Riba Rambles:
Musings of a Mental Magpie

Posted by Lis Riba at 4:14 PM

The Red Green Extreme Makeover: Because if women don't find you handy, they should at least find you handsome.

[An off-the-cuff remark I made during a walk around the pond with Ian.]

Posted by Lis Riba at 2:21 PM

Ooh! Now this is the kind of geek I am. All yesterday, friends have been forwarding around the news of The Last Starfighter the musical! Ian asked about going down to NYC to see it, but the idea really didn't do much for me.

Then, a little while ago, my father emailed me this New York Times article about an exhibit at the New York Public Library.

A diagram of John Locke's skull, a bill of lading from a 17th- century Dutch ship, an invoice for 25 boxes of spermaceti candles, a history of conspiracies against Queen Elizabeth I, an 18th-century German image of a shirtless Jew standing on a skinned pig. What do such things have to do with celebrations of the 350th anniversary of the arrival of Jews in America? And how does a handsome exhibition drawing on four New York Public Library collections tie these items together?

This unusual exhibition (through Nov. 13 at the New York Public Library) does not fully succeed, but that turns out to be a virtue: originality provokes, and this show fits no mold. It is given the slightly baroque title "Jewes in America: Conquistadors, Knickerbockers, Pilgrims and the Hope of Israel" and is the library's contribution to anniversary celebrations

I already mentioned the Library of Congress exhibit, and this sounds even cooler.

In 1654 a boat sailing from Cuba was attacked by pirates before its 23 Jews made their way, penniless, to New Amsterdam, where their fates were chronicled in that settlement's "Minutes of the Burgomasters and Schepens," which is on loan from the Municipal Archives of the City of New York. Their remaining goods were sold to pay debts; some were sent to prison. Such was the encounter whose 350th anniversary is being celebrated.

And though the article doesn't elaborate, I assume the Elizabethan history portion relates to Roderigo Lopez, though I'm not quite sure what he has to do with America. More research, I suppose (but after the holiday)

So, Ian, Fung Wah bus to NYC for an exhibit and a show?

A few minutes ago, Violet was batting a crumpled Post-it note around the floor (something we tossed at her to distract her from something else). The paper collided with a polished stone that had fallen off Ian's desk. Suddenly, the kitten looked back and forth between them, uncertain which to swat next. I tried to verbalize her thoughts: "Hmm... Rock... Or paper?" Realizing where the phrase was going, I said "You are not playing with scissors!" She then proceeded to ignore them both and wander off to pick a fight with a large cardboard box.

She is currently in the kitchen, torturing the last remnants of our paper tablecloth. [We intended to throw it out tomorrow anyway; she's just shredding any dangly bits to make them more manageable.] No, wait! She just galloped out of the kitchen and down the stairs. I think she may have lost her battle with the tablecloth. Poor dumb kitty.

Posted by Lis Riba at 1:55 PM

In a conversation earlier today, somebody commented that she Googled on my name, and remarked on just how much stuff I've got out there. I thought for a moment, and then realized -- I've been online for about sixteen years. So it's not so much that I'm extremely prolific, but just that there's been a lot more time for fluff to accumulate than for most people.

In fact, the third hit on my name (after my blog and homepage) are some movie reviews I wrote for my college newspaper in my Junior year. But it was once online, so persists forever.

In some respects, it can be embarrassing -- think back to your all-night bullshit sessions back in college, and then imagine them preserved for all time online. My goodness, I just searched the Usenet archive for some of my earliest posts (no, I'm not giving you a link to them -- you can decipher that on your own!) and I think I'm blushing. And it's not really anything bad, just youthful naivete...

At any rate, it's a useful reminder that not only is it unwise to judge a book by its cover, search results don't tell everything either.

"Results! Why, man I have gotten a lot of results. I know several thousand things that won't work."

           -- Thomas A. Edison

Posted by Lis Riba at 1:10 PM

Since I neglected to post anything from Eat and be satisfied: a social history of Jewish food in time for Rosh Hashonah, I thought I'd share this nifty tidbit I found about Yom Kippur. From the chapter on "Sabbath and Festival Food of Central and Eastern European Jews"

[I]t was the custom in Swislocz for many of these boorish rural types, yishuvniks, to bring cakes and sweetmeats to the synagogue on the eve of the Day of Atonement to distribute to fellow congregants before the fast. No one refused these gifts, for by tasting them one was already fulfilling one of the worst destinies that could be allotted, namely that of becoming a beggar.

