Riba Rambles:
Musings of a Mental Magpie

Posted by Lis Riba at 1:25 PM

The Left Coaster disassembles David Brooks' latest column:

Sadr is an enemy of civilization. The terrorists are enemies of civilization. They must be defeated.

In case you're wondering how a guy who's fighting an occupying army is a terrorist, Brooks isn't much help, but I think the new definition is "Muslim man who won't do what we tell him."

But aside from that definitional illogic, Brooks appears to be attempting a syllogism and doing so badly.

A syllogism is usually presented in the form of "A is a subset of B. B has attribute X. Therefore A has attribute X." The most famous example of this is probably:

Socrates is a man.
All men are mortal.
Therefore, Socrates is mortal.

But the way Brooks puts it, "A has attribute X. B has attribute X." But that says nothing further to equate A & B.

Cats have four legs.
Tables have four legs.
Therefore... ???

I'm not trying to say anything about Sadr himself, but just wish to note that this isn't the way of proving one's points.

Posted by Lis Riba at 1:05 PM

News reports this week report that Barcelona has announced its opposition to bullfighting for animal cruelty reasons. Which got me curious. Most accounts of Elizabethan theatre make reference to the popularity of bear baiting.

So when (and why) was bear baiting stopped? Does anybody know?

I can think of several historical points where it would be historically plausible for the practice to be halted -- interregnum when Cromwell closed the theaters, later periods with animal rights concerns... but I honestly don't know. Anybody have a factual answer? [Really amusing suppositions will also be entertained.]

Thanks in advance.

Added later: Massive thanks to Ford for finding the answer so quickly. As she wrote:

According to the Wikipedia entry on bear-baiting, it was finally banned by the English Parliament in 1835. It sounds like a growing sense that animals had feelings and shouldn't be abused slowly gained momentum over many years prior.

Thank you!

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:42 PM

Wonder what you're missing? AirAmericaPlace.com has posted unofficial audio archives. They just announced this on Majority Report, so folks at the station seem to be okay with it. I hope the host is up to handling the traffic...

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:05 PM

Majority Report is talking about fundamentalists and the rapture, which put me in mind of that overdone bumpersticker:

Warning: In case of rapture, this car will be unmanned

And I'm suddenly picturing a car thief trying to steal a parked vehicle bearing that motto. If caught, the defense would be that he assumed the rapture had come so the car was abandoned and up for grabs...

While writing this post, I discovered that Betty Bowers has this bumper sticker for sale:

In case of rapture, this car will be unmanned.
It will then recklessly careen into children at a school crossing -- killing all of them.

Posted by Lis Riba at 1:25 PM

Today's Christian Science Montior has an article on the continuing appeal of fairy tales:

Contemporary writers like to tinker with the classics in much the same way the brothers Grimm did. More than just adding cellphones or shopping malls, many imbue the tales with a modern sensibility: What if the frog were kissed and the girl turned into a frog, too? What if Hansel and Gretel wanted revenge on their parents? What if Cinderella weren't so passive?
They're not likely to turn off audiences, since they're building on a genre that has been with people from childhood - one that forges a common language.
"This is our cultural legacy," says Maria Tatar, who teaches a course in fairy tales, children's literature, and the culture of childhood at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass. "We haven't all read Hamlet, but we all know immediately what Little Red Riding Hood is about."
Today, the influence of fairy tales is found in everything from TV commercials to artwork, and is particularly noticeable in movies and books. Fairy-tale scholar Jack Zipes counted at least 100 different Cinderella-type stories published in the three-year period leading up to 2002, ranging from picture books to novels for adults. "All of these are attempts to present alternatives to this basic schema: What does a girl do when her mother dies?" he says.
<snip>
Tatar argues that collections like "The Blue Fairy Book" aren't exactly the Bible. "We shouldn't treat these stories as sacred," she says, "We should rewrite them for children and retell them." She points out the Grimm version of fairy stories tended to be red in tooth and claw - reflecting a time when children regularly had siblings who died before reaching adulthood.
But some of the writers doing the adapting say that it's those high stakes that attract them to the genre in the first place.

All these arguments are very similar to the reasons why people write and read fanfic. And the whole piece is an eloquent argument in favor of a vigorous public domain.

