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

Most things grow best in particular kinds of places. Crocus bulbs don’t flourish in Dixie rivers–baby crocs don’t enjoy cold Yankee gardens.

Creativity? Well, the answers aren’t so clear….

The exhibit “Cultures of Creativity” at Stockholm’s Nobel Museum features films on a bunch of environments where Nobel laureates and other creators flourished–Paris cafés in the 1920s–the colleges of Cambridge–Berkeley–Basel–Budapest….

The funny thing is how much every one of these places reminds you of blogging:

• “Informal meeting places for spontaneous, unplanned discussions”–a nice description of blogging, don’t you think?
• Enough colleagues to inspire you, but a world small enough that your own efforts can be heard.
• Real feedback, including real criticism, helps even newbies steer clear of obvious bullshit.
• Time and space to think and re-think your ideas.

So, what am I hoping to get out of BloggerCon? (Aside from the pleasures of actual F2F visits.) Ideas to make our blogging ecosystem even more fruitful–for us and for people who haven’t yet shared the fun.

Here’s an excerpt reprinted in American Scientist:

What allowed Barbara McClintock to see farther and deeper than her colleagues? Again and again, she stated that a researcher must take the time to look, have the patience to “hear what the material has to say to you,” and be open to what is in front of you….Some of McClintock’s fellow researchers felt that research on corn was far too slow. At best, corn can be harvested twice a year, while microorganisms reproduce in just a few minutes. For Barbara McClintock this was an advantage, since it gave her time for the analyses and insights necessary for a deeper understanding of her work.

People talk about meanings lost in translation–how about translations that find something hidden?

I mean, before David Weinberger read the world news in translation did he guess at the role of acorns in politics? Until I read a Portuguese translation of my page, I was ignorant of
“milliamperes” in Cambridge, MA.

President’s Bush’s speech to the UN yesterday got translated into many languages. What did other nations actually hear? I now give you Bush, in translation by Mark Spittle:

…As I am sure many of you remember, partly due to the fact that your international press is better at staying on-topic than the US press is, I pretty much thumbed my nose at you when I wanted to invade Iraq….

Now that Iraq has turned into a quagmire, a word I am pretty sure means ‘Vietnam’ in French, I am forced to come before you and fall on my sword.

Well I am not about to do that. Instead, I will plead and beg that you help us in Iraq. But I will not fall on my sword.

You see, I represent the American people. And the American people are tired of hearing about how every day more and more American soldiers are being killed in Iraq, and how more American soldiers have died since I put on my flight suit than before….

The American people feel it is the UN’s duty to assist in the rebuilding of Iraq.

First of all, they believe this because they understand the United Nation’s role in the world far better than my advisors did a few months ago. And secondly, they really would rather see your soldiers getting killed than ours…

So, I am asking you to forget the past, forget whatever was said, and look forward. Look to a future where the United Nations can prove itself relevant by sending its soldiers into a quagmire, and help free up the American responsibilities there.

I’m asking you not only as a friend within the international community, but as a world leader heading into a re-election.

One more thing, I know we owe some dues. Please stop sending the late notices.

Thank you, and may the American version of the Christian God bless you all.

Guest humor column at Liberal Oasis. Mark Spittle is one half of the political satire duo Spittle & Ink. He is a former Washington lobbyist and congressional assistant.

Virginia Republican telephone eavesdropping on Democratic conference calls last year a few underlings have been sentenced to probation–the former GOP executive director got his law license suspended for 2 years.

Most days, my site referers are funny ha-ha–for example, a Portuguese machine-translation that rendered my “Shiver me timbers” into “tirita eu madeiras” and “Cambridge, MA” into “Cambridge, miliampere.”

Sometimes, however, I wish the site referer had somehow led to a better, deeper person. Yesterday, somebody ended up at my site from a search for “versus on poetry when people in trouble.”

In case anybody does that search again: I wish I could help you, and I really can’t. But I do know who can–John Nolan, a Scotsman now living in Farmington, NH.

I stumbled on one of Nolan’s essays last week– Poets who matter 3: John Clare”–part of an ongoing series. Each essay embraces not only poetry but also

• The ongoing search for a poet laureate for Rochester, NH.
• Nolan’s police work in tough bits of Glasgow.
• (Very much between the lines) Life, the universe, and everything.

