Those addictive, terrible, wonderful smartphones

Don't let technology enslave you! #PutYourPhoneDown.

It's a quandary, isn't it? Even those of us who make fun of kids having their noses in their smartphones become slaves to technology. If you don't believe it, look up from your phone and look around.

The other day, I went walking outside my office complex and wasn't surprised. Every person – every single person – was looking at their smartphone screen. It was almost enough for me to post it on Facebook. Instead, I texted my amazement to Mrs. Brad.

LOL, as we say online.

Handheld technology has taken over the world.

This is where the old-timer is supposed to complain about society and how it's not as great as when people actually talked to each other. But to write about that, I would need to search Google on my smartphone for information about when cellphones reached the tipping point and whether there have been any significant studies about social interaction since.

If I find it, I'll tweet about it (You can follow me @bradstanhope), because the explosion of smartphones is the #biggestchange of my lifetime.

I've thought about this a reasonable amount lately – about how much we rely on technology in our everyday lives. I'm not alone – based on social media posts, a lot of people do so.

But I'll be frank: I'm as reliant on the technology as a garden-variety teenager. I don't know what I would do if smartphones were no longer available, but it would likely include a lot of fetal-position crying. And I'm not alone – witness the number of people who you'll see staring at their phones today.

Sometimes, it's ridiculous. Consider the scene at sporting events, where something dramatic happens and most fans are recording it on their phones. I guess they want to see a terrible video of something they could have watched live.

But that's what people do. If we have smartphones, we use smartphones.

I use mine for communication, maps, music, Internet access and to buy things. And that's all while I'm driving! (Just kidding . . . as far as you know. ROTFL.)

In fact, I recently started putting my phone in another room while relaxing with Mrs. Brad, because I was too often checking scores of sporting events instead of being present with her. But then I still sneak away and check my phone. Just in case, you know.

Has there been a revolution in history that changed our basic daily habits so fast? Fire was a game-changer, but it took decades before the caveman stopped using electric heaters. Centuries after the invention of the printing press, most people still didn't read. Automobiles were plentiful within a decade or two of their introduction, but there were still horse-driven buggies. Even personal computers, which came on at a breakneck pace, didn't move from luxury to necessity as fast as smartphones.

A decade ago, almost no one had them. Now we all depend on them: They are our phone book, camera, video recorder, radio, music collection, stereo, TV, personal computer, bank and phone.

How do you react if you forget your phone at home? It's time to panic!

I guess this is a long journey to say this: We love our technology. We want our smartphones.

If terrorists really wanted to paralyze us, they would find a way to make it impossible for us to use them. How could we live if we had to go back to the old days?

#unthinkable.

Brad Stanhope is a former Daily Republic editor. Reach him at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.

Who is the Bay Area's most popular athlete?

The Golden State Warriors are the best team as the NBA playoffs start. They're the most exciting team in their sport. They have a charismatic star who will be named the league's most valuable player in a couple of weeks, a player who is perhaps the league's most popular.

But he's the second-most-popular active athlete in the Bay Area.

With the NBA playoffs opening, the baseball season getting rolling and the NFL draft approaching, it's time for my sort-of annual column – naming of the most-popular Bay Area athletes. It's based on how beloved they are among both casual and passionate fans. Disagree? Feel free to comment online and tell me about how I hate the Raiders or Sharks.

Here's the top 10 list, counting down, with apologies to Klay Thompson, Joe Thornton and the entire Oakland A's roster. After all, there are just 10 spots.

10. Departed 49ers. Frank Gore, Patrick Willis, Mike Iupati and coach Jim Harbaugh all would have been contenders for the list (well, all but Iupati), so they are placeholders at No. 10.

9. Draymond Green, Warriors. Among core basketball fans, he's higher up the list. By the end of the playoffs, he will likely also move up with general fans, too. He is a ball of energy, enthusiasm and diverse skills, universally considered "the heartbeat" of the Warriors.

8. Hunter Pence, Giants. The kale-eating, scooter-driving outfielder became a favorite with his preacher-like "sermons" during the 2012 playoffs and World Series. Now he's a fixture in San Francisco, a twitchy, energetic favorite who hits in the middle of the order and rarely has a day off (except now, when he's out with a broken forearm).

7. David Carr, Raiders. Makes it by default – the Raiders have a lot of fans and he's their best young quarterback in a generation. Carr could become a fixture on the Bay Area sports scene, assuming the franchise doesn't move away.

6. Mike Krukow/Duane Kuiper, Giants. The team's TV announcers have been together for two decades and fans feel like they're part of the family. They are, if you watch 150-plus games a year.

5. Billy Beane, A's. It's not by design, but Beane, the A's general manager, trades away every player who could possibly make this list. He's also the only Bay Area sports figure who's been the focus of a blockbuster movie.

4. Colin Kaepernick, 49ers. His position is as close as royalty as the Bay Area sports scene has: 49ers quarterback. While not Joe Montana or Steve Young (or even John Brodie), Kaepernick led the team to three straight NFC championship games. Next season will be crucial – will he become an elite quarterback or slide into being an average QB on a mediocre team?

3. Madison Bumgarner, Giants. His performance in the World Series was unprecedented – in baseball, not just Giants history. The fact that it came after a really good season and that Bumgarner has a John Wayne persona made it even more striking. And he's 25.

2. Stephen Curry, Warriors. If you're a Warriors fan, you're lucky: You get to follow one of the most remarkable careers in NBA history. Curry is creative, funny, likable and the greatest shooter in NBA history.

