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)

Hero

The hero

Meet a real life hero, Long Island Railroad assistant conductor Eugene Chino.

Tuesday, summoned by other patrons who thought they heard a child screaming, Chino rushed on to the tracks in Freeport, NY, as a westbound LIRR train was held in the station. Weaving through active tracks and past the electrified third rail, Chino disrupted the rape of a 28 year old woman on the tracks. A 48 year old suspect was apprehended and charged with first degree rape.

Action > Inaction.

From the wisdom of Martin Luther King, "The problems of today are not the vitriolic words and the evil actions of the bad people, but the appalling silence and inaction of the good people."

Not this time.

Hero two?

The lesson here, as always, don't mess with a Marine. Age is irrelevant.

Wednesday in Plantation, Florida, two, twenty some year old males burst into a Subway restaurant shortly after a 11pm. They demanded money and attempted to force the manager and the only customer in the store at the time into the bathroom. Unfortunately for them, 71 year former Marine, John Lovell was that customer. He had a legal handgun with a concealed carry permit. He shot both robbers. One died on the scene, the other was apprehended with a chest wound hiding in the bushes of an nearby bank.

Hmmmm, robbery was a bad idea? Crime doesn't pay?

Sadly, the criminals families have attempted to flip the script and portray the thugs as the victims.

What they didn't think somebody else, like a 70+ year old man, might shoot them if they decided to rob him and Subway? Tough luck, eh?

Gold, fools.

The price of gold has climbed through the roof in recent years, sparking, believe it or not another gold rush in America. The Clarion is not talking about the rush of folks bringing Aunt Betty's gold jewelry into the local pawn shop and turning it around for cash. Although, anecdotally, according the ad volume for such transactions, there is a lot of momentum for that kind of gold rush, too.

The Clarion, however, is talking about the old school, 49er style, honest-to-goodness, gold rush, as in take your panning equipment to a silty river or stake a claim to some land and break out your picks and shovels. The price of gold has crept up to near $900 per ounce. (Something Clarion was predicting, to loud laughter, as long ago as September 2000.) This has sparked a greatly renewed interest in gold amongst average folks. Gold prospecting vacations are at an all-time high. Mining hobby and supply shops can't keep the required equipment on the shelves, some are reporting as long as a three month backlog on new prospecting supplies. The urge stretches from coast to coast and everywhere in between, Indiana, Vermont, and Michigan, as well as more familiar, California and Alaska are just a few of the many states amateur prospectors are excited about exploring. Some experts estimate that less than 15% of the total gold deposits in California have been mined to date.

Much as it sounds like a fun adventure and/or vacation, word is don't count on it paying for the cost of your trip. If you have fun in the great outdoors, searching for gold is another way to do it, and like fishing, the stories of catches/finds get bigger and better with time.

A final word from the Economist, "The game has not changed that much since the 1850s, according to Steve Herschbach, the owner of the Alaska Mining and Diving shop in Anchorage. He figures. “If you think digging ditches in pouring down rain while being eaten alive by bugs is fun, well you're gonna love gold mining.”

Canadians sue Facebook

A group of law students at the University of Ottawa have filed a complaint with Canada's Federal Privacy Commissioner. The students allege Facebook has committed 22 violations of Canadian privacy law. The accusations include that Facebook does not inform members about how their personal, supposedly private, information is disclosed to third parties for advertising and other for-profit activities, and also that it doesn't get permission from Facebook's users to do said information sharing.

The Clarion was concerned earlier this year when the stories surrounding the Facebook beacon broke. Anytime a social networking site concedes it is deliberately tracking users personal information and habits for sale it is worrisome. This kind of search technology is the internet at its most nefarious, privacy invading level.

Among the companies Facebook has informational alliances with Blockbuster Video, CBS, Travelocity, Hot Wire, eBay, The New York Times, Overstock.com, along with many, many others. Blockbuster is currently being sued in Texas over information it got on Facebook's users without their knowledge or consent.

Grateful not to be starving

Wanted to take a time out here at the Clarion.

We want to acknowledge how grateful we are to be where we are, in this country, in this day and age. We, like almost all Americans, should be profoundly grateful we are in no imminent danger of starving. During the course of human history this has not been the case for most human beings. Though things have improved, steadily if unevenly, still in the last 50 some odd years since the end of World War II, during the dawn of a post-modern era, untold millions have starved.

Any American who has traveled to the so-labeled 3rd world and gotten outside of the resorts will tell the tale. Unequivocally, most Americans are lottery winners in the game global population distribution. We are very lucky. We should be grateful. And hopefully we are grateful.

