October 16, 2004
Why Books Are Made of Paper, Not Squirrels
(Please put on your levity hat before you read this...)
In a recent discussion about the history of papermaking, I recently thought how beneficial it is that books are made of paper, and not our favorite small woodland creature, the squirrel *. Thus, i came up with many reasons why such a thing is not so:
- Books are made up of many pages, thus necessitating many squirrels. This creates multiple problems:
- Squirrels like to run around alot, therefore your book would never be in the same place, be it a library or a bookcase
- Squirrels do not like to be packed tightly into book form, thus your book's 'pages' would constantly be scattered across the entire area in which the squirrels roam
- Squirrels need to eat to survive, and so you would incur not only the initial cost of the book but the additional cost of squirrel food to maintain your squirrels
- Squirrels have fur, and ink does not adhere easily to non-uniform surfaces, plus hair falls out periodically, which would cause words to randomly disappear from your book
- The animals could have their hair shaved off, but having 1,472 shaved and word-tattooed squirrels for your War and Peace novel would just look creepy
- Squirrels only live to be less than 10 human years old, and so you would either have to:
- keep losing pages as the squirrels expired, and give up your book entirely once the last squirrel passed on;
- keep replacing your squirrels with new ones (which would incur additional costs to the aforementioned ones)
- Like many natural animals, squirrels reproduce to continue their species, and so eventually you would acrue many new 'pages' with no words on them, and you'd have to feed these too, or give them away
- The entreprenurial among us might see this as a good opportunity to go into the writing material business, as book consumers could easily become book-material suppliers
- This could also solve your expiring 'page' problem, if you used the new squirrels to replace your absent pages
- Squirrels are naturally timid and skeptical creatures who can run very fast, so getting your hands on one in order to read it would be difficult
- Squirrels have sharp teeth and claws, and so even if you did manage to get a hold of one, be prepared to endure or defend against deep wounds to your fingers and hands
As you can see, there are many reasons why books are not made of squirrels, some of which are detailed above. If you have any more reasons, please let me know. Paper is for books, and squirrels are for, uh, entertainment :)
* a.k.a. 'dawgie' to some people i know ;)
Posted by MaTT at 07:20 PM | Comments (10)
October 14, 2004
The Wonders of Can and Bottle Recycling
Last Thursday, my wonderful friend Rachel introduced me to the act of "getting your depost BACK" by recycling cans and bottles at the supermarket. I asked her, "Why do you say 'back'? Aren't you just getting extra money by recycling them?" "Nooooo!!!" she says. "The supermarket adds the 'deposit' to your bill every time you purchase a deposit-laden item, and so if you don't return the bottles/cans, you are actually losing money!" *
So, when we arrived at Meijer, we proceeded to the rear of the store, to the Cans/Bottles area. Sure enough, they have these fancy machines with LCD screens and a circular shoot chute, into which you stick your bottle/can. Having quite the large bag of cans, i started loading up the shoot chute... Immediately the screen started flashing, telling me i had too many cans in there, and i have to insert them one at a time. ??!!?? Why in the world would a bottle/can crusher need them inserted singly? So i did, and suddenly i found my answer. These fancy machines are SO fancy that they actually scan each bottle/can that is inserted, so that they know the bottle/can was indeed purchased in a state that collects deposits. And it does this scanning by rotating the bottle/can until it finds what it is looking for (the barcode?). Only then does it suck in the bottle/can (cans get pushed one way, and bottles get pushed the opposite way in the crusher [different mechanisms i guess] ). After all that, a little $0.10 appeared on the screen, and the machine was happily waiting for another bottle/can. Encouraged, i inserted another, the smile widening on my face as i watched the bottle/cans spin magically and get scanned and crushed. The machine can even do 2-liter bottles! So, after much enjoyment, Rachel finished with her bags of bottle/cans and i did mine, and we ended up with quite a tidy little bit of money, to spend as we wished at Meijer :) Pretty cool, if i do say so myself :)
The grand state of Pennsylvania, my home, does not do this, by the way... Thanks Rachel, for suggesting this topic!
* not exact words but that's the gist of what she said ;)
Posted by MaTT at 12:42 AM | Comments (10)