Ice Cream tip

WaDuke ice cream not pictured

Virginia Tech Men's Basketball coach Seth Greenberg reports that the Washington Duke Inn in Durham, NC has the best ice cream in the world, bar none. The Clarion Content has yet to try it, but we have to give Greenberg's opinion some credence. The widely traveled Coach Greenberg, a FDU graduate, has been on coaching staffs all over the country including: Columbia University, the University of Pittsburgh, the University of Virginia, the University of Miami, Cal State University at Long Beach, the University of South Florida and Virginia Tech.

We have to believe the man has tried ice cream in a lot of different cities and joints. And if he bothers, during an interview about his basketball team's prospects against mighty Duke next week, to throw a shout out to the locally known, WaDuke, as the best ice cream in the world, we think it is noteworthy.

We are going to give it a try. Stay tuned to this page for further updates.

Moving

The Clarion Content was surprised to read in this morning's LA Times that more people are moving out of the state of California than into it. It is our positively biased view towards the almost nation of California that makes that fact hard for us to swallow. When this was last happening in the 1990's, we made epic arguments that it wasn't only to be factually debunked.

What, you are leaving the temperate climes of the most cutting edge place in the country behind? What, have you been reading the Clarion Content's anti-recession shoutouts to the Dakotas? Unlikely.

The LA Times says the states that Californians are most frequently moving to Texas, Nevada, Arizona and Washington. It is primarily the cost of living and the economy that folks cite as reasons for leaving. California is an expensive place in the best of times, but when jobs are scarce and the economy is contracting it becomes a downright difficult combination of circumstances. Fear not Cali, your mini empire of 38 million is not going away, a mere 135,173 more people moved out of California than moved into it, a drop in the bucket. And California rates as one of the top four states for likelihood that natives reaching 18 there stay there, with more than 69% electing not to leave. The three states that rank ahead of CA for their residents who grew up there loving it enough that they are not leaving, Texas, North Carolina and Georgia.

Banker desserts

Hopefully you saw the British comedy clip we posted last week about the roots of the economic crisis. It was dry, acerbic, funny stuff. Here from the highly recommended Best of Craig's List is a little more fiery American response rooting for the bankers to get their just desserts. Ahh, comeuppance.

It is titled, "You reap what you sow: the greed of an archetypal Lehman douche."

"Most of you deserve this, you really, truly do. You chose this road because it was easy and because you’re stupid. This was and is the best you’ll ever do. You know who I’m talking about. I’m pointing the finger at you, you and you. And especially you. To all the overtanned Jersey douchebags with steroid addictions, to the smug Ivy League grads with dads in high places, to the good looking brain dead women that eschew Anne Taylor Loft for sales rack Brooks Brothers, and to the upwardly mobile black girls with fake hair and inappropriate-for-work Joyce Leslie outfits. Actually, scratch that. The black girls can stay.

Fuck all of you. You brought this upon yourselves. Your Alpha male bullshit begat this greed, your vile existence is truly at the core of this collapse. For all the times you and your drunk cronies threw up on the street outside Pacha, for all the times you made a scene on the 3:51 LIRR train to Babylon, for all the times you stood on the Path train, or the 6, iPod in hand, desperately trying not to touch anyone. You had it coming.

Is there some kind of code that says you MUST wear a blue shirt? Or is that some kind of unspoken bro ethos? Like, if you’re the dude in the white button down in Bryant Park, is no one gonna blow you? Or is conforming just that much easier, is conformity just a part of your DNA? Is that really the true reason why you’re so universally loathsome to anyone that’s not a part of that vile world?

Before the Bubble O’ Bullshit burst, you would laugh at me. You were the douche bags that felt superior, the ones who turned up their nose at their working-class roots, the ones who scoffed at their peers who worked at the Local Union. You were the ones who laughed at those that worked at non-profits and LIKED IT. “Art History? What are you going to do with a major in Art History?” Yeah, your finance major got you real fucking far. Maybe after this ship sails you’ll realize that aside from your rape trial, college didn’t teach you much of anything. Sorry bro, but in the real world, you can’t walk down the street, lacrosse stick in hand, and just get respect.

I hope that with this smashup comes your own social foreclosure. I hope all those dudes from my high school -- you know who I'm talking about -- the ones that never got good grades, the ones that never knew how to act like decent human beings, the date rapists, the juicers, the guidos, the Quinnipiac or Iona grads that never should have graduated yet somehow landed cushy Wall Street jobs -- receive the guerdon from the gods . I hope you’re evicted from your Upper East Side apartment, I hope your Denali gets repoed, I hope you can’t afford your bullshit Murray Hill lifestyle. I hope you truly get your comeuppance. Because it’s well fucking deserved and the Universe knows it. And what about me, you ask?

I’m laughing all the way to the nonexistent bank."

The Clarion Content says, "Whoa."

Truth is often said in jest

This comedy routine recorded in 2007, sounds all to real circa 2008, (save the racially insensitive humor.) It is a line that is frequently attributed to Shakespeare that, truth is often said in jest. Some speculate it dates to a courtly era when only the jester could point out certain things to the monarch aloud, publicly. This maxim continues to apply because humor is a natural human defense mechanism, what is indefensibly ridiculous or hard to believe is roundly mocked. This is very dry British comedy from the longest running TV show in the UK, "The South Bank Show."

Below George Parr appears on the fake talk show, "The Last Laugh."

Michael Franti

Playing his new song live in New York City.

