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

Frank Wilczek at Uppsala Waterworks Museum

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

Rumor has it that quarks and gluons abound in the cities of Sweden.

So, given that 2007 – 2008 is Frank’s sabbatical year, we’re headed to Stockholm (and Uppsala) for the fall term. Frank will be doing research and writing while finishing up a couple of books in progress. I will be boning up on philosophies of science in general and Nobel history in particular for my book Meta-Physics: Lives With, About, and Sometimes After the Cosmos.

Our plane leaves Boston tonight, which I hope excuses some of the recent silence on this blog.

Waiting for a mechanic

Originally uploaded by as_much

“Do not rent from U Haul,” the young policeman told me. “They are a bad company. Believe me, you do not want to rent from them again.”

One dirty un-airconditioned 14-foot van (we had reserved a 17-foot van but they didn’t have one) was waiting for me at 282 Lynnway in Lynn, MA, 20 miles from my house. This was the truck that U Haul had “reserved” for us, taking a credit card number hostage after we reserved a truck online. As the contract made clear, they expected our bill to reflect not only the truck’s rental fee but a mileage charge for 40 miles round-trip just to get the truck to the stuff we hoped to move.

The truck had only 1/4 tank of gas in it. It clanked and clattered as I drove it away. It groaned and grumbled whenever I pushed the speed up beyond 30 mph.

It totally quit when I got just 4 miles from the place where I rented it, blocking a lane of traffic on Revere’s busy VFW Parkway. I was able to pull about 6 inches of the truck’s nose into a store’s driveway before it stopped moving entirely. I will leave you to imagine the comments of other drivers, having to maneuver around my dead truck in traffic already bumper-to-bumper on a 94 degree hot and humid Saturday.

I called 911 to ask for help getting the road clear. They said they would send me a tow truck. I then called the U Haul “emergency service” number and spent 10 fruitless minutes listening to recorded messages, asking me to procure a pencil and paper and be ready with the name of a nearby cross-street in case they ever decided to answer.

The policeman came first, with a tow truck too small for my 14 foot van. We waited some more in the heat, and a second van came. The second tow truck towed my van to Action Towing in Revere, MA. The people who work for Action Towing are great–thanks so much, Bill and others, for all your kindness. They also got me a taxi back to the U Haul office in Lynn (which did not want the truck returned to them–that’s why it was towed to Revere, MA to await a visit of somebody from “the 800 number.)

While I was enjoying the kindness of strangers in Revere and Lynn, Frank easily found a U Haul truck in Cambridge, MA–something that corporate U Haul neglected to mention when kidnapping our credit card number to “reserve” a truck that promised them 40 extra miles of mileage charge. I got back to the Lynnway, explained the situation to U Haul folks there, and drove my car home again to help with the very last of the moving.

By 8 p.m. Saturday, we had returned the 14-foot Cambridge van to the U Haul office on Main St. where we got it. By 9:30 a.m. Sunday, we started getting text messages from U Haul that their Cambridge truck had not yet been returned. Phone calls and email to U Haul about this went unanswered. Finally I drove my car down to the Cambridge office, waited in line to speak to an agent, and was reassured that the email was “just a formality” reflecting the fact that the Cambridge office had been a bit slow checking in all the vehicles returned that morning. Estimate of my time wasted on this “formality”? At least two hours.

The rest of Sunday we had a vacation from U Haul. This morning (Monday), we started getting text messages that their truck from Lynnway had not yet been returned. I called the 781 phone number from the text message–“Just a formality” they assured me. Then I got more text messages asking me to call them “urgently” about the missing Lynn truck. I called them back–still “just a formality” but maybe I should now call their 800 number. I called their 800 number and had a long (and recorded) conversation with somebody there,. I explained that they were now the third office of U Haul to get the information that their non-functioning truck was waiting at Action Towing in Revere, because somebody else at their 800 number had told Action Towing that they couldn’t pick the truck up themselves until Monday.

After 10 minutes on the phone with the 800 number, they suggested I should now call folks in Lynn and re-give them all the information that I had given them in person on Saturday when I returned there by taxi to get my car. I explained that the people in Lynn had told me that the truck was no longer any business of theirs and I needed to talk to the 800 number–to the very people who now were asking me to call the people in Lynn.

That was this morning. At 1 p.m. and then again at 5 p.m. I got more text messages from U Haul asking me what I’d done with the truck I rented in Lynn, asking me to call the 781 number. I called the 781 number again–“Just a formality” they said, so I shouldn’t worry.

I’m so glad to hear that I shouldn’t worry, aren’t you?

“U Haul?” said the young policeman. “Don’t ever rent from them. Believe me, I see a lot of things in this job. You do not ever want to rent a truck from U Haul.”

The good-old U Haul that helped us move stuff for 20+ years has been replaced by some corporate monster that I’ll never deal with again.

Filmmaker Errol Morris says human faith in what Othello called “the ocular proof” is often misplaced–but not because he doubts the existence of “a real world” or “a fact of the matter”:

…photographs attract false beliefs – as fly-paper attracts flies. Why my skepticism? Because photography can make us think we know more than we really know.

Morris created those iconic “switcher” ads for Apple as well as a number of well-received documentaries. One of my favorites is his short “Oscar night” film–watch it now!– that includes Gorbachev praising Russell Crowe and my friend Sidney Coleman telling Morris:

The movie is playing a game with you. And it’s a game you’re happy to play.

Errol Morris, now making a movie about Abu Ghraib, is wrestling with some angst about truth and images. I wish any of the political candidates now soundbiting our ears had anything as interesting to say.

