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Photos capture life inside a drop of seawater

smithsonianmag.com

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Re: Photos capture life inside a drop of seawater

#71

Post by jrd259 »

bmitc wrote: post #65

Beautiful and interesting stuff! I have never heard of copepods before, but have now and will have to do some more reading. > Walter once got a call from an Orthodox Jewish organization wanting to know if there were pieces of non-kosher creatures floating in the New York City tap water. The answer was yes. Not to pick on them, but I found this illuminating on how religions present such a myopic view of life and what…

Unless he has considerable rabbinic training, Walter is not competent to judge whether the (invisible) copepods are kosher or not. The categories in the religious laws have some connection to biology but are not determined solely by physical conditions either. At the risk of over-simplifying, these laws are meant to be possible to follow. Nobody is going to decide that, henceforth, all strictly observant Jews must filter their water to remove microscopic animals.

Re: Photos capture life inside a drop of seawater

#72

Post by bondarchuk »

rodface wrote: post #68
dylan604 wrote: post #54

These pics remind me of an indy game way back on the PS3 called Flow[0]. It was designed as a low stress, low impact, and a fairly calming game. You were a small underwater creature that swam around collecting things to become a bigger creature. You used the 3-axis feature of the controller instead of the d-pad and joysticks. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(video_game)

I fondly remember and adored that game. It would be great to see an updated release of the Flash version https://www.crazygames.com/game/flow

There was also a very nice PSP version which I'm sure you'll be able to emulate on PC easily (no idea what's the state of PS3 emu).

Re: Photos capture life inside a drop of seawater

#73

Post by scarecrowbob »

kerpotgh wrote: post #66
m3kw9 wrote: post #59

Just imagine, you could have been born as one of quadrillion of these guys, but instead you are a human, that’s more than lottery luck we all got, if you can read this.

This is basically the Hindu belief system where you can reincarnate into any of those life forms depending on your karma in your previous life.

I'm not really up on Hinduism, but one of the implications of "atman is brahman" would be that, reciprocally "brahman is atman".

Therefore, also it's not the case that "you can reincarnate into any of those life forms" but rather that all those lifeforms, including you, are incarnations of the same over soul.

So, you always already are both those forms and not, and have just forgotten it was so.

And, then, finally, when you do bad things to those other incarnations you are doing them to yourself: it's not that you have to reincarnate to have someone else do shitty things to you, but rather the case that karma is always already in balance.

Anyhow, just my shitty heterodox take based on a single poorly applied mathematical rule.

Be well, other self.

Re: Photos capture life inside a drop of seawater

#74

Post by emblaegh »

daveslash wrote: post #60

My wife and I get into the ocean pretty often -- sometimes, every day. But when I leave my swimming attire hanging in the bathroom for more than a couple of days ( I try not to do that, but sometimes forget ), it starts to smell really fishy . My wife asks why it smells so bad after 2 days, but not immediately after getting out of the ocean. I tell her The ocean is a soup of life, and when you get out there are milli…

I assume the stink come from chemicals excreted by other living things eating the dead ones. So the stink is not a sign that your trunks are less full of life, just that it got new tenants.

Re: Photos capture life inside a drop of seawater

#75

Post by bmitc »

jrd259 wrote: post #71
bmitc wrote: post #65

Beautiful and interesting stuff! I have never heard of copepods before, but have now and will have to do some more reading. > Walter once got a call from an Orthodox Jewish organization wanting to know if there were pieces of non-kosher creatures floating in the New York City tap water. The answer was yes. Not to pick on them, but I found this illuminating on how religions present such a myopic view of life and what…

Unless he has considerable rabbinic training, Walter is not competent to judge whether the (invisible) copepods are kosher or not. The categories in the religious laws have some connection to biology but are not determined solely by physical conditions either. At the risk of over-simplifying, these laws are meant to be possible to follow. Nobody is going to decide that, henceforth, all strictly observant Jews must fi…

He was being asked by a rabbi, so I’m assuming they sorted that out, and it’s not really his problem.

Re: Photos capture life inside a drop of seawater

#76

Post by enw »

icambron wrote: post #67
manbash wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"you could have been born as" and the so-called "life-lottery" are a matter of philosophical and belief-system debate. The "you" (or: self) is a concept, a perception. I am just me, and couldn't have been something else, or born in another timeline, or to different parents.

To elaborate this point a bit: the "lottery" concept requires you to believe there's like a queue of souls and they each get allocated to different bodies, and you're lucky you got a fancy one instead of a microscopic shrimp. A different -- and to me, more plausible -- way to look at it is that "you" are an emergent property of a specific complex organism. How you actually emerge is a fascinating and difficult discus…

What would be the “me” if I were to clone myself 1:1? Would there be two “me”s? Or a the same old “me”, a single consciousness but two bodies?

Re: Photos capture life inside a drop of seawater

#77

Post by siwatanejo »

enw wrote: post #76
icambron wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To elaborate this point a bit: the "lottery" concept requires you to believe there's like a queue of souls and they each get allocated to different bodies, and you're lucky you got a fancy one instead of a microscopic shrimp. A different -- and to me, more plausible -- way to look at it is that "you" are an emergent property of a specific complex organism. How you actually emerge is a fascinating and difficult discus…

What would be the “me” if I were to clone myself 1:1? Would there be two “me”s? Or a the same old “me”, a single consciousness but two bodies?

Two consciousnesses with the same origin. What's wrong with that?

Re: Photos capture life inside a drop of seawater

#78

Post by hugs_vs_toph »

icambron wrote: post #67
manbash wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"you could have been born as" and the so-called "life-lottery" are a matter of philosophical and belief-system debate. The "you" (or: self) is a concept, a perception. I am just me, and couldn't have been something else, or born in another timeline, or to different parents.

To elaborate this point a bit: the "lottery" concept requires you to believe there's like a queue of souls and they each get allocated to different bodies, and you're lucky you got a fancy one instead of a microscopic shrimp. A different -- and to me, more plausible -- way to look at it is that "you" are an emergent property of a specific complex organism. How you actually emerge is a fascinating and difficult discus…

That problem used to mindfuck me. Eventually I realized it's more of an emergent problem, that only exists in our brains. Problem goes away by taking a step back and viewing the world from a perspective greater than self.
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