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:30 AM

Every now and then when I want to gape at the bizarreness that is humanity, I go and check out Obscure Store, full of weird links. Last night, two in particular caught my eye:

First of all, on the morning of Pesach, I heard both Ian and another friend complain that their attempts to burn chametz failed due to high winds. I know some considered it an ill omen, but it could've gone much much worse. Apparently a Brooklyn rabbi facing a similar situation decided that adding a little paint thinner to the guttering flames would make for a more impressive show. No word on how the family observed the seder from the hospital.

---

I'm somewhat more troubled by a story out of New Orleans. The new executive director of the City Planning Commission got into hot water during his introductory staff meeting, when he expressed his enthusiasm for his new job by saying, "I've got to grab the tar baby by the ears and jump right in." Several staff members were outraged, considering the remark racist and offensive.

I'm also outraged, but for an entirely different reason. Isn't a tar baby something you're not supposed to touch because it will only suck you in and trap you? A tar baby is a quagmire, so the very notion he'd want to "jump right in" to indicates his unsuitability for the job. Wouldn't it be much better to find an executive who will avoid the tar babies and quagmires?

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:00 AM

[Bush] has spent all or part of 233 days on his Texas ranch since taking office, according to a tally by CBS News.

-- Josh Marshall quoting Washington Post

233 days is also the length of time from Bush's inauguration (January 20, 2001) and September 11, 2001.

The article also notes that "Bush has spent all or part of 500 days in office at one of his three retreats, or more than 40 percent of his presidency."

Aren't we glad nothing crucial has happened during this time with... oh, terrorism or the war or the economy?

Added later: Dave Johnson points out another interesting confluence of timing:

As revealed in yesterday's testimony, the August 6 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing was titled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States." The following day, Bush left on the longest vacation any president had taken in over 30 years! If that's what they consider taking warnings seriously, I'm really afraid of what warnings they might be ignoring. And aren't we glad this administration ushered in the responsibility era?

I agree with Dave that I think these vacations are about to go from milestones to millstones.

Posted by Lis Riba at 12:10 AM

Quoting Town Crier via Galois:

Public Service Message: The Knesset (Israeli Parliament) has changed the dates for Yom HaZikaron (Remembrance day for Israel's Fallen Soldiers) and Yom Ha'atzmaut (Israel Independence Day) for this year 2004. According to original dates of the holidays, observance of Yom HaZikaron should have been Saturday night April 24th and Sunday April 25th, (4th of Iyar) and Yom Ha'atzmaut should have been Sunday Night April 25th and Monday April 26th (5th of Iyar).
However, in this year in Israel, due to an amendment to the Memorial Day and Independece Day Bill this month, Yom HaZikaron will be commemorated on Sunday Night April 25th / Monday April 26th; and Yom Ha'atzmaut will be celebrated on Monday night April 26th / Tuesday April 27th.
All local communities are urged to check their scheduled programming and plans to mark their calendars with the correct days for appropriate observance and celebration of the two holidays.

I don't fully understand the reasons for this change, though my suspicions would be something along the lines of not wanting the first holiday to directly follow Shabbos.

Posted by Lis Riba at 12:05 AM

Local news:

Our downstairs tenant's mother heard a strange noise coming from the basement stairs. And what should she find but a mama cat with a litter of newborn kittens!! Here's her initial story, followed by photos and more photos. Need I add she's looking for homes. If you're in the Boston or Providence area and are looking for a kitten, she's now got several.

Old news:

At the seder we hosted for the house, our upstairs tenant was talking about the former owners. She was particularly unhappy with the real estate agency they used when they decided to sell, and still remembered the day that Ian and I first saw the house, nearly five years ago. The realtors only told her at the last minute that they were showing the place and ordered her (rather rudely) to make sure it was clean. This wasn't the first time they treated her so brusquely, and she finally got fed up. She decided to teach the realtors a lesson by dirtying up her apartment and even spreading some extra kitty litter out -- she hoped the mess would serve as a visual and olfactory hint that she needed more advance notice of visitors.

Instead, she got new landlords who had cats and weren't the neatest people themselves. :) I really don't remember noticing anything particularly sloppy in their apartment, which I suppose isn't too flattering an observation about ourselves. [What I remember most about seeing that apartment was all the posters for anime & SF adorning marquisedea's door, which told us they were our kind of people.]

