Did You Know.....

[Warph]

Hidden Messages

.... if close your eyes for a moment and try to get a mental image of Amazon.com's logo.  You probably see something like bold, lowercase black letters with a slight orange curve under them.  Like many brand marks, the logo is there to represent the company in an immediate, visual manner, replete with a healthy dose of symbolism.  But Amazon's has a hidden meaning.  The orange curve is intended to invoke recollections of a smile.  And note that the curve is an arrow, starting at "a" and extending to "z." This, too, is intentional, as Amazon wishes to express that they have everything (or, at the time, every book) "from A to Z."

Amazon is, by no means, the only organization to slip hidden, perhaps subliminal messaging into its brand marks.  For example, FedEx wants to express not just your packages, but also the idea that those parcels are always moving forward.  Its logo, below, does that in an extraordinarily subtle way.  Pay particular attention the next time you see a FedEx truck go by and look to the white space between the orange "E" and "x" -- it forms an arrow, pointing ahead:  The presence of the arrow in the company's Arabic logo is both obvious and forced, and the designer of the logo explicitly notes that intentional inclusion of the arrow.

Others doing similar things?  Goodwill's smiling logo doubles as a lower-case "g." Tostitos' mark features two people -- the lower-case "t"s -- sharing a tortilla chip.  And if one looks carefully at the mountains in Toblerone's logo, there's a bear, symbolizing the city of Bern, Switzerland.... the town from which the chocolate hails.

But not all shadows and silhouettes are intentional.  Rumors once circled the crest of lions on boxes of Marlboro cigarettes; the white space under the lions' legs create a shape loosely similar to a pair Ku Klux Klansman cloaked in white, who together hold a sign reading "Veni Vidi Vici" -- Latin for "I came, I saw, I conquered."  Some suspected that Marlboro was a front for the Klan, but this has been widely debunked.


Bonus fact: In the early 1970s, FedEx was in dire financial straits, needing an infusion of cash to maintain operations. Venture capital was likely on its way, but not soon enough. As recounted by supply chain expert Roger Frock in his book, Changing How the World Does Business: FedEx's Incredible Journey to Success, the company needed $24,000 to make a jet fuel payment, but only had $5,000 in cash.  The company's founder, Fred Smith, sprung into action: he took the company's last $5,000 and went to Vegas.  Smith won an additional $27,000 and the company survived.

[Warph]

What are the odds of winning?

You have seen how a handful people were lucky enough to win a big lottery or hit that $1 million jackpot at a casino. (And you wished them happiness with their new wealth, of course.) How often have you wondered if it is worth playing the lotto or gambling? In short, what are the odds of winning?

Calculating the odds
Wagering against a randomizing value is risky.

It mostly is a game of chance but you can increase your chances of winning for instance at poker or blackjack by requiring some skill. It also will help if you educate yourself somewhat in probability theory. Unfortunately you won't be able to cut a deal with the father of probability theory, Girolamo Cardano, who was a friend of Leonardo da Vinci, because he passed away in 1576. Even if you had such opportunity, Cardano, an ardent gambler, would probably have advised you to carefully consider Nicolaus Bernoulli's St. Petersburg Paradox.

The odds of winning your local lottery is around 18 million to 1, that is 18,000,000 to 1. The odds of winning Powerball can be as high as 50 million to 1 and higher. The odds of being struck by lightning is actually lower! (The odds of your government fixing the economy is much higher.) However, believe it or not, you have a bigger chance – odds as low as 100,000 to 1 – to win at the casino or online casino.

Keep in mind that in most countries you do pay taxes on your winnings. In the United States you'll pay 28% tax on your lottery pay-out and up to almost 40% when winning millions. Also keep in mind that you can deduct lottery and gambling losses


The BIG winners
To win, you have to play. As these lucky players did:

1989: at the age 76, Elmer Sherwin won $4,6 million on a megabucks jackpot progressive slot. 16 years later, in 2005 at the age 91, he won another $21 million.

1997: late Australian billionaire Kerry Packer won $20 million at Las Vegas MGM Grand – but 2 years later he lost $28 million on the tables.

2000: two couples, Larry and Nancy Ross, from Michigan, and Joe and Sue Kainz, from Illinois, share the Mega Millions jackpot of $363 million.

2002: Andrew Whittaker Jr wins $314,9 million on American Powerball lottery.

