3 more freaking weeks of school, then sweet blissful summer.

we’ll see, we’ll see… i just look forward to doing only a moderate amount of thinking like getting prepped to work in a lab and study for GREs which is not the same as “3 weeks of material for a test”

that and the week after i get out of school, shaolin soccer is going to be playing at the independant theater in town. what better way to “kick” off the summer than being able to see that glorious movie on a psuedo-big screen?

i’m just getting myself worked up though, these next few weeks will be fun-filled, i’m sure.

i went to this talk on tuesday night that was given by this geochemist at harvard who studied mid-atlantic ridges, small volcanoes of sulfur that are generated by new plate being formed, and this basically creates a habitat for thousands of diverse species.

he pretty much made the point that intelligence is basically a byproduct of planetary evolution. i can’t put it nearly as eloquently as he did, but he spent about a half hour showing how climate and plate tectonics work to make volcanoes, which will sustain bacteria, even near the mantle, and eventually these volcanoes create contients. Failed planets such as venus and mars are the two ends of the specturm of this climate/plate tectonics thing not working, where one is dead, and the other is in overdrive. these continents will allow life that may evolve due to the underwater volcanoes to make their way onto land, and then diversify once they can utilize the atmosphere that has been created due to underwater creatures.

So since there are plate tectonics to drive the initial evolution, then there must be this balance between climate, water, and plate tectonics to drive life. in fact, it is probably a byproduct of this process, and any planet that has this balance is going to eventually create life. And eventually, this life is going to become intelligent through millions of years. so in essence, we are in our own cambrian explosion right now, forever altering the planet.

i thought it was pretty damn cool, kind of an unexpected train of logic, but wasn’t entirely unbelieveable. what a cool place this is.