The Body

A Guide for Occupants

Bill Bryson 2019 Bvt Lib 612 BRY

Notes and bibliography and index, yay!

• 001-004 silliness about the cost of the elements in your body ... actually the cost of purifying those elements. That can be turned upside down; there are 10 tonnes of CO2 carbon above my 0.7 acres, and another 30 tonnes (est) of carbon in my trees and bushes and grass. A few more tonnes in the wood of my house, and the books on my shelf, call that 10 tonnes, for a total of 50 tonnes for a "home price" of perhaps $500K; $10/kg carbon. For the rest of the elements, dig down, there is plenty of everything, arguably $4.7 trillion dollars worth of elements and compounds.

The reference human is Benedict Cumberbatch, 78 kg, ( 18.5% carbon by weight hence 15 kg, so the limiting element of human existence (carbon) cost of a my-backyard-sourced Cumberbatch is $150. Using a less expensive carbon source (like coal, closing at $340/ton (907 kg) is $0.40 per kilogram, or about $6 per Cumberbatch. Humans add 40 billion tonnes of CO2 to the atmosphere per year, perhaps 11 billion tonnes of carbon, or about one million "carbon-Cumberbatchs" per second.

Personally, I believe one Cumberbatch is ample, and would prefer the atmospheric excess turns into 3000 big trees per second. As I write this, way too many Oregon trees are burning into CO2 instead.

CH02 skin and hair

CH03 microbes

CH04 brain

CH05 head

CH06 mouth and throat

CH07 heart and blood

CH08 body chemistry

CH09 skeleton

CH10 bipedalism

CH11 equilibrium

CH12 Immune system

CH13 Lungs

CH14 Food

CH15 Guts

CH16 Sleep

CH17 Sex

CH18 Pregnancy

CH19 Pain

CH20 Diseases

CH21 Cancer

CH22 Medicine

CH23 Death

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