OFF THE WALL...

You may remember—it doesn’t matter, I’m not proud of it—that some weeks ago I went on a rabid-dog rant against texting on cell phones, saying all kinds of nasty things about this latest technological waste of time.

Well, it so happens that in the intervening days—yes, mea culpa—I have texted, maybe about ten times in two months.

Of course, that’s nowhere near the 80 times per day of the average teenager, thank goodness. I still cringe to think of that much thumbing through phone keys.

But as I said, I have found some opportunities where texting someone rather than talking to him seemed like the better thing to do. In those cases, I just wanted to relay a bit or two of information and didn’t want to go through the rigmarole of engaging in some stilted conversation of who knows how long to do that.

Yeah, I’m not the big gabber type who enjoys gabbing just to be gabbing. Not that there’s anything wrong with it.

However, on one thing I stand firm. Shoot me on the spot if you ever see me texting while driving a car. That’s just perversely negligent.

So yes, I now see a place for responsible texting. And I’ve also converted on another piece of technology I had previously sneered at: Twitter.

Okay, I can already hear the moans and groans.

“Barnes, how could you cave on that one. You’re tweeting, for crying out loud? You’ve finally gone over to the dark side?”

Um…yup.

But only some of you are moaning and groaning. According to a recent survey, about two-thirds of adults know little or nothing about Twitter, let alone Tweets.

For those of you in that category, Twitter is a free online service that gives you a maximum of 140-character to—at any given moment and over and over, if you’d like—answer the question, “What are you doing?” And your answer goes out to the rest of the world. These little messages are Tweets.

In actuality, the rest of the world could care less what you are doing. You have to have “followers” to generate much real caring as to your daily minutiae. And to have followers, you kind of have to be somebody—at least a minor celebrity or maybe a good tweeter who manages to be fairly interesting in 140-word chunks. Yeah, it’s not for everyone.

As for me, I don’t have many “followers,” although I’ve had a number of potential followers who were trying to sell me something (you can imagine what), so I’ve just blocked them, which is easy to do. I doubt if I will ever have many followers, and that’s okay.

No, what I enjoy about Twitter is being a follower. It can be a good thing. Right now, I’m following 30 different Tweet senders from all walks of life.

For example, I’m following The White House. Yeah, they send out 140-character Tweets regularly on what Obama and his administration are doing. (By the way, Twitter makes it easy to send links to other web pages in the Tweets, which happens all the time.)

I’m following the PGA Tour for the latest tidbits on golf, and I’m following David Pogue, the gadget and technology god who writes for The New York Times.

On the other hand, if you know me at all, you know I do not follow Sarah Palin, a reportedly prodigious Tweeter.

But I do follow Rainn Wilson, who plays the overstuffed character Dwight Schrute on the TV show “The Office.” Turns out he seems about as loopy on Twitter as his TV character.

However, one of his Tweets led me to a fascinating TED video (TED.com is a column in itself). The video was about crows and how smart and potentially useful they are.

Some crows are so smart that they drop nuts on a busy street so cars will run over the nuts and break them open for the crows to eat. But that’s not all. The crows wait for the light to turn red so traffic stops and they don’t get run over themselves. Now that’s smart.

Well, who would have known that about crows? Not me; that is, unless I followed Rainn Wilson on Twitter.

Monday, July 27, 2009

Crows!

If you've got 10 minutes to watch this, you'll find it fascinating.

Sunday, July 26, 2009

Shallow Dive Record

Friday, July 24, 2009

COLUMN: Going Bananas Again

By Tobin Barnes
My brother-in-law, Pat, is an engineer.

There are jokes about engineers, like: How can you tell whether an engineer is shy or outgoing? Answer: During a conversation, a shy engineer keeps looking down at his shoes, while an out-going engineer looks down at your shoes.

(Actually, that joke works equally well with accountants. Same stereotype, I guess. By the way, I don’t tell engineer jokes around Pat, and he doesn’t tell teacher jokes around me.)

Thing is, engineer types study things. They like to figure out how things work. They’re very analytical. Brainy, you might say.

That’s my brother-in-law. For example, long ago he’d figured out the best way to open a banana all by himself, way before opening a banana like a monkey was hip, like it is now.

In a recent column, I talked about how monkeys open bananas. Said humans should copy them by opening a banana from the bottom rather than the stem. It’s much more efficient.

After all, monkeys are analytical, too. They’re the engineers of the animal world. They certainly don’t have the range of human engineers, but they can figure out simple things, like bananas, quite well. They’ve spent a lot of time thinking about bananas, unlike humans, and therefore, they are adept at opening them the right way.

I, on the other hand, had to be told and shown a video. You see, I don’t have the engineering ability of even a monkey.

Well, when Pat was at college, learning to be an engineer, he was in the dorm dining room one lunchtime eating a banana that he had opened, well…like a monkey; that is, the correct way. (Again, that’s nothing against Pat. We all should be opening bananas like monkeys.)

During this, Pat happened to notice, across the way, some guy staring at him. And, of course, this was quite unsettling.

Who was this guy watching him peel and eat a banana? A stalker? A sociopathic serial killer? Was this a fatal attraction thing?

Freaky, Pat thought.

Later, Pat stopped by his girlfriend’s dorm room. Her name was and is Ann, and she eventually married him and just recently emailed me this story.

Anyway, Pat told Ann about this spooky guy in the dining room who was watching him eat a banana.

Huh, they both thought. Weird.

Sometime later, Ann’s roommate Lynne walked in. She said she’d just heard the funniest thing in her drama class. Seems this guy from the drama department likes to watch the strange behavior of other people and kind of study them.

Anyway, Lynne said, this drama person saw this guy at lunch eating a banana upside down. He said it was just stupid the way this guy was eating a banana from the wrong end.

Well, drama guy, as Forrest Gump would say, “Stupid is as stupid does.” Knowing what we know now, who do you think was stupid?

Of course, Pat and Ann immediately knew whom Lynne’s story was referring to—Pat—and they burst out laughing.

Unfortunately, Pat took the drama guy’s derision to heart—he didn’t want to appear weird in the eyes of others, even drama types—so he stopped eating bananas the proper way.

But don’t let this story of eating a banana like a monkey stop you, dear reader, now that you know the correct way.

However, be advised: The down side of peeling and eating a banana efficiently like a monkey is that people are going to stare at you, if not study you like an anthropologist, and report your weird behavior to others.