Well look at it her way, we two’ve been together since the Pleistocene and she’s always going to be the last in, the odd number
Funny, it’s easier to talk about her here than when we’re alone
Ye olde multifass, everything comes out here—
And you always mixing around, it looks like aimless walking—
Walking yes, aimless no
Eavesdropping?
I, I like the mix—
Thing is, they’re going such a long way around in biochem terms, using what they can get after the sunlight scatters around in all that dust. No UV gets through down at the surface to speak of. That poor li’l biosphere, they stack photons on top of each other somehow to get enough energy, then grab onto water near the ocean, split off the oxy, God what a lotta work
Petrowski calcs that the biosphere’s older than our solar system, really old, been perkin’ along over five billion years, think ’bout that, figured it from the heavy element abundance—
—dust transfers the energy to the bigger life-forms, uses mostly sulfide electron donors, quite a trick when you consider—
—riding those winds, eating the goddamn dust, little bitsy microbes on their way from the Eye to the sea—
—still think you’ve got the most beautiful ass honey of any guy who wears those maintenance overalls—
Seems to me you people got a purty good handle on the biosphere, can’t see why you don’t pass on the touchdown option an’ let us get on with it.
Bob it’s not that simple
Lissen we let the specialists chip away at the thing ferever we’re gonna turn gray up here ’fore we ever get down and movin’
Squeeze it a li’l an’ see what you get
Tough ecology, man, I mean tough. This place’d be dead as Mars with just a little less sunlight and atmosphere. Bio’s creamin’ their jeans to see what else’s under that dust
Too early to tell; we can’t see well enough to estimate the extent of the life pyramid
Shit this all there is to drink gotta be sumpin’ better down at Nguyen’s
Look at him makes you wonder how a muitifass can work with people getting carried away, drink and even drugs on a ship no less
Him? They’re self-canceling, doncha see? Keeps things loose but when votin’ time rolls around they’re too fuzzed to care—
You look at paramecia or your own sperm cells even they have this little whip,
No thanks not my kind of thing
flagella down there is your justly famous balls, my good man
wigglin’ upstream like salmon. Story of my life
and if this grack will let me finish, there are nine fibers on the outside of that whip to every one fiber on the inside
she’s fine y’know wonderful but also great at takin’ the ol’ romance out of it
and that ratio, that nine to one, is the same in thousands of organisms all over Earth and nobody has the slightest idea
unoriginal God is the best explanation. He just got tired
couldn’t you mumble a little softer I can still hear what you’re saying
okay okay so tell us nine. to one
we can’t see any obvious selective survival advantage for the nine-to-one ratio but who knows, still the easiest out is that ’way back at the beginning when sex started the nine to ones were just lucky is all and that ratio got locked in early
kiss me quick I’m nine to one
had too much sniffo already eh?
love me love my ratio
well you just keep on holding up that bulkhead it looks like hard work white the adults talk
hark the queen speaketh
so first thing I look for in the dust crawlies from Isis is the flagella, and sure enough—oh thanks, I’m having that rum stuff—sure enough I squint into the electron mike and there are the little whips going like mad, only when I splice some down it’s a seven to one, not our nine to one. So question is, what’s magic about odd ratios?
only two cases hell honey not statistically meaningful
still sounds suspicious to me