2003: a young guy walked away with $39,7 million from the The Excalibur Hotel and Casino.

2005: Dolores McNamara wins $160 million on the EuroLotto.

2006: 8 meat packers share in a Powerball $365 million.

2007: a retired auto worker from Ohio wins $314 million on the Powerball; 2 ticket-holders, one from New Jersey and one from Georgia, share $390 million.

2009: a business owner from Greece hit the $8,69 million jackpot with a Microgaming online game.

2011: Jim and Carolyn McCullar, from Washington state, and Holly Lahti, from Idaho, won the Mega Millions jackpot of $380 million.

2011: Scottish couple Colin Weir and his wife Chris win $262 million on the EuroMillions.

The above are just a few examples

[Warph]

(Livescience.com)  .....that a giant sea monster, the likes of the mythological kraken, may have swum Earth's ancient oceans, snagging what was thought to be the sea's top predators — school bus-size ichthyosaurs with fearsome teeth.

The kraken, which would've been nearly 100 feet (30 meters) long, or twice the size of the colossal squid, Mesonychoteuthis, likely drowned or broke the necks of the ichthyosaurs before dragging the corpses to its lair, akin to an octopus's midden, according to study researcher Mark McMenamin, a paleontologist at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts.

There is no direct evidence for the beast, though McMenamin suggests that's because it was soft-bodied and didn't stand the test of time; even so, to make a firm case for its existence one would want to find more direct evidence.

McMenamin is scheduled to present his work Monday (Oct. 10) at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America in Minneapolis.

Cause of death

Evidence for the kraken and its gruesome attacks comes from markings on the bones of the remains of nine 45-foot (14 meter) ichthyosaurs of the species Shonisaurus popularis, which lived during the Triassic, a period that lasted from 248 million to 206 million years ago. The beasts were the Triassic version of today's predatory giant squid-eating sperm whales.

Mark McMenamin, a paleontologist at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts was interested in solving a long-standing puzzle over the cause of death of the S. popularis individuals at the Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park in Nevada. An expert on the site, Charles Lewis Camp of U.C. Berkeley, suggested in the 1950s that the ichthyosaurs succumbed to an accidental stranding or a toxic plankton bloom. However, nobody has been able to prove the beasts died in shallow water, and recent work on the rocks around the fossils suggests they died in a deepwater environment, McMenamin said.

"I was aware that anytime there is controversy about depth, there is probably something interesting going on," McMenamin said. And when he and his daughter arrived at the park, they were struck by the remains' strangeness, particularly "a very odd configuration of bones."

The etching on the bones suggested the shonisaurs were not all killed and buried at the same time, he said. It also looked like the bones had been purposefully rearranged, likely carried to the "kraken's lair" after they had been killed. A similar behavior has been seen in modern octopus.

The markings and rearrangement of the S. popularis bones suggests an octopus-like creature (like a kraken) either drowned the ichthyosaurs or broke their necks, according to McMenamin.

The arranged vertebrae also seemed to resemble the pattern of sucker disks on a cephalopod's tentacle, with each vertebra strongly resembling a sucker made by a member of the Coleoidea, which includes octopuses, squid, cuttlefish and their relatives. The researchers suggest this pattern reveals a self-portrait of the mysterious beast.

The perfect crime?

Next, McMenamin wondered if an octopus-like creature could realistically have taken out the huge swimming predatory reptiles. Evidence is in their favor, it seems. Video taken by staff at the Seattle Aquarium showed that a large octopus in one of their large tanks had been killing the sharks. [On the Brink: A Gallery of Wild Sharks]

"We think that this cephalopod in the Triassic was doing the same thing," McMenamin said. More supporting evidence: There were many more broken ribs seen in the shonisaur fossils than would seem accidental, as well as evidence of twisted necks.

"It was either drowning them or breaking their necks," McMenamin said.

So where did this kraken go? Since octopuses are mostly soft-bodied they don't fossilize well and scientists wouldn't expect to find their remains from so long ago. Only their beaks, or mouthparts, are hard and the chances of those being preserved nearby are very low, according to the researchers.

Though his case is circumstantial, and likely to draw skepticism from other scientists, McMenamin said: "We're ready for this. We have a very good case."

[larryJ]

Steinway Grand

A concert grand piano is one of the more complex devices built by human hands.  Steinway pianos, still entirely handmade, have about twelve thousand individual parts.  To make one instrument in the company's Long Island City, New York, factory takes nearly a year and about 450 skilled artisans; case makers, plate fitters, grand finishers, belly makers, stringers and fine-tuners, among many others.

