Did you know that studies show the the leading cause of death is life?

There's 8, apparently: http://www.suite101.com/content/the.....f-life-a133049

Tru dat!

there are some forms of jellyfish, that supposedly convert after a while to a polyp and go through some rejuvenation phase, before converting back to a jellyfish, living without an end. at least i read that somewhere... but where...

Here maybe?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turritopsis_nutricula

not where i found it, but yes, that's what i meant =) thanks

they do indeed, but you can still smush it and kill it :p

the definition should be then, that life "can" die. in very rare exceptions it doesn't have to =P but then again, is my hard drive alive? because after it "died", i could't get it to work =P where is the line between dead and broken?

uhm... i just noticed that the definition stated above was "can" xD so... yeah, you're right i guess =P

Rofl.

You forgot the other thing that defines all living beings: reverence for Bruce Campbell.

That's not life, that's Consciousness.

No; even bacterial organisms will still stop what they're doing on occasion, pause thoughtfully, and say, "Goddamn... Bruce Campbell is awesome."

They are the ones that have evolved!

Wow, how morbid =O

There are many additional things often quoted, but death is one of the best (and also the most poetic ^^)

We had to do discussions about the definition of life in school. I think there were like 7 properties to make absolutely sure something is alive (and at least 3 had to fit or something... it's somewhat blurry). I don't remember all of them, but we had a lot of discussion about each point. Was actually rather interesting.

1) Create offspring
2) Conscious movement
3) Dying (many single cell lifeforms, can divide indefinitely making them practically immortal. They can die/be destroyed due to outer circumstances of course, but non-living things can be destroyed by outer circumstances too.)
4) Growth by absorbing matter and transforming it (a crystal can grow too, but it isn't alive)

Thats all I can remember from the top of my head. ^^

Where do zombies fall on this spectrum?

i thought you where going to say overwhelming ignorance and greed.

I take it you've never met a greedy printer :3

i have a special baseball bat just for greedy printers :D!

Viruses can die. Technically. Their reproductive cycle can be interrupted without transferance.

98% of all people die at some point in their life, lol :p

corrction, we all die, consume, excrete, move and arguably all beings large then single cell organisms wage war, war is in our nature how fucked up is that!

viruses do no consume or excrete. They also don't fight. Yet are considered alive.

they do fight, they kill cells and consume... depends on what you count as consume

You can't use the the word to describe itself X3

Shoe(n): a shoe

It can be said that some things which are not alive can also die. Stones that "grow" can stop growing, viruses can stop reproducing, all fusion within a star can cease, ideas and languages can quietly exit human consciousness, et cetera et cetera ad nauseum.

What about living creatures that have nanotechnology reinforcing cellular replication and health, allowing the elderly to reclaim their youth, allowing the youth to be disease free, and allowing the diseased to be immediately cured?

We are perhaps a dozen years from practical application of this technology. Your definition will have to change by then, because barring immediate vicinity to a black hole, Nothing would kill those people.

How about tossing them in a high temperature furnace? That seems to be pretty universally effective at killing things :P

the problem with that is that nanotechnology could also engineer living cells and program them to act robot like as well. and so duplication of both, biological and synthetic programmed nanocells within a host body would render them invincible to all but a direct nuclear explosion, and given time, nanotechnology could be done on the scale of quarks, as quarks are the universal on and off switches.

In the words of Philip Fry, "Thanks to denial, I'm immortal!"

So true! XD

Not immortality, but the Waterbear comes pretty close to avoiding that. There have been specimens found waiting in 500-year-old moss, dried out, waiting for water. They can survive almost absolute zero or a trip through your oven, massive doses of radiation and even live for days in the vacuum of space.

Bacteriae are immortal. There's always at least 1/2^x -th of the original cell alive.