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

What I’d really like to understand right now is not absolute Truth, oh thank you so very much, or any inner details of my Self.*

What I’d really like to understand is how to get RSS coding to work on French (and Spanish and Norwegian) accents.

Grrr.

Take for example, the lovely word “été”, which means “summer” in French. It looks a lot less lovely in 99% of RSS encodings.

ISO Latin-1 entities: été
HTML 4.0 entities: été
Unicode: 0x00E9t0x00E9 (even HTML can’t read that one.)
I hope I’ll have figured it out by the time summer comes, or (in bad French) Je espère que je puisse le faire avant l’été.

*

“Il faut se connaître soi-même: quand cela ne servirait pas à trouver le vrai, cela au moins sert à régler sa vie, et il n’y est rien de plus juste.”*

Blaise Pascal, (1623-1662)

Roughly: “You need to understand yourself–not as a guide to absolute Truth, but in order to manage your life, a more useful goal.”

BTW, I acquired a lifetime supply of inaccurate French in college, where I used to sit gazing at the cute French professor through the haze of everybody’s cigarette smoke, pitying his tortured soul and wishing he would fall in love with me and write poems about us. Of course, I was virtuously trying to think all these things in French.

Nanny Ogg, who has “the true witch’s ability to be confidently expert on the basis of no experience whatsoever,” offers world-class insight into the world of opera in Terry Pratchett’s Maskerade:

“There’s your heavy opera,
where basically people sing foreign and it goes like
‘Oh oh oh, I am dyin’, oh, I am dyin’, oh, oh, oh, that’s what I’m doin”,
and there’s your light opera,
where they sing in foreign and it basically goes
‘Beer! Beer! Beer! Beer! I like to drink lots of beer!’,
although sometimes they drink champagne instead.”

Can beer-drinking lead to foolish romantic choices?

Hah! You think you’ve got stories to tell? They are dwarfed by the tragic tale of the Australian male buprestid beetles.

Imagine you’re a shiny male beetle flying over the plains of western Australia with nothing more on your mind than finding a female to mate with and pass on your shiny genes. All at once you see the hugest, most beautiful female you’ve ever laid eyes on. Big females are the best to mate with because they carry the most eggs (more bang for your bang). Sounds like a dream come true, right? Well, if you happen to be the jewel beetle Julodimorpha bakewelli, you’ve probably been deceived. That gorgeous curvy body belongs to a beer bottle not a beetle….[more shocking details follow]

Thanks to Amity Wilczek for her blog Nature is Profligate and also, just a bit, for being my daughter.

xxx

Imagine you’re a shiny male beetle flying over the plains of western Australia with nothing more on your mind than finding a female to mate with and pass on your shiny genes. All at once you see the hugest, most beautiful female you’ve ever laid eyes on. Big females are the best to mate with because they carry the most eggs (more bang for your bang). Sounds like a dream come true, right? Well, if you happen to be the jewel beetle Julodimorpha bakewelli, you’ve probably been deceived. That gorgeous curvy body belongs to a beer bottle not a beetle.

It’s hard to pick one best moment in ROTK, but here are my top five (major spoilers ahead!):

Number 5: When Legolas fights a huge elephant plus all its riders.

Number 4: When Gimli tells Legolas, “That only counts as one.”

Number 3: When Eowyn and Merry defeat the Witch King.

Number 2: When Sam jumps up to go hit on Rosie Cotton.

Number 1 and absolutely best: Outside the movie, afterward, when my husband says, “Poor Aragorn. He really picked the wrong girl.”

Blogged any good books lately? makeoutcity has.

Jay McCarthy has been
blogging his reading of Dante’s Divine Comedy, * using the quotes-plus-notes that make him such a good guide to blogworld.

Then I started thinking–what if Dante rather than Jay were the blogger?
The Pepys’ Diary blog shows how a blog format can add value–even when you just reproduce a text and add hyperlinked notes.

But why stop there? Why can’t you “study” a favorite novel by writing a blog for each character? Why can’t you write a blog-novel where characters in a Live-Journal-like community interact? Or a role-playing game, where different players create fictional blogs that take turns talking about who did what to whom?

