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."