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

Happy in the Asylet

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

This Oslo restaurant used to be a home for orphans (“asylet“) but now they serve codfish, moose (“elg”), and ice cream with hot berry sauce.

I also enjoyed the conversation where I learned quite a few new things including that Dirac liked to spend time reading Sanskrit, that when Pauli called weapons work the “böse Hinterseite” of science that translates from German as the “evil backside” and that Norway’s moose season comes in October.

If any of these new facts of mine are things I heard wrong, blame the house red wine, which was almost as good as the elg.

Outdoors playing with cold wet leaves

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

Today’s NYT says that even monkeys “rationalize” past decisions–so that, for example, expressing mild preference for blue candy rather than red quickly transforms itself into strong preference for those blue candies.

In my American middle-class life, my car is blue candy. It’s so easy to drive to the grocery store instead of walking, to drive into Boston instead of taking the subway, even to drive the kilometer to Harvard Square if I know Harvard Book Store will tempt me to buy lots of books.

Living in Stockholm, my car got turned into red candy. Parking is expensive. Buses and subways go everywhere, and go there often. Besides, walking and biking and busing are what people do here. So the one-plus kilometer walk back and forth to work, time spent outside in every kind of weather, is no longer an “inconvenience” to avoid, it’s just something I do–and more-or-less enjoy.

Because I can rationalize, just like anyone else!

Swedish packet for Lipitor tablets

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

… (people I’ve sat next to at various dinner tables in various countries)–every one of the ones taking cholesterol meds (every one that I asked, btw) takes Lipitor, and not its generic sibling simvastatin.

Yes, yes, I know this is grossly unscientific. Maybe more grossly unscientific than (er, grossly bit follows, skip to next paragraph?) my art historian friend who claimed “scientific” proof that shaving one’s legs made leg hair grow faster–she had shaved only the front of her leg-fronts for years, and found (in her 40s) that now her leg-fronts (shins) were hairier than her leg-backs (calves.) She was not happy when I counter-exampled (do you want to read this?) that I saw the same shin-to-calf difference despite shaving (or not) both, year after year.

Grossly bit ended; on to new-but-unscientific addition. My US doctor says that Lipitor is no better than Simvastatin, and my HMO makes me pay more for L-not- S. But when I needed prescription pills here in Stockholm, a Swedish doctor looked at my near-empty bottle of Lipitor and remarked, “Oh, so they found Simvastatin didn’t work for you and had to upgrade you to Lipitor?”

My US doctor to the contrary, I’ve been happy to pay extra for Lipitor. And can it be totally coincidence that she used to criticize me regularly, when I took Simvastatin, for not “doing enough” to reduce my cholesterol? But now I keep getting good marks for cholesterol virtue?

Just my very unscientific two cents on NY Times story.

We walked home yesterday…

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

Go Red Sox tonight, because (according to the Boston Globe, a totally non-partisan source of news) the Heavens have SPOKEN:

“Comet Holmes, which has been orbiting quietly since its discovery in 1892, has undergone a million-fold brightness increase on October 24 — and is now visible to the naked eye (though difficult from under the lights of Fenway),” [MIT Professor of Planetary Science Richard P.] Binzel said…

Can the Red Sox’ fortunes be predicted by celestial events? Some fans may recall the lunar eclipse of Oct. 27, 2004 — the night Boston won its first World Series in 86 years. For Game 2 tonight, there may be another sign in the sky.

“There will be a full moon (but no lunar eclipse as in 2004) for tonight’s World Series game,” Binzel said.

Go, Red Sox!!! Let me add to Professor Binzel’s suggestions, and just as scientifically, that the pictured red sky in Sweden just a few days ago probably also should serve to predict your next victory!

Oh, oh, oh–shall we stop the presses?

Cranky DNA pioneer James Watson–who seems to have no clue that making oneself widely hated is not very clever–has worked out that headlines ensue when he says something rude enough about any random large group of human beings. (So far, he’s confined himself to insulting groups not male-plus-macho-plus-white, but probably only because that’s where the headlines are.)

I think headline writers should take a strong clue from my headline.

Inside the radio

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

Modern technology is made up of pre-made “black boxes.” If you open an iPhone, for instance, most of the stuff inside is just high-tech mystery stuff that was created to put in iPhone and used nowhere else.

This is the inside of an old radio, technology cobbled together from readymade pieces–bits of wire, a plastic knob, a few condensers, etc.

Maybe today everybody is trying to think “outside the box” because the stuff that’s inside the box is just too darn confusing.

Doesn’t the landscape look timeless?

Limestone caves, under the hill I was standing on to take this picture, were carved out when Ireland sat near the earth’s equator, with my “timeless” hilltop lying under a shallow sea full of coral and other warmwater-type creatures.

But enough philosophy–just enjoy the greens on these fields and the blues on this sky.

We walked home yesterday…

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

And the 2007 Nobel Prize goes to Albert Fert (France) and Peter Grünberg (Germany) “for the discovery of Giant Magnetoresistance” aka GMR.

If you have an iPod (or a recent hard disk) you should probably be thanking Fert and Grünberg too. The GMR effect, which they discovered, is the basis of the emergent technology of spintronics, based on changing the spin of electrons instead of shuffling charges around from place to place.

So, what does that photograph of clouds over Stockholm have to do with the Nobel Prize or GMR? Not much really–except perhaps very indirectly, by way of Einstein’s sense of the mysterious.

The Boston Globe didn’t miss last night’s show but I did–this year’s Ig Nobel Prize ceremony over at Harvard. I helped write the slide show, even from here in Sweden, but I didn’t get to stand in the thrilling darkness of Sanders Theatre, as I did last year, clicking my handiwork on and trying not to get too distracted.

The Tech went to the Igs, but I could not. I missed the bottomless bowl of soup, the sword-swallowing doctors, the crowd chanting “Eat it!” at hesitant laureates whose Toscanini ice cream had been flavored with vanillin synthesized from cow dung.

I missed the celebration of the “Gay Bomb.”

The list of 2007 winners is already online at the Ig Nobel website, whose servers are already under heavy demand. So it’s probably a good thing the webcast will be online just a bit later.

If you’re in the Cambridge area, one big and free Ig event is still to come. On Saturday (1 p.m.) at MIT in 10-250 (that’s inside the Infinite Corridor, but still quite easy to find) will be the Ig Informal Lectures. Don’t be late, even that great big room fills up pretty fast.

And Toscanini’s is giving free samples of its new “Yum-A-Moto Vanilla Twist” ice cream today (Friday) at 899 Main St.

I missed the show this year, but next year I surely will not!