Riba Rambles:
Musings of a Mental Magpie

Posted by Lis Riba at 12:15 PM

Atrios writes "Interesting Times notes the whole story may have started with this press release on a confederacy site.

However, that story was posted on Friday, whereas I had the story Thursday evening!

I know it's petty of me, but I wish I had higher readership so that I could've gotten the credit. [As I uncovered these articles, I did send e-mails to Joshua Micah Marshall, but he's been too busy with other things to update on the issue.]

On the other hand, the number of hits I've gotten has skyrocketed since I added the RSS feed. So, there's still hope for me yet. I just wish somebody had told me that RSS feeds and pinging http://www.weblogs.com/ were so key to higher readership.

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:05 AM

From today's Washington Post: "The massive appropriations bill approved by the Senate late Thursday includes a little-noticed amendment that would cut off funding for a Justice Department program that requires male immigrants from two dozen predominantly Muslim countries to register and be fingerprinted by the Immigration and Naturalization Service."

Though it's buried at the bottom of the article, we owe our thanks to Senator Kennedy for this. It's nice to know that somebody in power is outraged by the outrages. Mind you, this wasn't in the House version, so there's a chance it may not survive til the final version, but at least somebody is trying.

Between this story and the Senate's recent blocking of funds for the "Total Information Awareness" program, things are looking a little brighter for our civil liberties this morning.

Posted by Lis Riba at 1:00 PM

Back in November, I read a blog saying that conservatives were using the McDonalds coffee suit to drum up support for tort reform. I quickly cleaned up some old Usenet posts I made on the subject and posted them to my site. I honestly haven't heard much about the coffee case since then, and assumed the blogger was jumping the gun.

Now, the program that handles my website statistics was down for a couple months. No big deal -- it's mostly curiousity anyway. However, it's back up now and I'm really surprised by the results. My McDonalds essay is the second most popular page on my site! I don't know why.

Day-yumn I just searched Google for mcdonalds liebeck and I'm the second hit! [Seventh hit if you search on mcdonalds coffee.] But Google doesn't list any other pages linking to it. I understand the theory of PageRank, but I just don't grok it in practice, especially where my site is concerned.

I mean, I've commented on this before, back in November. I'm now the number one hit for Clinton impeachment charges, but still don't see any pages linking to that either. [When I showed him this, Ian exclaimed incredulously: "Aiee! You top out CNN!?" :) :) :) ]

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:30 AM

And whaddaya know. Just as I post my own RSS feed, Jim Romenesko's MediaNews gives prominent placement to an OJR article on aggregators.

Cool article. An interesting quote: "News aggregators may yet have unforeseen effects on Web publishing. ... Bloggers say they've learned to craft their weblog entries to write blurbs in the inverted pyramid style and to craft straightforward headlines. Clever, elliptical treatments, or heads that depend on other visual elements on a Web page, don't work when viewed in a news reader." I've already noticed this just one day into the process. Of course, the need for descriptive subjects makes it a bit harder on me, given my tendancy to... well... ramble. We'll just have to see how it goes.

I also liked this bit: But perhaps the biggest potential impact of news readers is the prospect that they will further level the playing field between Big Media and individual content creators. "It's all part of the democratization effect of the Web," says entrepreneur Dave Winer. I think every new web innovation has been heralded as a democratizing feature. And the folks with deep pockets eventually gain the advantage. It would be nice if this one did it, but read my trend analysis to see why I'm so skeptical.

Incidentally, it's things like this (what I've been doing to RSSify my journal) which earned me my Holland code. During my initial outplacement workshop, we took some assessment tests, including the Holland or RIASEC code. I scored an IAC: Primarily Investigative, Secondarily Artistic, Tertially Conventional. What makes this interesting is that Artistic and Conventional are generally in opposition. What I've figured is that I can get really creative about conventional things, such as nitpicking over the HTML code on my website so it looks just right. [You should've seen the way I'd fuss over Notes database design esthetics.]

