tyresias | Odd Meandenring Thyme

Today children in Timor-Leste (East Timor) are among the most disadvantaged in the world. Almost half are undernourished, 12 per cent do not reach their fifth birthday and only one in five attends secondary school (UNDP HDR 2004). (To find out more check out www.alolafoundation.org, www.etan.org or www.oxfam.org.au/easttimor.)

If you are an adult of “average”* weight, here’s what you do in 24 hours:
*average was not specified anywhere, I dare not speculate

Your heart beats 103, 689 times
Your blood travels 168,000 miles
You breathe 23, 040 times
You inhale 438 cubic feet of air
You lose in weight 7.8 pounds of waste
You perspire 1.43 pints of moisture
Your nails grow 0.00046 inches
Your hair grows 0.1717 inches
You exercise 7,000,000 brain cells

I get to pick all the topics I want to address during a forthcoming documentary but one, which is mandatory. Thomas Beatie. Phonetically, it sounded funny to me to refer to him as "enceint" because I've never heard the masculin version of the word pregnant in French before today.

A camel's hair brush is made of squirrel fur.

The ‘v’ in the name of a court case does not stand for ‘versus’ but for ‘and’ in civil proceedings.

The international telephone dialing code for Antarctica is 672.

You burn more calories sleeping than you do watching TV.

The sound that we hear when we place a seashell next to our ear is not the ocean, but rather the sound of blood surging through the veins in the ear. Any cup-shaped object placed over the ear produces the same effect.