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

Small impromptu John Lennon tributes

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

In a beautiful riff on growing up and growings older (whose title I stole for this post) David Weinberger writes today:

By December 8, 1980, nothing had gone wrong in my life. My parents were middle middle class, although growing up I thought we were wealthy. None of my desires were frustrated (well, except for prom night, but that’s a different story)…

Another great Weinbergerism on John Lennon there: “What a great blogger he would have been, so eager to be imperfect in public.”

This photo was taken when I accidentally found myself in NYC and part of a spontaneous John Lennon memorial on the 25th anniversary of his death.

To quote John Lennon (and his Quotations Page), “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”

Fusilli “waves and particles” – Photorecipe

Originally uploaded by funadium

Here’s something I haven’t seen before, over on Flickr–a “photorecipe” that combines food instructions with helpful pictures of each different stage. And, in this special case, with a physics flavor!

The creator, Funadium teaches both cooking and photography in Italy, close to France, but with lessons in English.

Judging from these fusilli, those courses would be delicious.

Senator Judd Gregg (R-NH): “Our society treats both perjury and obstruction of justice as extraordinarily serious crimes, ones for which people are put in prison,” Gregg told the AP.

Senator John E Sununu (R-NH) strongly agrees: “These acts are not merely technical violations of federal law; they demonstrate a broad and consistent pattern of behavior designed to corrupt our system of due process.”

Is impeachment called for? Sununu says it is:

“The President has undermined the judicial process, shown contempt for judges and officers of the court, and failed egregiously to uphold his oath of office. The President should be impeached. Those who will vote to exonerate a President who has shown such contempt for our judicial system either discard the evidentiary record, or willingly betray their own oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States.”

Gregg says so too:

“In a country based on the system of laws, which is really the great gift given to us under the terms of our Constitution, there needs to be a consistency of application. The idea that all people are equal under the law is not a relative term.”

Bzzt–thank you for playing! These quotes all come from 1999, when perjury and obstruction of justice were dead serious matters to Republicans Gregg and Sununu–and their target was President William Jefferson Clinton. But perjury and obstruction of justice are much more forgivable now–and how sincerely President Bush agrees with them!

Thanks to Dean Barker at Blue Hampshire for getting me started on this!

CERN’s Microcosm garden holds four giant chunks of classic physics equipment. Even if they were unlabelled, which they aren’t, you could guesstimate their chronological sequence using my Star/Wars/Trek Method to diagnose One-ness, Two-ness, and Three-ness.

One-ness: Early members of a high-tech sequence get built on mega-ideas with micro-money, by enthusiasts running on caffeine and pizza. To diagnose one-ness, look for stuff cobbled together. In the CERN garden, their first particle accelerator is built of unshiny sheet metal and old plumber’s pipe on a model developed for Rutherford back in the 1930s. Definite one-ness!

Two-ness: Most great ideas never get past the stage of one-ness, sad to say. But sometimes they do–sometimes the first item was such a big success, you get actual money to do what you love, only better! The best diagnostic for two-ness is craftsmanship plus simplicity. The original wild-eyed dreamer eagerly hires big-unionized workers who already know how to make big shiny things. The goal in stage two is to make something gorgeous that will do all the great stuff you wished you could do at stage one.

In CERN’s Microcosm garden, “two-ness” marks the gorgeously gleaming silver rocket-shippy thing that would look perfect with alien tentacles severed by rayguns mere microns away from the space-maiden’s shiny bikini–but I digress. And this “rocket” is really a CERN bubble chamber formerly known as BEBC, which unpoetically means “Big European Bubble Chamber.”

Three-ness: Three-ness marks the onset of “no more mistakes.” Let’s be responsible here–thousands of people depend on this project’s success. The mark of three-ness is shiny Frankenstein stuff–as if the skilled craftsmen of stage two now get conflicting orders from five different foremen. Let’s build a sphere–no, a tube–ok, a sphere on a tube. Give it lots of portholes–no, give it seams for access–no, both seams and portholes! I’m sure that’s not how the big copper resonator for CERN’s recent LEP experiment got designed, but you have to admit, that is very much how it looks. Definite three-ness.

Giant projects need three-ness, (and four-ness (and five-ness!)) CERN (where are they, ten-ness?) seems to be doing much better on all this than did the Star Wars franchise. No JarJar Binks, yet,–and hey, thanks for that World Wide Web thing, guys, really enjoying that!

There’s a lot of great one-ness that couldn’t get built in the first place if it didn’t have somebody else’s good solid three-ness to build on top of.

p.s. This image is part of a series from a great Fark contest for Star Wars vs Star Trek. This version was uploaded by Fark photo-ninja And-1!