Larryj

[Warph]

Preditions gone awry



..... that in 1894, the president of the Royal Society, William Thomson, Lord Kelvin, predicted that radio had no future. The first radio factory was opened five years later. Today, there are more than one billion radio sets in the world, tuned to more than 33 000 radio stations around the world. He also predicted that heavier-than-air flying machines were impossible. The Wright Brother's first flight covered a distance equal to only half the length of the wingspan of a Boeing 747. He also said, "X-rays will prove to be a hoax."

In the 6th century BC Greek mathematician Pythagoras said that earth is round – but few agreed with him. Greek astronomer Aristarchos said in the 3rd century BC that earth revolves around the sun – but the idea was not accepted. In the 2nd century BC Greek astronomer Erastosthenes accurately measured the distance around the earth at about 40,000 km (24,860 miles) – but nobody believed him. In the 2nd century AD Greek astronomer Ptolemy stated that earth was the center of the universe – most people believed him for the next 1,400 years.

In the early 20th century a world market for only 4 million automobiles was predicted because "the world would run out of chauffeurs." Shortly after the end of World War II (1945), the whole of Volkswagen, factory and patents, was offered free to Henry Ford II. He dismissed the Volkswagen Beetle as a bad design. Today, more than 70 million motorcars are produced every year. The Beetle became one of the best-selling vehicles of all time.

The telephone was not widely appreciated for the first 15 years because people did not see a use for it. In fact, in the British parliament it was mentioned there was no need for telephones because "we have enough messengers here." Western Union believed that it could never replace the telegraph. In 1876, an internal memo read: "This telephone has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication." Even Mark Twain, upon being invited by Alexander Graham Bell to invest $5 000 in the new invention, could not see a future in the telephone

Irish scientist, Dr. Dionysius Lardner (1793 – 1859) didn't believe that trains could contribute much in speedy transport. He wrote: "Rail travel at high speed is not possible, because passengers ' would die of asphyxia' [suffocation]." Today, trains reach speeds of 500 km/h.

In 1927, H.M. Warner, Warner Brothers, asked, "Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?" In 1936, Radio Times editor Rex Lambert thought "Television won't matter in your lifetime or mine."

In 1943, Thomas Watson, the chairman of IBM forecast a world market for "maybe only five computers." Years before IBM launched the personal computer in 1981, Xerox had already successfully designed and used PCs internally... but decided to concentrate on the production of photocopiers. Even Ken Olson, founder of Digital Equipment Corporation, said in 1977, "There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."

After the invention of the transistor in 1947, several US electronics companies rejected the idea of a portable radio. Apparently it was thought nobody would want to carry a radio around. When Bell put the transistor on the market in 1952 they had few takers apart from a small Japanese start-up called Sony. They introduced the transistor radio in 1954.

In 1894, A.A. Michelson, who with E.W. Morley seven years earlier experimentally demonstrated the constancy of the speed of light, said that the future of science would consist of "adding a few decimal places to the results already obtained."

In 1954, a concert manager fired Elvis Presley, saying, "You ought to go back to driving a truck." In 1962, Decca Records rejected the Beatles, "We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out."

In 1966, Time Magazine predicted, "By 2000, the machines will be producing so much that everyone in the U.S. will, in effect, be independently wealthy." In that year too CoCo Chanel said about miniskirts: "It's a bad joke that won't last. Not with winter coming."

Sometimes a few decimal places make a massive difference. Investment banks rely on computer models to direct trading activity; in August 2007, Goldman Sachs's hedge funds and other quant funds were left exposed by a series of market swings, each of which their software predicted would occur only once every 100,000 years. Goldman Sachs required a $3 billion (€1.9 billion) bailout, with other banks joining the hand-out queue.

Perhaps the guy who got it wrong most was the commissioner of the US Office of Patents: in 1899, Charles H. Duell, assured President McKinley that "everything that can be invented has been invented."