Somehow, that logic appeals to me. "Look, Gd, I'm already as low as I could possibly get. There's no place for me to go but up!"

Good fast, everyone (who is fasting, that is)!

Posted by Lis Riba at 7:55 AM

Thanks to Jussi for suggesting two further terms for my list, which I have now also looked up in the OED:

     egghead:

Etymology rather obvious

• Earliest cite: 1907

     boffin:

[Etym. unknown. Numerous conjectures have been made about the origin of the word but all lack foundation.]

• The first defintion, "[a]n 'elderly' naval officer," was first found in 1941

• For the definition I'm looking for, "[a] person engaged in 'back-room' scientific or technical research," the earliest cite is 1945, with a note that "[t]he term seems to have been first applied by members of the Royal Air Force to scientists working on radar." I also found a BBC article suggesting that "boffin" is generally applied to "a scientist or technician engaged in military research" (emphasis mine).

This is fun. Any other words folks can think of?

I did scan the OED SF Citation project to see if I could find anything there. Nothing related to this list.

However, did you know that filk (both noun and verb), filker, Sturgeon's Law, K/S and slash (as in a "subgenre of fiction") have all been added to the OED in the last two years? Pretty cool!

Added later: Elizabeth Bear has started an interesting and lively discussion on fannish terms in mainstream dictionaries, springing from this post. Go look!

Posted by Lis Riba at 12:01 AM

Just got a roll of photos developed (yes, we still use that old-fangled thing known as film) and I found a couple I wanted to share.

First, my beloved Boopsie, caught in a less-than-dignified moment:

I am so doomed if she ever discovers I've shared these pictures...

Secondly, I've often described our tenant's cat Persephone as a weirdling, but I'm not sure if readers have actually grasped just how strange she is. Take a look at her tail in this photo:

This is the best I've been able to capture on film, but it's by no means the most extreme I've seen. I've actually seen Sephie curl her tail higher up, so it not only curves 360°, but there's enough tail left to lie straight: like a _o_. Have you ever seen another cat whose tail corkscrews like that? Weird, ain't she?

No new photos of Violet (whom I've taken to calling "Grey" and Ian's calling "Blue"), but she's so silly-stupid that you can't help laughing at her.

• Before Ian steps into the shower in the morning, he turns on the spray to check the temperature. Well, this morning, Violet heard the sound of the shower starting and wanted to see what it was. So she jumped into the shower in the center of the spray! Ian says it took her about a half a moment to realize something was wrong, and she jumped back onto the side of the tub.
• She wants to drink from the faucet, but hasn't quite figured out how. So she'll lean her head closer and closer, then suddenly her ear or nose will get wet and she'll jump back in shock. Repeat ad infinitum.
• Yesterday, I was leaning over the bathroom sink to wash my face. Violet hopped onto the counter and decided to walk across my back to see if anything interesting was on the other side of the sink.

If these aren't enough for you, earlier this evening Ian wrote up our dinner with the cats.

So, life is entertaining in the House of Cats, though sound sleep (for us humans) remains a challenge.

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:30 PM

This morning in the car, I started thinking about language. I generally consider myself to be a geek, but the political world seems to prefer the word "wonk." And then, there's the old standby "nerd," which has a more derogatory tone.

But where do these words come from?

Well, I've got access to the online OED, so I thought I'd check. And the answer is stranger than I thought:

     nerd:

[Origin uncertain and disputed (see below).
  Perh. < nerd, a fictional animal in the children's story If I ran the Zoo (1950) by ‘Dr. Seuss’, depicted as a small, unkempt, humanoid creature with a large head and a comically disapproving expression. Alternatively, sometimes explained as a euphemistic alteration of TURD n. (see e.g. D. L. Gold in Comments on Etymol. (1983) 12 27), although given the predominance of early spellings in -e-, this seems unlikely. The suggestion that the word is back-slang for DRUNK n. is also unsupported by the spellings, as is derivation from the name of Mortimer Snerd, a dummy used by the U.S. ventriloquist Edgar Bergen in the 1930s (see e.g. J. E. Lighter Hist. Dict. Amer. Slang (1977) s.v. Nerd).]

