Riba Rambles:
Musings of a Mental Magpie

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:54 PM

I appear to have acquired a lapcat:

Posted by Lis Riba at 2:34 PM

How can I resist Julia's two-for-one special on amusing Bush stories.. I was already thinking of blogging the first one after seeing it on this morning's Atrios, and the second link just a bonus. But we now have proof (if it were ever needed) that the crowds cheering Bush are purely props and not actual supporters. "No speak English," indeed...

Posted by Lis Riba at 2:05 PM

I just saw this on TalkLeft and wanted to share the good news: The defendants in the Tulia, Texas drug sting will share a $5 million settlement.

Much to my surprise, this didn't make the Boston Globe and only got a small brief in the Washington Post. But it's an important story, and if you're unfamiliar with the background, TalkLeft has lots of coverage.

Posted by Lis Riba at 1:31 PM

Here is the text of the amendment currently being proposed:

It being the public policy of this Commonwealth to protect the unique relationship of marriage, only the union of one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized as a marriage in Massachusetts.

Two persons of the same sex shall have the right to form a civil union if they meet the requirements set forth by law for marriage.

Civil unions for same sex couples are established hereunder and shall provide entirely the same benefits, protections, rights, and responsibilities that are afforded to couples married under Massachusetts law. All laws applicable to marriage shall also apply to civil unions.

This Article is self-executing, but the General Court may enact laws not inconsistent with anything herein contained to carry out the purpose of this Article.

Can you see the fundamental logic error?

Let's just parse it out, shall we?

Furthermore, this amendment would simultaneously ban same-sex marriage and establish civil unions. Remember how I subdivided attitudes into three main groups? Should this come before the voters,

Group	Marriage?	Civil Unions?	Preferences
1.	Supports SSM	Opposes CUs	Against this amendment; rejecting separate-but-equal arguments
2.	Opposes SSM	Supports CUs	Favor this amendment
3.	Opposes SSM	Opposes CUs	Against this amendment; do not want to sanction any rights for same-sex couples

Now, this says nothing about how many people are in each group, but it's both ends against the middle in an unlikely alliance/coalition determined to defeat this amendment. That leads me to believe such a compromise will never pass in the end.

Posted by Lis Riba at 1:01 PM

1. this Boston Phoenix article explaining that, despite the slant of most news coverage, the results of last night's Massachusetts constitutional convention were good for gays.
2. Mark Kleiman points out that polls don't show signs of the predicted anti-gay backlash in public opinion, either from same-sex marriage nor from last summer's Supreme Court ruling on sodomy.

   Note that no one is seriously proposing that the anti-gay-rights amendment include a clause that would re-constitutionalize state-level sodomy laws. That suggests to me that the result in Lawrence v. Texas is now widely accepted, even by those who criticize the reasoning behind it.

3. Slate sees increasing hints that former Alabama judge Roy (10 commandments in the courthouse) Moore may run for president on a 3rd party ticket. Why is this good? Because he will do to Bush on the right what Nader did to Gore on the left in 2000, siphoning off the religious right voters Bush needs in order to win.

Oh, and two more asides about what's going on currently in Massachusetts:

• As long as Romney doesn't convince the SJC to defer the start date for marriage licenses (which I don't think they will, since people and cruise lines have already made plans based on that schedule), I don't really have much of a problem if the amendment passes this year. Might actually be a good thing because it would take some of the heat out of the debate. If the amendment passes, that ends anything the politicians can do until the next constitutional convention. And then, it would still have to pass next year's convention, which would be a bigger hurdle. And even if it passed that, the voters still would get their say another year down the line. There are plenty of chances to kill this thing, so if it passes this year, that's not the end of the world.
• For future reference, the best online coverage I've seen of the Massachusetts constitutional conventions has come from: The Boston Phoenix (when they're providing regular updates, as they have for the conventions), Andrew Bayer is dreaming of China, Rachel is dreaming of spring and The Third Avenue. Boston Common tries to filter the most interesting stuff from Boston bloggers, making it a useful central site.

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:15 AM

Ian is sick today with a cold or mild fever. And we're flying down to Florida tomorrow. He doesn't travel well under the best of circumstances -- just physically, he doesn't handle the stresses well. And to top things off, he's sick...

Methinks it's going to be one of those days.

