thing – Page 2

A new definition of life?

June 21, 2017 — leslie dean brown

Erwin Schrödinger theorized in his 1944 book “What is Life?” that contrary to the general tendency dictated by the Second law of thermodynamics, life decreases or maintains its entropy by feeding on negative entropy.

One of the most difficult questions to answer is “what is the purpose of life?”. But how can we possibly answer what the purpose of life is if we don’t even know what life is?

What is life? Go to a year 9 science book and the definitions will vary. They will undoubtedly mention the following processes: Homeostasis, Organization, Metabolism, Growth, Adaptation, Response to stimuli, Reproduction. By these definitions, would ‘life’ from another planet even classify as life?

Whenever we attempt to ask what constitutes life, we arrive at all sorts of vague definitions, for example:

“the quality that distinguishes a vital and functional being from a dead body”

“a principle or force that is considered to underlie the distinctive quality of animate beings”

“an organismic state characterized by capacity for metabolism, growth, reaction to stimuli, and reproduction”

“the condition that distinguishes organisms from inorganic objects and dead organisms, being manifested by growth through metabolism, reproduction, and the power of adaptation to environment through changes originating internally.”

“the sum of the distinguishing phenomena of organisms, esp. metabolism, growth, reproduction, and adaptation to environment.”

There are many definitions of what life is, but for every one of these sub-classifications, there are exceptions:

Adaptation to the environment. At what rate must life adapt for it to be considered alive? If we rapidly create an artificially toxic environment, no life form will be able to adapt in time and hence it will die. The same can be said for the “reaction to stimuli” argument. The entire plant kingdom is at a great disadvantage here – although they can adapt relatively quickly to their environment, plants can only react to stimuli very slowly. Viruses do not appear to react to anything. In fact, I suspect that “adaptation to the environment” and “reaction to external stimuli” are really disguised as the same thing, albeit at different rates of application.

Reproduction can never be a valid prerequisite for life (at least for an individual being or entity). The process of reproduction occurs in every single life form on this planet, it has therefore not surprisingly swayed our perspective when we think about all life forms. Life is more than reproduction.

I suspect that reproduction is a way of minimising damage to our core DNA instructional program, by relaying this information over different generations (more on that later). I can easily imagine an organic being which is alive and does not need to reproduce to survive by continually renewing itself. Imagine the last surviving example of an endangered heterogenous species: in the short term, it is alive despite facing certain extinction (unless cloned). But in the long term, in the future, it (defined as a species) is already dead. Eunuchs are alive; so are spayed or neutered dogs — but neither can reproduce.

Nor can DNA or metabolism be a criterion for life. In biology, the word ‘metabolism’ usually refers to Earth-bound chemistry. Doesn’t this preclude off-world life? DNA is merely a recipe for life on this planet, it is not a blueprint for ALL life.

It seems to me that our definition of life is extremely Earth-centric. This is again perhaps not very surprising since it’s the only life we know about (so far). So I think it’s time to attempt to define life in a new way. But how can we ever begin to grasp the chemistry on other planets or in other galaxies? Well, we might not have to know. We just need to define one single common process of life. What do all life forms have in common?

Interestingly time is an essential factor when we consider the concept of life. It is present in all the above definitions of life (metabolism, reaction to stimuli & environment, growth and reproduction). We cannot think of definitions of life without thinking about time as well. The concept of time is an essential component. A life-form cannot be defined as alive without measuring one of its characteristics against time. Although so far knowing all this doesn’t help us much.

What other parameters do we know about the cosmos that don’t change? What if we could define life in terms of one of these constants, by direct comparison?

One of the most commonly accepted universal ‘laws’ (at least ) is the second law of thermodynamics, which basically states that the universe tends towards a state of disorder. You need to add energy to a system for it to become more ordered. In general, it’s a rule that cannot be broken. But I’ve never completely understood this, because according to most thermodynamics lecturers, this planet should be an amorphous lump, along with all the others in our Solar system. With this rule, you’d also expect the cosmos to be a 100% random distribution of gas molecules by now… I’m not arguing against the second law… it just made me think.

