You know that the best way to put out a grease fire is by smothering it, right?
Fire needs oxy- oh, the nib broke off my pen.
Ahh shoot, now it’s spilling ink all over the page
No matter, I suppose- ultimately that’s where the ink was going anyway.
I was trying to control the flow, guide it into something more complex
Where was I? Oh, right, the magic of life on Earth.
Yes, this much oxygen, floating freely around with this much carbon; it’s dangerous!
You are practically always on fire, you know. You take in oxygen and expel carbon dioxide.
But your metabolism has all these funny ways of breaking down the process into little steps
It isn’t just oxygen molecules slamming into carbon atoms like burning coal, now is it?
It’s one drop of ink, one letter at a time, being scribbled out onto the page. Eventually, it will all spill and be absorbed into the paper.
It’s the slow unwinding of a watch spring controlled by the escapement mechanism, one tick at a time
It’s the sun slowly running out of fuel and all the terpsichorean splendor of ecology down here, just far enough away from the fire to keep us warm
It’s the whole evolution of the universe, the balance between cold dark matter pulling us in, giving space for the sublime while the hungry vacuum rips it all apart.
Stuff Cam Wrote 