"Barack Obama, yes we can!"



Special thanks to a New York City reader for sending this our way.

Cell Phone trick

Follow this link to a video of a fancy trick you and your friends can do with your cell phones.

Thanks to the Durham reader who sent this craziness our way. It wasn't Photoshopped? Right? Nah, there's no way.

Sad story

The Clarion Content is fond of the old saw, "The bus can come for ya any day." Meaning any given day can be one's last. We strive to follow the immortal words of Steven King's unforgettable character Ellis Boyd 'Red' Redding, "Get busy livin' or get busy dyin'." Rarely is our inevitable mortality brought home so forcefully as it was by reading this tragic story this morning.

Three generations of a family and four people were wiped out in an instant, a mother, her baby, her other 15 month old daughter, and a grandmother. An F/A-18D Hornet fell from the sky over a residential neighborhood in San Diego. The house burned to the ground as did the thankfully unoccupied house next door. The young Naval Aviator flying the plane was ordered to fly to Marine Corps Air Station Miramar rather than attempt to return to the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln, after one of his engines failed. En route his other engine failed, he ejected and survived the crash.

What a sad story.

A hero in a bad scene

From the terrorist assault on Mumbai, perhaps you have already heard this story. Perhaps, you have read other stories of heroism from this dastardly terrorist attack. The Clarion Content read about a heroic nanny, Sandra Samuel.

She was in the Chabad House with two-year-old Moshe Holtzberg and six other people when the assault began. Only Sandra Samuel and Moshe Holtzberg made it out alive. When she was shot at early in the assault, she locked herself and fellow employee Zaki Hussein in a downstairs utility room. As Samuel described it there was screaming, hundreds of gunshots and periodic grenade blasts that shook the building. Conflicting reports say, as the gunmen went door to door looking for survivors, Sandra Samuel unlocked her door, eluded some gunmen and dared others to shoot her. All reports agree that she ran upstairs to find the boy's American and Israeli parents shot and the child crying over them. She picked him up and made another dash past the gunmen for the door.

Both, two-year-old Moshe Holtzberg and the boy's heroic nanny, Sandra Samuel are both recovering from the affair in Israel.

Venice under water

Follow this link to way better pictures

On no! Venice, Italy is experiencing its worst flooding in twenty years. The fourth highest tide in modern history surged into the city Monday. The pictures from the Daily Mail of England are hard to fathom. The debate in many media organs is whether or not Venice which is known to be sinking risks becoming uninhabited. The population in recent years has dwindled to 66,000 and a large percentage of those residents are elderly. The city is flooded several times a year. Residents this week say you can literally swim across St. Mark's Square. Yet the city receives as many as twenty million tourist visits a year according to the Daily Mail.

New Music

It is a little late for what feels like a Dia de los Muertos song, but this beautiful canción crossed our path and we had to share it.


DeVotchKa

Madonna in LA

Madonna played to rave reviews in Los Angeles last week. The Clarion Content has long been a fan so that does not surprise us. What was interesting about the show was the special guests Madonna had invited.

Her Sticky & Sweet Tour was playing in the beautiful Chavez Ravine stadium of the Dodgers. The star studded crowd included such luminaries as Drew Barrymore, Rick Rubin, Ryan Seacrest, Heidi Klum, Kate Moss and Fergie. The highly culturally attuned Madonna's visual showcase included many images of Obama, whose election she recognized as cause to celebrate. She is also keenly aware of issues of sexual politics as the LA Times noted, Madonna and her rainbow-coalition dance crew, "enacted that struggle (Proposition 8) on-stage, both figuratively and literally." She was quoted from the stage, "There is one little disappointment, though. I'm sorry to hear that Proposition 8 passed. But we will not give up the fight -- never."

So what about those guests!?! Megastar Justin Timberlake sang "4 Minutes" from Madonna's newest release "Hard Candy." Much more interestingly, long time Madonna fave Britney Spears performed. The Clarion Content, full disclosure, is a huge Spears fan and Spears defender. Britney, noting, she's nobody's f*cking victim joined the divorcing Madonna on stage for the ending chorus of a well received version of "Human Nature." It is our thinking that Madonna hopes to mentor the troubled Spears; the patriarchy has a love/hate relationship with strong women who refuse to deny their sexuality.

Pygmy Tarsiers

One of the smallest primates known to humans was recently rediscovered after 85 years without a sighting. Previously thought to be extinct, these little shubbas, pygmy tarsiers, were recently uncovered in the cloud forests of Indonesia. They weigh about 2 ounces and can turn their heads 180 degrees.

They are also the spitting image of Gremlins. Seriously!


whoa...

Finally, a decent bagel

The Clarion Content has long sought after decent bagels in North Carolina, until recently it had been a trying and ultimately dissatisfying quest. Having northeast genetic stock on our editorial staff, standards were high. You don't bring Bruegger's bagels to the Clarion offices, lest you want to me mocked and derided until you run away cowering and crying. Bruegger's bagels are no more than one tiny half step removed from a frozen Lender's bagel (aka hockey pucks.) Lender's bagels are to bagels what Yugos are to cars, golf pencils are to writing implements, what dial-up internet is to a T1 line. Sure they are vaguely members of the same class, but they are craptastic. A Yugo hardly begins to make one understand the powerful possibilities of the automobile. A golf pencil can be used to scratch something down, but need to erase? Fugit about it. And if you grew up on MontBlanc's, you are never going to believe that someone else considers a golf pencil satisfactory. Really? Really? You are willing to accept that?