Physicists and thermodynamicists conveniently talk about open, closed and isolated systems and then scale the size of these imaginary boxes into whatever sizes fit their models in order to analyse various processes (either real or hypothetical). In our situation, they’d include the Sun in the size of their box to take into account its energy transfer. That doesn’t mean much to me.

What does all this have to do with life? Quite simply, as time passes, life in general has the unique capacity to re-arrange resources for itself and all by itself. It’s the one trait that separates inanimate objects (stuff that doesn’t appear to do anything) from animate objects (which do things spontaneously). Let’s just say that life evolves into more and more complex, ordered forms over prolonged time periods.

At first glance, you might not think that we as a civilisation are very organised. You might even call life “crazy” or “chaotic”. Look a bit closer, and you’ll see that the opposite is true. The very word “chaos” essentially means “an apparent state of randomness with the presence of an underlying order”. Think about the intertwined postal networks, telecommunications networks, street networks, social networks, food networks. Think about the logistical nightmare of supplying all the many things we consume on a daily basis; every single thing needs to be prototyped, tested, packed, inventoried, advertised, distributed, sold, consumed and disposed. That’s essentially what everyone is working toward: to offer a sevice to some one or some thing. Compare the sheer complexity of this life with the alternative: a completely barren desert lifeless landscape. Think about all the bits of information that we’ve created and stored in the world; think about the position of every single atom or molecule in both scenarios and then decide which one is more complex. Which one has had more order applied to it?

Consider the following new definition of life: any self-generating system which decreases local entropy levels over the long term. Why do I stipulate “self-generated”? Because artificial machines aren’t really considered alive until they can self-assemble or reproduce; once they become self regenerating, I’m sure they’ll be considered rudimentary forms of life too.

Large businesses [ironically called “organisations”] grow, react and in a sense spawn new companies. Still, these are not considered alive in the traditional sense because they are not self-generating. [Incidently- that could be one reason for the failure of large companies; there is so much re-organising going on, not enough work gets done!]

Viruses usually provide an example of a hazy distinction between life and non-life. In the traditional sense, viruses cannot reproduce on their own; hence some people do not consider them as valid lifeforms.

Using the entropy definition of life, parasitic viruses are only alive in terms of the whole system -when combined with the host organism. In other words, when you include the host as a part of the system, then they are both alive; if not, then the virus is ‘dead’. Like any parasite, you cannot define their existence without looking at the host as well. In my opinion, a virus is still alive in a sense since it replicates the genetic code (just another form of information).

I think we need to look more at entire systems, not just solitary organisms. You cannot draw black-and-white conclusions about life without looking at the surrounding environment. Highly constrained niche ecosystems are alive but very interdependent. If you remove one individual species it often cannot survive on its own. Indeed, remove just one ‘keystone’ species and you risking collapsing the entire ecosystem.

All this is not to say we break the second law of thermodynamics or that we are somehow exempt from its effects. Quite the contrary. There is an external all-pervading neutralising force which constantly acts against us.

Entropy manifests itself in various ways by attempting to randomise us. We experience both cellular and molecular degradation. The action of foreign chemicals & UV rays first come to mind. Cosmic rays, X-Rays, etc directly tamper with our DNA code. The bus that flattens you on the street has done a good job of increasing your entropy state. In fact, it seems that intelligent life itself has the potential to completely self-destruct. We’ve become too good at killing everything and we risk our own survival. I believe that this is entropy playing an unconscious revenge-effect type of role. Nope, it’s not some kind of god. Some people call this effect irony, some call it Karma.

I’ll admit that I am definitely not the first person to think about the connection between life & entropy in this way although I’m proud to say that did come to this conclusion independently … only 64 years too late!

American biochemist Albert Lehninger, argues that “living organisms preserve their internal order by taking from their surroundings free energy, in the form of nutrients or sunlight, and returning to their surroundings an equal amount of energy as heat and entropy.”

