A breakfast discussion with Betsy Devine
“A breakfast discussion with Betsy Devine, who enjoys being Mr Jennifer Lopez.”
Dave and Betsy are having breakfast. They discuss a variety of topics, including Betsy’s husband Frank winning the Nobel Prize in Physics, the differences between American and European breakfast foods, the dynamics of physical attractiveness, and the state of modern politics and the media. They reflect on how relationships and perspectives change as one gets older, and the challenges of maintaining principles in large organizations.
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Transcript
This transcript was automatically generated.
Okay, good morning everybody,
this is Dave Moyner and this is
Morning Coffee Notes.
What is today’s date? May 30th, 2005.
And I’m here with Betsy Devine.
You’re going to be hearing lots of Betsy and this is the second time I’ve ever done a Morning Coffee Notes over breakfast.
The first one I did.
Here, so I’m just going to put down the recorder now, it’s going to be on the table and we ’ll just have breakfast and you just have to kind of be aware that everything you say is going to be for the entire world to hear, right? So like no whining, no bitching , no, oh go ahead actually, okay , you can whine about not being able to whine.
The first one I did actually was with my parents and that was on my birthday, my 50th birthday which was earlier this month.
Yeah, you can just whine about anything.
I know, that’s nice that we can say that.
So we had breakfast at a diner in Queens in New York City and it was very interesting.
My parents, it turns out my mother is an eBay hacker and yeah, no kidding, and my dad has lots of ideas about outlining which is good because I’m getting ready to release another outliner.
Great.
Yeah.
It’s great.
So, how are you doing Betsy? Oh, I’m having a great time, I ’m playing along, I’m enjoying being Mr. Jennifer Lopez these days.
Now that Frank is sort of famous in the world that we move in, it’s really fun.
Why do you say Mr. Jennifer Lopez? Because he’s Jennifer Lopez.
Haha, I think you’re a mister.
And I’m Mr. Jennifer Lopez.
What’s that like, so? It’s pretty interesting.
Yeah.
You get to go, I get to go to a lot of exciting places and see a lot of exciting things that people wouldn’t necessarily invite blogger Betsy to find.
Really? To do, yeah.
Like what, for example? Well, for example, some people in Saudi Arabia gave Frank a physics prize and so we went over there and I had to wear, I had to wear an eBay and a covering on my head and we stayed in a wonderful hotel in a suite and we had, when we got there some very nice young person came up to us and said, “How do you do, I’m your butler, I’m the butler for this suite. " Wow.
And every time we turned around they were bringing us more fresh fruit, more fresh flowers .
Wow.
It was pretty interesting.
Where was this? It was in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
It’s very… So Frank wasn’t famous before.
What happened? He was very famous in the world .
He was very listening to the sn ows.
Oh well.
Oh, sorry, sorry.
So Frank won the Nobel Prize in Physics in December of 2004.
So, yeah, so he was a well- known physicist beforehand.
But now, he’s like Mr. Well- known.
That’s right.
He’s the number one physicist in the world this year, right? That’s exactly right.
He’s physics flavor of the year .
So that’s… Has it gone to his head? Does he still talk to you? No.
He’s a darling.
He hasn’t changed, except that he’s pleased and having fun.
So does he get to vote on who gets to win next year as a result? He doesn’t vote, but he gets to nominate.
I see.
And don’t… And so do people kiss up to him now, but wouldn’t it before? I haven’t noticed that, that I wouldn’t necessarily… Probably do.
Yeah.
That’s pretty much the way that the world works, isn’t it? I guess so.
So is this like… This isn’t a normal conversation for us, is it? No.
Because I have this thing on? Because you asked me what was going on.
I know.
Well, I never… I never asked you what’s going on.
No.
No.
That’s nothing.
Anyway.
But what I wanted to… I wanted to tell you, I thought it would be very good for this podcast, was this really fun song that I just learned.
Oh, cool.
And it’s called “Astra Feticis ,” and it was in the musical Little Women that… Somebody named Kalea in New York decided to publicize a Broadway show by inviting blog gers, women bloggers.
And it was a great idea, because did you ever read Little Women Day when you were a kid? I don’t think so, no.
It’s a book that a lot of boys get used to read, but it’s about four New England sisters who live together, and one of them wants to be a writer and goes off and does it.
Anyway.
And part of… And it’s Louise and May Alcott, right? Right.
And one of the sisters is called Beth, and not to spoil anything, but she dies before the end of the book.
Anyway.
That’s terrible.
But she… She liked… She’s crazy about music, and the sort of gruff old guy next door eventually invites her to use his really good piano, which is an exciting thing.
So in the musical, there’s this plot point advances, because they sing a song together.
He asks her to play for him, and she plays a silly song called “Massachusetts,” and then they collaborate.
They sing together.
Shall we go? Let’s go.
If you say, “Come with me, off to Massachusetts, off to Massachusetts,” we will go.
We will buy dishes there, maybe even two sets, dine in finest China, and then all will have some crepes Suzette’s.
I forget.
In Massachusetts.
That’s right.
Everything rhymes with Massachusetts.
But it’s really very impressive how things rhyme with Massachusetts, and the tune is very catchy, and I’ve been humming it to myself.
Is it right? It’s like one of these tunes that sticks in your head? Yes.
Yes.
We’ll do it again.
All right.
We will build model boats off in Massachusetts, off in Massachusetts by the bay, then we will sit around, wait until the glue sets something, something, something, and then poke on the parapets.
That’s great.
It’s just really funny.
It’s a girl’s song.
It’s a little girl’s song.
Yeah.
Let’s say.
It’s hard to picture a guy singing this.
I’ll get to it.
Don’t worry.
I mean, I did a song.
You brought one with me? I brought the CD so you can hear.
You can hear someone who can really sing it.
Really? I thought you sang it very well .
You had little loops in your voice there.
I mean, I sing like an amateur myself, but I just, Eddie Albert.
I heard you sing.
I heard you sing at Green Acres .
I wanted to sing with you.
I wish you would.
I would be happy to.
Well, it’s very easy to do.
You know all the words.
Well, they have them on the internet.
That still works.
I don’t have that much to sing with that.
Well, why don’t we sing it right now? All right.
All right.
Let’s hear it again.
Okay.
Now tell me.
Do you just sing the whole green? I sing the male part.
You sing the female part.
I sing the male part.
You sing the female part.
And if you don’t, can’t get the female part, then you just sort of like make it.
We’ll try it.
Let’s see what happens.
I mean, I know all the words.
Okay.
I know the male part.
Okay.
Hold up your finger if I’m supposed to join it.
Oh, okay.
And hold your finger down and I ’m not supposed to join it.
And then there is an end.
At the end, there is one line that we sing together, which is I can’t remember it now.
I’ll get to it when I get to it in the song.
I don’t remember the women’s words.
What are the women’s words? Tell me.
So, okay.
So, let me sing the whole song.
You sing the whole song.
Okay.
Green acres is the place to be.
Farm living is the life for me.
Land spreading out so far and wide.
Keep Manhattan just give me that countryside.
And then she goes.
New York is where I want to be.
Rather stay.
Rather stay.
I get allergic.
Get allergic smelling hay.
I just adore.
A penthouse view.
Darling, I love you, but give me Park Avenue.
And then, wait, there’s another lyric and I keep forgetting it.
And then at the end.
Okay.
I’ll hear it.
Okay.
So, we’ll go to the end.
Okay.
Then he goes.
The chores.
The stars.
Fresh air.
Times Square.
Times Square.
You are my wife.
Goodbye, city life.
Green acres.
This is where we do it together .
Green acres.
We are there.
And then the sponsor kicks in.
Something happens with the sponsor.
This is what people do in Cambridge all the time.
Right? Absolutely.
We’re in a weird part of Cambridge right now, right? Yes, this is very out of Cambridge.
This is the extraveny of Cambridge.
This is a new part.
Right? Well, it’s a very typical up scale hotel breakfast place.
Yeah, totally.
It could be in any city.
In fact, probably is.
One of the things I’ve really noticed because I’ve been traveling so much.
And you travel a lot too.
Yeah.
That’s how they’re… When you travel, they’re like little pods that are the same everywhere.
Yeah.
Like airports.
You know, airport lounges.
Well, they’re not all the same.
It was funny.
I was just reading four years ago today.
I think it was.
I went to Copenhagen.
And I got off the plane all jet lagged and flying from California.
Well, Copenhagen Airport is very different from normal airports.
It’s very stylish.
It’s very… It’s got all this great wood in it.
You know, because Danish design , furniture designs particularly , they do very, very, very well.
And so the Copenhagen Airport is not like most airports.
It’s not friendly though.
They say… They also say this is really funny because, you know, who Robert… You know Robert Scobble, right? Yeah.
Have you met him? No, I haven’t.
You would love each other.
I got an angry blog entry about him long ago.
“Call him John Scobble,” which does something kind of… Oh, yeah.
No, you can’t really stay angry at Scobble for very long, right ? So he’s going to Copenhagen.
