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Bear and Man

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

He's not coming to visit.
He’s not coming to visit.

H’lo. Bart here.

I saw this story about the researcher who had his messing-around-with-bears permit yanked because the higher-ups decided he was teaching us to get cozy with humans, which is not a good idea because it puts bears in danger.

I don’t know much about this case, but I can tell you for sure that some bears really don’t get it about people. I’ve heard about campgrounds where dumb bears are actually trying to get into cars. Strangers’ cars! No matter how many times you say “Don’t get into a car if you don’t know the person behind the wheel, and yet there they go, trying to peel off the doors sometimes because there’s a bag of Fritos in the back seat.

Yes, these are cars that belong to people those bears don’t know!

It used to be bears were bears and men were men but with animation and voice overs and Photoshop, sometimes even I’m fooled. There’s even a bear scented cologne. At least that’s what I think is going on at this website, but I don’t read German yet, so I’m not completely sure.

But some bears aren’t sure they’re really bears unless there are people around to take pictures of them and throw popcorn. Then there’s this one bear I read about who tried to break INTO a zoo.

Yes, there’s a lot of confusion out there about boundaries.

So everybody should know bears are wild animals. We aren’t pets and we’re not cartoon characters and we don’t think in complete sentences or talk like lummoxes or act like hairy versions of your best friends.

And I know you’re thinking that I pretty much do all those things I just mentioned. But that doesn’t mean I’m dangerously “habituated” to humans – far from it! I’ve learned to be cautious from dealing with people online, where everyone feels free to be their worst possible self. Thanks to that, I’m the most suspicious bear you’ve ever met.

And we’ve never met! Let’s keep it that way!

Your remote pal,
Bart

I agree that Bart is the wrong messenger for the Bears Aren’t People Campaign. But asking a normal bear to make the case for less bear-human interaction would be just plain scary.

Name an animal (or person) you’d like to keep at arms’ length, and why.

Songs

Take My Hand

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Today is the birthday in 1899 of the musician and songwriter Thomas A. Dorsey.

With his preacher father and church organist mother, he certainly had an upbringing rich in religion and songs of praise. But when it was time to get a job he went into the secular music world instead and made a name for himself there as a pianist and singer called “Georgia Tom”.

Dorsey put together a band to play behind Ma Rainey, performed in jukejoints and wrote bawdy (for the time) popular songs, but there was a personal cost that was most evident in the two breakdowns he suffered.

keyboard

He kept trying to return to a way of life that spoke to his roots, playing in churches and becoming the band director for two congregations. Dorsey couldn’t keep his street and social music out of the mix, and he raised eyebrows by bringing some blues to the people in the pews. It doesn’t take much to get people talking. There was concern that he was introducing the devil’s music to a sacred setting.

In 1932, his his wife Nettie and infant son died in childbirth. His response to this immense personal tragedy was to write new words to a hymn, “Maitland”. The result was Take My Hand Precious Lord, a song that was sung at the funerals of Martin Luther King Jr., LBJ, and Mahalia Jackson.

And of course it is still sung today.

Thanks primarily to this one tune, Dorsey is considered “The Father of Gospel Music.” And if Dorsey is Gospel Music’s father, Mahalia Jackson could be considered its mother.

Dorsey wrote hundreds of sacred and secular songs, both the words and the music, though he is primarily known for this one set of lyrics. As long as people turn to religion and music for consolation in dark times, the name Thomas A. Dorsey will be connected to Take My Hand, Precious Lord.

If you could be known forever for writing one song, what song would you want it to be?

Science, Uncategorized

Asteroid Busters

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NASA has issued an “all hands on deck” call for assistance in finding possibly threatening asteroids and developing plans to confront them. This “Grand Challenge” acknowledges the power of crowd sourcing to solve difficult problems. If two heads working on a conundrum are better than one, two billion heads applied to the same stumper are a great marketing opportunity for your brand.

The deadline to respond to NASA’s Request for Information is July 18th.

That’s coming up fast – almost as fast as a careening out-of-control asteroid bent on Earth’s destruction! So you’d better get started on your schematics. Get out a sharp pencil and a big piece of paper. All you have to do is design a system that will …

“… capture and de-spin an asteroid with the following characteristics:

  • a. Asteroid size: 5 m < mean diameter < 13 m; aspect ratio < 2/1
  • b. Asteroid mass: up to 1,000 metric tons
  • c. Asteroid rotation rate: up to 2 revolutions per minute about any axis or all axes.
  • d. Asteroid composition, internal structure, and physical integrity will likely be unknown until after rendezvous and capture.
Image: NASA/Advanced Concepts Lab
Image: NASA/Advanced Concepts Lab

Simple, eh? Maybe so.

