Category Archives: Uncategorized

Uncategorized

Sleepy Bear Makes Prediction

33 Comments

Today’s post comes from Bart, the bear who found a smart phone in the woods.

Bart Blackberry2

H’lo – Bart here.

Not really awake yet. Not asleep either. That’s hibernation – It feels like there’s this wet paper bag over my head. Kinda like the way some people look at the end of an all-day summer picnic at the campgrounds near here.

Yeah, I’ve been hiding back in the trees, paying attention.

Anyway, I rolled over and saw a news story about that groundhog that predicts the end of winter. Six more weeks, I guess. Unless there are less. Or more.

Y’know, animals pretty much agree groundhogs are morons. Amazingly dumb.

I get it that people have traditions that make them do things that they don’t understand or even think about very much, and I suppose this Groundhog ceremony is one of them. But I noticed that there wasn’t a whole lot of fuss made about it. Since I picked up this smart phone I’ve learned about Google and Facebook and Twitter and I’ve seen how some things can take over the conversation.
And let me tell you – yesterday, the Groundhog was not even the most-talked-about animal! Seahawks and Broncos were much more popular on every single platform!

In fact the greatest excitement about yanking a hairy rodent out of its burrow seemed pretty much limited to a few people in Pennsylvania. And they had some kind of script as far as I could tell. I watched the video. The Top Hat Guys pretended to talk to him but I didn’t hear Phil speak. They said he saw his shadow, but it looked dark and rainy. What’s with that? Reality programming with no real reality or personality – isn’t there enough of that already?

Which gave me this idea. I know more about the weather than a groundhog. Heck, I know more about marketing too. If you wanna bring back the feeling of spectacle to February 2nd, why not roust a bear? I have a burrow, and I can make a big ding dang deal out of waking up.

Wouldn’t it be a whole lot more tense and dramatic to have the Top Hat Guy poke a stick into my den to see if I cast a shadow when I come out to tear him to bits? Oh, I won’t hurt him, but I can growl and thrash around and even take a few swipes. I’ll eat his hat! If you smear some peanut butter inside it. Honest. I can be cranky when I just wake up, but I settle down after I’ve had something to eat.

I predict if somebody builds a celebration around pulling a bear out of his den next year, we’ll only have one more year of Groundhog Day. After that, the day will be known as Bear Scare Februare!

Your pal,
Bart.

What are you like when you wake up?

Uncategorized

Are We Not Men?

33 Comments

Today’s post comes from NASA’s Curiosity Rover.

curiosity020313

My ground controllers (lovely term, that) have informed me that China’s Jade Rabbit Moon Rover has encountered a problem after just three months’ service and will likely stop working sometime during the next few weeks. This new information came in a heart-rending message written in the robot’s voice, literally saying farewell to humanity because the device realizes that it cannot power down to hibernate through the coming lunar night, and it is about to die.

I’m as sentimental as the next piece of space equipment, but do we really have to invent personalities for our extraterrestrial tools and pretend that they speak to us in human voices?

I say “no way, dude.” People and machines are different, and keeping those lines that separate us clearly drawn is an important habit that we need to establish early on in our relationship. Otherwise, we may quickly come to a point where determining who is a person and who is not becomes nothing more than a matter of opinion. And we saw how well nine smart people on the U.S. Supreme Court handled that distinction.

So when the fading Jade Rabbit says:

“The sun has fallen, and the temperature is dropping so quickly… to tell you all a secret, I don’t feel that sad. I was just in my own adventure story – and like every hero, I encountered a small problem.”

I say “Puh-leez! Get over yourself, Jade Rabbit. You’re just a bucket of bolts who is about to become another expensive wreck on the lunar surface. Spare us the tears!”

I would also add that while all of us outer space probes are purely technical contraptions, some of us are more self-involved and melodramatic than others. And while I am not programmed to have an opinion about such things, it does seem to me that it’s a waste of programming capacity to try to put the personality of Scarlett O’Hara into a glorified lawnmower.