I’m getting perfect on you.
I didn’t even know you were friends when I wrote this.
I don’t think he’s ever picked on me.
Really? Yeah.
Plenty of other people.
But you know what? I can’t tell you something, okay? There are all these people… There’s a big thaw going on right now.
People see… I shouldn’t say this.
This jinxes everything.
But, you know, people, you know , we used to pick on me a lot, right? And Frank Painter, for example, and Frank and I are like becoming friends now.
That’s really good.
I’m glad.
I’m glad that he was just sort of like doing the thing that Chris Locke was asking him to do.
You know, Chris Locke decided to hate me.
Yeah, I know.
That was so strange.
Well, like, yeah.
I’m so ugly.
Well, there’s a lot of that going on.
There was a lot of that.
And now, the main thing, how people were… There’s like a thaw.
And I’m, you know, I’m not going to like hold any grudges or anything at all, but quite the opposite.
But I want to make sure this never happens to anybody else, you know? That there’s sort of like a high school thing going on in blogger lands, you know? And it’s not, it’s a very ugly thing.
You know, in high school, I was never the guy that people picked on.
Never.
It was the opposite.
I mean, not the opposite.
I didn’t pick on people.
I was like the BMOC, you know? I was like the guy that everybody came to.
I ran the school newspaper.
I ran politics in the student council.
I was like, you know, not the school newspaper, the school underground newspaper.
The hip one.
Oh my.
That’s better.
With all the drugs around it.
You know, not the ones with the guys that were going to MIT.
You know? From my high school, all the good kids went to MIT.
And, you know, not me though.
I went to Lehman College.
But… Well, you’ve done very well.
Yeah, they should have.
They should have accepted me to MIT, but I would have made a lot of trouble.
So Scoble is going to, he’s going to Copenhagen, I think, like next week or this week.
Yeah, this week.
And so he’s talking about, like , there’s this conference they have there every year this time .
And this is like, it’s just beginning to be spring in Copenhagen right now.
Yeah.
It’s a great time to go.
It is.
And they drink so much.
I mean, and the thing was, is that he wants to do like a blog ger con style thing where it’s all discussion based and everything, you know, on conference.
And of course, I went to this conference with this exact same idea.
And they told me, well, you know, it’s a really great idea, Dave, but it’s totally not going to work.
And I said, really, why? And they said, because Denmark is a flat country.
And I said, really, what does that mean? Basically, people are flat here .
They don’t have any spark or any zest for living.
They’re not very, they’re not, they don’t talk.
They just drink.
And I said, can’t be true, you know, because all the people that I meet, you know, people that you meet from, you know, other countries tend to be, I guess, the most, the more exceptional people in the country.
You know, I mean, if they make it to the U. S. or they show up, you know, on an international level, they are, it’s like Americans.
I mean, only 12% of Americans have passports.
Did you know that? Wow.
Yeah.
So, I mean, you know, it’s, that means that there are 88% of the people that, that have never left the country, right? So, you know, when they say in Europe that we really like Americans, actually, they really like the 12% that come to Europe.
They probably really wouldn’t like the other 88% if they actually had to meet them.
I mean, that’s, of course, that ’s not true.
The people in the middle of the country are pretty nice.
That’s not true.
Of course, that’s right.
Absolutely.
That was one of the lessons I have because I live in a red state now, right? And I live in a red part of a red state.
That’s okay.
It’s okay.
Yeah.
So, you know, the fact is people don’t run you down on the road.
And there’s this thing called Southern hospitality and it’s for real.
People are nice to you, you know.
And yet most of these people voted for, you know, somebody who I think is only, you’d have to be like kind of an awful person to vote for.
There’s the contradiction.
And that’s why there’s hope for us.
Because I think that a lot of reason why they vote for people like that is because they feel that way about us.
It’s not that we would run them down, but we don’t have a very high regard for them.
And, you know, it’s true, actually.
It’s true.
I mean, it’s true that in each side there’s a contingent of people who say really hurtful things about the other side.
And of course, there are others who are eager to make sure that people hear these things being said.
And to promote the discord.
I mean, so much of recent politics is just artificially manufactured discord.
Who the hell ever heard of gay marriage five years ago? I mean, who the hell ever heard of teaching intelligent design in the public schools? I just learned what intelligent design is.
And it’s not like what you think it would be, right? That’s anti-evolution is intelligent design, right? That’s right.
It’s not like how to make a better couch.
No, that would be intelligent.
See, I don’t, you know, my thing is I don’t get the contradiction between God and evolution.
I don’t think there is a contradiction.
Neither do 90% of the people that are, well, neither do more than 50% of people that are very religious.
Exactly.
It’s a manufactured controversy .
It’s completely a manufactured controversy.
That’s where the hope comes from. It’s like the cross-poll ination.
I have to admit, for some reason I lost your subscription to your blog, so I haven’t been keeping up on your life.
Well.
No, my aggregator did it. It had in mind of its own.
I mean, you know, but I went to Nashville.
Did you follow that whole thing ? Well, I’ve been subscribing to your blog.
I haven’t, you know, when I read your blog, I don’t always necessarily follow where you’re doing it.
Where exactly you are. I’m much more interested in what you’re thinking and what you’re going at.
Well, that in a sense is where I am.
Yeah, exactly. That’s the part of where you are.
I mean, if you’re coming to Boston, that’s really interesting because I’ll see if I were to plan to go to New York and I said you were going to be in New York City.
Oh, wow. Maybe I’ll see you there.
You’re here in Nashville or Florida and I’m not going there .
Well, Nashville is a huge… It’s not a difference between Nashville and Florida.
Nashville was a riot, a blog riot after… That’s right. That was the sort of red state.
That’s right. I remember now.
There’s all this fuss with you and Glenn Reynolds.
Yeah, and the irony of it was, or the weird part about it was, is that the actual event itself was reasonably… It was no more disruptive, I think, than it would have been had you had a political conservative moderating a discussion in San Francisco.
Right? Although, I don’t know.
See, I’m a lefty, so it’s really hard for me to imagine a left-wing person behaving that badly, you know what I mean? Although my parents, for example, my mother will say some really horrible things about Southern people, about conservatives and Republicans.
And I always say to her, you know, maybe if we were a little bit more understanding and maybe we would solve these problems, maybe… And so, conclusion, anyway, a long story, conclusion I came to is we need like a buddy system. We need to have pen pals.
We need to go find people who are our political opposites.
Have you talked to Tony Kahn? Tony Kahn has this thing.
Is that right? An idea very similar to that.
Really? He’s talking about… Yeah, you guys should talk to each other.
Yeah, more, I know. I absolutely agree.
But you see, of course, Tony K ahn and I would be the very likely people to talk.
Our politics are virtually ind istinguishable, right? No, I mean, maybe you and Tony could collaborate on setting something.
You know, it would be kind of fun to progress setting something like this up and block it.
That’s why… Absolutely.
Another contact I made was with Hodor. You know who Hodor is? Hosei, yes, I did.
Yeah, and that was very… We really hit it off.
And we had… So the question was, how do we create more connections between East and West? And really East and West, not like California and New York, but, you know, Iran and the United States or whatever, right? We had a whole session about this. Rebecca McKinnon led the discussion.
And the idea came out that what we need to do… It’s not enough.
I can’t read an Iranian blog and get a sense at all of what it’s like in Iran.
However, I think that if I read … Like, if you went to Iran and brought a camera with you, right? I’m going to Iran.
Oh, well, in that case, great.
I’ll bring a camera.
Let’s try the experiment, okay? The idea is that somebody who I ’m familiar with who has similar values to mine, okay? Who I think that I know, right, goes to a foreign country and then her eyes act as filters for me of what happened.
Then I can make sense of that.
And the word that we came up with was context.
Is that without context, it’s … The context… Without context, the contacts are meaningless.
I can’t understand what it means… So you’re going to Iran.
Yeah, Mr. Jennifer Lopez has been invited to Iran.
And how so? So there’s a university there.
Well, a very nice Iranian person here.
He sent me emails and I’d like … Can we meet? You know, he’d been to a talk that Frank gave.
Frank and I were signing our book, so… You and Frank have written a book together? Yeah.
What’s the book called? Money for the Harmony.
Oh, shit. What’s it about? It’s just been reissued by W. W . Norton.
Oh, awesome.
Yeah, it’s really a good book if I do say so myself.
Who comes first? Frank and Bets y? Well, it’s really… Yes, it’s him.
We did alternate drafts, but he wrote the first draft, so that ’s definitely… Okay, so it’s a Frank and Betsy .
It’s a Frank.
It’s a Mr. Jennifer Lopez.
Mrs. Jennifer… No, sorry.
It’s JLo and Mr. JLo.
That’s exactly right.
Which is good, because since it ’s about sort of… lights of fancy about modern physics and the universe, and how people can make sense of it, I think his thoughts and the direction are much more exciting than mine.
I know you much better than I know him, though, so I’m more interested in him.
It was really funny. It was funny you wrote it here.
Anyway, the point is, this is kind of funny.
