Riba Rambles:
Musings of a Mental Magpie

Posted by Lis Riba at 1:40 PM

I am terribly amused that if you search Google Images for "Kit Marlowe", the very first site/image that comes up is that of a Maine Coon breeder which has given that name to one of their cats' offspring.

Don't want to overload their site, so here's a local copy of the image:

Meanwhile, the old canard that fanfic writers aren't real writers has cropped up yet again, this time in dot_cattiness -- an LJ community for witty rants (cattiness). I think the topic is now running amok through three threads (first, second and third) currently with over 150 responses amongst them, including several of mine.

I have got to get around to writing that essay; in the meantime, I've been sprinkling roughs of some of my arguments where appropriate.

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:33 AM

At work today, we're doing some prerelease stress testing of the next version. The sample database appears to be inventory from an antiquarian bookseller. And I'm finding the content of the records far more interesting than the manipulation I'm supposed to be doing. Darnit, I don't want to test record deletion against rare historic volumes of Shakespeare or Marlowe. [Finally, I went searching for Lamb's Tales of Shakespeare, which I had no compunction about removing.]

Continuing the Marlowe's birthday theme, an interesting conversation has broken out on Matociquala's LJ, which made me want to share a quote and poem.

A few days ago at the library, I was flipping through some of Harold Bloom's essays on Shakespeare & Marlowe. Normally, I can't stand Bloom -- I think he's a pompous stuffed-shirt who does more harm for appreciation of Shakespeare than good^* -- but I noticed he edited a book of essays on Marlowe and I skimmed his introduction.

I've mentioned before that despite its period antisemitism, I actually enjoy The Jew of Malta, and would love to see a modern revival/reworking. Much to my surprise, Bloom speaks highly of Barabas, particularly compared to Shylock, and writes:

I cannot envision the late Groucho Marx playing Shylock, but I sometimes read through The Jew of Malta, mentally casting Groucho as Barabas.

And, though I never would've thought of that before, I can see it. Barabas is a villain, it's true, but he's so over-the-top and cynical and unrepentant (and his desire for revenge is justifiable, even if his actions aren't)... he's just fun! And, as many people have pointed out, his fellow Christians and Muslims aren't portrayed in that much better a light... Everybody's scum; Barabas is just that much more enjoyable about it.

And, going from bad to verse, Marlowe translated Ovid's Amores. I really adore this one in particular (taken from Peter Farey's Marlowe site, using the modernized spellings):

The closing couplet is an old joke, but I never realized quite how old.

Many of the elegies are entertaining and quite brief, if you want something quick to sample. I'm particularly amused by Book 3, Elegy 6 -- a quite witty ode on impotence -- though I've bookmarked too many pages to list all my favorites. [If you don't like reading online, Dover Press has released a cheapie edition of Marlowe's Complete Poems that lists for $2.50 before booksellers' discounts.]

And that's all for now.

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:05 AM

Yesterday over lunch, I wound up flipping through today's Boston Herald, the local Rupert Murdoch owned (conservative) daily paper.

Two opinion pieces on yesterday's SJC decision caught my eye.

The less interesting one was the unsigned editorial, which demonstrated shocking illogic. Basically, their argument is that the SJC majority did a "grave disservice to same-sex couples" by insisting upon what it euphemistically calls the "M-word." Marriage in Massachusetts will lead to more DOMA laws being passed around the country, causing problems when such couples move out of state...
Because, of course, civil unions in Vermont have been so accepted and embraced by the rest of the country!

Yes, that was their entire argument, and I demolished it in a sentence.

But Margery Eagan's column provided a far more interesting and important angle.

Titled "Gay marriage genie is out of the bottle, and closet, for good," the article began:

Here's a prediction: It's over. Gay marriage is here; it's going nowhere.

Assume it comes to a statewide vote, November, 2006.

By then hundreds, perhaps thousands of gay couples will have married. The horrible consequences predicted by opponents will not come to pass. (Undermining straight marriage; opening the door to polygamy, incest, to weddings between three men and a baby, three men and a penguin!)

Instead, gay families will be even more visible in schools and churches and at employee Christmas parties, most as bourgeois and boring as the rest of us. By then, many if not most of us will see the current hysteria against gay marriage for what it is: Fear of the unknown.

