“The testicle is the future.” – Harry Fisch

According to a few recent studies, human sperm has been decreasing in quality for over a century. Men are making less sperm on average; furthermore, the sperm that are produced swim poorly, are oddly shaped, come in low concentrations, and have a lower success rate of impregnating an egg. Low sperm counts are linked to factors of men’s health such as aging, being too fat or too thin, exercising too much or too little, poor diet, toxins in food and the air, and drugs including tobacco and alcohol. The urologist and researcher Harry Fisch of Weill Cornell Medical College believes that in most cases, improving a man’s health will solve his fertility problems. He encourages taking men off testosterone supplements, which can actually shrink the testicles and decrease sperm count.

Sperm stained to test semen quality. (from http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4e/Sperm_stained.JPG)

The Spark of Life: A Novel Perspective on Human Evolution

“The US fire departments responded to 386,500 home fires. Home fires killed 2,755 people and injured 13,160. Someone was injured in a reported home fire every 40 minutes. Roughly eight people died in home fires every day. A fire department responded to a home fire every 82 seconds.”

If you pay close attention, this gives only the statistics for US home fires in 2008. Expand this to the rest of the world including the third world countries that do not have the same firefighting and safety precautionary systems, we can only start to imagine the damage fire can cause. Fire is dangerous. A spark is all you need to ignite a whole city and to rob 142,807 people of their lives.

The Fattest Ape: An evolutionary tale of human obesity

Fat-Humankind's Greatest Asset In the Evolutionary War:

One of the biggest problems of our era is the problem of obesity. Obesity, especially in our modern culture is viewed as an undesirable trait. Take the pinnacle of urban civilization in America, New York City, for example. If you look closely at your surroundings when walking down a street in NYC, you will notice the flashy social media and billboards that are constantly screaming “skinny is the new beautiful”. Furthermore, any seasoned couch potato can tell you just how annoyingly abundant those weight loss and bodybuilding programs are that crowd the television commercials. Sometimes we find ourselves wondering, why is it so hard to be skinny? Why are we so prone to weight gain? Why do I have so much fat? Why is it that I still gain weight even as I eat leaves for breakfast, lunch, and dinner?