This is a funny blog story, so I got email from a guy saying, “I’d like to meet with you and talk with you for 15 minutes. " I gave him my card, my beautiful business card with my blog name.
What does it say on it? “Making trouble today for a better tomorrow. " Exactly.
My matter.
You know what? I’m going to get a new card that mine says, “Dave Winer, Bad Influence. " Oh, good.
Exactly.
Do you like that? Yes, I like that. I think that ’s a great idea.
So anyway… Hey, actually, can you hold it? I wanted to get some more food, and we don’t have to put this on pause or anything.
Just let it sit there.
Just let it sit there while you get the food.
They’ll take care of themselves .
Or you can keep talking if you want, but I’ll be right back, okay? All right.
Do you mind? No, I don’t mind.
I’m trying to think if I want anything else.
Okay.
Well, while you think about that, I’ll get some more.
Well, I’m going to sit here and podcast while Dave is gone.
So we’re meeting in a hotel.
This is Betsy DeVine.
So we’re meeting in a hotel breakfast room.
And I have sat in a million of these hotel breakfast rooms, and this is quite a nice one.
But it’s just, to me, really funny how life contains certain recurring kinds of things.
When you’re really young, everything is new.
Every day, everything is different, and everything is a whole new challenge.
That’s still true a lot, but sometimes when you get to my age, which is 58, there is a whole lot of things that become solved problems.
Or as a mathematician would say , it reduces to a problem previously solved.
And actually, I think that’s probably very good for your blood pressure.
So Dave, I was just telling the podcaster that it’s not so much that all airports are the same.
It’s that when you get to my age, which is 58, there are certain things that as a mathematician would say, it reduces to a problem previously solved.
Exactly.
They are approachable that way.
Yeah, that’s right.
I need to get some more locks though.
Go get more locks.
Anyway, I suppose that’s rather a nerdy way to think about it.
But hotel breakfast rooms are another thing that reduces to a problem previously solved.
Of course, it’s different breakfasts everywhere you go.
I remember how grossed out I was for the first time.
Dave, do you remember, were you grossed out the first time you saw an English breakfast? Oh yeah.
Oh my gosh.
God, is it awful.
You know, tomatoes, cooked tomatoes.
I mean, you know this breakfast , cooked tomatoes, really gross looking, fried, baloney.
And then some beans, some sort of very, very pale baked bean kind of beans in a ketchup sauce.
I mean, I’m looking at this and I’m like, how do you eat that shit? How do you eat that? Yes, exactly.
I had a really interesting observation in Denmark a few years ago.
I just read this in my blog and I was having Danish breakfast and you know, it’s herring and cheese and all kinds of cold cuts and stuff like that.
And I remember as a kid, my father used to eat that kind of stuff for breakfast.
And I used to think, dad, why don’t you eat Cheerios or pancake or egg or, you know, like real breakfast food or something.
I always used to think my father was weird.
But it turns out, he wasn’t that he was so much that he was weird.
It was that he was a European.
And that’s much better than English breakfast.
It’s actually very good.
It is.
And salad.
And salmon too, yeah.
There’s salad.
Danish food is actually quite good.
So is your father really European? Yeah.
Didn’t you grow up in Europe? Yeah.
Where? Romania.
Bucharest.
You’re kidding.
No.
My mother grew up in Prague.
That’s right.
I remember you’re related to that beautiful naked movie actress.
Hedy Lamar.
Hedy Lamar, let’s say.
There’s a second career for you .
Being Hedy Lamar is a distant relative.
Well, think about it.
This might be kind of fun.
I mean, here’s an interesting life project for someone.
Do you remember there’s a book by Gabriel Garcia, a story by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, about a guy who wants to write, and what he wants to write is Don Quixote.
So he sits down to write.
You know, he wants to essentially write a book that’s already been written.
So that would be kind of a fun thing to do.
That’s kind of a fun project for very To be Hedy Lamar? I can’t.
I’m a little engender.
I’m like, she was beautiful.
She really was beautiful.
There are some beautiful genes in there.
My mother is beautiful.
She’s a little older now.
You should see pictures of her when she was a young woman.
And the funny thing about it, she tells the story, is that she didn’t know that she was beautiful.
So many people don’t get that.
It’s sort of like the fish doesn’t understand that the water is wet.
Or that there even is such a thing as water.
This is one of my favorite stories.
You just don’t know that the world’s been treating you that way your whole life.
What she did learn, though, was as she started to age, the world stopped treating her like the young babes.
And then she started to resent that.
Because she was used to having the world organize itself around her.
Because that just doesn’t happen for men.
I mean, women, it doesn’t.
I mean, women don’t treat beautiful men with the same kind of deference.
I don’t think that beautiful women get from men.
Or the kind of hatred they get from women.
I mean, that’s another thing that you see.
Women really seem to despise the very beautiful woman.
I don’t know.
I don’t know that many very beautiful women.
I don’t know that many very beautiful women.
I dated one once that she was just like an object of desire for so many people.
For so many men.
And then the irony of it was that I’d be going to a party as her date.
And all the men would just swarm her.
And I would be kicking back and watching it in an amused fashion.
It’s not something you feel bad about.
Because all that energy is going into, that’s your experience.
That’s right, exactly.
But then the thing that was un foreseeable by me was how all the women would come up to me and badmouth her to me.
Oh dear.
Yeah, they would just sing the most awful things about her.
Oh dear.
Well, it could have had something to do with her rather than how beautiful she was.
I mean, it could have been that she was not a very nice person.
I mean, it could have been they liked you and wanted to warn you.
Oh, it could be.
You know, one really beautiful girl, I don’t know, lots of very nice looking women.
My little sister was very beautiful.
And actually that was hard for me when I was a little kid.
Really? Yeah, because I was a skinny little kid.
And she was beautiful.
And fortunately she and I have gotten to be good friends over the years.
But that’s not a necessary ending to it.
I can’t imagine somebody not being good friends with you.
Oh, well, you’re nice.
Thank you.
You’re that kind of person.
We all have different things.
I mean, yeah.
Even people who didn’t like me.
Really? Yeah.
Wow.
Of course, I would notice.
I would notice.
I don’t know anybody who doesn ’t like you.
Wow.
Thank you.
I think we should.
I think we’ll end our podcast right here.
And the podcast on a very high note.
Oh, I just thought of something .
Oh, never mind.
Well.
We all find these the most valuable.
And once you get past the point where, I mean, we’re aware that there’s a thing here recording it, but we have a report that we’ve developed over some period of time.
Yeah.
And that begins to come out a little bit.
And that that’s more valuable than a story that anybody has to tell, I think.
Yeah.
It was sort of like the interesting thing is, well, what’s the, what’s the relationship these two people have? Yeah.
Well, you and I have an interesting relationship.
I’m not exactly sure how I would define it, but interesting is a word I would use.
Interesting.
That’s a good word.
Yeah.
It’s a good word.
There was a girl I knew in high school who was probably the most, the prettiest girl I’ve ever known.
And her name was Kitty Fisk.
And she was, I’m old enough that it was right at the cusp.
When we were in high school together, Kitty Fisk used to put her hair in those horrible rollers.
And you might be too young for it.
No, I know.
You put this horrible brushy thing in your hair and make your hair all puffed up.
Well, it just so happened that Kitty Fisk, and everyone liked her.
She was really a lovely girl.
Of course, it was a girl’s school, so it wasn’t a competition for the alpha males like yourself, Dave.
There you go.
So perhaps if she had been.
Anyway, so she went to Benning ton, as I did.
And I remember I was there when Kitty Fisk made the phase change between the rollers and the long straight, the long straight beatnik hair.
Yeah.
And, and this was one of the times, one of the early times in my life when my thinking shocked myself because I thought to myself, but she looked a lot better.
Do you remember when you saw your first afro? I remember.
I didn’t understand it.
Really? I don’t remember that.
It wasn’t a bit.
I do.
You saw it and you said, how did they do that? I just didn’t understand at all .
Yeah.
How did they do that? Or it just didn’t make any sense.
It looked like a microphone top .
I was like, oh, wow, that’s weird.
I didn’t get the hair to do that.
Of course, I didn’t realize that, of course, that is the way their hair is, right? I mean, that sounds stupid to say that, but, you know, at the time, basically men kept their hair, black men kept their hair so short that it never sort of frizzed out like that.
And women ran, you know, through the straighteners, you know, like Condoleezza Rice does.
She still does.
Yes.
Do you think they’re promoting her for, there was, there’s been some stuff in the Washington Times, which I read online.
It really looks as though a presidential run for Condoleez za Rice is being promoted.
Yeah.
I know.
Hillary Clinton.
I know she’d be a lot better than a lot of people.
I mean, she’d be a lot better than a lot of the Republicans.
I’d rather have her than Bush’s brother.
Oh, I don’t know about that.
Let’s hope we’re going to win the next one.
It’s going to be really tough because they, well, you see, I don’t see it that way.
