Riba Rambles:
Musings of a Mental Magpie

Posted by Lis Riba at 3:10 PM

I hadn't realized Krugman was back from vacation, but today's column is a doozy -- about why the presidential race has gotten so nasty, so quickly. But it was this paragraph in the middle that really caught my eye:

[W]e have been living in what Roger Ebert calls "an age of Rambo patriotism." As the carnage and moral ambiguities of Vietnam faded from memory, many started to believe in the comforting clichés of action movies, in which the tough-talking hero is always virtuous and the hand-wringing types who see complexities and urge the hero to think before acting are always wrong, if not villains.

This puts me in mind of something Ian's been saying for a while. The third and last Rambo movie sent the title character into Afghanistan to assist and elevate the Afghani rebels. Considering those former allies are now the enemies of America should show the danger of such hasty action without thought. Sure, Rambo was only a movie, but in reality the CIA was training and arming these "freedom fighters" who are now using those tools against us. [I am suddenly envisioning a story in which John Rambo is captured and arrested as an enemy combatant for training and training with the Taliban, akin to John Walker Lindh...]

Curious about where and how Ebert originated the phrase, I checked Google and found it in his review of The Majestic:

Frank Darabont has deliberately tried to make the kind of movie Capra made, about decent small-town folks standing up for traditional American values. In an age of Rambo patriotism, it is good to be reminded of Capra patriotism--to remember that America is not just about fighting and winning, but about defending our freedoms. If we defeat the enemy at the cost of our own principles, who has won?

Ain't that the truth. In the words of Mister Smith goes to Washington:

"You see, boys forget what their country means by just reading The Land of the Free in history books. Then they get to be men they forget even more. Liberty's too precious a thing to be buried in books, Miss Saunders. Men should hold it up in front of them every single day of their lives and say: I'm free to think and to speak. My ancestors couldn't, I can, and my children will. Boys ought to grow up remembering that."

[Oh my gd! I went searching Frank Capra's work on IMDB. I didn't know he wrote and directed Hemo the Magnificent. May not mean anything to most of you, but I still remember that from middle-school science class... I feel deeply disturbed.]

Posted by Lis Riba at 2:20 PM

I want.

I already have numerous canvas bags and really don't need any more, but there's something simply irresistable in these times about having one with the Fourth Amendment printed directly upon it.

[Thanks Being Homeless for alerting me that the idea has become a reality.]

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:40 AM

The Washington Post is holding a readers' choice award for best blogs about politics and elections. Now, I probably haven't a chance in heck of actually winning, given my rank in the ecosystem, but it doesn't hurt to try.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/bestblogs

Of the ten categories listed, I'd probably classify myself as "most original," considering the ways I mix political news with literature and Elizabethan history...

The Washington Post is insisting on registration to prevent ballot stuffing, so don't forget BugMeNot is your friend.

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:40 PM

Anybody familiar with this DC event? Is it worth attending, or will it be too crowded to bother?

See, we got an invite to a family wedding in the DC area that weekend, and anything called a National Book Festival seems right up my alley. But, well, we're going to a family wedding that weekend, so even if attendance is feasible, it would probably have to be pretty damn good to pull me away from distant relatives.

Alternatively, there are a few other exhibits in DC around that time that may be worth staying an extra day for. Two in particular caught my eye:

• The Folger Shakespeare Library's current exhibit, "Voices for Tolerance in an Age of Persecution," sounds interesting, particularly since it "does not assume a linear progression from some supposed late-medieval 'darkness' to enlightenment liberalism."
• The Library of Congress is opening an exhibit on the history of American Judaism, including
  • The original letter from the Newport Hebrew Congregation to George Washington, as well as Washington's response, both of which include the famous phrase asserting that the United States "to bigotry gives no sanction, to persecution no assistance";
  • Thomas Jefferson's 1818 letter to prominent American Jewish leader Mordecai M. Noah, in which the former president cautions that "more remains to be done, for altho' we are free by the law, we are not so in practice";
  • Rare colonial maps of Newport and New York showing the locations of each city's synagogue, as well as other houses of worship;
  • Abraham Lincoln's notation, penciled on the back of an envelope, confirming his intent to rescind Grant's infamous Order No. 11 banning Jews as a class from areas of Tennessee, Kentucky and Mississippi;
  • Vintage film footage of life on the Lower East Side of New York City at the turn of the 20th century; and
  • Irving Berlin's tribute to his adopted home, "God Bless America," in his own hand.
  • Emma Lazarus' handwritten "The New Colossus," the 1883 sonnet whose words "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free" were inscribed on the base of the Statue of Liberty in 1903;
  • the May 14, 1948, note from President Harry S. Truman recognizing the State of Israel, with the president's own handwritten corrections;
  • and the chilling "Riegner Telegram," which alerted Rabbi Stephen Wise in August 1942 of the Nazi plan to murder with poison gas all the Jews in occupied Europe.
• And, of course, I still haven't actually been in and around the LoC building itself, since we were barred entry due to Ian's leatherman tool last summer.

