How Do You Define Life?

I understand the criticisms when people say that it's perhaps not even worth the time to try to articulate what it is that we mean by life. I think the big problem is that every time somebody proposes a definition of life, there's always somebody that can pop up and give an example of something that either doesn't fit the definition or isn't alive. Soos salt crystals, you know, there's lots of chrystolographers out there, and one of the tricks that they use to grow more crystals as they crush old ones. They use the little, iddy bitty pieces of their old crystals as the growth of new crystals. You don't need to do that with