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

“…washing down a handful of Oxycontin and a dozen Krispy Kremes with a pint of Jack Daniel’s and only then slathering on the baby oil and heading for the beach…”

…to quote Miss Conduct, whose advice column really peps up the Boston Globe.

Delicious, sugary, yeasty Krispy Kreme memery is popping up in some very strange dimensions, including math lessons in the Annals of Improbable Research.

Meanwhile, in real life, Miss Conduct and Annals editor Marc Abrahams (he’s also the IgNobel Igurehead) are (to coin a new-fangled phrase) wife and man.

As my German-speaking friend Diane would say, “Sweet!”

Cold chocolate pudding inspires Lisa Williams to blog about “unsung and unnoticed happinesses.”

She has this to add about unsung grouchinesses:

If I’m in a bad mood someone could give me a pound of gold and I’d probably say, “Dammit, don’t they know how cluttered my house is?”

I completely agree…

But I’m sure I could always find room in my house or fridge somewhere, if somebody gave me a pound of chocolate pudding…

I didn’t know many people at the Ig Nobel cookout, so I started chatting with two people wearing identical Sponge Bob shirts and tailored black shorts. “Yes, my husband and I have worn identical outfits every day for the past 27 years,” Nancy Featherstone told me. “Before that, we wore identical outfits only on weekends.” Nancy and husband Don are Ig Nobel old hands — Don won a 1996 Ig Nobel Prize for inventing the pink plastic lawn flamingo. I’m devastated that I won’t be able to go to this year’s Ig Nobels — we’re booked to be in Vienna on October 6 — but I’m helping with the slide show, and it will be awesome.

More than 40 years ago, artist Don Featherstone capitulated to reality and accepted employment with Union Products, hired to render a white duck and a pink plastic flamingo in three dimensions. The rest is cultural pop history: the Featherstone flamingo was born.

Throughout history, people have loved statuary. There’s plenty of evidence, in old paintings, in carvings, even in ancient hieroglyphics, that people have always loved to decorate their surroundings. In early America, for the longest time, there was no lawn ornamentation. Around the turn of the century, the Europeans started bringing over lawn ornaments in the form of bronze statuary. They were beautiful, and very popular, but few people could afford such things. Keep in mind that, before plastics, only rich people could afford to have poor taste.

Montgomery Scott aka Scotty (as in “Beam me up, Scotty!) was chief engineer of the original Star Trek. When Captain Kirk needed something impossible, it was Scotty who’d coax the Enterprise to deliver. Reluctantly, though, and with many words of caution:

• “Even if we were under full scale attack I couldn’t move any faster, not and maintain a safety factor.” — The Naked Time,” Episode 7
• “The warp drive is a hopeless pile of junk.” — “The Doomsday Machine,” Episode 35
• “I’ve giv’n her all she’s got captain, an’ I canna give her no more.”
• “She won’t take much more of this.”

Scotty didn’t need to prove his manhood with macho bravado–his concern was for his ship and for the big picture, not for polishing his own image. A suitable hero for a young nerd like me, and I always liked him.

How much of Scotty was in the writing and how much was in the performing? I was surprised to discover that actor James Doohan, who died this morning, was a Canadian who tried out multiple accents and nationalities before Scotty became a Scot. Wounded on D-Day–his cigarette case probably saved his life–Doohan gave Scotty the gritty no-nonsense attitude I so admired.

We will miss him,

There are certain problems with having a wife who blogs. For example, if you say something funny to a bunch of your high school classmates, your wife is likely to scribble it down on a paper napkin so that she can blog it later.

Then, four months later, she re-finds the paper napkin. So today (ta da!) I’m blogging two fine Frank Wilczek quotes!

I went off to college planning to major in math or philosophy–
of course, both those ideas are really the same idea.

---

In physics, your solution should convince a reasonable person.
In math, you have to convince a person who’s trying to make trouble.
Ultimately, in physics, you’re hoping to convince Nature.
And I’ve found Nature to be pretty reasonable.

…clarinet beats oboe.”

I love it when Julie Leung and Lisa Williams blog their kid stories. So, even though my daughter Amity is already grown-up and has a Ph.D., I asked her permission to blog her clarinet-oboe comparison.

Then I forgot to blog it until today, when she told me about her trip home from a recent conference:

“Yesterday, I made one of the classic blunders. I picked out a very sad book to read on the plane, so that all the way from Minneapolis to Boston I was trying to cry very unobtrusively.”

At least she didn’t start a land war in Asia….

Inconceivable!

Princeton students planned a protest “filibuster” outside Frist Hall for a couple of 12-hour days–but 90-plus straight hours later, the Frist Center Filibuster continues.

Rush Holt dropped by to read from Aesop’s Fables. When we showed up, a student was reading from the last book of the Talmud. And recent Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek, recruited to speak April 29 at 8:30, read selections from Einstein’s early papers on relativity, earning frequent applause from the evening’s crowd.

“I’m amazed by the level of enthusiasm,” says biology post-doc Teresa Leonardo. “People keep coming back, to speak and to listen–and they keep getting more empowered, more forceful, more eloquent.”

Senator Bill Frist, whose family donated millions for the Princeton University building that bears his name, has called for “the nuclear option” to stop Democrats from using the filibuster against anti-abortion judicial nominees.

Check out the Daily Princetonian for more–and I’ll be watching the filibuster webpage for photos of Frank–and Einstein–in action.

“This is about preserving our democracy from a lust for power that seems to have no end. Our message is that people will pay attention if you tinker with checks and balances to perpetuate your one-party rule.”

Jason Vagliano, history major at Princeton

Dame Miriam Rothschild (1908 – 2005), mother of 10 children, was the world’s greatest expert on fleas, as well as a wildflower advocate, code analyst, tuberculosis detective, and … I could go on but I won’t except to add that she once dressed up as a man to play cricket for England.

Dame Miriam simplified her life by wearing exactly one dress with a matching jacket, every day. That is, she had found an outfit she liked somewhere around 1960, so she had it made up in multiple colors and patterns–and that was her wardrobe.

She also kept her suitcase packed at all times, to make traveling simpler.

Dame Miriam very recently died–I just found out today. She has been one of my personal heroines since David McCullough profiled her in 1992 for Smithsonian Magazine. If you’re looking for a good scientific role model, check out this excellent and amusing retrospective.

Early this morning (December 26), an ocean  wave (tsunami) 30 feet high swept up over South Asian coastlines. Millions of people have been left injured or homeless–many thousands of people are dead or missing.

The scope of the disaster is overwhelming local resources–the International Red Cross is sending emergency aid–the American Red Cross is asking for donations to its International Response Fund. Internet users can find a donation form here.

And, bloggers, let’s help Dan Gillmor get this message out.