It is a problem in any organization

when a subgroup uses the power of the organization rather than the power of persuasion  to control the members of the organization, i.e. to demand unwilling assent.

I feel a bit of the archaeologist here, observing (and joining) the tribe which has ruled my building.  They have grown close over years of feasting and I, (sadly for me) was the first to sign up and be stuck with the bill.  So I follow the rules and am admitted to the tribe of rulers.  We rulers, of course, are sworn  to follow only the interest of the group of shareholders.

What follows...

is the next meeting of the rulers, in which the wicked queen  lashes out  to 

America's Christian rulers once again starve children.

 Our governments vilest strategy, denying food and medicine to those ruled by those declared to be our enemy, e.g. Cuba, Afghanistan(Taliban), and Iran.

America, thy name is Hypocrisy.

Man Cave

 One of the amazing things about being with Sarah

 is that for the first time in my life, I have a man cave.  I grew up in the world of father knows best, where father passed his time in the living room surrounded by playful children and optionally, a wife or Uncle Charley.  Thankfully, such was not to be my fate, in later life at least. 

What is life?

You should watch the video What is Life with Paul Nurse (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92oMfkuOIlA). ('What is Life?' is hereafter known as the question).  It is the perfect reductionist introduction to the question.  I propose a more holistic yet mathematical (scientific) viewpoint. 

As Nurse points out, the reductionist approach to the question relies on   QM to understand the minutiae of the chemistry and computation upon which life relies.  We now understand the hardware of life at the finest levels.  The reductionist analysis supplies the base on which we build an  enumerable model of life. 

We consider a discrete (enumerable) model whose elements (nodes) are the 4D subsets of spacetime, living volumes, that are life. The elements are organized into a dag whose directed edges reflect ancestry, containment and time. The dag induces a decomposition of 'spacetime contained in life'. This enumerable model has a natural physical representation in 4D space and a rich natural geometry; it suggests a myriad of new inquiries into the question:

1. What properties characterize living volumes.
2. How are living volumes embedded within non-living volumes.

Containment and inheritance induce a partial order and metric on these subsets. These metrics, of course, originate in spacetime itself, but as has been the case many times, alternative coordinate systems can offer new understandings.

Natural modes of this model could naturally be interpreted as emergent properties .