You see, I’m not a Democrat particularly, you know, and I read an article somewhere, something I sort of like figured out that McCain is, is doing a really good job positioning himself for the next run, right ? Although you got to figure they ’re going to slime him.
Carl Rowe is not going to work for John McCain.
I don’t think, I don’t think John McCain would have Carl R owe after what happened.
I would hope not.
So somebody is going to run against McCain and that somebody is going to have Carl Rowe on his or her side, probably on Lisa Reiser, somebody like that .
And McCain is being very smart.
I’m with this whole filibuster thing.
He’s really not that moderate a Republican, but he positioned himself totally as one.
In other words, he, he picked up a lot of moderation points there by being one of the peacemakers in the Senate.
Well, I think McCain, I mean, I don’t like McCain’s politics at all.
He’s very far right and I’m very far left.
That’s right.
But, well, I’m not very far left, but I’m, I’m a tax and spend liberal from way back.
Anyway.
I’m a gun to liberal.
In other words, I don’t see the eye ground on being aggressive anyway.
Yeah, so you were saying about McCain.
But I think the guy’s sincere and that doesn’t necessarily mean I want a sincere guy for president whose values are totally opposite from my own.
But I think, you know, I mean, I think it’s interesting with McCain that he’s, he’s taking different sides of a lot of issues.
For example, he was one of the few people to stand up against Bush and say that he shouldn’t, he shouldn’t pick on Kerry’s war record that way.
And that was a decent thing to do.
Yeah.
And, and I have to say, I don’t know if to be impressed or disg usted that McCain went to work for Bush after the way Carlos slimed him.
Because he wants to be president.
That’s why he did it.
That’s exactly why he did it.
It’s the only reason they’ve, the only thing that explains it is that he had to be seen as a, as a team player on the Republican Party if he wants the nomination at some point.
But if, if, if that were his motivation, Dave, that wouldn’t at all chime with his standing up to Bush about, you know, think about it.
He really, first of all, he really puts himself out inconveniences himself and does a lot of work for Bush and the campaign.
So, but instead of being able to cash in on that as I am a team player, he then goes and does something which potentially is very hurtful to Bush, which knowing how Bush is said to be very resentful guy.
But he wasn’t doing it for Bush .
See, he wasn’t campaigning for Bush to get Bush’s support.
He was campaigning for Bush to stay to the Republican Party is that my differences aren’t so big with Bush that I’m not willing to rally behind the Republican candidate for president.
Yeah.
So, I mean, yeah, look, first of all, there’s no question that everything really, really made, really impressed me.
Of course, it was designed to impress me.
And number one, number two is, yeah, I mean, and yeah, because you may not vote for McCain, but he’s trying to get Democratic votes.
Right.
So, when you say that he impressed you, what you’re saying is that he succeeded at appealing to Democrats at a time when it cost him absolutely nothing to do it.
I mean, obviously Bush would be , he didn’t cost him anything to do that.
You really don’t think it hurt him with the very Republicans he was trying to suck up to? Because that’s why he went and campaigned for Bush, because to prove to them, you know, to say, look, I had a difference of opinion on Bush on a material issue, and I’m my own man, and so I said what I thought, but when it came time to, when it came time to question whether or not it should be Republican or Democrat in the White House, I’m a Republican, so I went and worked for the Republican.
Yeah.
I think that they would never nominate somebody who had worked against the Republican or had been neutral about it, nor should the Democrats ever do that.
Yeah.
Because, you know, that’s what it means to be a political party is that, you know, unless it’s like Nixon in 1970, whatever, ‘74, at which point, you know, you don’t support the party anymore.
I mean, you don’t support the leader of the party anymore because it’s like ridiculous.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Everybody has to have a limit, but it’s good.
The first was ended up, you know, I mean, this is, of course, the battle for the Supreme Court.
Yeah.
And they’re going to win that one.
The Republicans are going to win it.
Rehnquist is going, is a very sick guy, and he’s going to withdraw, and at some point, pretty soon, and the Republicans are going to be in position to get Scalia as the next Supreme Court, you know, to each other.
Well, let’s see.
You know, I think it’s kind of, I was reading on the internet, so of course, I must be true, that economists tend to be less happy in their relationships than other people, allegedly the reason being that they analyze them economically, you know.
Well, what, is this to my advantage? You know, what are my interests here? What are her interests? And that’s the thing.
And I think it’s true, analyzing things like that would put a strain.
But I think my point is that one of the problems I think with our political system and with a lot of business, too, is that there’s a sophisticated level of economic analysis that goes on that actually is kind of hurtful in the long run.
For example, trying to, if you look at the past election, and you say, well, the only issue here is if I’m going to get more votes than the other guy.
And if that’s your issue, then it really makes sense to be dirty if you have to, to be deceitful, you know, to do all kinds of garbage-y tricks.
And my impression is, of course my impression is that the Republicans do this more than the Democrats.
They do.
But my impression is the Democrats do it, too.
Yeah, they do.
But Carl Rose resets the bar.
Yeah.
Resets the bar lower.
Way lower.
I have to live my wonder.
Totally.
I mean, you know, there’s been a reset of what we consider acceptable.
You know, it’s the slash and burn politics.
And, you know, the question is, are you willing to go? Are you willing to join them at that low level? And the Democrats have not been willing to do that, you know? And that’s why the Democrats have been losing, you know? I see that happening in technology all the time.
It’s like, you know, the question is, are you willing to stoop to the same level as your competitor? And, I mean, you know, that’s been the story of Microsoft.
And Microsoft grew in the ’80s, you know, by being willing to do things that their competitors weren’t unwilling to do.
They had these, you know, morals or standards or whatever , which were all very quaint.
But in the end, they ended up being on the scrappy of history because they weren’t willing to get down and dirty, you know ? Now, you can see Google going through that transition now, I think, where they’ve decided at some level that it’s now, you know, don’t be evil is no longer, is no longer the guiding principle of Google at all.
It’s, you know, the guiding principle seems to be squeeze every dollar of revenue that you possibly can out of the web.
And, you know, who cares if there is a web five years from now? It basically seems to be Google ’s baddest bit about everything.
I’d love to take your table first.
Here’s what I see happening with Google.
Okay, first you had a small… You can take this.
First you had a small group of guys.
Try to describe the picture because there are folks at home .
Okay, sorry, sorry, sorry.
This is for my benefit.
Okay, so the thing about Google is first there was a small group of guys that had a little project.
They were in it together and they were creating something and they didn’t want to be evil .
But now what’s happened, in my opinion, and it’s hard to see how this could not happen, is that Google is very successful.
So it’s hiring more and more, it’s hired a lot of people, a lot of young, smart, aggressive , ambitious people.
So if you are one smart, aggressive young person at Google, what do you want to do? You want to impress everybody else.
Absolutely.
And so what do you want to do? You want to push the envelope.
You want to figure out a way to make $5 more for Google.
So if you’ve got 500 very smart , aggressive young guys and women pushing the envelope, you know, you’ve got to realize that eventually there’s going to be some problems there.
Oh, I’m sorry.
I’m distracting Betsy because here, Betsy says something about zero.
This is a movie, not a picture.
Oh, okay.
Well, I think that don’t be evil is a very doable model for a group of 3, 4, 10, 20, 50 people.
But don’t be evil is not a doable model.
Once you have 500 employees who are trying to, who are trying to show you what they can do.
It’s just as if you were drug lord with the gang and you have 500 kids on the street.
The way they’re going to impress you from their point of view is by shooting someone, starting a gang war.
Now, this is not in the interest of the organization.
It’s not in the interest of the big world, but it’s in the interest of the individual person who’s pushing the envelope.
So.
I got that.
That’s beautiful.
That’s really, this is a multimedia experience.
All right.
Listen, you know what? Here’s the deal.
At 40 minutes and 39 seconds.
Can you imagine anyone but our mothers would be listening to this? They will.
They will believe me.
And they’ll be going to love you.
Okay.
No, no.
This happened with my father.
I mean, I sat down with my father kind of like this.
I did two with, I did one with my parents on my birthday.
And then before that, I sat down with my father and he told me stories about his life as a consultant in the 60s and 70s or whatever.
And they fell in love with him.
Right.
My listeners, they just.
And I understand why.
And he was absolutely charming.
And yeah.
And yeah, I predict they’re going to like you too.
Anyway, it’s been proven.
And by the way, what’s the URL of your blog? Oh, well, the best way to find my blog is to Google the name Betsy.
The ETSY.
Are you the number one Betsy? No, Betsy Ross is the number one Betsy.
I’m the number.
How unfortunate.
I know.
I’m the number four Betsy.
So I’m aspiring to go higher.
So Betsy Devine.
Betsy Devine.
But what is the URL of your blog? It’s Betsy Devine.
That’s B-E-T-S-Y-D-E-V-I-M-E.
Um, dot weblogger dot com.
Cool.
All right.
So I just wanted to say that 40 minutes has been proven to be the absolutely perfect length for a podcast.
Okay.
And we’re at 41 minutes and 51 seconds.
So, you know, we’re a little bit over.
