5,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 25 August 1998

Damn damn damzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzack! Oh I hate this. I was so good today, I woke up without prompting at 8 AM, didn't go back to sleep again while listening to the radio, got up and had tea and read email, a good dog was I. And then I think I made my big mistake when I got to work. Thinking, "You know, I bet the air conditioning bugs me because my blood sugar is low, so I feel colder," I not only bought lunch when I got here around 12:30, I sat right down at my desk and ate it instead of leaving it to sometime later tonight.

And now I havvzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz-HAVE! the dropsies. There are several other genuine workish tasks I should be doing right now but they require too much abstract thought and not enough activity. I get about 5 seconds into them and then pow, face down into the keyboard.

Sleep is tyranny!

I'm quoting this all over today but I'm gonna do it here too because it amazes me.

Scientists from the University of Georgia estimate the number of bacteria on our planet to be five million trillion trillion - that's a five with 30 zeroes after it.

There are far more bacteria on earth than there are stars in the universe.

[...]

It had been estimated before that one-half of the living mass on Earth is microbial, but the new figures indicate that this estimate is probably much too low.

[...]

Because the number of bacteria is so large, events that would occur once in 10 billion years in the laboratory would occur every second somewhere on the Earth.

If I can just figure out how to sell things to bacteria, I'll be rich! Rich! Rich I tell you, Rich! Buahahahahah! zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzthump.

Yeah, we multicelled types, we think we're so hot, with our nucleated cells and our mitochondrial slaves. But that's OK, the bacteria don't care what we think. They're busy swapping plasmids and getting on with the business of running a planet. This is making me think of Microcosmos by Lynn Margulis, the oft-uncredited co-creator of the Gaia Hypothesis, a microbiologist and all round smart, crabby lady scientist. (I only said "lady" to be annoying. Don't hit me. Well, OK, but not too hard.) Probably time to re-read that. If you want to know what the other half of the planet's biomass is doing, I recommend it. I'm still trying to find the coloring book version. Seriously! It's cool.

Man. That's the problem with going to Amazon to find links for books, I start reading the comments and I want to punch someone. This from some bozo's comment on What Is Life? by Margulis and Dorion Sagan:

[T]he definition for life (i.e. the answer to the age old question of what is life) was totally and completely missing. The definition for life should be a scientifically useful one and not merely a collection of traits or characteristics associated with life.

Uh, what?? What was this guy expecting? "Life is a pastrami sandwich with the wrong kind of mustard, but you have to eat it anyway." But definition-fixated people drive me nuts anyway. It's just words, folks.

Mmm, these M&Ms are good. Oh, they're all gone now. I'm sure tired of getting junk email about Human Growth Hormone. But I wonder if it's really any good. Can you tell I'm starting to wake up again now?

Fuck. Spoke too soon. It was just a temporary sugar rush. This is where I've just never understood the normal world. They'd rather have me here half-asleep and constantly screwing around with non-work-related things in an effort just to keep from falling over, than be awake when I'm here if it means being here two hours later in the day. OK, four hours maybe. The principle is the same.

Speaking of biology in many ways, I got an answer from that very interesting person who had an ad on Yahoo. It's a good thing. Right? I suppose. I seem to be God of Alienating Pseudo-Witticisms lately in email. On the other hand, I'm looking at the page I just linked in here, and it says in big capital letters "Why I Should Just Shut Up" and that's probably damn good advice. In any case, it's always nice to hear from other people who think learning about How It All Works is interesting. And know that that does not include any Mutant Message books. Period.

Willfully blind self-indulgent nebbish or amusingly quirky old coot? And how bout that local sports team? Discuss among yourselves.

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