So one can only imagine how excited we were after ten long years of searching to finally encounter, not only a decent bagel in the Carolina's, but an excellent one. Previously we had not met a bagel in the state of North Carolina that we would have rated over a 4 out of 10. New York Bagel & Deli of Cary, NC is the diggity. Of course, made from scratch! Their bagels are old school, huge and just the right texture. Not to mention, they are not so blinded by blueberries and other fruits, as to neglect the traditional flavors; garlic, onion, poppy, seasame, pumpernickel and so on. Their staff is top notch, most days owners Tom and Josephine Nurrito* are behind the counter. Even when they're not, the service is always impeccable. And if it is not always delivered with a smile, the gruffness hides some genuine caring about the people and the product. Your happiness is assured, they won't let you leave less than satisfied. Maybe it is just all that experience, they have been a family business for over 75 years. (Most of it elsewhere, as 75 years ago Cary was a field.)

* Josephine always has a delightful smile.

Text Google

google 466453

Did you know that you can text Google at 466-453, or "Google"---it is sweet!

Among the things Google can tell you:

But a few examples:
sports scores, text "NY Rangers score"

weather, text "w Durham"

movies, text "m 27707"

stocks, text "the stock symbol"

local stuff, text "Harris Teeter Durham" (a local grocery store, Google replied with their address and phone number)

define words, text "d tonsure" (the shaping of evergreens by clipping, or a bald spot resembling the shaven crown or patch worn by monks and other clerics.)

flights, text "ua 440"

...and we saved our favorite for last, calculator, text "144*18"

Rest assured there are even more applications depending on just what your cellular device can handle. Follow this link.

The reply is almost instantaneous. The Clarion Content is lobbying the good folks over at Google to support the Google, "I feel lucky" feature via text. It would be such an argument solver to be able to text Google, "23rd President" or "Robin Williams real age"...

from the Hunchback of Notre Dame

Word is Victor Hugo wanted to name The Hunchback of Notre Dame, simply Notre Dame. Upon review that makes perfect sense because ostensibly Hugo saw the cathedral itself as the central character of the story, a very modern angle for his time. One can see how the cast of other characters is an ensemble not a lead and supporting roles, nor simply a hero and a villian. Rather than spoil the story for you, and if you have only seen the movie you haven't gotten the half of it, we will instead offer...

Word pearls from Victor Hugo's masterpiece


"Pride always has ruin and shame close at its heels."


"'And love?' proceeded Gringoire.
'Oh! love!' said she, and her voice trembled, and her eye sparkled. 'It is to be two and yet be one- it is a man and a woman blending into an angel-it is heaven itself.'"


"It was the abuse of impunity going hand in hand with the abuse of punishment-two bad things, which strove for one another."


"The King never grants any boon but what is wrung from him by the people."


"In order to live one must get a livelihood."


"Life without love is but a dry wheel, creaking and grating as it revolves."


"Memory is the tormentor of the jealous."


"which imparted to her profile that ideal sweetness which Raphael subsequently found at the mystic point of intersection of virginity, maternity, and divinity."


"Oh, how hollow science sounds when you dash against it in despair [against] a head filled with passions."


"the blinder that passion the more tenacious it is. Never is it stronger than when it is most unreasonable."


"Montmarte, which had then almost as many churches as windmills, but has retained the mills only; for the material bread is nowadays more in request than the spiritual."

Country Music Awards

Carrie Underwood


Reese Witherspoon

When two of the five most beautiful women in the world are at the same party, you know it is a good one. Congratulations to the 42nd annual Country Music Awards held last night in Nashville, Tennessee. They had Carrie Underwood and Reese Witherspoon in attendance. It doesn't get much better than that, and don't let the people from Cannes tell you any different. A couple of big CMA red carpet surprises last night, at least to the Clarion Content's editorial staff. One, Miley Cyrus? What is Disney mega-pop star Miley Cyrus doing at the CMA's? Just accompanying daddy, Billy Ray? Or is she about to do a country album? Hmmm, something that bears watching. Surprise two, Kid Rock walked the red carpet alone! We don't think we have ever seen that before. Follow this link to 334 red carpet pictures from last night's Country Music Awards. Incidentally, inside the big winners were Kenny Chesney, Carrie Underwood, and Rascal Flatts. George Strait broke the record for most CMA awards lifetime when he won his 22nd for album of the year, Troubadour.

Third biggest Salmon in CA history

hint...way bigger than this guy!

If you have ever fished for salmon you are not going to believe the pictures at this link in the LA Times. The third biggest Chinook salmon in California history was discovered yesterday in Battle Creek in Tehama County, CA. This fish is positively huge! Even better it lived out its natural life and was not killed by a fishermen. As the biologist who found him, Doug Killam, said in the LA Times, "Hopefully, this fish was entirely successful in passing on its superior genetic potential."

Giant handbags

Ladies, one more reason to defend your giant handbags and purses. The Clarion Content has quite a few female friends who feel compelled to sport a large purse or bag to lug all their necessaries around in. Many of these females take shit from folks about just how big their purses are. Little do the critics recall how handy it is to know someone who always has a tissue, an umbrella, a band-aid, an aspirin and a stick of gum, not too mention, their own stuff.