But of course that’s, you know, the way it goes.
So anyway, this has been morning coffee notes for, what was it, May 30th, 2005? Yeah.
Coming few from Cambridge, Massachusetts.
And we’ll see you all again real soon, everybody.
That is so cool.
Show me how that works.
Oh, we’re still recording.
What is today’s date? May 30th, 2005.
And I’m here with Betsy Devine.
You’re going to be hearing lots of Betsy and this is the second time I’ve ever done a Morning Coffee Notes over breakfast.
The first one I did.
Here, so I’m just going to put down the recorder now, it’s going to be on the table and we ’ll just have breakfast and you just have to kind of be aware that everything you say is going to be for the entire world to hear, right? So like no whining, no bitching , no, oh go ahead actually, okay , you can whine about not being able to whine.
The first one I did actually was with my parents and that was on my birthday, my 50th birthday which was earlier this month.
Yeah, you can just whine about anything.
I know, that’s nice that we can say that.
So we had breakfast at a diner in Queens in New York City and it was very interesting.
My parents, it turns out my mother is an eBay hacker and yeah, no kidding, and my dad has lots of ideas about outlining which is good because I’m getting ready to release another outliner.
Great.
Yeah.
It’s great.
So, how are you doing Betsy? Oh, I’m having a great time, I ’m playing along, I’m enjoying being Mr. Jennifer Lopez these days.
Now that Frank is sort of famous in the world that we move in, it’s really fun.
Why do you say Mr. Jennifer Lopez? Because he’s Jennifer Lopez.
Haha, I think you’re a mister.
And I’m Mr. Jennifer Lopez.
What’s that like, so? It’s pretty interesting.
Yeah.
You get to go, I get to go to a lot of exciting places and see a lot of exciting things that people wouldn’t necessarily invite blogger Betsy to find.
Really? To do, yeah.
Like what, for example? Well, for example, some people in Saudi Arabia gave Frank a physics prize and so we went over there and I had to wear, I had to wear an eBay and a covering on my head and we stayed in a wonderful hotel in a suite and we had, when we got there some very nice young person came up to us and said, “How do you do, I’m your butler, I’m the butler for this suite. " Wow.
And every time we turned around they were bringing us more fresh fruit, more fresh flowers .
Wow.
It was pretty interesting.
Where was this? It was in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
It’s very… So Frank wasn’t famous before.
What happened? He was very famous in the world .
He was very listening to the sn ows.
Oh well.
Oh, sorry, sorry.
So Frank won the Nobel Prize in Physics in December of 2004.
So, yeah, so he was a well- known physicist beforehand.
But now, he’s like Mr. Well- known.
That’s right.
He’s the number one physicist in the world this year, right? That’s exactly right.
He’s physics flavor of the year .
So that’s… Has it gone to his head? Does he still talk to you? No.
He’s a darling.
He hasn’t changed, except that he’s pleased and having fun.
So does he get to vote on who gets to win next year as a result? He doesn’t vote, but he gets to nominate.
I see.
And don’t… And so do people kiss up to him now, but wouldn’t it before? I haven’t noticed that, that I wouldn’t necessarily… Probably do.
Yeah.
That’s pretty much the way that the world works, isn’t it? I guess so.
So is this like… This isn’t a normal conversation for us, is it? No.
Because I have this thing on? Because you asked me what was going on.
I know.
Well, I never… I never asked you what’s going on.
No.
No.
That’s nothing.
Anyway.
But what I wanted to… I wanted to tell you, I thought it would be very good for this podcast, was this really fun song that I just learned.
Oh, cool.
And it’s called “Astra Feticis ,” and it was in the musical Little Women that… Somebody named Kalea in New York decided to publicize a Broadway show by inviting blog gers, women bloggers.
And it was a great idea, because did you ever read Little Women Day when you were a kid? I don’t think so, no.
It’s a book that a lot of boys get used to read, but it’s about four New England sisters who live together, and one of them wants to be a writer and goes off and does it.
Anyway.
And part of… And it’s Louise and May Alcott, right? Right.
And one of the sisters is called Beth, and not to spoil anything, but she dies before the end of the book.
Anyway.
That’s terrible.
But she… She liked… She’s crazy about music, and the sort of gruff old guy next door eventually invites her to use his really good piano, which is an exciting thing.
So in the musical, there’s this plot point advances, because they sing a song together.
He asks her to play for him, and she plays a silly song called “Massachusetts,” and then they collaborate.
They sing together.
Shall we go? Let’s go.
If you say, “Come with me, off to Massachusetts, off to Massachusetts,” we will go.
We will buy dishes there, maybe even two sets, dine in finest China, and then all will have some crepes Suzette’s.
I forget.
In Massachusetts.
That’s right.
Everything rhymes with Massachusetts.
But it’s really very impressive how things rhyme with Massachusetts, and the tune is very catchy, and I’ve been humming it to myself.
Is it right? It’s like one of these tunes that sticks in your head? Yes.
Yes.
We’ll do it again.
All right.
We will build model boats off in Massachusetts, off in Massachusetts by the bay, then we will sit around, wait until the glue sets something, something, something, and then poke on the parapets.
That’s great.
It’s just really funny.
It’s a girl’s song.
It’s a little girl’s song.
Yeah.
Let’s say.
It’s hard to picture a guy singing this.
I’ll get to it.
Don’t worry.
I mean, I did a song.
You brought one with me? I brought the CD so you can hear.
You can hear someone who can really sing it.
Really? I thought you sang it very well .
You had little loops in your voice there.
I mean, I sing like an amateur myself, but I just, Eddie Albert.
I heard you sing.
I heard you sing at Green Acres .
I wanted to sing with you.
I wish you would.
I would be happy to.
Well, it’s very easy to do.
You know all the words.
Well, they have them on the internet.
That still works.
I don’t have that much to sing with that.
Well, why don’t we sing it right now? All right.
All right.
Let’s hear it again.
Okay.
Now tell me.
Do you just sing the whole green? I sing the male part.
You sing the female part.
I sing the male part.
You sing the female part.
And if you don’t, can’t get the female part, then you just sort of like make it.
We’ll try it.
Let’s see what happens.
I mean, I know all the words.
Okay.
I know the male part.
Okay.
Hold up your finger if I’m supposed to join it.
Oh, okay.
And hold your finger down and I ’m not supposed to join it.
And then there is an end.
At the end, there is one line that we sing together, which is I can’t remember it now.
I’ll get to it when I get to it in the song.
I don’t remember the women’s words.
What are the women’s words? Tell me.
So, okay.
So, let me sing the whole song.
You sing the whole song.
Okay.
Green acres is the place to be.
Farm living is the life for me.
Land spreading out so far and wide.
Keep Manhattan just give me that countryside.
And then she goes.
New York is where I want to be.
Rather stay.
Rather stay.
I get allergic.
Get allergic smelling hay.
I just adore.
A penthouse view.
Darling, I love you, but give me Park Avenue.
And then, wait, there’s another lyric and I keep forgetting it.
And then at the end.
Okay.
I’ll hear it.
Okay.
So, we’ll go to the end.
Okay.
Then he goes.
The chores.
The stars.
Fresh air.
Times Square.
Times Square.
You are my wife.
Goodbye, city life.
Green acres.
This is where we do it together .
Green acres.
We are there.
And then the sponsor kicks in.
Something happens with the sponsor.
This is what people do in Cambridge all the time.
Right? Absolutely.
We’re in a weird part of Cambridge right now, right? Yes, this is very out of Cambridge.
This is the extraveny of Cambridge.
This is a new part.
Right? Well, it’s a very typical up scale hotel breakfast place.
Yeah, totally.
It could be in any city.
In fact, probably is.
One of the things I’ve really noticed because I’ve been traveling so much.
And you travel a lot too.
Yeah.
That’s how they’re… When you travel, they’re like little pods that are the same everywhere.
Yeah.
Like airports.
You know, airport lounges.
Well, they’re not all the same.
It was funny.
I was just reading four years ago today.
I think it was.
I went to Copenhagen.
And I got off the plane all jet lagged and flying from California.
Well, Copenhagen Airport is very different from normal airports.
It’s very stylish.
It’s very… It’s got all this great wood in it.
You know, because Danish design , furniture designs particularly , they do very, very, very well.
And so the Copenhagen Airport is not like most airports.
It’s not friendly though.
They say… They also say this is really funny because, you know, who Robert… You know Robert Scobble, right? Yeah.
Have you met him? No, I haven’t.
You would love each other.
I got an angry blog entry about him long ago.
“Call him John Scobble,” which does something kind of… Oh, yeah.
No, you can’t really stay angry at Scobble for very long, right ? So he’s going to Copenhagen.
I’m getting perfect on you.
I didn’t even know you were friends when I wrote this.
I don’t think he’s ever picked on me.
Really? Yeah.
Plenty of other people.
But you know what? I can’t tell you something, okay? There are all these people… There’s a big thaw going on right now.
People see… I shouldn’t say this.
This jinxes everything.