Ancient history:

Last night on All Things Considered, I heard that archaeologists have found the earliest evidence of human domestication of cats (yes, yes, I know all the jokes). On the island of Cyprus, a full cat skeleton was found buried near a human skeleton -- over 9,000 years ago. That's over 5000 years before Egypt -- the previously definitive early benchmark. What's more, there's no evidence that cats were native to the island, meaning humans probably brought cats to Cyprus when they migrated from the mainland.

The earliest evidence of dog domestication was 14,500 years. This brings the domestication of cats within 5000 years of the taming of dogs, as opposed to a 10,000 year difference as previously assumed. More from National Geographic, because the original story in the journal Science is on a subscriber-only site.

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:35 PM

Last week, Hesiod tried to explain the scale of the problem with our presence in Iraq:

From Josh Marshall

From Riverbend, a blogger who lives in Baghdad:

This afternoon, The Left Coaster and Hesiod/Counterspin reported that a crowd of Iraqis bearing humanitarian aid broke through the U.S. siege with food and medical supplies. Both sites share the troubling news that "Troops in armoured vehicles tried to stop the convoy of cars and pedestrians from reaching the town" and "US forces were overwhelmed as residents of villages west of the capital came to the convoy's assistance, hurling insults and stones at the beleaguered troops." More worrisome to many are the fact that this involved both Shiites and Sunnis joining forces against us. Once again, Bush has proven himself a uniter, not a divider, in bringing other groups together against us!

Was any of this really unpredictable? For some reason, I'm yet again reminded of a classic Onion story, which just seems so accurate for how this war has gone. What is our exit strategy? [Beyond Bush's insistence we'll be out by June 30th whether the Iraqis are ready or not, which only makes sense in terms of U.S. electoral politics.] Even Daniel Schorr now says "Maybe it's time to dust off that unhappy word from Vietnam days - quagmire."

This is all turning terribly disjointed in my mind now. I had some points I wanted to make -- and some other links I wanted to share, but now it's all running together into one big bloody mess.

I'll confess, writing about war really isn't my thing. So here are a few other sites I've been going to for excellent information:

• Generally, I tend to respect the analysis I read from Phil Carter's Intel Dump. The author is a former Army officer and journalist.
• Many of the bloggers I respect are pointing people towards Juan Cole, a professor and expert on Iraq
• Over at Back to Iraq, journalist Christopher Allbritton has been in Iraq, and really knows the score.
• Daily Kos and Warblogging.com and Billmon's Whiskey Bar are all good for news and analysis, while Agonist tries to get the latest breaking news.
• Kathryn Cramer has been all over the issue of private military companies in Iraq since before Fallujah. Right now, she seems to be under a right-wing spam/DOS attack, but she's got some good information.

My prayers and best wishes for the health and wellbeing of everybody in Iraq...

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:15 PM

There's so much going on in Iraq that it's hard to get a clear picture, much less write coherently about it. Particularly in these inflammatory times when it seems as though certain people are looking for any misstatement as an excuse to target and tar other bloggers. But here goes.

In the infojunkies LJ community, somebody hypothetically asked what would happen if other nations "decided that the American people needed help removing George Bush" in the same way that this administration has implemented regime change elsewhere. Ian responded:

If anybody invades my country, I'm picking up a rifle and shooting at them.

This is why I have such sympathy for the Iraqis.

Ian and I discussed this further while driving to the first seder (Monday night). We wondered whether some of the most ardent pro-war proponents get that. While we may disagree with our leaders' decisions, and may protest and work to change things, it's still "my country, right or wrong" and we wouldn't want outsiders coming in and overthrowing our government. And I suspect most other people feel the same way about the countries they reside in. What's more, for all our patriotism, my family has only been in America for this century, Ian's a little longer. There are people living in Iraq whose ancestors probably resided there before the first humans crossed the land bridge onto this continent. They've got deep roots. Why should they welcome us in open arms?

Needless to say, events in Fallujah were very much on our mind. And we've got a question for any historians reading this. Whether you call them contract security or mercenaries or private armies, it's hardly unprecedented to have paid private soldiers fighting alongside regular army. But when else have the lines of command been so disjoint among the two? I mean, there have certainly been cases where it's been fuzzy who they reported to, but they were still getting their marching orders from the same central command. But in Iraq -- the contract security works for private corporations who got contracts from the executive branch, and they have no real ties to the U.S. military. That's one of the things that led to the disaster last week in Fallujah -- a lack of communication and coordination between the groups.