Well carriers of the large bag, there is one more reason to defend it today, from Kristen Seymour of StyleList Blog. In a post titled, "Giant Purses Save Lives," she reports, "Twenty-two year-old college student, Elizabeth Pittenger, was carrying half her life in her bag when a man stopped her, demanding her laptop, purse, and cell phone. She refused and fought him off, but before she could get away, he fired a shot."

It was stopped by the purse. She was unharmed and "nearby police heard the gunshot and were able to apprehend the shooter almost immediately."

You think a handbag with just her id, credit card, and cash, stops that shot? Yeah, not so much...

Internet warning

Beware a spam email message trumpeting President-elect Barack Obama's victory last night. The email will have a link to what is supposedly a website with election results. However, when you arrive there you will be asked install an update to Adobe's Flash Player before viewing a video. Don't do it!

Computerworld magazine explains. What's actually downloaded is a Trojan horse that compromises your PC then floods the machine with more malware. Another good reason to own a Mac, but if you don't be careful. According to Dan Hubbard, Websense Inc. VP of Security Research in Computerworld, "This is very coordinated, with evidence that they planned this, then waited for the election results."

CDCP?

Julie Louise Gerberding, CDC Director

Did you know that the Centers for Disease Control, the CDC in the shorthand parlance of the health community, is really the CDCP? The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention? Neither did the Clarion Content. The name change occurred all the way back in October of 1992. In the intervening sixteen years have you ever heard anyone call it by the full name or use the initials CDCP? Us either. Heck even their website is cdc.gov not cdcp.gov, which incidentally doesn't even a redirect back to their website!

Obviously they are doing a less than stellar job publicizing the prevention portion of their mission. It seems to follow that America has chronic health problems that have worsened to do the persistent lack of a prevention ethos in this country; among them obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease and their ilk.

What kind of prevention are Americans doing? Getting a flu shot at Walmart along with their bag of potato chips and corn syrup based soft drink!

Texas Tech Bell Ringer

With Texas Tech playing its biggest football game in eons, it seemed like a great time to break out an oldie but a goodie.

Ladies and Gentlemen,




The Texas Tech Bell Ringer

Diabetes spike

The Centers for Disease Control(CDC) reported on the results of a massive diabetes study today. Their study of more than 250,000 households will be published in the Oct. 31 issue of the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. They found that the rate of type 2 diabetes amongst the American population had nearly doubled in the last decade from from 4.8 people per 1,000 to 9.1 people per 1,000.

The Clarion Content would love to see those numbers graphed along side a study of incomes. US News & World Report cites Dr. David L. Katz, director of the Yale University School of Medicine's Prevention Research Center, "as obesity and poverty are strongly associated, and obesity is the predominant risk factor for type 2 diabetes..." The Clarion finds this fascinating because we think the initial inclination might be to think the opposite. One could easily posit that rapidly increasing obesity and therefore diabetes is about America getting rich and fat, sitting on its bum. "Why the richer those Americans get, the lazier and fatter they get," might be the take.

But it is the poor that are getting fatter, while the rich take better care of themselves. Is it about the diet of poor people and the paucity of healthy choices for cheap in America? (Or the plethora of unhealthy food options for cheap?) The rich can join health clubs, get massages, buy vitamin supplements, the list could go on and on. We wonder. Is this just a reminder of a grim statistic that is well known to actuaries but little known to the public? Is there a significant difference in life expectancy by income disparity in America?

Type 2 diabetes is treatable, but incurable. Complications from type 2 diabetes can include blindness, limb amputation, heart disease and kidney failure.

Ivory sale

For the first time in almost ten years there was a "legal" auction of ivory this week. The government of Nambia sold almost eight tons of ivory for $1.2 million. The group, CITES, (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) that sanctioned the sale of this ivory to China and Japan claims that proceeds from the auctions must be used exclusively for elephant conservation and community development programs in or near elephants' range. To the extent that oversight in something as high profile as "Oil for Food" failed miserably, the Clarion Content has little faith that an NGO will be able to assure how and where these African governments spend their money.

We agree with the Born Free Foundation that, "[The sale] will stimulate, not satisfy, the massive demand for ivory in countries like China. It will do nothing to re-educate customers (in China and Japan) that buying ivory is signing an elephant's death warrant."

Worse, Geneva based CITES has agreed to sanction three other sales of slaughtered elephants' tusks later this month.

Elephant murder has been so common place for so long that there are good arguments to be made that the very fabric of elephant society has been destroyed. The Clarion Content is not a proponent of "lifeboat" ethics, but neither do we believe that rapid animal extinction is good for Gaia and its inhabitants.

Work

People who stand on ceremony about their job description are ultimately losers, not leaders.

New Computer Spying

Don't look now but the word from the BBC and the Security and Cryptography Laboratory at the Swiss Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) is that a new form of computer spying has become possible. A project by two graduate students at the EPFL has shown that it is possible to tell what keystrokes a person is making from a distance of up to fifty feet away by measuring the electromagnetic radiation emitted by keystrokes with a radio antennae. The students demonstrated the effectiveness of their test on twelve different keyboard models, including embedded laptop keyboards. (Perhaps the countermeasures developed by the NSA to fight Van Eck phreaking will also work for keyboards.)

Sign of the apocalypse?

And you thought Anna Kournikova was too young and unaccomplished for the ESPN/Disney folks to make a Sports-Century documentary about her...that it was somehow all about exploiting her looks.

Leave it to the Disney publicity machine to always be able to top their hot air with even hotter air and even emptier hype.

