mental-post: 2013-03-31

Andropause is the male menopause

Andropause or male menopause, sometimes colloquially called "man-opause", is a name that has been given, in some parts of the English-speaking world, to a set of effects that appears in some aging men, and which have some superficial similarities to menopause effects in women.
Andropause may be related to the slow but steady reduction of the production of the hormones testosterone and dehydroepiandrosterone in middle-aged men, and the consequences of that reduction. It is also associated with a decrease in Leydig cells. A steady decline in testosterone levels with age (in both men and women) is well documented.
Unlike "menopause", the word "andropause" is not currently recognized by the World Health Organization and its ICD-10 medical classification. While the words are sometimes used interchangeably, hypogonadism is a deficiency state in which the hormone testosterone goes below the normal range for even an aging male.

Camels have three eyelids to protect themselves from blowing sand.

Camels' mouths have a thick leathery lining, allowing them to chew thorny desert plants. Long eyelashes and ear hairs, together with nostrils that can close, form a barrier against sand. If sand gets lodged in their eyes, they can dislodge it using their transparent third eyelid. The camels' gait and widened feet help them move without sinking into the sand.

There are more than 4,500 cockreaches species in the world!

Cockroaches are insects of the order Blattaria or Blattodea, of which about 30 species out of 4,500 total are associated with human habitats. About four species are well known as pests.
Among the best-known pest species are the American cockroach, Periplaneta americana, which is about 30 mm (1.2 in) long; the German cockroach, Blattella germanica, about 15 mm (0.59 in) long; the Asian cockroach, Blattella asahinai, also about 15 mm (0.59 in) in length; and the Oriental cockroach, Blatta orientalis, about 25 mm (0.98 in). Tropical cockroaches are often much bigger, and extinct cockroach relatives and 'roachoids' such as the Carboniferous Archimylacris and the Permian Apthoroblattina were not as large as the biggest modern species.

If you ever get stung by a jelly fish, you can use coca cola instead of pee to kill the pain!

American children receive $2.60 per tooth on average from the tooth fairy.

In the last 40 years, the US National Cancer Institute has spent $90,000,000,000 ($90 Billion) trying to find a cure for cancer

Extending a life for three to six month costs in average $150,000

A man was trapped under his dead 224 lbs wife for 3 days after she fell down the stairs on top of him

"In 1903, in Liverpool, England, an elderly man was following his 224-pound wife up some stairs in their house when she lost her balance and fell backward, hit her head on the floor and died instantly.

The husband lay trapped under his dead spouse for three days. When friends finally found the couple, he was dead, too."

Centralia, in Pennsylvania is town that's been on fire since 1962.

Centralia is a borough and ghost town in Columbia County, Pennsylvania, United States. Its population has dwindled from over 1,000 residents in 1981 to 12 in 2005, as a result of a mine fire burning beneath the borough since 1962. Centralia is one of the least-populated municipalities in Pennsylvania.
Centralia is part of the Bloomsburg-Berwick micropolitan area. The borough is completely surrounded by Conyngham Township.
All properties in the borough were claimed under eminent domain by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in 1992 (and all buildings therein were condemned), and Centralia's ZIP code was revoked by the Postal Service in 2002. A few residents continue to reside there in spite of the failure of a lawsuit to reverse the eminent domain claim.

The Bubbly Creek is the branch of the Chicago River that is so contaminated with blood from the Stock Yards that it bubbles to this day.

Bubbly Creek is the nickname given to the South Fork of the Chicago River's South Branch, which runs entirely within the city of Chicago, Illinois, US. It marks the boundary between the Bridgeport and McKinley Park community areas of the city. The creek derives its name from the gases bubbling out of the riverbed from the decomposition of blood and entrails dumped into the river in the early 20th century by the local meatpacking businesses surrounding the Union Stock Yards directly south of the creek's endpoint at Pershing Road. It was brought to notoriety by Upton Sinclair in his exposé on the American meat packing industry entitled The Jungle.

Beatosu and Goblu are two non-existent Ohio towns that appeared on Michigan's official highway map as a reference to the University of Michigan and their rivals, Ohio State University.

Beatosu and Goblu are two non-existent Ohio towns that were inserted into the 1978–1979 official state of Michigan map. The names refer to the slogan of University of Michigan fans ("Go Blue!") and a reference to their archrivals from the Ohio State University (OSU).
Peter Fletcher, a Michigan alumnus and chairman of the State Highway Commission, inserted the fake towns of "Goblu" (near the real town of Bono, Ohio off State Route 2) and "Beatosu" (near Archbold, Ohio, just south of Interstate 80/Interstate 90/Ohio Turnpike at exit 25). In a 2008 interview, Fletcher explained that a fellow Michigan alumnus had been teasing him about the Mackinac Bridge colors: green and white, the colors of Michigan State University. Fletcher noted that the bridge colors were in compliance with federal highway regulations, so he had no choice in that matter; he did, however, have more control over the state highway map. Fletcher said that he thus ordered a cartographer to insert the two fictitious towns.