At any rate, in today's Washington Post, Dana Priest writes that these "private security firms in Iraq have begun to band together in the past 48 hours, organizing what may effectively be the largest private army in the world."

There's more I want to write, largely coming from some really strong quotes from other bloggers and articles, but that will come later.

Posted by Lis Riba at 4:20 PM

Somebody abandoned a Boston Herald in the kitchenette today, so I flipped thru it over lunch. Keep in mind, the Herald is a more conservative Rupert Murdoch-owned paper, not my usual reading. But it can be quite useful to know what the folks on the other side of the political fence are saying.

This time, I found the editorial cartoon to be particularly enlightening:

In case they take down the image some time in the future, the cartoon shows the 9/11 hearings, with one of the panelists saying "Once again I emphasize that these hearings are not a witch trial! Now, will the next member of the Bush administration step up and take the stand." The speaker is pointing to a wooden stake with kindling piled underneath it.

So there you have it. A sneak preview how conservatives intend to spin any conclusions the commission may derive that are unfavorable to Bush. The commission was somehow stacked with people who have it in to for the Bush administration!

Searching further, I just found a March 22nd OpinionJournal column with a similar slant:

The 9/11 Commission has instead been driven from the start by meaner political calculations: To appease the demands of those (few) victims' families looking for someone to blame, and to provide a vehicle to embarrass the Bush Administration. That's the real reason Henry Kissinger and George Mitchell--two men who have acted in the past as statesmen--were hounded out as the original commission leaders on trivial conflict-of-interest grounds.
<snip>
[The Commission] is turning into a fiasco of partisanship and political score-settling. To be precise, Democrats are using the commission as a platform to assail the Bush Administration for fumbling the war on terror, implicitly blaming it even for 9/11. Democrats are using the commission as a platform to assail the Bush Administration for fumbling the war on terror, implicitly blaming it even for 9/11.

I went to the 9-11 Commission's website and looked up exactly how the membership was selected (Public Law 107-306, Section 603), and the commission is composed of 10 members, half selected by each party, with a requirement that [n]ot more than 5 members of the Commission shall be from the same political party. And the President himself appointed the chairman of the Commission. [Remember? His first choice was Henry Kissinger, who eventually withdrew under the controversy?] And the current executive director, Zelikow, was part of Bush's 2000 transition team, worked in the first Bush administration, and has a host of other connections to the Bush administration, which some are calling conflicts of interest in favor of the President.

In other words, the notion that this commission is biased against Bush or is conducting any kind of witch hunt is ludicrous!

But it looks like that's the spin being spread. Just laying the groundwork in case the results turn out unfavorably.

And somehow, that seems all too typical of the current crop of partisans-in-charge (I started to say conservatives, but that seems unfair to most who espouse conservative viewpoints). Instead of providing evidence to contradict unfavorable criticism, they attack the messengers. How long is the litany by now? Richard Clarke, Paul O'Neill, Joseph Wilson, Scott Ritter, John DiIulio... They've all been the target of character assassination after speaking out. Considering Bush initially ran for president on the notion that he'd select a top-notch highly-experienced staff, the number of former staffers they've since slimed seems awfully alarming. Either Bush really can't pick 'em or he can and they were right. Either way doesn't look terribly flattering to Bush... [On the other hand, career government workers, such as diplomat John Brady Kiesling and FBI Agent Colleen Rowley have made comments consistent with Bush's ex-staffers, so that would lend credibility to the critics, wouldn't it?]

By the way, back to the Commission for one final moment, the Center for American Progress has been fact-checking Condi Rice's opening statement and her Q&A testimony.

Posted by Lis Riba at 2:01 PM

I know this sounds odd, but I cannot remember whether I took an economics class as an undergraduate in college. I either took it as a required elective, eventually switching it from graded to Pass/Fail because I fell behind because of other commitments, or it was just one of those nightmares where you suddenly face a final in a class you never attended. And my memory is fuzzy enough that I'm honestly not sure whether I took such a class in reality or if it was just a dream.

At any rate, first from Corrente:

What is happening is nothing short of historic. The American workers' share of the increase in national income since November 2001, the end of the last recession, is the lowest on record. Employers took the money and ran. This is extraordinary, but very few people are talking about it, which tells you something about the hold that corporate interests have on the national conversation.