Word reached the Clarion this week of teeny bopper Miley Cyrus's impending autobiography. Miley a tween Disney multimedia star and heart throb has been everywhere for months, including some racy Annie Leibovitz photos, which once the negative pub started she immediately claimed to have coerced into doing. Miley, star of the Disney series Hannah Montana, began her career at the ripe old age of eleven, so of course, at fifteen, going on sixteen, she is ready to write an autobiography.

Yes, she is the daughter of Billy Ray Cyrus of "Achy-breaky heart" fame. She was even generous enough to give the old man a part in her hit show. You go girl.

It may be a few years before the Clarion Content gets around to reviewing her autobiography.

Governor Palin on Weekend Update

John McCain's running mate, the Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin made an appearance on Saturday Night Live this weekend. Palin showed a credible sense of humor and it was SNL's highest ready show in 14 years. As the New York Times reviewer put it, "One thing everybody can agree on is that Gov. Sarah Palin is qualified — to someday host her own television show."

Facebook murder in England

A grisly tale with a postmodern twist.

The grisly tale
Wayne Forrester, 34, of London, England was found guilty of murdering his 34 year old wife and mother of two, Emma. They had been married for 15 years and recently separated. Forrester, a truck driver, repeatedly stabbed her in the head and neck with a kitchen knife and a meat cleaver on February 18th in the middle of the night in their former home. He was later determined to be intoxicated and high on cocaine. He did not flee the scene. Neighbors found him sitting outside the house covered in blood and called the police.

The postmodern twist
Forrester told the cops about his dead wife, "Emma and I had just split up. She forced me out. She then posted messages on an internet website telling everyone she had left me and was looking to meet other men.

Forrester called his wife's parents the day before the murder to protest changes in Emma's Facebook profile which was now listing her as single.

He said, "I loved Emma and felt totally devastated and humiliated about what she had done to me."


Thanks to the BBC news for the heads up on the story.

Laundry

Laundry is a difficult task because you are never really caught up, there are always the clothes you are wearing which are in the process of getting dirty.

The Clarion would argue that this makes laundry a good metaphor for the upstream nature of life. Living creatures are always swimming upstream as they perceive the world out their own eyes. We see this described in the Second Law of Thermodynamics, entropy, (in short) energy in isolated systems dissipates. Animals in what we call 'the wild' are in a constant struggle for the food and water required to survive, as well as, dying to escape the predators in their ecological niche. Same goes for the plants.

Laundry is part of the entropy process, the constant progression to disorder. It is not as hard as life in 'the wild.'

Who's the plumber?

Joe the plumber from Ohio got more air time than Iraq last night at the presidential debate. He doesn't look like the Joe Six Pack we pictured. McCain used him to bludgeon Obama on tax policy, declaring it was a bad time to raise taxes on anybody. Obama turned it around to point at McCain's dangerous and ill-advised health care plan, and his support for taxes cuts for the uber-rich. (Though as McCain noted, Joe the Plumber is no Warren Buffett.)

So who is the real Joe the Plumber?

Here are a couple of links to read about him.

Beautiful photos and a debate

Once upon a time in Berkeley, CA, one of the Clarion's editors had a largely unresolvable debate with a particularly interesting interlocutor about Art. The point in question was whether or not all visual Art was a representation of something that could be seen elsewhere in the universe. Our un-indicted co-conspirator argued no, surely modern art alone was so different and free form that it was not represented. At the time, we recall arguing, that the micro-cosmos represented an array of mostly as yet unseen visuals that could have mimicked the wildest modern art. The discussion ultimately came back to unresolvable differences about the nature of infinity, already all encompassing or through the passage of time adding new to what only seems all encompassing through our mortal lens and scale.

We were reminded of this conversation earlier this week when astronomers voted for the best pictures taken by Hubble in its 16 years in orbit. The Hubble telescope transmits an almost unfathomable 120 gigabytes of information every week.

Follow this link to a gallery of the top ten photos as voted by the astronomers.

Follow this link to even more photos.

Ahhh, the fair

If you were looking for one more reason not to ride the rides at the State Fair or your local carnival, how about this story from Port Orange, Florida.

The ride operator (read: Meth addict) operating the "Crazy Bus" at the Port Orange Carnival forgot to apply the safety brake as folks were getting off the ride. Not surprisingly, the ride rose back into the air. Most folks were still inside the ride. Unfortunately, a mother and her young daughter were caught half in and half out of the ride as it ascended some 40 feet in the air. Thanks to a group of good samaritans this story has a happy ending. According to witnesses, the mother managed to hold on to the "Crazy Bus" with one hand and her daughter with the other for nearly three minutes, during that time a group of ten to twelve on-lookers formed a circle underneath the pair and urged the mother to drop her daughter into their waiting arms.

The mother, one Sheri Pinkerton, said later, "There was nothing I could do. I could not hold both of us. I held on to her as long as I could. I let go of her and she grabbed my shirt so I had to pry her hands off my shirt and let her fall."

The catch was made successfully and amazingly both mother and daughter survived the trauma unharmed.

A Yom Kippur thought

"Should we, then, despair of our being unable to retain perfect perfect purity? We should, if perfection were our goal. However, we are not obliged to be perfect once and for all, but only to rise again and again beyond the level of the self. Perfection is divine, and to make it a goal of man is to call on man to be divine. All we can do is try to wring our hearts clean in contrition."---Abraham Joshua Heschel

And to do our level best, again, at the next opportunity...

