How long?

As in, she laid there, how long?



Although calls to the Los Angeles County Coroners office went unreturned Reuters is reporting Playboy's Miss July 1959 was found dead at her Beverly Hills home after evidently being undiscovered for up to a year. Neighbors grew suspicious when they noticed cobwebs on the mailbox. She was in her bed, dead of what was said to be natural causes, the space heater in the room was still running, a year later, alongside her dry, mummified corpse.

Yvette Vickers,would have been eighty-two when her body was found April 27th, 2011. In the 1950's her film credits included "Attack of the 50 Foot Woman" and "Attack of the Giant Leeches."

Her last role was twenty-one long years ago in a 1990 horror flick called "Evil Spirits."

Creepy.

Internalizing

A fascinating little video clip here via the Twitter of Courtney Roskop.

Not at all clear on the context, but love the premise.

It would appear that the video game's characters are being played by actors who are musing on the morality of giving this kind of über-violent game to intelligent people. How would those people react? But before they can give an answer, they are interrupted by the squirrel and have to go back into shoot'em up mode. No time for thinking!

What a wonderful little Möbius strip of thought.

Billboards

Californian parents are apparently upset about billboards advertising the video game, "Duke Nukem Forever," a first-person shooter game for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. The reason for their angst supposedly resides in the salacious nature of the game rather than in the locations of said billboards, one is across from elementary school, the other near a church.

The Clarion Content would have preferred these folks fought the initial construction of an advertising platform near these important places, as opposed waiting to object to particular subject matter. This smacks of a First Amendment issue. The Clarion Content is loathe to use the Constitution to defend businesses right to advertise. We would prefer to argue that if corporations were not treated as persons under the law, no such right would exist.

"Duke Nukem Forever" is labeled "Mature" by the Entertainment Software Rating Board, suitable for those 17 and older. Read more about the game and the debate here.

Apparently luckily for the parents, the gameplay isn't all that good, so the kids may hate it, of their own volition, for an entirely more utilitarian reason.


How about the use of the American flag here if you want to talk about salacious degradation? Backwards, at that.

Klosterman IV

Cultural insight from Chuck Klosterman from his book Klosterman IV

American culture is... obsessed with health. We are obsessed with pleasure. We are obsessed with speed. We are obsessed with efficiency. In simplest terms, we are obsessed by the desire to accelerate every element of our existence in a futile attempt to experience as much life as we can in the shortest possible time. We have all entered in a race to devour the largest volume of gratification before it kills us.

Charity

The famous 12th century Spanish Jew pictured above, Moses ben-Maimon, is more commonly known as Maimonides. The Clarion Content's editor has long been fond of the code of charitable giving that he wrote. Maimonides wrote a lot of things in his time, Abraham J. Heschel once said, "If one did not know that Maimonides was the name of a man, one would assume it was the name of a university."

The Clarion Content likes the code of charitable conduct because the by-laws of dignity imply there is a grace to giving charity properly. We like this guidance.

Maimonides on Charitable Giving (paraphrased)

The highest degree of charity, exceeded by none, is that of finding a person a job, gainful employment, a business or a craft, an opportunity to provide for him or herself, that leaves them henceforth no longer dependent on the aid of others.

The next step beneath that is anonymous charitable giving where the giver does not know whom the recipient is going to be (only that the cause is good) and the donor remains anonymous, that is, he or she does not take credit for the charitable giving done publicly, anywhere. It is anonymous charity.

The next step beneath that is anonymous charitable giving where the giver does know whom the recipient is going to be. The identity of the donor is still anonymous, but the donor has direct how, where, and/or to whom the charity is to be distributed.

The next step beneath that is where the recipient of the aid knows where it is coming from, that is to say the giver proclaims somewhere publicly that they are giving the charity, but they are not told the exact how, where, and/or to whom the charity is to be distributed.

The next level is a where the giver and the receiver both know each other, but the giver gives the charity, help, aid or assistance before the recipient even has to ask for it.

The next degree lower is the giver who gives charitably only after the poor person asks directly, e.g., they are shamed into it.

Maimonides says the next degree lower than that is the person who gives less than can really afford to or should give, less than charitably, but at least they do not begrudge what they give.

Finally, the lowest degree is those who give less than they can afford to give, and give that begrudgingly and morosely.

Of course, below that would be those who give not all.

Food for thought.

Twain masters meeting

They say never the twain shall meet. Are they right? Or can we close this energetic web that is our time defiant singularity?