That's what a lot of folks have been saying, but it's somewhat surprising to see it coming out of Rupert's rag. But more interesting is how the article continues:

Here's a second prediction: The weakened Catholic Church will get nowhere in its terribly timed crusade against gay marriage.

"They didn't send out a letter like this on sex abuse," said one priest yesterday who requested anonymity, as so many priests, unfortunately, do. He was referring to the one million, four-page, full-color brochures just mailed to Catholic households urging them to lobby legislators against gay marriage.

"I know how much mailings cost. Most of my friends are very disappointed that when we're supposed to be so short of money they'd use our money on a mailing like this," said Lynne Pollino, a parishioner at St. John's in Wellesley. "We know a lot of gay people that are wonderful and monogamous and love and respect each other. At a time when so few relationships last, shouldn't we honor the ones that do?" said Pollino, who, at 60, is in the age group that's supposedly horrified by gay unions.

The article continues by mentioning other "ironies," such as the fact that Archbishop O'Malley has been talking about closing parishes due to a combination of "changing demographics, falling donations in some areas and a shortage of priests." And the hefty financial settlement to the victims of priest sexual abuse has further hurt church coffers. Nonetheless, the column suggests:

The parishes most likely to close? Ones, this priest guessed, where priests in December dutifully read the bishops' charge to rally against gay marriage: These are old, all but empty parishes. The parishes most likely to thrive? Those where priests ignored the bishops' directive, where gays are active in parish positions, where babies of gay couples are routinely baptized.

In such parishes, he said, priests put a discreet notice in the weekly bulletin. Or they left copies of the directive in the back of the church where, as another priest put it, "no one took any."

That's not to imply everybody's onboard with gay marriage, he added.

But as National Catholic Reporter journalist Chuck Colbert said, even moderates have "been aghast" at the hierarchy's vitriol, as if "to project their own inner demons onto gay people."

Indeed, it was a moderate, sensible-shoe crowd of middle-aged mothers, grandmothers and even one catechism teacher who exchanged tales of planned civil disobedience over the bishops' directive last Sunday in a suburban church basement. One said she'd been in a panic going to Mass that December morning. If her pastor preached against gay marriage, what should she do? Turn her back on him? Walk out? And if she walked out, should she sit in front to be noticed, or in back so as to slink away invisibly?

"Thank God he never mentioned it," she told her friends. She did not have to be brave after all. But later, emboldened, she signed a Web site petition urging lawmakers to support gay marriage. Anyone else who's interested, it's www.petitiononline.com/nowdoit.

You got that? The Catholic church's strong stand against gay marriage is pissing off large portions of its own flock. Mainstream people don't like intolerance and hatred, and don't want to be associated with it.

And totally separate from this column, the paper included a letter to the editor on the exact same angle: complaining how much more fuss the Catholic church was making over gay marriage than it did pedophiliac priests. So this isn't just Ms. Eagan's projection, but an actual trend among Catholics.

Now that's effective framing.

We've got a useful message people -- let's use it!

How much time and money and attention are these groups spending to combat gay marriage? And how does that compare to taking care of their own, or to other social problems? How much time will the government be spending wasting on the "Federal Marriage Amendment" that they should be using getting a balanced budget passed or dealing with matters of true importance?

And this almost makes me wish they'd get even more vitriolic, and bring in somebody like Fred Phelps on the case. People like that drive folks away from their side, making tolerance of same-sex marriage more acceptable.

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:10 AM

By popular reckoning^*, today is Christopher Marlowe's birthday. If he hadn't died, he would be 440 years old today. :)

So how to commemorate this day? Why not get to know the guy better?

• Read, view, or listen to some of his works.
• Read a biography of him.
• Or, enjoy one of the many modern works of fiction using Marlowe as a character. Thus far, I've found 36 within the last thirty years, so surely something will tickle your fancy. If that's too many to choose from, I thought now would be a perfect opportunity to narrow it down a little further and list my favorites:

   The Armor of light by Melissa Scott & Lisa A. Barnett

  What can I say about this? It's one of my favorite books. It's the book that first sparked my interest in Marlowe. Every time I reread it I discover something new...

