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

Chinatown exterminator

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

Yes, yes, yes! And this morning on Daily Kos the top-recommended story is my expose of the latest phone-jamming news!

First, McClatchy Newspapers found an insider source to confirm that the US Department of Justice protected Republican bigwigs from their slow-walked “investigation” of the 2002 Election Day phone-jamming scandal.

Second, two advance reviews of phone-jamming tell-all How To Rig An Election are full of dark seedy details of GOP dirty tricks.

Bring on Boston’s Red Dragon Exterminating Company!

James Clerk Maxwell and Alan Guth

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

Who is that non-physicist craving a photo-op in between James Clerk Maxwell and Alan Guth?

Readers of this blog may recognize the scarf.

This moment of post-banquet serendipity took place inside the great dining hall of Trinity College, Cambridge. Frank and I arrived a bit late, missing the polite request that people not take photographs–quite understandable considering all the amazing things there that you’d need to photograph just to remember one half of them.

Dragoyle

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

Here, from a collection of scientific instruments, is the lovely dragoyle.

Elsewhere In the he fascinating Whipple Museum of the History of Science, you can find “scientific” apparatus for phrenology (diagnosing head bumps and lumps to measure such human traits as “combativeness.”)

Phrenologywas once a time-honored way to do scientific study. Melvil Dewey gave "Phrenology" an entire integer (139) in his library decimal catalog system. For comparison, "modern Western philosophy" also got one entire integer (190).

The history of science is full of fascinating discoveries and proud achievements, but it is also full of cautionary examples and multiple proofs that calling something “scientific” doesn’t make it so.

Beautiful cold English December day

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

I walked several miles yesterday through the lovely cold green of an English December, under its pale sunlit sky.

Frank is here to discuss early-universe cosmology with a lot of the same friends who were gathered here by Stephen Hawking 25 years ago, back when the idea of inflation was just a tiny pre-nugget of its present, er, expanded state.

That was in summertime, a lovely English summer, with our whole family housed by Robin and Polly Hill out in Rupert Brooke’s own Grantchester. I did feel some misgiving when we jet-lagged four on the doorstep were greeted with a dismayed “My god, they’ve got a baby!”

(The form I’d filled out for our housing requirement had a space asking for “number of children.” Foolishly, I filled that space in “1*”, adding by * footnote that (in December, and planning a six-months-later visit) I was eight 1/2 months pregnant.)

Anyway, things got much better quite soon after that.

There is no better cure for the mental whiplash of packing and moving and shlepping your worldly goods onto one more long plane ride than taking a long walk through peaceful cool sunlit weather.

In fact, I think that I need another walk now.

Waiting to be on TV

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

I should not neglect to mention (although I am tempted) that Frank and I both made multiple appearances on December 10 on Swedish TV 4.

Late in the evening, Anna Björn re-interviewed us about what had been the best and worst Nobel bits of 2004. In case you missed it, the worst for me was worrying about walking down multiple marble staircases. The best was how charming everybody Swedish is (including HRH Prince Carl Philip) and going to the Green Frog Lucia Ball on December 13.

When the interviewers thanked us, and our car was waiting, and had been waiting for fifteen minutes, I took a step backward and stepped off the fairly high platform, almost but not quite falling on my black ball-gowned behind. On live TV.

Everybody that I know in Sweden seems to have seen this.

And to judge from their reminiscent smiles when I ask if they saw this, my almost-fall was a high point of Nobel late night TV.

Anyone who wants to give near-universal satisfaction on TV should really consider this quite simple method.

Actually falling might have given even more pleasure…

Good time being had by all

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

Maybe this photo is a little blurry, but it was late night and near the end of a wonderful party, the Stockholm University Student Union’s Luciabal for their “Order of the Ever Smiling and Jumping Green Frog.”

Many thanks to the students who invited us (again), especially to Per Marcus and also to his brother Mårten.

Not that either of them is at all visible in this photo.

Good night.

In Second Life we both look even more glamorous

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

They call it “white tie” but many also wear their honors, ribbons or brooches or long chains with giant gold medals.

The most festooned among male guests look like ancestral Vikings with trophies of plunder.