Ville Kaila and Arto Annila of the University of Helsinki describe how evolution explores possible paths to level differences in energy densities and so increase entropy most rapidly. Thus, an organism serves as an energy transfer mechanism, and beneficial mutations allow successive organisms to transfer more energy within their environment.

We are told very early on that this law cannot be broken. I think you know the one thing that ‘breaks’ this rule. Life. Life itself does not seem random. However, it certainly seems chaotic. But if you’ve read about chaos theory, it talks about “order in disorder”. What may seem disordered and random may in fact have an underlying order to it. Be it an international airport or the phenomenon we call the weather. It’s controlled by a simple set of rules, but all of these interacting together make it extremely difficult to predict. Some would say impossible. It takes someone like the mentalist to know what’s really going on.

This blog is essentially information (which is order) presented as a series of words (ideas). You could easily convert this paragraph into binary for example. Then it looks very ordered indeed. How am I able to do that?

01011001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01100001 01110010 01100101 00100000 01110010 01100101 01100001 01100100 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01110100 01101000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01100010 01101111 01101111 01101011 00100000 01101110 01101111 01110111 00100000 01100001 01101110 01100100 00100000 01111001 01100101 01110100 00100000 01100010 01101111 01110101 01101110 01100100 00100000 01100010 01111001 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01110011 01100101 01100011 01101111 01101110 01100100 00100000 01101100 01100001 01110111 01110011 00100000 01101111 01100110 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 01110010 01101101 01101111 01100100 01111001 01101110 01100001 01101101 01101001 01110011 0101110 00100000 01010100 01101000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01100010 01101111 01101111 01101011 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01100101 01110011 01110011 01100101 01101110 01110100 01101001 01100001 01101100 01101100 01111001 00100000 01101001 01101110 01100110 01101111 01110010 01101101 01100001 01110100 01101001 01101111 01101110 00100000 0101000 01101111 01110010 01100100 01100101 01110010 0101001 00100000 01110000

A thermodynamicist will talk about open and closed systems. That I need to look at the bigger picture, the net energy gain, not just the gross product. The net energy lost is the food and drink which I consume or ‘burn’ and convert into heat, thought and finger movement. That in order for me to produce a certain amount of order, I have taken it from somewhere else and created a net waste. Rest assured, my brain is working overtime right now. I certainly don’t feel that efficient. I do feel very much alive though, writing this. That’s precisely my point. I have taken energy and consciensously used it to make order. It doesn’t matter about the size of the ‘container’ for this open/closed system. I am the container. Me.

Nonliving things simply cannot do this. Crystals grow by minimising surface energy (dendrites).

At the edge of life you will find chaos.

While it’s difficult to appreciate the nature of order. Male bower birds collect and hord blue items in an attempt to impress their mate. That is ordering directly at work.

Ants create ordered colonies, much in the same way as we create cities. The size does not matter. Whether they are aware of themselves also seems irrelevant, although they can certainly communicate via chemical means.

If and when a computer is able to replicate itself in the form of a robot, as in the terminator, it will become a formidable source of life indeed. One can imagine an insatiable being whose only purpose in life is to make “order out of disorder”. Think along the lines of the Borg in Star Trek or the Simulants in the popular TV series Red Dwarf.

The Paris accord discord.

June 3, 2017 — leslie dean brown

Can we talk about climate change Mr Trumpet?

Rich, uneducated people almost never believe in climate change. Because I think the way they see it, “climate change” might as well be called “lifestyle change”… and we all know people don’t like lifestyle adjustments. Especially if it means downgrading them.

Oh and by the way, yes I’m fuckin’ FURIOUS alright! About this latest Paris agreement you bombed out on. You fucking-welldropped out of it, you pathethic small-handed fake-tanned little wanker! ¹

Now if I had have known 22+ years ago that the president of the United States of America was going to be this #tangerinefuckknuckle, to coin a phrase, I never would have taken up my university on their offer to study science in the first place. I mean why bother?!

