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

Andalas

Originally uploaded by zombie squirrels.

Andalas the male mini-rhino, who likes to play kissing games with his male zookeepers, is still jetlagged and mopey two months after being shipped to Sumatra from the LA Zoo.

Meanwhile, his potential mate Ratu ” almost came to grief a couple of years ago when she wandered out of the enclosed area and into a village where terrified elders mistook her for a mythical pig-man believed to be responsible for raping their women and tried to kill her. Police and sanctuary officials chased Ratu for hours, finally recapturing her after she fell into a sewage pit.”

What’s the happiest ending to this rhino story? A mating ritual involving razor-sharp rhino teeth–and then, if the luck of these two star-crossed rhinos changes, maybe, just maybe cute baby Sumatran rhinos.

Surely Ratu and Andalas deserve some good luck this time!

In this YouTube video, “peacekeeping poultry” (thanks, Kottke!) bust up a rumbustious battle between two rabbits.

After a recent run-in on Daily Kos, I’m picturing dialog that went something like this.

Rabbit #1: You what?
Rabbit #2: I voted for Ralph Nader for President.
Rabbit #1: You moron–people like you put George W Bush into the White House!
Rabbit #2: You cynical twit–people like you empower politics-as-usual where both parties…
Chicken #1: Hey, stop that!
Chicken #2: Now, quit it–both of you!
Rabbit #1: Hey, but he…
Rabbit #2: No, but she…
Chicken #2: Oh yeah, and fighting each other will really help both of you?
Rabbit #2: I was just explaining…
Rabbit #1: I have a right…
Chicken #1: Oh yeah, you both have a right to be idiots…
Chicken #2: Use those bunny brains of yours, who benefits when you fight?

But never mind my translation, just watch the video.

Creationist car

Originally uploaded by Amy Watts.

What a month this has been for the First Amendment, which protects us from getting arrested, but not from getting yelled at or even fired.

Stephen Metcalfe’s deconstruction of Imus’s downfall has the best explanation I’ve seen yet for Imus’s “funny” riff on abusing some young women who play college basketball. Imus and his fans felt free to enjoy a wide range of sexist or racist insults because they were “really” mocking Political Correctness and boring old middle-class decorum. Says Metcalfe,

In talk radio, the P.C. bogey is kept on life support, the better to allow the heaping of abuse on the marginal and disenfranchised to pass itself off as speaking truth to power.

In other crazy-speech news, the rightwing program of “abstinence only” sex education, financed by our tax dollars, turns out to be useless in protecting young people from any of the bad outcomes that sex education is supposed to help them avoid.

I fear this may be a bad thing for my corresponding suggestion of “Abstinence-Only Drivers’ Education.”

p.s. Even more photos of this inspiring car…


Update: Not so funny, but more eloquent–Ronni Bennett defends free speech. And taking a cue from David Weinberger’s “Moral means ambivalent,” I also was more eloquent in 2003:

Moral absolutes–they’re easy to ridicule when they’re the “absolute” morals of born-again Baptists from Birmingham, Alabama. But we on the Left have our own cherished absolutes–and we need to refresh our ambivalence about them too.

Is any remark claimed as “authentically Black” immune from criticism? If so, does that make any XX type who ever had sex a ho? Or should we switch perspective, and say any statement that degrades women is evil, deserving of powerful retaliation? If so, does that mean we should demand lip service to middle-class ideals before any kid from the ghetto gets to speak?

No–absolutes make for fast and powerful moral judgments, but not for intelligent moral judgments. Because….

Moral means ambivalent.

Picture an activity that sounded so, so foolish until you tried it….but then…!!!…no, I’m not starting to write an X-rated post. And I’m not referring to Gilbert and Sullivan, either. I’m talking about the silly webservice called Twitter.

Twitter is like a tiny newsreader I keep at the side of my desktop in a browser window because a lot of online-friends drop little notes into it from time to time. Some notes are chatty, some are short insights, and some are just plain great stuff that I wouldn’t have heard about otherwise, for example:

• I heard about a haiku contest to win a Joost beta invite — and my haiku won! (WebVideoDoctor.com, which ran the contest, is also a site that I’m glad I discovered.)
• When my brother had trouble getting Windows to make a screencapture, I asked friends in Twitter for help. Both Laura Moncur and Mr. Noded gave me the solution in minutes.
• Twitter let me re-connect with faraway friends, not to mention local friends I see too rarely–for example, Jack Hodgson, whose fine blog steered me to that Pirates of Penzance YouTube video.

