Posthumous changes

The Clarion Content's Pop Culture editor has not yet read Ernest Hemingway's, A Moveable Feast, though ironically a painter we know had just been encouraging us to do so. The book was first published in 1964. It is a memoir of the times Hemingway spent in Paris in the 1920s, eating, drinking and living. He was part of a group of well known American expatriate writers. Among the prominent people who make an appearance in the book are Aleister Crowley, Ezra Pound, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ford Madox Ford, Hilaire Belloc, Pascin, John Dos Passos, James Joyce and Gertrude Stein.

Now, according to Hemingway's good friend A.E. Hotchner writing in the New York Times, Scribner's publishing has conspired with Hemingway's grandson to create a sanitized, bastardized, disnified version of the book. Hotchner says in a Times opinion piece,

"The grandson has removed several sections of the book’s final chapter and replaced them with other writing of Hemingway’s that the grandson feels paints his grandma in a more sympathetic light. Ten other chapters that roused the grandson’s displeasure have been relegated to an appendix...[apparently] he doesn’t like what the original said about his grandmother, Hemingway’s second wife."

Hotchner, an author and playwright himself, strenuously objects to the new truncated version and Scribner's willingness to conspire in such deceptive editing. As he so eloquently puts it,

"I am concerned by Scribner’s involvement in this “restored edition.” With this reworking as a precedent, what will Scribner do, for instance, if a descendant of F. Scott Fitzgerald demands the removal of the chapter in A Moveable Feast about the size of Fitzgerald’s penis, or if Ford Madox Ford’s grandson wants to delete references to his ancestor’s body odor.

All publishers, Scribner included, are guardians of the books that authors entrust to them. Someone who inherits an author’s copyright is not entitled to amend his work."

The Clarion Content heartily agrees. It was bad enough to authorize a sequel to Gone with the Wind long after Margaret Mitchell and worse yet to speculate on how Dune would have ended when Frank Herbert died in the middle of the series, but to change something that was patently published as non-fiction is far worse. Scribner should be ashamed!

Seasonal Migration

Probably, dear readers, you have heard of the huge yearly biker rally in Sturgis, South Dakota. This is after all the 69th annual rally, and it has drawn much media interest recently. Attendance in some years has been estimated as high as 500,000 people. Have you ever considered how the bikers get there? The answer is of course, they ride.

This annual migration impacts, among other things, the economies of many small towns along the way. Consider the case of Carlton, Minnesota, population 810 as of the 2000 Census. It is at the intersection of Minnesota State Highways 45 and 210. According to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, "Cops have been bracing for months. Business people are crossing their fingers." They quote a local bar owner, "It's good news, I'm excited that they're coming and look forward to seeing them." Tim Rogentine owns the Lost Isle Bar on Hwy. 210 in Carlton.

The Star-Tribune reports, "His establishment will be closed for a private function from Wednesday to Sunday." When they asked him to confirm that the Hells Angels had rented out his bar, Mr. Rogentine said: "Um, I can't say. I've signed a contract that says I can't give any interviews."

Good times. The Carlton County Sheriff, Kelly Lake, has only nineteen field officers in her Sheriff's department.

Drinking and dementia

Sots everywhere rejoice! A new study conducted by Wake Forest University and presented at the International Conference on Alzheimer's Disease found that moderate drinkers have a 37% lower risk of dementia amongst those who were cognitively normal at the start of the study.

Drink more, think more, is not quite the conclusion though. The study also found that if you are over the age of seventy-five and still consuming more than 14 drinks a week you are at twice the normal risk of developing dementia.

The BBC reports that, "lead researcher Dr. Kaycee Sink said: "There are several possible ways in which moderate drinking might be associated with reduced risk of dementia.

"One is the same as the way we think moderate alcohol reduces the risk of heart disease, by beneficial effects on HDL cholesterol and blocking platelets.

"Additionally, animal studies have shown that low amounts of alcohol stimulate the release of acetylcholine, a chemical in the brain that is important in memory."

Read the whole story here.

New Ocean Current path

Research led by oceanographers at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and Duke University have added to the complicated model of the North Atlantic Ocean currents. This new evaluation may have substantial impact on scientists' understanding of climate change.

Using field observations and computer models, their study shows that much of the southward flow of cold water from the Labrador Sea moves not along the deep western boundary current, but along a previously unknown path in the interior of the North Atlantic.

