Riba Rambles:
Musings of a Mental Magpie

Posted by Lis Riba at 5:45 PM

Well, I e-mailed a letter to the Globe letter column, the reporter and the ombudsman. I really hope they print it. In the meantime, I noticed thru Google News that the article is being syndicated to other papers. In case anybody wants to refute it there as well, here's the text of what I sent. [This is largely a rehash of my earlier post.]

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The Justice Department spokeswoman told several blatant lies in your recent article on the USA PATRIOT Act ("Literary groups decry Patriot Act as invasion of privacy", May 16).

For the record, Section 215 never specifies libraries; its effects are much broader. It lets law enforcement see more than just "what [somebody] is doing on a computer." The law itself says they can request "any tangible things (including books, records, papers, documents, and other items)." Plus, there's no way technologically to track what one person does on a public library computer without recording everybody's actions on that machine.

According to the General Accounting Office and independent investigations, three-fourths of terrorism cases filed by the Justice Department since 9/11 have had nothing to do with terrorism. Thus, it's hardly reassuring that this law only affects those "identified as a terrorist" because most of the people they target are innocent. And while the law does require a court order, it goes through the secretive FISA court system which has never rejected such a request.

If the USA PATRIOT Act were as innocuous as the DoJ would like us to believe, why don't they tell the truth? Lack of understanding? I think we understand the Act better than Ms. Comstock would like.

I'm also disappointed that the Globe gave her the final word in the article. Fairness and balance are admirable goals, but that's still no excuse for allowing falsehoods to spread uncorrected.

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BTW, if you're interested in staying up-to-date on the USA PATRIOT Act and related civil liberties issues, take a look at the PatriotWatch blog and the We hate the PATRIOT Act LiveJournal community. [I've been meaning to recommend PatriotWatch for a while now.]

And speaking of civil liberties, even though the Texas Democrat walkout is now over (successfully), Talking Points Memo has been all over the story of Homeland Security's involvement in this post and the four following.

Posted by Lis Riba at 2:30 PM

Just a quick rebuttal to something USA PATRIOT-related in today's news. This morning's Boston Globe printed an article "Literary groups decry Patriot Act as invasion of privacy" Though generally favorable, it gives the last word to the DoJ:

Barbara Comstock, spokeswoman for the US Justice Department, yesterday said the opposition to the Patriot Act is misplaced. ''All Section 215 says is that when someone who is not an American citizen or is identified as a terrorist comes to a library to use a computer, we can go into the library and see what he is doing on that computer,'' Comstock said. ''The hysteria about this is due to a lack of understanding that a court order is required.''

Nice dodge, but don't buy it. Let's just dissect that statement a little:

"[L]ack of understanding"?
I think we understand the Act better than the spokeswoman would like.

Here's a more accurate translation:

''Section 215 says for someone who is not an American citizen or anybody we label as a terrorist (although 73% are innocent), we can go into any place we suspect that person goes and see any records they have on that person,'' Comstock said. ''The hysteria about this is due to understanding that court orders for this are always approved.''

For more on the USA PATRIOT Act and libraries, read my paper on the subject at http://www.osmond-riba.org/lis/usapatriot.htm.
And now I have to try to find time this weekend to write a letter to the Globe. Fairness and balance does NOT mean allowing lies to go uncorrected.

Oh, and since I'm posting, I wanted to point out my husband's letter to the local paper! Post any comments on this to his journal, but I just wanted to say how much I loved him.

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:01 AM

Looks like I chose the right time to join this company. Yesterday, we held a ship party for a new product. Food and punch and goodies. The CEO handed out little prizes to everybody, calling each person up to the front by name (a great opportunity for me to match names to faces). Since I've got so much to learn, I got a pair of Lennon-like (sun)glasses for all my heavy reading. Other coworkers got things like a propellor beanie (to help her with knowledge transfer), a crystal ball (for handling tough customer calls), a mood ring (for HR) and so on. And then we all got t-shirts with the product logo and really nifty notebooks imprinted with the company name.

Like I've said before, I'm working with a nice group of people.

Meanwhile, I've been answering support questions that have come in over email, I'm doing some QE testing for one product and my first phone shift begins Tuesday afternoon.

Anyway, missed the eclipse last night -- it was too cloudy outside. Instead, I spent yesterday evening cleaning up my hard drive a bit. Moving all my school and jobhunting files out of My Documents (and My Downloads) and into my backup drive. Which also meant re-partitioning my D drive so I'd have enough room for everything and then defragmenting my C drive overnight. I want/need to make some further updates in the weeks ahead and then I'm going to do a full backup and send my machine off to Sony to fix some longstanding problems with the power supply that I've managed to nurse along for ages. It'll be annoying to be computerless for the weeks it'll take to fix, but it will be nice to be able to use my laptop as a portable again.

