Science

Yawn Shop

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A new study says dogs yawn more in response to yawns from their owners than they do to the yawns of strangers. I just tried to make this happen with my dog by yawning several times right in her face. She wouldn’t look at me, possibly out of embarrassment. Or maybe I need to brush my teeth.

Diamond_yawning

But I did start to feel a little tired, so we took a twenty minute nap.

While sleeping I had a short dream that I was a frightened chipmunk running from a Rottweiler who had cornered me at the back of an open garage. With no easy escape, I cowered in a corner as the animal stood over me, drooling and trembling in the same way a movie villain pauses over a supposedly-vanquished superhero or secret agent to make a speech before delivering the final blow. It was a garage, so I considered grabbing a shovel from a hook on the wall and using it to force the dog to back away, but then I remembered, I’m a chipmunk – no hands. So I yawned. Amazingly, that caused the dog to pause for a moment, so I yawned again. The dog tipped its head to one side the way dogs do when they appear to be confused. I yawned a third time, and incredibly, the Rottweiler also opened its mouth wide.

Then I woke up.

I’m not sure this proves anything other than the potential fact that it is not very satisfying to fall asleep while reading science articles because it leads to complicated dreams about research. Maybe articles about yawning studies are bigger snoozers than comparable research papers. I should get a grant to study the phenomenon!

Contagious yawning has been observed and extensively documented between humans, chimpanzees and baboons, and there is reason to believe we have a stronger response to yawns from those we care about. Although the researchers in that study assumed the relationship between family members is automatically a more caring one than any relationship with others. That may not always be the case, since family members can be quite vicious towards one another (see Rottweiler, above).

There is also a theory out there that spontaneous yawning is a natural physical response intended to cool an overheated brain. I suppose you could observe this in any classroom where SAT tests are administered. Perhaps there is also a connection between test-induced yawning and spitwad formation in 16 year olds.

Back to my dog – she is definitely not responding to all the yawn cues I’m giving her, but she has started to obsessively lick a sore spot on her left rear leg. In this case, the theory of empathetic mimicry is not holding up. Although I am feeling a strong urge right now to bite my own ankles.

What makes you yawn?

Poems

The Whale On The Rail

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Whale_Tail

Ocean creatures are finding small ways to make us question our assumptions about them. We discovered earlier this week that dolphins recognize the whistles of other dolphins they shared a tank with 20 years earlier. That’s a better memory than most middle aged men I know, some of whom can’t remember who they met yesterday. And no, I can’t recall who I’m talking about, specifically.

But you can usually ignore dolphins and other water-dwellers if you stay on land – or so we thought until yesterday. Now it seems the beasts of the deep want to disrupt our daily routines, perhaps as a preview of how it will be once climate change causes the oceans to rise and flood low-lying areas like Manhattan.

Case in point: a story that got a lot of attention yesterday featured a dead shark discovered riding a New York Subway.

This idea of a straphanger Shark is bound to gain currency for a while. Look for cartoons and You Tube videos. Maybe there’s a movie in the works. Oh, wait, that was Sharknado!

Anyone wishing to capitalize on Subway Shark frenzy will have to take the next step by going both bigger and smaller a the same time. I suggest ripping off Dr.Seuss.

We were heading for home on the subway one day
We were too tired to speak. There was nothing to say

It was Sally and me at the back of a train
that smelled fishy and dank, but we didn’t complain.

The car clattered and rattled and squeaked on its track.
The lights flickered a bit. It got bright and then black.

And then darker than pitch. Clearly something was wrong.
While the squeaking we’d heard transformed into a song.

“What’s that noise?” Sally shouted. The deafening trill
became loud as a whistle and two times as shrill.

And then everything stopped – both the train and the sound!
When we got off the floor we both looked all around.

Peering deep in the tunnel – the source of the din –
we saw two giant eyeballs there, peering back in.

“Don’t be scared” said a voice. “I am harmless,” it joked.
“You’re too late,” I replied, for my trousers were soaked.

“I am sorry for that.” He was big. He was pale.
“You can just call me Moby. The Whale on the Rail.”

“He should not be down here,” stammered Sally, to me.
“Because whales belong down in the depths of the sea.”

“That is true,” said the whale. His breath stank of dead fish.
“But as long as I’m here, we can do what you wish.”