Posted by Lis Riba at 7:49 AM

Your future occupation by meteoric Your name Your future occupation Professional ice-cream taster Yearly income $773,441 Hours per week you work 82 Education Up to 2 years of college Created with quill18's MemeGen 3.0! Your future occupation by meteoric Your name Your future occupation Manager Yearly income $506,292 Hours per week you work 48 Education Up to 6 years of college Created with quill18's MemeGen 3.0! Your future occupation by meteoric Your name Your future occupation Writer Yearly income $597,741 Hours per week you work 24 Education Local college graduate Created with quill18's MemeGen 3.0!

I rather like their suggested yearly incomes, and I already have sufficient college education for all the listed options.

Anybody hiring?

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:54 PM

Well, we did the unadvisable, and let Sephie into our apartment for a few hours this evening. We were just sick and tired of all her whining, and at least this would hopefully keep her quiet. It did. Mostly she wandered around and explored silently while either Ian or I shadowed her with a spray bottle in case anything got bad.

Boopsie was on the bed in the bedroom, and seemed mostly okay as long as Sephie was out of her sight. She hissed when she saw Seph, but Boopsie isn't the brightest either. [Boop was at the foot of the bed, watching Seph, and somehow missed it when Seph walked around the bed to the other side. So picture Sephie to the right of the bed, while Boopsie is still glaring at the other direction where Seph used to be.]

Eventually, Boopsie moved from the bed to the bedroom door to guard the entire room and prevent Sephie from entering. Hissed at Seph when she passed Boop in the hall -- even growled a few times. For the most part, Seph made submissive body language, and even squeak/whimpered twice. [I'm starting to wonder whether her wonky tail might be one reason why other cats don't accept her. I mean, what does it mean to another feline when the tail is laying flat against the spine?] We stayed close by during these interactions, particularly the few times where Boopsie was between Seph and the exit. But honestly, nothing bad happened.

A few times, Boopsie was actually able to watch Sephie without her eyes going all big and threatening. At one point, Sephie noticed a used fabric softener sheet lying in the hallway. At first, it looked like her claw got stuck, but then she suddenly started rolling around with it as ecstatically as if she had a catnip toy. Spent about five minutes totally absorbed with it. Boop just stared at her as though she were insane, the look on her face was almost "wow, this cat is a moron."

After about an hour and a half, Boopsie was drinking from her water bowl (on the bathroom counter, beside the sink -- I guess all that hissing is thirsty work) and Seph was wandering about the floor. Boopsie let out a hiss-growl-snort, and we decided that we were tired and it was time to evict Sephie and send her back downstairs...

It was fun and fascinating to watch the two cats interact. We're actually somewhat proud of Boopsie for defending her territory without backing down and yet not actually attacking Seph. And Seph was mostly content to just explore the place while trying to avoid being hissed at by Boopsie.

It's been about 45 minutes; Boopsie is rather calmly on the bed, although in a very... monarchial posture. Sephie is once again meowing and scratching at our door...

And, though I know it's a few hours too early for Friday Cat Blogging, here's a blurry photo of Sephie while she was climbing onto my desk:

Posted by Lis Riba at 1:32 PM

I am so exhausted. Our tenant's kitten Persephone (aka Sephie or Percy) is lonely. We and the upstairs tenant have been feeding her and spending some time downstairs with her, but that is not enough. So she spent most of last night sitting in front of the (closed) door between our apartments, going "mew mew mew" for hours upon end. Yesterday evening, middle of the night, early morning... All hours, the repetitive "mew mew mew" from just outside our door. It's like Chinese water torture, only audially.

And we can't let her into the apartment, because her presence outside the door is enough to put Boopsie on edge. [So add the occasional "hiss" to the constant "mew. mew. mew."] We tried putting up the child-safety gate to see if we might be able to leave the door open in a way Sephie could see in but not get in, if that might be enough to assuage her loneliness. Instead she's demonstrated a remarkable talent for climbing, jumping or even balancing upon it in her attempts to get into our apartments.

I feel sorry for the little critter, but this has to be the most obnoxious cat who has ever lived. Percy stands for persistent as well as Persephone. And now I'm just dragging through the workday, the lack of sleep only making me feel even more addled and out-of-it. Will no-one rid us of this meddlesome beast?

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:45 AM

It's somewhat funny. One of my biggest complaints with recent nonfiction is the publishers' preference for harder-to-use endnotes at the back of the book, rather than providing more accessible footnotes at the bottom of every page. Yet the last two novels I've read, The Well of lost plots and The Amulet of Samarkand both use footnotes, largely for humorous effect. [Come to think of it, at least one other book I've read this year, Leopard in exile also used footnotes to explain historical details in their AU. And I can also recall one fanfic short-story, Gryffindor intrigues with footnotes, again for comedic value.]