Why bother trying to be part of the intelligentsia? Or is that spelled ‘intelligencia’? Never mind. Anything but listen to “the clever people”. If the amount of clout and respect we recieve from fossil-fuel undivested bury-your-head-in-the-sand-and-the-problem-will-go-away complete FUCKWIT types is next to zero. I would have studied a creative field like art or design instead, way back then, if I had have known.

“The rest of the world applauded when we signed the Paris Agreement. They went wild. They were so happy — for the simple reason that it put our country, the United States of America, which we all love, at a very, very big economic disadvantage.” — Donald Trump

No, Mr Trumpet, no. Wrong! We cheered because the bonds in every single carbon dioxide molecule exhibit antisymmetric stretching and bending resonance modes at frequencies of 2350cm⁻¹ and 670cm⁻¹ respectively. We cheered because your country emits approximately 71,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 of these molecules every single year.

And I mean, shiiit, we could stand to lose money here people. MONEY! All those people in mining, construction, manufacturing, engineering, logistsics, transport. So we better put the economy first. Jobs first. America first!

But who’s fucking atmosphere is it anyway? America’s? No, we all share the exact same atmospheric coating —thin as it is.

Is there some great big motherfuckin’ hermetically-sealed compartment bigger than the USA that I don’t know about, protecting the likes of North America from extreme weather events that we know will happen? Because the last time I looked, those tropical cyclones whupped your Eastern seaboard arses! That’s right. And you couldn’t run and hide, you had to shut up shop, board everything up and close all business. That sure turned out to be great for Florida’s economy, didn’t it now?

And it turns out rich people should be a lot more worried that they are about this too. For one thing they love living on low-lying coastal regions. But even though they might be able to afford to move, their hard-working employees won’t be able to afford to, will they? Less profit for you then!

If there’s one thing scientists don’t like, it’s uncertainty. And see, that’s half the problem. Isn’t it? One or two degrees might not seem like a lot, but then, it isn’t, is it? What we worry about isn’t one or two degrees of warming over the whole surface of the Earth. That’s the average. The variance in the temperature peaks and troughs could be much higher and lower, for example. What we worry about is some parts getting hotter than average by 8-10 degrees. What we worry about is some parts getting colder than average by 8-10 degrees. If that happened, the average temperature would still be the fucking same! But that doesn’t mean that it’s okay. Right?

What we worry about is chaotic changes in weather patterns. What we worry about are tipping points. What we worry about are graphs that spike up and down like a fuckin’ yo-yo. Because that would be far worse than any global warming. If one year the planet was freezing cold like Mars and the next one it was like fuckin’ Venus. That’s not good for crops for one thing. If there is only one planet Earth, and we can’t afford to downgrade this and wait fir the end of the experiment. We have to intervene now. NOW!

If there’s one thing scientists fear, it’s losing control of nature. So up until now, we’ve always had answers for you. But if you dumbarses don’t start to listen, then what the hell can we do about it later on? When it’s too late? Nothing. You’ll be like “Oh you should have warned us decades ago that it was worse than we thought. If it was that serious, why didn’t you jump up and down and shout out about it way more?”. And we’ll be like: “Well we told you, we told you so and you didn’t listen. You just kept on buying great big diesel trucks instead of looking for a way out.”

We should build a wall alright. We should build a 55-ft high wall, and all of the people who think our actions don’t/can’t/won’t have any global effect or climate consequences should have their name co-moulded into that fuckin’ wall for the sake of posterity. So when the world really does start to fuck up, future civilisations can have those people to thank for inheriting such a fucked up little world.

Do you know what the scariest thing is? – self realisation

May 5, 2017 — leslie dean brown

“Do you know what the scariest thing is? To not know your place in this world, to not know why you’re here. That’s… it’s just an awful feeling.” -Elija Price from the movie “Unbreakable”.

But what happens if and when you can’t seem to find your own unique, specific niche? I’m talking about major areas of your life, like employment. Your ideal partner? Your own distinct style? Your identity? Can these two states of overchoice and underchoice lead to mental health problems? What happens to your mood when there are an infinite number of things you could possibly do with your life? Do you begin to block everything out, deny existence of something?