This essay series (only 4 poets so far) is so recent I doubt it’s included in his longer work, The Poems and Songs of Farmington Corner. I’m going to get a copy for myself, and I bet that if you read some Nolan you’ll want one too.

I just acquired a new Flash cartoon addiction: Homestar Runner’s cyber-villain Strong Bad.

It could happen to you–one minute you’re watching him draw a dragon–the next, you’re terrorizing helpless peasants with Trogdor the Burninator.

You want to know how addictive Strong Bad is? You’ll even want to watch him clean out his inbox.

Hello, have we met? I’m Betsy Devine. I grew up in NH, but now I live in Cambridge. Some people think my new neighborhood is noisy. Maybe so–but when I hear the trolley go rattling by, I think, “Woo hoo! I am living in a city!”

If you’re coming to BloggerCon— I hope you are–here are some non-blog things I recommend.

• At Au Bon Pain (1360 Mass Ave), you can play chess with a master. Better yet, sit on the terrace with your latte and let someone else play chess–while you watch the world’s diversity walking by.
• Hop on the Red Line subway–get off anywhere. If you head “Inbound” from Harvard, enjoy a surprise vista out over the Charles River. If you head “Outbound”, go all the way out to Alewife and have a meal at Jasper’s Summer Shack. (Bring plenty of money or plenty of self-restraint.)
• Before there were blogs, there were books and libraries–if you are like me, and revel in such delights, buy Library: An Unquiet History. I just went to a book signing, the author is awesome.
• Visit the Harvard Bookstore, 1256 Mass. Ave–it’s a real bookstore. No, not the Coop (pronounced in Cambridge as if it were housing for chickens.)
• Public toilets in Harvard Square? The Coop, but only if you’re desperate–gross. Look for “The Garage,” which has decent, cheap food, not to mention Newbury Comics. Clean toilets are in the basement.
• Just walk on by the well-fed panhandlers who make a good living by embarassing tourists. (If you see someone in actual need of your help, that’s totally different.)

If you see two blonde crones on Day #2, say hi! That will be Kalilily (in tight jeans or pirate garb) and me (expect to see me, like Stendhal, in red and black.)

I hope you’ll love it here as much as I do.

“The Democratic candidates continued their patter of political hate speech. These kinds of harsh, bitter personal attacks are unprecedented in the history of presidential politics.”

Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie, quoted by ABC News, Sept. 10”

Good news for Ed Gillespie! “Whispers and screams,” a recent Harvard study of 510 editorials spanning a decade (pdf here) compared coverage of Bush and Clinton in The New York Times and The Washington Post (liberal papers) as opposed to The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Times (conservative papers). The conservative papers were much less likely to criticize “their team” and used much more bitter and intense language against those they disagreed with.

Here is the executive summary by author Michael Tomasky:

This study of the partisan intensity of the nation’s agenda-setting liberal and conservative editorial pages finds that while the pages are more or less equally partisan when it comes to supporting or opposing a given presidential administration’s policy pronouncements, the conservative pages are more partisan-often far more partisan-with regard to the intensity with which they criticize the other side. Also, the paper finds, conservative editorial pages are far less willing to criticize a Republican administration than liberal pages are willing to take issue with a Democratic administration.

This paper looks at the editorial stances during the Clinton and Bush II adminstrations of The New York Times and The Washington Post (the liberal papers) on the one hand and The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Times (the conservative papers) on the other. It identifies ten issue areas confronted by each administration that are “roughly comparable”-for example, the controversy surrounding Bill Clinton’s nomination of Zoe Baird to be attorney general, and the similar controversy surrounding George W. Bush’s nomination of Linda Chavez to be his labor secretary. Editorial comment from all four newspapers on this and nine other similarly comparable topics was collected; editorials were given a “score” of being either positive, mixed, or negative; numbers were tallied with regard to how often each of the four papers supported or opposed Clinton and how often they backed or opposed Bush. Finally, certain conclusions about the papers’ differing views of partisanship, as expressed on the page, were drawn. In all, some 510 editorials covering a decade were included in the study. The body of this paper (pages 10-50) will walk the reader through what each newspaper had to say about each of the ten issue areas under study. Appendices at the end will provide the raw numbers. But here is a quick sample of this study’s findings:

• The liberal papers criticized the Clinton administration 30 percent of the time. By contrast, the conservative papers criticized the Bush administration just 7 percent of the time.
• The liberal papers praised the Clinton administration only 36 percent of the time (the balance were mixed). The conservative papers, on the other hand, praised the Bush administration 77 percent of the time.
• The liberal papers criticized Bush 67 percent of the time. The conservative papers criticized Clinton 89 percent of the time. The study finds that there was often a striking difference in tone between the two sides as well.

