Relative Strength Decreases with Size

Often, I have wondered if the apparent strength of a human is skewed toward smaller people.  The people who can lift themselves up ropes with ease; do 100 pull-ups and push-ups; and those who are more agile are generally smaller in size, weighing far less than their Herculean neighbors at the gym, who can probably lift twice as much as they can. 

I’d put myself in the category of bigger men.  I’m pretty strong, but not Herculean.  As a man who can bench press 220 lbs- slightly more than my weight- I can’t even do a pull-up.  I can barely do 20 push-ups.  And I certainly can’t climb up a rope.  A man weighing 100 pounds less and can bench his weight can probably do at least 10 pull-ups, twice as many push-ups, etc. 

What finally explained this for me was the concept of surface area in relation to size, also called the square-cube law.  Think of a bodybuilder.  As their muscles get bigger, their strength only increases by the cross-section, whereas their mass increases by the entire volume.  Increasing the size of muscles while maintaining its proportions renders the bodybuilder weaker relative to his/her overall mass.             

The same can be said of many other animals.  Bigger animals have more surface area.  They therefore need a wider muscle-and-bone relationship to support their weight.  That’s why elephants can’t jump and ants can lift 50 times their weight.   

The Future of Air Travel: Will Airships Make a Comeback?

 Air travel would look very different today if it weren’t for one country’s decision.  In the 1930s, the U.S. had a monopoly on the world’s helium supply, all of it located in a small area of Texas.  What isn’t very well known is that the U.S. refused to supply Nazi Germany with the helium needed to safely fly the airships they were manufacturing.    

Most of the world’s airships at the time were being manufactured by the Germans.  With their respective resources, the two countries could have mutually benefited from each other as trade partners, possibly leading to less embitterment in the war to come.  

That’s beside the point though.  What I’m saying is that if the U.S. hadn’t kept helium from the Nazis, it’s likely the Hindenburg disaster of 1937 would have never occurred.  Helium would have been used as fuel instead of hydrogen, which is much less flammable.  Fittingly, this airship manufactured by Germany- at the time the largest in the world- crashed on our own territory, in Lakehurst, New Jersey.  Some might infer that it was subtle revenge, or that we had it coming.  But I think it was just a coincidence.  

The disaster all but ended airship travel around the world.  Too many zeppelins had gone up in flames, crashed, or gotten lost in unknown territory.  They were expensive to build, took a long time to manufacture, and were slow.    

Yet in our time, with the pandemic wreaking havoc on the airline industry, it might be beneficial to have a few airships around.  They'd be more comfortable and have much more space, similar to a cruise line.  The modern airlines are too obsessed with buying airplanes that squeeze people into tight spaces.  That just won’t cut in a pandemic-ridden world- a major adjustment might need to be made. 

Airships would have room for isolated cabins, making them more available to social distancing.  Other advantages are that they have more endurance due to their higher buoyancy; they are lighter and more maneuverable; they can stay in one place for long periods of time; they can carry larger payloads; and they have less turbulence due to their uniform surface area.    

Disadvantages obviously include their slow speed, their higher expenses, and the greater risk of crashing; but in our modern age we should be “up to speed” on the technology for building safe airships.  We must have faith in our brilliant engineers, who I believe can reproduce those big dirigibles of yesteryear at safer and less expensive standards.  Otherwise, air travel may become as elitist as space travel. 

Preventing Spillover: How Eliminating Poverty and Deforestation Lessens the Transmission of Disease

Disease is a hot topic these days.  While it’s true that many of the deadliest diseases transmitted to humans came from bats, it's unfair to blame them and call for them to be culled.  Social policies have more to do with solving the threat of a pandemic than the obliteration of more species.  As if we haven’t already done that enough! 

The two hot spots where disease has risen the most are southern China and sub-Saharan Africa.  The Chinese can deal with their problem in whatever way they see fit, hopefully by outlawing wet markets, where rare animals are seen as delicacies that bring good luck (ah yes, the good fortune of a pandemic). 