To prophesy is extremely difficult – especially with regard to the future – Chinese proverb

[Warph]

         "BOND.... JAMES BOND"

Jame Bond 007

He is handsome, tall, drives a fast car, has an unlimited expense account, and always gets the girl. That's just the actor. The character he portrays also has a license to kill. and is now

James Bond debuted in Ian Fleming's novel Casino Royale in 1953. The novel was adapted for television in 1954, featuring Barry Nelson as 007. The first Bond movie, Dr No, was released in 1962, starring Sean Connery. David Niven took the lead in a spoof version of Casino Royale in 1967; it is not recognized as part of the Bond franchise. Since Dr No, the equivalent of half the world's population have seen at least one Bond movie

Sean Connery starred in seven Bond movies (including the "unofficial" Never Say Never Again in 1983), George Lazenby in one, Roger Moore in seven, and Timothy Dalton in two. Pierce Brosnan was issued his fourth licence to thrill in the 21th Bond movie, Die Another Day. Daniel Craig had his martini shaken, not stirred, in the 22nd Bond movie, a remake of Casino Royale. He kissed the girls in the 23rd (officially 22nd) Bond movie, Quantum of Solace, released in 2008. Craig is now working on a new James Bond Movie to be released in 2012. All the 007 actors are over 1,8 metres (6 feet) tall.

In the first 22 movies, Bond has 23 vodka martinis, 6 of which he orders himself but two of those he never receives. The rest are prepared and brought to him. Most surprisingly, in his 7 appearances as Bond, Sean Connery utters the phrase "shaken, not stirred" only once, in Goldfinger. In Fleming's novels, Bond drinks gin martinis instead of vodka martinis.

The 007 sign
The Bond character was said to have been based on Dr John Dee, the very first British secret agent. Dee, who lived from 1527 to 1608, was an advisor to Queen Elizabeth I. He was a brilliant mathematician, magician, philosopher, alchemist and astrologer. During his time, England was at war with Spain, and fearing spies, Dee designed the 007 code for his correspondence with the Queen. The 2 zeros indicated "for your eyes only," and the 7 was a cabalistic, or, cryptic number. Dr Dee was not the only secret agent of the time. Seeing Spain amassing a new vast empire in the "New World" (the Americas), Queen Elizabeth secretly sent the pirate-turned-explorer Englishman Francis Drake (1540-1596) west with the added intent to harass the Spanish. It is known that Dr Dee and Drake actually met to discuss strategies.

However, Fleming explained the creation of Bond: "I extracted the Bond plots from my wartime memories, dolled them up, attached a hero, a villain, and a heroine, and there was the book."

Ian Fleming
Ian Fleming (28 May 1908 – 12 Aug 1964) was attached to the British Naval Intelligence Division during World War II. After the war, Fleming purchased a patch of land in Jamaica and built a bungalow on it, calling it Goldeneye. It was here, in his forties, on 14 July 1952 that after three attempts the first words of the first Bond novel were created: "The scent and smoke and sweat of a casino are nauseating at three in the morning."

The Bond name was simply borrowed from the author of Birds of the West Indies. The character M was modeled on Admiral John Godfrey, Director of Naval Intelligence Division (NID), to whom in 1939 Fleming was made personal assistant.

In the novels, James Bond and Q actually never meet. Fleming wrote about Major Boothroyd and the Q branch but never mentioned a character called Q.

Author John Gardner took over the writing of Ian Fleming in 1981 with his first novel License Renewed. Sixteen years later he relinquished the 007 pen to Raymond Benson who debuted with Zero Minus Ten and ending with his last offering called The Man With The Red Tattoo in 2002. Three years on, Charlie Higson was awarded the challenge to depict the teenager Bond in a 1930s setting in a series of 5 Young Bond books, starting with Silverfin

Places where James Bond made love
In the first 22 movies, Bond is told 35 times that he will die. He doesn't, of course. What he does, however, is make love 81 times: in a hotel room (20 times), London flat (2), at her place (15), someone else's place (2), on a train (3), in a barn (2), in a forest (2), in a gypsy tent (2), hospital (3), in a plane (2), in a submarine (1), in a car (1), on a motorized iceberg (1), in, around, under, or by water (25 times). Of the first 62 Bond girls, 31 were brunettes, 25 blonds, and 4 redheads. Women moaned "Oh, James!" 16 times.

From Thunderball:
Pat: "What exactly do you do?"
Bond: "Oh, I travel... a sort of licensed troubleshooter."

