Eating the Dead

Just an observation:  If people are starving, they will eat each other.  Granted, they will probably wait for you to die first, but then you’re an entre.  I base my hypothesis on three separate incidents, starting with the Sea-Flower, a ship carrying immigrants to the New World in 1741 that ran out of food on the crossing and the survivors turned to eating the dead.  (Bryson 157)  Then there’s the Uruguayan Air Force plane that crashed in the Andes in 1972 – you know, the one with the rugby team.  (The Andes Accident)  And, of course, there’s the Donner Party in the winter of 1846-47.  But the Donner party should really count as more than one example, because they were divided up into three separate groups, and they all turned to cannibalism independently of each other.  And a fourth party that was lost in the snow darn near did.  And there’s anecdotal evidence that some of those in the Donner Party didn’t wait until the person was dead.  But that has never been substantiated.  (Stewart)  True, that’s a limited sample, but I believe it warrants more study.  I have no idea why you might ever need to know something like that for sure, but it just seems like a good thing to know.

Work Cited

“The Andes Accident.”  2011.  ¡Viven!  08 Dec. 2011.  http://www.viven.com.uy/571/eng/accidente.asp

Bryson, Bill.  Made in America:  An Informal History of the English Language.  New York:  Harper, 2001.

Stewart, George R.  Ordeal by Hunger:  The Classic Story of the Donner Party.  New York:  Dell Pocket Books, 1973.

Quick Rule:  Awhile

Awhile is two words when it follows a preposition (such as “in a while”), and one word when it doesn’t (such as “awhile ago we were traveling down the Yellow Brick Road…”).

Word of the Every So Often

cantankerous:  (adjective)  difficult to deal with; peevish.  Because the teacher refused to accept sloppy work, his students labeled him as cantankerous.

Yet Another Deep Thought

Saying you’ve worked really hard on an assignment, therefore you deserve a good grade is like saying you ran really fast in a race, therefore you deserve to win, regardless of which direction you were running.