Mortaine’s Blog

Here is a good, philosophical question for you. Please answer before clicking the cut.

For the purposes of this poll only, “the planet is alive” does not refer to any specific organism living on it, per se, nor even any ecosystems, but rather the planet itself, including (perhaps especially) the rocks and dirt that form that stuff under our feet.

The reason I ask this is because of something I remember of a film I watching in Geography class in college. This geologist was asked if Planet Earth is alive, and his response (paraphrased) was that if you ask a butterfly if a tree is alive, the butterfly would say “Of course not. I’ve lived on this tree my whole life, and it’s never done anything! It’s not alive! How absurd.” And yet, we humans, who are longer-lived than the butterfly, can look at the tree and say “yep, that’s alive.”

So, how can we be so sure that the rocky bits beneath our feet are *not* alive?

And now, please comment below answering *why* you think the planet is or is not alive:

I have seven tetras now– I bought 3 adults last night, in a fit of desperation to keep the other ones alive and non-neurotic.

I dropped my car off to be serviced this morning, and now need to call them back about the details. The brakes were squealing, the transmission fluid is probably low…. and its last oil change was 25,000 miles ago. Whoops. I really need to remember that my car drives 400 miles a week.

To Dos:
Start (!) conference paper
Clean kitty litter
Post to Vlog
Audioblog
Get JourneyEd order sorted out
Get rebate stuff sorted out
Install s/w on Mac
Get started on contract