COLUMN: Crows Are Just a Tweet Away

By Tobin Barnes

I have a confession to make.

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.

Crows!

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

Shallow Dive Record

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.

Dancing Down the Aisle: Youtube Wedding Dance Sensation - ABC News

Dancing Down the Aisle: Youtube Wedding Dance Sensation - ABC News

In the News:

In the spirit of downsizing, my wife and I gave up our $700k home for a 400k home and the good news is we didn’t even have to move. – Will Durst

The first-ever pets-only airline began service last week. The first flight was behind schedule; they just couldn’t fly very fast with all those dogs sticking their heads out the window.

Pope Benedict XVI slipped at his vacation home and fractured his wrist. Of course, someone from his staff immediately picked up the phone and dialed IX-I-I. – Bill Mihalic, Rochester, Mich.

Jon and Kate are back in the news with “who left who.” Or is it who left whom? Whatever. The proper English is, “Who cares!” – Bill Williams

An 81-year-old man drove in a Nascar event this weekend. His left turn blinker was on the whole way. – Jim Rose

The Woodstock Music Festival is 40 years old this summer. Those who attended have changed quite a bit. They still do drugs. But now there’s a $15 co-pay. – Alan Ray, Stockton, Calif.

Best Caption

“And I’m telling you there’s nothing wrong with a man getting married to a woman.”— ­ Posted by Linluc

Runners-up:

“Call my partner ‘Prince Valiant’ one more time! I dare you!"— Posted by Perry McDowell

"Whaddaya mean I’m gonna die before Abe Vigoda???!!"— Posted by Marc Ragovin, New York

"You told me you would make my nose look like Michael Jackson’s!"— Posted by John Hammer

Wisdom of Larry the Cable Guy

(Sent by Tom Aldrich)

The wisdom of Larry the cable guy......

1.. A day without sunshine is like night.

2. On the other hand, you have different fingers.

3. 42.7 percent of all statistics are made up on the spot.

4. 99 percent of lawyers give the rest a bad name.

5. Remember, half the people you know are below average.

6. He who laughs last, thinks slowest.

7. Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm.

8. The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese in the trap.

9. Support bacteria. They're the only culture some people have..

10. A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.

11. Change is inevitable, except from vending machines.

12. If you think nobody cares, try missing a couple of payments.

13. OK, so what's the speed of dark?

14. When everything is coming your way, you're in the wrong lane.

15. Hard work pays off in the future. Laziness pays off now.

16. How much deeper would the ocean be without sponges?

17. Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.

20. What happens if you get scared half to death, twice?

21. Why do psychics have to ask you your name?

22. Inside every older person is a younger person wondering, 'What the heck happened?'

23. Just remember -- if the world didn't suck, we would all fall off.

24. Light travels faster than sound. That's why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.

25. Life isn't like a box of chocolates. It's more like a jar of jalapenos. What you do today, might burn your butt tomorrow.

COLUMN: Summer's End Around the Bend

Image by Denis Collette...!!! via Flickr

By Tobin Barnes
Depending on how you look at it, a goodly part of the summer is now gone. Calendar-wise, or solar-wise maybe, about one-third has passed.

But that bogus calendar-summer stuff that supposedly begins around June 20 and ends around September 20 has never made much sense to students and teachers, like me. Even Labor Day as the official end of summer, around here anyway, doesn’t mean much anymore.

Summer really ends when the high school football team starts practicing—the word “football” is lethal to any concept of summer—and classes begin a week or so later. And around here, that happens in the 20’s of August.

So what does that spell for the rest of summer, now that we’re in the 20’s of July?

Well, for me, a teacher going into his 34th school year—53rd, if you count my own education—it’s the time of year when summer starts slipping away. To put it hyper-melodramatically, it’s kind of like Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’s groundbreaking five steps that people go through in the acceptance of up-coming death.

Yeah, hyper-melodramatically.

First, there’s “denial”: No way! It was the Fourth of July just a few days ago.

Next, “anger”: Those blanket-blanks keep moving up the start date earlier every year.

Then “bargaining”: Maybe if I sleep three fewer hours a night, I’ll get more out of the time left.

Fourth, “depression”: Why did I go into education—maybe insurance or real estate would have been better.

And finally, “acceptance”: Okay, no more naps in the afternoon. I’ve got to get used to toughing it out through a day.