But, you know, people, you know , we used to pick on me a lot, right? And Frank Painter, for example, and Frank and I are like becoming friends now.
That’s really good.
I’m glad.
I’m glad that he was just sort of like doing the thing that Chris Locke was asking him to do.
You know, Chris Locke decided to hate me.
Yeah, I know.
That was so strange.
Well, like, yeah.
I’m so ugly.
Well, there’s a lot of that going on.
There was a lot of that.
And now, the main thing, how people were… There’s like a thaw.
And I’m, you know, I’m not going to like hold any grudges or anything at all, but quite the opposite.
But I want to make sure this never happens to anybody else, you know? That there’s sort of like a high school thing going on in blogger lands, you know? And it’s not, it’s a very ugly thing.
You know, in high school, I was never the guy that people picked on.
Never.
It was the opposite.
I mean, not the opposite.
I didn’t pick on people.
I was like the BMOC, you know? I was like the guy that everybody came to.
I ran the school newspaper.
I ran politics in the student council.
I was like, you know, not the school newspaper, the school underground newspaper.
The hip one.
Oh my.
That’s better.
With all the drugs around it.
You know, not the ones with the guys that were going to MIT.
You know? From my high school, all the good kids went to MIT.
And, you know, not me though.
I went to Lehman College.
But… Well, you’ve done very well.
Yeah, they should have.
They should have accepted me to MIT, but I would have made a lot of trouble.
So Scoble is going to, he’s going to Copenhagen, I think, like next week or this week.
Yeah, this week.
And so he’s talking about, like , there’s this conference they have there every year this time .
And this is like, it’s just beginning to be spring in Copenhagen right now.
Yeah.
It’s a great time to go.
It is.
And they drink so much.
I mean, and the thing was, is that he wants to do like a blog ger con style thing where it’s all discussion based and everything, you know, on conference.
And of course, I went to this conference with this exact same idea.
And they told me, well, you know, it’s a really great idea, Dave, but it’s totally not going to work.
And I said, really, why? And they said, because Denmark is a flat country.
And I said, really, what does that mean? Basically, people are flat here .
They don’t have any spark or any zest for living.
They’re not very, they’re not, they don’t talk.
They just drink.
And I said, can’t be true, you know, because all the people that I meet, you know, people that you meet from, you know, other countries tend to be, I guess, the most, the more exceptional people in the country.
You know, I mean, if they make it to the U. S. or they show up, you know, on an international level, they are, it’s like Americans.
I mean, only 12% of Americans have passports.
Did you know that? Wow.
Yeah.
So, I mean, you know, it’s, that means that there are 88% of the people that, that have never left the country, right? So, you know, when they say in Europe that we really like Americans, actually, they really like the 12% that come to Europe.
They probably really wouldn’t like the other 88% if they actually had to meet them.
I mean, that’s, of course, that ’s not true.
The people in the middle of the country are pretty nice.
That’s not true.
Of course, that’s right.
Absolutely.
That was one of the lessons I have because I live in a red state now, right? And I live in a red part of a red state.
That’s okay.
It’s okay.
Yeah.
So, you know, the fact is people don’t run you down on the road.
And there’s this thing called Southern hospitality and it’s for real.
People are nice to you, you know.
And yet most of these people voted for, you know, somebody who I think is only, you’d have to be like kind of an awful person to vote for.
There’s the contradiction.
And that’s why there’s hope for us.
Because I think that a lot of reason why they vote for people like that is because they feel that way about us.
It’s not that we would run them down, but we don’t have a very high regard for them.
And, you know, it’s true, actually.
It’s true.
I mean, it’s true that in each side there’s a contingent of people who say really hurtful things about the other side.
And of course, there are others who are eager to make sure that people hear these things being said.
And to promote the discord.
I mean, so much of recent politics is just artificially manufactured discord.
Who the hell ever heard of gay marriage five years ago? I mean, who the hell ever heard of teaching intelligent design in the public schools? I just learned what intelligent design is.
And it’s not like what you think it would be, right? That’s anti-evolution is intelligent design, right? That’s right.
It’s not like how to make a better couch.
No, that would be intelligent.
See, I don’t, you know, my thing is I don’t get the contradiction between God and evolution.
I don’t think there is a contradiction.
Neither do 90% of the people that are, well, neither do more than 50% of people that are very religious.
Exactly.
It’s a manufactured controversy .
It’s completely a manufactured controversy.
That’s where the hope comes from. It’s like the cross-poll ination.
I have to admit, for some reason I lost your subscription to your blog, so I haven’t been keeping up on your life.
Well.
No, my aggregator did it. It had in mind of its own.
I mean, you know, but I went to Nashville.
Did you follow that whole thing ? Well, I’ve been subscribing to your blog.
I haven’t, you know, when I read your blog, I don’t always necessarily follow where you’re doing it.
Where exactly you are. I’m much more interested in what you’re thinking and what you’re going at.
Well, that in a sense is where I am.
Yeah, exactly. That’s the part of where you are.
I mean, if you’re coming to Boston, that’s really interesting because I’ll see if I were to plan to go to New York and I said you were going to be in New York City.
Oh, wow. Maybe I’ll see you there.
You’re here in Nashville or Florida and I’m not going there .
Well, Nashville is a huge… It’s not a difference between Nashville and Florida.
Nashville was a riot, a blog riot after… That’s right. That was the sort of red state.
That’s right. I remember now.
There’s all this fuss with you and Glenn Reynolds.
Yeah, and the irony of it was, or the weird part about it was, is that the actual event itself was reasonably… It was no more disruptive, I think, than it would have been had you had a political conservative moderating a discussion in San Francisco.
Right? Although, I don’t know.
See, I’m a lefty, so it’s really hard for me to imagine a left-wing person behaving that badly, you know what I mean? Although my parents, for example, my mother will say some really horrible things about Southern people, about conservatives and Republicans.
And I always say to her, you know, maybe if we were a little bit more understanding and maybe we would solve these problems, maybe… And so, conclusion, anyway, a long story, conclusion I came to is we need like a buddy system. We need to have pen pals.
We need to go find people who are our political opposites.
Have you talked to Tony Kahn? Tony Kahn has this thing.
Is that right? An idea very similar to that.
Really? He’s talking about… Yeah, you guys should talk to each other.
Yeah, more, I know. I absolutely agree.
But you see, of course, Tony K ahn and I would be the very likely people to talk.
Our politics are virtually ind istinguishable, right? No, I mean, maybe you and Tony could collaborate on setting something.
You know, it would be kind of fun to progress setting something like this up and block it.
That’s why… Absolutely.
Another contact I made was with Hodor. You know who Hodor is? Hosei, yes, I did.
Yeah, and that was very… We really hit it off.
And we had… So the question was, how do we create more connections between East and West? And really East and West, not like California and New York, but, you know, Iran and the United States or whatever, right? We had a whole session about this. Rebecca McKinnon led the discussion.
And the idea came out that what we need to do… It’s not enough.
I can’t read an Iranian blog and get a sense at all of what it’s like in Iran.
However, I think that if I read … Like, if you went to Iran and brought a camera with you, right? I’m going to Iran.
Oh, well, in that case, great.
I’ll bring a camera.
Let’s try the experiment, okay? The idea is that somebody who I ’m familiar with who has similar values to mine, okay? Who I think that I know, right, goes to a foreign country and then her eyes act as filters for me of what happened.
Then I can make sense of that.
And the word that we came up with was context.
Is that without context, it’s … The context… Without context, the contacts are meaningless.
I can’t understand what it means… So you’re going to Iran.
Yeah, Mr. Jennifer Lopez has been invited to Iran.
And how so? So there’s a university there.
Well, a very nice Iranian person here.
He sent me emails and I’d like … Can we meet? You know, he’d been to a talk that Frank gave.
Frank and I were signing our book, so… You and Frank have written a book together? Yeah.
What’s the book called? Money for the Harmony.
Oh, shit. What’s it about? It’s just been reissued by W. W . Norton.
Oh, awesome.
Yeah, it’s really a good book if I do say so myself.
Who comes first? Frank and Bets y? Well, it’s really… Yes, it’s him.
We did alternate drafts, but he wrote the first draft, so that ’s definitely… Okay, so it’s a Frank and Betsy .
It’s a Frank.
It’s a Mr. Jennifer Lopez.
Mrs. Jennifer… No, sorry.
It’s JLo and Mr. JLo.
That’s exactly right.
Which is good, because since it ’s about sort of… lights of fancy about modern physics and the universe, and how people can make sense of it, I think his thoughts and the direction are much more exciting than mine.
I know you much better than I know him, though, so I’m more interested in him.
It was really funny. It was funny you wrote it here.
Anyway, the point is, this is kind of funny.
This is a funny blog story, so I got email from a guy saying, “I’d like to meet with you and talk with you for 15 minutes. " I gave him my card, my beautiful business card with my blog name.
What does it say on it? “Making trouble today for a better tomorrow. " Exactly.
My matter.