Faith and Being your best self

"Your body's gonna do what your mind lets it do. You have to surrender to [it.] You try to control the process, not the result." ---Barry Zito, San Francisco Giants pitcher

Leadership

A good leader uses one's subordinates leadership skills to further enhance the goals of the group. A fearful or insecure leader suppresses the leadership skills of subordinates.

Get busy livin'

What if we told you that you had five minutes to live? Or one hour to live? Would it not be the five busiest minutes or the one busiest hour you had ever lived? So many people to call. So much to say. So much not yet done. Dreams, projects, contemplation of one's place in the cosmos~prayer. What if we told you that you had one week or one month or six months? Does the same not apply? Wouldn't that be the busiest week, month or six months of your whole life? What if we told you we could guarantee you were going to die? (But not when.) How would you live the rest of your life then? As the master writer Stephen King put it, "Get busy livin' or get busy dying."

from Life of Pi

some of the wisdom of Yann Martel, from his book Life of Pi,

"All living things contain a measure of madness that moves them in strange, sometimes inexplicable ways. This madness can be saving; it is part and parcel of the ability to adapt. Without it, no species would survive."

(That first nugget reminds the Clarion of the brilliant, under-read, under-utilized Gavin De Becker book, The Gift of Fear.)

More from the Life of Pi,

"People move because of the wear and tear of anxiety. Because of the gnawing feeling that no matter how hard they work their efforts will yield nothing, that what they build up in one year will be torn down in one day by others. Because of the impression that the future is blocked up, that they might do all right but not their children. Because of the feeling that nothing will change, that happiness and prosperity are possible only somewhere else."

"I must say a word about fear. It is life's only true opponent."

(This third one goes on for four more insightful paragraphs.)

The book is well worth the read. Yes, we know, everyone else read it years ago.

Before there were X-gamers

It was a different time. It was before the cost of liability insurance had been driven through the roof by a lawsuit mad culture. It was before cable TV, let alone the internet. It was before Super Dave Osborne, let alone Tony Hawk.


Behold Evil Kneivel




Daredevil for real

Cat power

An Arizona cat survived a 70 mile trip under a pick-up truck, sitting on a spare tire yesterday. Bella traveled shaken but uninjured from Gilbert, AZ (upper left of map) to Kearny, AZ (right center edge.)

A look at the photo in this article suggests the cat may be smarter than the owner.

Pithy F*rging Sayings (8th ed.)

"Familiarity almost inevitably breeds indifference." ---Marc Bloch

"Aging comes at you like the tide. It only feels like waves because of the way humans measure time; birthdays, anniversaries, seasons."---staff

"An attempt to rest political equality on religious truth is simply a recipe for social disaster and political failure." ---Andrew Sullivan

"He hungered to explain who he was...an orphan boy...who had been poor all his life, had grubbed for a living, and was poor in other ways too- if he was that one what was he doing in prison? Who were they punishing if his life was punishment?"---Bernard Malamud in The Fixer

"Sometimes things that go without saying should go unsaid."---staff

"Never think that wars are irrational catastrophes: they happen when wrong ways of thinking and living bring about intolerable situations."---Dorothy L. Sayers

"Bad data is a far worse problem than no data."---staff

"It is...chimerical to build peace on the economic foundations which, in turn, rest on the systematic cultivation of greed and envy, the very forces which drive men into conflict."---E.F. Schumacher

Link to other Clarion sayings posts.

Yummy Lentils

The Clarion was recently quite delighted with a new lentil recipe that a dear friend made. The party in question has a big family and typically prepares meals in quantity so as to be able to store freeze and reheat. This batch of lentils was probably made to triple the proportions that are shown in the recipe that follows below.


amateur lentil photography

#1----2 tsp good olive oil
#2----2 cups of yellow onions (large dice) approx 2
#3----2 cups carrots (large dice) approx 3 to 4
#4----1 tbs minced garlic approx 3 cloves
#5----1 26 oz can whole plum tomatoes
#6----1 cup french green lentils (approx 7oz)
#7----2 cups chicken stock
#8----2 tsp mild curry powder
#9----2 tsp chopped fresh time leaves
#10----2 tsp kosher salt
#11----3/4 tsp ground pepper
#12----1 tbs good red wine vinegar

heat #1, add #2 & #3 cook on medium low for 6-10 minutes until the onions start to brown, add #4 cook for 1 more minute, meanwhile food press #5 until coarsely chopped, add #5 thru #12 to the pan, raise heat to bring to a boil, then simmer for 40 minutes, let set for 10 minutes.

Our friend's version is light and sweet, but still hearty. There are layers of background flavors, first you taste the salt and the sweet, then there is a musky richness and finally the hint of curry. Complex, satisfying without being overwhelming, or ultimately too forceful; it was a very good meal. The first night it was served with a cast iron skillet of cornbread and orange-apricot marmalade.

In the Clarion's less than humble opinion it tasted even better day two and three, like so many gravies and soups. The second time it was served with a crumbled sour Pecorino Romano cheese.

Paris Hilton is running for President

See more Paris Hilton videos at Funny or Die

Impending doom?

Is it a sign of impending doom? Five cloned puppies made by a South Korean company for (go figure) a Californian are about to be the first commercial canine clones sold in the United States.

