This headline caught my eye today. I have to admit that I didn’t read the article, because, honestly I’m not concerned about 6 deaths in central China. Don’t get me wrong, it’s definitely tragic at some level and it’s likely extremely important news in that region. The question, though, is whether it’s important ‘news’ half way around the world.
I am sure that many will argue that something like this is powerful enough that it should be in the news here, that something like this should be broadcast out of respect for the lives that were taken. Also, it is far more important than the other ‘news’ about the trivialities of celebrities’ love lives and style choices… that’s an entirely other subject though.
This is a murder of 6 people in a country of 1.3 billion which is four times larger than the US… so, the argument that this is newsworthy is like saying that everytime or two people are murdered in the US the German media networks should run it as a top story and tweet it on its alerts feed.
My point in all of this is that these are the type of things that push to overwhelm our ability to take in important news. News thats important to our lives, policies and choices.
Admittedly, this isn’t the most thoroughly thought-out post, so you tell me what you think…
So, as Carrie and I were listening to the NPR game show “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me” they talked about a chemical that was found on Mars’ surface that they are saying would hinder the chances of finding life there. I don’t know what the chemical is and it doesn’t matter when it comes to my question. I’ve read a couple of articles stating that it would indeed be dangerous for life there and would hinder it’s survival; so here’s my question that I think is rooted relatively well in evolutionary theory:
Wouldn’t life on Mars have evolved in such a way that the substance would either end up being beneficial (at best), guarded against or a non issue (worse)? There are plenty of chemicals and compounds here that can be harmful, but life here uses or just ignores (oxygen, carbon dioxide, etc.) would that not also happen with this specific chemical if life were to occur on Mars?
I think the issue lies in the fact that people who hear these things don’t understand how the evolutionary theory is supposed to work – things evolve to adapt to their environment. Life adapted to Earth’s environment would not be able to hand the compound well, but then again life from Mars might find some other substance that we don’t even think about deadly.
There seems to be one article that I’ve found that at least questions these evaluations as well.
