Category Archives: MORTALITY MECHANIC’S MANUAL

CATS AND MICE AND GODLESS PARASITES

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ichneumonidae__phrudinae“I own that I cannot see as plainly as others do, and as I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice.”

~  Charles Darwin, letter to Asa Gray, May 22, 1860

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Female_Ichneumon_xanthoriusIchneumonidae is a family of parasitic wasps, and one of my particular research interests.  If you’ve never heard of a parasitic wasp before, think chest-burster from Alien, but for insects. A more scientific definition is that parasitoid wasps lay their eggs inside or on top of other insects; those eggs then grow and develop by feeding on their host’s tissue, resulting in the eventual death of the host.  Estimates of the total species range from 60,000 to over 100,000.

YOUR VOICE ALONE

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VoiceSamuel Barclay Beckett (13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet, who lived in Paris for most of his adult life and wrote in both English and French. He is widely regarded as among the most influential writers of the 20th century.

Beckett’s work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human existence, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour, and became increasingly minimalist in his later career. He is considered one of the last modernist writers, and one of the key figures in what Martin Esslin called the “Theatre of the Absurd”.   Beckett was awarded the 1969 Nobel Prize in Literature.

SUICIDE IS PAINLESS

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suicide is painlessAs people grow older conditions of life often become increasingly painful.  We must decide for ourselves when the game is over, and consider our options. The lyrics to this song repeat the timeless question: to be, or not to be? Who should answer the question:  You or the body you animate?

 Lyrics to the song “Suicide is Painless” by Mike Altman
is the theme song for both the movie and TV series M*A*S*H.  Mike Altman is the son of the original film’s director, Robert Altman, and was 14 years old when he wrote the song’s lyrics.

THE NEXT WORLD

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PLATO — 348/347 BC) was a Classical Greek philosophermathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the foundations of Western philosophy and science.[3] In the words of A. N. Whitehead:

“The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato. I do not mean the systematic scheme of thought which scholars have doubtfully extracted from his writings. I allude to the wealth of general ideas scattered through them.

Plato’s sophistication as a writer is evident in his Socratic dialogues; thirty-six dialogues and thirteen letters have been ascribed to him. Plato’s writings have been published in several fashions; this has led to several conventions regarding the naming and referencing of Plato’s texts.[5] Plato’s dialogues have been used to teach a range of subjects, including philosophylogicethicsrhetoric, and mathematics. Plato is one of the most important founding figures in Western philosophy. — Wikipedia.org