{"id":366,"date":"2011-12-07T14:48:52","date_gmt":"2011-12-07T12:48:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/boboh\/2011\/12\/07\/the_source_of_a_quote_about_the_second_law\/"},"modified":"2011-12-07T14:48:52","modified_gmt":"2011-12-07T12:48:52","slug":"the_source_of_a_quote_about_the_second_law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/boboh\/2011\/12\/07\/the_source_of_a_quote_about_the_second_law\/","title":{"rendered":"The source of a quote about the Second Law?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A few years ago I saw a quote up on the wall on the MRG lab in Helsinki, and I&#8217;m wondering if anyone knows its provenance. It went something like this:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The Second Law of Thermodynamics, as it applies to life, states that organisms survive by making a bigger mess of their environment.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>which seems rather appropriate. I was reminded of this because I&#8217;m reading a manuscript and I think this totally undermines one minor sentence.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\n(and yes, I could just ask a present or former member of the MRG, but that would be no fun)<br \/>\nI tried to find a YouTube clip of Flanders&#8217; &amp; Swann&#8217;s take on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nyanko.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk\/fas\/anotherhat_first.html\">the first and second laws<\/a>, but if it&#8217;s there they won&#8217;t let me watch it. <strong>sniff<\/strong><br \/>\nI did, however, find a wonderful little animation of Tom Lehrer&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.privatehand.com\/flash\/elements.html\">The Elements<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A few years ago I saw a quote up on the wall on the MRG lab in Helsinki, and I&#8217;m wondering if anyone knows its provenance. It went something like this: The Second Law of Thermodynamics, as it applies to &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/boboh\/2011\/12\/07\/the_source_of_a_quote_about_the_second_law\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ecology","category-silliness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/boboh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/boboh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/boboh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/boboh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/boboh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=366"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/boboh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/boboh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/boboh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/boboh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}