At any rate, the Holland codes were interesting in a self-evaluative way, but not so much help on the job front. You see, there's a great big book (they have it in the BPL Reference section) which associates the Holland codes with various jobs (as defined by the Dept. of Labor). Not a-one for IAC. No AIC either. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted.

Posted by Lis Riba at 8:30 AM

Cue the lightning effects -- it's working!

And, thanks very much to nolly for pointing out that sometime during the night, LJ changed their policy to allow free users to get a smidgen of syndicated content, so I can now view this journal through LiveJournal and see it like everyone else does.

I didn't expect LJ to date all my posts with last night's timestamp, thus cluttering up everyone's friends lists with two weeks' worth of my garbage. But these things always have bumpy starts.

I've decided against using Blogger Pro's e-mail feature to generate a mailing list from my journal. The mail feature sends posts once, when they are first published, and I tend to tweak and edit my posts a few times after publishing so they look right.

I wouldn't want people to be getting an inferior form of my work. Therefore, I think I'll just share the URL for the syndicated feed, so anybody else who'd like can subscribe and be notified of new posts how they see fit. [I rather liked the Feedreader software for Windows.] The URL is http://www.osmond-riba.org/lis/journal/journal_rss.xml.

Now onto the rest of the day's news.

Wow. Helen Thomas says "This is the worst president ever. He is the worst president in all of American history." And she has up close and personal experience with the last eight, so seems to have some clue of what she's talking about. And, as I mentioned earlier, I really respect Helen Thomas for asking the tough questions and not backing down. Of course, Ian wonders what she thinks of Andrew Jackson. [As seen on Atrios]

It looks like other bloggers are agreeing with me that the Confederate Wreath story is bogus. Even though they're not aware of me (yet) Ian says that the moral of my previous posts (regarding the wreaths) should be "Don't ever piss off a librarian."

And did anybody see that the Economist recommends overhauling copyright by making terms shorter?

This weekend is the Vericon SF convention at Harvard. I don't think I'm going to attend, especially as I still feel like I'm playing catchup from Arisia.

Oh, and in reference to this post, I got an A in my Corporate Libraries class.

And I guess that's about all for this morning. Have a good day, and a good weekend.

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:20 PM

Yielding to the requests from my LiveJournal friends, I have upgraded my Blogger account to Blogger Pro and enabled an RSS feed.
That means that my journal can be syndicated, not only to LiveJournal, but to other aggregators and news services.

It looks like this will only syndicate the most recent seven days I've been posting, and not my archives, but this is definitely a start. Also, I've got it set just to share the first paragraph of my journal with a link back here for the full entry.

I'm not sure what netiquette is, so I'm not just posting the URL of my RSS feed. For now, contact me and I shall provide (besides, that'll let me know where my journal is being read). And I need somebody with a Paid LiveJournal account to fill out the form on http://www.livejournal.com/syn/ (I can't even see that page) which will add it to the LJ subscriptions.10:40 PM: Thanks to you-know-who for creating the LJ account for me! I don't know if sie wants hir name spread about, but sie knows who sie is! Readers with Paid LiveJournals can now go to http://www.livejournal.com/users/riba_rambles/ to get this very content delivered to their friends lists. Enjoy!

Mind you, I may revert back to basic Blogger. One of the tradeoffs in getting the RSS feed is that I can no longer edit my journal in Opera (unless I play with how it identifies itself). So, I may revert. Please give me feedback so I can evaluate based on your needs as well as my own.

I just wish to remind everyone that I don't necessarily know where my journal is being posted. I know for a fact that I won't be able to read comments made to my entries through LiveJournal, so please, please come back here and use the comments field that I've set up for such purposes.

Thank you.

Added a few minutes later:

Darn, it looks like it only syndicates the most recent 16 posts, even if more are visible on the main page. Another strike against continuing the Pro service.

Well, even though it won't be syndicated, I strongly recommend you read Don't Leave Public Schools Behind -- Act! from Monday, January 13.