The situation is summed up in the long, unwieldy but very revealing title of a new study from the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University: "The Unprecedented Rising Tide of Corporate Profits and the Simultaneous Ebbing of Labor Compensation - Gainers and Losers from the National Economic Recovery in 2002 and 2003."

Andrew Sum, the center's director and lead author of the study, said: "This is the first time we've ever had a case where two years into a recovery, corporate profits got a larger share of the growth of national income than labor did. Normally labor gets about 65 percent and corporate profits about 15 to 18 percent. This time profits got 41 percent and labor [meaning all forms of employee compensation, including wages, benefits, salaries and the percentage of payroll taxes paid by employers] got 38 percent."

The study said: "In no other recovery from a post-World War II recession did corporate profits ever account for as much as 20 percent of the growth in national income. And at no time did corporate profits ever increase by a greater amount than labor compensation."
<snip>
The bulk of the gains did not go to workers, "but instead were used to boost profits, lower prices, or increase C.E.O. compensation."

As Dave Johnson over at See The Forest often asks: "Who is our economy for?"

Speaking of which, the Wall Street Journal recently reported on a recent General Accounting Office report:

More than 60 percent of U.S. corporations didn't pay any federal taxes for 1996 through 2000, years when the economy boomed and corporate profits soared

Think about that as you get your own taxes ready for April 15th. Who is profiting and who is paying?

Posted by Lis Riba at 1:00 PM

So, while everybody else is blogging about Iraq and the 9/11 testimony by Condi Rice, my mind keeps being drawn to two articles in Sunday's Boston Globe (a book review and a business article) on a new book, The Coming Generational Storm, written by a pair of economists. I've been worried for a long time about what will happen to our economy when the baby boomers retire, particularly given this administration's shortsighted policies.

Laurence Kotlikoff, the lead author, is considered a pioneer of generational accounting, a method of fiscal analysis that measures costs over time. It's a new book, so few reviews or critiques have been published yet, but a Toronto Star article seems to have the most cogent summary of the arguments. Totalling up the national debt, Social Security and health care:

That adds up to a $57.9 trillion burden on America's next generation.

"This is the moral crisis of our age," Kotlikoff says. "We are collectively endangering our children's economic futures without giving them the slightest say in the matter."

A couple of years ago, former U.S. treasury secretary Paul O'Neill asked two of America's leading economists what it would take to mop up this sea of red ink. They gave him a menu of unappetizing choices:

• The government could raise federal income taxes by an immediate 69 per cent.
• It could raise payroll taxes by 95 per cent.
• It could cut discretionary spending by 106 per cent.
• It could reduce Social Security and Medicare benefits by 45 per cent.
• Or it could try to mix these options in the least painful way.

"Taking any one or any combination of these medicines will be brutal," Kotlikoff says. "But the longer we delay addressing the massive red hole, the bigger it gets."

His prescription: A radical overhaul of Social Security, a new federal sales tax, health vouchers instead of medical insurance for the elderly, the elimination of all of President George Bush's scheduled tax cuts and a stringent government austerity program.

These measures would not spare America's children a hefty tax bill, Kotlikoff acknowledges. But they would make it bearable.

This administration's policy seems to be "ignorance is bliss" and has tried to bury heads in the sand about impending problems. Quoting the Globe:

In 2002, Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill asked a pair of economists to calculate the federal government's fiscal gap. In simplest terms, O'Neill wanted to know how big a tab the current generation was leaving for future generations to pay. The calculation included everything from the cost of defense and roads to the bills for Social Security and Medicare. Their work never made it into print. After O'Neill was fired, his successor, John Snow, decided not to publish the findings.

Because, clearly, what we don't know can't hurt us. Did I already mention Condi Rice testifying today? Or maybe you should take another look at the latest news on mercury contamination.

Now, the Globe reviewer did point out that "economic predictions are a dime a dozen these days" (I did own a copy of Ravi Batra's Great Depression of 1990), but even he suggests "it would be unwise to scoff at Kotlikoff and Burns's doom-saying." And the business columnist includes further predictions from the book:

[A] failure to act will have consequences, he warns. In a worst-case scenario, he envisions a future that makes the ''Terminator" seem hopeful. He forsees a stagnant American economy crushed by debt. Taxes are dramatically higher. So is the inflation rate because the government has decided to print money to escape the fiscal vice. Money and talent are fleeing the country. ''I'm not particularly optimistic," said Kotlikoff.

