I have been, for many years, a frustrated scientist. To be happy, I probably needed to be a marine biologist. I have no time for most of what we call society. This is a dull place, full of people scared of each other, so devoid of pleasure they need ‘entertainment’. Orwell was right about News and Doublespeak, but only got the half of it. I have a thesis our lives are best described by pornography, something we think we hide, but is really the driving force of our interactions. There is now nothing more ludicrous in the world than an honest man, even the term ‘man’ ludicrous in excluding more than half our population, yet inclusive of all.
I prefer the world of mud dragons and penis worms, the latter, sadly for vengeful feminists, not some infection of the male vehicle covering the intrigues of sperm wars and selfish genes far more cunning than human slaughter strategies we revere as history. We have recently found a close relative of these ugly chaps, the latter looking rather like sad venereal-infected specimens in MOD films shown to sailors to put them off sex just before being issued with condoms as shore leave beckons. The fascinating thing about the new guys (actually very ancient) is not that they look like the male appendage around which men believe entertainment is built (for Cheryl Cole is surely ‘constructed’). Like the monolith of supposed thrusting pleasure that must be obeyed, these ‘new’ creatures are ‘all animal’ and do not breathe oxygen. Their energy system is based on hydrogen.
The new Loricifera species have structures called hydrogenosomes, which are found in some single-celled organisms and require no oxygen to produce chemical energy. Some of them are so cute they look like they were knitted somewhere in Peru. They have been found in a high brine concentrated lake below the Med, and are fortunate not to be on holiday there with ‘Sun For You’ or any other package holiday merchant gone bust. There’s a great pic at http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20727721.400-hydrogen-bombshell-rewriting-lifes-history.html – and some explanation of the evolutionary significance.
My psychology has been conditioned by such issues as wondering whether chimpanzees have a theory of mind, and long ago I determined they do and that many humans lack anything as sophisticated, driven as we are around the ‘pleasures’ of the worm and defence reviews that will put the ‘cold war to bed’. It still isn’t a no brainer to us that we should put war to bed, or that life constrained by forces of “reproduction” is cosmetic, pathetic and as brainlessly libidinous as what we call economics. I would be swimming with the dolphins if they hadn’t commercialised that.
Deep in scientific fantasy, and stuck on a far away planet on which the locals have produced technology so brilliant they could get me ‘home’ in a whisker, I don’t expect I’d be there with a vapid actress (Janeway) incapable of dropping her knickers to get hold of the technology, or that the planets inhabitants would want to give it up for a dose of Shakespeare or further developments in soap opera. I’d be ‘home’. What, in its right mind, would want to get back to all this?
Yep, that’s right. I’d rather spend my time with mud dragons and penis worms than Cheryl Cole, though she’d be better than watching her soon to be ex-husband playing whatever has replaced the once noble game of soccer. I should be so lucky, some might say, especially as I am now old, fat and worthless. Like any old fool, I might remember when I might have had my turn. I wouldn’t have been in the queue. Even before I realised something other than my brain dragged me around, Loricifera, resplendent in Peruvian garb would have distracted me. I never aspired to live in Eastenders or Dallas, but on another planet. Science is just better literature than literature, better art than art, a better lay than a mobile cosmetic and hair-piece shop.
After two hours demonstrating some basic chemistry to give a school-teacher friend a break, doing most of the explosive and bright-light stuff I could muster to retain interest, a young girl answered her teacher’s question on what makes iron rust with the phrase ‘because of the magnesium Miss’. She was as pretty and determined in look as my sister in her youth. I burned some more magnesium and explained why she could have been right and the girl then told us all she had been wrong. She tugged at my arm as I was leaving and asked ‘Miss’ if I could come back. There was science in her smile.
Allcoppedout's Blog 
Well you shattered my illusion at the end there of your very poetic and, dare I say, erudite piece. You’re just a dirty old man! Just like me!
Most of our age group will confess to being dirty old men Peter but we would be shamed to match your standard of Jew bashing and Rabbi baiting.
Another persecution complex. Rant on. No one’s listening. You are blind on one side.
http://peterreynolds.wordpress.com/2010/08/13/compassion-fatigue/
And Janeway, SixofNine? You’ll be wanting the Caligula program on the holodeck next!
Scientists, for most of their lives, may enjoy one World to the exclusion of others but the lucky ones are finally delivered to the Arts, ACO.
Oh and a very well written and enjoyable read.
I object – just because I would sacrifice my virtue to get us a large parsec boost does not make me a dirty old man! 6 of nine? Did you leave owing her one Peter?
The arts and sciences are one MTG – though I can spot a smaltz production several light years away yesterday.
I understand, incidentally, that space-time is being split again – I’ll have to read up. In the meantime,clock this space …
She was never enough for me, even after the dementia kicked in but then I realised I will always want more tomorrow than I had today. I forgot that this is the space-time conundrum and so I remembered assimilation into the ever-present as my future.
So sayeth the Ferengi Quark.
“The arts and sciences are one….”
Urinating on a bed cannot be regarded as science and perhaps few scientists would regard it as Art.
Put that in aspic MTG and you have a Hirst! Do it all in Hippo dung and you’ll get the Turder Prize – Elephant shit is so done.
“I never aspired to live in Eastenders or Dallas, but on another planet.”
You must have enjoyed ‘Avatar’ then. Particularly as a lot of the creature design was modelled on extant beasties from our oceans.
Impossible Julia. No one with the good taste and intelligence to appreciate Janeway, SevenOfNine and Quark the Ferengi would ever be taken in by such a pile of overpriced, appallingly written, badly drawn, third-rate, boring cliches. Together with Waterworld, Avatar belongs to that select collection of self-indulgent waffle that proves those with the money in Hollywood are entirely without brains.
Oh, the storyline was indeed rubbish, as Shijuro says. Who expects anything else from Hollywood?
But the creature effects were amazing.
Avatar? you mean ‘dances with wolves’ meets ‘ferngully…’?
I know what you mean ACO… my passion is Kendo and Paelontology… esp early Earth life (Pre-Cambrian…).
When I retire I should be qualified enough to continue studying full time or teach…
Just 5-years to go…
An explosion made it ‘easier’ for me to leave Shij. Like I’ve said we need the passion – lots of what’s wrong is confusion of bureaucratic objectivity with the real thing.
The promos for Avatar were enough to put me off. A story about miniature Peruvian knitters ‘breathing’ hydrogen with a big role in evolution – now that might get me going!
‘Ferngully’ sounds either like an ancient cricket term or something from the vilest ‘annals’ of homosexual pornography -nit unlike the film, come to think of it!
heh…