The Californian, a screenwriter named Bernann McKinney, brought her dog's frozen cells to RNL Bio in Seoul, South Korea. The company cloned McKinney's beloved pit bull terrier, Booger, in conjunction with a team of Seoul National University scientists. McKinney will keep three of the five cloned dogs and donate the other two to work as service dogs. McKinney already has five other dogs and three horses. She paid an estimated $50,000 for the procedure. However, it has been reported that this was a cut rate price for the work, available to her only as the first customer and because she has agreed to do promotion work for RNL Bio.

Should you be worried? The Clarion isn't sure, but certainly it seems like there are a nearly unlimited range of unknown possibilities related to cloning.

Ru-Roh

Canada lost an ice sheet seven square miles in area last week. The ice sheet broke off from the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf off of the north coast of Ellesmere Island in Canada's Qikiqtaaluk Region. It was the biggest piece of ice shelf to crack loose since 2005. However, before you panic and start moving back from the coasts in anticipation of rising sea levels, note: Ellesmere Island was once encircled by a single huge ice shelf that broke up in the early 20th century. And according to Derek Mueller, a research at Trent University, the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf has been steadily declining in size since the 1930's. The time scale in question here (as with much of the Earth's warming issues) is geologic.

Can drink you under the table!

The pen-tailed tree shrew of Malaysia can drink you under the table.

Doubt it?

These little guys can knock back the equivalent of up to nine Guinnesses a night. Their beverage of choice? Bertram palm nectar naturally fermented to have an alcohol content up to 3.8%.

Big Boozer

You go little shubba.

Tax Holiday

A quick reminder, for our dear local readers, there is a sales tax holiday this weekend in North Carolina. That's right! You can spend your hard earned dollars without the governor taking the state's usual cut. Items on the tax exempt list include clothing, footwear, and school supplies of $100 or less (per,) sports equipment of $50 or less (per,) computers of $3,500 or less, and computer supplies of $250 or less (per item.)

The relative price of computers (of the non Mac variety) is very low right now. Top of the line PC desktops and laptops can be had for under $650. Take advantage? It is certainly worth thinking about, especially if you know you are going to be in the market for a computer any time soon. The tax holiday runs from midnight Friday until midnight Sunday.

Say what?

Lamar County and Lauderdale County, Mississippi banned text messaging and online social network communication (MySpace, Facebook, etc.) between teachers and students.

An appropriate precaution? Or an over the top violation of free speech?

What say you, dear readers?

Read more here and here.

Aurora Borealis and Aurora Australis

Or the Northern and Southern lights, respectively.



Scientists have long puzzled about the phenomena of the auroras over the Earth's poles. The tremendous displays of light have been a source of mystery, wonder, speculation and myth since they were first observed.

Scientists using five satellites from NASA's THEMIS program (Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms) were recently able to say more about the source of these brilliant lights than was ever known previously. It has been known for some time that the auroras were caused by storms of charged particles. However, science had debated the source of these storms, local electrical disruptions in Earth's magnetic field or distant disturbances in the "magnetotail," the region of the Earth's magnetic field that points away from the sun.

A new study to be published next month in Science says: the storms of charged particles form when Earth's magnetic field lines collapse on each other, showering the upper atmosphere with captured radiation from the sun where it sparks the auroras.

Beautiful.

These storms get their energy from the outflow of gases from the sun known as the solar wind. As it reaches Earth, the planet's magnetic field deflects the gases, although some is trapped and shunted toward the poles. When the charged molecules hit the oxygen and nitrogen in Earth's upper atmosphere, energy is released as captivating blue, green and red wavy displays of brilliance.

A Delicious Bargain

Why isn't she smiling? Maybe she hasn't had breakfast yet?

The editorial desk of Clarion has long held that if there were any one meal that we recommended being a "regular" for it was breakfast. Now that is not a regular in the sense of eating breakfast daily, though surely we recommend that as an element of good health. No rather, we mean in the restaurant/bar sense of the word "regular." It is a milieu where being a "regular" implies being a familiar, weekly, if not almost daily customer of a given establishment. There is a relationship, they know you and you know them. Jack Nicholson was wonderfully portrayed an extremely difficult restaurant regular in "As Good as Gets." Many other regulars are more along the lines of Norm in the TV sitcom "Cheers."

The Clarion hasn't had a place where we have both had the desire and the budget to be a regular in a long time. And while we are not a regular yet at this place, we do have a delicious breakfast bargain to recommend that once again has the Clarion thinking about the joys of being a breakfast regular.

The place that brought this to mind is Durham's Parker & Otis. The Clarion will confess that there are numerous personal proclivities that draw us to Pando, as the employees call it. Firstly, it is walking distance from our offices. Second there are free coffee refills. Thirdly is the basic but delicious breakfast that has us thinking about breakfast regulars. The Clarion has always strongly favored the simple and hearty at breakfast. We don't want to think or work too hard, but we do want something to fire up the boiler room and get the body moving. We have long believed in breakfast as an essential metabolism regulator and energy provider.

At Parker and Otis they have found our number, and we theirs with a simple but delicious bargain, the #3. What is the #3 you ask? Two eggs any style, three crispy strips of bacon and a cheddar biscuit. Doesn't sound like much? Ahhh, but it simply kicks ass for $4.99. The eggs are from Latta Family Farm in Hillsborough, NC. The chef clarifies the butter before nailing them just right to order; some at the Clarion favor sunny-side up. The bacon is thickly sliced and applewood smoked. The biscuit is just the right texture and density to match the rich bacon and fresh eggs. The coffee is good, but the clincher is the fresh fruit garnish. Most diners kick you down a piece of stale kale, fast food never heard of a garnish, in faux classy places its a single orange slice. At Parker and Otis, where they care about what you eat, in recent weeks it has been a succulent fresh strawberry and a wedge of juicy pineapple. The coup de grace and the perfect palate cleanser.

