Financial Content/business North Carolina index.

• Position: Tar Heel Tattler

All three indexes continued their year-end rallies through the first month of this year. Life-science stocks led the way for North Carolina large caps and small caps, while some bank shares struggled.

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* Pay per view: A survey asked what various vistas--the view, not the real estate--along the Blue Ridge Parkway would be worth if the scenery were to disappear. Visitors pegged them with price tags that averaged $468 to $519 each. Pollsters didn't ask how many were willing to pay that for a peek.

* Check out: Johnston County lawmen warned merchants to be on the lookout for counterfeit checks bearing the number of the county jail's trust account, designed to safeguard inmates' cash while they're behind bars. A former jailbird tried to feather his nest by using the number on bogus checks he printed from his home computer.

* Coming soon: Women will be able to give themselves orgasms by remote control, thanks to a discovery by Stuart Meloy, an anesthesiologist at Piedmont Pain Care in Winston-Salem. Receiving the signal, a pacemaker-like device implanted in the back produces a sexual stimulus. It'll also make their husbands moan: Each costs $17,000.

* Ashes to gashes: A Sylva funeral home got a zoning exemption to build a $300,000 "crematorium and equipment maintenance facility" downtown. A Jiffy Lube for those embarking to the Other Side? Nope, owners say. They'll store and maintain backhoes and other cemetery equipment there.

* Maybe fry up some sushi: Matthews-based Harris Teeter recalled some of the Rancher Slow Cookers it awarded customers. Seems they more than lived up to their names, cutting off before the victuals were done.

* Name says it all: To better reflect what it does, Raleigh PR firm--or, as it describes...