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

Betsy MacGyver does Stockholm

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

One small but defining aspect of geek-style pride is overcoming small obstacles with instant fixes. Here we see the misfit of a Mac plug (too loose) into a Swedish wall socket — the plug was then propped into place with several MacWorld magaizines and a light-travel-reading textbook plus two local apples.

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Originally uploaded by gwydionwilliams

One of the top ten stories in Time this week is about the progress of Galaxy Zoo, which they call “Among the most ambitious and successful online “citizen science” projects to date,” saying further:

Galaxy Zoo asks its participants to help classify galaxies by studying images of them online and answering a standard set of questions about their features. For instance: Is the galaxy smooth or bulging? Is it elliptical or spiral? If it’s spiral, how many arms does it have, and are they tightly wound or thrown open wide?

I got to see some of the project’s early stages (as described in a blogpost from 2008 “Ox. docs shocks!,” so I am especially delighted to hear that their innovative work is ongoing and still so productive.

Cupcake nouveau

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

The economics of the cupcake revolution are visible here. Not one, not two, but four or five levels of promise that the cupcake is fancy and loaded with sugar and fat in plentiful abundance.

But this is not a traditional bakery product. The skilled cook who has learned to apply smooth buttercream strokes and ornate decoration is no longer needed. Much lower-waged workers can be hired to apply the poured fondant icing, fat smear of frosting whose imperfections are well concealed by sprinkles, and topped with a candy easily mass-produced.

Perhaps the most cynical thing on the entire cupcake is the retro funk message of its peace symbol. “This cupcake was created by cool people who are just like you!”

Granny D

Originally uploaded by aahsa

“Never be discouraged from being an activist because people tell you that you’ll not succeed. You have already succeeded if you’re out there representing truth or justice or compassion or fairness or love. You already have your victory because you have changed the world; you have changed the status quo by you; you have changed the chemistry of things and changes will spread from you, will be easier to happen again in others because of you, because, believe it or not, you are the center of the world.”
– Granny D, 14 May 1999

She walked across the USA at the age of 90 to promote campaign finance reform. At 94, she ran for the US Senate and gave Judd Gregg one heckuva run for his money — an indie film “Run Granny Run” resulted and can be watched on the interwebs.

She started her career as an activist rather late in life (!) and achieved a great deal in the mere ten years she gave to it. Thank you, Granny D, for the inspiration. A real New Hampshire icon has now left our planet. My thanks to Dean Barker and others at BlueHampshire.com for so many inspirational quotes from Granny.

“Don’t walk away because you are confused or because it is difficult. We have entered an amazing time, when each of us has an important role to play. That time is now. It is the best time ever to be alive on this earth, because everyone matters. Everyone is needed if we are to survive. Your creativity, your love, your courage–all of it. As the smoke of battle swirls around you, smile. It is a privilege to be alive in such a time.”
– Doris “Granny D” Haddock, 19 April 2002

Snow-covered lion on Columbia campus

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

“Not one dime! Not until Democrats pass healthcare.”

That is what DNC fundraisers who call our house are going to hear from now on.

The hacks and jackasses in Washington who took over the Democratic National Committee from Howard Dean have taken us right back to their old election-losing “centrist” techniques. Under Dean’s leadership, we witnessed the landslide election of Barack Obama and Democratic majorities in both the House and the Senate. All that advantage has been nearly frittered away.

Obama has spent the past year trying to engage Republicans in bipartisan governance. It’s been like a year of watching Charlie Brown trying to kick a football with Lucy’s “assistance.”

And when Massachusetts voters, one year after Obama’s landslide victory, re-fill Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat with a Republican? Surely something is very, very wrong. Let me just quote Howard Dean on what that something is:

If you want to win, you actually can’t sort of move to the middle and become a Republican. You’ve got to stand up and stand for the things that you got elected on and that the Democratic Party believes in and we haven’t seen that in the healthcare bill and I think that’s part of the problem.

The smartest thing Obama could do now, in my unhumble opinion, would be to beg Howard Dean to come back and run the DNC.

Update: Somebody on Daily Kos had a great suggestion about this issue: Make your own list of good progressive candidates. When you get particularly annoyed about something political, make that the occasion to send a donation to the next person on your own list.

NH strawberry season

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

Hello, 2010, you already look so appealing, even under a faint sugar frosting of newfallen snow. Farewell and very good riddance to the now-past noughties, from Bush’s Florida recount to the disasters his team left behind.