Menton market – candy fruit

Originally uploaded by funadium

I once read on the Internet (so we know it must be true) that being in love is delicious because it gives joy both to familiarity and to surprises.

I think I’ve just fallen in love with some candied fruit that funadium Flickred from a street market in the French town (not village, I’ve been informed) Menton.

All the world’s a perch

Originally uploaded by carpe icthus

A flock of ungendered sparrows–ungendered to me, that is–swooped into my back yard this evening. One female cardinal, already taking a bath, seemed content with their company.

Male and female cardinals look to an untutored eye like two different species–he metrosexual red, she muted soft buff colors with just that subtle hint on her beak of scarlet. Her bright-red lipstick, my mother used to call it.

Sparrows have gender-signs their mating partners decode–but they don’t broadcast their mating preferences out to the parts of the universe they don’t want to mate with. Energy that could have gone into scarlet feathers or lipstick is leftover for sparrows to do other stuff they care about–seed-crushing muscle maybe, or louder cheep-cheepers.

Now my personal dress-style is much more like Mrs. Cardinal’s than like Ms. Sparrow’s–but one of the things I’ve loved about the Web is that it’s let me try on gender-neutral identities. In places like Slashdot or an IRC chatroom, a woman can jump into the conversation using some “nickname” that doesn’t yell “Hey, I’m a female!”

I’m told that Jane Austen never wrote a scene where men were talking together without any women–because she herself could never witness such happenings. If she could have hung out in IRC, posting as “darcy,” just think how much more fun and trouble she could have created.

Boston Clam Chowder

Originally uploaded by japan-vincent

On July 1, 2007, 11,000 enthusiastic chowderheads will pay $10 a pop to sample contestants for New England’s signature dish–that hot, milky, salty, potato-ful, tomato-free, and clammy paradise known as New England clam chowder.

That and more will be going on in celebration of Fourth of July over at the big Boston Harborfest event.

I am delighted to learn that one earlier chowderfest winner is named Devine! Clam chowder recipes have gone through a big shift in the fifty-plus years I’ve been enjoying them–most notably starting in ’70s California when chefs began to add more and more thickening to the earlier just-milk-with-clam-juice-and-a-wee-tad-of-bacon broth.

My unprejudiced blogger verdict is that the clam chowders served at Legal Seafood and Jasper’s Summer Shack are way over-rated. The most delicious clam chowder in Boston, better than either of those and also much less expensive, is served at the little fast food outlets called Boston Chowda. There’s one inside “the Garage” at Harvard Square, another at Fanueil Hall.

If you go to Jasper’s or Legal, get just about anything except the clam chowder–and the chowder’s not bad, it’s just less good than Chowda’s. Both have great lobster rolls, and Jasper’s has awesome Rhode Island calamari.

One more local Boston-Cambridge-seafood-touristy note about Legal Seafood–their chain is so popular that most locations have people waiting for tables as soon as it’s mealtime. The Legal Seafood in Harvard Square (on the plaza with the Charles Hotel) is a welcome exception to this annoying rule–you can almost always get seated right away.

Hmmm, for some reason, I’m starting to feel very hungry!

Jim Clash posted an interview with Frank to his charming online “Adventurers” TV series at Forbes.com:

• What it’s like to win a Nobel Prize?

Jim Clash’s work deserves much wider notice for his quirky and quick-witted and very short incursions into the lives of interesting folks–e.g. Roger Bannister, Joe Frasier, Buzz Aldrin, and my own adventurous husband Frank Wilczek.

It’s a shame that the Forbes “video network” seems maniacally determined to tax your patience and interest to the limit before letting you access the content you came to see. Blaring and obnoxious video ads just don’t quit! Have an ad for Microsoft–now have an ad for Forbes.com–now have another ad for Microsoft.

Do you need to search for the content using Forbes’s search box? New search results page–new ad for Microsoft! Click through from search result to content–sorry, first you have to watch another long pre-ad for some extraneous Forbes content before the video you want to see.

Still, none of this slogging should overtax the courage of a real Adventurer!

Convalescent bichon

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

A. Therapy dog is to mopey doped-up patient.
B. Cute sailor dog look is to my glamorous Hollywood pajama look.
C. Patient with lots more to complain about but still wearing happy face is to patient with much less to complain about who is actually also feeling pretty good.
D. All of the above.

My little sister’s beautiful white dog had a whole buncha little lumpy things removed, so that she (the dog, not my glamorous sis) now wears a coverup on lots of bits she shouldn’t be biting. I have just a few stiches under my chin and thereabouts, but Marie and Bill and Dreama the Wonder Dog droved down to Cambridge to help Frank babysit me anyway.

I so much appreciate it. They’re so darn nice. And I still keep falling asleep. And I feel so lucky. Good night, I’ll be back to blogging at you soon.