11 September 2007

The Old Farmer’s Almanac made the following predictions for this month:

A major hurricane will threaten late September. Otherwise September and October will be cooler than normal with near-normal fainfall.

1-3Sep07

Sunny, cool

4-9Sep07

Sunny, warm

10-19Sep07

Rain, then sunny, cool

20-26Sep07

Rain, then sunny, cool

27-30Sep07

Hurricane

It was cool at the start of the month and then warmed up. Last night and today we have had rain from passing Tropical Depression Gabrielle.

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On 18Aug07 I heard an interesting podcast by Robert Krulwich on his weekly show called Hmmm… from NPR. The segment was called Size Matters and concerned the lifespan of different animals.

Elephant	80 years
Lion	15 years
Squirrel	5 years
Mouse	2-3 years

They also said that larger animals hearts beat slower than those of smaller animals.

Whale	1 beat every 3 seconds
Shrew	1000+ beats per minute

Scientist Jeffrey West has determined that no matter how fast it beats an animal’s heart is good for about 1.5 billion beats. So smaller animals die sooner because their faster beating hearts wear out sooner.

I timed my resting heart rate and came up with 65 beats per minute, 93,600 per day. Doing the math I find that I should have died back in November 1993. Like the Mars rovers I have exceeded my design lifespan, although not to the same extent.

	Design Lifespan	Achieved Lifespan	Exceeds Design Lifespan
Mars rover	90 days 0.25 year	3.75 years	1400%
Me	43.88 years	57.75	31.60%

West said that humans are the only animals he has found that don’t fit the mold and that is because of the intervention of modern medicine.

I just read the book The Immortalists by David Friedman (who is lecturing at AMNH tonight). It is about Charles Lindbergh and Dr. Alexis Carrel and their efforts to grow mammalian organs in vitro with a goal of extending human life. In the book they said that the average human lifespan in 1900 was 49 years (47 years in Wikepedia), close to the 1.5 billion beats rule found by West. That lifespan has steadily increased as a result of various modern technologies and is now around 75 years in the United States.