   A Mystery of errors by Simon Hawke

  Marlowe only makes a brief appearance in this mystery novel, but the banter between the lead characters is so entertaining that I have to recommend it.

   Stratford Man (tentative title) by Elizabeth Bear

  I'm bending my rules of selection by choosing a work I haven't yet fully read. This is still an unpublished novel, of which I've read maybe the first hundred pages of a draft. And on that basis alone, it is definitely in the top echelon. Publishers, pay attention to this one! I know whereof I speak.

  I had hoped that by today I'd be able to say that I've read fully half the list, but I remain one book short of that goal. And the shortest unread piece I have easy access to is RPS, which is just NMK.

There's more I may write about the poet later in the day, such as why I do believe he died in Deptford, but I think I shall save that for a later post. And though I'm no expert (just a dedicated amateur), if there's anything you'd like to ask or discuss about the man or his works, leave a comment -- I'd welcome the conversation.

At any rate, happy birthday (observed), Kit!

^* I'm not entirely sure why February 6th is popularly considered Marlowe's birthday. I mean, as far as I know the only facts we have to go on is the record of his christening on February 26th. In Shakespeare's case, people have used his christening to narrow down a probable birthdate within several days. If anyone has further information on how this particular date was selected for Marlowe, I'd be most interested.

Posted by Lis Riba at 12:30 AM

Kenya via Scott McCloud

Miserable Ovoid Creature via bikergeek

And, of course, Mark Fiore's weekly is always good...

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:25 PM

President Bush blamed "activist judges" for yesterday's court ruling in Massachusetts.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) was quoted as saying

"There is no basis in law for this ruling, but these judicial activists don't let law stop them from imposing their political values on the American people by judicial fiat." <snip> "The Congress must now act to protect the will of the people as expressed through their elected representatives."

At the library tonight, I found From Reporting Civil Rights Part One, a collection of newspaper articles from the mid-twentieth century. Including this article the day after the Brown v. Board of Education decision:

"Supreme Court, 9-0, Bans Segregation in Schools"
by Robert J. Donovan
New York Herald-Tribune May 13, 1954

  Sen. Richard B. Russell, D., Ga., called the decision "a clear invasion of the prerogatives of the legislative branch of our government."
  "It demonstrates," he said, "that the Supreme Court is becoming a political arm of the executive branch of the government. . . . Ways must be found to check the tendency of the court to disregard the Constitution and decide cases solely on the basis of the personal predilections of some of its members as to the political, economic and social questions."
<snip>
  Sen. Burnet R. Maybank, D., S.C., commented: "In my judgment it was a shameful political rather than judicial decision."

Sound familiar?

[I'd really hoped to find some articles showing public opinion polls after either the Brown decision or Loving v. Virginia to rebut Finneran and Romney's comments, but the newspaper archives didn't go back that far, and most books on the subject were checked out (probably due to Black History Month.]

Posted by Lis Riba at 2:55 PM

Dan Kennedy has the record, with statements going back to the first attempt to pass one federally. [via BT!]

I want to write a post about some articles in today's Herald, but they don't put all their content online, so it'll have to wait until I can access it through Lexis-Nexis.

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:51 AM

Somebody send these clowns a remedial lesson in basic government... From today's Globe:

House Speaker Thomas Finneran said Thursday that lawmakers will seek a way to stop the high court's gay marriage ruling from taking effect until after voters have had a chance to weigh in on a constitutional amendment defining marriage as a heterosexual union.
<snip>
"We've heard from the court, but not from the people," Romney said in a statement. "The people of Massachusetts should not be excluded from a decision as fundamental to our society as the definition of marriage."

1. As other lawmakers in the article acknowledge, the legislature really can't do anything to delay the ruling.
2. As I blogged the week after the ruling, polls of Massachusetts residence already show a majority/plurality (approximately 50%, depending on the poll) favor same-sex marriage and a majority opposes any attempts to amend the constitution to bar gays from marrying
3. Rights aren't determined by majority opinion. Our nation's founding document unequivocably states:

   WE hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights

   That means that we are entitled to them solely by virtue of being human. Paraphrasing Janis Cortese, the majority does not get to decide who deserves these fundamental rights. Or as my husband put it,

   "Rights" are not "deserved." If they were things you had to "deserve", they would not be "rights." They would be "privileges."

