What is the International Space Station for?

Where's the beef.

Recently, smoking has been banned in a variety of places by many countries and states. This has generally been done as a preventative measure to stop employees from suing their employers in the future if they contract smoking-related diseases.

In light of this I have a suggestion for employers and legislators alike:

Ban the cooking of meat in restaurants.

Bear with me on this, it isn't as far away as you might think. Imagine, if you will, a devout Buddhist who has never eaten meat in his life; let's call him Bernard. For whatever reason Bernard finds employment in a family restaurant which serves lots of sizzling meat dishes and is further exposed to the smoke from cooking meats in the kitchens. Years later, Bernard is diagnosed with variant Creutzfeldt-Jacob Disease (vCJD).

Doctors are mystified. So Bernard's lawyers set about proving that Bernard must have inhaled the prions that cause the disease, at work. They use the following steps:

Prions are in the food chain;
Prions are not damaged in any way by cooking, or even burning at normal kitchen temperatures;
The smoke from grilling meat contains small particles of that meat and therefore disease-causing prions;
Scientists do not know how many prions are needed to cause vCJD and so this is the most likely cause even at very low concentrations.
Bernard has suffered years of exposure to these "second-hand" prions and his employer has not done enough to protect him;

What other solution can there be but to ban the cooking and serving of meat in public places to protect the consumer from disease and the employer from litigation? Who knows, an internet search at a later date might even turn up this blog to show that the employer had been forewarned. In the interest of everybody's health, we should probably call for it now.

Is Fire Alive

Strange name for a blog.

Well, is it? I know the answer is most likely no, but I have never heard a really good explanation. Much of modern society and our understanding of the world is governed by arbitrary rules that we just accept. Fire possesses all of the characteristics of living things taught at school so people tend to say that it doesn't have a cellular structure and hence is not alive, but that is a very vague term. Cells vary widely in their structure and functions: some cells can reproduce and some can't; some have a nucleus, some don't; some have walls, some don't. All very vague. Fire certainly has a degree of structure-- we were all taught about the different parts of a gas flame at school. It can adapt; grow; regulate its surroundings; convert other things into fire; respond to stimuli-- just watch what happens if you stick your finger in a fire and keep it there; and fire can most definitely reproduce. Has anyone ever examined the structure further to look for more organisation?

Look anywhere for an answer to this question and you will see little debate and a smug, "We're scientists and we're telling you that fire isn't alive" kind of answer. I don't believe fire to be alive, probably through years of conditioning, but I like to keep an open mind. I actually understand what fire is, I can describe it, but I like asking awkward questions and dismissing glib answers.

OK. That's over. I don't intend to dwell on the nature of fire.