You know what? I’m going to get a new card that mine says, “Dave Winer, Bad Influence. " Oh, good.
Exactly.
Do you like that? Yes, I like that. I think that ’s a great idea.
So anyway… Hey, actually, can you hold it? I wanted to get some more food, and we don’t have to put this on pause or anything.
Just let it sit there.
Just let it sit there while you get the food.
They’ll take care of themselves .
Or you can keep talking if you want, but I’ll be right back, okay? All right.
Do you mind? No, I don’t mind.
I’m trying to think if I want anything else.
Okay.
Well, while you think about that, I’ll get some more.
Well, I’m going to sit here and podcast while Dave is gone.
So we’re meeting in a hotel.
This is Betsy DeVine.
So we’re meeting in a hotel breakfast room.
And I have sat in a million of these hotel breakfast rooms, and this is quite a nice one.
But it’s just, to me, really funny how life contains certain recurring kinds of things.
When you’re really young, everything is new.
Every day, everything is different, and everything is a whole new challenge.
That’s still true a lot, but sometimes when you get to my age, which is 58, there is a whole lot of things that become solved problems.
Or as a mathematician would say , it reduces to a problem previously solved.
And actually, I think that’s probably very good for your blood pressure.
So Dave, I was just telling the podcaster that it’s not so much that all airports are the same.
It’s that when you get to my age, which is 58, there are certain things that as a mathematician would say, it reduces to a problem previously solved.
Exactly.
They are approachable that way.
Yeah, that’s right.
I need to get some more locks though.
Go get more locks.
Anyway, I suppose that’s rather a nerdy way to think about it.
But hotel breakfast rooms are another thing that reduces to a problem previously solved.
Of course, it’s different breakfasts everywhere you go.
I remember how grossed out I was for the first time.
Dave, do you remember, were you grossed out the first time you saw an English breakfast? Oh yeah.
Oh my gosh.
God, is it awful.
You know, tomatoes, cooked tomatoes.
I mean, you know this breakfast , cooked tomatoes, really gross looking, fried, baloney.
And then some beans, some sort of very, very pale baked bean kind of beans in a ketchup sauce.
I mean, I’m looking at this and I’m like, how do you eat that shit? How do you eat that? Yes, exactly.
I had a really interesting observation in Denmark a few years ago.
I just read this in my blog and I was having Danish breakfast and you know, it’s herring and cheese and all kinds of cold cuts and stuff like that.
And I remember as a kid, my father used to eat that kind of stuff for breakfast.
And I used to think, dad, why don’t you eat Cheerios or pancake or egg or, you know, like real breakfast food or something.
I always used to think my father was weird.
But it turns out, he wasn’t that he was so much that he was weird.
It was that he was a European.
And that’s much better than English breakfast.
It’s actually very good.
It is.
And salad.
And salmon too, yeah.
There’s salad.
Danish food is actually quite good.
So is your father really European? Yeah.
Didn’t you grow up in Europe? Yeah.
Where? Romania.
Bucharest.
You’re kidding.
No.
My mother grew up in Prague.
That’s right.
I remember you’re related to that beautiful naked movie actress.
Hedy Lamar.
Hedy Lamar, let’s say.
There’s a second career for you .
Being Hedy Lamar is a distant relative.
Well, think about it.
This might be kind of fun.
I mean, here’s an interesting life project for someone.
Do you remember there’s a book by Gabriel Garcia, a story by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, about a guy who wants to write, and what he wants to write is Don Quixote.
So he sits down to write.
You know, he wants to essentially write a book that’s already been written.
So that would be kind of a fun thing to do.
That’s kind of a fun project for very To be Hedy Lamar? I can’t.
I’m a little engender.
I’m like, she was beautiful.
She really was beautiful.
There are some beautiful genes in there.
My mother is beautiful.
She’s a little older now.
You should see pictures of her when she was a young woman.
And the funny thing about it, she tells the story, is that she didn’t know that she was beautiful.
So many people don’t get that.
It’s sort of like the fish doesn’t understand that the water is wet.
Or that there even is such a thing as water.
This is one of my favorite stories.
You just don’t know that the world’s been treating you that way your whole life.
What she did learn, though, was as she started to age, the world stopped treating her like the young babes.
And then she started to resent that.
Because she was used to having the world organize itself around her.
Because that just doesn’t happen for men.
I mean, women, it doesn’t.
I mean, women don’t treat beautiful men with the same kind of deference.
I don’t think that beautiful women get from men.
Or the kind of hatred they get from women.
I mean, that’s another thing that you see.
Women really seem to despise the very beautiful woman.
I don’t know.
I don’t know that many very beautiful women.
I don’t know that many very beautiful women.
I dated one once that she was just like an object of desire for so many people.
For so many men.
And then the irony of it was that I’d be going to a party as her date.
And all the men would just swarm her.
And I would be kicking back and watching it in an amused fashion.
It’s not something you feel bad about.
Because all that energy is going into, that’s your experience.
That’s right, exactly.
But then the thing that was un foreseeable by me was how all the women would come up to me and badmouth her to me.
Oh dear.
Yeah, they would just sing the most awful things about her.
Oh dear.
Well, it could have had something to do with her rather than how beautiful she was.
I mean, it could have been that she was not a very nice person.
I mean, it could have been they liked you and wanted to warn you.
Oh, it could be.
You know, one really beautiful girl, I don’t know, lots of very nice looking women.
My little sister was very beautiful.
And actually that was hard for me when I was a little kid.
Really? Yeah, because I was a skinny little kid.
And she was beautiful.
And fortunately she and I have gotten to be good friends over the years.
But that’s not a necessary ending to it.
I can’t imagine somebody not being good friends with you.
Oh, well, you’re nice.
Thank you.
You’re that kind of person.
We all have different things.
I mean, yeah.
Even people who didn’t like me.
Really? Yeah.
Wow.
Of course, I would notice.
I would notice.
I don’t know anybody who doesn ’t like you.
Wow.
Thank you.
I think we should.
I think we’ll end our podcast right here.
And the podcast on a very high note.
Oh, I just thought of something .
Oh, never mind.
Well.
We all find these the most valuable.
And once you get past the point where, I mean, we’re aware that there’s a thing here recording it, but we have a report that we’ve developed over some period of time.
Yeah.
And that begins to come out a little bit.
And that that’s more valuable than a story that anybody has to tell, I think.
Yeah.
It was sort of like the interesting thing is, well, what’s the, what’s the relationship these two people have? Yeah.
Well, you and I have an interesting relationship.
I’m not exactly sure how I would define it, but interesting is a word I would use.
Interesting.
That’s a good word.
Yeah.
It’s a good word.
There was a girl I knew in high school who was probably the most, the prettiest girl I’ve ever known.
And her name was Kitty Fisk.
And she was, I’m old enough that it was right at the cusp.
When we were in high school together, Kitty Fisk used to put her hair in those horrible rollers.
And you might be too young for it.
No, I know.
You put this horrible brushy thing in your hair and make your hair all puffed up.
Well, it just so happened that Kitty Fisk, and everyone liked her.
She was really a lovely girl.
Of course, it was a girl’s school, so it wasn’t a competition for the alpha males like yourself, Dave.
There you go.
So perhaps if she had been.
Anyway, so she went to Benning ton, as I did.
And I remember I was there when Kitty Fisk made the phase change between the rollers and the long straight, the long straight beatnik hair.
Yeah.
And, and this was one of the times, one of the early times in my life when my thinking shocked myself because I thought to myself, but she looked a lot better.
Do you remember when you saw your first afro? I remember.
I didn’t understand it.
Really? I don’t remember that.
It wasn’t a bit.
I do.
You saw it and you said, how did they do that? I just didn’t understand at all .
Yeah.
How did they do that? Or it just didn’t make any sense.
It looked like a microphone top .
I was like, oh, wow, that’s weird.
I didn’t get the hair to do that.
Of course, I didn’t realize that, of course, that is the way their hair is, right? I mean, that sounds stupid to say that, but, you know, at the time, basically men kept their hair, black men kept their hair so short that it never sort of frizzed out like that.
And women ran, you know, through the straighteners, you know, like Condoleezza Rice does.
She still does.
Yes.
Do you think they’re promoting her for, there was, there’s been some stuff in the Washington Times, which I read online.
It really looks as though a presidential run for Condoleez za Rice is being promoted.
Yeah.
I know.
Hillary Clinton.
I know she’d be a lot better than a lot of people.
I mean, she’d be a lot better than a lot of the Republicans.
I’d rather have her than Bush’s brother.
Oh, I don’t know about that.
Let’s hope we’re going to win the next one.
It’s going to be really tough because they, well, you see, I don’t see it that way.
You see, I’m not a Democrat particularly, you know, and I read an article somewhere, something I sort of like figured out that McCain is, is doing a really good job positioning himself for the next run, right ? Although you got to figure they ’re going to slime him.
Carl Rowe is not going to work for John McCain.
I don’t think, I don’t think John McCain would have Carl R owe after what happened.
I would hope not.