The Badlands Guardian is a natural topographic feature in Canada, which, when viewed from above, looks remarkably like a human wearing a Native American headdress and earphones.

The Badlands Guardian (also known as "Indian Head") is a geomorphological feature located near Medicine Hat in the south east corner of Alberta, Canada. Viewed from the air, the feature bears a strong resemblance to a human head wearing a full native American headdress, facing directly westward. Because of additional man-made structures, it also appears to be wearing earphones. The apparent earphones are a road and an oil well, which were installed recently

The Skinny House in the North End of Boston, Massachusetts is an extremely narrow four-story spite house reported by The Boston Globe as having the "uncontested distinction of being the narrowest house in Boston".

A pizza farm is an educational visitor attraction consisting of a small farm on a circular region of land partitioned into plots shaped like pizza wedges.

The farm's segments produce ingredients that can be used in pizza, such as wheat for the crust, tomatoes or herbs, pork for pepperoni, dairy cows for cheese, and even trees for pizza oven firewood. Certain farms may even have access to coal or natural gas deposits that can be used as alternative pizza oven heating fuels. Many of the newer pizza farms are experimenting with alternative energy, such as installing wind turbines in the fields, to be more green. According to a 2005 article in USA Today, there are several such farms in the United States operated by metro-Detroit-born, radio-mogul, billionaire Jim Mazner.

The Eiffel Tower has been the inspiration for the creation of over 30 duplicates and similar towers around the world.

The Eiffel Tower was the inspiration for the Blackpool Tower in Blackpool, England. After visiting the Great Paris Exhibition in 1889, the town's mayor John Bickerstaffe commissioned the building of the tower, which has a very similar design and was completed 1894. The main differences are that the Blackpool Tower is approximately half the height of the Eiffel Tower and is not freestanding, the base being contained within buildings which house the Tower Circus. Both the Eiffel Tower and Blackpool Tower feature on the list of the World Federation of Great Towers.

A Gravity hill is a hill that gives the illusion of objects rolling up it.

A gravity hill, also known as a magnetic hill and sometimes a mystery hill, a mystery spot, or a gravity road, is a place where the layout of the surrounding land produces the optical illusion that a very slight downhill slope appears to be an uphill slope. Thus, a car left out of gear will appear to be rolling uphill due to gravity. In bicycle racing, such roads are known as "false flats."
There are hundreds of gravity hill locations around the world.

The slope of gravity hills is an optical illusion, although sites are often accompanied by claims that magnetic or even supernatural forces are at work.
The most important factor contributing to the illusion is a completely or mostly obstructed horizon; without a horizon, judging the slope of a surface is difficult as a reliable reference is missing. Objects one would normally assume to be more-or-less perpendicular to the ground (such as trees) may actually be leaning, offsetting the visual reference. The illusion is similar to the well-known Ames room, in which balls can also appear to roll against gravity.

In architecture, a folly is a building constructed primarily for decoration, but either suggesting by its appearance some other purpose, or merely so extravagant that it transcends the normal range of garden ornaments or other class of building to which it belongs.

In the original use of the word, these buildings had no other use, but from the 19th to 20th centuries the term was also applied to highly decorative buildings which had secondary practical functions such as housing, sheltering or business use.

18th century English gardens and French landscape gardening often featured Roman temples, which symbolized classical virtues or ideals. Other 18th century garden follies represented Chinese temples, Egyptian pyramids, ruined abbeys, or Tatar tents, to represent different continents or historical eras. Sometimes they represented rustic villages, mills and cottages, to symbolize rural virtues. Many follies, particularly during famine, such as the Irish potato famine, were built as a form of poor relief, to provide employment for peasants and unemployed artisans.

Aerican Empire is a micronation with bizarre land claims, such as a mysterious cow pasture and the entire northern hemisphere of Pluto.

The Aerican Empire (conventionally referred to in short form as Aerica) is a micronation founded in May 1987, which has no sovereign territory of its own and has never been recognized by any other sovereign state as existing. The name is a pun on the term "American Empire". In 2000 The New York Times described its website as "one of the more imaginative" micronation sites.
Its members claim sovereignty over a vast disconnected territory, including a square kilometer of land in Australia, a house-sized area in Montreal, Canada (containing the "Embassy to Everything Else"), several other areas of the Earth, a colony on Mars, the northern hemisphere of Pluto, and an imaginary planet.
As with most micronations, the number of members ("citizens") has fluctuated wildly with time. In May 2009, it was claimed to exceed 400 people.

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