Speaking of Ian, a little earlier today, he IM'd me the following:

Hey, dear, something I noticed about the Mass initiative amendment proposal:

If the Attorney General can be convinced that an attempt to define marriage as "one man and one woman" relates to religion, religious practices, or religious institutions, then the initiative petition is thrown out.

If the Attorney General can be convinced that an attempt to define marriage as "one man and one woman", in an attempt to reverse the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court's contention that this would be a violation of equal protection a) relates to a reversal of a judicial decision, b) relates to the powers of the courts, or c)is inconsistent with the protections of the indidual of equal protection before the law, then the proposed amendment is thrown out.

If the AG does this, the decision can be appealed the the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. The one that this amendment is trying to reverse the decision of.

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:35 AM

Excellent point from Zoe over at demagogue regarding the same-sex marriage issue in Massachusetts:

Dems need to get on the offense and frame this issue FAST before the Republicans club them to death with it.

That's particularly true if the rumors that Bush is going to advocate a federal constitutional amendment comes to pass. Keep in mind, the GOP is already gleefully rubbing their hands at tarring Kerry as an out-of-touch extreme-liberal Massachusetts, just like they did to Dukakis in 1988. And this court ruling will certainly be at the forefront of such an attack. So we need to reframe the issue into a matter of fairness vs. intolerance, and staying open and welcome to all beliefs. [Remember, the court ruling specifically states that no religion will be forced to perform same-sex marriages.] Let's try to put them on the defensive over this, rather than letting them back us into a corner.

Just to append to my previous post on (right-leaning) CBS's hypocritical policy regarding issue advocacy ads:

1. CBS's refusal to air MoveOn's ad had nothing to do with it being the Superbowl. Spokesmen have stated that this is their policy for all network advertising.
2. Here is their ad policy statement. To excerpt:

   For the purposes of this policy, a controversial issue of public importance is defined as one that has a significant impact on society or its institutions, and is the subject of vigorous debate with substantial elements of the community in opposition to one another. A commercial announcement will be considered unacceptable if it: (1) explicitly takes a position on such an issue, or (2) without taking an explicit position, presents arguments parallel to those being made by one side or the other in the debate concerning the issue, so as to constitute implicit advocacy.

   From the sounds of it, these Medicare advertisements clearly violate this policy:
   • Medicare has a significant impact on society or its institutions
   • Medicare reform is the subject of vigorous debate with substantial elements of the community in opposition to one another
   • This campaign presents arguments parallel to those being made by one side or the other in the debate concerning the issue, so as to constitute implicit advocacy

Pot. Kettle. Black.

CBS is violating their own policy by agreeing to air these ads, and by their actions demonstrate they are part of the right-leaning media.

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:15 AM

I think I simply have to quote Mark Kleiman verbatim on this one:

Let me see if I have this straight: The White House and the Republicans in Congress, with the help of some tame Democrats and the AARP, push through a Medicare bill that's a policy disaster with an estimated price tag of $400 billion. Then it comes out that the actual price tag (for the same inadequate set of benefits) is actually $525 billion, and the White House knew it. Congress plans to revisit the bill this year. Then the White House decides to spend $10 million provided in the bill for "implementation" -- in apparent defiance of the ban on using public funds for lobbying -- on slick, dishonest TV ads promoting the bill as good policy. [Well, the bill certainly was good policy for Billy Tauzin, chair of House Energy & Commerce and the main shepard of the bill, who has just resigned his chairmanship and is about to quit Congress to become the chief lobbyist for Big Pharma. Knowing that Tauzin is an ex-Democrat makes you sort of proud to be a Democrat, doesn't it? Considering the alternative, I mean.] It now comes out that one of the Bush '00 campaign's media consultants is going to pocket $1 million for buying the media time. CBS, which refused the Move-On anti-deficit ad on the grounds that it doesn't allow "issue advertising," plans to run the ads. Really, you can't make this stuff up.