***

p.s. And I do believe it’s Millie‘s birthday today–happy 82, Millie! Millie loves comments, so get over to her birthday blogpost and leave one!

The new Jasper Fforde book already has umpteen glowing reviews on Amazon.

Stardust the Neil Gaiman movie is in theaters now–not as good as Stardust the Neil Gaiman book except for Michelle Pfeiffer and Robert DeNiro who are…fantastic.

Mmmm, summer sorbets and slushies from our new Cuisinart ice cream maker–so easy! You just pour your cold mix into the pre-frozen freezer bowl and let it swirl for 20 minutes. Rich peppermint ice cream with chunks of York Peppermint Patty in it. Multi-berry sorbet (I ignore the recipe which says to strain out the seeds.) Watermelon-lime-and-peach granita.

Summertime seems to have invaded my blog.

Memory Map – New Orleans

Originally uploaded by Patrick Houlihan

Where was the house that you lived in when you were seven?

If you know the address, you can find that house with Google maps, zoom in on the neighborhood that you remember, and download a satellite photo for yourself.

Then, upload your photo to Flickr (an account is free) and use the “Add notes” feature to draw little boxes around places you want to comment on.

If you want to see what other people have done with this, check out this Flickr search for memorymap + hometown.

Hey, I made yesterday’s Concord Monitor!

Most of the editing to [potential US Senate candidate Jeanne] Shaheen’s Wikipedia profile has related to Iraq: Either adding or removing tidbits about her support for the war in 2002 or adding information about her criticism of the war since then.

Among the more notable edits: Someone working from a D.C.-area computer posted a link of the Shaheen YouTube clip to Wikipedia. (We checked – it appears not to have come from a Senate computer. The other Wikipedia editing conducted from that computer involved touching up the definition of “APR.”)

Then liberal blogger Betsy Devine got involved and snuffed out some of the newer additions to Shaheen’s profile, including the video link.

A sort of wiki-expert who has spoken at conferences and the like, Devine explained her doings this way: “Statements from right-wing think tanks or right-wing newspaper editorials denouncing Shaheen are not appropriate news sources. If they are introduced as examples of opinion or controversy, the opposing POV must get equal exposure. Campaign puffery is of course also inappropriate.”

Heh–well, when I rough-drafted that into a Wikipedia discussion page, I didn’t expect it to end up in dead-tree newsprint.

Yours now sort-of expertly,
Betsy

p.s. The new Simpsons Movie is really fun and funny–Frank and I are now baffled by its lukewarm reviews.

p.p.s. Thanks to Dean Barker at Blue Hampshire— without whom I would never have seen this story.

People voting in Cambridge, MA, November 7, 2006

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

Just in: California’s test of its paperless voting machines show that all are hackable, reports Ars Technica.

The news comes less than a week after Senate Democrats declared it’s “too late” to demand paper trails for 2008.

Nonsense!

Paper-trail legislation has been creeping through Congress since Rush Holt introduced it in 2003. Holt re-introduced, citing vote irregularities in Ohio, after the 2004 Presidential election.

Despite many co-sponsors, the bill couldn’t get out of committee, thanks to Representative Bob (“Friend of Diebold”) Ney (R-Ohio), more widely known for mandating Freedom Fries.

It’s more than a year from now until November of 2008. That’s time enough for black-hat hackers to create and offer up for sale the kinds of code tricks California researchers identified–many of which require no more access than a few minutes privacy with one machine. The kind of privacy that you expect when you’re voting.

It ought to be time for the Democrats we just elected to make sure that all votes will be counted fairly in 2008. That’s much more important than investigating Gonzales.


Update: It turns out the Democrats agree–and (even before I wrote this blogpost) had already crafted a compromise bill to for secure voting in 2008.

Photorecipe: Schrödinger tomatoes

Originally uploaded by funadium

Some nights it’s almost too hot to think about food–except for maybe something cold yet spicy like Funadium’s latest photorecipe.

Disclosure–I blogged another Funadium photorecipe, some fusilli called “Waves and particles” and he mailed me some fun Funadium swag from Italy. That was a surprise, not something I was expecting, and I don’t crave more swag for any future blogpost. I just try to blog stuff I think blogreaders will enjoy.

Why are these chili-topped tomatoes named after Erwin Schrödinger? Read the explanation yourself, but try not to lose your appetite when you get to the part about chocolate with bruschetta!

2007 My little sister Ri and her little white dog

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

• “So the fairy godmother rewarded the good little puppy by giving her a magic box that would always be full of dog biscuits.”
• “And then the beautiful princess said, “Who wants to come with me? I feel like going for another walk!”
• “Once upon a time there was a handsome but clumsy prince who couldn’t help dropping food onto the floor.”

Thanks to my sis for that last line, and to her dog for lots of inspiration!

Frank and Betsy and a bit of CMS

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

File this under W for Wow-I-never-thought-I’d-see-this.

Big article in today’s NYT on the interplay of science discoveries and wild rumors. And…blogs are a big part of the current “God-particle” kerfluffle.

“It is exciting even if you think the chances of it being true are only 0 or 10 percent,” said Tommaso Dorigo, from the University of Padua in Italy, who helped spread the D Zero rumor in June on his blog, A Quantum Diaries Survivor.

Wow, the NY Times expects its readers will know what a blog is.

I do wish, though, that science articles didn’t lean on sports metaphors so heavily. The exciting thing about the Higgs boson is the science, not the “race” to be first to see it.