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

xxx

first and only entry in this “blog”

via Frank Paynter

Hey, get your own blog-neighborhood map* from Feed Map. I just got mine…

I found this toy via Scoble, who has 100 bloggers in his Redmond neighborhood–but according to BlogMap we’ve got only 36 in the Boston area?

Now just a dad-blamed minute…

Steve Garfield (“no ordinary blogger”) is here, but where is Halley? Where is Lisa Williams? Where are the other 8 zillion bloggers I know here?
Where, for that matter, is the super-famous and hyper-local David Weinberger?

Still, I shouldn’t complain–BlogMap is a brand-new work in progress. Furthermore, it did introduce me to one local blogger who deserves lots more readers: Ben Brophy of MIT.

* On a much bigger blog-mapping scale, I liked the
WorldKit by Mikel Maron — here, for example, is Phil Wilson’s UK blogger map.

Mac fanatics rejoice–the future is ours! According to the March 18 Harvard Crimson, one of the things you learn as a student at Harvard is that Macs are better than PCs. The article cites a whole lot of reasons why–even more impressive are the numbers:

• In the fall of their freshman year, only 9% of the class of 2005 owned Macs.
• By the fall of their senior year, 21% of those students owned a Mac.
• Of the new computers purchased this year at Harvard, 32% were Macs.

I’m not sure what this means for the future of our planet, but you have to admit that news of the opposite sign would be depressing.

Thanks to Zoe of greenpass for pointing me to this story!

What’s going on in the Mideast now, and what should we now do about it? I’m sick of the sanitized (or uglified) spin each side creates to justify its own two-years-ago position.

If anyone could, Jeff Jarvis could lead both sides to a truce on “there-weren’t-any-WMDs” or “yeah-but-Saddam-tortured-people.” Such pointless debates just polarize people who need to be working together. Because what happens next in the Mideast is going to matter to every one of us, and to my children as well as to your children.

Oh yeah, I didn’t quite live up to this standard in my most recent blogpost. But I’m planning to do much better in the future!

Two years ago today, US troops and others invaded Iraq. Today protestors mark that two-year anniversary.

The Bush backers, having long since given up on finding weapons of mass destruction, now claim that invasion was right because…insert their current justification here. A few months ago, it was right because Saddam was evil. Now it is right because democracy is spreading.

March 19 marks another anniversary. On March 19, 1951, the democratically elected government of Iran nationalized oil production. A CIA-led coup followed swiftly, replacing Iran’s elected leadership with the Shah’s autocratic rule–thereby setting the stage for the religious and nationalist backlash that gave the world Ayatollah Khomeini.

Democracy in the Middle East? Great idea! But as Russell Mokhibar and Robert Weissman point out, “We Had a Democracy Once, But You Crushed It.”

“Tori” is much, much better than “Dostoevsky” as input to this great new vanity author’s tool….

Thanks to one of the world’s most modest and charming authors– AKMA — for the link!

Holy begorrah and a pile o’ shillelelaghs!

Only 7 minutes past midnight, and Noel Burke of Cork, Ireland, has got the Saint Patrick’s Day jump on the rest of us bloggers.

Peter Jackson showed off his own DVD of outtakes from all three LOTR films, including:

• While fighting Sauron outside the Black Gate, Aragorn (Viggo Mortenson) whips out an Uzi and starts firing while shouting out “And that’s for Frodo” and “That’s for Sam” as Sauron collapses.
• Legolas (Orlando Bloom) over and over and over again, NOT being able to shoot the arrows – they fell down, they got caught in his hair, in his cloak, in his fingers, in his quiver – they even came out back to front, and he put them into the bow feathers first….
• Faramir (David Wenham) politely applauding Aragorn’s coronation and clearly mouthing at the camera “This is b*llsh*t” before continuing politely applauding again, then turning to Eowyn (Miranda Otto) with a lascivious wink and a nod and then assuming a polite expression as he continued clapping
• Four uruk-hai crowding their faces into a camera and singing “You make me feel like a natural woman”

And more, and more, I really enjoyed reading many recollections of favorite bloopers, which I discovered via fondofelves.

People who aren’t me have said some stuff I want to share here…

• Tingilinde claims to quote a real-life right-wing Republican think-tanker:

  “The religious right? We are lucky that we can control them so easily. They are like cattle. You can keep them in line with little effort and divert their attention from their own situation. In the end they are harvested and the supply is steady.

  hamburger — mmmm — we love hamburger”

• Adina Levin, from SXSW, talks about nurturing online social trust:

  “At the panel facilitated by Molly Steenson on How to Grow Online Community, Craig Newmark of Craig’s list and Matt Haughey of Metafilter both talked about trust as a social issue. Craig talked about the Craig’s list assumption that people are generally good, and about the processes they use when people stop being good, from unintentional misbehavior to criminal fraud and spam….

  Both Craig and Matt noted that when a poster misbehaves, the first step is to speak with that person directly; reasoning solves the problem about half of the time…I can’t help thinking that the social-first approach to online community is the right primary approach.”

• And tonight at dinner, Amity remarked:

  “When somebody defends a new theory using the argument, ‘Scientists don’t like it just because it’s new,’ that new theory is almost surely a bad theory.”