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

Side view of surprising Swarovski waterfall

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine.

One day off from opera preparation, here in Austria–three of us carpediemed off to visit see the local tourist ne plus ultra.

Enough Latin? Oodgay, I’llway opstay ownay.

Some favorite bits of Swarovski’s “Crystal world:”

• Vintage thirties photos of glamorous women with crystals, including a Folies Bergeres girl chatting with two Gauloise-smoking stagehands–she’s wearing a (Swarovski?) necklace, and nothing else.
• Giant, moving, playing accordion
• World’s largest gem, a carved crystal that probably weighs about 20 kilos
• Dream scene with glittery toy zebra in a glittery red shoe, rocking on a glittery sea
• The museum’s entrance, hidden under this waterfall.

We wandered the park a long time before we found it.

Our home phone has been ringing off the hook in response to this press release from the IgNobellians:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

=================================================
Nobel Physicist Makes Operatic Debut
— Frank Wilczek Plays Amorous Atom in the Alps–
=================================================

ALPBACH, AUSTRIA, August 18, 2006 — Frank Wilczek already has a Nobel Prize, but on August 25 he will be honored on an even higher level — topographically higher, that is. In the Austrian mountain village of Alpach, elevation 1,000 meters above sea level, Wilczek will sing the lead role in the the opera “Atom & Eve.”

This will be Frank Wilczek’s operatic singing debut, as well as the first time “Atom & Eve” has been performed in Austria. The opera recounts the romance between a humble oxygen atom and the beautiful female chemist who spies him one day in her microscope. In the great tradition of operatic lovers from Tristan and Iseult to Rudolph and Mimi, Atom and Eve have some obvious difficulties to overcome. Professor Diane Shooman of Vienna will co-star, in the role of Eve. Pianist Paul Luggar of the Innsbruck Conservatory will accompany the singers.

Wilczek is Herman Feshbach Professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2004 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics, for work on subatomic particles indicating that distance makes the quarks grow fonder (or at least increases their attraction). Diane Shooman teaches at the FH Technikum-Wien in Vienna, and at the University of Art in Linz.

“Atom & Eve” is a featured part of the 2006 Alpbach Technology Conference. The conference brings business, government, science and other leaders from around the world together for several days, high up in the tiny town once voted “the most beautiful village” in Austria. Conference speakers and attendees debate the significance of technological developments for the business world and society, as well as living standards, quality of life, and competitiveness.

“Atom & Eve” debuted in 2003 at the Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony at Harvard University. The Ig Nobel Prizes honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think. Marc Abrahams, organizer of the Ig Nobel Prizes, wrote the opera’s libretto. Abrahams is also the editor of the science humor magazine Annals of Improbable Research. Abrahams will deliver a talk about the opera, and about the Ig Nobel Prizes, and improbable research in general. A past Ig Nobel Prize winner — Karl Schwärzler, the entrepreneur who made it possible to rent the entire nation of Liechtenstein for corporate conventions, weddings, bar mitzvahs, and other gatherings — will also give a brief talk.

The “Atom & Eve” performance, together with talks by Marc Abrahams and Karl Schwärzler, will be webcast live on Friday, August 25, 2006, beginning at 7:00 pm Austria time.

=================================
WEBCAST DETAILS:

WHEN: Friday, August 25, 2006, beginning at 7:00 pm (Austria time)

WHERE ON THE WEB:
The webcast will be streamed in both German and English:
GERMAN:
http://www.alpbach.org/deutsch/forum2006/technologie.htm
ENGLISH: http://www.alpbach.org/English/forum2006/technologie.htm
=================================
OTHER INFO:

Alpbach Technology Forum: <http://www.alpbach.org/>

Annals of Improbable Research: <http://www.improbable.com/>

Frank Wilczek:
<http://web.mit.edu/physics/facultyandstaff/faculty/frank_wilczek.html>

Libretto of “Atom & Eve”:
<http://www.improbable.com/ig/2003/atom-eve-libretto.html>

Front porch view

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine.

Maybe I should spend some time re-painting that chair, instead of just sitting down in it to read another book?

Too late for that now–we’re headed off to Austria tomorrow. In addition to giving a physics talk or two, Frank will sing the role of a lovelorn oxygen atom in one of Marc Abrahams’ IgNobel operas…

August 18 is the birthday of my brother Mark, shown here on the day that he and his puppy Too-Shy won “Best of the Mongrel.”

As the only child of us four with a summer birthday, he was regularly talked into asking for money as a birthday gift–money that would all be spent on treehouse supplies.

August is here, but Mark is no longer “making trouble for a better tomorrow.”

I miss you, Mark.

Let it be recorded that Frank is now the proud owner of a new Honda Civic Hybrid with a navigational computer, apparently the only such car for sale anywhere in the New England area. Thank you, Alfredo and Honda Cars of Boston, which is in Everett, but never mind. I’d also like to immortalize Frank’s 10-minute technique for selecting a replacement car:

BETSY TO FRANK: Look, I found the car issue of Consumer Reports.

FRANK TO BETSY: (Ten minutes later) I want a Honda Civic Hybrid with a navigational computer.

BETSY TO FRANK: I have a Honda Accord Hybrid. You might want one of those, they’re a little bigger.

FRANK TO BETSY: (Genuinely puzzled why I would suggest this.) But the Honda Civic has better gas mileage. And it’s also cheaper!

So Frank drove back to NH in my Accord. A few days later, I followed him in a new Honda Civic–which does get better gas mileage.

But I’m less evolved than Frank, and I like my own car.

