Author Archives: Steve Mays

“creativity thrives on constraints”

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The always insightful Amy Gahran poses a little thought experiment that I believe I’ve posted on a few times:

“What if social media (Twitter, Facebook, Delicious, Google Earth, etc.) were the only tool you could use to deliver the benefits of journalism to your community? You could still gather information however you choose (through in-person interviews, phone, Web, archive research, etc. — even social media), but you could only deliver your work via social media. How would you do it?”

I suspect this experiment is already out of the lab and we’ll see more and more examples. And I especially like the notion that “creativity thrives on constraints.” 140 characters. 30 sec of video. Boiling a story down to its essence.

Wildlife: Snake attacks helpless birds

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I took the dogs out to do their business earlier today and, on the way back, I happened to look up in the tree we walk under a dozen times a day. I saw what I thought was a black piece of plastic until it moved in an unmistakably serpentine way. It was a big-ass snake, about 15 feet off the ground.

As I looked closer I saw the snake was wrapped around a bird nest, which explained the frantic activity of some robins. They were darting in for a peck at the snake, trying to scare it off. With no luck at all. (I found it interesting that they were getting help from cardinals and other birds) The snake looked like he might be digesting something.

If you are a snake lover or naturalist or one of those guys who pick up snakes, you can skip the rest of this post. It’s just gonna piss you off.  Let’s go to the video [CAUTION: Adult language]:

Even if I’d been willing to get on a ladder and grab the snake, it would probably have brought down the nest. But friends, that was never a consideration.

And even as I fired little steel balls into the tree, the adult birds didn’t flinch or move away. They stayed right by the nest. I kept thinking I’d hit and kill one of them but I didn’t.

If this black snake had stayed out in the woods, stuffing himself with rodents and moles, he’d still be alive. But he decided to climb up my tree and eat some defenseless baby robins.