The study by Amy Bower, a senior scientist in the WHOI Department of Physical Oceanography, and Susan Lozier, a professor of physical oceanography at Duke University's Nicholas School of the Environment, was published in the May 14 issue of the research journal Nature.

The bearing this study has on climate change analysis is as follows according to Dr. Lozier, "This finding means it is going to be more difficult to measure climate signals in the deep ocean. We thought we could just measure them in the Deep Western Boundary Current, but we really can't." The cold southward-flowing water is thought to influence and perhaps moderate human-caused climate change.

Read more here at Terra Daily.com.

How to put out a grease fire

This excellent video came our way from a New York City reader. It is a very dramatic demonstration of how to deal with and how not deal with a grease fire. Do NOT throw water on a grease fire ever, it will explode. The water, being heavier than oil, sinks to the bottom where it instantly becomes superheated. The explosive force of the steam blows the burning oil up and out. Also, do not throw sugar or flour on a grease fire. One cup of either creates the explosive force of two sticks of dynamite.

Overreaction

This story is from the you can't touch this files. As in, you can't make this stuff up!

Dateline Torrington, Connecticut, a teenager hears her Mom screaming through the bedroom door. Apparently she does not listen closely to the screams, and assumes her mother is being assaulted. She rushes off to round up four of her friends. They grab a baseball bat, throw open the door, and proceed to beat the snot out of the mother's boyfriend, a twenty-five year old named, Roger Swanson. Turns out Mom wasn't screaming because they were fighting, it was an "f" word, but not fighting. However, the incensed teens did not give Swanson time to state his case.

He was sent to the hospital with a black eye among other minor injuries. The woman's daughter, whose name is not being released, along with two other seventeen year-old locals and a nineteen year-old friend, were arrested and charged with assault and conspiracy by Torrington police.

Hermione on the cover of Elle

Emma Watson, known for her role as Hermione in the Harry Potter flicks, is on the cover of the British version of Elle this month. Ms. Watson has clearly grown up over the years the Potter kids have been in the limelight. Once hilariously spoofed by fellow child star Lindsay Lohan on Saturday Night Live for the adolescent sex appeal of Hermione to teen and tween boys, Ms. Watson seems comfortable in her own skin.

She will be attending Columbia University in the Fall. Watson told Elle how one of her role models, Natalie Portman had done the same by stepping back from the limelight to attend Harvard. Ms. Watson is secure in her image and self, but like the feminist icon Madonna, Ms. Watson wants to maintain control of them, rather than have them dictated to her. In her own words, "I don't want other people to decide who I am. I want to decide that for myself. I want to avoid becoming too styled and too 'done' and too generic. You see people as they go through their career and they just become more and more like everyone else. They start out with something individual about them but it gets lost. Natalie Portman is an exception. I'm in awe of how she's handled herself."

Watson who looks stunning in Elle UK's August issue appears to be headed down the right path.

Read the article here.

A gleam

Right now this budding star is just a gleam in the mind's eye, but listen to that voice.

Introducing,
Raina Gray and Alienation of Affection

Deep in Kew

Deep in Kew, England, hidden in an overlooked file in the British National Archives, a rare 250 year old copy of the United States Declaration of Independence has been found. The last such copy of the Declaration of Independence, known as a Dunlap print publicly available at auction went for $8.14 million in 2000. The Associated Press quoted a Nation Archives Colonial Specialist, "it is likely that only around 200 of these were ever printed, so uncovering a new one nearly 250 years later is extremely rare, especially one in such good condition." Only twenty-six prints of the Dunlap Broadside have ever been found.

No surprise, the researcher that found the document was looking through late 18th Century files for something entirely unrelated.

Facebook a spy?

Not Mr. Sawyers

Regular readers know that the Clarion Content's editors love to tweak Facebook for its privacy threatening forays. We know, and hope that you do too, that the company is not entirely to blame. Users are complicit. We refer you to the fascinating Esquire essay by Tom Junod about the consumer's complicity forged by agreeing to terms of service.

Here is the latest bemusing Facebook story. John Sawers, currently Britain's ambassador to the United Nations, is about to become the head of Great Britain's legendary MI6, the British Secret Intelligence Service. His wife Lady Shelley Sawers had a Facebook page. On this Facebook page she posted family photos, information about the couple's children, their apartment and their high profile-friendships. There was nothing more scandalous than the fact that the man wears Speedo's when he swims. There was some concern that revealing the location that they vacation and where they lived posed limited security risks. The AFP reports that the page has since been taken down according to the British Foreign Office.