Charlie Sheen in motion

Charlie Sheen is not standing still. He has yet to recover his "Two and a Half Men" gig, and at the Clarion Content we like Bill Simmons suggestion that Rob Lowe would be a near seamless replacement.

Meanwhile Charlie and team #tigerblood had their first live show last night. It was widely panned by the critics and apparently booed in Detroit. Tough crowd in a downtrodden city, Bree Olsen and Natalie Kenly making out to open the show was applauded, somewhere shortly after that Charlie lost his way. At the Clarion Content we do not see this is a reflection of Sheen's lack of talent. Rather, the way we read the reviews, Sheen was punished for his lack of investment in good writers. People did not like his impromptu rants and Sheen admitted too much of his material was unscripted. Reshowing clips from his interviews, sounds and feels stale.

Sheen needs a good team of writers to channel his neurosis. He should be free flowing in an unremittingly self-parodying way. If he is going to get up on stage, he cannot be Sean Penn ranting his opinions at people. The masses are far more delighted by the Reality show paradigm, from Jersey Shore to someone like Kacey Jordan publishing her life and adventures on Twitter. When Charlie was #winning he was a firehose of moments, events, and adventures, the culture was participating in the Sheen experience. What was he going to do next? Society just couldn't look away, we had to know.

Can he recapture that? Probably not. But could a team of good writers do him up a brilliant self-parodyingly funny one man show that he could do every night? Definitely. Sheen can act. Team #tigerblood just needs to find the right sharp pens and it will be #winning again.

Rebecca Black sets new cultural speed record

Rebecca Black has set the new cultural landspeed record from nowhere-dom to superstardom. Andy Wharol's fifteen minutes are officially obsolete. As the thirteen year-old Ms. Black told Jay Leno, on the Tonight Show, [paraphrasing] "One day I am coming home from school and it is 4,000 views, the next day its four million, six weeks later I am on network television." Ms. Black rise was unprecedentedly meteoric, even in the age of viral video, yet, in her Leno interview she seems remarkable well-adjusted, even wholesome. Although, perhaps it has all happened so fast that she hasn't yet had the opportunity to become jaded.

She has debuted stronger on i-Tunes than Justin Bieber's latest single.

The feeling here is that Rebecca Black does not so much signal the coming of a new paradigm, she symbolizes the triumph of new modes of cultural transmission that have already quite securely taken hold. From American Idol to Twitter to Google's sponsorship of the World's First Online Science Fair, direct routes to the top of the Q ratings and a global platform have appeared where no such passages previously existed.

And really, just how different is Rebecca Black's single from say that of a Miley Cyrus who took a more traditional route to global superstardom (nepotism).

Regina Spektor

The music of Regina Spektor shatters the glass cage that is want to drop round my soul.

The Wisdom of Kelly Oxford

"Adulthood is the moment you switch from taking the occasional drug to trip out, to taking the occasional drug to feel normal."---Kelly Oxford

What's My Line? Reset

You may, dear readers, remember this author and Clarion Content guest columnist, one of Durham's own, from his on-going work of meta-fiction. The hilarious and wildly popular, The Unauthorized Autobiography of G.Ia.M'Rock. Read the old chapters here. Today he muses on memory and fame. Check out this piece and accompanying clip from the old television show, "What's My Line?"

It's a curious thing, fame. How someone who is well known to the nation or even the world at one time can be completely anonymous at another time, or vice versa. I doubt many of my compatriots could identify Humphrey Bogart, even in his trademark fedora and trenchcoat. And yet my grandfather would be at a loss to pick out Justin Bieber from any sort of lineup.

I don't know if you're familiar with the old panel show "What's my Line", but it's a guessing game where a panel of four famous contestants try to identify the occupation of someone of less renown. When the guest has a famous face, the panelists are blind folded, but in this particularly amusing section, someone whose face is now legendary, sits calmly in front of a group of people who have no idea who he is. At the end of the clip, he describes how big his fame has spread, and it makes you sort of wonder about the effects of advertising on our consciousness.

Simple advice

Baby Talk

This is something the intuitive have known for a long time. Baby's brains are ready and open for business from a very young age. Baby talk is the foundation of language. It is how babies practice and imitate the adults around them. Ask a smart parent, they will tell you.

The scientists are catching on, too. M.D. Perri Klass in the New York Times, "Babble is increasingly being understood as an essential precursor to speech, and as a key predictor of both cognitive and social emotional development."

