“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.

My kind of war

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I’ve read a lot news stories, blog posts and tweets this weekend, reminding everyone to remember the men and women who served and died in defense of our country. How best to do that? Little American flags? Those magnetic yellow “Support Our Troops” ribbons?

John MaysMy dad was in the Navy (a radio operator) and saw action in the pacific during WWII. He survived but never talked about it. To me or anyone else as far as I know. I do recall my mom telling me how relieved everyone was when it “started looking like we would win” the war. That was the first time I really understood it was possible for our country to lose a war. The movies always included some drama on that score but you knew the good guys would prevail. Not so for those who fought the thing.

Perhaps the best time to remember our men and women in uniform is before we send them off to fight and die. And if the cause isn’t just and right –whatever that means anymore– we don’t send them.

I grew up during the Cold War and I kind of miss it. If you think about it, a thermonuclear war is the only war where the politicians –who decide to go to war– might die in the first ten minutes. That is my kind of war.

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.