Gd willing, I'll have a job by then, but if not I may take an extra day to sightsee. I still don't entirely know what our schedule will be like with family events, but anybody in the DC area interested in possibly getting together? Other suggestions of inexpensive things to see and do while visiting the nation's capital?

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:15 PM

U.S. Supreme Court

UNITED STATES v. UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT, 407 U.S. 297 (1972)

407 U.S. 297
No. 70-153.

Argued February 24, 1972
Decided June 19, 1972

POWELL, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which DOUGLAS, BRENNAN, MARSHALL, STEWART, and BLACKMUN, JJ., joined. DOUGLAS, J., filed a concurring opinion, post, p. 324. BURGER, C. J., concurred in the result. WHITE, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment, post, p. 335. REHNQUIST, J., took no part in the consideration or decision of the case.

Quoting from the majority opinion:

History abundantly documents the tendency of Government - however benevolent and benign its motives - to view with suspicion those who most fervently dispute its policies. Fourth Amendment protections become the more necessary when the targets of official surveillance may be those suspected of unorthodoxy in their political beliefs. The danger to political dissent is acute where the Government attempts to act under so vague a concept as the power to protect "domestic security." Given the difficulty of defining the domestic security interest, the danger of abuse in acting to protect that interest becomes apparent.

[...]

The price of lawful public dissent must not be a dread of subjection to an unchecked surveillance power. Nor must the fear of unauthorized official eavesdropping deter vigorous citizen dissent and discussion of Government action in private conversation. For private dissent, no less than open public discourse, is essential to our free society.

So why am I sharing this?

As you may or may not know, the ACLU has filed legal challenges against two provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act (including the infamous Section 215). As has been reported in Friday's Washington Post:

The Justice Department is using secret evidence in its ongoing legal battles over secrecy with the American Civil Liberties Union, submitting material to two federal judges that cannot be seen by the public or even the plaintiffs, according to documents released yesterday.

In one of the cases, the government also censored more than a dozen seemingly innocuous passages from court filings on national security grounds, only to be overruled by the judge, according to ACLU documents.

Among the phrases originally redacted by the government was a quotation from a 1972 Supreme Court ruling: "The danger to political dissent is acute where the Government attempts to act under so vague a concept as the power to protect 'domestic security.' Given the difficulty of defining the domestic security interest, the danger of abuse in acting to protect that interest becomes apparent."

Now what innocuous reasons could there be for wanting to prevent the ACLU and the general public from seeing that phrase, which has been part of the American rule of law for over thirty years? To put it into context, here's the document (PDF) containing the redacted phrase: it's near the bottom of the very last page of the document.

A few more excerpts from the Washington Post article:

The ACLU has graciously made its copies of the court documents available on its website. Adobe Acrobat is required. My thanks to The Liquid List for first making me aware of this story.

This isn't the first time in the past month the DoJ has overreached in trying to prevent the American public from seeing necessary information. Late July they sent a notice to all depository libraries, ordering librarians to remove and destroy several documents already in the public domain -- largely documents dealing with forfeiture of assets. Articles describe these documents as detailing the laws and procedures and case studies in government forfeiture cases -- useful for prosecutors planning such a case and forfeiture victims trying to get their property back. Fortunately, librarians questioned this order and the DoJ backed down under the publicity. But if it weren't for that protest, that information would've been lost to the general public.

Never let us forget that this is our government; they're called "public servants" for a reason. As such, we deserve to know as much as possible about the workings of our government so we can hold them (and ourselves) accountable. As Judge Damon J. Keith recently wrote in a post-9/11 decision:

Democracy dies behind closed doors.

Posted by Lis Riba at 5:05 PM

I had a crazy thought this evening -- crazier than usual, even for me.

