The plank: Why walk it when you can BE it?

Planking: Risky even for inanimate objects. See the
editor's note below.

This one's going straight into my "People are Stupid" file:
 
"Planking." Not to be confused with the yoga pose. Apparently it's a trend where people take photos of themselves in supine or prone positions to post on their social media network of choice. It's an activity, evidently, in which folks attempt to one-up others by laying on surfaces of ever-increasing degrees of impressiveness (and, one assumes, ever-decreasing degrees of narrowness). This post at the blog of The Atlantic associate editor Nicholas Jackson mentions that an Australian man died after attempting to plank on the railing of a seventh-floor balcony.

Of course.

"Stupidity" doesn't come close to describing this sort of behavior, no matter which angle you chose to discuss it. If you're going to injure or kill yourself while attempting to impress others, at least take up an activity with some panache, one that requires some level of technical or physical prowess.

Like parkour.

Does anyone else hate the mimicry mentality that has blown up with the Internet? 

Editor's note: I managed to prove to myself the folly of planking. One Android was harmed in the production of the above photo. In attempting to plank on the edge of my desk at work, it tumbled off the edge. I bobbled it a few times before securing it in my hand. 

As I set it down I noticed one of its antenna had snapped off. I did a little in-the-field triage in an attempt to reattach the appendage, but Elmer's Glue is not the most powerful of surgical adhesives. I will monitor the patient's recovery and perhaps try a more potent glue. In lieu of flowers or sympathy cards, please send money for medical expenses. I'll be sure the funds are administered ... somehow.

No doubt nervous, the other Android stepped up, this time secured with a bit of scotch tape.We value safety here at TiW; it's usually our second priority.

Sept. 11 and the death of Osama bin Laden: Comparison of two campus scenes following both events

Historical record: The real show-and-tell value for any
future kids will be the fact that news used
to be printed on paper.

I went to work Monday morning oblivious to the news about Osama bin Laden. When I saw the headline online, incredulity washed over me. It was the same feeling I had the morning I woke up and saw that Saddam Hussein had been captured. Of all the headlines I expected to see at the start of this week, Osama bin Laden's death didn't make the list. I felt like I was in Bizarro World.

I decided to walk to the campus center later that morning to get coffee. I could have indulged in the break room supply or gone to a snack kiosk closer to my building, but it was my excuse to take in the student body scene, to see how young adults who were 8-, 9-, 10-, or 11-years-old or so at the time of Sept. 11 were reacting to the news.

From what I could see, it was business as usual.

No one glued to TV sets awaiting the latest scrap of new information amid the mind-numbing repetition of previously-reported details. No euphoric celebrations. No excited chatter. At least, nothing along those lines that I was able to detect.

Maybe had I stuck around longer than the few moments it took to get my coffee, I would have noticed more. However, I was so unstruck by the scene that I continued on my way, back to the office to (I admit) attempt to work while I followed the latest details as they were tweeted by my favorite news outlets.

A decade of change

This is in no way a criticism of students or that age-group in particular. Words, ink, airtime and electricity have been devoted in bulk to the discussion of how information-consumption has changed. No need to repeat that here.

However, I can't help but compare two scenes, nearly 10 years apart. On the morning Osama bin Laden became known to the wider world, I was in my senior year at the University at Albany.

For a school where many of the students come from New York City and surrounding areas, it was a tense day. Social media as we know it didn't exist. Cell phones were scarce among the student population. Those that were available made phone calls and (maybe) were able to access the most primitive of the mobile web.

I stood in line with my then-girlfriend (now wife) for seven hours to donate at a coincidental blood drive in the campus center. Had I known it would take that long, I would have instead been glued to the TV and my desktop PC. As it was, a friend, who was a campus EMT and was checking in at the drive, saw us in line and stopped to talk.

"I can't believe they're gone," she said.

"What do you mean they're gone?" I asked, vaguely thinking she was referring to all the victims.

That's how we learned the towers had collapsed.

Compare that to 2011, where I could have known almost immediately the latest developments even as I stood in line, patiently waiting to do the only useful thing I felt I COULD do on such a devastating day.

Technology and access to it has changed dramatically in the past decade, as it should have. That probably accounts for what was, to my eyes at least, dramatically different scenes in the aftermath of Sept. 11 and of the death of its perpetrating puppet master.

Maybe it's a question of scale (Sept. 11 being of a significantly higher magnitude than the death of bin Laden and some of his cohorts), or simply the fact that the news broke the night before; perhaps the volume of information consumed in the hours between the announcement and my coffee run had washed away the initial surprise more quickly than in the slower days of media 10 years ago.

Whatever the explanation, it's less interesting to me than the observational comparisons.