Riba Rambles:
Musings of a Mental Magpie

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:30 AM

Last night, Ian & I went to a double-feature at the second run theater: The Importance of being Earnest and About a boy. I highly recommend them both -- atypical romantic comedies that are a lot of fun. At the end of Earnest, Ian and I turned to each other. He said that he wanted to read more of Wilde's plays. I said I wanted to read a biography of Wilde... Such different approaches to things, we have.

For a period of time between college graduation and dating Ian, I was a serious fag hag (well, okay, a frivolous fag hag -- I rarely maintain a serious attitude towards anything except work; read my quotes from Tip O'Neill and Margot Fonteyn). It seems like that has evolved into a tropism towards gay authors -- Marlowe, Wilde, Maupin, to name a few...

Ah well, there are worse interests one could have, I suppose. 8)

BTW, I've fixed the problem with my archives that I reported in my last post. I've also transferred all the comments to my journal that were posted using the older system into my new commenting program. Just so you know.

Posted by Lis Riba at 2:45 PM

First of all, I'm not sure what's going on but something seems wrong with my archives. Only my earliest entries are showing, and republishing them is giving Blogger errors. Be patient, I hope to get it fixed soon.

Second, a bit of Elizabethan history. When Queen Elizabeth made her way down the streets of London before her coronation, she hired a reporter to walk alongside and take notes. Shortly thereafter, a pamphlet was published detailing the day's events: The Quene's Majestie's passage through the citie of London to westminster the daye before her coronacion. I have been trying to find the text of this online, and so far haven't had much luck. Since it must be public domain by now, if I don't find a copy online, I'm strongly considering either transcribing or OCRing (and correcting it) to ensure that there is a copy online. Just for what it's worth -- it sounds like it was a fascinating day.

Finally,

A few more thoughts on the pledge of allegience

Given the recent scrutiny to the history and wording of the pledge, I started really thinking about it -- applying textual analysis to it, as it were, and it raises a few questions:

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:31 PM

As long as we're talking politics and the courts, I just want to add that I am extremely disappointed in the recent Supreme Court ruling authorizing random drug tests for any student participating in any extracurricular activity, regardless of whether the school actually has a drug problem or not.

After Columbine, I wrote the following:

Those words, from Tinker vs. Des Moines, meant a lot to me; I feel very depressed that they've not only been ignored, but directly reversed. Schoolchildren no longer have greater rights than adults. They no longer are granted the same rights as adults -- they now have fewer rights than other citizens. I find that to be a very sad statement about our nation -- far more egregious than the current flap over the pledge of allegience -- and I mourn for our country and its loss.

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:05 PM

A friend asked me to say a few words on the recent court decision regarding the Pledge of Allegiance.
Well, there goes my political viability...

To put it as succinctly as possible:
 Either the phrase "under God" is meaningless or it serves a purpose. If it's meaningless, then why is it there? If it serves a purpose, then that purpose is clearly religious and it violates the Establishment clause.

In a 1984 dissenting opinion, Supreme Court Justice Brennan wrote (with Marshall, Blackmun & Stevens concurring):

I would suggest that such practices as the designation of "In God We Trust" as our national motto, or the references to God contained in the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag ... have lost through rote repetition any significant religious content.

Do Americans really want to water down religious expressions to make them meaningless like this?

Once again, I'm so glad that I read Tocqueville and understand the concept he called Tyranny of the majority:

The authority of a king is physical and controls the actions of men without subduing their will. But the majority possesses a power that is physical and moral at the same time, which acts upon the will as much as upon the actions and represses not only all contest, but all controversy.

With a tyrannical autocrat, the laws and threats are explicit. When majority rules, the pressure is much more insidious, and thus worse for society overall. Movie critics, scientists, historians can all tell you that what's popular isn't necessarily what's right. Even if it's a million-to-one odds, that one lone individual may still be correct.

I'll close with a Heinlein quote [And given how controversial he is; that's probably the final nail in my political aspirations]:

"Democracy is based on the assumption that a million men are wiser than one man. How's that again? I missed something."
          -- Robert A. Heinlein, The Notebooks of Lazarus Long

Added later:

Slate has a good article on the subject. To quote a short excerpt:

Chatterbox wishes that "under God" as recited in public schoolrooms had no "significant religious content." But the hysterical reaction to the 9th Circuit decision on the part of Christian conservatives proves this isn't so.

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:00 PM

A few more website updates to announce:

I have just posted new photos to my Pictures page. These include my new Victorian outfit and my purple hair.
I've also added descriptions of more of my roleplaying characters on my Recreation page and made further updates to the About Me essay.
Finally, I've started on a few more pieces for my Writing page, both non-fiction and fiction. (Yes, I'm actually trying to write fiction again!) I hope to finish and post these in the next few weeks.