While driving home from the Career Place, I was listening to an All Things Considered story about Senator Pat Roberts' proposal for reorganizing intelligence gathering in response to the 9/11 Committee findings. An interesting proposal, ignoring turf issues and creating new agencies based upon function rather than content.

And I realized that the whole mess boils down to a massive Knowledge Management problem. I started trying to apply the lessons of my KM classes, but had to stop because it distracted too much from the road. Still, I thought it would be an interesting intellectual exercise to unravel. And that led me down a different mental path.

• Massachusetts Senator John Kerry stands a good chance of being elected President
• If he wins, our Congressman -- Representative Ed Markey -- stands a good chance of winning Kerry's Senate seat (one of three big names in talks for the seat)
• If Markey wins, then we need a Congressman.
• And if I don't have a job by that time, maybe I should give it a shot and run.

I know I'd be a massive longshot and I doubt I could actually win. On the other hand, it would be a special election -- which would mean there'd be less competition for fundraising dollars.

Just for the heck of it, I looked up the requirements to run for office in Massachusetts. [I remember the California gubernatorial race required a $3,500 filing fee.]

As I said, I doubt I can actually win, but it doesn't cost anything to try. And hey, I'm a wonk, perfectly poised to take advantage of the whole blogger cachet, and came up with a slogan nearly a decade ago. [Debug the State!]

Of course it all depends upon both Kerry and Markey upgrading to higher offices. But if that happens, I just might...

Comments, questions, volunteers?

Posted by Lis Riba at 12:15 PM

There is a midsized grey cat on my lap at the moment. Her name is Violet, and yes she was brought in by our downstairs tenant. According to Dave, she has had all her shots, but hasn't yet been fixed. Part of a litter found by his mother, and they have too many kittens to keep. [I wonder if Violet is one of these: story, pix, more pix, more story...]

Violet looks a bit like a Russian blue: solid gray (including whiskers and paws) with just a hint of darker tabby-stripe in the tail. Eyes are a dark golden color. She's very friendly, and after shooing her off my desk about three times, I finally picked her up and put her in my lap. She's made herself very comfortable and is now purring up a storm. Quite resonant.

It's been interesting watching Boopsie deal with all this. She's mostly gotten used to Persephone. She's by no means friendly, but not actively hostile. Mostly she just ignores the kitten. There's still the occasional hiss, but I've also seen Sephie sniff Boop's nose without much reaction.

But Boopsie does not like the new cat, and her tactics have been fascinating to watch. She will corner the other kitten in a room, or behind a desk, or somewhere else in the apartment. Boopsie traps Violet someplace where Violet's only route of escape is past Boopsie. And then Boop just sits there and watches like a vulture, hissing or growling occasionally, just to remind Violet of Boopsie's displeasure. If the other cat tries to leave, Boopsie really hisses and growls, or makes a threatening gesture -- just enough to freeze Violet's motion and keep her in her place.

And then it's a standoff -- but with Boopsie dominant. I've seen Violet manage to sneak around Boopsie to explore another corner or another room, and Boopsie will then stand guard over that spot until eventually Violet leaves the apartment. Violet's best tactic has been to just lie down and nap where Boopsie has her trapped -- accepting her place but doing the feline "I wanted to be here" attitude.

Ian says it's the same strategy Boopsie used when Persephone first started dropping in. [I don't remember exactly -- it was a long time ago, and I was working fulltime then.] We did give Boopsie a can of catfood last night (instead of the usual dry) to show her that we love her and to make up for having to deal with all this. I think she appreciated it (or was feeling insecure), because though she usually doesn't sleep on our bed with us, she was planted on the lower-half of the bed this morning. [Hogging my side of the bed and leaving me with no place to put my legs.]

Violet is very friendly, and seems to be extremely person-needy. She's also somewhat clumsy (I saw her bonk her head on the (open) dishwasher door while trying to peer underneath) and very very pretty.

She's no longer on my lap: after trying to explore this desk several times (and accidentally slipping on the keyboard) she's decided to sleep on the floor near my feet. And Ian's home from running errands, so I'm giving him his computer back and will check out the computers at Career Place for further job apps.