So somebody is going to run against McCain and that somebody is going to have Carl Rowe on his or her side, probably on Lisa Reiser, somebody like that .
And McCain is being very smart.
I’m with this whole filibuster thing.
He’s really not that moderate a Republican, but he positioned himself totally as one.
In other words, he, he picked up a lot of moderation points there by being one of the peacemakers in the Senate.
Well, I think McCain, I mean, I don’t like McCain’s politics at all.
He’s very far right and I’m very far left.
That’s right.
But, well, I’m not very far left, but I’m, I’m a tax and spend liberal from way back.
Anyway.
I’m a gun to liberal.
In other words, I don’t see the eye ground on being aggressive anyway.
Yeah, so you were saying about McCain.
But I think the guy’s sincere and that doesn’t necessarily mean I want a sincere guy for president whose values are totally opposite from my own.
But I think, you know, I mean, I think it’s interesting with McCain that he’s, he’s taking different sides of a lot of issues.
For example, he was one of the few people to stand up against Bush and say that he shouldn’t, he shouldn’t pick on Kerry’s war record that way.
And that was a decent thing to do.
Yeah.
And, and I have to say, I don’t know if to be impressed or disg usted that McCain went to work for Bush after the way Carlos slimed him.
Because he wants to be president.
That’s why he did it.
That’s exactly why he did it.
It’s the only reason they’ve, the only thing that explains it is that he had to be seen as a, as a team player on the Republican Party if he wants the nomination at some point.
But if, if, if that were his motivation, Dave, that wouldn’t at all chime with his standing up to Bush about, you know, think about it.
He really, first of all, he really puts himself out inconveniences himself and does a lot of work for Bush and the campaign.
So, but instead of being able to cash in on that as I am a team player, he then goes and does something which potentially is very hurtful to Bush, which knowing how Bush is said to be very resentful guy.
But he wasn’t doing it for Bush .
See, he wasn’t campaigning for Bush to get Bush’s support.
He was campaigning for Bush to stay to the Republican Party is that my differences aren’t so big with Bush that I’m not willing to rally behind the Republican candidate for president.
Yeah.
So, I mean, yeah, look, first of all, there’s no question that everything really, really made, really impressed me.
Of course, it was designed to impress me.
And number one, number two is, yeah, I mean, and yeah, because you may not vote for McCain, but he’s trying to get Democratic votes.
Right.
So, when you say that he impressed you, what you’re saying is that he succeeded at appealing to Democrats at a time when it cost him absolutely nothing to do it.
I mean, obviously Bush would be , he didn’t cost him anything to do that.
You really don’t think it hurt him with the very Republicans he was trying to suck up to? Because that’s why he went and campaigned for Bush, because to prove to them, you know, to say, look, I had a difference of opinion on Bush on a material issue, and I’m my own man, and so I said what I thought, but when it came time to, when it came time to question whether or not it should be Republican or Democrat in the White House, I’m a Republican, so I went and worked for the Republican.
Yeah.
I think that they would never nominate somebody who had worked against the Republican or had been neutral about it, nor should the Democrats ever do that.
Yeah.
Because, you know, that’s what it means to be a political party is that, you know, unless it’s like Nixon in 1970, whatever, ‘74, at which point, you know, you don’t support the party anymore.
I mean, you don’t support the leader of the party anymore because it’s like ridiculous.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Everybody has to have a limit, but it’s good.
The first was ended up, you know, I mean, this is, of course, the battle for the Supreme Court.
Yeah.
And they’re going to win that one.
The Republicans are going to win it.
Rehnquist is going, is a very sick guy, and he’s going to withdraw, and at some point, pretty soon, and the Republicans are going to be in position to get Scalia as the next Supreme Court, you know, to each other.
Well, let’s see.
You know, I think it’s kind of, I was reading on the internet, so of course, I must be true, that economists tend to be less happy in their relationships than other people, allegedly the reason being that they analyze them economically, you know.
Well, what, is this to my advantage? You know, what are my interests here? What are her interests? And that’s the thing.
And I think it’s true, analyzing things like that would put a strain.
But I think my point is that one of the problems I think with our political system and with a lot of business, too, is that there’s a sophisticated level of economic analysis that goes on that actually is kind of hurtful in the long run.
For example, trying to, if you look at the past election, and you say, well, the only issue here is if I’m going to get more votes than the other guy.
And if that’s your issue, then it really makes sense to be dirty if you have to, to be deceitful, you know, to do all kinds of garbage-y tricks.
And my impression is, of course my impression is that the Republicans do this more than the Democrats.
They do.
But my impression is the Democrats do it, too.
Yeah, they do.
But Carl Rose resets the bar.
Yeah.
Resets the bar lower.
Way lower.
I have to live my wonder.
Totally.
I mean, you know, there’s been a reset of what we consider acceptable.
You know, it’s the slash and burn politics.
And, you know, the question is, are you willing to go? Are you willing to join them at that low level? And the Democrats have not been willing to do that, you know? And that’s why the Democrats have been losing, you know? I see that happening in technology all the time.
It’s like, you know, the question is, are you willing to stoop to the same level as your competitor? And, I mean, you know, that’s been the story of Microsoft.
And Microsoft grew in the ’80s, you know, by being willing to do things that their competitors weren’t unwilling to do.
They had these, you know, morals or standards or whatever , which were all very quaint.
But in the end, they ended up being on the scrappy of history because they weren’t willing to get down and dirty, you know ? Now, you can see Google going through that transition now, I think, where they’ve decided at some level that it’s now, you know, don’t be evil is no longer, is no longer the guiding principle of Google at all.
It’s, you know, the guiding principle seems to be squeeze every dollar of revenue that you possibly can out of the web.
And, you know, who cares if there is a web five years from now? It basically seems to be Google ’s baddest bit about everything.
I’d love to take your table first.
Here’s what I see happening with Google.
Okay, first you had a small… You can take this.
First you had a small group of guys.
Try to describe the picture because there are folks at home .
Okay, sorry, sorry, sorry.
This is for my benefit.
Okay, so the thing about Google is first there was a small group of guys that had a little project.
They were in it together and they were creating something and they didn’t want to be evil .
But now what’s happened, in my opinion, and it’s hard to see how this could not happen, is that Google is very successful.
So it’s hiring more and more, it’s hired a lot of people, a lot of young, smart, aggressive , ambitious people.
So if you are one smart, aggressive young person at Google, what do you want to do? You want to impress everybody else.
Absolutely.
And so what do you want to do? You want to push the envelope.
You want to figure out a way to make $5 more for Google.
So if you’ve got 500 very smart , aggressive young guys and women pushing the envelope, you know, you’ve got to realize that eventually there’s going to be some problems there.
Oh, I’m sorry.
I’m distracting Betsy because here, Betsy says something about zero.
This is a movie, not a picture.
Oh, okay.
Well, I think that don’t be evil is a very doable model for a group of 3, 4, 10, 20, 50 people.
But don’t be evil is not a doable model.
Once you have 500 employees who are trying to, who are trying to show you what they can do.
It’s just as if you were drug lord with the gang and you have 500 kids on the street.
The way they’re going to impress you from their point of view is by shooting someone, starting a gang war.
Now, this is not in the interest of the organization.
It’s not in the interest of the big world, but it’s in the interest of the individual person who’s pushing the envelope.
So.
I got that.
That’s beautiful.
That’s really, this is a multimedia experience.
All right.
Listen, you know what? Here’s the deal.
At 40 minutes and 39 seconds.
Can you imagine anyone but our mothers would be listening to this? They will.
They will believe me.
And they’ll be going to love you.
Okay.
No, no.
This happened with my father.
I mean, I sat down with my father kind of like this.
I did two with, I did one with my parents on my birthday.
And then before that, I sat down with my father and he told me stories about his life as a consultant in the 60s and 70s or whatever.
And they fell in love with him.
Right.
My listeners, they just.
And I understand why.
And he was absolutely charming.
And yeah.
And yeah, I predict they’re going to like you too.
Anyway, it’s been proven.
And by the way, what’s the URL of your blog? Oh, well, the best way to find my blog is to Google the name Betsy.
The ETSY.
Are you the number one Betsy? No, Betsy Ross is the number one Betsy.
I’m the number.
How unfortunate.
I know.
I’m the number four Betsy.
So I’m aspiring to go higher.
So Betsy Devine.
Betsy Devine.
But what is the URL of your blog? It’s Betsy Devine.
That’s B-E-T-S-Y-D-E-V-I-M-E.
Um, dot weblogger dot com.
Cool.
All right.
So I just wanted to say that 40 minutes has been proven to be the absolutely perfect length for a podcast.
Okay.
And we’re at 41 minutes and 51 seconds.
So, you know, we’re a little bit over.
But of course that’s, you know, the way it goes.
So anyway, this has been morning coffee notes for, what was it, May 30th, 2005? Yeah.
Coming few from Cambridge, Massachusetts.
And we’ll see you all again real soon, everybody.
That is so cool.
Show me how that works.
Oh, we’re still recording.