It is our firm belief that many Americans know this and feel gratitude. It is again to the fore because of the global food crisis that is unfolding. The good news is there has been some recognition and awareness as this situation has developed. Already America and Great Britain are responding with emergency food aid. The bad news is how severe some commentators say the situation is and how though the issue was seen coming, how little proactive action was taken. The skyrocketing cost of transportation is a key element in the rise of food prices. This price surge has been significant. The costs of other commodities have also been on the rise. The expanding middle class of China and India are contributing to the demand boom pushing price pressures.

Conditions are dire in some places. While it is not clearly dire in all of the following countries there have been outbreaks of rioting in Haiti, Cameroon, Bangladesh Indonesia, Cambodia, Egypt, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Mauritania and Senegal. The crisis has been further stoked by the concomitant rise in the costs of staple cooking oils and fertilizer in many of the same countries. Tragically food crises tend to have exponential ripple and multiplier effects that make them worse as they go on. Malnutrition leads to less work, less fields getting tilled and planted, less efficient harvests. (As does more expensive and therefore less used fertilizer.) Worse yet, rather than respond by lowering tariffs and barriers and encouraging the production of more food, many governments have been responding with export bans and other attempts at hoarding.

The situation is difficult and there are no easy answers. We here at the Clarion don't have one. We firmly believe that deescalating the conflict in Iraq would remove some of the risk premium imposed on world oil prices and that this would have substantial positive knock on results for the price of food. But it is going to take some time for any long term changes in the course of policy, whether: deescalation, free trade or a change in biofuel strategy, to filter down to the local market place.

Emergency food aid and charity are vitally important in the short term. It is an American responsibility. (All wealthy countries share in this responsibility.) Amazingly enough, it is even an opportunity, an opportunity to burnish America's global reputation to remind the world what America once stood for, not preemptive warfare, but the Marshall Plan, not Gitmo, but the Peace Corps. America has many faces and does amazing things, the billions of dollars aid and charity that appeared in the wake of the Asian Tsunami tragedy of 2004 was but the most recent testament to this.

The final thought, gratitude. Gratitude. Not only should America and Americans participate in giving food aid worldwide, we should be profoundly grateful most of us don't need it. There are many places on this earth where stocked grocery stores and easy access to clean water would seem like luxuries.

Don't forget to give locally too!!

Advertising

The Clarion has long wondered if somewhere beyond the parameters of the debate about the First Amendment and the freedom of speech there is a socio-cultural debate we should be having about advertising. It strikes the Clarion that advertising has certain inherent flaws surrounding the need to aggrandize and the incentives to overclaim. (And of course, reflexively the urge to diminish faults or downsides.) Are these problems that may be endemic in advertising symbols, emblems, perhaps even signifiers of core defects, structural issues in the capitalist or market system, itself? Truth in advertising? Or misdirection? Fine print; let alone subliminal visual tomfoolery? Does advertising encourage us to lie to ourselves? Are there strong capital, market incentives in this day and age for our most imaginative minds to engage the arts of cultural deception? At what cost to our faith in each other and our society?

If truth be told, then what need for advertising? What value is added? Publicity?

Beyond the debate about the freedoms of speech, we must within a global cultural context ask ourselves about the nature and value of truth in the marketplace and advertising's ever increasing role. Veracity must have value. Global commerce with its infinite nodes requires ever more skepticism. Yet from this interconnected globe spanning superstructure springs back innovations that show that scale (globally interconnected commerce) can bring new ways to measure veracity and reliability, from Google search to E-Bay seller ratings.

Now here are links to two funny commercials we've recently seen blogged.

Wasted genius? You decide.

Good advertising, an oxymoron?

Funny, how it works.

Yep, somebody got paid to write this.

Pimpins versus Shubbas

Can a word be rejected on a purely aesthetic basis?

As regular readers know, the Clarion is a big fan of wordsmithery. We appreciate the new, well-crafted word. We're not exclusionary or any sort of linguistic purists. We were intellectually braised in the late, late 20th century stew of a post, post-modern era. We accept that language is an imperfect convention and a constant invention. If most all rules in this existence are to a large extent constructs and no rules are firmly affixed, well, linguistic rules are no different, they flux, too.

The two words in question today are recent additions to the Clarion's heard word lexicon, pimpins and shubbas.

Pimpins and Shubbas.

Both of these words fail to turn up at Merriam-Webster.com. The good folks at Merriam-Webster never got wind of these words. Truth be told, the Clarion hadn't either until hearing them uttered by our local, Durhamanian youth recently.

Pimpins is used to refer to one's male comrades, one's homies, one's pals, one's buddies. Used in a sentence, [talking to said buddies about leaving.] "Come on pimpins, it's time to bust out of place."