• Earliest cite, 1951

     geek:

[Origin uncertain; perh. orig. a variant of GECK n.¹
  The following prob. shows a transmission error for gecke (see GECK n.¹) rather than the present word:
  a1616 SHAKESPEARE Cymb. (1623) V. v. 161 To taint his Nobler hart & braine, with needlesse ielousy, And to become the geeke and scorne o'th'others vilany.]

• Aside from that Shakespeare quote, the earliest cite is 1876, meaning [someone] "who is regarded as foolish, offensive, worthless, etc."

• For geek meaning "[a]n overly diligent, unsociable student; any unsociable person obsessively devoted to a particular pursuit." the earliest cite was Jack Kerouac in 1957

     wonk:

[In sense 1 related to WONKY a. The other senses may represent different words.]

• The first definition (possibly related to "wonky") was 1918, and is in the phrase "all of a wonk," listed as obsolete and rare.

• For the form of the word I was seeking (definition: "A disparaging term for a studious or hard-working person.) the earliest cite was 1962

All of them, origins uncertain... (cue Twilight Zone music?)

So suddenly in the 1950s, English-speakers needed words for this type of person, and no existing terms could suffice.

It might be an interesting exercise to correlate the linguistic shift with what was going on in the rest of popular culture. Alas, I have neither the time nor background to pursue this, but if you have anything you'd like to share (including links if research on this has already been done), I'd love to hear more.

I did Google on these three words to find other synonyms, which I then checked against the OED. Here's what I found:

• Neither square (from 1940s jazz slang) nor dweeb (early 1980s) have quite the connotations I'm looking for: they refer to people on the outs with the dominant social group, but don't have the intellectual sheen of the other terms.
• swot seemed popular from the 1850s to 1900, believed to have originated at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, as a dialectical variant of SWEAT
• grind was university slang, also from the 1850s, although the most recent cite they provide for that definition was 1951 -- so did it go out of fashion as the new words came in?

I really have no point or direction in this research. I just find this stuff interesting, and thought others might as well. All of which just goes to confirm I'm a geek.

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:45 PM

I meant to post this earlier in the week, but have been so busy with jobhunting stuff that I just haven't had the time.

I wish I had the time to go through my posts over the last year so I could provide more thorough corrections and mea culpas, but that's even less feasible in my limited time.
I do recognize some of my "sins" of blogging that I need to work on in the following year: failing to attribute my sources; posting too quickly before verifying the facts; spreading rumors and gossip; not posting corrections or updates as prominently as the original posts; not linking erroneous posts to corrections or updates, thus possibly leaving readers with a false impression.

I think I'm doing well regarding copyright issues. I try to limit myself to fair use quotes, and email for permission where possible/necessary. I also do my best to respect other people's privacy and not blog identifiably about anyone without their permission. And there, too, I feel satisfied with how I've done over the past year. I also feel I've done well in protecting the privacy and intellectual property and trade secrets of my former employer and any companies I'm applying for. [Yes, I have had interviews; I'm just not writing about them here.] Again, if you feel I've wronged you or someone else in this regard, please let me know so I can make it up to you.

Some of these flaws seem endemic to blogging -- the race for speed and scoops. That does not excuse my conduct, but it means I have to make myself more aware of it. I also feel concerned that I've disappointed readers by not following through with promised writings. In the past year, I've started three separate works of fiction and completed none of them. They're all simmering on the back burner of my brain, but other more "urgent" demands on my time (and my own fear of failure) have kept me from completing them. I'm sorry to disappoint readers who've been left hanging. I also feel guilty about other promised essays and blog posts that I've been intending to write, yet haven't. I've been accumulating arguments and supporting evidence for, but have never found the time to write the durned things.

Since this is probably my last chance before anybody truly observant starts preparing for the holidays, one final reminder of the Al Chet for electronic communications.

