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

Once upon a time, the old story goes, a wise man created a man of clay and brought this “golem” to life to do his will. One day, however, the wise man lost control of his creation. Its enormous strength was unleashed in massive violence–until the wise man got control again and turned the golem back into lumps of clay.

Many versions of the story exist. Supposedly, it  inspired Mary Shelley to create her story about Frankenstein.

Most recent versions associate this story with a real and notably wise Rabbi living in Prague, Rabbi Loew. The oldest stories are simple wonder tales, where the golem is used for various household chores and goes wild by uprooting the local village fountain when asked to bring water.*

Later, the golem had a nobler purpose–to protect Prague’s Jews from Christian violence. Interestingly, as the golem’s purpose became nobler and more important, so too did his rampages become more violent and frightening.

Doesn’t this sound like the current debate about artificial intelligence? I mean, if your idea of a robot is a cute little mechanical vacuum cleaner, who cares if the darn thing goes out of control? But as our modern secular rabbis make ever-more-powerful servants for themselves, the more things the rest of us have to worry about….

*The folk image of a fountain that, even uprooted, continues to pour out water seems strange to moderns who picture the pipe lying under the fountain. After World War II, many Soviet soldiers who occupied Eastern Europe came from very primitive Siberian villages. It was commonplace for such soldiers to steal faucets and stick them in trees because they imagined that water was somehow magically inside faucets.

In light of the news of so-called human cloning, my friend Joel Cohen asks an important philosophical question:

If you pushed your naked clone off the top of a tall building, would it be:

A) murder
B) suicide
C) merely making an obscene clone fall

Prague is lovely, cobbled underfoot and Baroque-d above, full of local fun things you can eat and drink outdoors for not much money.

The Golem hasn’t haunted me–nor have the ghosts of Franz Kafka (who lived here) and Tycho Brahe (who died here (Did you know that Brahe had a silver nose to hide his normal nose, mostly missing after a duel? (But I digress.) ) .)

This post is my complaint against Czech keyboards! They seem to have hidden their exclamation points–and when you are trying to send email from a smoke-filled Internet cafe, it is irksome to sit staring at an almost-familiar keyboard that is missing one thing I almost always need!!

Fortunately, my little sister responded to my cry for help with enough !!!!!!!!! so that I can copy and paste them all day long. What a good sister!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Bless you, Marie, and thank you all for listening.

I’m enjoying the heck out of Lonely Planet’s Czech phrasebook–can you tell that I really ought to be packing instead?

Here are two “found poems” based on their useful suggestions:

1. Glad (sort of) I’m not that young anymore

Kiss me.
Kiss me.
Take this off.
Kiss me.
That was amazing.
Will you marry me?
Would you like a cigarette?
Kiss me.
Do you feel like going for a run?

2. But, Officer….

What am I accused of?
You will be charged with no visa.
You will be charged with traffic violation.
You will be charged with murder.
Just joking!
Kiss me.

One set of phrases offered by Lonely Planet has really made me wonder:

• I’m sorry, it’s not the custom in my country.
• I’m sorry, it’s against my beliefs/culture/religion.
• I don’t mind watching, but I prefer not to participate.

What are these phrases used for–bear-baiting? cannibalism? ethnic jokes? I’ll let you all know if I ever find out. But for now, darn it, Betsy, will you go pack?!!!???

In Czechoslovakia, the polite guest brings flowers–an odd number, please–with no wrapping paper around them. Shoes are left by the door. Don’t eat or drink before wishing the others good health.

The Lonely Planet phrasebook is full of good advice for travelers much more adventurous than I am. I hope I won’t need Czech phrases for “Do you have a condom?” or “I’m on methadone.”

I love to travel and I love to learn about places I visit, most especially their languages. You can do lots more stuff when you speak and/or read the native tongue–even in the Netherlands where everyone speaks English the train stations and museums are a lot more fun if you can read some Dutch. But we’ll be in Prague just a week, so I have merely stocked up my “Language Emergency Kit”–ten rock-bottom minimum sentences for any trip:

1. Where’s the bathroom? (gdeh yeh zah-khod?)
2. Thank you very much. (dyeh-kuh-yi mots-kraht)
3. Please. (pro-seem)
4. Yes. (ah-no, sometimes abbreviated “no”–nod head as you say it.)
5. No. (neh– shake head as you say it.)
6. No, thank you. (neh, dyeh-ku-yi)
7. I’m sorry. (yeh meh leeto).
8. My husband is vegetarian. (mooy man-zhel yeh ve-ge-ta-ri-ahn)
9. Does this dish have meat? (yeh ftom-hle yeed-le ma-so?)
10. Is there a local Internet cafe? (yeh tah-di in-ter-net ka-vah-na?)

If you don’t have vegetarian husband, here are two different usefuls: “Do you have a non-smoking section?” (mah-te od-dye-le-nee pro nee-kur-zhah-ki?) and “It’s beautiful” (to yeh krahs-neh).

