Thursday, August 26, 2010

Help a documentary filmmaker



The producers of a documentary film about legendary Duke Track Coach Al Buehler are looking for photographs, audio, video, testimonials and other archival materials of track meets at Duke between 1971 and 2000. Buehler's Duke cross-country teams captured six ACC titles and finished second on ten other occasions. He was part of the U.S. Olympic Track and Field program at 1972, 1984 and 1988 Olympic Games.

The filmmakers project entitled, "Starting at the Finish Line: The Coach Al Buehler Story" hopefully will be screened at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival next year. If you have any material or information that might help these folks you can contact Amy Unell at coachbuehler@gmail.com. Check out the film's website here.

Special thanks to our friends at the Community Sports News for alerting us to this story.

Thursday, August 19, 2010

An Ecological Believe it or not



We ran across an ecological believe it or not out of Oregon this week for our truth trumps fiction every time files. The Associated Press is reporting that residents of Newport, Oregon and surrounding areas have discovered that shrimp bought from some local stores glows in the dark. Yep, you read that right, it glows in the dark.

Local marine biologists at Oregon State University's Sea Grant Extension say say it's due to marine bacteria that are not harmful. It can, however, apparently cause shrimp and other seafood to appear luminescent. Reportedly, the bacteria can grow at refrigerator temperatures, especially on seafood products where salt was added during processing.

Brilliant?

Thursday, August 12, 2010

A Profusion of Dragonflies



Anecdotally, the Clarion Content has seen a massive increase in the amount of dragonflies in the Durham County area this Summer. Always, with one eye open for the decline of the keystone species, either in Gaia, or in micro-local ecosystems, this has stood out. Dragonflies are everywhere. They are born and bred in standing water and we had a rainy Winter, but this seems exceptional. It is unclear what their natural predator in our area might be.

Has anyone else noticed this?

We recall reading just a few short years ago about the year of the missing acorns in Northern Virginia which quite literally drove local squirrels stark raving mad.

On-line gaming


Social City is one of Playdom's leading games...

How big has on-line gaming become? Walt Disney bought social networking games developer Playdom for $563.2 million. Playdom is a leader in games designed for and played on the social networking platforms Facebook and MySpace. Playdom was a start-up founded by a couple of UC Berkeley grads just a few short years ago.

Disney is positioning itself not only to grab a large chunk of the on-line gaming market, but grabbing new intellectual property for perspective future character vehicles: movies, cartoons, toys, etc. According to Disney CEO Robert Iger, "This acquisition furthers our strategy of allocating capital to high-growth businesses that can benefit from our many characters, stories and brands, delivering them in a creatively compelling way to a new generation of fans on the platforms they prefer."

Thanks for the heads up goes to the DailyFinance.

Monday, August 9, 2010

What they are watching...Episode X

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].

In this case "What they are watching" is a young, North Hollywood dance sensation, who appears poised to leap into stardom...Kyle Hanagami. He is beautiful and a bad ass dancer. His videos have garnered hundreds of thousands of views.

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

How to...


How to? Ask Google, of course.

We always love a fascinating sociological query here at the Clarion Content's editorial desk. We thought we might clue you into one we check on, for shits and grins, fairly regularly. As you probably already know the Google search box autoprompts responses to what you are typing in, that is to say, it makes suggestions. So if you type, "Harry Pott" Google is already guessing ahead to "Harry Potter" and "Harry Potter and the deathly hallows," as things you might be searching for.

One of our favorite little sociological games is to type the phrase "How to" into the Google search box and check out the autoprompts for what kind of stuff folks are trying to figure out how to do. We gave it a whirl today and as always the answers were amusing, if not particularly illuminating.

From Google, the top ten "How to" autoprompts...

1. How to tie a tie
2. How to train a dragon
3. How to
4. How to kiss
5. How to remove a tick
6. How to destroy angels
7. How to lose weight fast
8. How to get a passport
9. How to grill corn
10. How to draw

Almost as amusing from Google, the top ten "How do" autoprompts...

1. How do magnets work
2. How do I love thee
3. How do I get a passport
4. How do websites use cookies
5. How do I find my IP address
6. How do clouds form
7. How do you get pregnant
8. How do pirates dress
9. How do you get pink eye
10. How do you like me now

Discuss amongst yourselves.

Bad Ass Merle Haggard pic


This bad ass picture of Merle Haggard came from here...

Durham City Council rejects billboards


Billboards avoided...

The Durham City Council rejected a two year campaign by Fairway Outdoor Advertising to relocate some of its billboards, upgrade some others and convert still other billboards to digital operation. The council was unanimous in its vote, 7-0 against. The Raleigh News & Observer quoted Councilman Mike Woodard, who reported receiving more than 1,000 e-mails in opposition to Fairway's request and seven in favor of it, "This issue has united Durham like none other." The City/County Planning Department also recommended against the change, "No substantial positive effect has been identified for Durham's economic development," by changing the ordinance.

Thursday, July 29, 2010

What they are watching... Episode IX

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].

This was the theme song to the popular 1990's Nickledeon variety show, All That. It is now part of the on-going revival of 1990's culture among today's youth. The song is performed by TLC, Tionne "T-Boz" Watkins, Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes, and Rozonda "Chilli" Thomas.

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Things that need to invented, part V



We are reviving our long dormant and long overdue, "Things that need to be invented" column, hopefully heretoforth to once again be published monthly. Your brilliant suggestions are encouraged, read the other folks sweet invention ideas here [scroll down below this post]. We are so confident about the volume of your forthcoming submissions that we are kicking things back off with a triple shot of invent this.

The first thing in this month's column that needs to be invented is a cheaper electric riding lawnmower. Gas powered lawnmowers are so bad for the environment. On top of their deleterious effect on air quality and the noise pollution, they are woefully inefficient and resource wasting. We are going whole hog with the electric and hybrid cars things, why can't somebody get on it for the lawnmower market? They are quieter, way less polluting and way more fuel efficient. We could not find one cheaper than two grand. Surely they can beat that with a little more mass production. Maybe we can get a government tax credit for buying an electric lawnmower?

The next thing we would like to see invented is for Major League baseball to put its entire back catalog of game telecasts on-line. Let us, the fans, be able to look up any game, any time and stream it on-line. We would pay for this. And we are not just talking this year's game, but the historical back catalog. Think how many games diehards would watch? And if this project sounds fanciful, try to remember that just a few short years ago the idea of digitizing your entire music library to something the size of laptop, let alone i-pod, was the stuff of dreams. What an argument resolver! Want to know who was pitching in the pine tire game? Or where the use of middle relievers really started? Stream one Yankees-Royal game, stream an entire A's or White Sox season. MLB you can be America's game again, start here.

And finally in the sub-category of needs to be invented known as their needs to be an app for that... (And nobody on the Clarion Content's staff has an i-phone so please alert us if their already is an app for this...) The Craigslist Missed Connection application! Just walked by that beautiful girl or that cute guy in the coffee shop or bookstore without saying anything and regretting it already? VoilĂ , an instant Craiglist Missed Connection post. In era where texting and IMing are ubiquitous and conversation subsuming, what could be better than instantaneously being able to anonymously record on-line that you wish you would have talked to thus and such hottie?

Thank you and good night. We will return same time, same place next month. Send us your feedback and your brilliant invention suggestions.