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:20 AM

Shortly after the 2000 election, Apple Computers published a full page newspaper ad showing the infamous butterfly ballot from Palm Beach County, with the tagline "Never underestimate the power of Design." I was attending the ACM's Conference on Universal Usability at the time, and both the ad and ballot garnered a fair bit of discussion over the weekend and among UI design professionals. [Unfortunately, most of my links were in the old Lotus Soapbox discussion database, which I no longer have access to; but I did have a nice selection of evaluations on the ballot from UI experts...] Even Amazon got into the act: Inspired by the Palm Beach County, Florida, ballot form, we've devised a totally new way for you to find and discover anything you want to buy online.

At any rate, Teresa LePore, the Palm Beach County elections official who designed the butterfly ballot, is apparently at it again.

News stories are filled with descriptions of her latest ballot design.

Associated Press

Palm Beach County has introduced an absentee ballot that requires voters to indicate their choices by connecting broken arrows, sparking criticism that it is even more confusing than the infamous "butterfly ballot" used in the 2000 election.
Theresa LePore, the elections supervisor who approved the 2000 butterfly ballot, opted for a ballot design for the Aug. 31 primary that asks voters to draw lines joining two ends of an arrow.

Palm Beach Post

[People] who study voting behavior say the arrows aren't necessarily easier for voters. However, they are easier to read for optical scanners, which are used to count absentee ballots.
"People do the crazier things when they're asked to connect the arrows," said Stephen Ansolabehere, a former director of the Voting Technology Project, a collaboration between CalTech and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

This only affects absentee ballots, but articles say "demand for absentee ballots is shattering records due to get-out-the-vote drives and distrust of touch-screen voting machines. Palm Beach County received 30,752 absentee requests by Friday, nearly three times the 11,472 requested before the 2000 primary."

It took me a bit of searching, but I finally found some images of what the new ballot design looks like -- astonishingly enough, in an article on how the ballot design has already failed in the last round of primaries:

Despite instructions that clearly explain how to connect arrows so their votes will be counted, warnings to vote for only one candidate and admonitions not to erase, at least 150 Palm Beach County voters managed to mess up their absentee ballots in the March presidential primary.

A classic 'overvote' -- the voter chose two candidates in the same race.	This voter seemed to want John Kerry, but used a circled X instead of connecting the arrow.	Not content with following instructions by connecting the arrow, this voter drew another arrow pointing at Kerry's name.	This voter connected the arrow correctly, but spilled food or liquid on the ballot.
click to enlarge	click to enlarge	click to enlarge	click to enlarge
Source: Palm Beach Post

Teresa LePore is quoted as saying, "While I get trouble for saying it's human error, that's what it is." That may be the case, but effective design practices can reduce the possibility of such errors. And bad design can increase the potential for such mistakes. And it's a bad designer that blames the users for his or her own failings.

User interface design is a profession. People study it and there are established experts in the field. Why are things like this -- particularly with the stakes so high -- being left to amateurs?

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:01 PM

Mine, that is.

Okay, I do not accept advertising on this blog. But I had an old link that would show what context-sensitive ads Google might place on a site based upon its current content. And just for the heck of it, being bored this afternoon, I decided to see what advertisers would be considered relevant to my current weblog home page.*

And you know, it actually found some pretty cool stuff:

I'm actually tempted to buy from a few of these places myself.

Of course, I'm not getting any revenue from these ads since I'm not actually participating in the program. And I'm really not terribly interested in adding advertisements to my blog -- I don't think I'm quite so hard up as to need to hit my friends up for cash nor surrender any control over the site to outsiders. Still, I thought these stores looked interesting and thought I'd share the links.

In the meantime, Ian and I have been watching Wild Kingdom in our bedroom. The strange cat (who I'm currently dubbing Sherlock) has made two sweeps of the apartment, sniffing everything thoroughly and having more flehman reactions per minute than I've ever seen. She and Boopsie are both on the bed; after a brief standoff and staredown they seem to have reached an uneasy truce, but I expect violence to break out any time so want to be onhand to see. I'm rooting for Boopsie. Still haven't found any clue to the other cat's identity. I'm assuming it came in with our downstairs tenant, since I see signs that he has been home, even if he isn't there currently. I just hope this cat has had its shots, because I don't want Boopsie to catch anything from it if it does come to blows.

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:56 PM

Okay, here's an interesting bit of speculation.

Via Volokh, a retired Foreign Service officer asks Was 9/11 Supposed to Be 9/18? A few excerpts:

In the spirit of the 9/11 commission's call for greater "imagination" in intelligence analysis, there is a strong case to be made that the original al Qaeda plan was not to attack New York and Washington on Tuesday, September 11, but rather a week later, on Tuesday, September 18 -- the day on which Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, fell in 2001.