The beauty of crowdsourcing is that there are brains out there that will see this problem from just enough of a skewed angle to come up with an approach that no one else could think of.

The ugly of crowdsourcing is that millions of others will mimic each other with the same obvious but impractical and flat-out dumb idea.

NASA has given us a head start, releasing this image of one possible approach to creating a super-sophisticated space vehicle that could capture and transport a speeding space rock.

The idea has its roots in childhood play. It can’t be a coincidence that it looks so much like this extremely simple ball-in-cup game. Who didn’t play this as a kid? Or as an adult?

ball-in-cup

My problem with this approach is that I hated the ball-in-cup game. I found it incredibly frustrating and ultimately (because I couldn’t do it), boring.

I would never go this way with the Grand Asteroid Challenge. I’d go back to the solutions we tried on the hot, muggy, buggy nights of my youth and launch a giant sheet of super-sticky double-sided Asteroid Fly Paper. NASA could partner with 3M on this one. Building a thin but tough, mobile, super-sticky landing strip and putting it in the path of an onrushing asteroid wouldn’t be simple, but I believe it would be extremely satisfying. And the larger you make your sheet of Asteroid Fly Paper, the greater the chance you’ll get the asteroid you don’t expect – the one that wasn’t on your radar.

Once they’re trapped in the goo, we can examine freshly humbled space rocks to our heart’s content.

And no, I don’t know how we’ll get them off the paper, or even get close to them without getting stuck ourselves. That would be a DIFFERENT Grand Challenge.

How would you capture and control dangerous asteroids in space?

Uncategorized

Beechly’s Betrothal Brainstorm

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Today’s guest post is really a travel pitch from a partisan player, tourism-wise. I usually refuse to take these blatantly promotional offerings, but it’s late and I’m stuck for a blog entry. Plus, the writer is well known to us all as Minnesota’s 8th district Congressman, Loomis Beechly.

Beechly Officiates While Couple Canoedles.
Beechly Officiates While Couple Canoedles.

Greetings Constituents,

This is the time of year when Minnesota’s picturesque 9th district fills up with temporary new residents.

Welcome, cash cows!

I say this in the most loving way possible because we do rely on you to drop a bundle of dough while you are visiting the district. Our people are both desperate and grateful for your support, so whether it’s a wildly expensive lunch on a dock or an overpriced boat excursion or an extremely costly but smallish cup of earthworms, I hope you’ll be quiet and gladly fork over the bucks whenever we ask and not make a fuss about it.

After all, you’re on vacation! What’s the point of getting mad?

I also want to acknowledge that this is Pride Weekend in the Twin Cities, and coming as it does at the end of a week that included the Supreme Court’s overturning of the Defense of Marriage Act, now seems like the perfect time for someone to suggest in a public forum that a group of people who really set the tone for style in our culture ought to initiate the yet-untried concept of in-the-lake weddings.

And I don’t say this merely because I represent all the water surface area in the state or because gay weddings are bound to be outrageously spendy affairs or because religious people might think they’ve cornered the lake ceremony market with their baptisms and making shallow water the go-to place for gay and lesbian unions would be a subtle but delicious in-your-face move, but just because this is something that could become amazingly stylish and it hasn’t been tried before.

As far as I know.

I would love it if two people getting hitched with their four feet in six inches of water at some Minnesota resort became a genuine GLBT (Gay Lake Betrothal Tradition).

Of course we’d have to think of some way to make this work in the winter, too. Possibly involving chainsaws, waders and heated tents.

Your Congressman,
Loomis Beechly

Describe the classiest (or most memorable) wedding you’ve attended.

Uncategorized

Ask Dr. Babooner

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Dear Dr. Babooner,

Ann_Landers baboon 2 copy

Summer has just begun and I feel like its already over.

The rain has been constant and the mosquitos have been huge. I’ve been working like crazy at my job and spending the rest of my time cutting up trees knocked over by the violent storms we’ve been having. Plus, I had to eat the entire contents of my freezer in one afternoon last weekend because the power went out. I still feel dangerously overstuffed and on the verge of exploding, I can’t sleep and I think I gained 40 pounds in spite of all the physical activity.

What’s worse, I made a bet with my sister-in-law that the Supreme Court would uphold the Defense of Marriage Act, and now that I’ve lost I’ll have to pay her by watching every minute and taking detailed notes on every episode in her boxed-set collection of Season 3 of Glee.

I haven’t done any of the enjoyable warm weather stuff I said I was going to do back in February when I was dreaming about right now, and I can feel the time slipping away.

This might be the worst summer ever.