Given modern politicians' aversion for solutions that inflict pain now in exchange for better long-term outcomes, I don't hold out much hope for the future, either. An ounce of prevention may be worth a pound of cure, but the current administration seems to be reversing that, promoting policies which give short-term (electoral) benefits and defer the pain until after they will be out of office.

Has anybody got any good news (on a macro, not micro scale)? I think I could use some about now.

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:05 AM

You probably don't want to hear this horrifying news, courtesy of Mary Beth (who's running for state leg!), but I've rarely read of a health hazard so in need of dissemination (emphasis mine):

...February 6th announcement by the EPA that their estimates of over 320,000 children per year born with blood levels of mercury that put them at risk for learning disabilities and neurological disorders were off by over 50%. The real number, they now admit, is probably closer to 630,000.

While that number seems rather high, let's put it in a bit more perspective.

630,000 out of 4,000,000 annual US births, or 15.75%.

In even more comprehensible terms, one out of every 6 children born in the U.S. has a mercury blood level above the level deemed safe by the EPA.

These are not children exposed to mercury (unless you live in a sterile bubble, everyone is exposed to some level of mercury), but children who acquired enough mercury through their mother during pregnancy so that their cord blood levels register higher than the maximum safe level

And keep in mind that this only refers to the level of mercury the EPA has deemed a health risk. The EPA (particularly under this administration) is extremely averse to inconveniencing industry, so the actual safe levels of mercury may be even lower. Julia notes that they've already let campaign contributors water down mercury regulations to the point of ineffectiveness, and Mary Beth points out this isn't the first time the White House has downplayed and delayed reports on mercury's effects on children.

[T]he lack of true public alarm is of serious concern. If one out of every six children were suddenly born with six toes, or missing limbs, it's hard to imagine there not being a million parents on the Mall demanding action from Congress. Mercury is one of the most toxic substances known to man, and an unacceptable percentage of our babies are now born with levels believed to be dangerous (problem is, so little research has been done on mercury, we don't even really know what level is in fact safe - just what level seems to be obviously harmful.)

-- Mary Beth

Mary Beth has further information in this post, including tips for protecting your own health and some recommended avenues for activism.

One in six newborns are being left behind.

You know something, I really don't care that much about what the first Google result is for some loaded word. This is an area where we really can and should be making a difference! It's been a while since I reminded folks of the Congressional toll free switchboard at 1-800-839-5276. Let's use it wisely.

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:15 AM

Well, I'm back at work again after a two-day "holiday" spent mostly in the kitchen (day one, cooking; day two, cleaning). Ian wrote up a pretty decent description of our seders and I don't feel like elaborating further.

Quick shout out to my family in Florida, who are celebrating my nephew's/godson's Pidyon haBen. Wish I could be there. I know that newborns can be a trial, but no matter how great the temptation, please redeem him. :) Isn't he adorable?

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:00 AM

Elizabeth Bear's "This Tragic Glass" has been posted to SciFi.com.

I have updated my Marlowe in modern fiction list with that link. I am probably overdue to make other changes to that page, particularly in regards to the nonfiction references, since Peter Farey has updated his own Marlowe pages. However I haven't come across any new Marlowe fictions in a while, so if anyone can recommend further Marlowe works, please let me know soon so I can update accordingly.

Added later: If you wish to comment to the author about "This Tragic Glass", here's a link to her LiveJournal. Also, if have any influence in the publishing industry, she's got an entire novel on Marlowe (and Shakespeare) that hasn't been sold yet. It's a historical fantasy and offers a very different take on the character than she presents in this SF story. I read the first hundred pages of the manuscript last fall and was really impressed (called it one of the top three modern fictional portrayals of Marlowe -- and I should know!). So, read, review, and let's get that other work released...

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:55 PM

An easy way to remember to count the Omer is through the Homer Calendar, which uses imagery from the Simpsons as friendly reminders and includes the guide to Jewish Springfield. Hayom shnei yamim la'omer.

Posted by Lis Riba at 3:50 PM

Via Atrios, Air America Radio is saying they've just been picked up on 4 more stations nationwide, with details to be announced soon.

Fingers crossed for Boston!

