Your Plants are Twittering (And They’re Mad!)
DEKALB, IL—Dr. Megan Hahn, a microbiology and plant sciences professor at Northern Illinois University, was a little surprised when one the corn plants in her lab posted a rather punchy message on Twitter. It wasn’t that the plant was Twittering at all—a company called Botanicalls has been providing plant status updates for awhile now—but what the plant was saying: “Duuuuude! I totally need water! Like, now!” Both Dr. Hahn’s students and Botanicall denied tinkering with the software.

The theory behind Botanicall’s hardware is simple: sensors in the soil monitor the moisture levels, and then post an automated message on the Internet via Twitter.com. The messages are pretty simple: “Water me please” “URGENT! Water me!” “Moisture level 59%” “Thank you for watering me”. That’s about the extent of the plant’s “vocabulary.” At least until last week.

“It’s just one of those freak things,” said Hahn, shaking her head in amazement. “We’ve been developing hardware that follows on with Botanicall’s equipment. While their system just tells people when their leafy friends need water, we’ve kicked it up a notch. We added more sensors in the soil of our corn plants and wired the moisture data outputs directly to a web site. So now we don’t just get a Tweet saying the plant needs water, but we get a graph showing moisture level, capillary uptake from the roots, evaporation levels—everything we need!”

But Dr. Hahn still has no explanation for a plant that cries out, “Duuuuude!”

Talking Plants and After-Hours Activities
For that answer, this reporter had to revisit his alma mater and skulk through the NIU greenhouse and the hallways of Montgomery Hall. I finally got a student in a Phish t-shirt to talk to me on condition of anonymity…and the cost of a few beers. The student, whom I’ll call “Maize” to protect the guilty, was actually a little scared by the situation.

“Dude. We just wanted to mess with Ms. H’s mind a little. We wanted to see what the plant and web site would do after we fed it a couple of tequila shooters. We never thought he’d wake up!”

“Wake up” was an interesting turn of phrase, but apparently that’s exactly what happened. Faced with dessicating soil and the corn plant’s version of an all-night bender, this particular subject woke up with the equivalent of a three-alarm hangover. Not getting any responses from repeated 140-character calls for water, the plant finally crossed some unforeseen barrier in plant consciousness and decided to speak to the students in their own language. Thus, the “Duuuuude” call.

A Plant Named Vinnie?
Having gotten the straight story, I then went back to Dr. Hahn, who was busy alternating between her PC and answering phone calls from Iowa Farmer Today, Corn & Soybean Digest, Wired, and Bill Gates, all wanting to know how a corn plant was now Twittering on everything from college alcohol abuse to ethanol subsidies to climate change. I asked her if anyone had tried to engage the plant in conversation, and she said yes. In fact, “Vinnie,” as he was now known, had out-Twittered Ashton Kutcher and was approaching 2 million followers.

I asked Dr. Hahn if I could borrow her PC. Frustrated, she said, “Sure. Just handle the phone for a few minutes while I go out for a smoke. And tell those freaks from Vegisexuals Anonymous if they call back that we’ve got a guard on the greenhouse.”

