One lone male hummingbird -- master of all he surveys.
But before he can settle down to enjoy himself -- here comes another hummer and the first guy feels obligated to defend the nectar -- no matter that there are four feeding holes and a lady in the kitchen ready to refill the feeder -- it's a point of honor!
I took these pictures a few days ago and was reminded of them last night when a heated discussion broke out after dinner about Twitter -- yes, the social networking kind. I don't know much about Twitter -- don't tweet and don't follow anyone else's twittering. So I didn't feel capable of weighing in on the subject under discussion -- which, if I followed it, was something like "Email and Twitter and other social networking modes, all of which place a premium on brevity, are rapidly destroying their users' ability to engage in detailed and abstract reasoning."
Or not. Twitter's role in getting the news out of Iran and in enabling dissidents to come together was referenced. Haiku were mentioned too -- an art form in which brevity is like the distillation of ideas. A case was made that many people are communicating now who otherwise would not.
I don't know how the discussion ended. It got too loud for me and I went upstairs to check my email.
What do you think? Is all this communication a good thing? Any down sides? (Of course, the fact that you're here reading this suggests a certain bias in favor of the Internet.)
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