The fourth Krispy Kreme Challenge, NC State's growing tradition, was yesterday. Bell Tower to Krispy Kreme, eat a dozen donuts, then run back (four miles) in an hour. The prize? A green t-shirt and money raised for the NC Children's Hospital.

I grew up in Sacramento, Calif. back in the 1980s, left in 1986 then moved back to town in 1996 for college. One of the region's big concerns is mass-transit, something that after explosive growth from Bay Area-evacuees, the area is still trying to get right. Raleigh seemed in a similar position back in 2002 when I moved here. So, it's with interest that I watch Raleigh and the Triangle struggle with some of the same questions of mass transit. Today's Q section in the N&O [1] asks, "Where should the Triangle put it's transit dollars?"

It's a question to answer sooner rather than later since it's harder to rework an area to fit mass transit after the building that would justify said mass transit takes place. Also: early mass transit planning shifts how and where development takes place vs. being a bolt-on after the fact.

Clears are the simple and speedy people, who tend to know the price of things before they get to the register and always have the cash or debit card ready, and step out of the way immediately to a place where they can put away their change and receipt and reassemble themselves without obstructing the flow.

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Corporate America invented self-checkout lines for Clears, which worked well for about five minutes, until someone who wasn't a Clear caused yet another human paper jam.

I'm one of those people and I hate stores that have the inefficient people (customers) check themselves out. Or worse, tune the self-scanners differently than their clerk-manned stations. If you want me to check it out myself, let me do it as fast as you allow your employees to. Still, I don't see myself ponying up $128 for the privilege.

To put the energy-using demand of meat production into easy-to-understand terms, Gidon Eshel, a geophysicist at the Bard Center, and Pamela A. Martin, an assistant professor of geophysics at the University of Chicago, calculated that if Americans were to reduce meat consumption by just 20 percent it would be as if we all switched from a standard sedan — a Camry, say — to the ultra-efficient Prius. Similarly, a study last year by the National Institute of Livestock and Grassland Science in Japan estimated that 2.2 pounds of beef is responsible for the equivalent amount of carbon dioxide emitted by the average European car every 155 miles, and burns enough energy to light a 100-watt bulb for nearly 20 days.

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Because the stomachs of cattle are meant to digest grass, not grain, cattle raised industrially thrive only in the sense that they gain weight quickly. This diet made it possible to remove cattle from their natural environment and encourage the efficiency of mass confinement and slaughter. But it causes enough health problems that administration of antibiotics is routine, so much so that it can result in antibiotic-resistant bacteria that threaten the usefulness of medicines that treat people.

1. Disclosure