Screw chemistry reports. The person who marks them doesn't live up to his word. This person has no consistency in his standards. There's just no pleasing him. You'd think that after someone said "Just use the results you obtain, even if they're wrong. The important thing is that your calculation methods are correct. Just explain the errors in your discussion.", he'd actually read the damn page-long discussion you give him about why the results are off. Instead of just circling my data and asking stupid questions like "why is this negative?", you'd think that he would probably realise that my reports tend to extend beyond the ignorant slapping down of stupid data.
But noooo, it doesn't work that way. Every single report(after the first one which I had no idea what to do) I have submitted has contained detailed explanation and exposition about the experiment in question. I have tried my best to figure out what was looked out for in technical reports(since we weren't given an example to refer to) and all I found out was that the reports were subject to every whim and impulse of the marker. Those of you who know me, tell me, am I good at following protocol? I may take short-cuts around certain things, but not with work. I have never been (entirely) lazy about work while also expecting good results.
So yeah, after I got back my most recent report, I said "F this." and decided that this moron wasn't worth my time, or my frustration. After all, there was no way that I could pull an A-average for reports now, not after the string of sub-par grades given to me for no good reason.
On top of that, no more microbiology practicals, and I still have yet to receive any more reports back for it. Brilliant. Just brilliant.
So, the hell with it. I don't care. There's nothing I can do about it for now anyway.
Today, during lunch, I had a lot of time to let my mind wander, and I chanced upon that horrible, horrible topic of "What is life?". Immediately, I realised the answer.
There is no "life". "Life" does not exist. "Life" was just a term made up by people because they wanted to believe that things that can move around and eat were special. Unfortunately, nothing is special. You see, the question "What is life?" is a stupid question, for it brings about more questions, such as "where do we draw the line between living and non-living things?" There is no line.
Stuff(being everything) is made up of atoms. It doesn't matter what goes beyond that. When many atoms come together, they become stuff. Rocks are made up of billions of silicon dioxide molecules. Cheese is made up of billions of cheesium atoms.
"Living things", as we know them, are essentially made up of many kinds of Stuff. They are much more complex than a piece of cheese, but it can be said that they are simply many different pieces of cheese existing together. A simple animal has Brain Stuff, Digestive System Stuff, and Various Other Stuff. Each of these Stuffs are made out of cells, which are basically made up of more Stuff. The carbon atom in your body is no different from the carbon atom on the other side of the galaxy(not counting isotopes). So nothing about the individual Stuffs in your body are actually special.
The Stuff Mindset says that no matter how awesomely the Stuff in your body react with each other, enabling themselves to turn other Stuff into Stuff that they want, they're all still made of Stuff. And since every atom an element is pretty much the same(still not counting isotopes), our Stuff is the same as other Stuff. It's just placed differently.
The reason why I like Stuff, is that we no longer have to answer the question "what is life?". There will no longer be a need to draw any line between "living" and "non-living" things. No more wondering about whether a virus is a living thing or not. The answer is, it's not a living thing. It's made out of proteins and genetic material, which are made out of atoms. The fact that they can do things is irrelevant. Human beings are also not living things. They're made out of carbohydrates and proteins and various other Stuff, and the fact that they can do things is also irrelevant.
A human being is a swarm of swarms. It's a swarm of organs, and the organs are swarms of specialised cells. The cells themselves are made out of several swarms, and these organelles are also made out of swarms. What you see on the outside is the result of the infinitely complex reactions between these swarms. And the fact that these swarms are "swarming" is a product of chance. So there you have it: You are not alive. You are the result of chemistry working on Stuff.
So the next time anyone asks me whether or not a virus is a living thing, I will remove his brain-swarm and donate it to the Biofuel plant. The fact that I can turn someone's body into regular stuff shows that he's basically just Stuff in a very ordered position.
Yes, of course, this is a gross overgeneralisation of how complex "living" organisms are. But seriously, we're not that much different from the first self-replicating molecules that formed in Primordial Soup back then. It's just that the random nature of the universe, coupled with natural selection, has allowed those molecules to change beyond their original states to become what most people call "life". Take it as that humans are macro-viruses, and that the Earth is a "life-form". It has its own systems, cycles which have to work in a certain way, or the earth would become messed up, just like how animals and plants get diseases. The earth has a human infection. Humans are messing up the earth, just like how viruses mess up humans. So is the planet alive? I don't think anyone has ever answered that.
-Joe