Dr. Babooner, I know my attitude stinks and I’m focusing on all the wrong things. How can I deal with my frustration, guilt and regret, and still have a good summer in the (almost no) time that remains?

Sincerely,
Fallen Behind

I told Fallen she should resist the temptation to grade her summer. Once you establish a set of expectations you become too much like the stock market – everything is measured against what you thought would happen rather than what actually does happen, and you become tiresome to other people who are not in on the secret reasons for your suffering.

In Summertime, adding any project to your “to-do” list should require Congressional Action – that’s the only way to keep your schedule clear.

And you should never, ever make political bets with anyone. Especially not a relative. But if you have to wager with punishment by “Glee,” choose Season One, which was much better than Season Three.

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

The Baboon Congress

Rainbow TV

Video 63 Comments

Today’s guest post comes from Steve Grooms

It is fun and instructive to consider the social messages hidden in TV commercials. The people who make commercials concentrate so hard on making the big sell that they often send other messages that are more interesting than the main one.

color-bars_large

In earlier discussions here on the Trail we noted that it now seems that men are fair game in ads, often being depicted as buffoons. Women are usually presented as wise and adult. That, of course, is a total switch from the way gender was presented in the earlier days of television. Women then were shown as silly, empty-headed shoppers whom their husbands tolerated because they were attractive.

I easily remember when African-Americans never appeared in commercials. When that became controversial in the 1970s, blacks began showing up in ads, especially if the ad featured several white faces with maybe one dark one among them. Happily enough, over the years blacks have appeared in so many commercials that I think few audience members pay any attention to blacks in ads now.

I was puzzled the other day when I noticed that relatively few Hispanics are shown in commercials. That seems odd, particularly in view of how politically important that demographic has become. Then I remembered that Hispanics have many Spanish language channels. Madison Avenue must feel that is where Hispanic actors should be prominent in commercials.

The issue that has intrigued me most is the still-touchy area of interracial dating. I have carefully watched commercials, hoping to spot the first one to show romantic partners of mixed races. To my surprise, in one week earlier this year I saw interracial relationships featured in two prominent commercials. Both are still running.

The first one that I noticed was a State Farm commercial that showed an Asian man partnered with a light-skinned African-American woman. And indeed, they have a child in a stroller. This is the ad where a mime tells the couple about a great Sate Farm policy. The infant in the stroller says, “Am I the only one here who finds it weird that the mime is talking? Freaky!”

Just days after seeing that commercial I saw a romantic, impressionistic commercial for Apple iPhones with cameras. That ad has many quick cuts, one of which presents an attractive young couple posing for a photo together. A Caucasian male is apparently dating a light-skinned African-American woman. Apple has a similar ad running now with a couple that very well could be biracial, but both young people are so Goth in appearance that nobody could say what races they represent! You have to look fast – it’s at the :46 second mark.

It was fun to see two commercials that were not afraid to show relationships crossing
racial lines, but I told myself that I would probably not live long enough to see a commercial with a black man married to a white woman. That flaunts the most potent racial taboo of all.

Well, I was wrong. There is a commercial now running for Cheerios in which a white woman is in a relationship with a black man, and they have a child. The ad cleverly pulls its punch by not showing the black guy and white woman in the frame at the same time, but that did not save it from controversy.

That ad by Minnesota’s own General Mills has ignited a firestorm of bigotry.

In spite of the controversy, General Mills defends the ad and continues to run it. I wonder how long it will be before this controversy seems odd to us all. And I wonder how many years it will be before we see a gay couple in a commercial.

Have you seen something interesting in a television commercial lately?

Uncategorized

Charged Up!

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Today’s post comes from perennial sophomore Bubby Spamden.

drained_battery

Hey Mr. C.,

I’ve really been loving the power outage we’ve had since last Saturday. I know my plan for summer was pretty much to sit in the basement at our house and play video games with my buddy Oscar other losers who also don’t have jobs. But all that gets thrown out the window when the power dies and your devices don’t work.

Then I realized this was a business opportunity!

So I grabbed my dad’s gasoline powered generator and went down to the nearby strip mall and found a table outside the Starbucks and put up a sign that said “charge your phone for $5”!

You wouldn’t believe how popular that was!

I ran the generator all day and using a power strip from the garage I was able to charge six cell phones at a time. It took about 2 hours to charge each phone, and I worked a 10 hour day, so do the math!

No, I mean literally, do the math, because I have no idea how to figure this out.

All I know is that running the generator all day long took ten gallons of gas at 3.54 per gallon and I think I wound up with more money than I had when I started. But it also cost me something in explaining time, since I had to argue with people pretty much nonstop about the noise and the fumes.