Posted by Lis Riba at 7:30 PM

I'm starting to get a bit suspicious about this wreath story. The only names mentioned have been John Edward Hurley, president of the Washington-based Confederate Memorial Association, and Vicki Heilig, president of the D.C. chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy.

Hurley's organization has a number of press releases on their website about the wreath hiatus, from July 2001, July 2002, and last month. Hurley seems to believe the reinstatement of the wreath is some form of Bush administration payback to Heilig and Richard T. Hines. However, judging from these and other sources, it looks as if Hurley has been involved in some nasty litigation with the other two.

And it looks like even Salon isn't quite buying Hurley's arguments. On December 20th, Salon reported:

Hmmm...

Posted by Lis Riba at 6:05 PM

From Woodrow Wilson to the first Bush administration, presidents had a tradition of sending a wreath to Confederate Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery on Memorial Day to honor Jefferson Davis. A few days ago, Talking Points Memo reported that the current President Bush has reinstated the practice, after a ten year hiatus.

Today, he writes that the Washington Times has denounced the earlier article, claiming that the tradition was unbroken. The wreath-laying never stopped, according to them, so Bush did nothing that his predecessors didn't.

This sounded a bit odd to me, I decided to put my librarian sleuthing skills to work. [Click here to jump to my conclusions.]

First of all, there exists a Confederate Memorial Day that is celebrated separate from the traditional May Memorial Day found on most calendars. That may cause some confusion in straightening matters out. However, a little searching through the news archives uncovered these gems:

So, unbroken until 1990, and then interrupted not out of egalitarian sentiments, but rather because two different Confederate groups were squabbling. Not bad, but that could just be a one-year hiatus. I continued digging and found two pieces from the Washington Times themselves:

Gee, you'd think they'd've mentioned if the President left a wreath. Particularly since they bothered to mention those from the Senators. And how about this?

So, it's an uninterrupted tradition the UDC president never saw before.

In short:

• Bush Sr. refused to send a wreath in 1990 because of squabbles among Confederate groups *NOT* because he saw any light.
• In 1992, the WT thought that Senators' wreaths were worth remarking upon, but didn't mention any from the President
• In 2001, the president of United Daughters of the Confederacy, DC chapter said she never saw such a wreath before.

Doesn't sound much like an unbroken tradition to me.

I've already e-mailed this to Joshua Micah Marshall, so hopefully this will get wider distribution.

Posted by Lis Riba at 4:05 PM

In my Social Informatics class, we conducted trend analysis on information technology. I concluded that "[t]he main theme that keeps popping up over and over again is that of power and control." Dan Gillmor points out the latest threat -- vertical control. As he points out:

That just about says it all.

On the personal front, this week has been so unproductive I feel like hitting my head with a heavy book and yelling "Bad Dobby!"

My last class starts next week. The professor has just posted her updated description, outline, and assignments. I'm afraid. Particularly of that semester-long project we'll have to do.

But, mostly, I feel the need to repeat my frequent plaint: "I hate job-hunting!"

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:45 AM

I was going through the latest library job postings, and damn if I didn't hate that residency requirement! Tom Menino strictly enforces a law which requires anyone working for the City of Boston to live within the city of Boston, even though the wages of most city jobs make city living unaffordable. Why? Because the BPL is hiring a John Adams Cataloguer:

Covet. covet. covet! [For anyone who is qualified and interested, I found the posting on MLIN.]

Meanwhile, Norman Solomon pays a well-deserved tribute to someone whom I greatly respect: Some people like to play "Hail to the Chief." I would prefer to say "Hail to the dean of the Washington press corps -- Helen Thomas." I wholeheartedly concur.

Also, a very interesting book review on Slate this week. Slate does its book reviews (as it does many columns) by asking two (or more) people to hold a public e-mail conversation on the topic. This week's book is Motherhood Lost, an anthropologist's look at miscarriage.

I'll confess, I've got a lot of fears about pregnancy. I want children, but I'm honestly scared of the physical strains it will put my body through. [When/if it finally happens, I'm going to commission a custom Nancy Button saying "Please DON'T tell me your pregnancy horror stories."]