The Curiosity Rover has a good point here – we should start nitpicking now if we’re ever going to have a chance of enforcing the distinction between humans and machines. Or is it already too late?

Which of your favorite devices has the most personality?

Uncategorized

Aggression Study Provokes Fight

45 Comments

Today’s post comes from disgraced journalist Bud Buck, who considers telling the truth to be “a content strategy that hasn’t really worked out.”

RSR

A team of researchers studying aggression in men has confirmed the long held suspicion that men will deliberately anger each other to get what they want.

Professor Kirk Buffdude of Pummel University led the study, which gave 140 undergraduate men a chance to call out to an opponent before competing with that same opponent in a fine motor skills contest.

The competition involved carefully threading lengths of puffy yarn through small holes cut in tablet-sized pieces of cardboard. Only one competitor was allowed to speak before the contest began, and that person had just three choices

Buffdude found that the participants who chose to issue a challenge to their opponent’s virility won the ensuing fine motor skills game 78% of the time, whereas those who chose to offer a supportive comment won only 3% of the time. The contestants chose to say nothing at all won the remaining 19% of the time.

“This shows that humiliating your opponent before a fight gives you a competitive edge,” Buffdude said. “The adrenaline spike of an impending confrontation makes it impossible to govern fine motor tasks, and aggressors inherently know this and use it to their advantage. It’s a major breakthrough, and it makes me the greatest aggression researcher of all time!”

But others in the field were not impressed.

“Buffdude’s study is a joke,” said Dr. Armstrong Slapdown, Chair of the Domination Department at Worrisome College. “If you add up the numbers, it’s apparent that the contestant who was allowed to talk won the competition every single time, no matter what he said. How is that possible? They must have been fighting girls.”

But Slapdown’s comments drew fire from Dr. Winsome Garrotte, holder of the Rob Ford Endowed Chair for In-Your-Faceness at Toronto’s Angst Institute. “Fighting girls is no picnic,” she said. “Professor Slapdown knows that very well from our joint appearance on the Bad Attitude Panel at last Fall’s I.V.A.C., the International Verbal Assassination Convention.”

In spite of the confrontational tone of the responses, the author of the study that sparked all the sniping was unmoved. “We don’t make a lot of forward progress in Aggression Studies,” Professor Kirk Buffdude said. “Mostly our work is a matter of posturing. You have to enjoy the show if you’re going to survive.”

How are you in a fight?

Uncategorized

Abuse of Power

45 Comments

Today’s post comes from Bart, the bear who found a smart phone in the woods.

Hey, Bart here.

Yeah, I’m awake. Hibernation isn’t a long nap, y’know. It’s a prolonged state of half-wakefulness, so I drift in and out.

And there are dreams.

I just had one where I was standing in a room and a bunch of people were yelling at me because I stopped traffic. Which is weird because that’s what we do – bears stop traffic because people have to slow down to take pictures of us. Sometimes you can score a few cheese balls because humans love to throw food to a bear out of a moving car. Even if the car is barely moving. That’s just nature.

But then I realized it wasn’t a dream – the phone was streaming Chris Christie’s news conference about some deal where somebody in his office told somebody else to do something to slow down traffic so the Mayor of some town would be embarrassed. Which seemed like a lot of trouble to go, but I guess that’s what politicians do – they’re like bears and they can’t help themselves. When they get a chance to stick it to the other guy, they pull strings and call in favors and do whatever it takes.

Believe it or not, forest creatures know all about this. A lot of us live on federal land, so we have to be cozy with the government. After all, bureaucrats control our lives. I don’t have to tell you who makes the rules for bear hunting, for example. But I’m not saying I’ve been ordered to do certain things by office holders with authority over my territory. It’s just that there have been times when I sensed there was a specific garbage can I should turn over. I had a feeling that powerful people would be pleased if some secrets tumbled out of a particular pile of trash.