Uh huh, I innately sense the lack of sympathy from all the working-stiff, non-teachers out there: “Boo-hoo, cry me a river, you big baby. Try life in the 50-week REAL world.”

Yeah, that’s right. I agree. I know I’ve got it good. As the old hackneyed joke goes: What’s the three best things about teaching? Answer: June, July, and August.

And though education, like any profession, has plenty of ups and downs, for most teachers, like myself, it has far more ups than downs—far more. Yes, I’ll freely admit that it’s been an enjoyable career, summers included. I’d even recommend it—with reservations, that is. (And I’ll perhaps speak of those reservations after I retire, when I can be—how shall I put this?—more objective.)

Despite the so-called slack schedule, education is obviously not for everyone. After all, you don’t see people lining up out the door, itching to teach a few sections of English or algebra. The mere thought of standing in front of twenty-some teenagers—or for that matter, seven-year-olds—would be pretty darned scary for many people. It still, after 33 years, gives me pause once in awhile.

When I first started, in this same school district all those years ago, they said there were at least a hundred applications for every opening. In other words, feel yourself lucky to get a good teaching job.

Those figures might have been stretched a little, but, yeah, I guess there was competition back then.

Now, it’s more like only a handful of applications for any given education placement. Sometimes it’s less than that. In some districts, jobs go unfilled. You know there’s got to be some reasons. Also, there are reasons why a hefty percentage of new teachers—half in urban areas, sometimes just as big in rural areas—leave the profession within three years.

But if this economic downturn continues, maybe that will change. We’ll see.

Well, how about other things? What else comes with the end of summer?

Usually, some darned hot weather, of which we’ve miraculously had hardly any so far. This has been a blessedly cooler-than-normal summer here in the Black Hills. Thank you, thank you.

Oh, and one other thing. The end of summer also brings the Sturgis motorcycle rally to our part of the country.

But I’ll talk more about that next time.

Monologue | Aired Tuesday night on CBS: You remember Dick Cheney, who was the Vice President for eight years with George W. Bush? And we didn’t think much about Dick Cheney and then one day he goes hunting, boy, that changed everything. Well now it turns out that for eight years, Dick Cheney had a secret hit squad to assassinate al Qaeda leaders. And the team was unbelievable. Here’s who was on the team: Lee Marvin; Jim Brown; John Cassavetes; Telly Savales; and Trini Lopez as Pedro. Read more…

COLUMN: Monkey see, Monkey don't

Image by Jared Kelly via Flickr

By Tobin Barnes
And here I thought I knew how to open up a banana.

Nope. Didn’t.

Turns out monkeys do it better.

Open a banana, that is.

Yeah, all this time I’ve been strangling them. For 57 years, going on 58.
Monkey see, monkey do. But I didn’t.

Huh.

Makes me wonder what else I’ve been botching up along the way. Makes me think there might be a better way of doing just about anything—tricks of the trade of life and such. Just didn’t know them.

Nobody’s told me or I haven’t figured them out for myself. Maybe I’ve been living in deprived ignorance, in a fool’s paradise, when things could have been so much better.

Of course, you’ve probably been in the same banana boat as me. After all, I’ve never seen any human doing it better than I’ve been doing it.

Like me, you’ve always taken a banana by that so-called stem, that little handy-dandy, pop-top handle thingy there, thinking that’s what it was made for, and then you’ve tried to break it off.

Sometimes it broke off pretty well—if you were lucky (I don’t even know if ripeness has anything to do with it), but sometimes it was like rubber, and you ended up mooshing up the top part of the fruit inside, trying to open that thing up. It turned into a mess sometimes. You had to bite it or pry it or bang it to get it to open.

Even when the stem broke off correctly, usually only one segment of the peel stripped down. You had to go back up to two or three more times to bring down the other sides.

Turns out that method was totally inefficient.

Monkeys would have laughed at you, if there had been any monkeys around.

In my case, I thankfully have had no monkeys around when I’ve opened a banana, castigating me with monkey laughter from behind my back.

On the other hand, if I had had a monkey or two in my life, I would have seen them peeling bananas the right way. (However, there’s no guarantee that I, like the average baby monkey, would have adapted.)

To learn how to peel a banana properly, I had to stumble upon a YouTube video. That’s right. It took cutting-edge technology to teach me something simple.

So what does that say about me? Or you? Or, more abstractly, the Universe?