So why are footnotes going out of style in academic nonfiction, yet popping up so frequently in fiction?

By the way, I just finished Jonathan Stroud's The Amulet of Samarkand last night and have to recommend it most highly. I know the expression "If you liked Harry Potter..." is overused these days for just about every work of YA fantasy, but this really did strike a similar chord. [It also reminded me a bit of Phillip Pullman.]

It's set in a modern London where magic works and features an eleven-year-old boy as its protagonist, but posits a much more plausible coexistence between mundane and magical worlds than J.K. Rowling. Britain is an oligarchy, ruled by the magicians. Magicians all work for the government and are not allowed to have children of their own (that way lies dynasties, warns a history teacher, pointing to Italy as a particularly disastrous example). Instead, children with magical aptitude are plucked from their homes at the age of six, and apprenticed to existing magicians. The political intrigues reminded me of Pullman, and the young magician who may be more powerful than his elders reminded me of Potter.

What's more, it's funny. Allow me to excerpt from the opening chapter:

The temperature of the room dropped fast. Ice formed on the curtains and crusted thickly around the lights in the ceiling. The glowing filaments in each bulb shrank and dimmed, while the candles that sprang from every available surface like a colony of toadstools had their wicks snuffed out. The darkened room filled with a yellow, choking cloud of brimstone, in which indistinct black shadows writhed and roiled. From far away came the sound of many voices screaming. Pressure was suddenly applied to the door that led to the landing. It bulged inward, the timbers groaning. Footsteps from invisible feed came pattering across the floorboards and invisible mouths whispered wicked things from behind the bed and under the desk.

The sulfur cloud contracted into a thick column of smoke that vomited forth thin tendrils; they licked the air like tongues before withdrawing. The column hung above the middle of the pentacle, bubbling ever upward against the ceiling like the cloud of an erupting volcano. There was a barely perceptible pause. Then two yellow staring eyes materialized in the heart of the smoke.

Hey, it was his first time. I wanted to scare him.

And I did, too. The dark-haired boy stood in a pentacle of his own, smaller, filled with different runes, three feet away from the main one. He was pale as a corpse, shaking like a dead leaf in a high wind. His teeth rattled in his shivering jaw. Beads of sweat dripped from his brow, turning to ice as they fell through the air. They tinkled with the sound of hailstones on the floor.

All well and good, but so what? I mean, he looked about twelve years old. Wide-eyed, hollow-cheeked. There's not that much satisfaction to be had from scaring the pants of a scrawny kid.¹

---

¹ Not everyone agrees with me on this. Some find it delightful sport. They refine countless ways of tormenting their summoners by means of subtly hideous apparitions. Usually the best you can hope for is to give them nightmares later, but occasionally these stratagems are so successful that the apprentices actually panic and step out of the protective circle. Then all is well -- for us. But it is a risky business. Often they are very well trained. Then they grow up and get their revenge.

Observant readers (or link-clickers) might notice that this is labelled The Bartimaeus trilogy: Book One. Normally I avoid multi-book series by untested authors so I won't be left hanging for the story to conclude. I'm not sure how the sequels will add to the story and world (not entirely true, I have since read an interview with the author that gives a few hints), but the book is quite well self-contained with a satisfying conclusion. A few threads have been left dangling which can be picked up later, but on the whole it's resolved very well, and one could stop there without feeling there's anything left to do.

Mind you, the universe Jonathan Stroud has created is a nifty one, and makes a tempting playground/springboard for further exploration (as in fanfic or roleplaying).

^* The title of this post was inspired by The Devil's details: a history of footnotes, one of several books I've discovered on the subject. The other major work on the topic appears to be The Footnote*: a curious history, which I also haven't read.
I have read Invisible forms, which discusses footnotes along with dedications, prefaces, stage directions, indices, and several other seldom-regarded aspects of reading. A very fun book. Makes the interesting observation that the effects of footnotes cannot be effectively conveyed when reading aloud, and thus lacks classical and oral precedents. I wonder how the audio version of Amulet handles it.
But I digress, and what was meant to be a cutesy subject for this post has zoomed all out of control...

Posted by Lis Riba at 12:00 PM

I know I haven't been posting much lately, but I've been rather preoccupied with personal issues. Our downstairs tenant is out of the ICU (thank Gd!) and we just found out that his mother has a LiveJournal of her own and we've gotten more information on his condition from there (in addition to what we've been finding out from our upstairs tenants, one of whom is Dave's girlfriend).

