Damn, 4AM,
and I promised myself I would get to sleep earlier.
I thought I’d just put up a couple of things that I’ve refound after doing some snooping on the web (these mostly pertain to “debunking” stuff we were told as kids):
1:
Yeah, a worm won’t recover from getting split in half, despite what most of us were told as children (http://sciencefocus.com/qa/how-many-times-can-worm-be-split-half-and-still-grow-back).
2:
Rabbits don’t tend to like carrots. Despite Bugs Bunny showing us otherwise, a rabbit can not survive on a diet of only carrots (http://www.humanesociety.org/animals/rabbits/tips/rabbit_fruit.html).
3:
Cracking your knuckles will not lead to arthritis. The cracking noise is merely gas being quickly released from the joints when they are put in an awkward position; one not usually achievable by ones own muscular functions (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cracking_joints).
5:
Shaving facial hair does not cause it to grow back thicker/quicker! When one shaves, it merely cuts off a superficial layer of hair; not even affecting the actual follicles in which the hairs are grown. The appearance of a thicker beard after shaving when one is young is due to the increasing thickness of ones beard as one ages. It has absolutely nothing to do with shaving (http://www.snopes.com/oldwives/hairgrow.asp).
I hope you all enjoyed this very short list. I would make it longer but I’m getting sleepy. I’ll finish off the night with some cool space pictures or something to do with science, don’t worry.
Well, I haven’t posted anything
in a while, and seeing as it’s 2:40AM here, I figured I’d put something up about sleep
Note this isn’t a full blown article, just some snippets of things
Wikipedia (the all knowing) defines sleep as “a naturally recurring state characterized by reduced or absent consciousness, relatively suspended sensory activity, and inactivity of nearly all voluntary muscles.”
Sleep was once thought to preserve the body’s energy for use in the morning, when we need to do things. But it has been shown that sleep is actually detrimental to the metabolism. The reason as to why we sleep is currently unknown and under study.
A beneficial aspect to sleep is that it puts the body in a heightened “anabolic state.” This means a state that accentuates the growth, repair and rejuvenation of the body.
There are two basic stages in sleep: REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep and non-REM sleep.
It is during the REM sleep that one most usually dreams and it is also the time when one dreams most vividly.
Several studies have shown that sleep-deprived people tend to enter REM sleep much quicker than those who aren’t sleep-deprived when sleeping. This could possibly infer that REM sleep is, infact, the period of sleep in which the body rejuvenates the most.
There is such a thing as polyphasic sleep, which means sleeping more than once in a day.< /br> There is a so called “uberman” sleep schedule which insists on 6 twenty-minute naps every 4 hours in order to maintain the maximum amount of daylight possible from a day. Essentially, the naps are short in order to stimulate REM sleep as soon as one enters their nap. If it is true that REM sleep is what stimulates the body’s rejuvenation then this schedule takes full advantage of that.
A short disclaimer, please don’t try the uberman sleep schedule unless you’re dedicated, otherwise you will ruin your sleeping pattern and feel very groggy for a while.
I’d like to thank Wikipedia for providing me with all of this info. Great site.
How many senses can you name?
Let’s see how many I can name…
Taste
Smell
Hearing
Sight is actually split into 2 different senses:
►Light intensity
►Colours
Touch is split into about 5:
►Heat
►Cold
►Pain
►Itch
►And pressure
There’s proprioception (your body’s sense of self awareness)
Sensors that tell you when to pee
Sensors that tell you when your bladder is full
A sense of hunger
And a sense of thirst
Wow, much more than the original 5 that you thought you had right?
All info thanks to http://tlc.howstuffworks.com/family/question242.htm
EDIT:
I forgot about the sense of timing and balance, two very important senses
Edwin “Buzz” E. Aldrin Jr.
Some facts:
The lunar module pilot of the first manned mission to the moon, Apollo 11.
A little known fact about the Apollo 11 mission is that it was the second manned voyage to space where every single member had previously been on a flight. That is to say that it is the second all-veteran flight to space.
Aldrin was a Christian and had actually taken communion on the moon a few hours after landing. This event was not made public for years as, at the time, NASA was fighting a lawsuit filed by a lawsuit stating that astronauts should not undertake religious activities whilst in space.