See the Forest has one other tidbit on this scam:

The government will be spending $9.5 million to run blatantly political pro-Republican election ads, in English and Spanish, promoting Bush's Medicare Destruction bill that was passed by a few votes. From The Progress Report: "THE AD'S DISTORTIONS: The new Medicare ads urge citizens to call 1-800-MEDICARE to hear more about the new law. And in 'Big Brother' style, when you call that number you have to actually say out loud 'Medicare improvement' in order to get information. The information you then receive is filled with distortions. The hotline claims the new Medicare 'is the same Medicare you have always counted on' -- failing to disclose that the law includes provisions which try to force more seniors into private HMOs. The hotline claims that seniors will be able to find 'immediate savings between 10% to 15% from a new drug discount card program.' But the cards, which were written into the bill by one of President Bush's closest business associates, actually do not guarantee any savings at all. The hotline also says the new prescription drug program under Medicare 'will provide significant savings for seniors.' But as the Center for Economic and Policy Research notes, 'seniors in the middle income quintile will pay an average of $1,650 a year in out-of-pocket expenses for prescription drugs in 2006 - a figure nearly 60% more than they paid in 2000.'" You have to SAY "Medicare Improvement." This is basic marketing -- repeat the message. Getting rid of Medicare is "improvement." And making you actually SAY it...

Posted by Lis Riba at 12:40 AM

I'm finding a lot of amusement from items in Salon's War Room '04 blog:

First comes the story that Bush isn't doing so well in the Republican primaries.

I had already noticed the New Hampshire results showed nearly fifteen percent of registered Republicans wrote in somebody else rather than casting their vote for Bush. Salon notes:

It's true that when a sitting president runs virtually unopposed, turnout isn't exactly strong and there's room for mischief from voters just having fun or boosting novelty candidates. But The Nation's Online Beat column this week sums up just how dismal Bush's N.H. primary showing was. Even compared to past incumbents, including Clinton and Reagan, Bush's support was unusually low in New Hampshire.

Tuesday in Oklahoma Bill Wyatt, a little-known GOP challenger, won 10% of the votes in the Republican primary.

In other words, running relatively unopposed among a wholly Republican electorate, and Bush's results are embarrassingly poor.

So how is the GOP establishment responding? By taking their ball and going home. They don't want to play any more. From The Nation:

Considering President Bush's less-than-stellar showing in New Hampshire, it should come as little surprise that Republicans in some states have decided to cancel their primaries. In South Carolina, for instance, the state Republican Party's executive committee decided not to hold their state's tradition first-in- the-south primary. They simply endorsed Bush for reelection and agreed to select delegates at district and state Republican Party conventions where, presumably, the president will not have to run the risk of embarrassment at the hands of independent thinking voters.

Meanwhile, there are rumors that Roy Moore may enter the race as a third-party candidate further to the right than the Prez. You remember Roy, don't you? He's the former member of the Alabama Supreme Court who was ousted over his illegal public ten commandments blasphemy.

And if that weren't enough to make Bush and Rove sweat, get a load of this entry:

Voters told exit pollsters on Tuesday that the national economy seems crappy at best. Eight in 10 called it not so good or poor. When asked that perennial election year question -- are you better off now than you were four years ago? -- about half said no, their families' financial situations had actually worsened. Indeed, the economy was the No. 1 issue on the minds of voters in states from South Carolina to Arizona on Tuesday -- a trend similar to what pollsters heard in Iowa and New Hampshire, too. Apparently these voters haven't talked to President Bush.

None of this means the ABBA movement can rest easy, because Bush and Rove have never shown any reluctance to fight dirty, but it it somewhat heartening to see the tides turning against Bush.

Posted by Lis Riba at 5:40 PM

The PBS miniseries In Search of Shakespeare starts tonight, and in anticipation, PBS has beefed up the website with a host of new information, including a massive section for educators.

Unfortunately, I'm discovering I can't quite trust the site's resources.

The worst howler so far was reported by a poster on HLAS and is part of their educational game. To wit:

"Dido Queen of Carthage" was actually written by Christopher Marlowe in 1594.

Well, by most accounts, Christopher Marlowe died in 1593, so either that's quite a feat or PBS is subtly signalling their opinion on the authorship debates.

Seriously, the play was first published in 1594, but it was probably written earlier -- at least before his death.

