It’s spring, the birds are tweeting -- and so am I

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Now I’ve done it.

I’m tweeting.

Which is proof you can teach a very old dog new tricks.

But I have promised myself to keep the tweets 99%news-related, because of my strong feelings that social media websites (Twitter, Facebook, MySpace), despite their utility, have 1) sadly replaced real human interaction; 2) contain too much inane and mundane personal information that no one except one’s very close friends really needs to know; and 3) can eat up far too much time I could be spending on writing, reporting, reading and having a real rather than virtual life.

So most of my Tweets will be links to my stories and blogs. (How I love tiny urls!) Others will report news. And, yes, I did post a couple updates today about the perils of road cycling in Chicago, which turn our flat terrain into Category 1 climbs, and I will offer similar observations about my personal experiences if I think they are more than navel gazing.

And I will let you see my happy face on Twitter as soon as it exterminates a current bug on picture posting. (Poor Twitter; this is the message I got when trying to upload a picture today: ‘Twitter is stressing out a bit right now, so this feature is temporarily disabled.’’)

To make this long story (for Twitter, anyway) short:

You can follow me on Twitter at olyphil.

-- Philip Hersh

(The photo Twitter won’t let you see: Me in front of the Athens Olympic Stadium during its final stages of roof construction.)