A Sept. 18 timetable would account for one of the most mystifying and disturbing incidents that occurred after the attacks: The spread of the assertion, widely reported in parts of the Arab and Muslim world, that "4,000 Jews" had been absent from the World Trade Center and that their absence was evidence of "Zionist regime involvement" in planning and carrying out the plot.

Since the allegation was clearly ludicrous and demonstrably false -- there was nothing to indicate that there had been a warning to anyone to stay away on Sept. 11 -- it was quickly dismissed in the West as predictable propaganda from anti-Israeli ideologues.

It was the sheer absurdity of the story that made me wonder about its origins. <snip> The answer I kept coming back to was that these stories were likely timed to fit with what was expected to be the reality at the time. For had Mohamed Atta and his conspirators struck on Sept. 18, a large percentage of Jewish employees who would normally have been present in the World Trade Center buildings would likely have been absent in observance of Rosh Hashanah, and would have escaped death when the planes struck.

The author goes on to suggest that the date got moved one week earlier due to "the FBI's detention and interrogation of Zacarias Moussaoui in mid-August of 2001." The nature of their research into airline schedules meant they had to stick with the same day of the week, and September 4th was ruled out because "bin Laden himself had insisted that the attack on Washington occur when Congress was in session."

No way of knowing whether this is the truth or not, but it's certainly an interesting conjecture.

Okay, this is weird. A cat we've never seen before has just walked into our apartment and started sniffing around. We know Boopsie, who's big and gray&white. We've gotten used to Persephone, who's teeny and black and broken and has made our apartment into a second home. We've never seen this cat before, who's between the other two sizewise and colorwise, being a dark grey. [We also know and recognize our upstairs tenants' cats, though they are shy and/or polite so never enter our apartment.] I heard doors opening downstairs earlier, and knew our downstairs tenant was expected home tonight, so I thought it might be him, but there are no humans downstairs. Just this strange cat walking the perimeter of our apartment and sniffing at everything. Over the past six months, Boopsie has gotten used to Seph, at least enough to tolerate her with only the occasional hiss. I wonder how she'll react to this newcomer who is even now as I type this rubbing itself (can't tell him or her) against my legs...

Posted by Lis Riba at 6:21 PM

Jeff Jacoby, the Boston Globe's token conservative columnist (in the same sense that Mallard Fillmore is the token conservative comic strip) wrote an article today in defense of price gouging after a disaster -- specifically, what's going on in post-hurricane Florida. Actually, calling it a "defense" is being somewhat mild. He praises the practice:

[Price spikes] do far more good than harm. Higher prices make it possible for victims to get the help they need to ride out the crisis and for the devastated region to recover as quickly as possible. They do so by sending the message that critical supplies and skills are urgently needed, and by inducing consumers with less-pressing needs to voluntarily defer to those whose needs are more exigent. When customers in Florida are willing to pay $10 for ice that usually goes for $2, or $400 to rent a generator that usually fetches $250, producers everywhere have a powerful incentive to ship truckloads of ice and generators to Florida. The higher price is justified not only by the higher demand, but by the higher costs associated with doing business in a disaster area. Newsday last week quoted the owner of a tree removal company, who had driven down from Miami and was charging twice his normal rate "because I've got to deal with more aggravation."

"No one wants to come here when I can stay home and sleep in air conditioning next to my wife and kid, go to the gas station whenever I want and get gas," he said. "The ones who are willing to pay now know that they're not getting a great deal, but they're willing to pay a little bit more to get their lives together quicker."

At the same time, price increases perform what George Mason University economist Donald Boudreaux calls "economic triage," directing supplies and repairs to those whose need for them is most pressing. Someone who wants a generator so he can power his computer and TV might be willing to rent one for $250. At $400, he is more likely to decide he can live without it -- thereby making it available to the butcher desperate for electricity so he can keep thousands of dollars' worth of meat from spoiling.

The Globe archives aren't as readily available as other papers, so I can't check Jacoby's history, but somehow I don't recall him being quite so sanguine when it's his own ox being gored. "Higher prices make it possible for victims to get the help they need," indeed...

I no longer live in Florida, but many in my family do. When Bush started calling up National Guardsmen for Iraq, I remembered how much the Guard helped in Homestead after Hurricane Andrew, and worried what would happen should another storm hit an understaffed Florida. And, well, there was more I intended to write on this topic, but I can't find the news articles/blog posts I read earlier this week that I wanted to reference.