  The Clinton adminstration had barely unpacked its bags when The Wall Street Journal referred administration figures as “pod people from a ‘Star Trek’ episode. . .genetically bred to inhabit the public sector.” That sort of language does not appear on the liberal pages. In sum, the two sides define partisanship quite differently and envision the roles they play as political actors very differently as well.

So if Gillespie redirects his charges toward the people on his own team, he has a darn fine chance of doing some good.

“The Democratic candidates continued their patter of political hate speech. These kinds of harsh, bitter personal attacks are unprecedented in the history of presidential politics.”

Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie, quoted by ABC News, Sept. 10, well in advance of “Talk Like a Pirate Day.”

Ed Gillespie says his blood starts boilin’ when he hears Dick Gephardt call Bush “a miserable failure.”

“Shiver me timbers, Dick Gephardt!” thinks Ed Gillespie. “That’s way out o’ bounds in presidential politics. Can ye’ picture Republicans spewin’ such scurvy charges against Bill Clinton?”

Meanwhile, “liberals”* at the DNC posted a
pile of Republican abuse goin’ all the way back to the first Bush and Willie Horton. But the DNC (just like Mr. Gillespie) can’t recall one cross word anyone aimed at Bill or Hillary Clinton.**

Arrrr, ye blisterin’ bunghole “Democrats”! Do ye think yer pretendin’ ye never knew Bill Clinton will win ye one vote from the “We-hate-Clinton” brigade? ‘Tis the same fool strategy Al Gore tried–remember?

Arrrr, the whole lot o’ those National Committees be scurvy dogs. Run up Jolly Roger, boys–let ’em walk the plank!

* “Whether they are defending the Soviet Union or bleating for Saddam Hussein, liberals are always against America. They are either traitors or idiots, and on the matter of America’s self-preservation, the difference is irrelevant. Fifty years of treason hasn’t slowed them down.”

Ann Coulter, enthusiastically quoted by the Conservative Book Service website.

A little brown frog with shimmery bright green lipstick now lives at the edge of a pond in my yard.

Such are the riches of the internet that one minute you can be googling “frog + Massachusetts” and the next minute you’ve hopped into a world full of pre-blogs* full of frogs.

For example, when Otto and Friedo Berninghausen created their tadpole-identification website, they were talking about frogs, not introducing themselves. But consider their wiggly tadpole graphic (above). Consider their instructions for ordering water-resistant tadpole books from the Nabu Natur Shop:

Include 14.90 EURO cash and add about 2.00 or 3.00 EURO for postage.

Another pre-blogger I just got to know is talented nature photographer Mike Redmer. Like any blogger, he’s eager to share stuff he just learned and thinks you’ll appreciate–for example, he’s written articles about the diet of female bird-voiced treefrogs and how to take a portrait of your snake. I also learned that he’s an expert in “skeletochronology.” Talk about sharing personal information….

I feel I’ve also “met” Wellesley instructor Marcy Thomas. She has piled up some wonderful web links on her course pages. I love her photo-permission statement on her page about vernal pools, which seems to come straight from an older, friendlier internet:

Photos were taken by Marcy Thomas and VPOP students and will be updated as better ones become available. You are welcome to use them.

If you have some time to waste on the internet–hey, if you don’t, why the heck are you reading my blog? I urge you to read the “pre-bloggers” in your field.

Wake up call from the shrinks–now they can figure us out from the way we sleep?

I was happy to learn, from early reports, that my sleeping position is unusual and shows (preen, preen) I’m “gregarious and brash.”

Then I read the story in its BBC original:

Freefall (7%): Lying on your front with your hands around the pillow, and your head turned to one side. Often gregarious and brash people, but can be nervy and thin-skinned underneath, and don’t like criticism, or extreme situations.

Now, just a minute there–“nervy and thin-skinned”? That sounds almost like some kind of criticism….