“There are games for commuters and whales we can play.”
“If you have a sharp knife and a sea bass to flay.”

“We do not have a knife,” I replied, in a peep.
“That is not a good game. You go back to the deep.”

But the Whale on the Rail only blinked at us twice.
Then he said, “Maybe some other game would be nice.”

“We could play ‘Where’s Your Blowhole?’ he said. “That is fun.”
“Not for us,” shot back Sally. “Because we don’t have one.”

“So you think,” said the whale. At his voice, the car shook.
“But you always find one in the last place you look.”

“The conductor is coming,” I said. “Swim away.”
But the Whale only smiled. “I would much rather play.”

We all know how this ends.

Add a few lines to “The Whale on the Rail.”

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Ask Dr. Babooner

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Dear Dr. Babooner,

Ann_Landers baboon 2 copy

I had some big plans to spend the day with an important out-of-town visitor a few weeks from now. It’s not romantic – we are in the same line of work (country-running) and I think of him as someone who understands the unique challenges of the business. I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, so let’s call him “Barack Obama”. I wouldn’t say I have much to learn from him or that we’re equals, exactly. I just want to hang out with someone who “gets it”, if you know what I mean. While we are both powerful in our own way, one of us is going to keep his job a lot longer than the other (hint: it’s not him).

Anyway, we traded messages and I thought the meeting was set. Then out of the blue I get a call saying “Barack Obama” is canceling because we don’t have much to talk about! While I agree we aren’t the closest of friends, I’m shocked and hurt to be treated this way. After all, I’m pretty important. People who cross me have a habit of winding up dead. I’m not admitting anything, I’m just saying that nobody cancels a meeting with me! It’s a new, and not very pleasant, sensation. Now that I’ve been embarrassed by this sudden change, I feel like we really DO have a lot to talk about.

There are several reasons this happened. Mostly, he’s upset because I’m friendly towards two people he’s angry with.

Isn’t that a little childish?

One of the guys “Barack Obama” is ticked at let some secrets slip about some snooping and other clandestine things that aren’t too flattering. That’s unfortunate, but no one is arguing that the charges are lies, so I don’t see where “Barack Obama” has the standing to be angry. I tend to think honesty is the best policy. For other people, anyway.

The second guy is also a presidential-type country-runner who got himself into a bad situation and is dealing with it by being violent and merciless on the upper end of the evil-villian scale of bloodthirsty retribution. Again, I don’t condone this sort of behavior unless I wind up having to do it myself, which I could totally see happening someday.

I’m not saying that these are the best guys in the world. In fact, one of them might be the worst. But is it ever right to punish someone for their friendly and open-minded attitude towards other people?

Uncertainly,
Vlad

I told “Vlad” that Junior High School never really ends. Folks often pressure others to ostracize a person because of the way that person looks or the clothes they wear or the things they believe or the laws they break of the innocents they murder.

I commended Vlad for not caving in, and told him he’d eventually get over missing his meeting with “Barack Obama”. And even though the relationships he’s protecting are not particularly important to him, it’s the principle that matters. You can’t let someone else push you around because they don’t like your not-really-my-friends. If you let that happen, you could someday wind up with no one who is close, kind of like a tyrant or a secret agent, or both.

But that’s just one opinion. What do YOU think, Dr. Babooner?

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Larger Than Life

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

He promises to sit VERY still.
He promises to sit VERY still.

Yo, Bart here.

I know they call these the “dog days” of summer, but as a bear I can tell you that things are pretty darn quiet for us, too. I could nap all day! I guess Al Roker gets the same feeling sometimes. Sure, I know who Al Roker is. You think I was born in a barn?

When I’m not napping I waste hours and hours wandering around the internet. Pretty amazing how the time just melts away, but at least I’m not getting into trouble at campsites. I hear when the game wardens trap you or they shoot you with one of those tranquilizer darts, the first thing they do is take away your phone. Bummer.

Anyway, I got really excited when I found this video and the article that goes with it.

A huge bear was captured and released, and some guy who makes things out of concrete saw the video and wants to do a statue of him. But the bear is already gone, so he wrote to the naturalists to get the measurements so he could get the proportions right.

