Refine and Repeat

(Boy, that headline’s a stretch.) Anyway, Rebecca, a Chinese friend of mine says that if we drink cold drinks after or during a meal, it’s more likely that the fat in the meal will congeal in our stomach. This is one of the reasons why Chinese drink tea at meals — to prevent the congealing. (I thought it was because the water in China was so unhealthy it had to be boiled … go figure) So Rebecca says “drink more tea. Hot, but not too hot.”. If you know Rebecca, you know Rebecca knows.

It also works for me because I have a low body temperature, and cold drinks tend to make my hands and feet cold. So I drink more hot tea, and feel great, Pu Erh being my tea of choice, but I’m cool with a lot of them, including Earl Grey. Pu Erh takes a bit of getting used to, but it seems to be smoother if not oversteeped. I just had some nice smooth stuff at Crown Princess restaurant in Toronto. Nice place.

So there you go. More tea for thee?

A recent study found, or supposed, that either we’re alone in this universe, or the other guys are just as bad as us. It’s quite possible that the other guys are jerks, using up resources, mistrustful of others, not very enlightened indeed. Maybe so …

… but aside from that, I take issue with the binary “alone or not” choice, or at least I take issue with some interpretations of the “alone” side of the coin. Implicit in such a point of view is the idea that we have always been alone, will always be alone, and that when we’re gone, pfft. No more us, no more intelligent life … such as it is. We are God’s only children.

“Not so”, I say. What if … we’re not the only intelligent life, but we’re just the first. Hey, someone has to be the first! Why not us? Imagine that there are some amino acid noobs out there, doing their best to struggle onto the universal stage and play their parts. “But that may take millions of years”, you say, and “if we snuff it, there’ll be nothing out there for millions of years”.

So what?

We often need to look at some of our paradigms and see how human-centered they are, as if our pitiful nanoseconds of universal existence meant anything in the grand scheme. Maybe we’re alone now, or maybe there was life before us, or maybe there will be life after us. Maybe it’s all one big continuum of life in various stages, maybe like us, maybe not.

Hm.

So. What’s for lunch?