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Carpe Donut

Dear Members and Constituents,
What do you call it when your sister is in tears because the only tool she has to search in the dark for her lost shawl is a bioluminescent sphere? You ready? It's a glow-ball find-a-shawl cry-Sis'. Yeah, I know, it's bad. Very bad.

On a slightly more serious note, had you looked at yesterday's Top 10 Google "Hot Trends" you would have found no trace of a global financial crisis. Sure, Mauritania is in trouble (two of the top ten trends focus on it) and there is a pet chain allegedly abusing puppies, however, the majority of the searches --six of them-- are for celebrities (the remaining trend, if you are counting, is for a movie called "Twilight"). You might argue searching for crisis-related topics is unnecessary due to the constant bombardment we receive from the media. You might also argue the more serious trends get buried deeper and cannot be uncovered with a cursory sampling. I, for one, think this mundane sampling of what people are searching for on the internet is an encouraging sign folks are continuing to live their everyday lives. Curiosity about a porn star lawsuit or what prince Andrew is packing (I could not have made these two up) continues to motivate people to search the web.

The sun rose again today. There are donuts at my desk again today. Amanda Tierney (our donut girl) celebrates her birthday again today. And it's comforting to know that if you look at the Google Top 10 Hot Trends again today, while the list bears no resemblance to yesterday's (some three weather-related searches, three mass media stations, three historic characters and a different porn starlet), one common theme is still no crisis-related searches in the top 10.

"Carpe diem quam minimum credula postero" -- Horace
(Pluck the day, minimizing your reliance on the future)

Happy Friday!
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