“How Kissing Works” –excuse me, Google, I know that HowStuffWorks page title says “kissing”, but their visual (unlike mine) is a face with no skin, while the article (“cooties?”) has strong pro-abstinence vibes…I’m not sure your ads for high-priced lip balm work here.

Oh, and a tie-in to Mobil Travel Guides, which sent me to check out the HowStuffWorks take on
“How Gas Prices Work.”

Mmm, a scholarly-looking breakdown with info on crude oil prices, demand, taxes, and–but something is missing, those record profits for oil companies. MSNBC News in July seemed to think that was part of the story:

With crude trading around $60 a barrel, the oil industry is enjoying one of the biggest windfalls in its history…

“This is the mother of all booms,” said Oppenheimer & Co. oil analyst Fadel Gheit. “They have so much profit, it’s almost an embarrassment of riches. They don’t know what to do with it.” …Since January 2002, stocks of major oil companies have gained 88 percent; during that period the Standard and Poor’s 500 index has gained less than half as much….

MSNBC notes that “All of this industry good fortune has not escaped the notice of consumers,” which does kind of leave you wondering how it manages to go unnoticed at HowStuffWorks…

How does that work, HowStuffWorks?

There’s more funny stuff on the kissing from the often-startling Mr. Sun. (“Do not look directly at Mr. Sun. Bask in him.”)

A California friend just sent me email lamenting that the BlueCoat WebFilter has declared my blog off-limits for “Adult/Mature Content.”

Their website helpfully explains this category:

“Sites that contain material of adult nature that does not necessarily contain excessive violence, sexual
content, or nudity. These sites include very profane or vulgar content and sites that are not appropriate for children.

Very profane and vulgar content? Good grief.

I’m curious to know if rightwing blogs are also banned by these mysterious people.

The Irregular Times scolded this blog and others for interfering with Ellen Tobin’s “work in her career as a political consultant.” What darn career as a political consultant? Ellen Tobin has never had a career as a political consultant. The idea that she has suddenly acquired such a career, and become so good at it that she’s already worth $386,000 to struggling Republican Senator Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, is pretty ludicrous.

The idea that the RNC is using Chafee to funnel continuing hush money to James Tobin seems much more likely.

The Washington Post and the Providence Journal give conflicting accounts of Ellen Tobin’s role in Northeast Strategies. Neither one suggests that she is working as a political consultant.

I’d be very curious to know if the RNC’s generosity to Lincoln Chafee included a recent donation of, oh, $386,000 or thereabouts with private instructions of just where to spend that amount…

Summarizing my talk at Wikimania…

0) In quantum mechanics, looking at something changes its nature. Media attention creates just such effects on Wikipedia pages, and elsewhere all over the two-way web. Call it the “Paris Hilton” quantum effect. 0.5) Wikipedia has good tools to deal with individual vandals, mostly based on searching for “bad” strings in text/username and then blocking IPs that create such edits. We also need tools for vandal waves and spin waves, problems we’ll face increasingly in the future as Wikipedia gets more media attention. 1) An vandal wave* occurs when a controversial topic gets hit by a lot of different editors, time-synchronized because they arrive from a media event. For example, the leftwing blogs deploring the “swiftboating” article on Nov. 29, 2005 the Adam Curry/podcasting news on Dec. 2, 2005, or Stephen Colbert’s recently urging people to edit “elephant” Such waves yield mostly bad edits because of the way the editing software fails when they occur.

2) You can detect a vandal wave by two simple metrics. 1) The average time between edits by *different* users gets very short. 2) The ratio of edits by IP to edits by registed Wikipedians goes way up. (This isn’t because most IPs are vandals–it’s because a heavy influx of IPs to one page gives you warning that a lot of new users are suddenly seeing that page.) Putting numbers on that–depends on what kind of traffic your page gets normally. (Here I made some arm-waving mention of “derivatives” and even “second derivatives.”)

3) It’s important to respond fast–first because the media event is giving lots of people their first impression of Wikipedia, so you want that impression to be an accurate picture of Wikipedia at its best. Second, because editing software fails in a bad way under such heavy use–“edit conflicts” block people’s thoughtful contributions, while permitting less desirable but faster edits, such as blanking the page, adding an obscenity, or even just correcting one word without realizing a larger problem exists.

4) Wikipedia’s vprotect response should be re-thought as a way to welcome potential new editors at the same time as blocking quick bad edits. For example, the vprotect could include a link to recent page history to show why the vprotect has been added. Also, “failed edits” shouldn’t be dumped and lost–chances are people put thought and effort into creating them. There should be a backup page or two for each controversial article where such “lost” edits get archived so that they can become part of the discussion once the pace of bad edits slows down.

5) A “vandal wave” occurs in response to media attention. “Spin waves” occur in anticipation of media attention, as motivated and paid professional writers try to spin the content of pages. These writers will become increasingly good at hiding their motivation and their identities–we need better techniques to deal with them than outing the few inept ones who get caught.

6) Wikipedia is a resource not only of facts but also of coding solutions that other big interactive websites will be needing in the future. Wikipedia is full not only of words but also of numbers–for example, the timestamp on each edit makes it easy to compute time between edits. These matters will become very important with the growth of “two-way web.” Here at Wikipedia, we saw them first!

* People at the talk correctly pointed out that “vandal wave” was too narrow a description. So with a tip of my hat to Doc Searls, who talks about an “intention economy”, maybe we should call them intention waves. A wave of people arrives at your page–motivated not just to take a look, but to try to play with your software to make the page look more like what they want to see.

There you have the meat of it–my first PowerPoint assisted talk ever–sad that my summary has to leave out the funny parts and fine pictures….