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:15 PM

In 1988 or so, I saw a monologue by one of the (Brandeis) drama department MFA students. The man talked about being a trendsetter of sorts. If he liked something, it would inevitably become popular. He (apologetically) claimed responsibility for leisure suits, but justified it by saying he was only 7 at the time. He turned to my friend Jill (in the front row) and offered to make her an international superstar. [My immense gratitude if anyone can provide any more info about this monolog, such as author, title, or anything that would enable me to find and read the script.]

The reason I mention this is because I'm worried that the same thing is happening to me. I became a fan of John Adams after watching 1776, and hearing a talk by Joseph Ellis on C-SPAN. Back in 1998 I started reading up about him. Then, last year, he suddenly burst into the limelight. David McCullough wrote a biography which became a bestseller; other books have come out or are planned; there's talk of finally giving him monuments here in Boston and in Washington, DC. John Adams is no longer ignored and dismissed; he's become trendy... but I was into John Adams before John Adams was popular

I'm writing this now, because I just realized something. As my Reading lists show, I've really gotten off reading about all things Elizabethan, particularly biographies of the Queen herself. [No, it has no relation to my name.] Well, I just realized that 2003 will be the 400th anniversary of her death. Major museum exhibits are planned here and in England (such as the one in DC I mentioned a few days ago). I'm sure that more books and events will be planned. Whatever happens, I expect it's going to be big, real big. Elizabeth I is going to be big. And once again, I was there first.

Kinda spooky.

In the past I've noticed this ability on a small-scale. I used to call it "contagious enthusiasm." I introduced friends to TV shows or music groups or books that I liked, and they became bigger fans of the series than I ever was. I've turned individuals onto Dr. Who, the Monkees, comic books, and so on. But that was always me personally recommending things to people directly.

Now, these larger trends are probably coincidences, but it still feels odd that two obsessions that I once thought were my own private passions become mainstream and then big-time. And it makes me wonder what other interests of mine might break out of the niche in the future.

When I read Malcolm Gladwell's Tipping point, I recognized myself in his "Maven" persona-type. However, Ian pointed out that most mavens Gladwell describes are specialists in some area, and I'm too much of a generalist. I'm an infovore, with interests all over the map. This week I've been delving into Elizabeth I, Christopher Marlowe, [and I've got a list of other names and titles to pursue chaining off these works], the Gunpowder Plot, the English Civil War, medical ethics & pain management & gender bias thereof, drink recipes, D&D, plus my regular daily dose of news, mainstream and topical, and meta-media.

Anyway, if any coolhunters read this journal and want to talk to me about upcoming trends, I'd be delighted.

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:15 AM

Okay, I've cleaned up the interface a little bit this morning, removing the random quotes from the left frame (all those quotes and more can be found on my Quotations page).

As a matter of fact, I've entirely removed the left frame, thus providing more space for my actual posts. The contents formerly in that pane (searching and links to the archives) can now be found at the bottom of the page. On the side, they were just too much wasted space.

I hope you like the new look.

Posted by Lis Riba at 12:01 AM

A few more random ramblings:

• Sunday night, I sent the following question to Roger Ebert's Movie Answer Man column (although I'd welcome other responses in my comments box):
  Subject: Lilo & Stitch & the MPAA
       I know that it's hard to explain the motivations of the MPAA, but why was Lilo & Stitch rated PG, when Disney's much darker animated film "Hunchback of Notre Dame" got a G rating? I've seen both, and would think the contents of Hunchback would be much more problematic for small children, and hence more objectionable.
• Sunday's New York Times has a fascinating and disturbing article about how women's physiology may mean that they suffer more pain than men, yet "women's pain reports are taken less seriously than men's, and women receive less aggressive treatment than men for their pain" and that women were "more likely to have their pain reports discounted as 'emotional' or 'psychogenic' and, therefore, 'not real.'"
    A report in the Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, titled "The Girl Who Cried Pain: A Bias Against Women in the Treatment of Pain" is available online, and makes for some very interesting reading on the subject. ["One particularly troublesome study indicated that women are more likely to be given sedatives for their pain and men to be given pain medication."]
    This sounds somewhat similar to what I described in my 1998 essay, Impotence and Inequities. And I think I may have my topic to research in my government class...
• The BBC History Reading Room contains some delightful essays by noted historians, both purely historical and speculation on such questions as What if the Gunpowder Plot had succeeded?.
    If your tastes are less literary, the Multimedia Zone has history-based games, which can be a lot of fun. (How well do you know Scottish slang?)
• Finally, you may have noticed that I finally got rid of the banner ads at the top of my journal. Hooray!

Posted by Lis Riba at 4:55 PM

A very refreshing summer drink: Italian soda made with mint syrup. I recently discovered it and recommend them. Very cooling on hot days...

Added later:
BTW, does anybody know where to buy the syrups for Italian sodas? I'd like to make these at home...
Thanks in advance!