If you look at sperm counts in humans, on average the older the man is, the higher the sperm count is. However, as young men become old men, they do not experience an increase in sperm count. The correlation is not with the age of the man, but with the time period he was born. It is believed that this is due to exposure to artificial hormones in food while still in the womb — as the level of hormones, pesticides, and so on in our environment has increased, our fertility has decreased.
Brief interjection: Fabulous.
Anyway, there's a tower in Taiwan called the Taipei 101. It's currently the world's tallest skyscraper at 1667 feet, and weights about 700,000 tonnes. Think about the Earth's anatomy. To over-simplify, it's like an orange — the peel is solid rock and dirt, and below that is lava. Push a pin into an orange and it doesn't take a lot of pressure to rupture the peel… Like that pin, Taipei 101 has been putting enormous concentrated force on the Earth's crust and is breaking through — it has re-opened an ancient fault line in Taiwan and so far has been linked to several earthquakes.
In response to Taiwan's mega-tower, other nations have vowed to build even larger skyscrapers. Right now oil billionaires are constructing the Burj Dubai. They're expecting to finish this 2,300+ foot monstrosity in 2008, making it the tallest structure of any type ever built by mankind. The foundations' concrete alone weighs over 110,000 tonnes, with the total weight being in the range of a million tonnes.
As a point of trivia, the tower is being built by Osama bin Laden's family. You have to wonder which branch of the family is going to be the more destructive one for humanity in the long run.
Yeah, these days, it helps to be crazy.
But don't worry, you are immortal.
Grr. I had something I wanted to post about but I can't remember.
Update: Oh wait, now I remember the other “you should think about this” point. When your body is threatened by disease, microbes, or injury, it responds with leukocytosis — the immune system, recognizing that the body is at risk, sends out white blood cells to destroy the invasion and keep you healthy and alive. There is however a “non-at-risk” leukocytic response — it also happens when you eat food. For a long time it was assumed this was a normal part of eating, but then it was discovered that with raw (or slow-cooked) and unprocessed foods, there was no leukocytosis.
To put that in the clearest of terms, your body responds to cooked and processed food in the same way as it does to poison. Human physiology was simply not designed (err, I mean evolved) to consume what we eat as modern man. Click the picture below to check out various examples of “before and after” shots from we like it raw, one of my favorite food blogs.