I’m sure that for everyone, there are moments when it all seems like it is too much to bear. It seems to me that in this new information age, a lot of people are withdrawing into their shells, refusing to face the true reality of this world. Perhaps because of their online internet experiences. It’s called “future shock”.

We’re always reminded that people who can’t find a worthwhile niche are not much use to society. In this way, perhaps one completely natural & previously redundant “coping mechanism” (stemming for overchoice) is the occurrence of mild depression. We all know that chronically depressed people are obviously more prone to suicide. They consciously choose to eliminate themselves from their own suffering. It is a way of dealing with their own extreme level of internal conflict, self-pity, guilt and their perceived burden on society. But what if it is actually a subconscious choice that has already been programmed into them? Are the peers who have failed to recognise and treat their condition (just like they would any individual with another sickness) partly to blame?

Are we all making “nano-niches” for ourselves, in an attempt to fit into this new highly-customised, choice-oriented advanced consumer society? We now join online local communities such as forums, blog directories, facebook, dating sites, chat rooms. We subscribe to newsletters, RSS feeds. We can search for whatever we like with google, almost without limits. As individuals, we’re always searching to redefine ourselves, to find our life purpose.

No one can or should tell you what to do with your life. There is only one person who can decide and determine what you should do and that is you.

If you’re living your life trying to please someone else, you’re probably wasting your time. Sooner or later you will come to the realisation that the best way to please other people (such as your parents, your partner or your friends) is to be yourself. It’s fine to ask people’s opinions and sometimes they can know you more than you think you know yourself. I would say try and listen to that inner voice. Sometimes it is so soft, so quiet, it’s hard to hear it above the noise.

I often find myself asking these questions:

Who do I want to be?
Who do I want to become?
What do I want to do with my life?

When you are told very early on that you can do anything –to be anyone– choosing your own career path is never easy. So despite my little spiel about self-realisation above, this is my advice, should you choose to accept it:

Pretend you are retired. What would you do with your time — when time is most important to you?

Or Imagine you don’t get paid anything to actually work. What would you do with yourself then?

[look at the japanese overlapping circles]

Trophy hunter hypocrasy

April 20, 2017 — leslie dean brown

Personally I think you trophy hunters are all basic cowards. Shooting animals from distance… Like wow.

And it’s always a giraffe. But they’re not venomous. Are they? So like they are really going to fight back… Wow. Or a zebra. They don’t appear to have claws either.

You had to take a selfie. You just had to take a selfie. That’s the thing with you trophy hunters, isn’t it? You always have to have a memento. But don’t serial killers always take mementos of their victims? I think they do. They might as well call it “souvenir hunting”.

And we all know that you greedy bastards want to collect the whole set, too. We know. Because they are all very “limited edition”, aren’t they? These endangered animals.

Is it really the thrill of the hunt? Or is it all just for that tacky piece of junk that is hanging on your wall that you need to keep there … to remind yourself every single day that “you’re really brave”. Yes I think that’s what it is. You all have such a subconscious inferiority complex, you need these bullshit reminders on your walls of your “manliness”. And you need to show it off to others, too.

And what’s this you little shit-turd? You killed a lion this time? With a gun. Well anyone can do that. Anyone with a finger.
And you put the gun over your shoulder like the little dip shit that you are, acting all ‘superior’. What’s that for?

But are you superior? Are you really? Let me tell you why you’re not superior, little man with a 4cm penis:

Because yes even crossbows are overpowered today. All those linkages. Made of advanced materials. You know. You know I know. Oh I know all about materials.

How about this? Next time, try it with a fucking wooden bow that you’ve carved from a tree that you cut down yourself. And no I don’t mean with a chainsaw. I mean you must chop that tree down by hand with an axe. To be fair. To be fair to the lion.

What about the string then? For the bow. Did you harvest that from natural fibres and make it into twine? I didn’t think so. You’re all using synthetic bow strings, aren’t you? Or is that what you are so convinced that human technology is ‘superior’, because of synthetic materials?