My parents are arriving this afternoon, and this weekend is jam-packed: Shabbos dinner with my in-laws tonight, big dinner/party/gettogether Saturday night with the extended family (so I can celebrate with those who can't attend the ceremony in person (one of Ian's aunts is getting her Master's on Sunday as well)), commencement Sunday morning followed by a picnic lunch and seeing the lilacs in the arboretum, and though I'll be going to work on Monday, we're taking my parents to the all-you-can-eat lunch at Sushi Corner in Melrose. Then they're flying back to Florida, and as I mentioned earlier, I start taking customer calls on Tuesday.

Whew!

After the commencement ceremony, I hope to slip onto one of the school computers and post about it to my blog, but otherwise don't expect many updates over the weekend.

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:45 AM

The standoff with Texas Democrats is still going on. In a bit of chilling news, the Department of Homeland Security helped the GOP to find the AWOL representatives. As Josh Marshall says, "Hopefully we can democratize Iraq quickly enough that they can come back and democratize us." Wampum has more on the Texas GOP's intimidation tactics.

Although redistricting is normally a fairly politicized process, what makes this so extraordinary is that generally speaking, redistricting is only done either (a) after census results come back or (b) under a court order. Neither cause applies here. Instead, the GOP currently has a majority in the government so is trying to extend that by redrawing the boundaries in their favor. Molly Ivins's got the dirt on the Texas Leg.
Oh, and if you hear Texas Speaker Craddick getting on a high horse about such tactics, he and 30 other Republicans did exactly the same thing in 1971.
Fortunately, it looks like the Dems may win this battle, because midnight tonight is the deadline for new bills to be filed and they expect to be back to work tomorrow.

Meanwhile, over in Iraq, Body and Soul points out that the US still isn't providing enough troops to guard important sites. In this case, the story involves mass graves with fragile forensic evidence that ought to be protected so the perpetrators can be prosecuted. Museums, libraries, nuclear facilities, gravesites... Either we're seriously understaffed or officials just don't get it. Instead, the government's response has been to authorize our troops to shoot looters on sight. Oh, there's a way to win over the Iraqi people!

Speaking of poor diplomacy (and when in this administration have we had any other kind?) It looks like when our administration talks about promoting democracy in the Middle East, they only mean the kind that's totally subservient to our interests. [What is that kind of political system called? Colonial?] You may recall that just before we invaded Iraq, the Turkish parliament voted against allowing US troops to deploy in Turkey. Well, according to TPM, Deputy Secretary of Defense Wolfowitz told the Turkish media that "[the Turkish military] did not play the strong leadership role on that issue that we would have expected." Here's the transcript, if you don't believe it.

As horrific as that sounds, it's even worse in context of recent Turkish history. Back in March, Josh Marshall explained that "[T]he military pushed out an Islamist government only a few years back. Going over the civilians' heads to the Turkish General Staff would inevitably raise the spectre of a repeat of those events." So sure, Wolfowitz. Why don't you encourage a military coup of one of the few successful democracies in the Middle East that's tended to support us. How many days until the next election??

Cool new Google Hack: The Domain Purity Test. It takes the first fifty pages on a site and checks them against Google's SafeSearch filter. Osmond-Riba.org has 4 possibly naughty URLs out of 50, so is 92% pure. For those of you with prurient curiousity, Google didn't like these pages:

• Journal archive for the week of August 4, 2002
• Shakespeare archive for the week of August 4, 2002 (probably the same content as my journal archive)
• Quotations
• Roleplaying characters

And don't forget about the total lunar eclipse tonight! 11:15 PM to midnight here in Boston; check the US Naval Observatory for local times.

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:40 AM

My supervisor just forwarded us Simple Rules for Building Customer Satisfaction via Email Support.
Rule One begins with the advice to "[a]lways proofread..." Rule Three is a typo! It says "Be Discrete" but proper grammar would be to "Be Discreet."

Sigh... Why should I follow their advice if they don't? And how do these people get jobs in writing?

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:30 AM

On the one hand, right now I'm feeling rather burned out on the academic aspects of learning (homework and papers). On the other hand, I already see other fields I'd love to study, such as Suffolk University's Certificate of Advanced Graduate Study in Political Science. ["The CAGS program is appropriate for you if you already have a postgraduate degree, and either wish to prepare yourself for a career in professional politics, or want to supplement your current career with specialized knowledge of professional politics."] Harvard Extension School also lists some graduate-level certificate programs that sound interesting. [Certificate in Publishing and Communications or their Writing Program.] And, I still keep toying with the idea of further studying law, especially after I get into email discussions with law professors over the USA PATRIOT Act.

