Was Bradbury prescient?

To help you better understand today’s “Pearls Before Swine,” here are three definitions:

Hedonistic – devoted to pursuit of pleasure; self-indulgent

Anti-intellectual – opposed to the pursuit of advanced knowledge

Science fiction – futuristic fiction based on innovations in science and/or technology

Famous “sci fi” writers include Ray Bradbury, author of Fahrenheit 451, as well as:

Isaac Asimov – “Foundation” series
Orson Scott Card – “Ender’s Game” series
Robert Heinlein - Stranger in a Strange Land
Douglas Adams – “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” series
Frank Herbert – “Dune” series
Arthur C. Clarke - 2001: A Space Odyssey
H.G. Wells – The Time Machine

Was Bradbury prescient? (Prescient means knowing something before it happens.) Are we as a society devoting more time to self-indulgence and less time to improving our minds through reading and other academic pursuits? Is there a serious message within this funny comic strip?

Is my bias showing? Probably!
 

Try and try again

I found Zoe, well, a bit trying in today’s Baby Blues (one of The Daily Sentinel’s new comics).

Zoe needs to take a time-out and reflect on writers’ workshop rules. One rule is someone who reads another’s essay always offers positive comments on some aspect of the essay and helpful suggestions on how to improve it.

An essay can always be improved, and, contrary to what Zoe thinks, all writers can do better.

A great approach to improving an essay is to judge it according to these six traits: ideas, sentence fluency, organization, conventions, word choice and voice.

I wish I had learned about the six traits of writing much, much earlier, because they really do help to polish up essays. Try googling “six traits” or ask your teacher for more information on them.

The word “essay,” by the way, is similar to a French word meaning “to try.” When we write essays, we try to put our thoughts down well enough so that others may easily read them and understand them. Often we have to try and try again. In other words, we have to revise our writing, but the process is well worth it. Good writing reflects good thinking, and in this day and age we need all the good thinking we can get.

For the other three new comic strips, see The Daily Sentinel’s print edition or e-edition.

Pink, white and blue in the workaday world

I found The Daily Sentinel today a bit unsettling. Not because of the news, which often can be unsettling, but because of the background color throughout the entire paper: pink.

To acknowledge the beginning of National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, today’s edition is printed on pink paper. That means that color photographs also appear on pink paper, which concerned our staff photographers a bit. I think they’ll be relieved when their pictures once again show up on regular newspaper stock.

For quite some time, pink has symbolized girls or women, and blue has symbolized boys or men. While many decry this symbolism as sexist, it seems entrenched in our culture.

There are even pink-collar jobs, such as secretarial work, for which women have been traditionally hired.

Men who prefer working with their hands and/or men who have decided not to pursue higher educations hold blue-collar jobs, such as construction work.

Some feminists argue that women should at least go after blue collar jobs, because swinging a hammer often commands a better hourly wage than typing a memo.

White-collar jobs are office jobs that are often, but not always, held by people with higher educations.

Whatever the color of our collars, however, we all live in dread of the pink slip. This Americanism means a notice to an employee that his or services are no longer required. “Getting the pink slip” is a euphemism for “you’re fired.” (See July 20 entry for more on euphemisms.) It comes from the "use of pink paper as the employee’s carbon of a dismissal notice,"  according to Webster’s.

Today, I am grateful for my family, job and health. Today, I am also mindful of the need to get a mammogram whenever my doctor recommends one. It is, after all, a vital way to stay “in the pink.”
 

Goldilocks goes orbital

The headline above alludes (refers) to a fairy tale that has been popular nearly 200 years, although the tale’s main characters have changed along the way.

“The Story of the Three Bears” was written by Englishman Robert Southey in 1837. According to Wikipedia, in his original story Southey wrote about three male bears and an elderly woman. In later years, also according to Wikipedia, the bears became Papa Bear, Mama Bear and Baby Bear, and the old woman was transformed into a young girl with golden hair.

An artist’s rendering of the planet appears below. You’ll find the full story on this fascinating planet in The Daily Sentinel’s print edition or e-edition.

A more tasteful word

I don’t like beans.

Once when my mother was away for a week, my father discovered all sorts of beans languishing in our kitchen cupboards—navy beans, pinto beans, lima beans, kidney beans, we had ‘em all.

A product of the Great Depression, Dad decided this was a prime opportunity to teach my sister, brother and me not to waste food. We had beans for breakfast, lunch and dinner for five days straight. When Mom returned, we threw ourselves onto the living room floor and cried out, “Thank goodness you’re back. Dad’s been making us eat beans!"

As an adult, I am grateful to my father for the many life lessons he taught, including not wasting food, but I still cannot bring myself to consume beans. This is my loss, I realize, as beans are highly nutritious.

While scanning the recipes in today’s food section of the paper, I hit upon the solution: call beans a different name. So, soon I’ll try making “pasta e fagioli.” Translated, it means pasta and beans, but I’ll be sure to use the Italian name if family or friends ask, “What’s for dinner?”

If I just use Italian, I can bring myself to benefit from the excellent protein that beans fagioli provide.

Besides, this recipe actually calls for chickpeas. I'm sure that beans fagioli could be substituted, but I’ll stick with the chickpeas for now. Some memories fade slowly, after all….

The recipe is below. You may wish to try it, too. Buono appetito!