The Sisyphus Gambit

Think about the purpose of reproduction. Nobody cares about it anymore, as evident in declining birthrates and three hundred million aborted Chinese babies (just let than number sink in for a minute, it's more than the deaths from every war fought in the Twentieth Century combined). Reproduction is old hat. In fact, it's so old hat people get offended if you even bring it up. But think of the purpose of biological life for a moment and you'll see it all comes down to reproduction, but what's the point of that? This goes beyond asking why sex exists at all, why did bacteria divide long before sex existed?

It's real simple, but it may come as a surprise. Reproduction is an attempt to cheat death. It's a clever gambit that's been going on for billions of years. At least they tell us it has. There's no real way to tell just how long life's been going on, as I mentioned earlier in "Dreaming of Genesis" and "Dating Anything". It's based on a misperception, that just because something seems old does not mean it really is, but we're talking about appearances here. The truth may be we're in the Matrix and everything is only a hundred years old, or however old the oldest human is. However far back living memory goes there's no way to tell if it ever went back any further, but that's a different topic for a different day.

Let's just say it's billions of years old because that's what convention says. It doesn't really change how you live your life either way. Over time a cell accumulates damage that it cannot repair, mostly from free oxygen, but also from cosmic rays and other environmental hazards. At this point the cell can do one of two things, either it can die or it can divide and give half its damage to each new cell. Now, these new cells can never be as immaculate as the original cell, which started out with zero damage, so over time this whole thing is winding down unless the cells can get smart enough to find a way to repair all the damage. That's the whole point of reproduction: the cells are trying to cheat death long enough to find a way to defeat death for good. Reproduction delays the inevitable.

And somewhere along the line complex forms develop (or don't, but that's another topic), and now they can't well divide in two because there's a brain here and a heart there and to split all the cells in half and restructure everything would be too difficult, so sex has to be invented. Special cells have to be produced that can divide trillions of times and form a whole new body. And you need to bring two members of the same species together for the same reason that bacteria swap genes (plasmids: special bits of DNA that can deliver genes between different bacteria), because otherwise you keep producing copies of the same exact thing and if something comes along and knocks one off then all of the others will be susceptible too. That's why you need diversity.

Now, why there has to be two different specialised units coming together rather than have every individual be a hermaphrodite I can't really say. That part doesn't make sense to me. Maybe it's a trick. Some designer set it up to trick males and females, who aren't all that alike, to come together out of some sadistic joy in seeing if they can get along long enough to reproduce, who knows. These bacteria not only became smart they became psychopathic too, maybe.

Whatever the reason, now you have a system in place where these cells can keep at it, keep multiplying, keep cheating death just a little longer. All in the hope that one day one individual will become smart enough to find a way to repair the damage and then the whole business of reproduction will be over. There will be no reason to make new cells because the old ones are now immortal, or at least until a black hole destroys them. They'll keep making new cells until they figure out how to get rid of the black holes too.

Think about it. You're a door. Through you energy is transmuted to make more people, themselves destined to suffer, reproduce, and die, to keep this race going until either death or the cells get the upper hand. For each individual it doesn't much matter, does it? Unless you're on a farm and you need lots of kids to help plough the fields and milk the cattle, but for city dwellers, for individuals there's no real purpose for any of this, is there? For society yes, for life, yes, but what is the individual supposed to do?



Well, that depends on the individual. Where do you place your faith, in your own abilities or in some promise of a future where descendants you may never see get to live in a paradise on Earth that may never come to pass?

Beyond Fear of Death

Adi Da explains how all fear is fear of death, and how fear of death is the central feature, indeed the only feature, of the ego. Runs 25 minutes.

Dinosaur Extinction: After the Impact?

"The age of the dinosaurs ended 65 million years ago with a gigantic asteroid. No one knows precisely when or where the next asteroid will strike. Could humans be the next species to face extinction?" (From the Science Channel website)

On the Science Channel 2 July 2007 there was a docu-drama called "Super Comet: After the Impact" (the latest in the super disaster films, the previous being "Supervolcano"). It follows four groups of people in different places (Mexico, Hawaii, France, and Camaroon) trying to survive a comet of similar size as the one that impacted 65 million years ago hitting in pretty much the same place. What are the odds of that? I don't know but it can't be very likely, but for sake of edutainment let's assume this comet hit in the very same spot the last one did. There were a few bits of outdated science that were presented, and some continuity problems which I will present as follows.

1. The impact is said to have created a megatsunami 3000 feet tall after impacting the ocean near the Chicxulub peninsula, resulting in massive inland flooding around the world. However, about 40 minutes later when a satelite image is shown of the region, the crater is entirely on land. It was a land-based impact and therefore could not have created a megatsunami.

2. The film tells us that ejecta from the impact (debris shot out of the crater and into space) will rain down on the earth and raise temperatures to 600 degrees F, enough to ignite all flamable material on the surface of the planet. We know this is not true. The Chicxulub impact 65 million years ago was believed to have let do world-wide forest fires because a layer of ash was found all over the world's surface, however ash can be blown by the wind thousands of kilometers, and we know the huge impact created very fast winds. Charcoal, which cannot be blown far by the wind, was not found world-wide, meaning there were no forestfires consuming all flamable material on the planet. There would have been fires endemic to the region of impact but there could not have been fires all over the globe. There's just no evidence of it. If a similar sized object impacted the earth it would have to be made of napalm in order to turn the world into one big fire.

3. The impact is said to hit a region of carbonate rock, which combined with the water vapour in the atmosphere would produce sulfuric acid rain (H2SO4). This, too, is wrong. How do we know? Well, there's no evidence of it happening when the previous Chicxulub impact took place. If you'll remember your days from science class you'll recall that when sulfuric acid was poured into the container of sugar it turned into a giant black thing. Well if we are to believe battery acid fell from the sky it would have killed vunerable amphibians living in the shallow waters. And that's precicely what we don't see! The amphibians didn't go extinct when the dinosaurs did, even though they were more succeptable to the battery acid rain! In fact amphibians thrived following the impact since there were no giant lizzards roaming around eating everything.

So what? No megatsunami, no world-wide forest fires, no battery acid rain. What next? Well, did an impact really kill off the dinosaurs? The evidence is starting to look shakey. Prof. Gerta Keller of Princeton University and Prof. Wolfgang Stinnesbeck of the University of Karlsruhe have come up with some compelling evidence to toss aside the theory of a single large impact killing off the dinosaurs. Fossil records show a gradual extinction happening over millions of years. Furthermore, cores drilled from the Gulf of Mexico show that the Chicxulub impact happened 300,000 years BEFORE the dinosaurs went extinct.

Well, what did kill the dinosaurs? I'm getting there. 500,000 years before the K-T boundary, and 200,000 years before the impact, massive volcanic activity began in India. A flood basalt eruption produced millions of cubic kilometers of new rock over hundreds of thousands of years and created the Deccan Traps.

This massive volcanic activity exerted pressure on the biosphere and caused the gradual downfall of the dinosaurs and other Cretaceous creatures. The Chicxulub impact was just one of a long line of hits the earth took during this time period. It is believed a second impact (the K-T impact), larger than the one at Chicxulub, was the final straw that pushed the dinosaurs over the edge and produced the tell-tale iridum layer. The exact location of this second impact (which it will be called here until someone comes up with a better name than the K-T impact) has yet to be discovered, but tentative evidence points to somewhere in the Indian Ocean.

Next time will the producers of mega-disaster docu-dramas insert more science and less Jerry Bruckheimer? I don't know, but hopefully an equilibrium will be reached when "Super Sun Spot: Day of Reckoning" comes out.

-Dee