I took a look at their Marlowe biography and found it unreadable. Maybe I'm just hypersensitive or overly pedantic, but I was cringing before I even finished the first paragraph, and couldn't get much further. Almost every line contained at least some glaring error:

Honestly, I couldn't read much more in the essay. It certainly describes the current popular myths of Marlowe, but those are just one possible interpretation of the facts. And getting so many little picayune details wrong, makes me dubious about what kind of big picture they can build from such spurious foundation.

Ah well. Maybe the show and site can provoke enough interest to lead people to better sources of information on the plays and playwrights.

Posted by Lis Riba at 12:21 PM

Just noticed the headline while searching for something else:

The Massachusetts high court ruled Wednesday that only full, equal marriage rights for gay couples -- rather than civil unions -- would be constitutional, erasing any doubts that the nation's first same-sex marriages would take place in the state beginning in mid-May.

The court issued the opinion in response to a request from the state Senate about whether Vermont-style civil unions, which convey the state benefits of marriage -- but not the title -- would meet constitutional muster.

That's the top of the AP article. Boston.com has The full text of the court's decision. In brief:

The Senate's question to the SJC: Does Senate, No. 2175, which prohibits same-sex couples from entering into marriage but allows them to form civil unions with all "benefits, protections, rights and responsibilities" of marriage, comply with the equal protection and due process requirements of the Constitution of the Commonwealth and articles 1, 6, 7, 10, 12 and 16 of the Declaration of Rights?

The SJC's answer: We are of the opinion that Senate No. 2175 violates the equal protection and due process requirements of the Constitution of the Commonwealth and the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights. The bill maintains an unconstitutional, inferior, and discriminatory status for same-sex couples .... The answer to the question is "No." -- Chief Justice Margaret Marshall, and Justices John M. Greaney, Roderick L. Ireland, Judith A. Cowin

Posted by Lis Riba at 8:01 AM

From Reinventing Shakespeare:

[In 1886, t]he patrician (and promiscuous) American male Richard Grant White claimed that women generally don't like Shakespeare -- "with the exception of a few who are not always the most lovable or the happiest of the sex."

I stayed up far too late last night reading that book. As in, it's less than six hours since I finally went to bed.

The latest Free Will Astrology horoscope is up, warning me:

I predict that in 2004 you will become far more discriminating about what images and information you allow to enter into the holy temple of your mind. You may even put up protective barriers that keep out the media's toxic psychic wastes and your friends' bad moods. I also predict that if you don't become more discriminating, you will lose touch with your own deepest desires and end up trying to be something you're not. In conclusion, fellow Cancerian, you sure as hell better remember how naturally telepathic you are, and how easily you take on other people's feelings as if they were your own.

Yesterday, I finished another fanfic, bringing my total reading for the year up to eighteen books or novel-length fictions. At the libraries last night, I checked out another three (two of which I'd put on reserve several weeks earlier), though I'm starting to wonder whether my reading habits are approaching unhealthy levels again. [I'm not saying avid reading is bad in general, but it may be getting in the way of other things I need to be doing.]

BTW, here's another interesting bit of Boston history:

[In America, f]oreign plays, glorifying a foreign feudal past, could become particularly objectionable when played by foreign actors. In 1825 Edmund Kean, by refusing to perform Richard III in front of an almost empty auditorium, was felt to have insulted the dignity of Boston, thereby provoking America's first theatre riot.

Posted by Lis Riba at 12:35 AM

Ooh! Now there's something I'll have to go see sometime. From Reinventing Shakespeare:

[T]he first major private collection in America did not become public until 1873, when the Boston Public Library bought Thomas Pennant Barton's two thousand volumes of Shakespeariana, including all four seventeenth-century folios and a copy of half of the quartos published before 1709.

I wonder whether they still have them all. I wonder if I can get in to see them.

Then again, my letters regarding the BPL's John Adams collection seem to have vanished into a black hole, so I'm not sure how much luck I'll have getting rights to view these. [Description of my request at the bottom of this post]

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:05 PM

Okay, some enterprising person needs to actually code this quiz, because right now you just have to write the answers and score it manually, but Which Democratic candidate are you in bed? [Via Suburban Guerilla]

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:39 PM

Ian and I went out for Chinese food tonight. After opening my fortune cookie, I said, "I think I've got your fortune." Ian read his and thought it sounded more appropriate to me. So we switched.

For the record, here are the two fortunes we received. What do you think?