So, at first thought, a book about miscarriages and the effects they have on women seems to be incredibly counter-productive to my mental state. But somehow it's not. Getting to read objectively about worst case scenarios may actually calm my fears by limiting them to the plausible. Of course, this book is about death of the fetus, and most of the bad things happening to the mothers are psychological, not physical (I'm not sure if I'm ready for that), but it's still a very thought-provoking series of articles.

You can read the review at these links: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

Finally, I've gotten a lot of responses from LiveJournallers to my earlier question of how they'd prefer to read my journal. In brief, LJers prefer to read everything on LJ. But what about you non-LJers. Would you like me to investigate a mailing-list format for my journal? Please respond, even if it's in the negative.

Thanks.

Posted by Lis Riba at 6:30 PM

First of all, I just signed up on Konica Online to retrieve some photos I just had developed. One of the password hint questions asks "Your favorite pass time is?"

I seriously considered submitting "spelling"

Now on to the latest political news:

ONE FOR THE MONEY:Well, I think I'm going to call my Congressman and Senators tomorrow. Capitol Hill Blue is reporting:

"The President considers this nation to be at war," a White House source says," and, as such, considers any opposition to his policies [by members of his administration -- I think!] to be no less than an act of treason."

Okay, when I went to school, we learned about something called a Declaration of War. Without one of those, then we're not a nation at war. And I'm going to call my Congresscritters and demand they either get one of those passed or call the president on wrongly using the term. [Seen originally on Atrios.]

STRIKE TWO: On Friday, the Washington Post prominently reported that "Condoleezza Rice took a rare central role in a domestic debate within the White House and helped persuade President Bush to publicly condemn race-conscious admissions policies at the University of Michigan ... in a series of lengthy one-on-one meetings with [the President]."

Turns out that's not exactly true. As Dan Kennedy points out, in another WP article the very next day, Rice said she "isn't really opposed to affirmative action [and] didn't play a central role in persuading Bush to publicly oppose it. The whole story was apparently planted with the Post by some unbelievably cynical White House officials, whom Rice subsequently took to task." [Quotes from The New Republic; also reported by Howard Kurtz.]

Sleazy. Sleazy. Sleazy. [Not Condi, but whichever "administration officials" were telling lies about her behind her back. And shame on the reporters who didn't follow up with her and instead swallowed their planted story hook, line and sinker!]

THREE'S A CHARM: According to this morning's New York Times, the President's tax proposals will reduce taxes for businesses that buy gas-guzzling SUVs, without giving any break for purchasing more fuel-efficient vehicles. As a Boston Globe editorial puts it, "This proposed bonus for purchases of the least fuel-efficient passenger vehicles comes at the same time the Bush administration is trying to persuade the world that its justification for war with Iraq is not just to ensure cheap oil for wasteful US consumers. It becomes increasingly difficult to accept that contention at face value when the administration refuses to use its authority to encourage greater fuel economy."

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:25 AM

Oh, brilliant!

For those who travel by air and dislike the new "security" measures, take a look Penn Jillette's description of the Bill of Rights, security edition. [Seen in response to a recent Peter David article.

Oh, cool!

As seen on Sideshow, an Internet connection speedometer! Yesterday afternoon, we were running at 1.262 Mbps! (we seem to be a bit sluggish right now)

Meanwhile, Ian's posted about his Arisia experiences in two posts.

Good conclusion on last night's Buffy. Zeppo, meet Gummo. Although I've seen some good anti-Xander points made here and here.

Important question:

Apparently, if I upgrade to Blogger Pro, I will gain the ability to offer mail subscriptions to my journal (no more having to check back here to see when/whether I updated) and I could create a subscription feed that would enable LiveJournal users with paid accounts to read my journal on LJ. I've heard a few people comment that they have problems remembering to read my journal since it is part of my site, rather than somewhere with other blogs.