A photo essay by train

These photos were taken from the Amtrak train, The Carolinian, December 2007.

Careful on the internet

Associated Press photo


Be careful what you post on the internet. The warning has been in the air for years now, but the relevance of the maxim continues to grow. No longer is it just job and school applicants who must be careful what prospective employers and admissions officers are seeing on their Myspace profiles or Facebook walls. There is a growing array of criminal investigation and prosecution that is using the information willingly provided on these sites to catch criminals. And now, we read, using these sites and the pictures on them to influence judges and juries sentencing of criminals.

The Clarion read only today about a twenty year old, Providence, Rhode Island drunk driver who had seriously injured a fellow youth in a drunk driving crash. Less than two weeks later, while the victim was still in the hospital, there were pictures of him partying it up posted on somebody's Facebook. The pictures (see above) showed him laughing and drinking at a Halloween party while wearing an orange prison jumpsuit costume.

Prosecutors were alerted to the existence of the pictures, and changed their sentencing recommendation from probation to two years in prison. The judge agreed, and called the pictures depraved when ordering the man to do two years in prison.

US Air where your safety comes first

US Air where your safety comes first, or at least second, after costs and profit margins; that's how the Clarion reads remarks this week by US Air pilots about the carrier's shocking and potentially unsafe practices.

Eight pilots have filed complaints against the airline for allowing their aircraft to fly dangerous low on fuel in attempt to cut costs. Less fuel when a plane departs is less weight and therefore better fuel mileage. Pilots said in a full page ad in USA Today that US Air was ordering them to depart with less safety margin fuel than they felt necessary. FAA regulations require all domestic flights have at least forty-five extra hour worth of fuel than it would take to get their destination. (In 1990 an Avianca Airlines plane ran out of fuel after a lengthy holding pattern over Kennedy Airport and crashed into Long Island, killing seventy-three.)

Pilots who have been requesting more fuel than the company policy deems necessary have been ordered to attend punitive training sessions to explain why. The carrier denies the pilots claims, and says the extra training sessions are an opportunity for the pilots to explain their requests for additional fuel. The company further says that its policy is for planes to have an extra hour's worth of fuel per flight.

Note that all of this is occurring in the context of a labor dispute between the company and the pilots.

Jet fuel recently surpassed labor as airlines' biggest cost.

Belmar, NJ

Belmar is back. Not that it was ever really gone as a legendary Jersey shore party destination, but this week town officials acknowledged the silliness of some of their P.C. inspired recent laws and repealed them.

These included laws that made it illegal to flip someone the bird in public or to have a keg on the beach. Wait, what, when was it ever illegal to have a keg on the beach in Belmar?

AOL travel news quotes Mayor Ken Pringle, "I'm not sure anyone even knew that making obscene gestures was illegal. Right after we send out our tax bills, I tend to see a few."

Belmar realized it is tough to be the Daytona Beach of the north when your laws are more restrictive then other local shore towns. Make more restrictive laws and the revelers just go somewhere else. Duh.

Open those pipes

So said the chairman of the FCC to Comcast..."Open those pipes."

Even the business pandering chairman of the FCC, Kevin Martin found Comcast's broadband networks practice of denying service to certain websites and blocking file sharing to be against the rules. Score one for the little guy! Or at least until the four other commissioners of the FCC weigh in with their votes. Martin's order requires a majority of the five commissioners to support it, and while he found a libertarian streak, there is no guarantee the other commissioners will.

The way the Clarion reads the tea leaves there are two "No" votes, one "Yes" vote, and a hard to call, which must come through for Chairman Martin to win 3-2.

Martin's long awaited ruling said in part, (that he found) "Comcast's broadband network management practices to be in violation of the FCC's policy principles."

Also that, "Comcast is broadly and arbitrarily blocking subscriber access to the legal Internet content of their choice."

He said they should, "fully disclose the limitations on the use of bandwidth for subscribers so they know exactly what they are paying for."

This is an important ruling because as more and more consumers get broadband access in their homes, more and more big files will becoming down the pipes, and the incentives for the monopolistic cable-internet providers to commit monkey business will be greater. They will punish the users of the greatest amounts bandwith, if not with denial of service, then with higher charges. Cable-internet providers will do this so that they can maximize their total net number of users and thus revenue while denying consumers free choice in a market where they have a monopoly on service provision. This was definitely an area the FCC needed to step into definitively and strongly.

We will keep you posted on how the commission votes.

Read more here from PC Magazine.

Gas Prices

A very unscientific list of gas prices observed by the Clarion's staff on the I-85/I-95 corridor (Durham to New York City) between June 18th to July 6th.

on the Jersey Turnpike $3.97/gal.

near Philadelphia Pennsylvania $3.95/gal.

in Delaware $3.99/gal.

in Maryland $4.06/gal.

just south of Washington, D.C. $4.06/gal.

in Richmond, Va. $3.89/gal.

Strictly anecdotal observation. But for an interesting aggregator of such anecdotal information check out gasbuddy.com here. It's free and it might save you a couple of bucks. (search by zip code)