What is life?

So aliens aren't those bag of bones walking on runways?
http://cosmicvariance.com/2007/09/08/the-meaning-of-life/

clipped from www.google.com Once we break free of the most parochial definitions involving carbon-based chemistry, we’re left with the general ideas that life is something complex, something that processes information, something that can evolve, something that takes advantage of local entropy gradients to make records and build structures.