June 11, 2008 at 11:27 am · Filed under Books
There have been many occasions when I’d be reading something, and I came across this word. My logic could never make sense out of it. So, finally, I looked it up.
The word sic may be used either to show that an uncommon or archaic usage is reported faithfully: for instance, quoting the U.S. Constitution:
The House of Representatives shall chuse [sic] their Speaker…
or to highlight an error, sometimes for the purpose of ridicule or irony, as in these examples:
Warehouse has been around for 30 years and has 263 stores, suggesting a large fan base. The chain sums up its appeal thus: “styley [sic], confident, sexy, glamorous, edgy, clean and individual, with it’s [sic] finger on the fashion pulse.”
It is also sometimes used for comic effect:
The Daily Mail was the first newspaper [sic] …
The More You Know!
October 10, 2007 at 7:29 pm · Filed under Books, Food
While reading, I came across this phrase, “Waste Not, Want Not.” I know I’ve heard it before, but the meaning didn’t seem clear. If we don’t waste something, … we won’t want it? I laid in bed thinking about it and looked it up this morning.
If we don’t waste what we have, we’ll still have it in the future and will not lack (want) it.
This definition makes it more comprehendable. ‘To lack’ something makes more sense than ‘to want’. They should change it to “Waste Not, Lack Not.” But, I suppose it doesn’t roll off the tongue as well.
I have some more thoughts on the wastefulness of food, but I’ll save that for later.
April 12, 2007 at 8:08 am · Filed under Books, News Events
Kurt Vonnegut, whose dark comic talent and urgent moral vision in novels like “Slaughterhouse-Five,” “Cat’s Cradle” and “God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater” caught the temper of his times and the imagination of a generation, died Wednesday night in Manhattan. He was 84 and had homes in Manhattan and in Sagaponack on Long Island.
Mr. Vonnegut wrote plays, essays and short fiction. But it was his novels that became classics of the American counterculture, making him a literary idol, particularly to students in the 1960s and ’70s. Dog-eared paperback copies of his books could be found in the back pockets of blue jeans and in dorm rooms on campuses throughout the United States.
~NY Times
~Chicagoist
April 4, 2007 at 6:31 pm · Filed under Books, Lifestyle
Everyday, the mail cometh. Some of it is good mail, some is junk mail, some is grocery ads, and some are local newspapers. All of it, for each tenant, gets piled into one hefty stack. I’ve sort of become the keeper of the mail. I get home first, and I don’t want to rummage through all of the stuff on the stoop. Therefore, I take the pile into my apartment and go through it there. I know the other tenants good enough that I can go into their apartments, say hello, and drop off their stack of mail.
Now, I know that nobody likes junk mail, and I know that they don’t rummage through the coupons and weekly grocery sales like I do. So, I sort out all of the ads and junk mail and set them aside in my apartment. I proceed to give them their share of the good mail. Why do I set this stuff aside? Well, I have a little pet peeve about throwing paper in the trash.
Some corporate entity has gone through the effort to send us some announcement which they consider of the utmost interest. Yes, Dell, I bought my computer from you, but you don’t need to tell me about your super deals each week. How many computers does one man need? And it’s not just Dell. It’s every business. I can unsubscribe and do what I can to stop it from coming, but what I hate to do is put this stuff directly in the trash. I don’t like the conceptualization that this stuff gets processed, printed, mailed, trashed, and landfilled. It’s just wasteful. Pure and simple. Where can I drop this junk off to be recycled…huh, Chicago,…where?
Chicago has a number of recycling initiatives, which aren’t conveniently convenient.
- Drop-Off Center - only 15 centers in the city for paper, plastic, and glass and nowhere near me.
- Blue Bag Program - you have to pay for the bags and hope the “Sanitation Engineers” don’t toss them with the regular trash when they pick them up.
- Blue Cart Program - an experimental initiative to include recycling carts next to the regular dumpsters. (Not available in my ward)
The other other alternative (and what I’ve been using) is the ‘L’ stops. Most ‘L’ stops in the downtown area have a blue bin for depositing “newspapers only”. Is it OK for me to throw excess junk mail in these bins…I dunno. Hopefully. I usually grab the stack of paper and ads, take it with me on my way to work, and toss it in the blue bins. It’s not out of my way, and it makes me feel like I’m doing something good. *shrug*
However, this past weekend, Roommate got on a cleaning kick. He was rearranging furniture, throwing trash out, and herding bunnies into the dust pan. He picked up my stack of papers and asked, “Are you done with these.” I told him my little recycling initiative, and he just rolled his eyes. He left the room and came back a book, Hard Green: Saving the Environment from the Environmentalists A Conservative Manifesto. Amazon reviews says
“Moreover, his analysis of recycling programs and their ilk gives a much-needed kick in the pants to complacent types who think their garbage sorting is helping anything but their consciences.”
I do agree that some environmentalists go too far with their actions and approximations. (Disclaimer: I’ve never seen An Inconvenient Truth). But I believe recycling is at least an effort to make things better. It’s better than throwing everything away without a seconds thought. Hard Green is on my reading list. I’m trying, Terra Mater.
March 31, 2007 at 7:05 am · Filed under Books
The first cartoon he ever drew, and the last one, was of 2 rhinoceroses getting married. A regular human preacher in a church was saying to the congregation that anybody who knew any reason these 2 should not be joined together in holy matrimony should speak now or forever hold his peace.
…
“What’s funny about it?” said Jack incredulously. “Where’s your sense of humor? If somebody doesn’t stop the wedding, those 2 will mate and have a baby rhinoceros.”
“Of course,” I said.
For Pete’s sake,” he said, “what could be uglier and dumber than a rhinoceros? Just because something can reproduce, that doesn’t mean it should reproduce.”
I pointed out that to a rhinoceros another rhinoceros was wonderful.
“That’s the point,” he said. “Every kind of animal thinks its own kind of animal is wonderful. So people getting married think they’re wonderful, and that they’re going to have a baby that’s wonderful, when actually they’re as ugly as rhinoceroses. Just because we think we’re so wonderful doesn’t mean we really are. We could be really terrible animals and just never admit it because it would hurt so much.”
- Kurt Vonnegut from Hocus Pocus
Are certain people rhinoceroses? Could I be a rhinoceros? If we could distinguish one animal from the rhinoceroses would that be hurtful or beneficial. Is it right to do so?