Posted by Lis Riba at 2:45 PM

It's too far away for me to post to Bard in Boston and definitely too far away for me to attend, but <whimper> a Boston Phoenix article reports that the Stratford Festival in Canada is performing Cymbeline, Henry VIII, King John, and Timon of Athens over the next month: four rarely performed plays, and all ones that I haven't yet seen. Hopefully some other time, though...

Added later: Speaking of uncommon Shakespeare, Publick Theatre has about a dozen more performances of Troilus and Cressida scheduled over the next month before it closes. Tickets are a little bit pricy, but it's so seldom shown that I'd like to see it. Ian's not interested. Is anybody else? Maybe we could make arrangements to get together for a showing? Let me know if you're interested so we can possibly work something out.

Posted by Lis Riba at 8:35 AM

Via Daniel Drezner, I found this post by Will Baude:

I remember being struck that if you took the various signs of "alcoholism" and replaced books and reading as appropriate, nearly all of them applied to me:

Are books a necessary part of your daily routine? Check. Do you become grumpy and irritable if your books are taken away from you? Check. If you begin reading, just a little bit, do you find it hard to stop? Check. Do you find yourself growing distant from friends who disapprove of your book habit? Big check. Do you find yourself needing more and more books to get the same "fix"? Check. When you meet a new person or enter a new room, do you instantly size up his bookshelf? Check. Does your book habit sometimes get in the way of leading a "normal" life? Check. (Think of the countless social engagements I have declined because I preferred to finish an addictive read.) Do you buy books to make yourself feel better when sad or lonely? Check. (Hence: some fifty books purchased in two months in England last fall; less than a dozen this summer).

If I recall correctly, I think Professor Leitzel finally outed me when he caught me in the basement of the Seminary Co-op one morning a few years ago, buying my third copy of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. (You know, sometimes the library copy is out, you've left one copy at home, lent one copy to a friend, and you really need it . . . )

The moral of the story is-- what exactly? Perhaps that "addiction," especially addiction to things other than ingested chemicals, is a badly-formed concept (consider gambling addiction, internet addiction, book addiction, religion addiction, sex addiction, exercise addiction, and begin to try to draw lines).

Yeah, it's funny, but the last paragraph strikes me as an actually serious and important question. I don't have a degree in the field, but one of the better definitions I've found for addiction comes from Dr. Lynn Weiss, a psychotherapist who wrote (emphasis mine):

To avoid confusion, I'd like to present the idea that anything -- both substances and behaviors -- can be used addictively. That's because addiiction covers the way in which a substance or behavior is used. If it functions in your life in some way other than its inherent intent would indicate, it may be classed as an addiction. If you are unable to stop a behavior because you are using it to distract yourself from some feeling or need, you may be facing a problem with addiction.
<snip several paragraphs where she discusses drugs and inhalants>
In addition to the biochemically addictive qualities of these substances, psychological addiction also takes place if the chemical is used to escape problems, soothe emotional or physical hurts, empower you, free you, or in any way alter how you feel. Any behavior used in this way would be labelled addictive.

So it's not necessarily how much you participate in an activity, but why and how. That still leaves open the question of how harmful such a thing as "book addiction" can be, but I think that can partly be evaluated based on whether it's causing problems in other areas of one's life.

It may not be as funny as Will Baude, but does that make sense with people's experiences?

Postscript (added slightly later): Next month, I'll be visiting family for a week, requiring flights of about three hours in each direction. Last night, I started listing some books that I might want to bring along from the library for reading material during my travel. In very short order, just by looking at the titles I've mentioned in this blog over the past month, I came up with ten. And that's excluding anything I might find and WorldCon, three must-reads with publication dates after I leave for Florida, and ignoring the idea I could or should be doing other things in that time besides reading.
For the record, the books are: Elizabeth's London, Frost Fair, Gloriana, Grand Tour, Master Rosalind, Queen's fool, Railway Detective, Tamburlaine Must Die (which alas, seems to be only available in the UK at present), The Intelligencer, and Tower Menagerie. [And just seen today while browsing, A Conspiracy of paper] I'm hoping to get all or most of these from the public libraries, which means carefully timing when I put in the requests so I can get them in time before travel yet avoid keeping the newer, more in-demand books out of circulation for too long.