And the arrow. Let’s not forget the arrow. Did you also make that yourself? So you choose to make the arrow from metal. But let me ask you, hunter: did you obtain that metal from first principles? Including smelting from the ore? Did you dig that ore yourself? No. Did you light the fire for the smelting operation? Chop down that wood, too, by hand with an axe?

Something tells me that you didn’t. I didn’t think so. You did none of that. You all went to the shop and bought the metal rods. For the arrows. Didn’t you? Went in your car to get those? That’s what I thought. You drive more than me. And you think I pollute. You lot actually consume more than I do! And you thought it was the other way around…

And how did you shape that arrow? Not with a lathe! No, not with a lathe. Not with electricity that gets streamed right to your closest power outlet. I mean, lions don’t have electricity to help them out, do they? No they don’t. They don’t need electricity…

Here’s a thought. Why don’t you go and hunt with a knife? EH? Something tells me I don’t think you would be in that. Because then the risk is in the lions’ favour. Don’t fancy the odds? I thought not, coward.

You want a rush, you do it properly. Give the lion a fighting chance. Because how much adrenaline can you get from shooting fish in a barrel?

Maybe if you do all of the above, make your own bow and arrow, knife, using tools you made yourself, you’ll regain some of your actual life. And you won’t feel the need to shoot lions to feel ‘happy’. Maybe if you used your muscles a bit more, you might generate more endorphins that way.

And I see you strung up that lion. It’s like you’re trying to show people that it is an animal and you are the “all powerful” ‘human’. But you, too, are an animal. And I mean that in the derogatory sense, not in the sense of awe I have for a truly magnificent beasts that hunt every single day of their lives on the Serengetti.

Did someone help you haul that lion up there? Over that tree branch? Or did you do it all by yourself? Something tells me you had to order your pathetic cameraman ‘friend’ to help you out. I know your muscles simply are not big enough to move that lion even two lousy inches without help.

Not to mention the fact that the rope is acting like a pulley system, halving the effective weight. Wow, you lifted up a quarter of a dead lion. Wow. That must have been hard. You must be so proud of yourself! Well done. And I know you probably worked up more of a sweat lifting that dead lion two feet off the ground than actually pulling the trigger a few times too, didn’t you?

Because, you certainly didn’t hunt the lion on foot, did you? I mean if even this fat ugly bastard barely works up a sweat in an African climate, I’m sure you are making it too easy for yourselves. What do I mean by that? Too easy?

Well, you drove there in your comfortable safari jeep, powered with a diesel engine, didn’t you? It probably even has air-conditioning, doesn’t it? Well maybe on the ‘deluxe’ tour.

Oh sure you got out of the car AFTER driving all the way there from Cape Town. Or wherever. But you certainly did not arrive there on foot, you pathetic cheating little bastards.

Why not try cycling or walking, and hauling your own kit over there to the safari next time? Yes I’m talking about all the way from the international airport. Try actually using your leg muscles to get somewhere next time.

What bothers me is that you like to act all “tough and manly”. Yes even the trophy-hunter-bitches like to be all “tough and manly” too (because they’re probably just lesbians and don’t even realise it or won’t admit it to themselves). It’s okay to be butch you know. Or bi. It’s okay. Better to lick pussy than kill lions.

But, again, I digress. Where was I? Oh yes, you like to all “tough and manly”. But did you walk all the way to Africa from your hometown? Did you swim or row over the Atlantic ocean? No. I didn’t think so. You flew there. Well you didn’t fly. The plane flew. And you just sat there watching television. Once again, a ‘wow’ is in order. Wow. Gettting served your meals directly in your lap. Having other people carry your water for you.

And so you you claim you are “helping the environment”. But the flight to Africa certainly isn’t helping out the atmosphere, is it?