While I've got this soapbox, I suppose this is as good a time as any to inform readers on LJ (and other aggregators that I'm not aware of) that LJ and other aggregators do not recognize owners of syndicated feeds and do not notify me of comments made to my posts within LJ. I do make a habit of regularly checking LiveJournal for new comments; if there are any other places people are commenting on my posts, please let me know about them. Furthermore, LiveJournal syndication pages vanish after a week or two; I've lost LJ comments in the past because of this (including some graduation congratulations), so I've made it a personal policy to recopy LJ comments into a more permanent location in my standard comment link. If you object to this practice with your own comments, let me know, and I will exclude your comments from my conversions or remove any existing comments already transferred.

Thanks for reading, this post and in general.

I hope it's not too preachy for me to wish you all be inscribed for blessings in the Book of Life.

Posted by Lis Riba at 6:56 PM

While digging through my archives on Lemony Snicket for my previous post, I came across a quote I had blogged. It's been nearly two years, and I had forgotten it, so I think I can safely repeat it without boring you readers:

Lemony Snicket, The Carnivorous carnival:

"Besides getting several paper cuts in the same day or receiving the news that someone in your family has betrayed you to your enemies, one of the most unpleasant experiences in life is a job interview. It is very nerve-wracking to explain to someone all the things you can do in the hopes that they will pay you to do them. I once had a very difficult job interview in which I had not only to explain that I could hit an olive with a bow and arrow, memorize up to three pages of poetry, and determine if there was poison mixed into cheese fondue without tasting it, but I had to demonstrate all these things as well. In most cases, the best strategy for a job interview is to be fairly honest, because the worst thing that can happen is that you won't get the job and will spend the rest of your life foraging for food in the wilderness and seeking shelter underneath a tree or the awning of a bowling alley that has gone out of business..."

You know, he really manages to put things in perspective, doesn't he?
[Jude Law will be providing the voice of Lemony Snicket in the upcoming film. Tim Curry narrates the audiobooks. Both seem entirely appropriate casting choices.]

Posted by Lis Riba at 6:40 PM

Having a personal philosophy is like having a pet marmoset, because it may be very attractive when you acquire it, but there may be situations when it will not come in handy at all.

Well, finished reading The Grim Grotto this morning (it was released on Tuesday, I bought it yesterday). This is the eleventh book (out of 13) in Lemony Snicket's Series of Unfortunate Events. For those who are unfamiliar with these books, here's a summary I wrote a while back. I highly recommend them and even bought the first book as a lending copy to introduce friends to the series. [You in the Boston area? You curious? Just ask.] A film adaptation of the first three books is coming out before Xmas, so if you want to read them unspoiled, you might want to hurry.

At any rate, maybe my memory's playing tricks on me, but I didn't find this as enjoyable as the previous books. The first half really dragged, IMO. Things did pick up in the latter half, but not enough to totally overcome the bad beginning.

I can't put my finger on what precisely was wrong, but some of the cutesy narrative tics that are usually so entertaining, such as "... a phrase which here means ..." definitions, felt overused this time around. And I think he dragged out his "water cycle" analogy a bit too much. Also, the two most recent books made such frequent mention of having a commonplace book, that I half expect to see Lemony Snicket Commonplace Books on the shelves in time for Xmas. Added later: Okay, I spoke too soon. The Blank Book was actually released six months ago.

I really wanted to like this book; I reread Book 10 last month to refresh myself on where they left matters. And I didn't have these problems with that book. I think one major obstacle is that this is Book 11, so the author had to fill readers in to a lot of backstory.

It's still an excellent series overall and I do intend to read the final two books when they come out. I've got high hopes and an intense curiousity as to how Handler/Snicket could possibly wrap everything up and resolve all the questions satisfactorily. But he seems to have a plan, so even if I can't quite figure out where he's leading us, I trust him.

By the way, for anybody looking for a paper topic, the portrayal of the press in children's literature is fascinating. Rita Skeeter, The Daily Punctilio, the papparazzi and Lilly Moscovitz in The Princess Diaries... There's a lot of animosity and distrust being sown.

