Betsy Devine: Funny ha-ha and/or funny peculiar

The canonical path (for women) to immortality is to be adored by immortal men. Consider the life, and fame, of Alice Pleasance Liddell (1852-1934), the inspiration for Alice in Wonderland. Three photographs:

The first, taken in 1859 by Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgson) shows 7 year-old Alice posed as a beggar girl.

The second, taken by the famous Victorian photographer Julia Cameron (1815-1879), shows Alice as a young woman–posed as the mirror image of Carroll’s beggar girl.

The third shows Alice at 80, when she was eking out her income by lecturing on her experience as “Alice.”

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The brilliant but shy Oxford mathematician Charles Dodgson first met Alice when she was (almost) four–he was twenty-four. Three years later, Alice inspired Carroll/Dodgson to dream up the
Alice in Wonderland story during a boat trip–he published the story in 1865. Its sequel, Through the Looking Glass, appeared in 1871.

Supposedly, Queen Victoria’s fourth son Prince Leopold, fell in love with Alice when he was at Oxford. He was dissuaded from wedding a commoner, and Alice got married in 1880 to another Oxford student, named Reginald Hargreaves.

Now (if not earlier) her story diverges from fantasy. Of their three sons, two were killed in action in World War I. In 1925, Alice’s husband died too. She was 73. No passionate young men gathered round to adore and protect her. She was reduced to selling Carroll’s hand-written manuscripts, and later to touring the US giving lectures. She confessed to her last surviving son that she was “tired of being Alice in Wonderland. Does it sound ungrateful? It is – only I do get tired!”

(I remember a football-playing college boyfriend with a bad knee, whose doctor told him, “Twenty years down the road, your football glory plus ten cents will get you a cup of coffee–assuming the cost of coffee doesn’t rise.” For most of us, once we are 80, telling the story of all the men who worshipped us way-back-when won’t pay the rent. In that way, Alice was lucky.)

If any girl got a ticket to immortality from the man who adored her–Alice surely did. So, how immortal is she? According to Google the hits for “Alice Liddell” plus the hits for “Alice Pleasance Liddell” add up to about 4,000–Lewis Carroll himself gets more than 164,000. In fact, the photographer Julia Margaret Cameron has about 4 times as many hits as little Alice.

The moral? If you want to be immortal, girls–or if you just want to be solvent–do it yourself!

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Mister Rogers has left our neighborhood. I haven’t thought about Fred Rogers in years, but now that he’s dead I feel as though one of my friends is gone.
His gentle voice, slow pacing, and dorky cardigan begged for parody. I liked Eddy Murphy’s–Rogers liked it too.

I loved the way he treated us all with respect. I loved his complete lack of irony. I was moved by this heartfelt, person-by-person eulogy written by my cynical pals at Plastic. It reminded me how many good neighbors we have online.

The AP eulogy has a quote I want to share:

During the Persian Gulf War, Rogers told youngsters that “all children shall be well taken care of in this neighborhood and beyond — in times of war and in times of peace,” and he asked parents to promise their children they would always be safe.

“We live in a world in which we need to share responsibility,” he said in 1994. “It’s easy to say ‘It’s not my child, not my community, not my world, not my problem.’

“Then there are those who see the need and respond. I consider those people my heroes.”

Dear neighbor, if you read this far, you must be missing Mister Rogers too. I’m finding some comfort in what he used to say:

“You always make each day a special day for me. You know how? By just you being you. I like you just the way you are. Bye, neighbor.”

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Dave Winer blew me away today with a blog entry called “Why blogs are cool“. Dave, a major blog-software guru, has been thinking aloud online about Google and Blogger–and thereafter suffering through having other people quote, misquote, analyze, mis-analyze, etc. whatever he said. Dave responds to it all with good humor. My favorite quote:

Because I have a weblog, I can write about it at length, several times. I can write until I’m finished. If you don’t care, that’s cool too, you can hit the Back button. But I get to say what I want, and I can get it right, and if I don’t there’s a fresh empty page tomorrow that I’m going to fill, Murphy-willing of course.

Can you think of a better, or shorter, description of why blogs are cool? Thank you, Dave Winer.

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In my blog, I tend to write about:

• Funny stuff I can’t resist and hope you can’t resist either.
• Struggles with writing a book of nerdy humor, and studies of people who write funnier stuff than I do.
• Political good versus evil, with occasional shades of gray.