What is more interesting is first-year babies all over the world babble in similar ways, but during their second year, toddlers mold their sounds into the words of their native tongues.

This has implications for linguistics that stretch from the Biblical Tower of Babble story to the co-development of the human species.

For parents this is a reminder to talk to your kids even from the youngest age. Scientists' research indicates that babble has cognition in common with questions. Babies' brains are open for reception when they are babbling along in baby talk. Research also suggests that the television and the computer don't substitute for human interaction when it comes to language learning. Babies are picking up on facial clues and gestures as an essential part of their language skill development.

The New York Times reports that a baby hears much of language and is able to differentiate well before it can reproduce the same range of sounds. The experiments argue that a baby’s vocalizations signal a state of focused attention and a readiness to learn. When parents respond to babble by naming the object at hand babies are more likely to learn words.

This kind of linguistic and neurological digging is a wonderful nexus for people to understand our common humanity. And a great reason to start talking to your kids as early as you can.

Duke F*ckbook follow-up

Just a brief follow-up about the PowerPoint sexual conquest list published (allegedly accidentally) by a graduating Duke Senior. As we noted in our original piece, several days before the national media descended on Duke and Durham to write their version, the story is so much bigger because the Duke F*ckbook was written by a woman.

There is a double standard for male and female sexual conquest. American society has yet to stop placing women on a pedestal that somehow demands different and more chaste behavior. One might hope in this day and age that we had come further than that. A New York Times piece today recalls a similar scandal that took place at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the 1970's. In this case two women at MIT published a similar rating of the sexual methods and prowess of thirty-six male undergraduates. The report appeared in an alternative campus newspaper as a, "Consumer Guide to M.I.T. Men." The idea was to "turn the tables" and show men how it feels for women to be objectified. The double standard in the guise of the university reared its ugly head and the two women were put on academic probation for 10 months.

Will Duke sanction Karen Owens? We sincerely hope not.

Duke F*ckbook

This is a surprise. It is emblematic of the multiplier effect of the internet. A Duke student, class of 2010, named Karen Owens created a Power Point presentation detailing graphically the guys she hooked up with in college. She says that she never intended for it to go public. She only forwarded it to three friends. But it has gone viral!

It is all over the internet.

The Clarion Content is headquartered here in Durham, NC. We know from Shooters.

It is our belief that people have collated lists of folks they have had carnal relations with since the beginning of time. Ms. Owens' list is such a salacious scandal because of the prestigious Duke University name attached. (Note: she did not get with any of Coach K's ballplayers.) Duke lacrosse's slimy history and well-deserved reputation also made this story bigger. (Several of her conquests were lacrosse players.)

What should not make the story bigger or more scandalous is the fact that it was conceived of and carried out by a woman. The double standard of women are sluts and men are studs should crumble in the face of this kind of brazen attitude. Women talk about sex, too, her Carrie Bradshaw like manner and voice was the best part of the story.

See the whole Power Point (names redacted) here.

Poem of a Lost Generation

This brilliant poem by Jonathan Reed has received more 13 million views on You Tube.



Thanks to the Morris County New Jersey contributor who sent it our way!

Milgram revisted

State-owned, France 2 channel broadcast a documentary last Wednesday night. This documentary attempted to imitate the famous experiments of Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram. Milgram's experiment, in his view, was a test of the collective culpability, the obedience component of the Shoah, the Holocaust.

The test involved one subject, one examiner and one accomplice. The accomplice played a test subject as well. The actual subject was induced to believe that both they and the accomplice were test subjects. The basic game is that the subject, called "teacher," examines the accomplice called "leaner," on word memorization. After wrong answers the subject/teacher was supposed to shock the accomplice/learner, played by a trained actor. No actual shocks were administered, but subject/teachers were convinced that they were doling out actual electric shocks gradually increasing in voltage for 15 volts to 450 volts, by the end of the "game." Literally convulsing the accomplice/learner. Crucially the subject/teacher was given a 15 volt real demonstration shock just before the start of the "game," so as to understand how it would ostensibly work for the subject/learner. (Wiki does a surprisingly good recap here.)

The French documentary attempted to recreate the scenario. In a non scientific sampling, 82% of participants, in the ludicrously named, fake TV show "The Game of Death" agreed to pull the lever to inflict electric shocks, gradually increasing in voltage, on their "opponents." Again instead of real subjects, they were but actor/opponents/accomplishes, not really being shocked. Interestingly the BBC reports that, "'The Game of Death' has all the trappings of a traditional TV quiz show, with a roaring crowd chanting "punishment" and a glamorous hostess urging the players on." A horrifying self-fulfillingly megalomaniacal set-up.