Meanwhile, back at Stockholm’s huge palace, I was just getting up to the border between France and Norway when first Al Gore (in my blog) and last night’s Nordita Nobel dinner party (in real life) broke off my narrative.

Nobel events come with extra one-ups of high protocol, strict and careful ordering of where everyone sits or stands and with whom one parades.

Once you get to the palace, the protocol deepens and thickens, as if layers of old marble had been wrapped up in more layers of tapestry.

Just to mention the most intimidating example: the end of your evening is signaled by loud, loud crashes from ceremonial walking sticks banged on the floor by elegant men in fine uniforms. It’s the signal for honored but non-royal guests to flee quickly back to the non-royal side of the room so their Majesties can bow solitary farewell.

There are few things more comforting, in such an atmosphere of does-the-whole-world-except-me-know-these-rules, than being escorted to dinner by the hugely and handsomely ribboned-and-medaled Norwegian Ambassador Odd L. Fosseidbråten, someone who really does probably know all the rules.

And sitting between two ambassadors feels even safer, most especially between the contrasting but both very charming ambassadors of Norway and France. (This handsome Viking is neither of those two ambassadors.)

Both Odd Fosseidbråten and French counterpart His Excellency Monsieur Denis Delbourg are near the end of their terms as ambassador. (“Past my sell-by date” was the smiling description from one of them.) It was fascinating to hear each one’s warm perspective on Sweden intertwined with historical ties to his own country. But diplomatic careers don’t keep you too long in the one lovely place. The fresh ambitions when one arrives somewhere new are a precious resource to both host and source country. Over time, it becomes hard not to settle down on your laurels. Meanwhile, young diplomats need their own chance to shine.

So now I do think I know what is the diplomat’s “job.” It is to gather up knowledge, will, and empathy so that you can act strongly for your own country while recognizing and valuing what will be important to somebody’s different country. Of course nobody I met said anything like this (and if they had would have framed it in less-flowered language.)

I am just trying to interpret the metadata.

Now it’s time to get ready for tonight’s Green Frog ball.

Ice crystals in polarized light

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

Al Gore’s Nobel Lecture includes a Nobel story that I didn’t know:

Sometimes, without warning, the future knocks on our door with a precious and painful vision of what might be. One hundred and nineteen years ago, a wealthy inventor read his own obituary, mistakenly published years before his death. Wrongly believing the inventor had just died, a newspaper printed a harsh judgment of his life’s work, unfairly labeling him “The Merchant of Death” because of his invention – dynamite. Shaken by this condemnation, the inventor made a fateful choice to serve the cause of peace.

Seven years later, Alfred Nobel created this prize and the others that bear his name.

The whole speech is worth reading, not least for Al Gore’s reminder that “political will is a renewable resource.”

Well worth remembering, as our shared future ticks closer.

On December 10, toward the end of the Nobel evening and wine, some remarks of wisdom ensued over our brandy glasses.

The considered advice of Nobel laureate Barry Sharpless was that zinc gluconate is an excellent preventive medicine.

My finest advice was that sleeping in really cold bedrooms is like free marriage therapy eight hours in each twenty-four. (I’m not sure now this would work for Europeans, if they have separate-but-equal duvets. It is based on experience in American big beds.)

Then Barry and I turned hopefully to Carl Bildt, Sweden’s Foreign Minister in both real and Second Life, who was (during his stint as Sweden’s Prime Minister) the first head of state ever to send out an email to another head of state, in that particular case US President Bill Clinton. (I found this out from Mr. Google, not from Carl Bildt.) But instead of advice, he imparted some meta-wisdom that I am still thinking about.

He said, “People imagine that the job of a diplomat is being polite to foreigners. That is not the job.”

So last night, when I found myself seated in Stockholms Slottet on the very enjoyable border of France with Norway (between the distinguished ambassadors to Sweden from those two large glamorous countries), I did interesting research into Carl Bildt’s statement.

But this blogpost is already long enough. More wisdom (I hope) will flow after I do some packing.

Another later, late-night Nobel party

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

This marble statue in Stockholm’s royal Palace is holding a flower and looking very much the way I feel right now.

It’s been a lovely and very long birthday today.