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

Gee, did we claim that we’d find WMD in Iraq? “Billmon has knit a noose out of quotes,” says JOHO.

What did the Bush team claim, and when did they claim it? Right now, a lot of embarrassing statements by Rumsfeld and others are still on line–for example, this March 30 interview with Rumsfeld:

MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: Finally, weapons of mass destruction. Key goal of the military campaign is finding those weapons of mass destruction. None have been found yet. There was a raid on the Answar Al-Islam Camp up in the north last night. A lot of people expected to find ricin there. None was found. How big of a problem is that? And is it curious to you that given how much control U.S. and coalition forces now have in the country, they haven’t found any weapons of mass destruction?

SEC. RUMSFELD: Not at all. If you think — let me take that, both pieces — the area in the south and the west and the north that coalition forces control is substantial. It happens not to be the area where weapons of mass destruction were dispersed. We know where they are. They’re in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat.

Unfortunately, many of Billmon’s links go to interviews hosted by servers at the Department of Defense. I would feel more confident in finding them tomorrow if somebody else with a nice big server would make copies elsewhere.

Bush says we found those WMD. Did we find nuclear weapons, tons of ricin, stockpiles of anthrax? Nope. But we did find two trailers.

The agency reported that no pathogens were found in the two trailers and added that civilian use of the heavy transports, such as water purification or pharmaceutical production, was “unlikely” because of the effort and expense required to make the equipment mobile. Production of biological warfare agents “is the only consistent, logical purpose for these vehicles,” the CIA report concluded.

Well, my apologies for suggesting that evidence of WMD in Iraq was exaggerated to provide cover for sending US troops. They had not one but two big trailers–gosh, who knew?

I can skip straight to the dish on the Digital Genres conference, because it has already been blogged by both AKMA and David Weinberger, with photos on Kiplog…

Five cool things about Chicago:

1. Streets running east-west are numbered, so in that one dimension, even I can’t get lost.
2. I got to hear some of Frank Paynter‘s un-given talk on Cole Porter.
3. Korean lilac in bloom smells wonderful–and because Beth Hastings knew what the plant was named, I might be able to get some myself someday.
4. To get more perspective on life, I went to the Oriental Institute and hung out with people who died three thousand years ago.
5. To get less perspective, I went to the Penang restaurant (2201 S. Wentworth) and drank beer and coconut milk with Alex Golub and David Weinberger.

Five cool quotes from talks:

1. “Is the Talmud really written, or is it just written down?” (David Rosenberg) [The question can also be asked of most people’s weblogs.]
2. “You see warnings on slash writing that might offend–for example, ‘PWP.’ That stands for ‘Porn Without Plot’, or ‘Plot? What Plot?’ ” (Holly Swyers)
3. “Listing words alphabetically lets you avoid deciding what’s more important.” (Dan Headrick) [He also pointed out that search engines let you find information stored with no organizing principle.]
4. “An archive is not a library. The former stores everything it produces or collects; the latter is selective.” (Theo Van Den Hout)
5. “A weblog is like a Dada street performance–both the production and the consumption are interactive.” (Steve Himmer, aka OnePotMeal.)

Five cool quotes not from talks:

1. “Bill Gates would be a lot less happy about how rich he is if he had to lug it all around.” (AKMA)
2. “Our [Western] relationship with our physical bodies is already mediated by culture and technology much more than was possible in most other societies in history.” (Alex Golub, who lived on sweet potatoes for two years while doing his anthro fieldwork in New Guinea)
3. “When you live in a virtual world, you need a really good chair.” (Alex again, this time quoting a web-obsessed friend who has a bad back)
4. “What’s the difference between high church and low church? My faith is so low-church that we eat the bread and drink the grape juice while believing that we don’t know what’s going on.” (Trevor Bechtel)
5. “We can argue if you disagree with what I said. But if you say we can’t talk about our values–I don’t see how we can argue from that premise.” (David Weinberger)

Props to Alex Golub for organizing a great conference!

“Colloquium” is one of those words that’s supposed to mean something real but most often doesn’t. (Another word of this type, you’ll notice, is “yes”.)

A “colloquium” is a talk that an expert gives to interest non-experts. On a scientific topic, a true “colloquium” could fall anywhere in between an article in Discover magazine (pretty pictures plus arm-waving) and one from Scientific American (a fairly dense critique).

Most people who give colloquia fail on one of two measures. Type one keeps forgetting what “non-expert” means. Type two doesn’t grasp the meaning of “to interest.”

If you find yourself at a type-two colloquium, I recommend thinking up new ways to rearrange all the furniture in your house. If you find yourself at a type-one colloquium, you can still have quite a good time by approaching it as you would a piece of classical music.

First, expect the speaker to have his most clear, most memorable, most understandable material at the beginning. Classical composers often start movements with a “theme” that gets varied later on, and if you aren’t paying attention most of the rest will be lost on you.

Second, even if you get confused somewhere after the theme, all is not lost. The “composer” in front of you, if she’s any good, has some “cadence material” planned for the end of the piece. There is a reason this topic was chosen, a reason for the sequence being followed, and when the end arrives there will be something “best” that’s been saved Uh oh, having said that, I haven’t raised up your expectation that I saved up some big POW! BIFF! BAM! for the end of this post. I’m more the “bing” type anyway….

