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

I just found out that the TV camera crew I live-blogged on November 11 produced quite a good short movie with that footage. It includes a lot of the stuff I wrote about here (our piano really needs a tuning!) as well as some intriguing physics clips: BANG! A man shot from a cannon flies into a net (at least 20 times). Crash! An old truck gets bashed into rubble (only once), and Hmmmm….The night sky opens up to reveal…David Gross!

Roland Zuiderveld
does a good job on the science of the strong force, quarks, and
gluons–all in 15 minutes and in Swedish, with time for Frank on the
accordion and the two of us slowly walking near our house.

Our dog Marianne doesn’t get any screen time–neither does
kitchen-blogging with my computer on top of the stove–but despite
these small flaws, I really enjoyed the movie–so thank you, Roland!
And thanks to Dennis, mysterious friend of GD, for emailing me the link.

I’ve been getting email from readers frustrated by the many Nobel stories I started to tell but never found time to finish. One person called it “blogus interruptus.”

For example, I started several times to blog about Kiruna but never got much past telling you that it has as many space scientists as reindeer herders (about 500 of each). On December 17, Frank and I spent the morning with Sverker Fredriksson and Ingrid Sandahl visiting the huge LKAB iron mine, which employs another 2,000 of Kiruna’s 24,000 non-space-scientists and non-reindeer-herders.

Here are a few LKAB facts I jotted down:

• You could build 12 new Eiffel towers every day with the iron ore dug up at LKAB.
• Every night around 2 a.m., the mine does its blasting–which makes the town of Kiruna vibrate slightly.
• Iron ore is easier to ship and grade if you process it into uniform pellets.
• LKAB backs up its goals (quality and safety) by paying company-wide bonuses based on how well the goals are met.
• People who work in LKAB mine agree that theirs are the best jobs in the best company in the best town in the world.

That last item, however, seemed pretty widespread among people in Kiruna. I just hope space scientists and reindeer herders don’t ever get into fights with the people of LKAB about who does, in fact, have the best job ever.

The five platonic solids, left to right: octahedron, icosahedron, cube, tetrahedron, and the squishy one is a dodecahedron.

In other words, our lost suitcase was found–almost exactly a week after disappearing. (Thank you, Scandinavian Air, for finding it, and thanks to Continental for delivering it to our house at 1:30 a.m.)

Now, I was extremely pleased–though the next morning was soon enough to check on it–that my winter hat, two pairs of shoes, et cetera, were once again part of my life. Frank, however, was much more excited about his magnetic “stix and balls”* from the Nobel Museum, which he has now turned into five platonic solids.

“The Platonic solids were known to the ancient Greeks,” according to Steve Wolfram. Furthermore, “Plato equated the tetrahedron with the “element” fire, the cube with earth, the icosahedron with water, the octahedron with air, and the dodecahedron with the stuff of which the constellations and heavens were made (Cromwell 1997).”

Of course, if the heavens were made of magnets and balls, they’d also squish out of shape from their own weight. But I know Frank has some tricky un-squishing planned for the immediate future…

I blogged last year about some Swedish surprises, many enjoyable but others disconcerting.

One
of my discoveries this trip is that Swedish “aha” isn’t quite like an
English “aha.” In (American)
English, “aha!” is an exclamation of great surprise, said with a bounce
like “Wow!” or “Eureka!” or
“Unbefriggin’lievable!” In Swedish English, “aha” expresses a kind of
friendly interest, something like maybe “Mmmm”or “Tell me more.”

Why is this disconcerting? Imagine somebody who often says “Wow” in
tones of polite restraint and you’ll understand.

My brother Kevin just sent me some great photographs–this one reminded me (aha!) of my first surprise at the northern European “two-bed double bed.” In America, two people who share a bed are sharing one undivided mattress covered by the same top sheet and quilt(s). In Sweden, the shared bed now has a cold hard divide down the middle. The best thing about the Swedish two-mattress system is that nobody will tease you about stealing the covers all onto your side of the bed.

One great surprise this time was the
meringue cake served at the Operakälleren. Fortunately, the
wonderful Lena (who races sled dogs in her spare time from winning
prizes for cooking) says that she will send me the recipe–because that
cake is  Aha! and Wow! and even Eureka!

One of my original goals in Nobel-blogging was to help future laureates dodge those “if only I had known” moments. So, here in one handy location, are just a few:

1. When you fill out a form with everyone’s name, profession, and title–“title” doesn’t mean “job title” as in the US, it means titles like Professor, Dr., Mrs., maybe HRH or even Duke of Earl. Oops! I was surprised but not unhappy to end up with “Författare” (Swedish for “writer”) on my Nobel banquet place setting–but I wonder what happened to friend Naomi, whose dual career I’d summed up as “Film director and hotel owner”…
2. Laureates and spouses don’t have to figure out how to get to the Grand Hotel from Arlanda Airport–or how to get anywhere else, for that matter–because the Nobel Committee delivers a huge Volvo limousine with a great driver (thank you, Harald!) almost to the door of the airplane.
3. When you arrive at the Royal Palace for dinner on December 11, don’t draw the conclusion from previous banquets that you should start shaking hands along the huge reception line to your left. Your job is to stand in a reception line on the right.
4. Don’t worry about making my mistakes, or new ones of your own, because your “Nobel attendant” (thank you, Cecilia!) will rescue you with good-humored clever kindness.

One of my original goals in Nobel-blogging was to help future laureates dodge those “if only I had known” moments. So, here in one handy location, are just a few:

1. When the Nobel committee asks you to list each guest’s “title,” they don’t mean “job title” as in the US, they mean titles like Professor, Dr., Mrs., maybe HRH or even Duke of Earl. If you know this, you won’t end up with “Författare” (Swedish for “writer”) on your Nobel banquet place card, and I hate to think what they listed from my friend Naomi whose dual career I summed up as “Film director and hotel owner”.
2. Laureates and spouses don’t have to figure out how to get to the Grand Hotel from Arlanda Airport–or how to get anywhere else, for that matter–because the Nobel Committee delivers a huge Volvo limousine with a great driver (thank you, Harald!) almost to the door of the airplane.
3. When you arrive at the Royal Palace for dinner on December 11, don’t start shaking hands with all the people lined up in a huge reception line to the left of the door. Your job is to find your own spot because you have to stand in the same reception line they do.
4. Don’t worry about making my mistakes, or new ones of your own, because your “Nobel attendant” (thank you, Cecilia!) or some other helpful Swedish person, will rescue you with good-humored clever kindness.

A delicate snow is falling on Cambridge right now–I love Halley’s flour-sifter image.  Good-bye, stick-figure skeletons of summer mint plants! I don’t want my memories to have similar
fates…

The SVT tape of Frank with the Rymdgymnasiet students who dressed up as aliens will probably vanish by Thursday, Dec. 30 (but thanks to Odd Minde for sending the link to me)

http://svt.se/svt/jsp/Crosslink.jsp?d=2528&visaart=true&visadep=false
Torsdag kl 22.15 (Frank starts about 2/3 of the way through the program)

Of course, I can still ask Frank to sing Abba tunes in real life…

Anyway, I’ve started posting my own Nobel photo albums.

And thanks to Digitala Bonder–someone I don’t know–who Flickr-ed a photo of me with Prince Carl Philip.