Bond expert Steve Hadlow - Get the latest 007
news on James Bond site: http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/007bs/

The 007 girls: http://commanderbond.net/

Ian Fleming Site: http://www.ianfleming.com/

[Warph]

The IRS will still collect taxes after a nuclear attack


....that the United States Internal Revenue Service manual lays out the basic ground rules for "continuity planning", which ensures that the IRS will still be able to function under any number of extreme circumstances. This includes wars, natural disasters, terrorist attacks, pandemic influenza, and yes, even nuclear explosions. (You can read all about it in the IRS manual).

In fact, the U.S. Treasury Department has had plans since the 1960s to revive and maintain the American economy after a nuclear attack. After such an attack, economists in secret locations will oversee the apportioning of tax-free cash grants to survivors (a stimulus package), while the government buys up assets destroyed in the attack (like the Troubled Asset Relief Program), and pays off any outstanding bank loans and mortgages. After that, the pre-existing tax policy will likely be abandoned, and the IRS will have to form a new policy for generating government revenue to fund the rebuilding process. No firm tax plan for such a scenario has been agreed upon, but several proposals and guidelines have been prepared and stored at relocation sites for just such an occasion. Which of the plans they opt for will be decided based on the situation on the ground, though one likely system would enact a sales tax as high as 30%.

While nuclear winter won't be enough of a crisis to free us from the IRS, we can take comfort in the fact that the United States Postal Service will also be functioning in that time of crisis. The USPS has an emergency planning manual for just such an occasion. Their post nuclear attack plan has been in place since 1981. Not only will they continue to deliver the mail, they will also have to distribute the 60 million change-of-address forms that they already have prepared and distributed throughout 30,000 post offices. Check out this Brookings article to learn more about the U.S. government's post-doomsday plans.

[Warph]

.....that Ben Matlock, the Atlanta-based fictional attorney portrayed by Andy Griffith in the eponymous television show Matlock, tried dozens if not hundreds of fictional cases.  Each (with some exception) followed a similar pattern.  Matlock, in his pale blue suit, would represent one of a seemingly endless list of clients wrongly accused of murders but with a weak alibi.  The case starts to go well, until -- as Matlock surprisingly discovers (causing him to make this face) -- that someone has a deep, dark secret, such as an affair, etc., which derails Matlock's theory as to who is the true murderer. 

But Matlock wins in the end, due to some convoluted twist involving absurd facts and legal proceeding which could not exist in the real world.  Take, for example, the following.  Matlock sought to demonstrate that someone other than his client was guilty of the murder committed and found a unique witness: the victim's dog.  Matlock brought the dog to the courthouse, and the dog saw (smelled?) the person Matlock and his client believed was the true murderer.  The dog barked like a lunatic and the jury, finding reasonable doubt that Matlock's client was guilty of the crime, acquitted the accused.

Fiction? Surely.  But in the case of Rosie, a golden retriever, there is a kernel of truth to the story.

Rosie, per the New York Times, is a "therapy dog who specializes in comforting people when they are under stress." And recently, she went to work in a courthouse, during a trial, sitting alongside a 15 year old girl who was on the witness stand, testifying that her father had raped and impregnated her.  (The father was on trial for the crimes associated with these allegations.)  The father was convicted, and the daughter, per her psychologist, thanked Rosie immensely. 

But Rosie's role in the courthouse is not without controversy.  While prosecutors and others argue that the dog enables witnesses to testify in and about situations which they would otherwise avoid, defense attorneys wonder aloud of juries are being unintentionally misled by the dog. After all, they argue, the dog -- cuddling up to a witness and being pet -- injects credibility upon the witness which may be undue, and cannot be easily distilled from the testimony.  (As one defense attorney noted, you can't cross-examine a dog.)  Prosecutors argue that this concern is overstated at best and the dog serves a much greater purpose, and, as advocacy site CourthouseDogs.com believes, the dogs "promote justice" which would be woefully absent without the animals' inclusion.  And the gusto with which courthouse dog supporters believe this to be the case should not be taken lightly; after all, Rosie is named for famed civil rights activist Rosa Parks.

The defense team in the aforementioned rape case is appealing -- understandably, especially given the novelty of Rosie's inclusion. There is a very good chance that the New York State Court of Appeals -- the state's highest court -- will end up deciding the matter.  And if dogs are similarly used in federal trials, perhaps one day Rosie and her canine friends will be the subject of a Supreme Court decision.