Africa however has a different problem, relating to poverty.  There is currently no scientific consensus on the origin of AIDS, or how it was first transmitted to humans.  But there is a consensus that it originated from chimps in the Congo Basin of southeast Cameroon, circa 1908.  The AIDS pandemic may have resulted from Cameroonians living in extreme poverty, who had no choice but to eat chimp meat to survive.  In the book Spillover, David Quammen imagines such a scenario happening, in a memorable passage about the origin of AIDS transmission to humans. 

If we can fix extreme poverty in places like Africa, we may effectively prevent the next major pandemic from spreading.  Marburg and Ebola are far deadlier diseases than covid-19.  Granted they aren’t airborne, and therefore don’t transmit as easily; but imagine if an airborne variant were transmitted to humans.  With the ever-increasing population of Africa, it would be transmitted among humans easily.  By eliminating the need for consumption of rare animals, we limit the spread of disease, possibly preventing their extinction as a bonus.    

Another variable is our encroachment on the environment.  By "cutting down" on deforestation and the slaughter of defenseless animals, whose organs are often used as resources (in addition to being food), we better protect ourselves as a species from spillover happening.  Deforestation results in decreased habitat for many animals, forcing them into closer living quarters, allowing the probability of zoonotic transmission of disease to rise.  If we respect the environment by not putting so much pressure on animals to co-exist, we decrease the likelihood of another disease like covid-19 from spreading. 

Lifetime Limit on Heartbeats Across the Mammalian Kingdom

In the introduction to Scale by Geoffrey West, a graph is shown presenting a general limit on heartbeats in a lifetime for any species of mammal.  Regardless of size and metabolic rate, most species of mammal aren't able to pump more than 1.5 billion heartbeats in any given life, discounting the life expectancy of species that are endangered or die quickly due to outside influences.    

I find it remarkable that there is such a limit.  It explains why people with lower resting rates are generally in better shape, and tend to live longer.  If your resting rate is 60 or below, you have a better chance of living longer than people with rates above 60, because you will have taken longer to reach this mystical limit on heartbeats.  Let this be further proof that exercise and healthy eating helps you live longer. 

The South Pole Wall

     Astronomers have discovered a huge wall of galaxies hiding behind the Milky Way.  What they call the “South Pole Wall” extends 1.4 billion light years, wrapping like an arm around the backside of our local supercluster.  It rivals other large walls in size, such as the Sloan Great Wall, which is more than twice as far.  What makes this one so special is its proximity to us; it's the closest wall of such size that we’ve discovered so far.  It took so long to discover because of all the dust in the center of our galaxy blocking it from view.  Thanks to the mathematical modeling of galactic redshift, astronomers were finally able to detect its mass.   

Most Calories Burned in a Day

    My Fitbit has inspired me to remember all the days I expended over 4,000 calories.  Below you will find all the ones I could think of.  Most of them involved a rather busy day at work; others were special occasions where I exerted myself to the max.  Please note that many of the busiest days at work aren’t covered here.   I only used the busiest days I could think of at any particular job(s).

Year	Activity	Calories/hr	Duration	Calories	Rest of day	Total
2009	Glacier NP 15-mile hike	450	7.5	3375	1815	5190
2012	Panera catering record	390	9	3510	1650	5160
2013	UPS AM loader/PM dishwasher	500, 250	12	3750	1320	5070
2013	Biggest rush of my cooking career	390	8.5	3315	1705	5020
2008	UPS double shift	400	8	3200	1760	4960
2008	Fred Meyer AM, UPS PM	250, 500	10	3375	1540	4915
2008	UPS loader on Cyber Monday	450	6.5	2925	1925	4850
2015	Marathon training	931	2.33	2169	2383	4553
2006	McDonald's power out after windstorm	261	11	2871	1430	4301
2008	Biking from Bothell to Gas Works and back	745	2.5	1862.5	2365	4228
2019	Trimming trees after snowstorm	838	2	1676	2420	4096
2010	Infected Mushroom show	512	3	1536	2510	4046