MAN
But one in a certain place testified, saying, What is man, that thou art mindful of him? or the son of man, that thou visitest him?
—Heb. 2:6
3257 Worth Of A Man
It has been estimated that the chemical contents (inorganic compounds) of a 150 lbs. man is worth:
—in the 1930s 98¢
—in the 1960s $3.50
—in the 1970s $5.60
Over 60% of the body weight is water, which would be free.
3258 Education Raises Man’s Value
How much is a man worth? According to the Institute of Life Insurance, it all depends upon the education he gets.
The Institute values a man in terms of potential life income. A grade school graduate can expect to earn in a normal lifetime $219,000; a high school graduate, $303,000; a college graduate, $444,000.
3259 Worth Of “Energetic” Man
Not long ago the worth of a man was assessed at ninety-eight cents. Now, with atomic power in view, this has all changed. Someone has figured that the atoms in the human body would produce 11,400,000 kilowatts of power per pound if they could be harnessed. On this basis of computation, a man weighing 150 pounds is worth $85,500,000,000.
3260 A Six-Million Dollar Man
When biochemist Harold J. Morowitz of Yale University received a humorous birthday card from his daughter that read: “According to biochemists, the materials that make up the human body are worth only ninety-eight cents,” he reached for a catalog of a supply company and began looking up prices.
It turns out the human body is actually A Six Million Dollar Man.
Hemoglobin is $285 a gram; insulin, $47.50 a gram; purified trypsin (an enzyme), $36; bilirubin, the bile pigment, $12; human DNA, $76; collagen, $15; human albumin, $3.
Some less common constituents: Acetate kinase, a substance that activates an enzyme, $8,860 a gram; alkaline phosphatase, $225; hyaluronic acid, the cement substance of the hyaluronic acid, the cement substance of the tissues, $175; bradykinin (amino acids), $12,000.
A real shocker came when he got to follicle-stimulating hormone—$8 million a gram—a gift he suggests for people who have everything. For the really wealthy, there is proclactin, the hormone that stimulates milk production in the breast glands—$17.5 million a gram.
Calculating the percentage of each chemical in the composition of the human body, Morowitz arrived at $245.54 as the average value per gram of human being.
He then weighed himself: 168 pounds or 79,364 grams. Since man is 68 percent water, his dry weight was 24,436 grams. Multiplying that by $245.54 came to $6,000,015.44.
“It was an enormous upgrade to my ego after the 98-cent evaluation,” Morowitz wrote in the journal Hospital Practice.
3261 Valued At 3¢ Each
Three cents? That was the value placed on eighteen human lives in one case in this “enlightened” generation. It seems that two families near Cairo shared the same water pump. When it needed repairs, a quarrel arose over payment of the bill. One thing led to another until bullets began to fly. When the smoke cleared, there were nine dead from each family. The total repair bill for the pump was fifty-five cents.
—Stanley C. Baldwin
THE LIFE OF MAN
3262 Life Expectancy In Early Days
From a 19th-century report:
“The yearly mortality of the globe is 40,000,000 persons. This is at the rate of over 100,000 per day. The average of human life is 33 years. One-fourth of the population die at or before the age of 7; one half at or before 17. Among 10,000 persons, one arrives at the age of 100 years. One in 500 attains the age of 90, and one in 100 to the age of 60.
3263 Present-Day Life Expectancy
The highest present-day life expectancy belongs to the women in Norway (77 years) and the men in Sweden (72 years).
In most European countries and the America’s, men and women can expect to live to be over 60. On the other hand, most African countries report life expectancy of under 50 years.
3264 Seven Stages Of Man
1. Milk
2. Milk, vegetables
3. Milk, ice cream sodas, candy
4. Steak, Coke, French fries, ham and eggs
5. Frogs’ legs, caviar, Crepe Suzettes, Champagne
6. Milk and crackers
7. Milk
3265 Life’s Key Words
1–20 years—learning
20–30 years—ladies
30–40 years—living
40–50 years—liberty
50–60 years—leisure
60–70 years—living
—Speaker’s Sourcebook
3266 Life String
Someone has put it consecutively: apron strings, heart strings, purse strings, harp strings.
3267 Names For Each Decade
The Chinese apply certain terms to different ages. The age ten is called the opening degree; twenty, youth expired; thirty, strength and marriage; forty, officially apt; fifty, error-knowing; sixty, cycle-closing; seventy, rare bird of age; eighty, rusty-visaged; ninety, delayed; one hundred, age’s extremity.
3268 Life’s Viewpoints
The old believe everything; the middle-aged suspect everything; the young know everything.
3269 “Little Man” To “Old Gentleman”
In his essay “Three Score and Ten,” Stephen Leacock wrote about reaching 70:
The path through life from youth to age, you may trace for yourself by the varying way in which strangers address you. You begin as “little man,” then “little boy” (because a little man is littler than a little boy), then “sonny,” then “my boy,” and after that “young man” and presently the interlocutor is younger than yourself and says, “say, mister.”
I can still recall the thrill of pride I felt when a Pullman porter first called me “doctor” and when another raised me to “judge” and then the terrible shock it was when a taximan swung open his door and said, “Step right in, Dad.”