Ultimately, the Clarion Content, having read Eric Hoffer's True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements, fears for our collective humanity. Careful with your demagogues, because who knows what we are capable of, six species epochs have gone before us.

The Friday Night E-mail shutdown

The Clarion Content has observed a phenomenon at our offices and in the personal lives of our staff. We call it The "Friday night e-mail shutdown," though it goes on for the whole weekend. We want to ask you, dear readers, is it as pervasive for you as it is for us?

In our little corner of the world, the weekend nearly brings to a halt email communication. We are deluged all week. People expect responses to emails within hours, if not minutes. Then suddenly just after about 6pm Eastern, there is an abrupt and fairly complete drop off to our email traffic, from heavy to near nil. Even the folks who usually reply in five minutes all week, disappear.

Is this true for you, too?

There are probably a couple of phenomenons at work here. One is texting. Social planning of a rapid and semi-spontaneous nature is far easier via text than e-mail. Two is Facebook, a far more social milieu than e-mail (The Clarion Content does not Facebook, but so we hear.) Perhaps a third, is that people who spend so much time working in front of their computer all week are ready to get out from in front of a computer by the weekend, to leave it behind, like letting go the shackles of work itself. We have various friends of the Clarion Content who we know fall into that category. Email even more than computing in general seems to be associated with work and obligation. Many emails are requests for one to do something. Respond or react to something. Have an opinion on something. Sign a petition on something. Action and doing required. Effort.

What say you, dear readers? Are you reading this column on a Monday having spent the weekend away from your computer and email?

Calvin and Hobbes creator

Bill Watterson the creator of the legendary comic strip Calvin and Hobbes broke a twenty-year silence this week. He had not given an interview since 1989. A proud Clevelander, Watterson sill lives in the greater Cleveland area. He answered a few questions for his hometown paper, The Cleveland Plain Dealer. The Clarion Content cannot help but wonder if he was influenced by the recent passing of one of the other all-time famous recluses, J.D. Salinger. Both men were brilliant thinkers in their own mediums. We can't help but believe that the explosion of media attention surrounding Salinger's death, and the subsequent speculation into the vacuum that Salinger left, had to influence Watterson's decision to air some of his positions now. Less is more up to a point, but leave the masses too blank a slate and they will make use of it. Read the whole Plain Dealer article here.

It all depends on who's counting

The story has been everywhere. Avatar is a $1 billion dollar movie. It is the highest grossing movie of all time. But as we have long heard, "There are three ways to not tell the truth: lies, damned lies, and statistics." Is Avatar's claim to be the biggest movie ever subject to this cliche? An interesting article in the Los Angeles Times makes the case.

The issue in question as the LA Times frames it, is Avatar the largest box office movie ever? As is so often the situation, the answer depends on how one frames the question. Avatar is indeed the biggest grossing moving of all-time when analyzing gross revenues, i.e. total dollars. However, when the metric is changed to adjust for inflation, the Avatar is nowhere to be found.

The biggest movie of all-time for individual ticket sales, i.e. fannies in the seats, and the biggest movie of all-time when considering inflation adjusted gross revenues are the same flick, "Gone With Wind." It garnered what would be in today's dollars nearly $1.5 billion in ticket sales. To give you an idea, dear readers, of just how different the two lists are, check this out from the Times: the all-time not adjusted for inflation gross revenue top 50 list includes only five films from before 1997, but check the adjusted for inflation gross revenue top 10 list, there's only one film, "Titanic," that was released in the last 30 years.

This phenomenon is part of longer term trend in American cultural history where folks conflate the most recent and the best. America wants everything that is new to be improved, new and improved are as linked as peanut butter and jelly in the American psyche. It is not good enough to simply be the best home run hitter or the best sprinter of one's era, one must be the best ever. The Clarion Content worries that this kind of thinking provokes a vicious cycle that labels far too many tremendous efforts failures. The movies are apparently not exempt. The LA Times writer, Patrick Goldstein sums it up well, "I don't know about you, but when I think of how much cultural heft a film has, I'm more interested in how many people enjoyed the communal delight of being in front of the big screen, not simply how much money they had to pay to see it."

Lies, damned lies, and statistics.