Posted by Lis Riba at 1:40 PM

Someone named Don Fama left the following comment on my blog yesterday:

It is not surprising you have a degree in Library "Science".
This inane award has convinced a lot of silly women that they have something worthwhile to contribute to the world of ideas.
Get a teaching position with the public schools! There your womanheaded ideas will flourish amoug the stupid females that dominate public education.

Wow. I haven't seen comments this ignorant since the trolls attacked me over my weblogs.com opinion. At least this person shows some semblance of literacy in terms of vocabulary, reading comprehension and ability to write grammatically correct sentences. [One punctuation error: In the U.S. the period should be within the close quote.] Fails utterly in logic, of course, but that probably can't be helped.

I think the The Librarian Avengers said it best:

     Ok, sure. We've all got our little preconceived notions about what librarians are and what they do. Many people think of them as diminutive civil servants, scuttling about "Sssh-ing" people and stamping things. Well, think again buster.
     Librarians have degrees. They go to graduate school for Information Science and become masters of data systems and human/computer interaction. Librarians can catalog anything from an onion to a dog's ear. They could catalog you. Librarians wield unfathomable power. With a flip of the wrist they can hide your dissertation behind piles of old Field and Stream magazines. They can find data for your term paper that you never knew existed. They may even point you toward new and appropriate subject headings.
     People become librarians because they know too much. Their knowledge extends beyond mere categories. They cannot be confined to disciplines. Librarians are all-knowing and all-seeing. They bring order to chaos. They bring wisdom and culture to the masses. They preserve every aspect of human knowledge. Librarians rule. And they will kick the crap out of anyone who says otherwise.

Or, to paraphrase Spider Robinson, librarians control information. Don't ever piss one off.

Don, if you're reading this, I'm not upset in any way by your remarks. I hold your comment up for public mockery, and invite others to do the same. Should you anger me, I now know your email address, the IP address you used to access the site, which pages you viewed and what search terms brought you here. I have no plans to use any of this at the present time, but I do have that information.

Posted by Lis Riba at 1:25 PM

And Clay Bennett of The Christian Science Monitor (formerly of my hometown paper, The St. Pete Times) is among the most eloquent.

I've seen this sentiment echoed across dozens of blogs, and yet nowhere as succinctly:

          Copyright The Christian Science Monitor, reproduced with permission

Posted by Lis Riba at 7:18 PM

From a link on the Red Dwarf site, I discovered the PropStore of London with (as one might guess from the name) props from all kinds of films and tv shows. There's a boatload of Red Dwarf stuff, a data crystal and G'Kar headpiece from Babylon 5, and all kinds of stuff from all kinds of movies. [Want Branagh's fencing costume or sword from Hamlet?] And all of it is either far too trivial or far too expensive to consider purchasing.

And then I see it -- something matching my interests that actually seems to have a reasonable price tag for what it actually is: onscreen script pages from Shakespeare in Love for "Romeo and Juliet." And they're $109. They've got a scratched out draft from Act I Scene 1 (only $49!), Tybalt's Act III, Scene 1, Shakespeare's manuscript from that scene, the Friar's Act IV Scene 1, a bit of Act I Scene 2 and sets of two paired pages from Act I Scene 1 and Act I Scene 5. Looking at them in closeup, the Tybalt page at least appears to follow proper period convention of only showing the final three prompt words, rather than giving the actor everybody else's lines. [Hey, copying was enough of a pain without unnecessary duplication.] And aren't I an incredible geek that I not only know this and care, but have been scrutinizing the images to check?

No, this is not a plea for anybody to buy it for me. I'm just admiring and want to share the love...

<longing sigh>

Posted by Lis Riba at 6:05 PM

Ian wasn't feeling too well emotionally today and I was extremely productive yesterday, so we decided to take a day off. I got Red Dwarf Series II from the library yesterday (the DVD I'd been hoping to get, McKellan's Richard was checked out between my checking the OPAC that morning and getting to the library itself), so we spent the afternoon watching the whole thing.

Ah, fun and memories. According to the interviews on the second disc, series two is where they really felt they hit their stride. The producers weren't too happy with the first season, because of budgetary limitations. But these were all excellent -- I've forgotten just how funny the show was. I'm just glad I'm watching this after Worldcon, or I could've spent a lot of money at the Red Dwarf table in the dealers' room.