But again, I just got out of a degree program, and think I need some breathing space before I immerse myself back in academia.

Besides I already see several avenues for further study I'd like to explore that relate to my job and the products I support. These include Javascript, XML, SQL, Microsoft networking (IIS), and possibly VBScript. Picking up SQL will probably be a breeze: I already grok the concepts so I that'll largely be a matter of learning the specific vocabulary and syntax. I think the next thing I ought to learn is either Javascript or XML; I'm leaning most heavily towards Javascript next, but I'll probably poll some of my coworkers for their opinions on which is most useful.

Meanwhile, lots of fun stuff going on in politics. Between the Texas Democrats going on the lam to prevent partisan gerrymandering (see DailyKos and Off The Kuff for the best coverage) to the Senate GOP submitting the wrong tax bill to Congressional Republicans growing resentful of Bush, it's certainly an amusing time to be a Democrat. Meanwhile, Fox News is facing investigation in the UK for providing biased war coverage and could be forced off the air. Too bad something like that can't/hasn't happened in this country. As See The Forest wrote: "If Republicans try to tell you that the media is liberal, ask them why they oppose the Fairness Doctrine."

Oh, and just for the silliness factor: What Kind of Fanfiction Writer Are You?

You write angst, angst, and more angst. For you, a story isn't a story unless someone gets molested/tortured/humiliated/abused. That's okay, though; nobody writes angst better than you! Not only that, but your plotlines, however dark, are quite often very original. Those who can stomach what you dish out will gladly attest to your greatness and brilliance. Some might even call you a god! A rather cruel god, but a god nonetheless. Your writing is probably hauntingly beautiful, and someone who's read your stuff will never forget it.

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:25 AM

I just checked the school website. Grades have been posted. I earned an A- in the course, with a cumulative GPA for the program of 3.612. (Not that I had any doubt, but) it looks like I'm graduating this Sunday! And, I think that puts me in range for cum laude (although that's a site for undergrads, so I don't know if Master's students are evaluated on the same scale).

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:40 PM

I finished my presentation at 6:30. Class ended 9pm. The professor turns in her grades tomorrow morning at 9:30am. Commencement begins Sunday at 10am (although lineup starts at 8:45 and there's a breakfast before that).

My parents are arriving Friday afternoon. My in-laws are planning a party/gettogether Saturday night. My parents are leaving again Monday afternoon. On Tuesday I will start taking phone calls on the tech support lines at work.

I don't know why, but this old Doonesbury strip is suddenly running through my mind. I'll post more later when I'm hopefully more coherent.

Posted by Lis Riba at 5:30 PM

I'm just posting this now so my site will show up in Weblogs.com for my presentation in class tonight.

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:00 AM

On Friday night Ian and I went to see Bend it like Beckham. Marvelous film! I highly recommend it. The only adjectives I can come up with to describe it are joyful and exuberant. The last film that evoked such feelings was Monsoon Wedding. Part of me wants to watch both of them again in a double feature, and part of me isn't sure I could handle that much concentrated emotion. [During Bend It, I actually started crying during the wedding scene.]

I had checked out from the library Live from New York, the new book about the history of SNL. Not as good as Weingrad & Hill's 1986 Backstage History of SNL, which I read back in college. The new book is much more insiderish -- just a compilation of quotes from the cast and crew, with very little exposition. Thus, if you're not already familiar with the people and sketches they're talking about, the authors leave you completely at sea. There are some interesting tidbits I hadn't read about before, and this book includes more of the modern history (including 9/11) but otherwise, it's a mess. I don't know why the critics have been going so gaga over it.

The book also really gave me an uncomfortable feeling of cultishness. Not in the standard 'cult TV' sense, but in the backstage cast and crew attitudes. A lot of young fragile artistes (performers and writers) suffering from sleep deprivation, isolation, taking drugs, and doing whatever they can to eke out a glimmer of praise from father-figure Lorne Michaels... It's really creepy.

At any rate, Ian never saw the original cast of SNL. He was too young when they first aired (then again, so was I) but never saw them in reruns as I had. So on our way home, I rented one of the Best of SNL videos. Oh, I was so gratified that he liked it.

Other than that, I spent most of the weekend working on my presentation for class tonight.

Postscript: Here are Ian's comments on the movie and video.