Ian and I are going to be out of town this weekend for the bris. Nate is apparently happy, healthy, and, as you can see below, adorable:

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:04 AM

If you think your online polls are being flooded by opponents trying to skew the results, then it may make sense to institute a policy requiring email addresses before accepting a vote.

But using that list of email addresses to solicit voters in your future polls isn't going to help get the results you expect your membership to provide.

Ian laughed so hard his face turned red. Here's his account of the experience, with a link to the poll and screen-captures.

My only concern about this is that they don't use that email list to inflate their influence when they lobby others. Not that they'll lobby us, but that they'll claim us as their own: "We have so many zillion members!"

Posted by Lis Riba at 6:15 PM

Our downstairs neighbor/housemate/tenant was struck by a car last night and will be in the Neurosurgery ICU for at least the next two weeks. [Latest details from his girlfriend, who could really use your good vibes and support.] For now, it appears that we are responsible for his cat, Persephone. And the poor thing is lonely, mewing through the night.

Boopsie (who is currently 13 years old) hates other cats. So far, when she's actually been confronted with other cats. She hisses whenever she becomes aware of another cat on the other side of a closed door. The few times she's actually faced another cat (our door wasn't closed tightly enough and Sephie came in), Boopsie's response is to hiss and back away. AFAIK, Boop has never attacked another cat (it's almost frustrating, we wish she'd just defend her territory, instead of backing off, and letting the intruders invade and forcing us to intervene as she gets stressed out).

According to Dave, Persephone was low-cat-on-the-totem-pole in her former residence, and I suspect if she and Boop were to actually deal with each other, they'd quickly establish a pecking order that would allow them to get along. On the other hand, Boopsie is 13 years old and fairly set in her ways.

At any rate, given the current situation, should we open our door to Seph and let her and Boopsie work it out amongst themselves? Or will this just further traumatize the two kitties and possibly risk damaging shalom bayit?

Please advise ASAP.

Posted by Lis Riba at 12:00 PM

Updated photos of my newborn nephew have now been posted. Get a load of that head of hair!

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:42 AM

As seen on Usenet, M&M's obsession leads to physics discovery [via BT!]

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:40 AM

As heavily as I had started drinking Jasmine tea only a few months ago, I appear to now be addicted to Tealuxe's Masala Chai. [A classic combination of Nilgiri black tea blended with cinnamon, cardamom, ginger, clove and black pepper. Traditionally served with steamed milk, sugar and/or honey.] I know it sounds sacreligious, but brewed from the hot water spigot of the water cooler, with four sugar packets and one creamer... de-lish!

Unfortunately, Masala Chai seems to have much more caffeine than other teas I drink, and caffeine has a definite... diuretic effect upon me. I also have a tin of the Kashmiri Chai [From northern India, the predominant flavor in this Chai is cardamom. Peppermint, nutmeg, tellicherry pepper and black Indian teas balance out this exotic blend.], which I haven't yet sampled. Smells marvelous, but because the site says it's "[u]sually served with 1/3 steamed milk," I should probably just take it home and try to brew it there...

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:10 AM

and it was so warm just last week...

Posted by Lis Riba at 7:59 PM

I meant to post these links yesterday before everything went crazy this morning, but I love my husband! Get a load of his Purim costume!

Posted by Lis Riba at 3:55 PM

Was awoken this morning by my parents on the answering machine. My brother and sister-in-law just had their firstborn early this morning. He'll be called Nate, full name to be given at his bris next weekend. Photos here.

Then, at about 12:30, just as I was expecting Ian to arrive home, a police officer came to the door. Our downstairs neighbor had been hit by a car last night and was in the ICU at Mass General Hospital, and they didn't have any contact info for his parents. Notified our upstairs tenants (because they had his mother's phone number), called his mother to inform her, then Ian came home and we all drove to the hospital together.

Ian and I weren't allowed to see him because we weren't family, but fortunately one of our upstairs tenants is his girlfriend, so she was able to visit him (though he was sedated at the time). Eventually, we left and by the time we got home, an answering machine message from his mother indicated she was probably already there. Still worried about his condition, though.

At any rate, medical ups and downs today. I think I must've been running on adrenaline through all that, because I'm starting to crash -- feeling exhausted and shaky after keeping it together for everybody else.

How are you?