…on July 3, 1973, I was a kid in my twenties about to get married for the second time, and boy was I nervous. Just about everything went wrong that day.

• Because we “eloped” with just 4 grad student pals as our witnesses, our families assumed a baby was coming. In fact, we were just too impatient with all the postponements due to “Aunt Agatha can’t come June 7, how about the next weekend–no, Uncle Ed can’t make the next weekend…” Well, a baby did come, about 15 months later.
• I baked us a chocolate wedding cake from a mix, but assumed I wouldn’t have to grease and flour my brand-new miracle cake pans lined with Teflon. Wrong! Our guests ate bowls of ice cream with huge hunks of scraped-from-the-pan cake on top.
• We got lost driving to Dutch Neck traffic court, so we missed the time of appointment with the judge. We and our pals had to sit through an hour of testimony about stop-sign violations and DUI before being called into the back room for our “ceremony.”

One thing went right–I married a wonderful man, who hasn’t once stopped surprising me in all the 30 years afterward.

Feel free to throw rice anytime.

The new Harry Potter is still pretty good, but….

Fortunately, the magical buzz of goofy summer reading lives on in the new Christopher Moore I was lusting for.

Fluke : Or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings turned to out be just as fast and funny and sexy as Moore’s earlier Bloodsucking Fiends and The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove.

A book by Christopher Moore is like a huge umbrella drink served with double fruit and extra vodka–it may not be quite what you ordered, but….Wow!

Oops–the Army Times just caught on that Republican talk about “standing behind our troops” was a thin cover-up for doing the dirty to soldiers and their families.

In recent months, President Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress have missed no opportunity to heap richly deserved praise on the military. But talk is cheap — and getting cheaper by the day, judging from the nickel-and-dime treatment the troops are getting lately.

For example, the White House griped that various pay-and-benefits incentives added to the 2004 defense budget by Congress are wasteful and unnecessary — including a modest proposal to double the $6,000 gratuity paid to families of troops who die on active duty. This comes at a time when Americans continue to die in Iraq at a rate of about one a day.

Similarly, the administration announced that on Oct. 1 it wants to roll back recent modest increases in monthly imminent-danger pay (from $225 to $150) and family-separation allowance (from $250 to $100) for troops getting shot at in combat zones….

Army Times, June 30 editorial “Lip Service”

[rant]Grrrrr–this makes me (Betsy) so angry! I’m not pro-military, but I am pro-working-class-kids, and that’s what our army is mostly made up of these days. These kids signed up for a dirty dangerous job and were promised a lot of benefits in return. Now a lot of those kids are still getting shot at and killed–and the Bushies are shutting down VA hospitals and letting military bases deteriorate to save money for fat-cat tax breaks and stupid imaginary super-weapons. [endrant]

Who had this story weeks before Army Times? The Onion did:

NORFOLK, VA—With more than 5,400 jubilant Marines and sailors cheering him on, President Bush landed on the deck of the U.S.S. Harry S Truman in a Navy jet Monday to preside over a historic veterans’-benefits-cutting ceremony.

…After congratulating the soldiers on their victory over Saddam Hussein, Bush announced that the new budget passed by the Senate includes a $14.6 billion reduction in veterans’ benefits. He then held aloft a pair of oversized scissors and snipped a ribbon bearing the words “Veteran’s Benefits.”

The Onion, June 4 story on “Dramatic Veterans’-Benefits-Cutting Ceremony”

I’m hoping the kids will get their benefits back once Karl Rove reminds Bush just where those absentee military ballots come from.

Thanks to Oliver Willis for the Army Times link–thanks to Dave Winer for the naughty acronym!

Almost two years after 9/11, the United States is still “Dangerously Unprepared and Underfunded for a Catastrophic Terrorist Attack“, says a report just released yesterday by a blue-ribbon panel of former military officials, business leaders and Nobel laureates.

The report details $98.4 billion dollars badly needed to fund port security and local first responders.

The Department of Homeland Security gave this unnerving response

The Department of Homeland Security took exception to the findings. A spokesman said critics could just as easily have focused on what has been accomplished since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

What has been accomplished? Homeland Security dollars are being doled out to cash-starved states–with enormous fanfare. New York State got the most–$321 million–of the mere $3 billion given out so far. On a per capita basis, however, Republican states like Texas and Wyoming are getting many more dollars than New York.

Ohio hopes to use some of its Homeland Security windfall to fight zebra mussels in the Great Lakes. Just goes to show the Bush team can be trusted to frustrate terrorists.

More proof if you need it that Google isn’t God: None of this made the front page of Google News.
You can see real (but short) news reports at NYT , CNN, and USAToday.

Hey, look what just happened to one of my favorite weblogs!

Disclosure, not only do I read Dave Winer’s blog but I really like him. And I am very annoyed with the guys out there in blogworld who think they’re sooooo cool when they jerk his chain.

No scripting news–that really sucks. Robert Scoble thinks so too. Patrick Logan thinks so too. Ken of Digital Common Sense thinks so too. If you think so too, please blog it.