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

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.

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.

Ready for inspiration to strike

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

There is something magical about musicians in concert spaces before they perform. Years of aspiration and perfecting skill, weeks of practice with friends (and perhaps enemies) — in just moments now, one more wonderful chance for their public fruition.

Last night’s concert featured two works by Mieczysław Karłowicz, a string serenade and a violin concerto, followed by Beethoven’s Pastorale symphony (#6).

I had never heard Karlowicz’s music performed before and am glad I discovered it–not least because we share a December 11 birthday. Krakow’s St Catherine Church is a wonderfully high-arched space for listening to music augmented by the occasional twittering of its few sparrows.

This huge Gothic church sits in Krakow’s former Jewish district Kazimierz, brutally emptied by Nazis, now serving up platefuls of carp and earfuls of klezmer nightly in restaurants like Ariel and Klezmer Hois.

Vladimir Nabokov said of “articulate art,” but could also have said of music or science or any fine human endeavor, that it is a “melancholy and very local palliative.” There is something melancholy about musicians after a concert, even one that ends with a standing ovation, as last night’s performance by Capella Cracoviensis deservedly did.

bigmac

Originally uploaded by uuuuuli

Four Big Macs per hour.

That’s what the average Dutch worker earns — although the Dutch 17 year-old working at McDonalds earns a mere 1.05 Big Macs per hour.

Yes, the Big Mac Index (and its more elite rival, the Tall Latte Index) are semi-serious efforts to match wages to cost of living in different countries.

Why not expand this to comparing cost of living across the lines of social class. Conservatives are outraged that US auto workers can earn 10 Big Macs per hour, but they seem quite content that GM executives get $3M to $14M per year.

This makes perfect sense, however, because GM executives do not eat Big Macs. The relevant point of comparison should be something like dinner for one at Oxford’s Fat Duck restaurant, which costs $170.

The Big-Mac-Fat-Duck Index requires, then, paying the GM executive at least $1,700 per hour. If a GM executive puts in 50 weeks per year at 40 hours per week, that is 2,000 highly valuable executive hours they should expect to get fair pay for, which works out to at least $3.4M per year.

And this does not even count beverage, tip, or air fare from Detroit to the UK!

The executives who get even more than that are no doubt eating meals somewhere even more expensive.

Harvard unfair to torrid sea vixen, others

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

Dear Harvard,

Why have you locked up A Sea-Spell? Where are you hiding The Blessed Damozel? You own but are not displaying two of Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s best and most famous paintings.

I understand that wall space is scarce with the Fogg Museum closed, but there is no excuse for keeping these two off display when you are devoting a room in your "pre-1900 western art" space to truly horrible "art" by somebody who wasn’t even born until the 1960s.

The Blessed Damozel isn’t happy and neither am I!

Yours sincerely,
Betsy Devine

“Mission accomplished!” said Frank, over dinner tonight. We all looked at him. “It just doesn’t mean what it used to mean now, does it?” he said.

“Neither does ‘Heckuva job,’” pointed out someone else.

There should be a word, maybe something based on “oxymoron,” for expressions that used to mean “[something]” but now mean “[ha-ha-ha-NOT-something].” Heckuva job on creating so many, Team Bush!

Since I’m suggesting it, maybe I should make up said word, but since nothing suggests itself I won’t.

But that’s OK, because what I will do is “take full responsibility.”

TheWhiteHouse Twitter stream shifts from Bush to Obama

Election of Barack Obama was done by us.

Two screens are better than one

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

We just got a TV the day before Thanksgiving, after more than a decade without one. In the two months since then, we have probably watched a total of ten hours on it, about five of them 30 Rock.

But watching the inauguration of Barack Obama on CNNHD, even with my laptop by my side, I can see that TV gives a different and somehow communal experience of news events, quite unlike the hunt-and-peek solipsist patchwork of (for instance) my TV-less website surfing on Election night.

That effect isn’t necessarily benign. When 9/11 unfolded, students who sat glued to TV for hours were more traumatized than those who talked with friends and family. And how about the 2004 “Dean scream”? Played more than 700 times with shocked comments each time, it emerged as the artifact of a crowd-blocking microphone, but not before torpedoing Howard Dean’s run for president.

In Wikipedia, there’s a policy we call WEIGHT — basically, an article should represent fairly all competing viewpoints, but without giving such undue weight to unusual views as to imply that these viewpoints are widely supported. In TV, there seems to be a policy that we might call DRAMA — for example, to give enormous over-weight to any person or event that generates exciting footage.

I can’t say I’m sorry to be watching hour after hour of the inauguration of Barack Obama. But I like it that I can keep working as I do so.