Shubba is a team of endearment for an extremely cute animal. Used in a sentence, "Aww, look at the little the shubba."

Shubba, for less than good reasons, is somehow significantly more aesthically pleasing to the Clarion's ear. It is in part connotation, shubba's are inevitably darlings, pimpins decidely less so. Beyond that, pimpins is a strange creation, ideally, grammatically, pimps has more basis. However, the fatal flaw of pimps is a decidely negative connotation, even syms don't want to be referred to as pimps. It is widely considered derraogatory. To be pimpin, or better yet big pimpin, on the other hand, is a good thing. To be pimpin is to be stylin' or looking good or rolling in it, winning at the game of life. So when one refers to one's homies as "pimpins" the connotation is then positive, they got it going on, they may even be playas, but they are not pimps. (read: misogynists)

The sound of it still doesn't roll off of the Clarion's tongue, but language is both personal and a consensus. If it works for others who are we to say, "No!" We have no such standing, nobody does except in France.

At first we thought neither of these definitions of these words made the Urban Dictionary cut. For shubba this is correct, the one definition listed is an usage the Clarion is not familiar with, shubba as an exclamation. But a closer look at the UD for pimpins, reveals definition number five, from Big Dirty (Joppa Smoot), who defines pimpins as "another name to call someone." The example of it used in a sentence is, "'Sup, pimpin." This is spot on for the sense the Clarion has heard in Durham.

In sum, despite its less than pleasing sound, pimpins is in the lexicon, alongside shubbas. No language is onomatopoeia. New words cannot, in fact, be rejected on a purely aesthetic basis. One might elect to use them more or less on the basis of aesthetic preference, as in: the Clarion is going to refer to the dudes as "pimpins" on, but not before, the Tuesday after Never. Whereas, while we are unlikely to use shubbas when speaking with homo sapiens, we are quite sure to use it when speaking with other furry creatures.

Do me a solid

Do me a solid is a wonderful new phrase that has made an appearance in the modern lexicon. It means do me a favor, but conveys a shading of the favor between friends that the Clarion most appreciates. A favor is an act of grace, consideration or sympathy. Certainly, nothing to be looked askance at, but rather to be accepted with humble gratitude and returned grace.

However, in our view, modern American society, as epitomized by the Mafia movie, has exploited the favor, turning it into a quid pro quo. A quid pro quo is in fact something quite different than a favor, it is an act done, rather than out of kindness or grace, with the expectation of the return action in mind. It is done in the mindset of, "I do this because; then you will owe me (one.) And I will be able to call on you when I need it."

Do me a solid has made an end around that kind of favor to recapture the original essence of the deed. A solid is not a favor that creates or carries with it an obligation, beyond the mutual obligation to care for one another that is inherent in real friendship. It is rather doing the right thing, the obvious act of grace. A friend comes to you in need, you do not tote up the score of whom has helped whom most recently and how much. If they say do me a solid, they need you. To do a solid is to do the right thing in that kind of situation, unquestioningly, with no expectation of return. Friends are always in each other's debt. Friends are solid. You can count on them.

“There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves.” –Jane Austen

Words sourced

The Clarion is a huge fan of wordsmithery. A word itself, that our publishing software does not approve of, despite Merriam-Webster's citation as far back as 1873. As a fan of such craftsmanship, we love Urban Dictionary.

Urban Dictionary is a dictionary composed of reader contributed definitions. The definitions are all accompanied by a thumbs up, thumbs down rating, and listed from most to least approved. Anyone can submit a definition with accompanying examples. Submissions are not paid. So rather than being edited down to one correct, or even several popular versions of any given definition, queriers looking up words see all given definitions ever posited by posters.

The Clarion is addicted to voting on other folks' definitions. Goodness, could anything make the people in my immediate family happier than a dictionary where you can vote whether or not you agree with the definition, as well as submit your own definitions. Sweetness and joy.

At the Clarion we delight in wordsmithery (see Urban Dictionary's definition of wordsmithery here. We love words, meaning and feeling, communication is our lifeblood. We hope we have explicated our favorite new tool, the Urban Dictionary for you. Now we want to throw some fresh word fuel on the fire.

Three words for your pleasure and warmth.

Scenester. Pretendica. Fatabulous.

New words? Not exactly, but only one of them can be found at our friend Merriam-Webster's website.