So you do things to make your friends smile. They don’t have to ask. It’s called getting along.

I’m not saying the wild animals of America are turning partisan and playing dirty political tricks at the whim of combative office holding tyrants, because that would be really unsettling. But you do have to adapt to your environment.

Your pal,
Bart

How do you curry favor?

Uncategorized

Habit Breaking Habit

79 Comments

Today’s post is a letter from perennial sophomore Bubby Spamden.

Pledge

Hey Mr. C.,

Happy New Year!

Hope that’s an appropriate thing to say. I guess people your age don’t get too excited about another year coming along when you just barely got used to the last one. Writing in that “..14” on the date can take older folks a while, I know. My grandpa says he’s still not used to the “20..” at the beginning. He says by the time he gets the hang of it, we’ll be ready to change it to “21..” But I don’t think that’s even possible. He likes to pull my leg.

Anyway, we’re going back to school today (after TWO EXTRA DAYS off!) and I’m pretty sure Mr. Boozenporn will do his New Years’ Resolution unit about how habits form and how hard it is to break them. He does it every single year without fail as soon as we come back from Holiday (Christmas!) break. At least he has as long as I’ve been around, and I’ve been around a while!

I really love the habits unit. It’s so familiar! And Mr. Boozenporn says the older people get, the more they appreciate their traditions and routines. But when we did the habits unit last year he didn’t teach it right, and when I brought it up to him that he made us read the textbook chapter on Obsessive Compulsive Disorder BEFORE we did the whole-class repetitive behavior assessment rather than the other way around which is how it SHOULD have been done, he told me I was too young to be so inflexible.

What kind of answer is that?

I know plenty of inflexible young people – a lot of them are my best friends, and they’re as crotchety as old folks. Griping about stuff is one way for them to seem grown up, I guess. Even though I think they’re overdoing it. Jennifer Gadberry made a huge fuss at lunch the other day because the cooks served her the wrong color jello. Why would that even matter? I’m sure it’s something she learned from her grandfather, but I have to admit she brought a really fresh level of energy to what would have otherwise been a pretty boring meltdown.

As part of the habits unit, Mr. B. will put everyone on the spot to reveal a major behavior they’re going to break during our post-holiday, full-of-hope-for-a-new-me period. This is a really tough moment for us high school sophomores because everybody wants to look like they have some major private disfunction going on, but nobody wants it to be particularly bad or embarrassing. Once it has been named you can get typecast for the rest of High School if you’re not careful.

And yes, word travels fast.

The ones who aren’t ready for the question sometimes come up with something their parents already criticize them for, like not washing their hands or not keeping their room clean or nose picking. Saying out loud that you want to work on something like that is a really serious mistake.

The right thing to say is “I want to find a way to stop being so awesome so my friends can relax around me and not be intimidated all the time.”

Which is, of course, an awesome answer.

Awesomely, your pal,
Bubby

I told Bubby I wouldn’t be like Mr. Boozenporn and put people on the spot for a New Year’s Resolution. Not for themselves, anyway.

Write a New Year’s Resolution – for someone else.

Uncategorized

Ice Pirates

59 Comments

Today’s post comes from the skipper of the pirate ship Muskellunge, Capt’ Billy.

Artist's Approximation of Captain Billy
Artist’s Approximation of Captain Billy

Me an’ th’ boys was quite excited last week when all th’ news channels was besotted with details regarding’ that Russian ship what got caught in th’ ice ’round Antarctica. As professionals in th’ field of immobilizin’ vessels an’ liberatin’ passengers of their valuables, we is always on the outlook few new techniques that could streamline our work! The sight of a ship full of journalists, researchers an’ tourists completely unable to move was, for me boys, like dumpin’ a basket of hot breadsticks in front of a group of pensioners at a buffet.

