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

Inside Frank’s office, the interview filming has started.

I’m not sure if I’m happy or sad that the giant, big-gestured Penn and the fast-fingered Teller aren’t here in person to ask Frank their emailed questions. (They’re in Las Vegas somewhere, appearing nightly in “an edgy mix of comedy and magic involving knives, guns, fire, a gorilla and a showgirl.” The MIT physics group could absorb all those elements with easy savoir faire–except for the fire, which would set off our overhead sprinklers.

Meanwhile, I noticed on the Penn and Teller Showtime webpage for “Talking to the Dead” that the “experts” are shown all together with links to their homepages. That is, the “Your mother is speaking with my voice” medium (Penn called her, if I remember this right, a “pigdog”) is on just the same basis as the respectfully photographed debunking psychologist…

Meanwhile, I am so tempted to stand outside Frank’s closed door and make a very soft and ghostly “Whoooooooooo”….

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Here, on the monitor, you see Gilles Morin. Gilles is the sound expert on this particular shoot, but after getting his microphones set up he has been doing other helpful things like (here) sitting in the interview hotseat to be “lighted”…

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Here are Scott Firestone (the director, from Firestone Productions) and Frank Wilczek surfing the web to track down nefarious claims being made about ghosts and physics…

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Here is the Penn-Teller cameraman Aaron Frutman of DGA Productions doing something very high-tech, though I’m not sure what….

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We just arrived at Frank’s office–there before us were MIT’s physics demo guru Markos Hankin and Penn and Teller’s director Scott Firestone. I’m hoping this is the same Scott Firestone who directed The Panda Adventure in IMAX, but I can’t ask him because he went downstairs to buy some bottled water.

I also can’t show you what he looks like yet, because he pointed out it would look more interesting once the cameras arrive. And he is the director….

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Years ago, when our now-grown-up daughters were smaller, Frank and I moved into Einstein’s house, where we would live for the next 8 or so years, surrounded by Einstein’s furniture.

Of course, we two planned to sleep in Einstein’s bedroom, a tiny room that was dwarfed by Einstein’s study right next to it. Einstein’s big Biedermeier bed was not really big enough to hold two people, we later decided, but on our first night there we didn’t know that yet.

Now, I don’t believe in ghosts, not even in Einstein’s. But it was very strange, in the middle of that first night, to wake up and hear the sound of slow, heavy breathing that was not Frank’s breathing or my breathing or the breathing of one of our daughters.

Whish–pause–whoosh. Whish–pause–whoosh.

It’s one thing not to believe in ghosts, and it’s another thing not to be spooked by strange midnight noises!

One of the good (and bad) things about a small bed is that if you are awake in the middle of the night, you don’t have to do something active to wake up your partner. Your partner will automatically wake up anyway. Here’s how it played out, at least in my recollections:

Mysterious noise: Whish–pause–whoosh. Whish–pause–whoosh.
Frank: (Sleepily) Betsy, is something wrong?
Mysterious noise: Whish–pause–whoosh. Whish–pause–whoosh.
Betsy: (very tiny voice) What is that noise?
Mysterious noise: Whish–pause–whoosh. Whish–pause–whoosh.
Frank: It’s the steam radiator.
Radiator noise: Whish–pause–whoosh. Whish–pause–whoosh.
Betsy: Oh.

So Penn and Teller may not realize it, but when they got Frank, they got a real ghostbuster!

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I’m racing around getting ready to drive to MIT where I hope to live-blog Frank’s latest adventure–he’s appearing on Penn and Teller as one of their experts to talk about ghosts!

Penn and Teller, if you don’t know, started out as magicians with hugely successful and very funny stage show. They now have a TV show on Showtime called, er, “Tishllub.” (I’m assuming the censors of Google can’t spell that backward, but I’m sure you can.) Each episode pokes fun at some popular fakery–like UFO abductions or talking to the dead–showing the audience how its “results” can be fudged.

It’s a pretty amusing show, spiked with pretty surprising language. As Teller (I think it was Teller) explained, “We could get sued if we call somebody a liar, but our lawyers say calling them &#@@!! or **&^%$??!! is fine.” (Do their lawyers know about Michael Powell?)

Anyway, Frank won’t have to swear–at least, none of the experts on other shows did–and he has some pretty cool physics demos set up. This particular show will be about ghosts, a topic on which I do have more to say, but in another blogpost.

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By the way, many thanks to ”
The Tatler” for liking Frank’s talk last night and saying my blog is “interesting”! (Also, thanks to Technorati for letting me notice this blogpost.)

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Oh joy, oh Rapture–there’s a growing belief that the end of the world is at hand. This outlook can be dangerous to our planet, warns Bill Moyers–because if you are looking forward to the Rapture, then here are some of the signs of the end that are good things: famine, drought, plagues, global climate change,….

What happens next, wonders Moyers, if “environmental destruction is not
only to be disregarded but actually welcomed – even hastened – as a
sign of the coming apocalypse.”
If you think Moyers’s concern is overblown, consider the case of the
apocalyptic red heifer.

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Born-again Christians teamed up with fundamentalist Jews to breed a flawless red heifer. But this story is not meant to have a happy ending–except for the fanatics trying to set it in motion. The Jewish group wants to sacrifice the animal as a first step toward rebuilding Jerusalem’s Temple. The second step, unfortunately, would be to destroy two of Islam’s most sacred shrines in Jerusalem, provoking all Israel’s neighbors to attack it. The Jewish group is convinced their G-d will give them a swift victory. The Christian group hopes for a different scenario–after a fierce Arab-Israeli war, all the Jews become Christians or else get incinerated. Then the messiah arrives and the Rapture begins. As Moyers describes it, “True believers will be lifted out of their clothes and transported to heaven, where, seated next to the right hand of God, they will watch their political and religious opponents suffer plagues of boils, sores, locusts, and frogs during the several years of tribulation that follow.” The perfect heifer will be ready to sacrifice in April, 2005, at a time when Israeli fundamentalists are already said to be plotting to strike at Islamic shrines. At least one Israeli has called this little red cow “a four-legged bomb.” If this bomb goes off in Israel next month, American apocalypticists will have helped to light the fuse.

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Frank: “I am the Count. I haff com to suck your blood.”
Betsy: “My blood? Eeek–I will now try to escape disguised as a kicking Russian dancer.”

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It was wonderful spending time with Frank’s family, including some people I hadn’t seen for 10 years. It was wonderful just barely making it on board the ferry at Port Jefferson, and being one of the very first cars offloaded as a reward. It was wonderful getting dinnner and three free books each at our favorite old Traveler Restaurant in Union, CT. It’s wonderful being back home again. It will be wonderful getting some much needed sleeeeeep.

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Growing up in NH, I always wanted to travel. OK, maybe I never
specifically longed to go driving to Bridgeport, CT, hop on a ferry to
Port Jefferson, NY, and end up at a wedding in Ronkonkoma–but I’m
looking forward to it now, as today’s destination.

After a two-month break from Nobel traveling, Frank and I are headed
back out the door for the next few months. Among the places I’ve been
organizing our plans for:

• Washington, DC
• Tampa, FL,
• Philadelphia, PA
• Princeton, NJ
• Delft
• Riyadh
• Barcelona
• Madrid
• Oxford

And that’s just from now through mid-May. So I’m hoping your payback
for my recent sparse blogging will be lots of exciting stories from the
road.