The first word, scenester, this is just the kind of word the Clarion loves Urban Dictionary for, a word that is clearly moving into the lexicon, but not yet officially accepted. You can see the faint outlines of this because old Merriam-Webster's claims to have scenester in its unabridged version, which has a "free trial" you can sign up for, uh, no thanks. Urban Dictionary already has it and right on the money, too. A scenester is a person who tries very hard to fit into a given scene, generally around music. They are not the true original adherents of the given trend or music, but rather the copycats. In fact, they may not be into the music at all, scenesters tend to be more into emulating the look, the fashion, and the appearance, rather than the substantial thing the scene was originally about; imitators.

The depth of definition offered at Urban Dictionary allows for such nuance. Nuance is an essential part of the structure of the Clarion's thoughts about meaning.

As for the next word, pretendica, the Clarion doesn't think even Urban Dictionary has the full scoop (yet) on how they are using it these days. The Urban Dictionary has pretendica as marijuana slang only. The Clarion will concede that it likely started there, but these days it is used to refer to anything that is a faux imitator. As in, scenesters are pretendica because they are not true believers, but rather fakers. The slang of today will also use pretendica to dis a band, bar, car, ad infinitum. If there is a version of it that can be the real deal, than there is an imitator that is pretendica. Fake Gucci handbags are pretendica. Merriam-Webster has no idea from pretendica. Hilariously trying to guess misspelling their second suggestion, after pretender, is puritanically. But give credit where due, they do know the final word, fantabulous.

Fantabulous which M-W's dates to 1957 as slang. It is also considered misspelled by the Clarion's publishing software, which was coded by illiterate degenerates no doubt. The Clarion does not doubt fantabulous's existence. We did not know it had been around that long since it sounds like something that kids just made up. And well they could have, and well within their rights they would have been to do so. Is there meaning or just nuance added by combining two words that mean basically the same thing. This begs the question, is fantabulous a portmanteau or no?

A portmanteau is a mash-up of two words that form a single word with a blended meaning of the two words that it came from; so the most cited example is usually smoggy, a word that is a combination of smokey and foggy, and an effect that is a combination of smokey and foggy. This is the key not only have the two words been shortened combined, but their meanings have been blended into the new entity. Another classic portmanteau is bionic from biological and electronic. The word that gave birth to the portmanteau, slithy failed to survive. It was coined alongside the new meaning added to portmanteau, formerly luggage, by Lewis Carroll in Through the Looking-Glass. Slithy was supposed to be a combination of slimy and lithe. Perhaps these two words are so hard to associate that their fusion was doomed. What could it possibly mean for something to be slimy and lithe, it would be so dastardly and horrible that one would hardly care to contemplate.

The Clarion would argue fantabulous fails the portmanteau test for another reason entirely, no additional meaning is obviously signified by the fusing of fantastic and fabulous into one word. It is still stupendous, awesome, marvelously good. There are a plethora of words already available to describe events, situations, personas that might be fantabulous. This is not to say it should be banned, surely there are events, situations, personas that can only be described as fantabulous. There is nuance in fantabulous. It is simply to the Clarion's judgment not a portmanteau. Ginormous fails the same test for the Clarion with much less panache. Can't ya just say HUGE!

Hike who?

Growth

Vast, endless seas of concrete,
nary a living creature in sight,
save for the paver, humans.


Ours

In a time of War,
throbbing with sacrifice,
what is not enough?

Crazy

Crazy is just a measure of deviation from the average. And what is this mythic beast average? It is not extant.

Because who among us is this average person? Is average a male or a female? Ah-ha. Already, we see the problem, is there then two averages? One for each gender?

This average person do they have 2.4 kids? Do they live in a house? An apartment? In suburbia? A city?

Are there types? Oh surely, there are types and archetypes. But when somebody tells us we’re “Crazy” or “It’s crazy,” we ususally take it mean daring or different. When someone tells you you’re crazy, it is usually a sign you have had a bold and/or innovative idea.

Trust your gut and have a good sounding board, but don’t be afraid to go way out on edge. It’s the view.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained isn’t just a saying in a universe with no rewind, it’s axiomatic.

A good friend of the Clarion’s passed us a quote not that long ago from a man who didn’t fear the crazy tag. Wore his crazy like a brightly colored scarf...Walt Whitman

“This what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward people...re-examine all you have been told in school or church or any book, dismiss what insults your very soul, and your very flesh shall become a great poem.”


Crazy, right?

Uniqueness

The Clarion found William Safire's “ON LANGUAGE” column fascinating this week (June 24th 2007). Safire examined what has happened to the meaning of the word unique. He traced how the meaning and usage of unique once considered unmodifiable by “very, quite, rather, almost or practically” has degenerated so much that it has been replaced by the phrase one-off. Safire’s definition of one-off, “without precedent, easily copied but impossible to perfectly reproduce or clone,” is spot-on.