I grew up in NH, my nose in a book when I wasn’t building treehouses (summer) or giant snow forts (winter). We lived in a real neighborhood–I don’t think many families owned a house key. There were about 10 elderly* women in the 5-block radius I roamed who would offer me orange juice, bathroom privileges, and a comfy chair to sit reading kids books from the 1920s. I’d like to say thank you here to Miss Alice Colgan, who lived with a sister she hadn’t spoken to in 20 years. Both of them were delighted to see me or my siblings knock on the door.

The blogging world takes me back to those days of roaming. I like knocking at the door of your blog and finding out what’s on your mind today. Better than orange juice!

My husband and I live with our 20 year-old cat, our 15 year-old dog, and a little snake we’re baby-sitting for one of our daughters. Our two 20-something daughters–one college, one grad school–are a big part of our lives but don’t actually live here.

I am a nerd, and even bigger fan of nerds than I am a nerd myself. I used to spend a lot more time programming than I do now. I’ve coauthored a couple of books, both now out of print, but if you look up “Betsy Devine” at Amazon you can read some really nice reader reviews. The book I’m writing now is a collection of nerd humor, science humor, funny pictures, interviews with funny nerds–working title “Hell of a Good Universe.”

* The word “elderly” was one my grandmother liked–and one that the women I’m talking about would have liked. I thought of people as “elderly” once they got past 30 or so. I looked forward to getting there myself, and now–woo hoo–I surely have!

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Thanks to Blog Sisters for much-needed advice and support writing this bio!

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So which fairy tale archetype are you? Hmm??
made by Michelle at EmptySpace.

In my blog, I tend to write about:

• Great stuff on the Web I think you should go take a look at.
• Struggles with writing, and studies of people who write better than I do.
• Political skullduggery that I don’t want to see get swept under the rug. I started this blog so I could write about the “Republican Astroturf” scandal–those fake “genuine leadership” letters.

I grew up in NH, my nose in a book when I wasn’t building treehouses(summer) or giant snow forts (winter). We lived in a real neighborhood–I don’t think many families owned a house key. There were about 10 elderly women in the 5-block radius I roamed who would offer me orange juice, bathroom privileges, and a comfy chair to sit reading kids books from the 1920s. I’d like to say thank you here to Miss Alice Colgan, who lived with a sister she hadn’t spoken to in 20 years. Both of them were delighted to see me or my siblings knock on the door.

The blogging world takes me back to those days of roaming. I like knocking at the door of your blog and finding out what’s on your mind today. Better than orange juice!

My husband and I live with our 20 year-old cat, our 15 year-old dog, and a little snake we’re baby-sitting for one of our daughters. Our two 20-something daughters–one college, one grad school–are a big part of our lives but don’t actually live here.

I am a nerd, and even bigger fan of nerds than I am a nerd myself. I used to spend a lot more time programming than I do now. I’ve coauthored a couple of books, both long out of print, but if you look up “Betsy Devine” at Amazon you can read some really nice reader reviews. The book I’m writing now is a collection of nerd humor, science humor, funny pictures, interviews with funny nerds–working title “Hell of a Good Universe.”

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Thanks to Joho for a link to Halley’s Alpha Male series. Brilliant, fascinating, funny adult writing.

But…it’s hard to picture my own favorite men hoping other men envy them, or wishing large groups of women would crave their touch. “Alephs” are too busy thinking about–oh, I don’t know–quantum computers, or saving the whales, or making weblogs better. They live in a world that fascinates them. Like Halley’s Alphas, the Alephs have lots of “stuff” they’re longing to show you. But the Alephs show off their stuff because they are really interested in it, and really interested in sharing its delights with you–and if that kindles a sexual spark, and fireworks follow, it’s a real event in the life of the Aleph male*. It’s exciting and meaningful, not a minor variation on what he did to some other girl last week.

Halley, I think your writing is wonderful–and your research on Alphas sounds like lots of fun! But… give Alephs a chance and see if you don’t like them even better.

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* There are Aleph females too, of course. I like them too.

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I was touched by the blog a friend on Slashdot linked to, an Army reserve guy now in some sandy place full of diesel fumes, calling himself “Lt. Smash”.

Don’t be put off by his bursts of bravado–can you blame him for trying to keep his courage up in such circumstances? His struggles with personnel, bugs, and smallpox vaccination are human and moving.

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Blocking Democrats’ phones on election day with repeated hang-up calls–an Idaho phone bank was paid thousands of dollars to do just that. NH Republicans admit paying $15,600 to the firm that set up these calls. Phone foolery is just a misdemeanor, but interfering with elections is a felony. So, is any NH Republican in trouble?