1. Buster Posey, Giants. Who else? He's played five years in the major leagues and has won three championships, a rookie of the year award and was MVP – all for a team that hadn't won a title in nearly 50 years. Young Giants fans think the team always has a great player with a perfect baseball name. They don't. Sometimes the best player is named Bobby Murcer or Randy Winn.

Brad Stanhope is a former Daily Republic editor. Reach him at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.

Does the ordre of letters in a word mattre?

For the past several years, a behind-the-scenes war played out between the acting world and traditional media.

The issue: Spelling. Of one specific word. Is it "theater" or "theatre?"

It's "theater," of course, but not everyone agrees. The tension is particularly rampant in Fairfield-Suisun, because the drama groups all decided to spell their facilities wrong. At least according to newspapers and Americans.

The drama troupes call them "theatres." You know, the Downtown Theatre. The Missouri Street Theatre. Solano College Theatre.

Newspapers – particularly this one – drew a line in the sand. They said, in essence, that you can call the building a "theatre" if you want and you can call your troupe a "theatre," but we won't use "theatre" as a generic term, because we're not British. And it's not the 18th century. And we learned how to spell in elementary school.

Isn't this the kind of thing we fought the Revolutionary War to prevent? Wasn't King George III trying to force us to spell wrong? Didn't the Boston Tea Party have the desire for freedom to spell correctly?

Isn't this a step backward?

Then I thought about it. And realized I might be wrong.

We let groups self-identify all the time. Every few years, a subgroup of our culture comes out with a new way to describe themselves and we go along. The dictionary is filled with words that are considered outdated or even politically incorrect, so we don't use them anymore.

So maybe the theater . . . er, theatre . . . people are right. Maybe we should just give them a break and let them spell wrong if they want.

Aftre all, there's nothing that says you can't change the ordre of lettres in words, right? And we do speak English, which means that sometimes the people in the mothre country might be correct in how they spell things.

Whether the lettres are in the right ordre or not isn't really up to me. Or to you. Language changes ovre time and sometimes we should change with it.

When I say "we," I mean not only you and me, but newspapres, television reportres and even dictionary editors.

Perhaps the theatre people are on to something. Maybe our language is changing and they are making it bettre fastre.

Aftre all, they do a lot of great plays. You know, "A Streetcar named Desier," "Fiddlre on the Roof," "Jane Eyer" and "Petre Pan."

To deny them the right to spell the word incorrectly could create, to paraphrase Shakespeaer, "the wintre of their discontent."

I guess my point is to let the theatre people embrace their inner misspellre.

Then I thought about it and realized they're wrong. I'm American. We have rules. We spell words correctly.

I'm not ready to change the Constitution to say, "We the people, in ordre to form a more perfect union."

It's time to re-draw that line in the sand.

Otherwise, soonre or latre, we'll be spelling wrong and not know it.

Brad Stanhope is a formre Daily Republic editor. Reach him at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.

Missing silverware mystery not so mysterious

It was like a science fiction movie where people start disappearing, but no one realizes it's widespread.

Except it was spoons, forks and plates, not people. And it was only at the homes of people who have a certain type of resident: High school and college-age students.

It's chilling. And it happened to us.

Mrs. Brad and I noticed it a few years ago. Our silverware, which we got as wedding gifts in the last millennium, started to disappear. First was spoons.

Then forks.

Making it worse? The gradual disappearance of a few plates.

What in the world? Where did our stuff go?

The first option of course is to check to see whether the hired help was stealing our silverware. The only problem was we had dismissed most of the servants during the Great Recession, when we had to cut the household staff to the gardener, my driver and our washer woman.

So we took the next obvious step: We asked our sons. They were in high school, the age where we were beginning to trust them to take food into their rooms (with the stern warning that mice and rats would come after any uneaten food left on plates). Perhaps they had some spoons, forks and plates in their rooms.

They had kitchenware in their rooms, but not nearly enough to explain all that was missing. When pressed, they said they were sure they hadn't lost silverware.

Silverware?

Missing?

Us?

No, we always return it.

We knew that wasn't really true, since Mrs. Brad and I had both seen plenty of dirty plates with silverware – and even some food (mouse food!) left in their rooms: Bowls with dried ramen noodles. Hardened cereal.

But when their rooms were cleaned and the silverware and plates were all in the dishwasher, a kitchen inventory revealed the truth.

We were down at least two plates. And we'd gone from 10 spoons and forks to three or four of each.

What was happening? Was a terrorist sneaking into our house and taking spoons and forks? Was someone using a giant magnet to suck them away? If so, how did they avoid knives? Were aliens harvesting our silverware to power a return trip to their planet?

We were baffled. Our sons insisted that they were innocent. The silverware was gone.

Then we talked to some friends and found the same thing happened to them.

They were down to a few spoons and forks. The plates were gradually disappearing. And they had kids of about the same age as ours.

The reason was obvious. There is obviously some mathematical formula that combines the age of your live-at-home children with the number of forks and spoons. As the kids get older, silverware disappears. It's not their fault, it's just math.

Now I joke with young parents: "Sure, it's hard now, but wait until the spoons go!" They look at me like I'm crazy, but just wait. They'll see.

I realize that the disappearing silverware is God's way of making sure kids move out. If ours stay much longer, Mrs. Brad and I will be forced to eat with our fingers out of pans – which only happens now when Mrs. Brad is out of town.

Look at it this way: At some point, we'll lose two occupants of our house, but gain some spoons and forks. I'll miss my sons, but you know the old saying: It's great to have kids, but they're not much help when you're eating a bowl of ice cream.

Brad Stanhope is a former Daily Republic editor. Reach him at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.