Anyway, I like the idea of re-imagining Dante as a non-professional blogger-like journalist who gives an extended account of extended adventures.** (Note, if you take up this project–lose the terza rima!)

In my work life I skim a lot of blogs using RSS*+*. I also find value in reading that asks my commitment, time, and thought.

Guess I’ll stop writing this now and go do some of it!

* You can visit more authors with Jay in his category “Books.” And Lisa Williams of Cadence90 has links to even more good books in her “Nightstand” over at del.icio.us.

** A modern non-fiction example: Susan Kitchens blogging of the Mars landing (thanks to Dave Winer for the link.)

*+* Excellent explanation of the merits of RSS for fast reading by Robert Scoble.

The neocon hawks pushed Bush to invade Iraq because

1. Saddam had WMD,*
2. Iraq was closely tied to terror attacks on the US,** and
3. Grateful Iraqis would welcome our intervention. (three asterisks)

None of the above turned out to be true, but that’s OK, because Saddam was an evil man who killed and tortured any who dared to oppose him.

The good news from the neocons is that they don’t insist that we bomb and invade all the many other countries whose governments kill and torture dissidents. Phew, because that would be a long list.

No, all the
latest right-wing agenda demands is that Bush should prepare for war against Syria, Iran, North Korea, with an option for future action against Saudi Arabia and France.

Wow.

I feel very sorry for the soldiers who just found out that the Army can unilaterally extend their term of service. (four asterisks)

And I’ll be surprised if the Republicans are as eager to get all the military absentee ballots they can, in 2004.

* Bzzt, wrong. Maybe they were thinking of North Korea?

** Bzzt, wrong again. Maybe they were thinking of Saudi Arabia?

(three asterisks) Bzzt, half right. A lot of Iraqis are glad to be rid of Saddam. Unfortunately, not many are happy with the chaos and violence that threaten to engulf them, and probably will when US forces leave.

(four asterisks) Washington Post headline: “Army Stops Many Solidiers From Quitting.”

Through a series of stop-loss orders, the Army alone has blocked the possible retirements and departures of more than 40,000 soldiers, about 16,000 of them National Guard and reserve members who were eligible to leave the service this year.

On December 13, President George W. Bush signed a big chunk of Patriot II into law–but the “major media” were focused on Saddam’s spider hole.

Coincidental timing? Bush hasn’t signed a bill on Saturday since–more than a year ago–the government would have shut down Monday if he didn’t, according to the San Antonio Current.

Patriot I freed the FBI from pesky Fourth Amendment restraints (like probable cause) in its dealings with “financial institutions.”

The new law (US 108-177) extends the definition of a “financial institution” to include car dealers, airlines, jewelry stores, and any other business “whose cash transactions have a high degree of usefulness in criminal, tax, or regulatory matters.”

Public furor after details of the Patriot Act II leaked led to a change in the plan–but not what we hoped for. Instead,

Ashcroft and Co. disassembled Patriot Act II, then reassembled its parts into other legislation. By attaching the redefinition of “financial institution” to an Intelligence Authorization Act, the Bush Administration and its Congressional allies avoided public hearings and floor debates for the expansion of the Patriot Act.

Look, I’m in favor of fighting terrorism–but if this bill is needed then why is Bush working so hard to sneak it in under the radar? Why isn’t he instead telling the world about how and why it’s important?

I’m hoping my fellow-bloggers will join me in reminding our national representatives and media that this event deserves to be noticed, not tamely forgotten.

Or, if you’re too busy, maybe I could interest you in buying a nice tshirt that says “I Wasn’t Using My Civil Rights Anyway“.

Thanks to John Battelle’s excellent SearchBlog for this story.

Halley is having a house party for Dean! I am sooooo there.

Not only do I want to get in on the Dean conference call at 9:30, I am also dying to meet MakeOutCity’s Jay McCarthy, not to mention Sooz.

How about you? Here’s Halley’s RSVP page.

xxx