No.

The NH GOP claimed the only guilty party was GOPMarketplace.com. Did state or federal agencies follow up?

No.

According to the Feb. 20 Union Leader, the GOP Marketplace attorney said “the firm hasn’t heard from federal or state investigators, either.”

The party of law and order blocked calls to the Manchester Firefighters’ Union as well as to Democrats. This infuriated Manchester police, who asked both state and national officials to investigate. Did anything come of this request?

No.

A week later (Feb. 12) the Union Leader reported “For the third consecutive business day, the Justice Department’s public affairs office in Washington did not return The Union Leader’s call.“

Republicans run NH, Republicans run DC. This investigation was over before it started.

The Feb. 21 Union Leader reports that Manchester City Republican Party Chairman Joe Kelly Levasseur used his TV show to call NH Democratic chair “Kathy Sullivan a bitch” and city chair Raymond Buckley a “political masturbator.” Was he reined in by the party of “family values”?

No.

“State Republican Party Chairman Jayne Millerick issued a statement saying Levasseur “certainly has a colorful way of expressing himself.” But Millerick questioned why Democrats were focusing on Levasseur’s behavior instead of important state issues. She would not answer a question about whether Levasseur’s behavior violates the new Republican code of ethics.”

What new code of ethics? The one that forbids GOP staffers to indulge in “any activity which would corrupt or degrade the political process.”

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Any box of Droste cocoa shows an infinite series of beautiful Dutch ladies holding trays with boxes of Droste cocoa, and so on–Netherlanders call such images “Droste effects.” Dutch graphic artist MC Escher delighted in similar and even more complex designs. Is their hypnotic spell purely artistic? Metaphysical? Mathematical?

Physicists at the University of Leiden have created some gorgeous studies and animations of Escher’s “Print Gallery”. (Warning: artistic non-fungible-time warp. )

One of the original researchers, Bart de Smit, will be speaking at MIT on Tuesday, March 13. To quote the MIT lecture announcement:

One of M.C. Escher’s most intriguing works depicts a man standing in a gallery who looks at a print of a city that contains the building that he is standing in himself. This picture, with the title Print Gallery, contains a mysterious white hole in the middle. Two years ago, Hendrik Lenstra discovered the mathematical structure of this print. Using well known mathematical results about elliptic curves, Lenstra showed that what Escher was trying to achieve has a unique mathematical solution….. With help from artists and computer scientists, we have constructed a completion of the picture.The white hole turns out to contain the entire image on a smaller scale, which in the Dutch language is known as the Droste effect…. In the talk, the mathematics behind Escher’s work and the process of making the completion will be explained and visualized with computer animations.

That’s coming up Thursday,
March 13,
4:15pm – 5:30pm, in MIT’s 10-250. I don’t know about you, but I can hardly wait.

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This fascinatingly ugly object is a
Critterbug, marketed as a cat toy, but in fact a battery-powered laser pointer. Available where cat toys are sold (I paid $12.95 plus tax in Cambridge, MA), it is just what you need to spice up any PowerPoint presentation. Available in many hideous colors-I think my favorite is green, but the red has a certain shock value all its own.

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In today’s Union Leader, veteran reporter John DiStaso smashes the Republican cover-up piece by piece.

The Republicans have claimed at various times:

• That they never hired GOP Marketplace.
• That they paid GOP Marketplace for get-out-the-vote calls.
• That they were demanding a refund from GOP Marketplace.“If we don’t get it back, you might see a theft of services charge,” said Republican leader Richard Kennedy .

Within the past few days, GOPMarketplace.com has disappeared from the web, replaced by a collection of “Access Denied” and “404-not found” pages. The phone still works, though, and DiStasio talked to the company’s attorney, who said that NH Republicans have made no effort to get back the $15,600 spent on phone-jamming.

When confronted by DiStasio, GOP State Chair Millerick explained “she hasn’t tried to get a refund since she’s been in office, preferring to ‘move forward’.”

The GOPMarketplace attorney John Partridge also says the firm hasn’t been contacted by any investigators–federal or state. If true, that makes the disappearance of their website even more strange.

And one more question. If no NH Republicans knew about the plan to block get-out-the-vote phone lines–how did Virginia-based GOP Marketplace or the Idaho-based phone bank get the phone number of the Manchester Firefighters’ Union?

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