Paradigms have shifted beneath unique in ways that undermine its meaning. One angle from which to consider the paradigm shift that has contributed to the process of the debasement of unique stems from the post-industrial revolution mode of mass production. To give but two examples; we live in a country where hundreds of thousands of virtually identical, machined to be the same, Toyota Camry’s are produced, but each one issued its own unique vehicle identification number, to become ‘your car.’ Similarly hundreds of thousands of Intel Inside CPU’s are manufactured annually, virtually identical, but boxed differently, each one shipped with its own unique IP address to become ‘your computer.’ Unique has lost something when societally we are asked to understand objects as both mass produced and individually unique. This is a classic paradigm shift, mass production has required that objects barely distinguishable to the layman as unique. Objects that are virtually identical, machined to be the same, replicas, are asked to exist is separate, discreet, individually identifiable entities. This conundrum is omni-present in the post-industrial global present, thus the need for the phrase one-off which stands in stark repose to the mass production of nominally unique products.

An one-off product is handcrafted and irreplicable. Works of Art are understood as inherently one-off. To say some thing or object is one-off is to set it in the paradigm of a different mode of creation, pre-mass production, pre-genetic engineering, where each creature, animal or plant, was self-evidently understood as one-off. Separately from modes of creation/production, we live in an age where unique has been swallowed by the level of parsing possible. For example, we are asked to understand that there are unique species. Isn’t this phrase, “unique species” an oxymoron? The grouping of creatures denoted by species stands in opposition to the original meaning of unique, as Safire refers to it, “the paradigm of absolute solitude.” Today, we face a peculiar cognitive dissonance where we are asked to accept that very different looking dogs form one unique species. Even beneath that division where once we thought each creature had its own unique DNA, that too, through cloning, has come to be understood as potentially replicable. What then can be left of our perception of uniqueness?

The Clarion would argue that the paradigm shifts that have occurred triggered the need for the phrase one-off. A linguistic revolt as it were to bring back the sense of originality, craftsmanship, creativity, Art and vitality that was once inherent in unique and omni-present in the worlds where humans dwelled. A “prototype” is the first of its kind, but it is exactly the wrong synonym for one-off. Its meaning bespeaks of its desire to be machined, to be replicated. A one-off object is “one of a kind,” crafted individually, without a thought of its replicability.

Generation Gab, a huge success!!

Generation Gab organized by one of Durham’s own, Mary Coffman, was a tremendous success. Generation Gab was an event that brought together four octogenrian women, all near lifetime citizens of Durham and a smattering of Durham’s civically oriented youth for a tea party and oral history forum. It was the first in what Ms. Coffman hopes will be a series of Durham oral history forums.

Ms. Coffman’s mother, Laurie Coffman is the pastor of Cavalry Methodist Church where the event was held. The four women, Linda Woodall, Betty Philips, Ruth Upchurch, and Louise Parrish are all long time members of Calvalry Methodist. The Coffmans aware of the personal treasure they had in their midst and anxious share, persuaded these ladies that they had organized an opportunity where their stories could be heard and valued. Mary convinced a coeterie of her own peers to spend their Saturday afternoon nibbling on delicious cucumber sandwiches, sipping tea and listening.

Mary’s vision had come together. It had originally flowed from conversations with fellow Durhamanians following viewing the recent Durham documentary, "Durham: A Self Portrait.” Twenty-something Mary has personally known these ladies since she was a young girl. Durham has changed substantially in just that time. Mary recognized that these ladies were irreplicable recepticles of Durham’s history. To offer but one example of the change in Durham between Mary’s youth and the Clarion’s establishment, the sweet smell of tobacco. The sweet smell of tobacco you say? Apparently Durham positively exuded the sweet scent for years on end. The Clarion has never smelled it, never even heard of it. But after Generation Gab when we asked around, it was firmly ensconced in the memory of all the Durhamanians who had been here when.

This was hardly the only nugget. Did you Durham once had a streetcar system? Or that the North Carolina School of Science and Math was originally Watts hospital? Or that sixty plus years ago, it was standard to finish school with 11th not 12th grade? The list goes on and on.

These amazing women, who remember filled their lives with achievement long before the groundswell of feminism in the late 1960's and 70's, literally bubbled over with stories, anecdotes and facts of Durham's rich history. It was terrific. All involved glowed with joy and wished that we had more time to explore. Fortunately, Mary Coffman is already in the process of organizing a follow-up event, much to the delight of all the participants.

Keep your eyes on the Clarion we will have the date and location as soon as it is announced.