Bonus fact: If a courthouse dog case were to go to the Supreme Court, the dog would not be a party to the case. But in another situation, dogs could, in theory, be a named party. That situation? Civil asset forfeiture claims.  There, the government brings a civil (that is, non-criminal) action against an alleged criminal's property, claiming that the property was used in the furtherance of a crime.  Note that the case is not brought against the alleged criminal but, in fact, against the property itself.  This leads to odd sounding case names such as United States v. $124,700 in U.S. Currency, a real case decided in 2005.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA_v._$124,700

[Warph]

.....that the Indian state of Goa sits on India's eastern shore.  It is the smallest of the nation's 28 states by land area, at under 1,500 square miles.  It is the fourth smallest by population, with about 1.5 million inhabitants, and is mostly Hindu (65%) with a sizable amount of Christians (26%) and a small amount of Muslims (6%).  It is also the only place on the planet you are likely to come across a "pig toilet," perhaps one of the most foul and awful inventions in human history.

When it comes to food, pigs are, well, pigs.... they will eat just about anything.  Soybeans and corn make up the diet of the typical farm-fed American pig.  Wild pigs typically forage on a diet of bugs (dead or alive), trees, flowers, leaves, etc., but also will consume the occasional dead animal upon which the pig encounters. Pigs have been known to eat garbage of all sorts as well.  In fact, pigs, when in enclosed areas, will just eat and eat and eat until there is literally nothing left but dirt -- and then, they'll start digging, looking for more food.  Anything in the area is likely to be eaten, destroying whatever is in the area.  And some Goan take this all-accepting diet to solve a problem: plumbing.... or, a lack thereof. 

Meet the pig toilet.

The pig toilet is, basically, a big hole acting as both outhouse and trough.  A person comes to the outhouse section and, colloquially, does his business.  The outhouse is situated over the pig sty, with a pathway connecting the two.  The "stuff" travels down the carved out path from the outhouse into the pig sty or adjacent trough.

For the person, it's nature calling.  For the pig, it's the dinner bell.

This, of course, makes later slaughtering and eating the pig a huge health risk. For decades, this was not a very big problem, as the vast majority of Goa's population (being Hindu or Muslim) would not eat pork products regardless, due to religious reasons.  However, as the population of Goa has become more sophisticated, the employment of pig toilets has begun to wane.

That said, if someone offers you sorpatel, you may want to pass.


Bonus Fact: Sorpotel, is a dish of Portuguese origin now commonly cooked in the coastal Konkan region of India primarily Goa and Mangalore and in northeastern Brazil. Ingredients include meat and offal, which varies depending on region from pork to lamb and even beef. The meats are first parboiled, then diced and sauteed before being cooked in a spicy and vinegary sauce.

The flavourings and spices differ from region to region, for example, some use more vinegar. The size of the pieces also varies, as does cooking technique: some sautee the meat prior to cooking it in the sauce, while others add the diced parboiled meat directly to the sauce.

In Goa, Sorpotel is often accompanied by "sanna" - a spongy, white, and slightly sweet steamed rice and coconut bread. However, it can also be enjoyed with bread, on rice, or in a bun as a sandwich.

[Warph]

....that you become a brand new person every seven years?  Poppycock!  Don't believe it.  It's a neat idea, and one that has caught the popular imagination.  Here's how the story goes: Every seven years (or 10, depending on which story you hear) we become essentially new people, because in that time, every cell in your body has been replaced by a new cell.  Don't you feel younger than you were seven years ago?

No... it hasn't worked for me.

It is true that individual cells have a finite life span, and when they die off they are replaced with new cells.  As The New York Public Library's Science Desk Reference (Stonesong Press, 1995) notes, "There are between 50 and 75 trillion cells in the body.... Each type of cell has its own life span, and when a human dies it may take hours or day before all the cells in the body die." Forensic investigators take advantage of this vaguely morbid fact when determining the cause and time of death of homicide victims.

Red blood cells live for about four months, while white blood cells live on average more than a year.  Skin cells live about two or three weeks.  Colon cells have it rough: They die off after about four days.  Sperm cells have a life span of only about three days, while brain cells typically last an entire lifetime (neurons in the cerebral cortex, for example, are not replaced when they die).

There's nothing special or significant about a seven-year cycle, since cells are dying and being replaced all the time.  It's not clear where this myth began; perhaps some well-meaning but innumerate person simply added up the all the lifespans of the body's various types of cells and (mistakenly) assumed that all the cells are renewed after seven years.

You don't think that LarryJ had anything to do with that myth, do ya? ... being an Army Medic and all.