Anyway, this guy gets on the video there with a bunch of bananas—can’t even see his face—and he says, like you, he’s always peeled a banana the wrong way; that is, until this girl taught him how to do it like a monkey. You see, monkeys want to get to the fruit right away, not mess around with it like a human.

So instead of breaking off the stem, monkeys pinch the bottom end of the banana, and, “Voila!,” as a French monkey would say, the peel breaks into two halves that can be quickly taken apart. And immediately the monkeys have their fruit, “Tout de suite.”

No fuss, no muss. No human biting, no human mooshing.

Can it be any simpler?

Well, if you need your instructions illustrated—after all, we’re not a bunch of dumb monkeys—search YouTube for “How to Open a Banana Like a Monkey.”

Oh, and one caveat: I’m thinking that if you’re dealing with a fairly green banana, you can pinch that sucker until the cows come home and it’s not going to open up. But then, even a monkey would know that.

Open a Banana the Right Way (Really)

Good Late Night

Monologue | Aired Wednesday night on NBC: In a recent study, the United States was ranked the 114th happiest country in the world. Then Sarah Palin stepped down. Now we’re at 17.

Since resigning as governor, many say Sarah Palin is now going to spend some time working on her memoirs. Alaskans are saying they can’t wait to start reading Palin’s memoirs and then quit halfway through. Read more…

COLUMN: Would I Do That, Too?

By Tobin Barnes
I was miffed after pulling into our post office parking lot.

Of course, the parking lot itself is a construction of fiendish design, seemingly planned to make patrons feel small and—insidiously, I think—cooperative.

Considering how much traffic the lot is called upon to handle, it feels nervously constricted. If it were human, it’d be all a-jitter with apprehension.

And I’m not letting any cats out of any bags. Anyone who has driven into it, with or without trepidation, will tell you the same.

First, you have to drive down a concrete slot the width of a toboggan run and the slope of a cereal bowl. That initiation is just the beginning.

After that, everything continues to be narrow and compact, like an old school cloakroom—interdependently with other patrons, you have to kind of sidle in and sidle out to get your business done. Because of the claustrophobic lack of space, you regularly have to wait for people to come and go before you can come and go.

There’s no free-wheeling openness here that would mimic the vast stretches of the Great Plains upon which the parking lot is located. There’s no haughty bravado of spaciousness that might boisterously beller, “We possess this land and we intend to use it fully.”

No, none whatsoever.

There’s no rugged individualism of the Old West possible here. Our rightful broad-shouldered American heritage has been denied to patrons of this post office.

Here, in this parking lot, you are a social insect who must abide with the rules of the ant farm. Someone, no one will ever know who, put the farm on too small a plot, perhaps intentionally, and now we ants are left dithering with the results.

And I get it. I understand the logic.

I’ve been illustrating, not complaining.

I can do the social insect gig with the best of them. I’ve always been ready and raring to conform. I kind of feel my comfort zone in that mode—just so long as the other ants keep in line, too.

But not so.

The other day when I pulled into the lot, carefully, as I’ve learned to do, I saw that, horror of horrors, someone was abusing ant farm rules. He or she was diagonally parked across three whole spaces—there can’t be more than twenty total—right there next to the door of the post office.

The car was a snazzy, late model, silver-grey Mercedes convertible (top down) with black leather interior.

Yeah, I knew what was going on right away.

He or she—let’s go with “she” this time rather than the default lumpish self-absorbed “he,” just for variety—was protecting their pricey baby from inadvertent dings so often liberally applied by the uncaring and unwashed masses in public parking lots across America.

And can you blame her?

If I were driving a late-model Mercedes, rather than my 2002 Toyota RAV, wouldn’t I also park so as to take up three spots, including a handicapped-accessible spot, as she did?

With my RAV I take any available spot. What’s another ding?

But when my RAV was new, and I was under the illusion that it always could be, I was much more careful. I’d park far away from any potential ding predators, no matter how far I had to walk to do my business. Of course, over time and a starter collection of dings, that impulse wore off.

But how about if I, theoretically speaking, had a nice late-model Mercedes, wouldn’t I take up three spaces, including a handicapped-accessible spot to protect my beautiful baby?

I hope not.

Would I, instead, wait, if necessary, for two spaces farthest away from the door and then walk the thirty yards?

I hope so.