It would be awesome to have an enormous statue made of me, using concrete or anything! So here’s the deal – I’ll pose for anyone who wants to do a bear sculpture. The only conditions are:

  • No tickling
  • All the berries I can eat
  • My name goes on the plaque
  • I get to go home when it’s done

Deal? Honest, it’s kind of quiet now, and I just sit around all day anyway! Just remember, bear season hasn’t started yet.

Your pal,
Bart

What does the inscription say on the statue of you?

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Hobby Farm

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Today’s post comes from disgraced former journalist Bud Buck.

People often ask me to explain how, as a one-time newsboy poster child and respected radio anchor, I became a disgraced former journalist. I always tell them if they’ll simply sweeten my palm with a $20, the story is theirs. Sometimes it works.

Newsboy

The short version is this – it became so difficult to manage all the true information that was in the world, as a self defense mechanism I started to make things up. It worked for a while and I began to see my job as a form of self-expression. It didn’t hurt to lie so much when I remembered that it really was all about me!

And now the rickety tower that was once the institution of American journalism is approaching total collapse with word that a famous newspaper with a storied tradition will be purchased by a very rich guy who needs a new toy to play with. And yes, I just ended a sentence with a preposition. That’s how dead good writing is! Deal with it!

Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon, bought the Washington Post for 250 million dollars. It’s not a takeover by Amazon because Bezos, one of the world’s wealthiest men, is buying it as an individual.

And yes, he got free shipping!

Bezos is famous for focusing on “the customer experience.” I can only guess that his experience as a Washington Post buyer was satisfactory, though I guess I’ll have to wait for the customer review to be certain. But one thing you won’t have to wait for is the pundit review. People who write opinions for a living have fallen on this story like a family of bears on the last picnic basket in the woods. They are tearing it apart because it features all the things they love – journalism, money, and … well, that’s about it.

My opinion hardly matters in all this, except to me. And that’s the point! This is the next logical step in the total disintegration of communications. Every person is now his or her own media empire. I suspect Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post because he didn’t have time to start his own blog. Look for someone richer to step up soon to buy The New York Times, and someone wealthier still to snap up CBS, NBC and finally Trail Baboon. Then it’s a total free-for-all!

Someday soon, when every news source is a vanity project beholden to a single personality, we will all be so busy filtering and interpreting information we won’t have time to actually know anything. And when that day comes, I won’t waste your time with an “I told you so.”

Instead, I’ll say “Welcome to my world.”

This is Bud Buck!

Who do you trust?

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Deep In The Weeds

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Speaking of working steadily at a task that feels endless (as we were yesterday), I have been slowly making my way around the yard hand-weeding some planting beds that have been allowed to go to seed.

The original plan was to keep these areas heavily mulched and carefully tended to provide some space where flowers, ornamental grasses, trees and bushes could thrive. And at first, that’s how it worked. But over time the mulch dissolved (as expected) and while I was looking the other way, the beds have filled in with misshapen, spiky intruders from Mars.

I could go after the invaders with a noxious chemical cocktail, but that’s a solution for cowards. I need to confront the weeds personally, face to frond. Besides, there is always a risk that any foliage killer I spray on unwanted greenery will drift off and murder the more upstanding flora I’m trying to protect. I suppose it’s like keeping a loaded gun in the house. With very little effort you can do more damage than the threat you armed yourself against at the beginning.

These photos show you the scope of the task.

Backyard Vengeance Tour – the results

My approach is simple and brutal. I drop to my knees and claw at the Earth with a three pronged hook held in my right hand. As the soil is loosened I grab the weed with my left hand and toss it into a bucket. Then repeat, repeat, repeat. If it sounds “old school”, you’re right. This is basically the technique our prehistoric ancestors used to spiff things up around the entrances to their caves. I flung myself at the problem for several hours straight on Saturday, all the while wondering what possible good could come of it.

In the sandy areas, scurrying ants reproached me for destroying their cities. I tried to explain that I was down here with them because I was withholding my support from Monsanto, but the ants were too busy running in panic to pay me much mind.

I continued to dig. After an hour, I found it very difficult to stand up straight. After two hours, I had a sense that if I suddenly keeled over, the weeds could reclaim everything before I was cold.
Weeding must be the opposite of teaching. You can see immediate results, but you can be pretty certain your work will have absolutely no effect at all on the future.

To which pointless chore have you given too much of your time?

Uncategorized

1,000 Bottles of Beer

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This is post number 1,000 on Trail Baboon, all written by me or as guest entries by various baboons.