Presently I shall be introduced as “this venerable old gentleman” and the ax will fall when they raise me to the degree of “grand old man.” That means on our continent anyone with snow-white hair who has kept out of jail till 80. That’s the last and the worst they can do to you.
3270 Everyone OK
In his book I’m OK—You’re OK, Dr. Thomas A. Harris says that there are four basic attitudes toward life: The newborn infant feels helpless in relation to his all-powerful parents, dispensers of food, warmth and happiness, and soon gets the idea, “I’m not OK—you’re OK.” He either retains this outlook or acquires another.
When he realizes his parents’ “fallibility” he may think either, “I’m not OK—you’re not OK” (an attitude of hopelessness—the individual is worthless and so is everyone else), or “I’m OK—you’re not OK” (a psychotically criminal conclusion—the attitude that only the indivitual is right).
The mature adult then grows into the attitude that both he and others are basically worthwhile. “I’m OK—you’re OK.”
3271 The Sphinx’ Riddle
The sphinx in ancient mythology was supposed to have propounded a riddle: “What animal goes on four legs in the morning, on two at noonday, and on three in the evening?” The riddle remained unsolved till Oedipus appeared and gave the right answer—“Man.” In infancy the human babe goes on all fours; during life’s course he walks upright on two legs; and in the eventide of life he leans on a staff.
The sphinx, frustrated at the solution of her riddle, cast herself down from the pedestal and died.
3272 Epigram On Man (Life of)
• Sen. Paul H. Douglas of Illinois, commenting on a pet project of his, the establishment of the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore on Lake Michigan: “Until I was 30, I wanted to save the world. Between the ages of 30 and 60, I wanted to save the country. But since I was 60, I’ve wanted to save the dunes.”
—Quote
TALKING ABOUT HEIGHTS
3273 More Poundage To Take Care?
Once an American life insurance company made an analysis of nearly 270,000 policies that it had issued to white males and discovered an unknown and unexplainable fact. It was found that there was a direct relationship between the height of the insured and the amount of his insurance. With each additional inch of the men’s height, the average face value of their policies increased proportionately—from $2,979 for men of just five feet to $5,906 for men of six feet, five inches.
3274 People Now Taller
Present-day adolescents weigh more, and are somewhat taller than those of a few decades ago. For example, the young men entering service in World War II were, on an average about 2/3 inch taller and about 10 pounds heavier than those accepted in World War I.
Increases in height and weight have been observed in many comparisons of college students with those of the preceding generation. A comparison of heights of mothers and daughters who attended college showed that on the average, the daughters were 1–1/8 inches taller.
3275 Tall In South, Short In Northeast
The four states with the tallest men—Texas, Oklahoma, Mississippi, and Tennessee—are in the South Central Region of the country. The seven states with the shortest men—Rhode Island, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New Hampshire—are in the Northeast Region of the country.
3276 Heights By Ethnic Groups
Of the various ethnic groups within the United States, the Scottish, with an average height of 5 feet, 8 inches, were the tallest among the men demobilized after the war. Shorter than they, in order, were the English, Germans, Irish, Poles, French, Jews, and Italians, the last with an average of 5 feet, 5 inches.
3277 Pepin The Short
It is recorded that Pepin the Short (714–768), king of the Franks, who was only 4½ feet tall, carried a sword 6 feet long. He was the father of Charlemagne and a mighty swordsman in spite of the disproportion.
3278 Romulo Versus Napoleon
Philippine Foreign Secretary Carlos Romulo, who measures only five-foot-four, says he lost self-consciousness about his height when he visited Madame Tussaud’s London Wax Museum and discovered that he was two inches taller than Napoleon. He promptly junked his elevator shoes.
Napoleon Bonaparte was barely 5 feet, 2 inches in height. After the Battle of Lodi in 1796, he became known as “the Little Corporal” because of his amazing bravery.
3279 Wilberforce’s Handicap
Wilberforce did not like himself. He was a diminutive edition of a man and never enjoyed good health. For twenty years he was under doctor’s orders and had to take drugs to keep body and soul together. Yet he stopped the British slave trade. Boswell once went to hear him speak and said afterward: “I saw what seemed a mere shrimp and mounted upon the platform, but as I listened, he grew and grew till the shrimp became a whale.”
The most stimulating successes in history have come from persons who, facing some kinds of limitations and handicaps, succeeded in spite of all.
3280 The Ambition-Less Dictator
A reporter went to see the mother of the murdered Chancellor Dolfuss, the little dictator of Austria who was killed by the Nazis. She was almost forgotten, an obscure peasant woman of an obscure Austrian village. If he was called the “little dictator,” she could be called the “little mother,” for she was only four-and- a-half feet tall.
She told the reporter that she knew her boy would be murdered, and had often begged him not to become famous. He wasn’t ambitious, she explained. It was a feeling of inferiority of littleness that drove him so high. When he was a boy he wanted to become a priest, but a chimney sweep told him it was no use.
“You are not tall enough,” said the chimney sweep, “you are too short to wear the robes and vestments of a priest.”
Yes, Dolfuss was too small to be a clergyman—so he became dictator of his country.
—Lowell Thomas
See also: Evolutionists ; Individualism ; Luke 12:25: Rev. 13:18.