Notwithstanding that some ignoramus politicians have never heard of her, Canadian literary giant Margaret Atwood has a novel twist when it comes to her latest book.
An autographed, limited edition of In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination will be printed on straw instead of the traditional timber-derived paper. 300 straw-produced books, will go on sale for $100 this week at canopyplanet.org.
According to the award-winning author, printing on straw avoids “any harmful impact on forests and their fragile ecosystems.” To farmers, though, the quirky print run is a waste.
The brainchild of Vancouver-based environmental group, Canopy, the limited edition illustrates the "viability of wheat and flax straw as alternative sources of fibre for fine paper."
“I just find it shocking that in 2011 we still cut down 400- to 800-year-old trees to make bank statements and junk mail,” said Canopy executive director, Nicole Rycroft. “We want to demonstrate that in fact, you can produce paper without using forest fibre at all.
The so-called Second Harvest paper isn't all that viable, after all, having been produced from Alberta flax straw and wheat straw imported all the way from China to a processing plant in Montreal.
Want to be eco-friendly? You could always purchase the book on an e-reader...
Should couples be able to marry via Skype? Two law professors -- Mae Kuykendall and Adam Candeub at Michigan State University -- think so.
Their study, recently published in the Journal of Law Reform, proposes that couples in all 50 American states should be able to wed in spite of geographical boundaries.
Such a law would surely come in handy for those in same-sex unions, as well as the elderly, ill, and deployed.
With the video conferencing technologies available, the professors feel the current laws are "obsolete and antiquated" and do not reflect "the mobile needs of a technologically connected society."
Kuykendall and Candeub began working on their E-Marriage Project in 2008. Though the States do sanction marriages performed by proxy (via a representative), a ceremony via videoconference would obviously prove a much more cost-friendly alternative.
“Every time states liberalize, they get nervous," Kuykendall says. "But we urge states to stop being nervous and modernize their marriage laws.”
Do you think e-marriage is hokey or a viable alternative for couples who, for whatever reason, can't be together on their big day?
Tilda Swinton has a shocking confession to make.
In the Telegraph, the 50-year-old Oscar-winning actress unveiled a deep dirty secret: as a child she almost tried to murder her baby brother.
The We Need to Talk About Kevin star has been thinking a lot about bad seeds. It was only after the brutal murder of 2-year-old British boy James Bulger, that Swinton uncovered her own latent memories of fratricide
"Having suppressed it for years, I remembered when I was four or five, I tried to kill my own brother," said Swinton. "He was newly born and I was disappointed, because he was the third boy. That was enough as far as I was concerned."
Apparently when young Tilda entered the baby's room she had a change of heart. In fact, when she saw that her brother's bonnet ribbons were in his mouth, she alerted her parents. Her actions, ironically, were pegged as heroic.
"So I had this strange reputation — my brother's savior — and no one knew I wanted to kill him. It took the Bulger case for me to remember that I'd seriously wanted to."
Perhaps this unsettling revelation has given her added insight into her latest role as the mother of a boy mass murderer in We Need to Talk About Kevin, based on the controversial best-selling novel by Lionel Shriver.
Swinton has 13-year-old twins of her own, son Xavier and daughter Honor.
Printer-friendly version