My question is, oh reader of this journal, would you benefit from either of these features? Would you prefer to have my journal entries mailed directly to you or show up in your LJ friends list to reading it in its current format? And which would you like most? Please comment or e-mail me and let me know. [Frankly, I rather like the idea of getting a copy of my journal up on LJ, since I know so many LJ-ers, and one time I posted something to both places I got way more hits and comments from the LJ side.]

Posted by Lis Riba at 12:00 AM

Tonight, like most Monday nights, was open gaming at Mystery house. It is also, sadly, probably my last open gaming night for several months, as my final class will run Monday nights, begins next week, and ends with my graduation in May.

We had fun. I brought along Doctor Who: Curse of the Fatal Death to watch, since others there hadn't seen it before. It got a lot of laughs, even among the non Whovians. I forgot how funny it was. Afterwards, we played a round of rather cut-throat Munchkin, and followed it up with a quick game of Nanofictionary, which I won.

Then, around 11 PM, we left for home (offering the other non-resident a ride). And, as they said their farewells, all three denizens of Mystery House said they'd have to find excuses to invite me over on other days of the week, since I wouldn't be able to attend future gaming nights. Aww... <sniff> I feel so touched.

Unfortunately, near the end of our evening, Ian started feeling unwell and worries that he may be coming down with Norwalk virus. He apparently worried that if any disease was going around the con that working massage den meant that he would catch it, even though he took precautions by handwashing before and after every client. I hope he's okay.

Posted by Lis Riba at 5:25 PM

One of the general definitions is "writers write." Advice for aspiring writers is simply to write. When writers are asked how they can write so much, the puzzled response is "how can I not?"

I'm starting to understand that sentiment.

I feel like I'm being driven by this story. It may seem like excessive anthropomorphizing, but this story wants to be written and has chosen me as conduit. And sometimes, that's how it feels.

Today, another tidbit came to me. Nothing I had considered before, But it was just like a puzzle piece snapping into place, tying into things I set up in the very first chapter and resolving several open endings I hadn't yet noticed and neatly wrapping other things up.

What's more disturbing is that today I typed up a scene I wrote in my notepad yesterday. And it had two lines of dialog that felt right when I wrote them, but weren't entirely... exact plot-wise. But they fit with the new tidbit I'm adding.

It's hard to explain in vague terms, so for those who want the exact details, highlight and read the following, though it does spoil what's intended as a major shocker late in the story.

Spoilers for "Second chances" (written white-on-white):
Okay, in the opening chapter, Draco fails the Death Eater initiation. He escapes with his life, but Voldemort has his wand.
The night of the Yule Ball, Crabbe and Goyle, under Voldemort's orders, murder Dumbledore, risking the continued existence of Hogwarts as a school.
I had hoped that Draco could get his own wand back for the final confrontation with Voldemort.
So, the solution I came up with today was Crabbe and Goyle use Draco's wand to murder Dumbledore, leaving it at the scene!
And the creepy bit is this exchange of dialog I wrote before I had this revelation:
  "You turned in Crabbe and Goyle," observed Lucius.
  "I had to. They would've suspected me otherwise."
Now, there was no reason for Draco to be under much suspicion, unless his own wand was the murder weapon.
Click. Click. Click.

My doubts about writing this story are fading fast. In fact, I'm wondering whether the story will let me escape untold. Does that make sense?

Posted by Lis Riba at 12:01 PM

Arisia was fun but exhausting, the way a good con should be. Ian worked massage den; I floated around the panel like a butterfly, flitting from panel to panel as the whims took me. Some random observations:

