If Heathcliff were alive today...

Essay: There Will Be a Quiz
By JOE QUEENAN, The New York Times, April 6, 2008

Freelance writers are always looking for ways to scare up a few extra bucks, so recently I tried my hand at writing some of those “Questions for Discussion” that appear at the back of many paperbacks. I got the idea after reading Andrei Makine’s novel “The Crime of Olga Arbyelina,” the hard-luck saga of a Russian émigré with a hemophiliac son who pops up in France after World War II, hoping to put her life back together. Rumored to be kin to the luckless royals who ran afoul of Lenin and the boys back in the old country, Olga endures a life of uninterrupted misery and heartbreak.

The novel’s story line isn’t all that hard to follow, so by the time I reached the end, I had a pretty clear idea that Olga hadn’t gotten a fair shake in life. Be that as it may, I was startled when I turned to the back of the book and encountered eight questions prepared for book clubs that might be interested in discussing the novel further. Question No. 5 ran like this: “Olga has been driven from her homeland by the Bolsheviks, raped by a soldier, abandoned by her husband, treated with indifference by her lover, drugged, sexually violated and impregnated by her son. Does the novel lay the blame for Olga’s fate on the shoulders of the men in her world? Would you?”

At first, I thought this question might be a fluke or an oversight, but then I paged through a pile of other novels containing similar supplementary materials. Now it became clear to me that seemingly off-the-wall questions were a staple of the genre, deliberately included to shake up the musty old world of literature and force readers to think “outside the box.”

( If Heathcliff were alive today, would he mention Cathy’s death on his Facebook page and change his relationship status to It’s Complicated? )

Science Saturday?

The sample of fossilized feces that was radiocarbon dated to 12,300 BC and contains preserved 14,000-year-old human protein and DNA.

Evidence Supports Earlier Date for People in North America
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD, The New York Times, April 4, 2008

The discovery was one for the pages of an archaeology classic, something with a title like “Gods, Graves and Scat.”

Some people, coming into new country long ago, stopped at a cave for years perhaps, or only a day’s rest. Time enough, in any event, for them to relieve themselves — you know, answer nature’s call, if they bothered with euphemism. The cave was their in-house outhouse.

Exploring Paisley Caves in the Cascade Range of Oregon, archaeologists have found a scattering of human coprolites, or fossil feces. The specimens preserved 14,000-year-old human protein and DNA, which the discoverers said was the strongest evidence yet of the earliest people living in North America.

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For Seattle Shoppers, Paper or Plastic Could Come with a ‘Green Fee’
By WILLIAM YARDLEY, The New York Times, April 5, 2008

SEATTLE — The cashier’s chorus has long fallen on deaf ears among the sustainability set here. Paper or plastic? “Neither” is of course the greenest answer.

Soon, however, “neither” may be the cheapest answer, too.

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Health Database Was Set Up to Ignore ‘Abortion’
By ROBERT PEAR, The New York Times, April 5, 2008

WASHINGTON — Johns Hopkins University said Friday that it had programmed its computers to ignore the word “abortion” in searches of a large, publicly financed database of information on reproductive health after federal officials raised questions about two articles in the database. The dean of the Public Health School lifted the restrictions after learning of them.

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