Henry Miller

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Henry Miller: Opposition to GM crops has prevented golden rice's approval

Henry Miller: Bio-fortified rice could save hundreds of thousands of lives a year, but opposition to GM crops is still preventing its approval

The Idler's Glossary, by Joshua Glenn,

The Idler's Glossary, by Joshua Glenn, "playfully explores the etymology and history of hundreds of idler-specific terms and phrases, while offering both a corrective to popular misconceptions about idling and a foundation for a new mode of thinking about working and not working" is now available on Amazon. The publisher asked me for a blurb to put on the back cover. Here's what I sent them: The Idler's Glossary is wonderful! I opened it, set it over my eyes, and took a delightful two-hour nap. Thank you so much. Here are a few examples from this worthy tome, which is illustrated by the stupendously talented Seth: bootless: Must every non-useless, non-unprofitable activity involve wearing boots? Quite the contrary, wouldn't you say? Let's start using "slipshod" to mean any activity which is not an end in itself. See: FLIP-FLOP, SLIPSHOD. bored: Being bored [a term which appeared suddenly, out of nowhere, among the smart set in the 1760s] is the condition?which Guy Debord called the "worst enemy of revolutionary activity"?of being too restless to concentrate, but too apathetic to bust a move. Fortunately, unless one's boredom becomes magnified to a sort of frustrated world-rejection, it's just a mood... and soon passes. Also note that Lin Yutang says that "philosophy began with the sense of boredom," since both involve dreaming wistfully of an ideal world. See: ACEDIA, APATHETIC, ENNUI, SPLEEN. bum: Like "queer" or "bitch," this term for a wandering mendicant has long since been re-appropriated, as in the song, "Hallelujah, I'm a Bum." As opposed to the guy who sits in the same spot every day asking for a hand-out, the bum [from the German for "saunter"] roams freely throughout the city, the country, the planet: He is king of the road. See: BEGGAR, LOAF, SAUNTER. cadger: Cadging, the ancient art of imposing upon the generosity of others, is an essential skill for the would-be idler, since poverty is the easiest way to obtain a great deal of free time. According to Henry Miller, who calls it "mooching," when performed without squeamishness or reservations, cadging is both exhilarating and instructive. So long as a cadger [from the Scandinavian word for "huckster"] is generous in turn (though not necessarily in kind), he ought not to be considered a deadbeat, freeloader, or sponger. See: BEGGAR, SCROUNGER. The Idler's Glossary...