General Nonsense

Flying Dinosaurs

Once upon a time there were dinosaurs. They died and decomposed and turned into oil. Millions of years later, humans turned that oil into plastic. Recently, plastic became the major building material for the new Boeing 787 Dreamliner. There’s your proof that dinosaurs can fly.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19421415/

This got me wondering if the 787 is a new form of life. After all, it’s carbon-based, i.e. mostly plastic, and more intelligent than most people I know. And it reproduces, in the sense that more 787s are being built. But is that enough? I turned to Wikipedia to find out the definition of “life.”

According to some stranger with no credibility, life is characterized by “growth through metabolism, reproduction, and the power of adaptation to environment through changes originating internally.” Luckily, intelligence is not part of the definition. So we can skirt that argument.

Metabolism is essentially the chemical reactions in a living thing. The 787 has plenty of chemical reactions. If it didn’t, the engines and the air conditioning wouldn’t work. You might argue that the majority of the plane has no chemical reactions. Luckily, the definition of life doesn’t require a minimum percentage of chemical reactions. It just has to have some. Check.

The 787 also eats and poops. Its food is people. And its poop is people who are a few hours older and slightly more decomposed. People enter the 787s stomach, stay there for a few hours decomposing, and exit through the rear (I’m hoping, because it makes the analogy more spiffy). The passengers pay money for this trip, which goes into the financial bloodstream and results in fuel and replacement parts being added to the plane. It’s not a perfect analogy, I grant you that, but some bugs have their skeletons on the outside and no one complains about that.

The 787 obviously reproduces, with help from humans. There will be more 787s next year than this year. You could argue that the plane can’t reproduce on its own, but neither can some flowers. They need bees to pollinate them. Technically, no animal could reproduce without the help of other plants and/or animals, because you can’t procreate if you have nothing to eat. Most life depends on other life, directly or indirectly, in order to reproduce.

To qualify as life, the 787 must also adapt to its environment through changes originating internally. It’s designed to do just that. If the plane senses a drop in cabin pressure, it releases the oxygen masks. If it’s on autopilot, it continuously adjusts its path to compensate for wind. Clearly it adapts to its environment.

So there you have it. The 787 Dreamliner is alive. And you are jet poop. Deal with it.