I’m exhausted, and proud. The total overall number is a convenient landmark because all I have to do is count the guest posts to know that TB is an amazing 16.4% reader-written.

beerwall

That’s better than the New York Times, by far.

It didn’t seem very long ago that we observed reaching the landmark of post number 500. That was an achievement, but this is better. I would almost say it’s exactly twice as good.

And so through stubbornness, determination, or simply as a result of habitual behavior and lacking the creativity to do anything different, we have moved into 4-digit territory, post-wise. And one of the things that sets blogging apart from books or a pile of paper newspapers is that all the writing we’ve done remains online for people to stumble across as if it had just appeared – fresh and new to each set of eyes that beholds it for the first time as long as they don’t look at the date or read any of the obsolete references included in the text.

That’s a form of immortality, isn’t it? Or longevity, at least?

And taken together, one could argue that we’ve collaborated to write a very long book that is “scattered and unfocused in subject and style, featuring a variety of occasionally compelling and sometimes incomplete characters drawn with varying degrees of skill.”

I put that line in quotes because I’m pretty sure someone’s actual book has been reviewed that way.

If you measure success in terms of readership, as opposed to simply counting raw numbers of posts, you would have to say Trail Baboon is consistent but certainly not growing.
Here’s a screen shot of our monthly readership statistics since January, 2011. We appear to get between 60 and 90 visitors a day, with each reader refreshing the page 4 to 7 times.
That adds up and it starts to look like a lot when you view it on a monthly basis, but in truth our community is rather small. But loyal!

Remarkably, our total numbers for the month of July 2011 and July 2013 were almost exactly the same though two years apart – 13,096 vs. 13,094.

Screen Shot 2013-08-03 at 8.47.16 AM

At any rate, congratulations, Baboons. Our achievement puts me in mind of a classic anthem sung by high-achievers throughout time:

One Thousand Bottles of Beer On The Wall,
One Thousand Bottles of Beer!
Take One Down, Pass it Around.
Nine Hundred Ninety Nine Bottles of Beer on The Wall.

Nine Hundred Ninety Nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall,
Nine Hundred Ninety Nine Bottles of Beer!
Take one down …

How do you pace yourself to reach a distant goal?

The Baboon Congress

Lick Your Wounds

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Today’s guest post comes from Steve Grooms.

Let’s imagine that life has beaten you up lately, and now you hurt. Maybe the Powers That Be at your office decided to erase a favorite application off all the hard drives and force you to learn a new one. Maybe someone said something unkind when you were at a vulnerable moment. Or—if you are like me—maybe you said something incredibly stupid, or you sent out a tasteless group email that you desperately would like to suck back now.

Band-Aid_close-up

For many of us, taking one of life’s little blows isn’t a great challenge. But sooner or later you are going to experience a cluster of indignities in a short span of time. Maybe you clash with your teenager and then have a flat tire on the way to work. Maybe you try on last year’s pants and find you can’t even get the zipper up now, as you have supersized your butt, and a day later you learn your taxes are going to be audited.

Just imagine that you are hurting. You need to do something profoundly comforting because you are stuck in a bad place. You need to lick your wounds.

What do you do?

Do you lose your pain by throwing yourself into company, maybe going to a party you’d hoped to avoid because now you know that forcing yourself to be social will fix what is wrong? Do you whip out your phone and call the one person on earth who will never let you down? Or are you more inclined to hide from the world, retreating into a quiet place where you surround yourself with things you trust to bring you peace of mind?

What activity will cure you now? Do you read? If so, what author or book can you trust to make you feel better? (This is a time I often re-read books from favorite authors.) Is there a particular location that will soothe you? What music will you put on, or do you prefer the purity of silence?

I am told that some folks can make themselves feel better if they dress up. Ha! My normal clothing is extremely unstylish. When I feel blue, I’m apt to lower my standards, going from a comfy sweatsuit to an OLD comfy sweatsuit that is so threadbare it would make a stranger worry whether I could afford my next meal.

Perhaps you turn to food if you need to feel better? What food? Something sweet? Something your mom used to cook? How ambitious do you feel when you are repairing a bad mood? Many folks turn to alcohol at such moments, and I don’t need to mention how risky that is!

