Recycle Your Computer Responsibly

(Image from Salon.com: "Woman in Guiyu, China, about to smash a cathode ray tube from a computer monitor in order to remove the copper-laden yoke at the end of the funnel. The glass is laden with lead but the biggest hazard from this is the inhalation of the highly toxic phosphor dust coating inside.")

A parade of trucks piled with worn-out computers and electronic equipment pulls away from container ships docked at the port of Taizhou in the Zhejiang Province of southeastern China. A short distance inland, the trucks dump their loads in what looks like an enormous parking lot. Pools of dark oily liquid seep from under the mounds of junked machinery. The equipment comes mostly from the United States, Europe and Japan.

For years, developed countries have been exporting tons of electronic waste to China for inexpensive, labor-intensive recycling and disposal. Since 2000, it's been illegal to import electronic waste into China for this kind of environmentally unsound recycling. But tons of debris are smuggled in with legitimate imports, corruption is common among local officials, and China's appetite for scrap is so enormous that the shipments just keep on coming. (Elizabeth Grossman)

Salon.com has a pair of must-read articles on the global problem of disposing of old electronics:

• Elizabeth Grossman's "Where Computers Go to Die -- and Kill" explains that over 50% of the US's recycled computers go overseas to poor countries where their toxic components are poisoning people and communities.
• Grossman's companion piece, "How to Recycle Your Computer," provides guidance on how to dispose of your old computer so that it doesn't end up in a toxic dump. The article contains an array of good web links.
  

If you don't have a subscription to Salon.com, you can read the articles for free after watching a brief advertisement.

2006 NWC Multicultural Showcase

The Four Subjects of Poetry

On Saturday's NPR Weekend Edition, Scott Simon interviewed Edward Hirsch. During the course of the interview, Hirsch cited poet William Matthews's conclusions about the four subjects of poetry, which are

1. I went out into the woods today, and it made me feel, you know, sort of religious.
2. We're not getting any younger.
3. It sure is cold and lonely (a) without you, honey, or (b) with you, honey.
4. Sadness seems but the other side of the coin of happiness, and vice versa, and in any case the coin is too soon spent, and on what we know not what.

Mondegreens & Eggcorns

Several years ago, we heard a NPR segment called "When a Man Loves a Walnut" which introduced us to the concept of mondegreens, which are lyrical misunderstandings . . . a slip of the ear, if you will. One of our favorites, for instance, is thinking Jimi Hendrix sang, "Scuse me while I kiss this guy," instead of the actual lyric of "Scuse me while I kiss the sky" (which is still strange, albeit more poetic).

As expert Gavin Edwards explains on Modegreen Central,

The term "mondegreen" was coined by Sylvia Wright in a 1954 Atlantic article. As a child, young Sylvia had listened to a folk song that included the lines "They had slain the Earl of Moray/And Lady Mondegreen." As is customary with misheard lyrics, she didn't realize her mistake for years. The song was not about the tragic fate of Lady Mondegreen, but rather, the continuing plight of the good earl: "They had slain the Earl of Moray/And laid him on the green."

Now a new concept: eggcorns. Eggcorns are to spelling as mondegreens are to lyrics. If you've ever seen someone write that they are giving "a free reign" to something (instead of "a free rein"), then you've encountered an eggcorn. As The Eggcorn Database explains, eggcorns are "reshapings of words and expressions: a word or part of a word is semantically reanalyzed, and the spelling reflects the new interpretation."

The name of the mistake--eggcorn--is a misunderstanding of acorn and became the name of this particular linguistic error in 2003. Eggcorns are different from (but related to) malapropisms because eggcorns are actual homonyms, whereas most malapropisms are sound-related but different (such as allegory for alligator).

For more, see an entry on Language Log by Arnold Zwicky entitled "Lady Mondegreen Says Her Peace about Egg Corns" and another by Mark Liberman on "Eggcorn Terminology."

Grizzly BearCam

The National Geographic Society's Wild Chronicles features a short video in which naturalists fit an Alaskan grizzly with a collar camera. In the resulting film, we get to see life from a bear's eye view: grazing, catching salmon, napping with the family group, scuffling with a rival . . . and burping. It's a walk on the wild side that gives us a different perspective of the world.

There'll Always Be An England

There'll always be an England,
And England shall be free
If England means as much to you
As England means to me.
-- Popular World War I Song

We certainly hope there will always be an England, particularly as long as it produces such riveting reading as the recent news article about the rampaging rabbit of Northumberland. The Guardian headline ran, "Armed guards hunt Were-rabbit of Mouldshaugh Lane" while the more staid London Times declared "No carrot is safe as monster rabbit goes on rampage." The Times goes on to report that

The creature leaves behind huge footprints, has diabolically shaped ears and is proving the biggest threat to cabbages in the history of the local allotment. So strong that it is able to pull leeks and turnips fully out of the soil, the black-and-brown rabbit has already demolished a market stall’s worth of Japanese onions, parsnips and spring carrots.

All this talk of diabolic rabbits calls to mind, of course, the Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog, that most fearsome beast from the 1975 cinematic masterpiece, Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
In case memory fails, here is a snippet of dialog:

TIM: Well, that's no ordinary rabbit!
ARTHUR: Ohh.
TIM: That's the most foul, cruel, and bad-tempered rodent you ever set eyes on!
ROBIN: You tit! I soiled my armour I was so scared!
TIM: Look, that rabbit's got a vicious streak a mile wide! It's a killer!
-- from Scene 21, Monty Python and the Holy Grail

There are other historical antecedents for vicious rabbits, of course. On April 29, 1979, President Jimmy Carter was "attacked by killer rabbit" although The Straight Dope argues that it was, in fact, a nutria, a far more aggressive rodent. We are reserving judgement, but it sure looks like a rabbit in the photos of the incident from the Jimmy Carter Library.

Furthermore, there is the distressing 21 Feb. 2006 report from Norway. Aftenposten, a Norwegian newspaper, reports that "A large and unusually bold hare was apparently so irritated when a dogsled team entered its territory that it went on the attack, in an otherwise peaceful forested area of northern Norway."

Still interested in killer rabbits? You might wish to see Night of the Lepus, the classic 1972 horror film about giant mutant rabbits: "They were born that tragic moment when science made its great mistake... now from behind the shroud of night they come, a scuttling, shambling horde of creatures destroying all in their path."

Rabbit image from Wikipedia entry on the Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog.

A First Friday Potpourri

First Friday for March: A celebration of National Library Week, a memory of NWC library founder John H. Hinckley, and poetry old and new.