"What's Life?"
"A Magazine."
"How much does it cost?"
"25 cents."
"But I've only got a dime."
"Well, that's life."
"What's Life?" posted by explosion at 3:46 AM on April 5, 2010 [5 favorites]
What kind of twisted, shallow, hipster existence must I lead for this current post to lead me back to this one? posted by The Potate at 3:57 AM on April 5, 2010
That isn't to say that "twisted" is "shallow" or "shallow" is "hipster"or any other iteration of that. Nor should it say that the current post or the post to which I linked is or was "twisted," "shallow," or "hipster." posted by The Potate at 4:02 AM on April 5, 2010
Dang it, someone beat me to the George Harrison reference. posted by litlnemo at 4:53 AM on April 5, 2010
It depends on what your definition of "is" is. posted by Aquaman at 8:11 AM on April 5, 2010
Life is what happens while you're busy wrongly attributing quotations to John Lennon in the high school yearbook. posted by drjimmy11 at 10:42 AM on April 5, 2010
Baby don't kill me. posted by jpcooper at 11:07 AM on April 5, 2010
Frenchmen do not live on pain alone. posted by Sparx at 1:42 PM on April 5, 2010
This is a question I contend with on a daily basis as part of my research in bacteriophage biology, despite years of working with them I could not tell you if they are alive or not.
When bacteriophage were first discovered independently by Felix D'Herelle and Frederick Twort all they could really see was the bacteriophage effect, or glassy plaques of dead bacteria with each plaque containing around 100 million discrete plaque forming units which could be transferred and quantified on a new plate of live bacteria when accurately diluted. Twort thought this was either a stage in the life cycle of the bacteria or a toxic self-replicating enzyme produced by the bacteria themselves, while D'Herelle saw an entirely new form of life, an obligately parasitic organism so small it could pass through filters with pores nearly an order of magnitude smaller than any cell could fit through and which could not be seen by any microscope. At the time it generated great controversy which was eventually settled in D'Herelle's favor by the invention of the transmission electron microscope in the late thirties which was able to take gorgeouspictureslike these.
Is T4 more alive than a wild plasmid? Is it less alive than the E. coli cells it infects? Are we less alive than the plants and bacteria we rely on as our sources of carbon, nitrogen, phosphate, and energy? I guess I don't know posted by Blasdelb at 4:48 PM on April 5, 2010 [8 favorites]
posted by Rhaomi at 3:20 AM on April 5, 2010 [9 favorites]