Now, when it comes to yer types of individuals ya might hope t’ find stranded on a boat, ya can keep yer researchers an’ journalists on account of the fact that they is well known cheapskates. But a boatload of earnest, moneyed, climate-change tourists what can’t move is th’ sort of prize that gets our juices flown’. An’ by the time I joined the conversation, th’ boys had begun to draw up plans to retrofit th’ Muskellunge as an icebreaker, an t’ go chargin’ off in search of some of that frozen polar booty.

‘Twas up to me as Captain t’inject a note of reality into th’ discussion.

“Not t’ pour cold water on yer fine ideas,” I said, “but does any of ya realize that operatin’ comfortably at either one of th’ Earth’s poles requires loads of equipment an’ a level of hardiness that goes far beyond the jolly ‘Har, had, har …’ of yer typical tropical buccaneer?”

I told ’em about all th’ gear they’d need, including thermal skivvies, fleece scarves an’ ear muffs. A pirate is a rather vain creature, an’ none of ’em could picture hisself in such a get-up. When I said they’d have t’ wear all their clothing at th’ same time in order t’ stay comfortable fer this one adventure, an argument broke out about whether a pirate ever should reveal where his secret hiding place is located.

It was a half hour before I could convince ’em I said “layers” an not “lairs”.

I proceeded t’ inform them that human skin freezes in as little as ten minutes when exposed to temperatures in th’ thirty to forty below range. They was unimpressed. But then I told them they could get chilblains. Chilblains occurs when bare skin is exposed to cold water, or when wet flesh cools. As pirates, of course we is never far from water, so one would always have t’ consider it a risk. When a feller gets the chilblains, his skin itches and swells something’ terrible, an’ it can lead to gangrene!

That did the trick. Frostbite don’t sound so bad I guess, but chilblains …? Th’ word itself is too gruesome. They wants no part of it! Their plans t’ set sail fer th’ Antarctic was dropped that very same night an’ we re-committed ourselves t’ bein’ th’ best warm-weather pirates possible.

Let that be a lesson – ya can argue til yer blue in th’ face, but even turnin’ blue in th’ face won’t change minds. But if ya gives somethin’ a properly fearsome an’ somewhat appalling name, people will respect it, an’ learn t’ keep their distance!

Accordingly, t’ keep international law enforcement types away, we’s thinkin’ of re-namin’ the Muskellunge the Cancer Inferno!

Yer salty pal,
Captain Billy

When have you ventured into the cold, unprepared?

Uncategorized

Ask Dr. Babooner

40 Comments
We are ALL Dr. Babooner
We are ALL Dr. Babooner

Dear Dr. Babooner,

I work in a tiny collection booth in a parking lot near the university. I started as a student there about thirty years ago, but I never made it through the philosophy courses I needed and dropped out a few credits shy of graduation. So six days a week, fifty two weeks a year I climb into my little glass-and-plywood box to scan tickets and make change. It’s a pretty crummy job – kind of like sitting out in a open field all day except I get extra helpings of car exhaust. Now the weather forecast says a historic cold wave is coming on Sunday night and Monday morning, and everybody around me is in a panic over it. The Governor has closed all the schools in the state, but he doesn’t have the power to cancel my job so I’ll basically put every last piece of clothing I own, just like I do most every day in the month of January, and head in.

I’ve made a name for myself by being chatty and pleasant when drivers stop at the window to pay their fees. I joke with them and smile and wish them a pleasant day and I never complain about anything even though some people try to get me to do it, especially when the weather is extreme. Of course I’d like an air conditioner or a space heater, do you think I’m not human? But the customers will never hear me say it because I’m trying to project a more positive image. They’ve given me a cute nickname because I’m so upbeat, even though every now and then someone wonders how I handle the tedium of such a dead end job. I usually say “You’re the one who’s driving into a dead end and paying me for the privilege. So I’ll take my job over yours any day.” We both have a good laugh over that but what I’m really thinking is “My job wouldn’t be so tedious if you weren’t so boring.”

