos will be long gone by then, as the igloo will collapse…dome-first!

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One can bank on the fact that most coins derive from Latin words, and are named after people, places, or things.

Even the word coin, translates from the Latin “cuneus,” meaning wedge, and was thusly named because early coins ressembled the wedges the dies used to coin coins. Our cent, from the Latin “centum,” meaning one hundred, our dime, from the Latin “decimus,” meaning tenth, and the French franc, from the Latin “Franconium Rex,” meaning King of the Franks, are all examples of the naming of money, the root of all evil, which translates from the Latin word “mona,” meaning to warn!

On to a more weighty manner in which people named coins, that being physical weight. The English pound, translates from the Latin “pondo,” meaning pound, or, to get more heavily into detail, from the Latin “libra pondo,” meaning a pound of weight. This method of naming coins weighed heavily in naming of the Spanish peso and of the Italian lira.

A sense of fairness dictates that some coins bear the names of the metals of which they are composed. Thus, our nickel is made of nickel. Location, not Latin, sometimes figures prominently into the naming of sum (oops!), some coins. Our very own dollar, not always in paper form, originally hailed from the silver mines of Bohemia, where Bohemians extracted silver for the coins, and minted them in the town of Joachimsthal. Realizing that the coin they termed the Joachimsthaler, short of lacking in creativity, was rather lengthy, our Bohemian friends lost the head of the name, and kept the tail, with the end result being the thaler. The thaler eventually lost its lisp, and became our dollar.

Many countries used their word for crown, for example, crown, sovereign, krone, krun, krone, corona (not the beer), to demonstrate that some crown authority initially granted permission to mint them. Other countries named coins in honor of their heros, such as the Panamanian balboa, after the explorer Balboa, the Venezuelan bolivar, after one of it’s national heros, and the Peruvian sol, also not a beer, but the Spanish word for sun, after this ancient Incan object of worship.

Teflon, the non-stick coating used on pots and pans, holds the title in the Guiness Book of World Records as being the slipperiest substance on earth.

Scientifically speaking, Teflon will not chemically bond to anything, but can be forced mechanically into small nooks and crannies. This slippery substance adheres to their surfaces once manufacturers sandblast them to roughen them, apply a primer, and embed the Teflon into the primer.

DuPont scientist, Dr. Roy Plunkett, accidentally created the recipe for Teflon in 1938, while attempting to produce a better coolant gas than the one currently on the market. In doing so, he toyed with different combinations of gases and, either accidentally or intentionally, left one batch of gasses in a container overnight. Upon arrival at work the following morning, he found that the gasses in the container had “vaporized,” and in their stead, found a slippery, waxy solid, which remained intact when exposed to corrosive chemicals which normally eat through things with which they come into contact.

The substance Dr. Plunkett discovered in the container that day was tetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), a solid version of fluorocarbons, or freon. For pronunciation’s sake, the doctor shortened the name for the substance to Teflon, but even the abbreviated name failed to nudge DuPont into production of the product.

In fact, DuPont waited until 1948, ten years after Teflon’s discovery, before beginning its production for commercial applications.

As DuPont dragged its heels in launching Teflon, a Parisian named Marc Gregoire learned of it, and successfully applied it to his fishing tackle to prevent the line from tangling. At his wife’s urging, he managed to apply Teflon to her pots and pans, and within several years, this entrepreneur sold in excess of one million Tefal (his name for Teflon) coated pots and pans.

The concept of Teflon coated pots and pans did not stick in America. When UPI reporter Thomas Hardie encountered one of these coated pans, when visiting a friend who had just returned from Paris, he saw a niche in the American market for the slick pots and pans, and immediately contacted Marc Gregoire in Paris. Hardie pitched these pots and pans to every major U.S. manufacturer of cooking utensils to no avail. His next move in his quest for a buyer was to import 3,000 of the pots and pans, with the goal of selling them to all major department stores. Once again, he hit a roadblock until, finally, he convinced a buyer at Macy’s Herald Square to take 200 pans off of his hands. All sold within two days, despite a major snowstorm.

Hardie had finally arrived, and could not keep up with the demand for his product. While building a manufacturing plant to produce the product, other manufacturers of pots and pans took advantage of Hardie’s moment of silence on the scene, seized the opportunity, and manufactured their own coated pots and pans.

Today, the use of Teflon coating is firmly embedded in America, and extends beyond pots and pans to include bakeware and other kitchen utensils. Hardie’s initiative and staying power paid off handsomely.

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