I think what with our infrastructure breaking down and all these mega-storms popping up, this could be my career – cell phone charger mogul. I hear they do it all the time in those “third world” countries, and my Uncle Dan says that’s what we’re turning into.

He’s kind of sour most of the time.

He also says that the word to remember for a young person looking to find a career used to be “plastics”, but today it’s “batteries.”

So anyway, I think this is going to be my great strategy – to charge batteries in places where the power has gone out.

Or I could just try to meet this girl I saw on CNN and convince her to marry me. Then I’d be set for life because she’s going to be rich. I’m pretty sure she’d like me a lot, though it would take some effort on her part because people say I’m not easy to know or understand.

But that’s OK – she seems like the type who isn’t afraid of a little work!

See you on Easy Street!

Your Pal,
Bubby

Describe a Get Rich Quick idea of yours that didn’t pan out.

Uncategorized

Blackout Haiku

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Power_tower

I was just a kid delivering newspapers along Sunset Road in Montrose, New York when the power went out across the Northeast and parts of Canada back in November 1965.

Lots of Minnesota kids had a similar experience this weekend, as power outages from storms on Friday darkened large parts of the Twin Cities and central Minnesota.

The blackout I experienced as a ten year old was memorable for the way adults reacted – up to that point I had never seen my parents so helpless. And of course every blackout, no matter how long it lasts, reveals to us just how completely we rely on having an uninterrupted power supply. Habits are exposed and we realize how fragile our infrastructure is the moment we flip that switch and nothing happens. It takes a blackout of several hours before I can begin to change my expectations.

Whether you have power or not, I’m guessing you’ve had enough experience with outages to summarize it in three lines – with five syllables, seven syllables and five syllables.

I.
I enter the room
anticipating a light
that does not come on

II.
Every appliance
gets its button pushed again
before I say “duh”

III.
Refrigeration
Doesn’t happen without help
on Summer’s first day

Share a Blackout Haiku.

Songs

Burn On

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Burning_water-1-

This is one day out of several in its history when Cleveland’s Cuyahoga River caught fire.

The year was 1969, and we remember it today because someone at Time Magazine decided to write about it and Randy Newman processed it in a way that’s simply unforgettable.

The song only lasts two and a half minutes but it says as much about man’s ability to foul his environment as all the words that have been applied to the topic in the 44 years since. That’s the beauty of a great topical song – it can deliver its message quickly, discreetly, and in a way that gets inside your head.

Of course many topical songs become obsolete by the next news cycle, but for me, this one endures.

Apparently there are no known photos of the Cuyahoga burning that day, but Newman’s song is vivid enough to drive home the point that it is ridiculous and fundamentally wrong for a river to catch on fire.

Even if you are a pro-jobs, anti-regulation, big-industry loving, right wing Ohio voter, you could be tempted to sing along with this charming ditty about the smokin’ Cuyahoga. That’s the real power of a well-crafted piece of musical commentary.

What song do you love to sing, even though you don’t necessarily believe the words?

Songs

Opening A Northwest Passage

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On or about this date in 1940, the first successful west-to-east navigation of the Northwest Passage began, starting in Vanouver, BC and ending in Halifax, Nova Scotia, two years later.

The Northwest Passage is a sea route above the North American continent. For many years and quite a few explorers it was an elusive prize. Searching for it brought pain, despair and death to too many adventurers, who wound up with their vessels trapped in sea ice very far indeed from any hope of rescue.

shipwreck

It seemed the Northwest Passage was a myth, like Bigfoot or the Easter Bunny. But With our relentlessly progressing climate change, the ice has gone out and stayed out longer, and what was once thought impossible is now increasingly common. So common, nations have started arguing about who controls the route, which, when open for commercial uses, will save shippers an enormous amount of time and money.

Is this a silver lining in the saga of global warming? Ask a polar bear who is swimming and searching in vain for something solid to stand on.

I can only guess how members of the doomed 1845 Franklin Expedition might have processed the news that their goal could be reached with no trouble if only they were willing to wait 160 years. The bravery of a handful of long distance travelers willing to sacrifice comfort and life itself could not accomplish what billions of less valiant people have done simply by choosing to ride down to the corner for a pack of cigarettes. The Northwest Passage is destined to be opened by those of us who don’t mind idling in front of the neighborhood convenience store.

Of course it reminds me of this favorite song.

Back in the 1970’s when Stan Rogers wrote about tracing the Northwest Passage over highways in a car, little did he know he was talking about the very activity that, multiplied many times over, would cause a Northwest Passage by sea to finally open up.

When have you found your pathway blocked?