Still working through Reinventing Shakespeare, and I feel a need to share the subtitles to the current chapter, "Victorian Values":

• In which our hero is not introduced
• In which our hero gradually reveals himself
• In which our hero's progress is described (establishing chronologies)
• In which our hero attends the university
• In which our hero crosses the ocean (Shakespeare in America)
• In which our hero makes the acquaintance of a number of young ladies (Lamb's Tales and Bowdler)
• In which our hero is mistaken for someone else (authorship debates)
• In which our hero meets an extraordinary figure, who resolves some puzzles, and at last explains the purpose of his life, and the meaning of his many adventures (on A.C. Bradley, whose significance I haven't gotten to yet)

By the way, as people are talking about the unprecedented half-a-trillion dollar ($500,000,000,000) budget the Bush administration has announced, please not that it does not include any money for Iraq or Afghanistan, which the White House is estimating will cost at least another fifty billion ($50,000,000,000). (Talking Points) So take that number as a starting point and expect things will only increase from there.

Just so we're clear on this administration's priorities:

February 2nd:

Janet Jackson's boob exposed

February 3rd:

FCC investigation announced

July 14, 2003:

Unknown senior administration officials exposed the top spy in charge of WMD investigations

September 26:

Justice Department opens investigation under CIA pressure

December 30:

Ashcroft removes himself from investigation and invites career prosecutor

• Only two days after the Super Bowl, Janet Jackson confessed the stunt was intentional. I'm really not sure what more an investigation is expected to uncover.
• Nearly six months after it happened, the identity of boob who exposed Valerie Plame is still unknown.

While we're at it, anybody figure out yet who mailed anthrax to news companies and Democratic Senators in late 2001?

Added later: Ian believes I wrote the parallelism too weakly. Here's his version.

Posted by Lis Riba at 3:20 PM

So apparently the big story today is that Janet Jackson accidentally exposed her breast during a halftime dance number. I didn't see it; after checking the score periodically during the first half, I only tuned into the game for the final quarter or so.

But now there are complaints and apologies flying everywhere, the FCC intends to investigate... Why is there such a fuss over seeing a woman's breast?

I mean, according to Census 2000, 50.9% of the American population is female, and thus should be accustomed to seeing breasts every day as they dress and undress. And they may be exposed to other women's breasts in such typical places as locker rooms, changing rooms, doctors offices, etcetera.

That leaves 138,053,563 men -- or 49.1% of the population.

But Census data also found 59,374,609 households that consisted of either married couples or unmarried partners of the opposite sex. Which means that 43% of those men are in a relationship where they stand a decent chance of regularly seeing a bare female breast anyway.

Which leaves 27% of the U.S. population as males who are unmarried and not living with a woman (or are in same-sex relationships).

Surely a good portion of them either had relationships with women in their past or are currently in a relationship (but aren't cohabitating) where the've seen a female breast. And that doesn't enclude environmental factors, such as profession (anyone involved in patient care or artists sketching models)

But what about the children? Well, government statistics from the early 1990s show that at least 50% were breastfed, with a mean duration of 28 weeks. In other words, most people have seen a female breast at least once in their lives.

So could somebody explain to me, why this is an issue worthy of spending government money on for an investigation?

Updated 4:25 PM, In the comments, Lis Carey provided more context to the scene, making a point that it wasn't just a bared breast, but how the breast was bared that makes the difference. I still think that an FCC investigation into how such a thing got televised doesn't seem the right direction, but it may not be as simple a case of prudery as the above makes it out to be. [Then again, this is the administration that spent several thousand dollars to cover statues with exposed breasts, so who can tell?]

I also meant to append to the original that one of the reasons I avoided the Super Bowl this year was because of CBS's decision to refuse MoveOn's ad. I wanted to give the demonstrably right-leaning broadcast (at least in terms of ad selection) as few eyeballs as possible. However, this morning I saw ShardsOGlass.com one of the advocacy ads that CBS says it never airs. Quite funny and demonstrates how scarily influencial television advertising can be. Ian now wishes to make freeze pops with embedded shards of glass, and was pondering "candy glass" or sheet rock candy... Sigh

Posted by Lis Riba at 12:59 PM

It's been over eighteen months since I first considered writing a lengthy essay describing how