The Citizen, 2013-04-18, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, APRIL 18, 2013. PAGE 5.
“What an astonishing thing a book is...a flat
object made from a tree with flexible parts on
which are imprinted lots of funny dark
squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re
inside the mind of another person.”
– Carl Sagan
I agree. And that is why I Kindle
not. Neither do I Kobo or Cybook or
Jetbook or Pocketbook Touch. I have
nothing against e-books. If I were scaling
Everest or trekking to Antarctica I’d
probably opt for an e-book over a
haversack full of Stephen King novels, but I
don’t expect to indulge in extreme
mountaineering or polar expeditions anytime
soon and I already have enough expensive
and temperamental electronic lozenges in
my life. The fact is, I just like the actual
heft and flex of a device that I can stick in
my back pocket, drop in the bathwater or
absent-mindedly forget on a bus and replace
without taking out a bank loan.
I love books. Not just the pleasure of
reading them or talking about them, but
their very physicality. The most beguiling
house I ever entered was a farmhouse owned
by the writer Timothy Findley. Inside the
walls were lined with books. Everywhere.
In the kitchen, over the doorways, above
the stairwells. Expensive leather-bound
volumes cheek by jowl with cheap
paperbacks. I saw no paintings, photographs,
knick knacks or gewgaws – just
books.
I know of another house like that. It belongs
to Louise Erdich, a First Nations novelist and
poet who lives in Little Falls, Minnesota.
Here’s how she describes her digs: “We have a
lot of books in our house. They are our
primary decorative motif –books in piles on
the coffee table, framed book covers, books
sorted into stacks on every available surface,
and of course books on shelves along most
walls. Besides the visible books there are the
boxes waiting in the wings, the basement
books, the garage books, the storage locker
books. They are a sort of insulation,
soundproofing some walls. They function
as furniture, they prop up sagging furniture
and, disguised by quilts, function as tables...I
can’t imagine home without an overflow of
books.”
Ms. Erdich has bibliographic backup. When
she’s not at home in her bookwomb, she’s
running, yes, a bookstore in downtown Little
Falls.
Martha Stewart would be appalled,
but I’m glad there are home decorators like
Findley and Erdich around and I expect
there will be as long as humans continue
to read. And as long as we continue to
read, I’m sure there will be good old,
rectangular, squiggle-covered-wood-pulp-
between-two-covers books around to give us
comfort.
Because let’s face it: next year, Kindle or
Kobo or Fillintheblanksboox will come out
with the all-new Mark Twelve super-enhanced
turbo-fired e-book with a mess of new bells
and whistles, making last year’s e-book
hopelessly obsolete.
But books? They’ll just keep on being
books. As Robert Nash said: “The book is a
technology so pervasive, so worn and polished
by centuries of human contact that it reaches
the status of nature.”
Exactly. Why tinker with something that’s
already perfect?
Arthur
Black
Other Views
Our perfect invention: the book
Whenever we experience a large
weather event like last
Thursday/Friday’s ice storm, it
reminds us just how lost we are without power
flowing through the walls.
We all like to think that we’d be fine if the
lights went out, but the reality of it is that we’re
not. Sure there are plenty of us who would
survive. We’d be able to cook and bathe and
keep ourselves afloat for a while, but when it
comes down to it, our lives are so intertwined
with technology that it makes it hard to
function without it.
A perfect example of this reliance on
technology was on display on Friday when the
power at The Citizen office, like pretty much
everywhere else in the community, was out.
Unlike at The Citizen’s old location on the
east side of Queen Street, now we have phones
that use VOIP (voice over internet protocol), so
unlike the old system that ran through phone
lines whether the electricity was running or
not, with these new phones, if the power is
down, so are the phones.
Olivia, a new co-op student The Citizen has
taken on, wasn’t able to come in for her
scheduled time at the office because of the
poor road conditions, so naturally she called
the office and no one answered.
It wasn’t until she e-mailed me from her cell
phone, and I received that e-mail on my cell
phone, that we finally connected and I could
explain to her what was happening. That
process works, of course, until our batteries
die, and then we’re out in the cold again.
Making the situation worse, of course, was
the weather and the temperature, leaving
thousands of people out in the cold as their
heating methods too fell by the wayside along
with the electricity.
There were, however, plenty of knights in
shining armour to come and save us. A large
group of area firefighters were out at warming
centres delivering supplies, or out on the
highways clearing debris and tree limbs from
the roadways, completely volunteering their
time. Then of course there are the hundreds of
Hydro One workers putting in an ungodly
amount of hours in an attempt to get the power
back online.
There are a number of stories of those with
power helping out neighbours who were still
without it by Saturday, while the majority of
the Blyth area had its lights turned back on and
the Brussels area had to wait until late
Saturday night.
Some things hold up with the power out, and
other things don’t. Any time the electricity is
out, I think back to my experience during the
great blackout of 2003 when power was out all
over Ontario and the northeastern United
States. I was working for Rogers at the time,
and I was scheduled to start at 4 p.m., just
minutes before the power would go out.
When it became clear that the power wasn’t
coming back on for a long, long time, I got a
call from my manager telling me to empty out
the ice cream freezer, either into the garbage,
or into as many friends as I could find.
