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

Sooo good to be home again. No, that’s not my house–it’s a sliver of ivy-covered autumnal tower from the Bavarian castle with wonderful wifi. And I don’t miss it, not one little bit. I’m back in the stolid brick Cambridge house that has all my own dear stuff inside it, including my very own bedroom and bookshelves and bathtub. Ahhhhhh! Which reminds me of one of my favorite stories about my somewhat-irascible Grandpa Devine.

Long, long ago, in the late fifties or early sixties, I happened to be visiting his stolid brick NH house when he got what was then a very unusual phone call.

I heard only one side of it–his side–which went something like this:”Yes….yes…yes…WHAT?”

“I beg your pardon?”….

“This house? Do I want to remodel this house?”…

“Madame, have you ever seen my house?”…

“No, I didn’t think so. If you had, you would never have made such a phone call. This house doesn’t need to be remodeled, any more than the TAJ MAHAL!”…

“Good DAY, Madame.”

I’m so glad to be home, in my very own Taj Mahal.

Sigh–Joi Ito watched the Ig Nobels, but I couldn’t get the webcast to play until now. So I am sitting here, on my Bavarian mountain, listening to the “Infinite Chopsticks” overture as I write this blogpost.

Meanwhile, I’ve been making do with Feedster searches for “ignobel” and “ig nobel“, and “igs.”
These turned up various stories in MSM: AP, ABC Science Online, The Guardian, and New Scientist.

And, would you believe, the Ig Nobels got blogged in

• French
• Russian,
• Spanish
• Chinese
• Japanese,
• Korean.
• Dutch (“Testikelprotheses goed voor Ig Nobel-prijs”)
• Vietnamese, and
• Portuguese (I think).

Ahh, I did get to see my own children at about minute 24 carrying “Frank Junior” onstage–he gets “introduced” about minute 33. And I see that Marc Abrahams has posted this year’s winners, releasing me from the heavy burden of secrecy. Ahhhh.

Wait–do two “aahhh”s make up for my initial “sigh”? “Subvocal utterance: A four-dimensional calculus”–if I could just publish such a scholarly paper, I might just win myself one of those Ig Nobel Prizes!

A recent scholarly paper by Richard Price asks, “In an expanding universe, what doesn’t expand?“

The expansion of the universe is often viewed as a uniform stretching of space that would affect compact objects, atoms and stars, as well as the separation of galaxies. One usually hears that bound systems do not take part in the general expansion, but a much more subtle question is whether bound systems expand partially. In this paper, a very definitive answer is given…

If parts of the universe grew, but others didn’t, here are my nominations…

• Let parking lots stretch while our cars all remain the same size.
• Let space inside airplanes get bigger while bodies stay constant.
• Let people get taller without anyone getting fatter.

Sadly,Price’s research has not yet stretched (sorry) much beyond models of classical atoms.

And real-life observation suggests opposite effects for every single one of my hopeful wishes….

Thanks to Tingilinde for the link!

Even more full-circle 2005 Nobel strangeness: 2005 Physics Nobel laureate Roy Glauber is a longtime star of the IgNobel Prize ceremonies.

Frank and I will be watching via this year’s Ig Nobel webcast (October 6) from a mountaintop in Bavaria (with good wifi.) And yet, despite our distance in physical space, Frank will have his own connection to the IgNobels this year for the very first time. Not a talking head, not a walk-on part, but (as the seasick Frenchman replied when the steward asked if he had dined) “Au contraire.”

All fans of funny ha-ha and funny peculiar should watch the IgNobels!

One year ago, Frank got the Nobel phone call at 5:30 a.m. This year, one of those phone calls went to Roy Glauber, a Cambridge neighbor.
It’s full circle time–and, what a wonderful, funny (peculiar and ha-ha) year this has been.

• Fans of J Lo have besieged my husband for autographs.
• HRH Prince Carl Phillip of Sweden told me which kind of long underwear is best for the Ice Hotel (Middle weight, he said, and he was right.)
• Frank’s picture got added to Princeton’s Nobel gallery, a place we loved visiting, way back when we were courting.
• And I’m racing to sort out, by October 15, the rest of this year’s adventures for publication in a book with Frank!

Frank’s been invited to far more places than he could possibly go–and we’ve gone to far more of them than we probably should have. But how could we regret, despite battered suitcases now, and sometimes sore feet, all the places we’ve seen, the new things we’ve discovered, and wonderful people we’ve met?

Thank you, Nobel Foundation, for making this possible. And thank you, dear blogreaders all, for sharing this journey.

…our next Secretary of Agriculture, maybe?

Warning: swallow your coffee and put down that can of cola before clicking to see more of Mr. Sun’s US Cabinet predictions (“Veterans Affairs: Don’t really know any, ask McCain”) based on recent news reports.

Bonus link: Somebody funny is blogging as Harriet Miers.

Very, very, very, very, VERY (!!!!) sweet…

“It is the technology that makes the music. So the search for the music begins with the technology.” Univ.Doz. Mag. Alfons Huber Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna An arc of glue on a soundboard. Three different but similar harpsichords, all with their damping boards mysteriously vanished. Metal-working tools of the sixteenth century. Early music by Haydn that uses chords your fingers can’t span on a modern keyboard. These are the kinds of clues Alfons Huber deciphers to repair and recreate ancient musical instruments for the Vienna Kunsthistorisches Museum’s historic collection.

A world-class expert on the 600-year history of the Austrian harpsichord, Professor Huber also creates lovely replica instruments so that museum-goers can feel their “action”–and hear the sounds that Haydn and others imagined as they composed. The differences can be subtle or striking. Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata sounds amazing on a period instrument! Later, Frank got to try out Mozart’s Sonata in C Major on the Mozart-replica keyboard in this picture.

Many thanks to Professor Huber, and to harpsichordist Susanne von Laun, who led us through Hamburg’s lovely historical keyboards, for making this adventure possible! (Note to the learned: please ascribe any errors in my description to bad memory; I was much too enthralled to take any detailed notes.)

Related webpages:

• Webpage for Vienna’s historic keyboard instruments (with links to a sound file for each one.)
• Exhibition coming in May, 2006: Viennese pianofortes in the time of Mozart.
• More about the Vienna museum display

If you go: The display of ancient musical instruments is not in the Kunsthistorisches Museum itself but in the Neue Burg nearby (in the same building as the Nationalbibliothek.)

“In my pocket,” said Frank.

For more on the state of our Vienna adventure, its Flickr album now includes rocks from Mars, a lady poisoner, an Olympic discus-thrower, and a keyboard Mozart might have played.