v1kram's posterous

A horse's ass ...

The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is  4 feet, 8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number.

Why was that gauge used? 
Because that's the way they built them in England, and English expatriates built the US railroads.

Why did the English build them like that? 
Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used.  

Why did 'they' use that gauge then?
Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.

 

Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing? 
Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England, because that's the spacing of the wheel ruts.

  

So who built those old rutted roads? 
Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (and England ) for their legions. The roads have been used ever since.

  

And the ruts in the roads?
Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels. Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing. Therefore the United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot.
 Bureaucracies live forever.

  

 So the next time you are handed a specification/procedure/process and wonder 'What horse's ass came up with it?', you may be exactly right.

 

Imperial Roman army chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the rear ends of two war horses. (Two horse's asses.) Now, the twist to the story:

When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRB's. The SRB's are made by Thiokol at their factory in Utah . The engineers who designed the SRB's would have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRB's had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains, and the SRB's had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel 
is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track, as you now know, is about as wide as two horses' behinds.

 

 

So, a major Space Shuttle design feature of what is arguably the world's most advanced 
transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse's ass. 

And you thought being a horse's ass wasn't important? 
Ancient horse's asses control almost everything ... 

and CURRENT Horses Asses are controlling everything else.

miCro bOdy parts ...

 

 

 

 

Get up close and personal with your innards with these 15 amazing 3D-body shots.
Almost all of the following images were captured using a scanning electron microscope (SEM), a type of electron microscope that uses a beam of high-energy electrons to scan surfaces of images.

The electron beam of the SEM interacts with atoms near or at the surface of the sample
to be viewed, resulting in a very high-resolution, 3D-image.

Magnification levels range from x 25 (about the same as a hand lens) to about x 250,000.
Incredible details of 1 to 5 nm in size can be detected.

1. Red Blood Cells

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They look like little cinnamon candies here, but they're actually the most common type of blood cell in the human body - red blood cells (RBCs). These biconcave-shaped cells have the tall task of carrying oxygen to our entire body; in women there are about 4 to 5 million RBCs per micro liter (cubic millimeter) of blood and about 5 to 6 million in men. People who live at higher altitudes have even more RBCs because of the low oxygen levels in their environment.

 

 

 

 

2. Split End of Human Hair

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Regular trimmings to your hair and good conditioner should help to prevent this unsightly picture of a split end of a human hair.

 

 

 

 

 

3. Purkinje Neurons

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Of the 100 billion neurons in your brain. Purkinje neurons are some of the largest. Among other things, these cells are the masters of motor coordination in the cerebellar cortex. Toxic exposure such as alcohol and lithium, autoimmune diseases, genetic mutations including autism and neurodegenerative diseases can negatively affect human Purkinje cells.

 

 

 

 

 

4. Hair Cell in the Ear

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Here's what it looks like to see a close-up of human hair cell stereo cilia inside the ear. These detect mechanical movement in response to sound vibrations.

 

 

 

 

5. Blood Vessels Emerging from the Optic Nerve

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In this image, stained retinal blood vessels are shown to emerge from the black-colored optic disc. The optic disc is a blind spot because no light receptor cells are present in this area of the retina where the optic nerve and retinal blood vessels leave the back of the eye.

 

 

 

 

6. Tongue with Taste Bud

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This colour-enhanced image depicts a taste bud on the tongue. The human tongue has about 10,000 taste buds that are involved with detecting salty, sour, bitter, sweet and savoury taste perceptions.

 

 

 

 

7. Tooth Plaque

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Brush your teeth often because this is what the surface of a tooth with a form of “corn-on-the-cob” plaque looks like.

 

 

 

 

8. Blood Clot

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Remember that picture of the nice, uniform shapes of red blood cells you just looked at? Well, here's what it looks like when those same cells get caught up in the sticky web of a blood clot. The cell in the middle is a white blood cell.

 

 

 

 

9. Alveoli in the Lung

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This is what a colour-enhanced image of the inner surface of your lung looks like. The hollow cavities are alveoli; this is where gas exchange occurs with the blood.

 

 

 

10. Lung Cancer Cells

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This image of warped lung cancer cells is in stark contrast to the healthy lung in the previous picture.

 

 

 

 

11. Villi of Small Intestine

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Villi in the small intestine increase the surface area of the gut, which helps in the absorption of food. Look closely and you’ll see some food stuck in one of the crevices.

 

 

 

12. Human Egg with Coronal Cells

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This image is of a purple, colour-enhanced human egg sitting on a pin. The egg is coated with the zona pellicuda, a glycoprotein that protects the egg but also helps to trap and bind sperm. Two coronal cells are attached to the zona pellicuda.

 

 

 

13. Sperm on the Surface of a Human Egg

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Here's a close-up of a number of sperm trying to fertilize an egg.

 

 

 

14. Human Embryo and Sperm

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It looks like the world at war, but it’s actually five days after the fertilisation of an egg, with some remaining sperm cells still sticking around. This fluorescent image was captured using a confocal microscope. The embryo and sperm cell nuclei are stained purple while sperm tails are green. The blue areas are gap junctions, which form connections between the cells.

 

 

 

 

15. Colored Image of a 6 day old Human Embryo Implanting

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Maude & Mabel

Two old ladies are outside their nursing home, having a drink and a smoke,
when it starts to rain.  One of the old ladies pulls out a condom, cuts off
the end, puts it over her cigarette, and continues smoking.

Maude:  What in the hell is that?

Mable:  A condom.  This way my cigarette doesn't get wet.

Maude:  Where did you get it?

Mable:  You can get them at any drugstore.

The next day, Maude hobbles herself into the local drugstore and announces
to the pharmacist that she wants a box of condoms.

The pharmacist, obviously embarrassed, looks at her kind of strangely (she
is after all, over 80 years of age), but very delicately asks what brand of
condom she prefers.

"Doesn't matter Sonny, as long as it fits on a Camel."