This picture is here to remind me of all the many things that are now better than they were when I was a little girl. The Merrimack River, once full of untreated sewage and factory waste, is now full of fish and dotted with boats in the summer. (Oh how Republicans complained about its cleanup!) I can find strawberries even in January, good ones, even! And I can drink black coffee any time I want to, because I’m a grown-up.

Let’s make our next decade a good one, thinking big picture thoughts and letting them guide us.

Let’s not end up looking back, ten years into the future, with head-shaking regrets. Let our 2020 vision be better than this one!

John Brockman, founder of the feast

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

John Brockman and Katinka Matson were in Cambridge this weekend, throwing (as usual) an enjoyable party…

..at which none of my iPhone pictures came out, but I like this one of John, seen here with just a bit of Albert-Laszlo Barabasi, the author of the (soon to be published) Bursts.

There was quite a bit of talk about the Edge question for 2010 (which remains secret until it gets published there January 1.) I was also very intrigued by the ongoing DNA mysteries that Ting Wu explores in her Harvard Med School lab — and by the diverse places that Katinka Matson finds the flowers for her humongous photographs. I also learned that Frank Wilczek considers evolution a very roundabout way to deliver paltry amounts of information. I am looking forward to reading Connected by Nicolas Christakis and James Fowler, especially the chapter that begins with epidemic laughter. And if I had been sitting closer to Marvin Minsky or Benoit Mandelbrot, I might have learned something novel from them as well.

And then there was the Harvest’s sticky toffee pudding! Thanks once again, John Brockman and Katinka Matson.

Mmm computer displays to dream on 3

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

I have seen the future and it is CERN.

The only reason our desks don’t all look like this right now is that you, yes you, haven’t yet realized how much you want this, and therefore computer and software manufacturers have not yet started to make it easy to get.

Brains are not computers and we have “evolved” our computers to supplement the places where we really need extra help — memory storage and processing, collaboration, number crunching, and visualizing stuff.

The trouble is that, because computer monitor square-footage has been very expensive in the past, we are used to short-changing ourselves on visualization. Instead of getting the full shiny benefit of all the ways our computer CAN help us think, plan, and imagine, we are resigned to the time-consuming hackage of layered or tiled windows cluttering up our lone monitor.

Old computers and old monitors are very cheap; it would be easy to maker-fy several onto the wall behind your desk for simultaneous and useful display.

But wouldn’t this create a problem, I hear you asking, with “continuous partial attention“?

Au contraire! — as the seasick Frenchman said, when asked if he wanted to eat. By keeping our very own plans and obsessions and interests on view, we would compete more successfully for our own brainspace against the binging and buzzing of multi-interruption.

What would you keep on your own five new computer screens? I am also mentally giving you a free sixth one, where you actually work on the stuff you do now.

Real-time results from CERN’s ATLAS detector

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

Frank and I are in Bern on our way to CERN, as the LHC beams are finally online and being brought up to speed. The LHC beam got to Bern’s labs before we did.

But not much before we did — ATLAS recorded its first particle “splashes” on Nov. 20, not much more than a week ago.

The ATLAS group at Bern University focuses on data-acquisition and data-analysis. One of the many amazing things they showed us today is their giant realtime display of LHC information.

The lefthand side of the monitor (most of it not visible in this photo) shows many aspects of the LHC beam status. One young experimenter is here pointing to information about the most recent “event” recorded by ATLAS, from three different viewpoints. This was a cosmic ray event, which was superceded by a second cosmic ray event during the few minutes we stood looking at the monitor. (The beam status was “off” so collision events were not on view.)

The black rectangle with many particle tracks is a lovely revolving three-dimensional image of very the first beam “event” recorded by ATLAS. Wow.

I am definitely going to follow CERN on Twitter for more.

Yes, an entire calculus limerick, resurrected from my 1992 joke book, has been made into a YouTube video by my old friend Stu Savory. (Calling him my “good old” friend would make him sound older and less good, so I’ll leave it there.)

The limerick is a fine old mathematical chestnut, most likely created by a real practitioner who invoked Gausswhen trying to tie his cravat and thought of Klein bottles when he heard the milkman’s cart rumble by. With blessings upon Stu’s head, I am not that old.

I hope all my readers will show their support for YouTube’s new adult content by favoriting Stu’s video early and often.