Scott Johnson of Feedster aaa

“Get a snapshot of your life as it might have been had you been living in Britain 100 years ago. Just enter your gender and your father’s profession,” says the wonderful but rarely-work-safe Niek. If you don’t like what you see, you can nudge your avatar up or down the sociological staircase and try again.

I’m off to Chicago, to sit at the feet of Alex Golub, Frank Paynter, AKMA, and other University of Blogaria faculty members at the Digital Genres Conference. I may even get to meet two of my favorite Boston bloggers out there–Steve Himmer of OnePotMeal and David Weinberger of Joho will both be speaking.

Expect sparse blogging the next few days, and vastly improved blogging when I return!

The Bush flight suit story and pix had been around blogs for weeks before Richard Goldstein surfaced it in VV. “AllHatNoCattle” was early, with lot of links:

http://www.allhatnocattle.net/5-12-03-bush-sock-flight-suit.htm

Of course I like my version best:
http://BetsyDevine.weblogger.com/2003/05/16#a178 aka
http://betsydevine.com/blog/2003/05/16/but-karl-you-told-me-to-stick-a-sock-in-it/

Several people have said that flight suits just plain do this–Google image searches didn’t turn up even one similar photo. Flight suits without those crotch straps make guys look like eunuchs…you check it out, you know how to google. It’s hard to believe the hyperactive image consultants described in the NYT article

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/16/politics/16IMAG.html?ex=1054094400&en=a1fcc8877e3f54ec&ei=5070

didn’t finetune the fit of that flight suit before letting Bush be photographed in it. Like you, I doubt that fine-tuning was as low-tech as “shoving a sock down the commander in chief’s tightie-whities.” That couldn’t be it–preppie Yalies wear boxer shorts.

Here are my parents in 1943, just before my dad headed back to sea. He came home with a Purple Heart, after mortar fire killed men standing on either side of him. My dad never, never talked about the war.

I honor people who risk their lives in war–and I grieve for the people who lose their lives in war. But I don’t like the way war’s risk has been changed for our leaders by high-tech weapons and our “volunteer” army of working-class kids whose only hope for a decent job or college tuition was military service.

The day after Pearl Harbor, my father dropped out of law school and joined the Navy. He wanted to defend his country–that goal was worth risking his life for. That’s still my idea of what a “just war” means–a war where you try to kill somebody else in defense of a cause that you would willingly die for. A harder test of justice is whether you would send your children to fight for the cause.

Can you picture Bush sending his twins to risk their lives because Iraq might have weapons of mass destruction? Would you send your kids to battle in Iraq because Saddam Hussein was an evil guy whose minions tortured people? If so, your opportunity may still come–many other nations around the globe meet both criteria.

While wandering happily map-less around the Web, I suddenly found myself enjoying Hoom! Maps.
For map images and more, head over there now–but don’t forget to heed this final warning:

“When using any walking directions or map, it is a good idea to stop at an inn or hostelry and inquire about news from abroad. Find out whether any wars are brewing, and if so, whether agents of the enemy are pursuing you. This is only an aid in planning. Your eventual route and mileage may vary.”

(Thanks to NH blogger RefugeIsland for the link.)

“Try? There is no try. There is only do or not do.” (Yoda, The Empire Strikes Back)

“No such thing as bad student, only bad teacher. Teacher say, student do.” (Miyagi, The Karate Kid)

“Never make fun of someone who speaks broken English. It means they know another language.” (H. Jackson Brown, Jr.)

Friends don’t let friends blog drunk–but why do authors make some of our favorite characters speak broken English? One simple reason: this trick tells us Yoda is “exotic” compared to good-old-boy down-home Luke Skywalker.

A less obvious reason for non-standard English is to seduce the reader by making him/her work harder to get the message. Richard Adams used this ploy cleverly in his wall-to-wall-sex-scene novel Maia–by refering to breasts (for example) always as “deldas” he enlists you to work with him for his naughty effect.

Super-wise characters often speak broken English for similar reasons–that is, when you have to work hard to figure out what they mean, you don’t notice that what they’re saying is already trite. (Trite? And why not? Is truth supposed to change as often as styles in skirt-length or lipstick? Okay, stop ranting, Betsy.)

I got some real enjoyment out of these Japanese-in-English pages, most likely non-fictional, devoted to dressing up your cat for photographs.

1. You need to dress a cat. And you will say to a cat
together with a family. “It has changed just for a
moment”. [ “it being very dear” or ] You will pass
pleasant one time.

2. If a family and a cat become fortunate, you will
take a commemorative photo! Therefore, please photo
your cat lovelily with much trouble.

3. If it finishes taking a photograph, you will make
it remove clothes from a cat immediately. You will say
then, without forgetting the language of gratitude to
a cat. “– be flooded — a way — good — having done
one’s best — ! — ”

You can dress up your kitty to look like a frog, a sheep, Ann of Green Gables, or a man in a red necktie (the Japanese word for that seems to be “nekutai.”)

Thanks for the link to Karen Marcello, guest blogger at Boing Boing.