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

Great Tew churchyard

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

… though it has been slightly buried by packing, then travel, then jet lag, and now the unpacking.

It has been wonderful spending a springtime in England.

Roses, campanula, hardy geraniums, and the peaceful, sleepy cooing of pale-gray doves.

Wide meadows with elderflower and hawthorn tree borders, whose stiles Miss Elizabeth Bennet might have slipped through on her long walk through the fields to Mr. Bingley’s house.

Small village shops where Alice in Wonderland might have bought apples or candy.

And in London, I swear that I once saw Bertie Wooster coming out of a tailor’s shop, proud of but unnerved by his coat’s rather daring new color.

But now my own real life is starting up again, which is a good thing.

Tolkien’s table, Merton College

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

Is this the table where JRR Tolkien wrote Lord of the Rings? Is it the setting he had in mind for Elrond’s conference where 4 hobbits, 2 men, and one each of wizard/elf/dwarf pledge their faith to a fellowship of the One Ring?

It may well be both of these, for it is a fine old stone table in the gardens of Merton College, one where (it is said) Tolkien would often sit outdoors writing on fine days like yesterday in the years after 1945, when he became Oxford’s Merton Professor of English language and literature.

Merton (founded in 1260 by Walter de Merton) has many lovely medieval spaces set among peaceful lawns and well-tended gardens. I would not be surprised in Tolkien’s vision of Lothlorien’s elegant retreat from a dangerous world owes something to his own experiences of life in this setting.

Lilac and wisteria

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

OK (if you’re not English) can you guess which one of these is not the name of a city or town within a short drive from Oxford?

While you are thinking, here are some village names that we saw on road signs while driving past acres of springtime from Oxford to Cambridge:

• Chorleywood
• South Mimms
• Wormleybury
• Cherry Hinton

Ready with an answer on Slough, Staines, or Maidenhead? All three are real English placenames.

A pound of sugar and a pint of beer

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine,
photo by Amity Wilczek.

That was the daily diet of the wasp colony that built this huge paper nest in 1857.

Before you envy this self-indulgent diet, bear in mind that the wasps got their sugar dissolved in their beer.

This magnificently well-fed colony soon drew the attention of nearby wasps, who abandoned their own nests and moved in to help build the ever-growing mansion. They were welcomed “without the least show of opposition,” says the exhibit label.

So if you plan to write up the history of open-source software or BarCamp, please give appropriate credit to these pioneers.

(For more information, see a closeup of the label.) It’s now on display in Oxford’s Museum of Natural History.

Galaxy Zoo is the project of some Oxford astrophysicists trying to classify millions of never-before-seen-by-human-eyes stellar objects that big computers have photographed.* It turns out that human beings are much better at doing these classifications than computers are. It also turns out that people all over the world enjoy doing this via the internet. (Insert words like “Web 2.0” and “social networking.”)

Now learned Oxonians are trying to make it official that the name of one recently discovered object (maybe the first-ever echo from a long-dead quasar) should be “Hanny’s Voorwerp.” Why? Because this object was first seen and asked about by a young Dutch schoolteacher named Hanny, one of Galaxy Zoo’s many enthusiastic amateurs. “Voorwerp” means “object” in Dutch. After Hanny flagged this unusual blob, Oxford astrophysicists used their connections to get other astronomers around the world to start taking closer looks at this bit of the sky.

That’s just one of many surprises from the Galaxy Zoo collaboration, including an odd discovery in neurology aptly summed up as “People are screwed up, not the universe.”

Hanny will be visiting Oxford this weekend, and I’m guessing the Oxford guys show her a very good time.

* Everything in the universe is “Miscellaneous”–until somebody steps in to tag it with real information.

Geeks can haz artistic photo effects

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

… especially when geeks take photos in low light and then enhance the heck out of their dark materials.

Oxford Geek Night last night was an interesting blend of Meetup with short but excellent unconference.

The Wikipedia “unconference” article seems to have been hijacked by proponents of exactly one specific brand of (un)conference.* But I think Kaliya Hamlin captures their essence and history quite a bit better:

The name “unconference” arose to describe conferences that step outside of the more traditional model — that is, presentations selected months beforehand, sponsors buying speaking slots, boring panels of talking heads, and high fees.

Gobion Rowlands talked about his company’s science-based Flash game “Climate Challenge” — I would have liked to hear more about the Flash and less about the company, but when keynotes are chopped down to only 15 minutes something has to go. (That’s because I’m working on a Flash game right now–I bet lots of the people there are thinking of their own startups and thought Gobion’s talk was absolutely perfect.)

Jon Hicks packed his 15 minutes with really useful “steal this idea” ideas about building a website “From Design to Deployment.” He also, bless him, posted the slides (pdf).

The five–minute talks, with countdoown clock, are also cool.

Only bad thing is that there are, by far, not enough chairs. I was surprised when I got there (early) to see that very few geeks had brought their own computers. By the time the talks started, with at least half us geeks standing up for all two plus hours, I understood why the laptops had been left at home.

* Update — since I didn’t like what Wikipedia said on “unconferences,” I dredged up some references (they supported my POV) and amended the article. But who knows what you’ll see now if you click this link?

Morris dancing broke out in early April

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

… and in other Oxford local news, readers of my blog can relax, because those stray pigs who wantoned through the allotments of Wantage did find a good home, with the help of “four RSPCA inspectors and three members of Oxfordshire County Council’s trading standards team” who “rounded up the porkers after enticing them into a trailer with several loaves of bread.”

I love local news, though the price of having lived now in so many places is that quite a lot of news is “local” to some past home. Just a few more to share:

• A savvy drug inspector in northern Sweden: “I check their underpants to ensure there is only one penis”
• A recent survey in the Netherlands: “In 29% of homes only one person is able to operate the latest electronic gadgets.”
• A remarkably pithy headline, also from the Netherlands: “Dog mess is major irritation.”

Tip O’Neill says that all politics is local. Not all news is local, but lots of the best of it is.

Convenient money changing

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

… for the inconvenience, on a recent Sunday, to customers who expect to swap pounds for Euros with no waiting, no fuss, and no commission!

If you have ever stood in line at a cashier’s window to change local money into some currency for an upcoming trip, if you have ever reached the head of the line only to shake your head at the exorbitant fees they were planning to charge you, look longingly at this machine in a Marks and Spencer, parked in between the bakery and dish soap!

I’m sure the store loses no money on this machine, which attracts people who will probably spend more money and time buying even more stuff in their store.

"Bespoke" sheep in pasture

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

Pictured: the sheep on a local gentleman’s farm with wide view of the Isis. I nicknamed this flock the “bespoke” sheep because they are clearly not some farmer’s normal collection of uniform “off the peg” sheep for commercial purposes.

In other rural news from the Oxford area, everyone’s favorite Oxford Times newpaper says that a wandering sow has made a pig of herself in the gardens of Wantage. “Stray pig eats two tonnes of root vegetables from town allotment” was the hard-copy headline. From the story:

The stray sow, pictured, is believed to be living in an empty barn in a field close to the West Site of King Alfred’s Community and Sports College. She has eaten all the parsnips, carrots and cabbages growing in the 41 allotments….Sharon Chrisp, an RSPCA inspector, said: “The allotment holders are understandably upset about the damage to their crops to the extent that some people have suggested the pigs should be shot, which we are desperate to avoid…If the owner cannot be found, then we are looking for someone who has porcine experience who would be willing to offer these pigs a suitable home as pets.”

If the owner of these bespoke sheep has porcine experience, two furry legacy-breed pigs would probably fit right in with the springtime scenery.