Some folks know they can wash away a bad mood by soaking in the tub. Others go for a
run or take a long hike in a beautiful place. Some grab a dog and lose their pain by making the dog happy.

A woman friend was prone to depressions. Her cure was to clean her home. When Beth was down she would grab a vacuum cleaner and suck all the dirt out of her environment, running the machine nonstop for several hours at a stretch. If sufficiently disturbed, she would wash everything in her home “larger than a paper clip,” including the walls and the underside of furniture.

What do you do when you need to lick your wounds?

Uncategorized

A Sense of Achievement

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Today’s post comes from Congressman Loomis Beechly, representing all the water surface area in the State of Minnesota.

beechly-speech

Greetings Constituents!

As your elected Representative, I wanted to take a moment before my Summer Break begins to thank each one of you for the calls you’ve made and the mail you’ve ee’d about the work of our 113th Congress! I agree with all of you on everything you said, and every single concern you expressed is my number one priority! And I know that many of my colleagues in the House feel exactly the same way about all their constituents too.

In the end, politics is pretty simple. We just want to be loved. And how do you show someone you love them? You listen, and do what you’re told, of course!

I’m not using that as an excuse, but it does help explain why we in Congress are currently having a hard time getting things done. Face it – you’re confusing!

I’m not saying it’s your fault, because that would get me in even more trouble. But maybe you should look at this in a different way. Right now, with multi-tasking being All The Rage, we have to ask ourselves if we in Congress are setting a good example for the busy people of this great nation.

So many Americans are trying to squeeze more productivity out of each and every minute, you can’t blame them for feeling overwhelmed and under appreciated! There is simply too much to do, and no one is speaking against the urge to do even more. Why? Because no one has that kind of time! And as long as productivity stays high, there’s no reason for employers to even consider hiring the laid-off millions who are exhausting themselves daily in a fruitless search for work.

That’s where we, your elected Representatives, come to the rescue.

As leaders, our task right now is to lead the American workforce towards acceptance of a bigger and better standard of idleness. We are aggressively doing nothing in excellent style while eating great food and wearing nice clothes. And we’re doing it for an unselfish reason – to show you what real recreational non-productivity looks like. When I’m home in my district, I model this by fishing all day. Here in Washington, I have to show it by talking endlessly about nothing in particular and reaching no compromises of any kind. It’s like fishing, but without the catch. I just release, constantly.

Only by doing this can I make it safe for you to begin to relax and to stop multi-tasking. Because no matter how lazy and worthless you become, you can be certain that your existence is still not as pointless as that of your Congressman.

So the next time some sourpuss points out that the House has accomplished practically nothing this session, I hope you’ll do what I would do – respond with a smile, a nod, a word of gratitude, and a nap.

Your Congressman,
Loomis Beechly

How productive are you?

Uncategorized

Lousy Little Leaker

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Although I never quite made it to the Bradley Manning level, I’ve been a leaker most of my life for all the wrong reasons. It’s not that I believe in truth or justice or transparency – I just want a little attention. That’s why, one night at the dinner table when I was eleven years old, I cagily revealed to my older brother that he was going to find a Matchbox Car in his birthday haul the next day, but I was not going to tell him which one in the set he was going to receive.

Jaguar

This, I thought, would give me supreme power over him.

Naturally, my mother was outraged that I had betrayed her confidence. I was sent to my room immediately, forced to skip desert.

At the time, I didn’t quite understand the outrage. We each had accumulated a ton of the tiny metal cars, so getting another one was not that big a deal. Which model though? That was the key (as any collector would understand), and I was keeping that significant detail to myself. He would be tormented to have to spend the night knowing there was a new vehicle in his stable and wondering which one it was, praying and hoping it would be the Jaguar XKE when I knew full well it was the Ford Galaxie Police Cruiser. Not only would he spend the night in agony, his morning would be poisoned by disappointment.

Police_cruiser

No actual harm done. What’s the problem?

But in my mother’s mind, I had spoiled her surprise, and I played Edward Snowden to her Lindsey Graham. If she’d had access to the worst gateway lounge in a Russian airport, she would have marooned me there forever, or at least until I apologized to everyone in our family minus the dog.

Which was odd, considering that a few months later the dog was the one who would eventually wind up with that Matchbox Car firmly in his mouth – an unsatisfying substitute for a bone on a dreary, nothing-happening day.

When have you spilled a big secret?