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

When computers get their own drivers’s licenses–which OS would you like to see behind the wheel?

Team Banzai’s autonomous car uses 3 Mac Minis, fully loaded with OS X. Microsoft has fine slogans (“Where do you want to go today?”) but I hope I’m not sharing Route 95 anytime soon with a car whose “driver” could be zombie-jacked by a Windows spam-spewer in Russia.

Props to Niek for the link and a better title than mine: “Mini, you can drive my car.”

Montgomery Scott aka Scotty (as in “Beam me up, Scotty!) was chief engineer of the original Star Trek. When Captain Kirk needed something impossible, it was Scotty who’d coax the Enterprise to deliver. Reluctantly, though, and with many words of caution:

• “Even if we were under full scale attack I couldn’t move any faster, not and maintain a safety factor.” — The Naked Time,” Episode 7
• “The warp drive is a hopeless pile of junk.” — “The Doomsday Machine,” Episode 35
• “I’ve giv’n her all she’s got captain, an’ I canna give her no more.”
• “She won’t take much more of this.”

Scotty didn’t need to prove his manhood with macho bravado–his concern was for his ship and for the big picture, not for polishing his own image. A suitable hero for a young nerd like me, and I always liked him.

How much of Scotty was in the writing and how much was in the performing? I was surprised to discover that actor James Doohan, who died this morning, was a Canadian who tried out multiple accents and nationalities before Scotty became a Scot. Wounded on D-Day–his cigarette case probably saved his life–Doohan gave Scotty the gritty no-nonsense attitude I so admired.

We will miss him,

Dave Winer laughed when I told him that yesterday, but it’s really true. In the looking-glass world of blogging and IRC, you can enjoy too-much social life without ever taking ten fingers off the keyboard.

Dave came to town and demoed his new OPML editor last night–
Lisa Williams and David Weinberger both live-blogged the event; you can replay the video made by Steve Garfield here.

But Dave and his demo will soon hit a city near you, most likely, and when they do, I urge you to get out and enjoy them.

As for me, I’m headed back to the backwoods!

The outing of Ambassador Joseph Wilson’s wife as an undercover CIA agent (if that is what she was) would be contemptuous — not to say felonious. As former President Bush said in 1999 of those who expose intelligence agents, they are “the most insidious of traitors.” We fully agree…even if the actors may not have appreciated the nature of their conduct.

 Robert F. Turner, associate director of the Center for National Security Law at the University of Virginia,…said the identity of Mrs. Plame in the Novak column appeared to be the reporter’s attempt to explain why Mr. Wilson was sent to Niger, not to reveal her role as an undercover CIA officer. “It does not strike me as going to the core what this law was intended to prevent,” he said.

There are certain problems with having a wife who blogs. For example, if you say something funny to a bunch of your high school classmates, your wife is likely to scribble it down on a paper napkin so that she can blog it later.

Then, four months later, she re-finds the paper napkin. So today (ta da!) I’m blogging two fine Frank Wilczek quotes!

I went off to college planning to major in math or philosophy–
of course, both those ideas are really the same idea.

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In physics, your solution should convince a reasonable person.
In math, you have to convince a person who’s trying to make trouble.
Ultimately, in physics, you’re hoping to convince Nature.
And I’ve found Nature to be pretty reasonable.

Now I’m headed to the blogless backwoods of NH–while I’m gone, read the folks on my blogroll, assuming they don’t all decide to take time off now also.

The IgNobel Prizes have their own funny blog, and you should IMHO be reading it.

A lot of bottles…

Have you read Stu Savory’s intergalactic cometary warning?

It’s 3:25 a.m. in Stockholm, our flight leaves at 6:50 a.m. Blogging own my inner thoughts would come out close to “Mmmzzzzz,” so farewell.

Kudos to NASA! (Hey guys, why not hire me to do your graphics?)

Robot ad placement at its most disturbing: An ad for “old-fashioned hot dogs” attached to BoingBoing’s demo of vintage LSD scare-story about talking hot dogs with ketchup in their hair…

p.s. Einstein’s sister had moral issues with hot dogs–she loved them, but she was a vegetarian. Her famous brother kindly encouraged her, “You know, in your case, I believe the hot dog could be considered a vegetable.”

Similarly, my non-hot-dog-eating husband defended me at a physics picnic against some knowledgeable passerby warning about all the bad stuff they put into hot dogs (I eat one about once a year.) “What’s inside your hot dog,” said Frank, “is protons, neutrons, and electrons.”