As I dance on SCO’s freshly dug grave, Jobs announces new iMacs and iLife, and inorganic life (how’s that for an oxymoron?) may exist throughout the universe. On Boston in Brief, Boston by Bike at Night, William Gibson signs books at Harvard, and the Quincy August Moon Festival.
Correction: SCO’s original claim alleged “millions of lines of Unix code in Linux”. To date, they have only been able to point to a bare handful of “similar” code. This is moot, of course, as they don’t own the code.
Any comments or suggestions?
Email: Colin, Carl, Captain Damage
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All music composed and recorded by Karl Kornfeld.
Why exactly is inorganic life an oxymoron?
According to the American Heritage Dictionary, ‘Organic’ is defined as, “Of, relating to, or derived from living organisms.”
According to the American Heritage Science Dictionary, ‘Organic’ is defined as, “Involving organisms or the products of their life processes.”
Another definition in the same dictionary equates organic with carbon specifically. However, this is only in keeping with our currently held beliefs that all life must be carbon-based (see http://biocab.org/Silicon_based_Life.html).
So, It’s either life or it isn’t. If it isn’t life, and it isn’t carbon-based, then it is inorganic. If it is life, but not carbon-based, then surely we should amend the narrow view that ‘organic’ involves only carbon.
The biological definition of life is pretty varied and doesn’t necessarily require that things be carbon based. Its more along the lines of “Here’s what we think the definition of life is, but that will change if we find something that is the exception.”
I mean its just me, but I don’t think inorganic life is a good oxymoron.
Hi, I’m Colin, this is my co-host Carl, this is my other co-host Karl.
Er… oxymoron is when you put two words together that contradict eachother. i.e. ‘inorganic life’, or ‘deafening silence’.