Posted By crates on October 29, 2007

         Recently walking through the woods near my house, I happened to scuff my foot through some leaves and into the mould that lay beneath.  I was struck by the sight of a fine network of white fungus that ran throughout the soil, the crumbling humus, the decaying logs and leaves like the circulatory system of some great slumbering earth creature.  And in a sense it was a great organism absorbing nutrients from the decaying forest floor.  Also even the roots of the trees and other plants have a fungus growing in association with them helping to absorb the nutrients from the soil in a great symbiotic endeavor called mutualism.

     Thinking of these fine threads of interconnectedness reminds me of my family with its own lines of relationships, sometimes obvious, sometimes very subtle.  And thinking about this led me to think about the interrelationships between all living things and between living things and nonliving things.  I had a vision of lines of causation linking the entire universe in a great shimmering, pulsating web.

       I know, I’m strange.  Anyways, I’m still doing my morning walk although I’ve stopped the jogging until the ache in my right knee lessens.  Speaking of which, I have discovered an apparent contradiction to the Laws of Thermodynamics!  You know the First law, energy can’t be created or destroyed, and the Second Law which states that during any energy transfer some energy is converted to heat and lost to the system (or words to the effect).  Well, it’s been six weeks of walking/jogging and I have yet to lose ONE POUND OF WEIGHT!  Since my eating habits have remained the same, and since I’m expending more energy, then one would think that I should be losing weight.  I am puzzled by this apparent contradiction to the laws of physics.  Perhaps the fat is being converted to muscle? Oddly enoough here’s another article dealing with an apparent contradiction to the Second Law.

Categories: Uncategorized
Tags: Ecology, Thermodynamics