• The Looney Labs folks are really cool people. Attended one of their panels in which they explained some of the design choices in Chrononauts (and offered them a few historic ideas for the possible sequel game), played a couple games of Nanofictionary (which I eventually bought), ate their Pop-Tarts, also bought a copy of Proton, which is just perfect size and weight to slip into my purse for times I get bored. We chatted a bit with them between panels, and they're just really cool people. I have to remember to send them instructions on how to make bunnies out of Origami.
• I got to meet a red-tailed hawk in the Con Suite on Saturday. Unfortunately, I couldn't attend the panel on falconry, but what a beautiful bird. I want one!
• One of the better panels was Sarah Smith's reading of her forthcoming novel, Chasing Shakespeares, about the authorship controversy. Only one other person showed up, so we wound up Shakespeare-geeking, trading resources and theories... So cool, so educational, so much fun. [For example, apparently the mechanicals' play in Midsummer Night's Dream is based on an actual play on Pyramus & Thisbe; she's going to email me information on tracking that one down.] You can read more on her website, including a lot of useful and fun links.
• An off-the-cuff line I was proud of. In a panel about Buffy Season Six, I complained that I thought it was a flaw that they never foreshadowed any risks of magic addiction. Dan Kimmel asked whether events in my life were foreshadowed, and I snapped back, "Joss Whedon isn't scripting my life."
• The con also held a small track (4 hours of panels, prereg required) on jobhunting, which turned out to be very useful. I wonder if that means I can deduct some of the con expenses.
• Still, we managed a surprisingly frugal con. Since Ian was staff, he got his meals in staff den and we were able to crash in the staff support room. I saw several books in the dealer's room that I desperately wanted to read (including the new one by the GoH, Ruled Britannia), but I popped over to the Internet room, and Cambridge Public Library had copies of them all (and RB was actually available!) so I just put hold requests on them all and saved myself the money.
• That given, I noticed a bit of a disconnect between the con and the economy. I overheard some staffer say that people were complaining about the lack of more substantial foods in Con Suite, and seemed to be relying on the free food for their meals. The staffer blamed that on the cold weather and people being unwilling to go outside. I disagree. People were eating the con-provided free food to save money. Dealer's Row also felt somewhat off. It seemed unbalanced in favor of expensive luxuries -- clothes, garb, armor, weapons, jewelry -- and I didn't see as many dealers selling less expensive merchandise like books and games. Just seemed out of place to me.
  FWIW, I mentioned this to the folks running Boskone, and suggested they set aside a place and/or time for job networking, because I think that'll go over really well.
• Amazingly enough, even with all of that, my fanfic writing proceeded apace. During slow times, I kept writing notes in my little steno pad, and by Saturday night, I had an outline of the full story, and even worked out a suitable conclusion. I love the way this story keeps working out. It's just coming together. I get an idea for a scene, tease it out like combing wool, and discover resonances to themes I set up in the first chapter... I've already used up most of a steno pad with notes (in addition to my actual writing on the computer) and only started the new pad on January 1st. I think this could turn out really good. And I may have finally broken my decade-plus curse of Fiction Writer's Block.

Otherwise, I met some nifty people, reconnected with old friends, and generally had a great if exhausting time. Today I'm enjoying the afterglow: catching up on sleep and e-mail and news and getting a head start on the week ahead, and feeling pleasantly relaxed. Reality is starting to intrude once again: Boopsie just barfed on the comforter to express her displeasure with our absence. But in all, it was a very good con.

Added later:

Oh, how could I forget to mention the ribbons!? Con badges are normally adorned with ribbons like "Staff," "Program Participant," "Gopher," etcetera. However, this year the con staff printed at least three-dozen different silly slogans, and various people were passing them out randomly. Gave people excuses to look at other people's badges (and made it easier to refresh on other people's names in the process). At the end of the con, I had five ribbons:

• Be brave, throw a room party (my first ribbon)
• Born to be cuddled
• Wandering punster
• Got books?
• Cute? I can do cute.

I briefly had "Hug slut" but gave that to Nye, who needed it more. The ribbon I most wished I had gotten was "Prooffreading at it's best." That one hurt to read.

I'll bet the company they contracted to make the ribbons must've had a blast. It's a great break from the usual boring "First Place" thru "Honorable Mention" that they normally have to print.

It was a really clever and fun idea, and I hope other conventions pick up on it... [Hint, dad!]