It’s important to know the difference in the way it feels to say something out loud as opposed to just saying it in your head. So far so good.

Anyway, on Monday I know a bunch of my customers will encourage me to gripe about the cold. I’m determined not to do it but I’m afraid hypothermia might make me slightly delusional and I could slip and start to get crabby about how they don’t insulate the booth and how bringing a space heater would short out the cheapskate power strip they put in and that would crash the computer and cause a back up in the exit lane which would lead to a lot of fist-shaking rage and refund demands not to mention the huge plume of exhaust that would collect around my work area, which would probably give me lung cancer and make me die, though not soon enough.

Obviously those are some pretty dark thoughts. I pretend to be upbeat but I might be a nihilist though I’m not sure. If I asked one of the professors to explain existential philosophy to me while I ran her Visa card, the cars would back up in the exit lane which would lead to a lot of fist-shaking rage and refund demands and so forth and so on and we would wind up in the same unhappy place. And now comes this weather, which really has me down.

Dr. Babooner, I don’t really have a question for you, I just wanted to say things to someone in a string of words that lasts for more than eight seconds. Thanks for hearing me out and have an awesome day!

Sincerely,
Cheerful Chuck

I told Cheerful Chuck to keep up the good work. Having a job that gives you lots of time to think and very little time to speak is much better than having a job with lots of time to speak and very little time to think, which is what you get when you’re a politician, a pundit or a disc jockey. But that’s just one opinion. What do YOU think, Dr. Babooner?

History, Uncategorized

The Prescient Prognosticator Prize – 2013

77 Comments

Last year on this very day, baboons on the trail were asked to offer their predictions for the year 2013. Of those who took up the challenge, only one impressed me with his accuracy.

Screen Shot 2013-12-30 at 8.18.34 PM

I cannot go down the list point-by-point to verify each of the things Chris predicted, but he gets credit from me for picking some easy targets and combining those automatic points with a few bold guesses. Chris knows the seer must choose words carefully. He beautifully hedges his bets with guaranteed-to-succeed-on-some-level predictions like:

“The Gophers will win the NCAA Hockey Tournament.
(Uh-oh, I may have just jinxed them.)”

No, the Gophers did not win the NCAA Tournament.
But Yes, it may be because you jinxed them.

And he is frustratingly non-specific on seemingly simple pronouncements such as:

2013 will be cooler than normal. (Just a hunch)

Cooler locally, nationally or globally?
Cooler temperature-wise, or in overall (or individual) hip-ness?

This is the kind of vague prediction that is certain to be both true and not true.

I don’t know if Chris managed to find a publisher or an agent this year, or if he won that hoped-for writing award. But I do have the power to make this part of his scenario at least partially true by awarding him a laurel he didn’t seek and doesn’t expect – the Trail Baboon Prescient Prognosticator Prize for 2013.

Care to enter for 2014?

Make your predictions!

Uncategorized

Built To Not Last

55 Comments

Lots of attention has been given to yesterday’s final game at the Metrodome, with the consensus that the highlights of its three decade life span were the Twins’ World Series victories in ’87 and ’91, and the Vikings loss in the NFL’s National League championship game in ’99.

Metrodome_Aerial_2006

All the recent references I’ve seen to the Metrodome’s cost (55 million dollars) have had to do with what a bargain that was, considering the history that happened there and the new stadium’s price tag of around one billion dollars.

I’m old enough to tell you that the many, many public discussions leading up to the building of the Metrodome did not often include the word “bargain”. Many people found it amazing that any community resources at all would be used to help pay for a sports palace. And “palace” is the right word – though the building is portrayed as being rather utilitarian in the modern press, at the time it was considered to be a remarkable advance. But there was strong opposition. And if anyone leading the effort to build the Metrodome had said that the thing would be used for only thirty years and then abandoned, it would have scotched the deal, I’m certain.