Posted by Lis Riba at 3:35 PM

Seth Finkelstein points out something that needs repeating over and over again:

The latest example of this is that the top-ranked result when searching Google for "Jew" is an antisemitic site. But this no more means that Google is antisemitic than the top-ranked results on miserable failure, unelectable or WMD demonstrates political bias by the company. Officially, they're purely ranking popularity, meaning that any organized group could force the search results one way or another.

Still, an article on this latest instance of the phenomenon shows an interesting (and troubling) bit of corporate doublespeak:

While Google will not alter the results of its search engine, [Director of Corporate Communications David] Krane promised to alert the firm's engineers to further refine the search algorithm, which might alter the findings for the term "Jew."

In other words, Google's not going to alter the search results unless they decide to alter the search results.

IMO, this is problematic for the company, because once they start tweaking their algorithms in this manner, they take more responsibility for the outcome. If they "refine" their algorithm on behalf of this issue, they will be under increased pressure to make modify them for other search rankings people don't like, which could start a very slippery slope.

The better response seems to be the counter-googlebombing that's going on, linking the word Jew to the Wikipedia entry for Jew. Although I agree with Ian, I prefer the idea of linking Jew to JewFaq.org, which I consider an excellent resource. [Remember, wikis can be vandalized! That's a social issue, not a technological one, and can be even easier than googlebombing.]

But it still bears repeating: popularity is not authority. Do people really need me to explain the difference?

Posted by Lis Riba at 2:05 PM

Just because I haven't said so recently enough, I love my husband.

Also, for those not participating in the fast of the firstborn, the increasing prevalence of lo-carb meals makes it a lot easier to find a pre-Pesach lunch that (while not strictly kosher) doesn't include any chametz or grain products. [Although baked potatoes would also have been a suitable option.]

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:25 AM

Well, today is The Fifth International Edible Book Festival. Since Passover starts tonight, I'm not in a position to participate. [Good timing, organizers -- next time schedule it so the "People of the Book" will be able to join in.]

At any rate, some of you may have seen this before, but in honor of the day I'm sharing some virtual chametz: a photo of our wedding cake:

Being SF fans, bibliophiles, geeks and punsters, not only did we use actual titles for every layer, but each one had significance. From the bottom it provided a concise history of our relationship. There are multiple layers of meaning in each, but just to be brief (Ian, feel free to correct me):

• Foundation by Isaac Asimov: Everything lasting -- relationships and cakes -- ought to be built upon a solid foundation.
• Neuromancer by William Gibson: After being friends for a while, our relationship changed as we began our new romance.
• Ringworld by Larry Niven: How better to describe the wedding ceremony with its jewelry exchange?
• Good Omens by Gaiman & Pratchett: And finally, it's considered lucky to save the top layer of the cake for the one year anniversary (which we did; it was delicious).

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:15 AM

Several parody tunes this weekend that tickled my funnybone and I wanted to share.

Jeff and Jeremy collaborated on excuses for not cleaning for Pesach based upon "Book report" from You're a good man, Charlie Brown (see this response to go directly to the song, though Jeremy's original list is worth reading too)

To the tune of the Beatles' "Paperback writer," bikergeek wrote "Pervy slash writer."

Meanwhile, demonstrating why he gets paid the big bucks, Peter David pictured the joint Bush-Cheney appearance before the 9/11 Committee as a scene from the musical Chicago: "We both went for Saddam."

Enjoy...

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:00 AM

Okay, I actually wrote this Friday evening, but then felt unwell and never got around to posting it. The references to this week refer to last week and the website stats I recorded go through Friday morning. And, yes, I know Kos has been involved in some controversy this weekend. But the general truths still hold:

I was going to try to write this snazzy introduction to unify these themes, but it's just not coming together.

 • This month, the Bush administration pissed off Howard Stern. His disillusionment allegedly started when he took a vacation recently and read Al Franken's new book. When he got back, he quoted a few excerpts and started badmouthing Bush. Coincidentally the following day, Clear Channel decided to drop Stern from their stations because of past indecency.

Not only didn't that silence him, it's set him on a cause to vote Bush out of office. I've tuned him for a few minutes here and there since this dispute, and every single time I've come in in the middle of some rhetoric against the right-wing Republicans. He has populated his website with political activism and anti-Bush links.