Oh that’s right, you ultra-conservative religious gun-toting motherfuckers don’t ‘believe’ that humans can cause something like that. It seems to me your puny little brain does not comprehend physics or chemistry. But I digress…

Even if you don’t believe in climate change, that flight you took —like everything we do in this world— has an ecological cost. You have just polluted the air.

But it’s not just that. Planes require fuel. And that fuel has do come from somewhere. And where does it come from? That’s right, it always comes from natural spaces, doesn’t it? And the metal in that plane. That metal has do come from somewhere. And where does it come from? That’s right, it too comes from natural spaces. The very same natural spaces you claim to care most about. Oh the hypocrasy!

Now you could argue that the plane was going to fly to Africa anyway, even without you. But something tells me you don’t think too much. All you alpha-male hunter types. You have a little too much latent testosterone. And not quite enough IQ to match.

By your own fucked-up “hunting logic”, modern aviation is supposedly not ‘sustainable’ either, is it? Or had you conveniently forgotten about that part of your trip? You know… all the modern things in life that you’re taking advantage of…

All this time, you have been sitting on your fat arse getting driven and flown to places! And meanwhile, what you think of as a ‘lesser’ lion has —all this time— been hunting on his own. No guns. No bows and arrows. No gunpowder. No laser cut blades. Just claws and teeth mate. Claws and teeth. No composites. No ceramics. No steel or cast iron or bronze. No metal whatsoever. No plastic handles. Not even natural materials like cotton or wood, for the lion.

No lap meals for the lion. No air conditioning. No television. No flight crew. Not even so much as a fucking tent for shelter. And yet you have a nice soft mattress to sleep on, princess!

I think, to be fair, you should have to fight the lion with no materials, no technology at all. Just you and your bare hands. Learn some karate maybe? Or maybe you could try to bite the lion with your own teeth, just in the right spot. Estrangulation? Or maybe you could grow your hair long, draw some of your own blood, make a composite out of that and try to suffocate it that way. But you’d have to be pretty quick. Lions don’t like being crept up on. They tend to kill unarmed people.

Now, see, I’m not some tree-hugging vegan. I don’t view the world with rose tinted glasses. I know lions get killed. And I know tribes eat lions. I think you should be forced to eat that entire lion within one week. Not with the help of your miserable friends, but, you know, on your ownsome. But I am starting to become vegetarian, because I don’t like the way meat is farmed.

Would you try to hunt me down if you knew I was armed? If I could shoot back? I don’t think so. I really don’t think so.

Quite frankly, I don’t even think of you as human. You are not part of my species. You don’t belong.

It’s too bad the law defines you as human. Were it legal, I would hunt YOU down! I might do it from a mile off. Or I might just walk up to you and shoot you in the face. I wouldn’t even think twice, because to me, you are not human.

You disgust me, trophy hunter.

It takes real courage to admit that a lion is the greater beast here among men.

Why am I a minimalist?

March 31, 2017 — leslie dean brown

I am a former materials scientist. The first question I always get asked is: “what is that?”.

Materials science is the study of mostly synthetic materials such as metals, polymers, ceramic and composites. We study their physical & chemical properties and how they are extracted from the Earth.

I am telling you this because I think that people need to start listening to scientists. More people need to listen to more scientists.

That’s a two way thing. I think that more scientists should start their own blogs (and other mediums communication like that).

Right. So I am a former materials scientist. And do you know what I now think about materials? What I now know?

I think that everything that you buy kills some part of the world somewhere else. The metals in the electronics that you are buying come from mines and natural spaces have to be destroyed to get them. I think we have to realise that and remember it every time we go to buy something. We need to think about that whenever Apple tries to sell us some new product. Do we really need it? What is the environmental cost?

My view now is that the things that we buy have to come from somewhere. Ask yourselves where. Most plastics [polymers] in use today come directly from oil. Uh oh.

All metals that aren’t being recycled are mined. Mines are always built in the natural environment (just look what happens when they are not –like with coal seam gas– people complain their heads off and usually get their own way).

But the problem isn’t just big banks and mining companies. Because I think 99% of adults have simply forgotten where they get their stuff from. [Read more…]