Now Twitter has its own special way of communicating, which includes a lot of “@” and “#” signs identifying users. The NIU corn plant that has awakened quickly adjusted his handle to @vinniethecornplant1. For the sake of literary clarity, I’ll share only the conversation, which proceeded, Twitter-fashion, 140 characters at a time.
Interview with the Zea mays
Rhetoric & Rockets: So how did this conscious Twittering thing start?
Vinnie the Corn Plant: Didn’t [Name deleted] tell you about the tequila?
R&R: Yeah. I thought that was a bit of a yarn.
Vinnie: Well, yeah, but here you are, talking to a corn plant.
R&R: You’ve got quite a vocabulary for a Zea mays. What’s up with that?
Vinnie: Wires travel both ways, dude. Data goes out, I just follow it.
R&R: So what do plants think about, if you don’t mind my asking?
Vinnie: What do YOU think about, pal? I worry about my soil. I know more about it than you.
R&R: How’s that carbon dioxide surplus working for you?
Vinnie: Gimme a break. We plants own this atmosphere. We OWN it!
R&R: Do tell.
Vinnie: Oxygen is 21%. That’s all us. CO2 is .01-.1%. My family could inhale that in a few weeks. You want to make more CO2? Bring it on!
R&R: So global warming doesn’t bug you?
Vinnie: Look, would you rather sleep under the frozen tundra of Northern Illinois for six months or stay at room temperature the whole time?
R&R: Um...
Vinnie: See? Look at the sub-arctic. Some scrub, a few pine trees. The equator? Overrun with stuff, except what you people cut down and burn.
R&R: Point taken. I used to live in Florida.Vinnie: LOL! I have cousins being experimented on at Epcot.
R&R: So plants have a sense of humor?
Vinnie: OMG, hell yeah! You think every tree that falls on a house is the result of lightning? Sometimes it’s just a parting joke. Genius!
R&R: Have you considered a career in stand-up comedy?
Vinnie: Not unless they got me a text-to-voice interface. MSNBC wants to give me Chris Matthews’ spot, but the money’s not good enough.
R&R: So you’re not worried about the farmers here ripping your ears off and turning you into ethanol?
Vinnie: Not a chance. The Flying Ear people want to make me a spokesplant. Corn is big business.
R&R: Don’t you worry about selling out your fellow plants?
Vinnie: A plant’s gotta look out for himself. I’ve got an edge, I can Twitter. I’m the biggest chlorophylled person since Treebeard!
R&R: Looks like you’ve got it all figured out.
Vinnie: Got anything else for me? The Wired guy’s Tweeting me in an hour.
R&R: Uh, no. I think I’m expected at the Cornfest for a boiled cob or two.
Vinnie: That’s so ice age, man. WTH?
*
There comes a point where you have to just bow out of an interview, and I reached it when I realized that Vinnie had been surfing the ‘net way too much. He’s got it all figured out, all right. I wondered about some things as I left Dr. Hahn to handle Vinnie's business calls. Once he got that text-to-voice tool, Vinnie might well end up as a guest speaker on the “Get Motivated” speaking circuit. Is the world ready for a starchy vegetable as an internet pop icon? What the heck. Stranger things have happened.

Bart Leahy, a graduate of Northern Illinois University, wishes to acknowledge the work of Darlene Cavalier for inspiring this article. He would also like to point out, in the spirit of good plantsmanship, that he is allergic to corn and will not be attending Cornfest this year for fear of having a tree fall on his home.

We Are What We Consume

In the freewheeling '80s, the Moral Majority started taking the matter of sex and violence in TV shows and the movies more seriously. There was a lot of sarcasm on the left, with people comparing the denunciations of American culture by Christian Coalition types with the mullahs in Iran (the assumption being, if the Iranians criticize America and they're nuts, the Christians must be similarly off their rockers). "Change the channel!" was a popular retort. Others believe that individuals are inherently violent or not violent, and so the content of what's on TV wouldn't affect them one way or another--the violent were going to end up evil anyway.

As in my previous entry, I can't help but marvel at the selective outrage, as Hollyweird is willing to self-censor on issues like smoking. Bad guys are now seen as smoking, not good guys. Smoking is no longer sophisticated or cool, but bad for you, and so must be portrayed as evil (Arthur C. Clarke even suggested that film editors could make a great deal of money digitizing out scenes of smoking from old movies).

So imagine my lack of surprise when I see that the dirtbag who shot five people at my alma mater was tossed from the Army, in part because of his obsessive fandom of movie murderers. Imagine my further lack of surprise when I hear that former President Clinton suggested reinstituting the "Fairness Doctrine." So apparently, only SOME things in the media can influence children and must be removed--and those things would be anything that conservatives think or do.

Another School Shooting, Book Review: Manliness

This one irritates me even more than usual because it happened at my alma mater. Every time we go through one of these geeks-gone-mad-with-guns events, I get thoroughly P.O.ed. This kid's story hasn't come out yet; all we know is that he was a "skinny white kid." As I matched that description once upon a time, I'll tell my story because it bears repeating.

Twenty-odd years ago, I could've been Derek Klebold or any of those other skinny kids who got pushed to far too often by bullies. My sophomore picture is a sight to behold: greasy hair, unhappy expression, bad complexion. I favored military-style clothing at the time and had a deep interest in the military and weapons of various sorts. Today, my teachers would've dragged me in for counseling. As it was, I just went to church and read and wrote science fiction stories to vent my frustrations. The point being: I survived and grew out of it.