Many news articles on this new crusade point out the size and loyalty of Stern's audience, though MTV News got the best quote:

[Media director for the Center for Media and Public Affairs, Matthew] Felling said. "If he asks his listeners to go out on election day, they will go. These guys are highly suggestible. They'll strip for a 12-pack of Powerade."

 • This week, the Bush administration pissed off David Letterman. Atrios has been on this all week, but Krugman gives a good summary in today's NYT:

On Monday, Mr. Letterman ran a video clip of a boy yawning and fidgeting during a speech by George Bush. <snip> CNN ran the Letterman clip on Tuesday, just before a commercial. Then the CNN anchor Daryn Kagan came back to inform viewers that the clip was a fake: "We're being told by the White House that the kid, as funny as he was, was edited into that video." Later in the day, another anchor amended that: the boy was at the rally, but not where he was shown in the video.
<snip>
But here's the really interesting part: CNN backed down, but it told Mr. Letterman that Ms. Kagan "misspoke," that the White House was not the source of the false claim. (So who was? And if the claim didn't come from the White House, why did CNN run with it without checking?)

The Columbia Journalism Review Campaign Desk has been following the story as it's progressed, 1, 2, 3. Apparently the CNN is shouldering all the blame itself, claiming an internal game of telephone garbled attribution and led to the misunderstanding. But if that's the case, why is it that "[t]he White House is still not returning phone calls on the matter?" Particularly since CNN has claimed they did work with "White House producers ... on authenticating the tape."

 • Jon Stewart: The Daily Show is one of the few programs that make me want cable television. But I don't, so I've been catching the video clips. Wow. He is going after the Bush administration but good! And he's really amazing at cutting through the spin. A couple examples of recent quips:

SCOTT MCCLELLAN (from a news clip): "There's no record of the president being in the situation room on that day that it was alleged to happen on the day of September 12th."
JON STEWART: "Do you mean to tell me that on September 12, 2001, President Bush wasn't in the situation room? What situation was he saving it for? Honestly - take the plastic off the chairs and use the situation room - Sinatra ain't coming over!"

transcript from My Whim is Law

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Or how about this line, after showing Clarke's comments to the 9/11 Commision hearings:
JON STEWART: "So what Governor Thompson uncovered is that in all White Houses, sources are sent to subtly manipulate a docile press. Stop the presses. <beat> Seriously. Stop the presses."

 • Add to all that this week's launch of Air America Radio. They don't have many affiliates yet, but that doesn't negate its influence. Majority Report (I have got to learn how to spell Janeane Garofalo's name without constantly copying it from the website) has its own weblog. [And how cool is that -- the radio hosts were actually responding in realtime to things posted in the blog; and they got nearly 600 comments during the 3-hour program!] At any rate, somebody from Air America's web hosting company posted a comment in the middle of the discussion (emphasis mine):

We're so sorry things have been buggy, nobody could have anticipated the response we have received.

We've broken records people... We are Real Audio's #1 stream. We were at 50,000 streams during Al's show around 2:00 EST. We got 350,000 unique visitors from 8:00 last night to 2 this afternoon. That puts us on pace to be a top 50 site...on the entire web. We're talking Bank of America, Dell Computers numbers.

You guys are awesome, this is amazing and we're so proud to be a part of it.

I assure you were working round the clock to bring you the best community website possible. Were getting new servers set up to handle the incredible response. Next week we'll be rolling out new functionality: membership, blogs, newsletters, and in a little bit, audio archives for all the shows.

I realize that it took years of careful work for the rightwingers to gain such predominance over the talk radio airwaves, but at least with the narrow focus of upsetting Bush's applecart, not only are we hearing more voices speaking out, but we're getting some varied voices with pre-existing audience loyalties. Not just the usual talking heads.

Speaking of the power of the liberal talking class, there's a lot of hype in the blogosphere about how much of a boost a single link from Instapundit can give one's hitcount. Well, I've gotta tell you, after poking around at my server logs, Daily Kos beats Glenn Reynolds hands down.

These are my statistics for the month of March thru this morning:

March 22nd link from Instapundit:	654 hits		530 visitors
March 31st link from Daily Kos:	3450 hits		2753 visitors

And that doesn't include the additional 535 hits my old Successories parody image has received since somebody posted it within one of Kos' comment threads.

Instapundit may be ranked higher than Daily Kos in the TTLB Blogosphere Ecosystem, but in terms of who actually gets clickthrough, Daily Kos really delivers.