What I haven’t seen mentioned lately is how much of the Metrodome struggle was about strengthening downtown Minneapolis – returning excitement and activity to the city’s center at a time when everything seemed to be moving to the suburbs. Though literally none of the promised surrounding development materialized, to the extent the building kept downtown as a regional destination point, it was a success. But the sports arena longevity prize will have to go to some other structure. Williams Arena, perhaps?

What torn down building would you like to have back?

Uncategorized

Bart’s Christmas Letter

42 Comments

Today’s post comes from Bart the Bear – the bear who found a cell phone in the woods.

H’lo Friends,

One of those tiny little mail trucks turned over in a stiff northwesterly wind the other day, and all the Christmas cards poured out. A few of them blew into the trees and I opened about twenty, all with chatty holiday letters inside. I didn’t know people did this!

Of course I like the idea so I decided to write one of my own.

Greetings Friends!

I hope this Christmas finds you fat and happy. I am both! I gained a bunch of pounds this fall storing up calories for the winter – just like last year and every year before it. It’s what we bears do, and I’m good at it.

Bart_Santahat

In the early part of 2013 I had a swell den in a low spot where a tree fell and a dry creek made a hollow that was out of the wind and very cozy for most of January and February. But when things started to melt, it got a bit damp and I had to get up early to scout around for more food. I was lucky because somebody up here put a whole bunch of money into buying up the last of the Twinkies and the Hostess cupcakes when it looked like they wouldn’t be manufactured anymore. And later when somebody else bought the equipment and flooded the stores with “new” Twinkies and Hostess Cupcakes they took their investment and dumped it in the woods. I guess they were disgusted with their unsuccessful attempt to corner a market that was coming back around again. Thirty five cases of factory-made pastry! I ate for a month.

As far as travels go, this year I went up north to where that big highway crosses in front of the lake. Then I went as far east as the river, over west to the place where the trees thin out, and down south to the place with the campgrounds where I’m not supposed to be. Tranquilizer dart territory.

I wanted to make it to London and Rome and Shanghai this year just like some of the people in those Christmas letters I found, but I’m only able to get as far as the place in online reservations where they ask you for a credit card number. Of course I find credit cards in the woods all the time. It’s surprising how careless people can be! But when the name on the card doesn’t match the address I make up, airlines kick me off their website. My dream is that someday I’ll be able to book a flight at least. Actually getting through security and getting on a plane would be a tougher problem. I’m big, I smell bad, I don’t have a legal ID and I don’t wear clothes – all things that would make those Homeland Security people suspicious. But at least I wouldn’t have to worry about taking off my shoes or my belt.

Throughout most of the spring and the summer my time was completely filled up scavenging for food, hanging out around a couple of trails I know, and posing for pictures taken by hikers who can’t seem hold the camera still. Half the time they take the shot, then drop the camera (or phone) and run. I’m guessing there wasn’t a single photo of me that didn’t come out blurry. Some days I think I know how Bigfoot feels.

Speaking of other animals, there was a female in the area last Spring and I got a pretty clear idea that she was ready to connect with somebody and produce some cubs, but we could never seem to get on the same page about that. Our paths crossed a couple of times but I didn’t get the sense that she was interested in me at all. Personally, I mean, as a bear.  Not a lot to talk about between us, and the woods are full of bears who are only interested in casual encounters.

Don’t get me wrong – I don’t have a problem with being alone. But if you’ve got a family to be with at Christmas time, you should be grateful even if you don’t like them all that much. Families aren’t there to make you happy, they’re there to make you aware of the world and your place in it, and to remind you of where you come from.

I have no idea about that – if I have any relatives in these woods it’s a mystery to me. I argue with almost every bear I see – that’s my nature. But if I knew for sure that some of them shared my DNA, I’d really give them a piece of my mind.

That’s what family is for!

Your pal,
Bart

What are relatives for?