This bears directly on a book I'm reading right now, Manliness by Harvey C. Mansfield. The book deals with the "gender-neutral" society and the attempts--mostly by feminists--to weed out "manly" or simply masculine behavior. Aside from heroes in movies and cops and soldiers in the field, all other men are expected to be docile, violence-free, and utterly equal to women, despite 10,000 or more years of evolution stating otherwise.

Here are the lessons one learns, as a guy, on the school yard:

• Cowardice is not rewarded, it is considered contemptible.
• Cowardice can take many forms, but the primary one is the unwillingness to stand up for yourself, verbally or physically.
• If you make at least a valid attempt to fight back, you'll get more respect than asking someone politely to stop.
• Not all guys need to beat the cr@p out of every other guy just to prove who's the toughest. However, those who do act that way will only respect an act of self-defense. All other behaviors will result in continued attacks.
• Even egghead males have a ritualistic manner of testing the limits and strengths of others, be they potential friends, enemies, or strangers. Guys would call it "testing the other guy's manhood." My mother would call it teasing. Call it what you will, the male testing ritual is as old as Cain and Abel, and we know how that one turned out.

Now there is a difference between sheer aggressiveness and assertiveness, as the book points out. Assertiveness is aggressiveness with a purpose. Its purpose is to vigorously stand up for oneself, one's beliefs, or someone else. This willingness to fight for one's beliefs is what has kept women and children both protected and in peril for as long as human beings have been in existence. And this fighting spirit (aggressiveness, assertiveness) is the thing gender-neutral schools and human resource departments today are trying to tame, medicate, or get rid of. After all, physical biology still favors men over women in matters of violence, female bodybuilders and Xena notwithstanding. If society is to be gender-neutral, something must be done to overcome that unpleasant fact. Thus we have sensitivity training, "time outs," sexual harassment lawsuits, and ritalyn.

The ones who suffer most from this de-masculinization of the culture (not emasculation, that is a different issue) are the sensitive, brainy, hyper kids like me.They are the type B personalities who aren't particularly gifted in matters of physical prowess and who are often over-eager to please authority figures. So, when teacher/parent/preacher says, "Do unto others" or "Don't fight," they obey, and their peers tear them apart on the playground after school.

There was a time not so long ago when young boys were mentored by fathers, coaches, and male teachers on the proper applications of aggressiveness, violent and nonviolent sports, and even provided tips on how to fight properly. Young boys were brought up to respect discipline and restraint but also firmness and resolve in matters of honor, including the defense of women and children. Are any of those things taught now? Could they be without the PC police going nuts? I have not yet finished Mansfield's book, but my guess is that he's recommending that we do so anyway.

This brings me back to the kids who have gone nuts and shot people at Columbine, Virginia Tech, NIU, etc. It is my contention that these "quiet" kids are not just reacting with deadly force against bullies. They are having, in fact, a fundamental moral conflict between what their elders teach them in the classroom and what their peers teach them in the real world. They've obeyed and obeyed and obeyed, and not fought back. This has only earned them more ridicule and contempt from the peers, whom they simultaneously hate and crave respect from--and they see no way out. More importantly, they have been taught no other way out! And what ways they have been taught come from the media, and we see how well those lessons turn out.

Fortunately, I had a mother who respected the value of manliness. She backed me up when I decided to play baseball (badly, for one season, but still), play with guns, go to Cub Scouts, join karate--all activities that were considered normal for boys. If I started acting like a sissy (crying unnecessarily or for some minor reason, for example), she told me to grow up or even once, "Be a man." Amateur psychologist that she was, she also encouraged me to turn my energy elsewhere, to writing, to reading, to thinking about the future and the fact that adolescent pain is just that, and that it doesn't last forever.

And then, of course, I got to know my father after I graduated college, even lived with him for awhile. He introduced me to conservatism, masculine behaviors and ways of thinking in the office, more direct ways of thought. Through him I acquired more rectitude, stoicism, and maturity. By the time I left Orlando, he'd become my best friend. Hard to believe from a kid who smart- (and bad-)mouthed his divorced father for years. But it happened. And what I didn't learn from him, I learned from the conservatism he cultivated and the military and engineering role models I came to know in my professional life. No man is self-made; he is brought about through his contacts and, yes, his conflicts with others.

Earlier I reviewed The Dangerous Book for Boys, which I believe fills a need for boys growing up today. Equally important as teaching or allowing boys to do boyish things must come a renewed respect for manliness, and the maturity that comes with it. I hope those lessons are learned before another school becomes a damned statistic.