So while we sat around and played cards in
the dark and ate as much ice cream as we could
stand, we had no idea that the unbridled joy of
eating tons of free ice cream would soon end
with the reality of a blackout. Sure, there was
the eventual stomach ache the next day, but we
would soon be waiting in lines for hours to get
gas and finding any kind of cooked food
became harder and harder by the day. It was
then that I accepted that I needed power and
didn’t want to be without it, no matter how
much free ice cream they offered me.
A life of power
Shawn
Loughlin
Shawn’s Sense
When I was younger I was fascinated
with the Darwin Awards, an annual
observation of people who prove
that natural selection is real.
Some of the better stories from the awards
include the following:
• A lawyer named Clement Vallandigham, in
1863 who claimed that a murder victim shot
himself. He demonstrated his theory and, not
realizing the weapon he was using as a prop
was loaded, shot himself. Fortunately, he still
won the case.
• Another lawyer, this time in Toronto, when
trying to prove that skyscraper glass was safe,
fell through a window and into the courtyard
of the Toronto Dominion Bank Tower after
falling 24 floors.
• Or how about Kelita H., a driver from
Kentucky who, in 2010, decided to try and do
a “Chinese Fire Drill” while travelling “at
highway speed” down a country road. In her
attempt to crawl on to the roof of her Chevy
convertible, she fell to her death (don’t worry,
the passenger steered himself to safety).
The reason that I’m no longer interested in
them, however, or not as interested as I once
was, is because of the internet.
While it could be the case that I don’t need
to wait until the Darwin Awards are held to see
the silliest way humanity automatically thins
the herds, I have a feeling that my waning
interest is due to a far more simple reason: the
internet spreads stupidity just as fast as it
spreads knowledge.
In recent years we’ve seen things like the
cinnamon challenge take over video sites like
YouTube. The cinnamon challenge, which,
according to internet resources, has been
around since 2001 and really hit its stride
between 2007 and 2010, involved eating, in 60
seconds, a spoonful of cinnamon without the
aid of water.
If the simple idea of pure cinnamon being
forced down your dry gullet isn’t enough to
turn you off the idea of this form of
‘competitive eating,’ then maybe the fact that
this could be the last challenge you ever
participate in can.
Cinnamon can cause several conditions,
when ingested in such large amounts, that will
not only hurt someone but could result in
death.
Aside from the risk of gagging while
attempting to down the intense spice, the
cinnamon can clump and choke someone to
death.
It can also cause inflammation and infection
in the lungs and, as with most things in the
world, cinnamon on its own can kill you
because it contains coumarin, a toxic
chemical.
Now, don’t go running around the house
throwing out all your cinnamon buns,
cinnamon rolls, cinnamon sticks, apple cider
with cinnamon, sugar-and-cinnamon... wait..
where was I?
Oh yeah, toxicity. Cinnamon, when
consumed in normal amounts, likely won’t
hurt you.
In massive amounts, like the cinnamon
challenge, it could have a toxic effect. It could
also result in cinnamon travelling up the nasal
cavity, coming out your nose and causing
intense irritation there.
One Michigan high school student spent
four days in the hospital as a result of the
challenge and, for the first three months after
the challenge went viral, it resulted in 122
calls to poison control centres in the United
States of America.
The Darwin Awards are presented to people
who accidentally kill themselves by not
thinking things through before attempting
them.
I would imagine the cinnamon challenge
would fit, but how can you call it Darwinism
when so many people are participating in it?
Fast forward to today and another challenge
has been issued on the internet: The condom
challenge.
Now, before you go crying foul about the
‘mature’ nature of this particularly column,
read what the condom challenge is:
A teenager by the name of Amber-Lyn Belle
Strong (known as Savannah Strong on
YouTube) attempted the condom challenge
and, within six days, has more than 400,000
views of her attempt. To win, the participant
must snort a condom up their nose and
somehow maneuver it to their mouth and spit
it out.
The only caveat is that the participant must
not choke (likely to death) in the attempt.
A cursory search of “The condom
challenge” on YouTube returns approximately
239,000 results as of Monday this week. That
was less than one week after the original video
was posted by Strong.
The internet, and YouTube, are filled with
challenges for people to undertake including
eating hot wings, downing four litres of milk,
breaking coconuts, eating raw onions, tackling
every item on the Wendy’s $1 menu and even
taking 50 shots of egg nog, but very few of
them have reached the level of potential death
that snorting a prophylactic up one’s nose.
It would seem that children, teenagers, even
20-somethings these days aren’t content to
face the challenges of going to school, getting
an education, getting a job and making
something of themselves. They would rather
place landmines like swallowing poison,
snorting rubber and whatever the next deadly
challenge to come along will be.
It seems to me that Darwin, if he were alive,
would have a hay day finding proof for his
theories and would eventually decide that, if
the proliferation of internet challenges
continues, there won’t be anyone left to hand
out his awards.
Then again, maybe I’m looking at this the
wrong way.
If you take an average person and find that
they’re doing something stupid, you have to
realize that half of the people in the world are
doing something just as stupid.
Maybe that half of the world is the one
signing up for YouTube to broadcast these
challenges.
Denny
Scott
Denny’s Den
Darwinism, thy name is the internet
“One of the common failings among
honorable people is a failure to appreciate
how thoroughly dishonorable some other
people can be, and how dangerous it is to
trust them.”
– Thomas Sowell
Final Thought