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

Kottke posted a funny parody how-to on different ways to order from restaurant menus. (To order a la Malcolm Gladwell, ” Glance quickly at the menu and order whatever catches your eye first. Spend no more than 2-3 seconds deciding or the quality of your choice (and your meal) will decline.”)

Here are a few of my own favorite how-tos from around the web, some of them very elaborate:

British pub etiquette

“There are strict rules of etiquette involved in attracting the attention of bar staff. The ritual procedure is best described as a sort of subtle pantomime – not the kind of children’s pantomime you see on stage at Christmas, more like an Ingmar Bergman film in which the twitch of an eyebrow speaks volumes.”

Tricks of a whole bunch of different trades

“If you have to change a light bulb where the glass is broken, you can press a potato into the metal base to unscrew the remains of the bulb from the fixture.”

How to get drunk with co-workers in Japan (multi-page with Flash movie)

“It is most important never to fill your own glass or cup. Pouring is a sign of respect or friendship…If you want to drink more but nobody pours for you, fill somebody else’s glass and he will notice.”

Here’s a Google language tool I just discovered* — “Use the Google interface in your language“.

And they’re not just talking Afrikaans, Welsh, Xhosa, Yiddish, or Zulu. How about interfaces in “Bork Bork Bork”?

Pig Latin?”

Are you “Eelingfay Uckylay”?

Elmer Fudd

(Or should that be Ewmew Fudd?) What are your “Pwefewences”?

H4x0r:

Click link to learn “4|| 480u7 Google“…written in even more H4x0r!

And Google calls this “n0rM4L s34rCh”?

Graffiti tempts the juvenile offender,
Or sentimental lover on a bender–
But my brief love notes I’ll immortalize
With sugar, beer, and moss bits in a blender.

Sorry, this story from Kottke’s linkblog just energized my inner Omar Khayyam…

I can’t wait to try this!

If you’re a bad bargainer–like me–here is a great discovery!

After test-driving a car that I want to buy, I told the nice salesman the truth: I printed out its entire New Car Price Report ($12 download from the
Consumer Reports website)–and then left it at home by mistake. So, I said, we’ll have to talk price after I go home and look at my printout.

“Wait a minute,” he said–then he went to talk to his manager and came back and offered me about 10% off the sticker price of the car–even more than Consumer Reports claims the average buyer saves!

I’m not a good bargainer–but the salesman assumed I was, and then he bargained with himself on my behalf.

That was the title of one of todays sessions here at the America Physical Society meeting in Tampa. Some other intriguing topics being discussed:

• Charm Physics
• Alchemy of the Heaviest Elements
• Cleo Bottomonia Physics

It’s been great fun re-meeting so many physicist friends–and riding the elevator with hundreds more physicists, including many –but sadly not enough–women physicists. (The pipeline for women from high-school physics to physics full-professorships seems to spring a bad leak somewhere before grad school.)

Physicists come in a lot of different varieties but I have not seen any who’d fit your popular image of naughty conventioneers.

Among the great shirts and bumper stickers for sale, here is my favorite:

PLEASE FLIRT HARDER, I AM A PHYSICIST

Hurray for science! Hurray for springtime!

• Here comes better microwave popcorn!
• Springtime hits NH, as seen from a motorcycle.
• Naked mole rats are only the fourth ugliest animal?
• Top ten useless limbs and vestigial organs
• Bonus linkiferousness: All the links from Mind Hacks

Magnolias so pink,
And the spring sky so blue….
Who could waste time on taxes today?
But … we do!

Niek has wonderful photos this morning of wildflowers that had “escaped” from the Holland flowerfields…

Meanwhile, Frank Paynter beautifully evokes the tranquil here-and-thereness of spring in Wisconsin…

Meanwhile, Kalilily is singing along with Perry Como, “It’s a good day from morning till night”…

Meanwhile, it’s sunny and cold in Cambridge, MA, with blue skies above the tree branches now hinting pale green. My front yard has tulip leaves but no flowers yet. Maybe when I get home next time, they will have opened. Yes, after two days at home, we are packing again.

No abayas this trip, but once again we need clothes for both hot and cold climates–an APS meeting in Tampa (where I also get to celebrate my little sister’s birthday!) followed by a Philadelphia tribute to Yoichiro Nambu.

But I’ll be reading all of your blogs for more signs of springtime…

Don’t tell George Bush, but Frank Wilczek now seems to be famous in France, according to Google. A French astrological website specializing in famous people (including not only “scientifiques” but also “sex symboles”) has posted Frank’s astrological birth chart.

People who share Frank’s May 15 birthday, according to their list of notable Tauri, include twins Madeleine Allbright and Trini Lopez, both born in 1937–and, among many others, Socrates (466 BCE)!

Back to earth for a moment–Wikipedia has Socrates’s date of birth as June 4, 470 BCE, and the Encyclopedia Britannica isn’t even sure about the year, but what do I care?

It’s more fun to picture Socrates as Frank’s astrological alter ego. And helping people believe what they want to believe has kept astrologers in business for many, many cycles of Sun and Moon.