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

Left to right: Light with schmutz, microphone in heavy fur coat, Guy the cameraman.

1) I shot some photos of Frank with Roland, Guy, and Rob just at the moment before they started.

But I left the camera cable upstairs, and now I can’t go tromping up the stairs get it because the “So, what is a quark?” phase of this interview has started. Footsteps in the background would not be a good thing.

In fact, I’m pinned down in the kitchen, eavesdropping and (of course) typing this. Thank heaven for Airport wi-fi!

2) Roland wants some still photos on his camera also, for newspaper ads. I’m willing to take them–but Amity’s would be much better! And she has been darn nice about all the interruptions to her graduate work, over the years, when Mom or Dad suddenly needs a photographer.

Of course, a quick call to her cellphone failed to reach her, and the crew should be finished and out of here in an hour…so I sent her an email and (one more desperate measure), I’m blogging this call for help.

Frank is sitting in the dining room chair, getting lit for the camera.

“More schmutz,” says Guy. Schmutz turns out to be two pieces of
waxy-looking paper he hangs in front of a light that is shining on
Frank.

“Why is that schmutz?” I ask.

“That’s just what we call it,” says Guy. “The real name, the brand name for it, is actually Opal.”

Something with a pretty name like Opal gets nicknamed “schmutz”? It must be a guy thing, Definitely, a guy thing.

Three very nice young tv-crew-men are downstairs getting ready to
interview Frank, so of course I decided it would be fun to live-blog
this unusual event.

Roland, the interviewer from Sweden, is young and tv-good-looking–he has already
interviewed two US Nobel laureates before he came here–visiting Minneapolis and
Santa Barbara.

Guy, the cameraman who also does lighting, lives in Wellesley. Rob, who does sound, is also a local freelancer.

They’re setting up lights and cameras and microphones all over our
house’s familiar spaces, while Roland and Frank chit-chat about physics
and travel.

Rob dangles a huge microphone in a thick fur sweater (a “Rykote windscreen”) over one of our dining room chairs.

Guy pulls down the shades in our dining room so that he can take full control of the ambient light.

More soon….

Stockholm University students have their own Nobel tradition–new
laureates are invited to a December 13 ball, then inducted into “The
Supreme Order of the Ever Jumping and Smiling Green Frog.”
Their actual paper snailmail invitation contained no email address or
URL. For information about this unique event, it had to be Google once again to the
rescue!

The guest of one 1987 Nobel-winner describes a banquet with drinking-songs followed by “hi-jinks.”

From a detailed diary of 1996 Nobel-guest adventures kept by David Mermin: “between midnight and 1 the
culminating event of the week takes place… details of the lunatic ceremony are lost in the
fog, but somehow it manages to culminate in all six of the
1996 Nobel Laureates in Physics and Chemistry lined up together and
uttering cries of “Rivet, rivet” while squatting on their haunches and
yumping up and down. A fitting end to a can-you-top-this week.”

Stockholm University science students explain the frog insignia: “The Frog is made out of an alloy of lead with
bismuth, frog-ish green and tied in a very special way. The Insignia is
supposed to be weared with tail-coat for the gentlemen and
evening-dress for the ladies. When a Frog-member dies, the relatives
are asked to send the Insignia back to the Order or to destroy it.”

Frog-members also get to drink
pea soup with brandy in March–the group’s only other official event.
Thank you, Google–jumping and smiling will be on Frank’s Nobel week
schedule!

One thousand thank-you letters! Even my optimistic husband Frank was
taken aback by the job of replying to all the old friends and others
who congratulated him on his Nobel Prize.

Frank–who doesn’t like to do a not-very-good job on anything–solved the problem of
replying-quickly versus replying-personally in a characteristically
outside-the-box-Frank way.

He wrote a sonnet he could send everyone fast.

Then he organized his in-box so he could write real replies one day at a
time–first to all the As–then to all the Bs–then, on Thursday night, his
hard disk crashed. It’s off at Disk Doctors being (hopefully) salvaged.

But if you wrote to Frank and your first name begins with C, you’re top on his list when he gets his computer back.

If you recently tuned in just for
Nobel-Prize-family-backstage-surprises
blogging–or if you’re an old reader who wouldn’t mind hearing less
about Nobel Prizes–well, this situation categorically reminds
me of a joke I once wrote for Absolute Zero Gravity:

1. According to Fields Medalist Enrico Bombieri, there are three kinds of mathematicians: those who can count, and those who can’t.
2. I happen to believe that people can be divided into precisely two
   categories: those who believe that people can be divided into precisely
   two categories, and those who don’t.
3. If you agree with me, let me ask you this: which category is Bombieri in?

But I digress. If you are a Nobel-only reader, you can avoid the rest of this blog by subscribing to the RSS feed for its just-Nobel-gossip posts. If you prefer Nobel-free blogging–well, as they say for New England weather changes, just wait a while…

just put up some more photos of recent events: http://www.funnybits.com/Nobel2004Oct/index.htm

Nobel section of this blog: http://BetsyDevine.weblogger.com/newsItems/viewDepartment$nobel

Nobel blog of Robert Engle, one of last years laureates in economics.

Nobel’s formal events require white-tie-and-tails or (there is an exception!) “national costume.” Unfortunately, the national costume of physics is anything-goes-topped-with-a-funny-logo-on-your-Tshirt.

I’ve been doing online “research” on what people wear* to all the various parties in Sweden–the Engle family blog was a great resource. They went to three balls in one week…wow!

As a direct result of this research, I got Frank to come shopping with me and buy some non-sneakers.