What they are watching...Episode XVII

Our look at what the teens and tweens of America are watching. We peer into their world through the lens of Youtube. You may have caught some of our earlier episodes, if not, follow this link and [scroll down].

The kids they still love the physical comedy and the slapstick humor. The message is in the action, not some highfalutin reference or irony. Check out the satirization of country singer Kenny Rogers below doing "Jackass", the eighth graders who sent this video our way had no idea who Kenny Rogers was, nor had they ever seen him. They still found this video utterly hilarious.

What are they watching... Episode XVI

Our look at what the teens and tweens of America are watching. You may have caught some of our earlier episodes, if not, follow this link and [scroll down].

The kids they love the Auto-tune, Christina Aguilera's opinion not withstanding. Likely, we are witnessing the first Auto-tune generation, people who do not remember before it was possible to bend pitch to the nearest true tone. Of course, those are not the only fun and games that you can play with Auto-tune, see the witness below for evidence.

Dumas to come to the screen

The works of Alexandre Dumas, particularly the Three Musketeers, have been favorites of the silver screen. Now the renowed French actor, Gerard Depardieu, wants to bring the life of Dumas, himself, to the cinema. Depardieu hopes to develop a joint film project with Azerbaijan. Dumas traveled throughout the Karabakh in the 19th century and stayed with a poet, who was a daughter of the last Khan of Karabakh Natavan.

In the modern era this area has been a flashpoint of tension between Armenians, Azerbaijanis and an imperialistic Russia.

Depardieu will have to work very carefully around the literal and proverbial minefields, if he is to bring Dumas's life to the screen.

Think your office is getting smaller?

It is probably because it is.



The Los Angeles Times reports that in the 1970s, American companies typically believed that they needed 500 to 700 square feet per employee to build an effectively functioning office. Today, the average is barely more than 200 square feet per person, and the space allocated could hit a mere 50 square feet per by the year 2015. The Times cites several long-term trends that are converging to crunch office space. Technologies like laptops over desktop computers, cellphones over landlines and outsourced data back-up over in-house servers are finally beginning to affect the way offices are laid out. Younger employees are more used to working in communal spaces and as part of a team. Part of the reason too is economic, cubicles have shrunk from an average of 64 sq.ft. to 49 sq.ft. in recent years, and companies continue to look for more ways to stretch their real estate dollar.

Imagine what the office will look like when the Facebook generation arrives.

The LA Times predicts a revolution in the commercial real estate market quoting Peter Miscovich, who studies workplace trends as a managing director at brokerage Jones Lang LaSalle, "We're at a very interesting inflection point in real estate history. The next 10 years will be very different than the last 30."

Read the whole article here.

New Wal-Mart coming to Durham

More of Wal-Mart in Durham

Have you have ever wondered why the parking lot for the Lowe's hardware store at Martin Luther King and Fayetteville Road always seemed too big? After all, Durham is filled with ridiculous parking lots with spots jammed in at the most illogical of angles, just to meet code.

Of course, there is a reason. It had long been rumored that there would be a Wal-Mart on that site. Today the Triangle Business Journal is reporting it will indeed happen,

"The retailer will begin construction soon on a new Wal-Mart store on land it purchased in 2006 on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in Durham... The new Durham store, which will be at 1010 Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, will not carry the supercenter title, but the 109,180-square-foot building will be a full-service store with extended grocery selections, a deli section, a meats department and a pharmacy."

There is probably an interesting debate

Auto-tune is a fascinating ethical conundrum.



But it is hard to argue with Ms. Aguilera's position...

Dogs

Dogs Playing Poker is a classic piece of American Pop Art.



It was originally a series of sixteen oil paintings by C. M. Coolidge.



Commissioned in 1903 to advertise cigars...



It has spawned numerous beguiling imitators. Check out a few here.










These dogs inspired this piece.



They like they just won a poker game...

More Gaian evidence

The Clarion Content is an unabashed support of the Gaia theory. We read several years back about work being done on parasitic worms, the human digestive tract and autoimmune disorders. The basic premise being that when human's used to spend a lot less time and energy sanitizing our food, we were a lot less susceptible to autoimmune disorders.

Naturally, this struck our Gaian heart as a likely candidate for a symbiotic relationship. Research has increasing born this theory out, although it is still highly controversial in the United States. Parasitic worms (likely worms in general) carry connotations far beyond the more common archetypes of natural healing; we are not talking wheat grass shots, yoga or even acupuncture here. We are talking extracting roundworm eggs from the stool of an eleven year-old infected girl, cleaning them and eating them. Or putting hookworm larva on a patient's arm so they burrow through the skin enter the bloodstream and make their way into one's intestines.

Yet the results have been compelling. Many of the Man's pigeons pooh-pooh evidence found on blogs. Read then an amazing tale on CNN backing the theories originally popularized by Dr. Joel Weinstock, chief of gastroenterology at Tufts University Medical School.

Humans lived with worms in our intestines for thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of years. Is it really so odd that our bodies and theirs learned to work together?