Ronni Bennett says that Twitter sounds stupid–ok, and she’s right, it does sound really stupid. But it’s also fun and rewarding in ways that would be hard to justify to somebody who hasn’t yet moved past the silly part into the wow, amazing! part.

Just like, for example, Gilbert and Sullivan?

It’s not the cover of Rolling Stone

Originally uploaded by scriptingnews.

Now here’s a picturesque cover, full of good blog jokes–Dave Winer’s sneaker and XML-orange couch, in honor of his ten-year bloggiversary.

• Ten years blogging!
• Dead software guy lives on
• Podcasting genius
• Blogging foooool
• Spicy noodles man
• Master of coooool
• He’s still diggin
• Singin a song [mp3]
• Fighting for justice
• Righting the wrong

Amen! And it’s giving me huge satisfaction this morning, thinking about all the things that I learned from Dave–e.g. blogging, RSS, and unconferences–that this just may be something that Dave learned about from me!

;->

Can’t read the headlines?

• All-singing, All-dancing Nobel guy
• Einstein: “Know when to hold ’em.”
• Extra dimensions? CERN says no.
• Want wit, wisdom? Eat salmon, soy!
• Turkey is no longer a superfood.
• Blueberries hold the secret of eternal life!

You too, or your sweetie, can be similarly featured thanks to this crazy promo page sponsored by Xerox.

…and other gems from this month’s Ansible:

• From Thog’s Masterclass, Eyeballs in the Sky Dept. “His eyes ran, literally, across the whole of the upper portion of his face …” (Richard Marsh, The Beetle, 1897)
• Arthur C. Clarke appeared on the BBC website in his favourite t-shirt: “I invented the satellite and all I got was this lousy t-shirt.”
• Literary agent Barbara Bauer is suing Patrick and Teresa Nielsen Hayden and others, for blogging about her.

Two Irishmen jumped off the Empire State Building…which brings me to my own suggestion for turning the Kathy Sierra horror story into a victory for blogging kindness. Let me tell you a (non-PC) story I heard from my dad…

***

Pat and Mike and their half empty bottle of whiskey somehow get to the top of the Empire State Building. “Sure, and a leap to the ground would be a glorious end to this fine evening,” says Pat.

“I’m not so sure,” says Mike. “What if it hurts?”

“Ye baby” says Pat, “watch this.” So Pat jumps over and hollers back up to Mike, “Jump, ye baby, it doesn’t hurt at all.”

So then Mike jumps, and he and Pat are both flying down through the air and feeling grand. But Pat is still that little bit in front. So Pat hits the ground first. And Pat yells up to Mike, “Mikey–go back, go back–it hurts, it hurts!”

***
Good people around the blogworld are asking how we can defend cyberbullying victims like Kathy Sierra. But the great story here is that Kathy defended herself against bullies who lured each other on into more and more outrageous posts and comments.

One minute the bullies, like Pat, were flying high, with power to hurt and diminish whatever they touched. Then–thanks to Kathy–bullies hit the reality that a wide public is reading ugly comments made about *them*.

It hurts, it hurts.

No, I’m not rejoicing in anyone’s pain. There’s been more than enough pain to go around in this whole sorry mess.

My point is–let’s get back to the positive here–that warning cyberbullies to “Remember Kathy Sierra” is powerful and likely to succeed. It’s not a call to improve your morality. It’s a call to remember the horrible wrath that rained down on anyone who had even tenuous connections to sites where anons gathered to bully Kathy Sierra. Respected people, good people, like Frank Paynter and Jeneane Sessum, whose work on the web had made them widely loved, suddenly found themselves under truly scary attack by angry (and well-meaning) people who were ready to shoot first and maybe aim later.

“Remember Kathy Sierra.” It’s better though longer than “Stop Cyberbullying.” And it’s shorter than my alternative warning to potential cyberbullies:

“Go back, go back. It hurts, it hurts.”

***
p.s. I bless Andy Carvin for “Stop Cyberbullying Day,” (also Scott MacLeod for some great cartoons.)

… when its stepper motor is reprogrammed to play Beethoven’s Für Elise.

This is the kind of lovely geek achievement that gives you some hope for the whole crazy human race.

Thanks to Tinglilinde for the link!

Three Sisters
Originally uploaded by BigFrank.

They look so innocent, but….

Cows, in their intestines, produce methane gas. Lots of it–enough gas to become a problem for global warming.

Scientists have developed a pill that helps cows break down that methane, using its energy to produce sugar. Cows get fatter–methane goes down–and the whole planet becomes a happier place.

What good news from science, that gives us all reason to smile!