I'm blushing somewhat to admit it, but I used to have a bit of a crush on Rimmer. [I wonder if anybody's written any slashfic for the show?] And, of course, I immediately recognized the actor playing Peterson as Arthur Weasley from the Harry Potter films. I should check IMDB and see how many other actors have been in both series. Ooh! IMDB's Trivia page says Alan Rickman was under consideration for Rimmer. Is that real or just an UL (like Reagan and Casablanca which is oft rumored, but actually untrue: it was just a publicity stunt to keep his name in the news, but he was never seriously under consideration)?

Another amusing bit from the DVD. They include a brief clip of Stephen Hawking praising the show, and I realized how easy something like that would be to fake. I mean, get a clip of Hawking sitting in his chair, and you could play any computer generated audio to accompany it. I'm assuming that the Red Dwarf crew legitimately earned his appreciation, but then again, you never know...

At some point, I'm going to rewatch the six episodes with the full-cast commentary track. I'm looking forward to it.

Added later: The commentary track is so-so; mostly the actors taking the piss out of one another rather than actual insight into the episodes. But I just have to make note of three Rimmer scenes which demonstrate what an impressive actor Chris Barrie is. First two are in "Queeg:" (1) There's been damage to the hologram simulation suite, and Rimmer starts switching personalities, imitating the other cast members in rapid succession, sometimes jumping back and forth from line-to-line -- and the impressions are on target and immediately recognizable. (2) The ship's computer has taken control of Rimmer's body to force him into an exercise routine: jogging while unconscious, and then being slapped awake!? The third scene worth mentioning is the opening scene in "Parallel Universe." Not the music video, but the scene afterwards with him wearing a very nice pair of biker shorts... Yum.
I've noticed thru the online catalogs that libraries in the Minuteman network have DVDs of series 1-4 (mostly checked out at the moment). Unfortunately, I'm really craving "Terrorform," which was Season 5.

Posted by Lis Riba at 12:15 PM

Sunday night (so it would be on their desks first thing on the workweek), I placed an order with Artscroll for their interlinear machzors and benchers. I debated paying extra for 2-day shipping, but in the end went with their cheapest option -- UPS Ground -- officially 2-6 days, but I was hoping to receive it by Friday before Kol Nidre, since we're both on the East Coast.

The package arrived almost an hour ago.

I'm glad I didn't pay more for shipping; I would've felt real foolish. [And wasn't it considerate of them to include a brochure for their siddur sale that ended yesterday?]

I bought some navy and ivory ribbons yesterday for possibly decorating my tallis clips. I think I'm turning some into bookmarks before Yom Kippur.

Posted by Lis Riba at 3:00 AM

I've spent much of this evening researching some other stories that I'm not at liberty to post at the present moment, however I just found this on See the Forest:

According to the International Herald Tribune,

In a decision that could affect Americans abroad who are not yet registered to vote in the Nov. 2 presidential election, the Pentagon has begun restricting international access to the official Web site intended to help overseas absentee voters cast ballots.

According to overseas-voter advocates who have been monitoring the situation, Internet service providers in at least 25 countries - including Yahoo Broadband in Japan, Wanadoo in France, BT Yahoo Broadband in Britain and Telefónica in Spain - have been denied access to the site of the Federal Voting Assistance Program, apparently to protect it from hackers.

In an e-mail addressed to a person in France who had tried to access the Web site, the Federal Voting Assistance Program's Web manager, Susan Leader, wrote: “We are sorry you cannot access www.fvap.gov. Unfortunately, Wanadoo France has had its access blocked to U.S. government Web sites due to Wanadoo users constantly attempting to hack these sites. We do not expect the block to be lifted."

Isn't that convenient. Most U.S. states have a voter registration deadline of October 2, and the Pentagon is blocking overseas voters from getting the registration information. The article does suggest an alternative:

Those who cannot access the voting assistance program site can go to a new site, www.overseasvote2004.com, which promises to help absentee voters complete registration "in five minutes." It features state-specific registration forms that voters can print out and fax and mail back to their states.
Alternately, voters can go to their U.S. embassies or contact their local representatives of Democrats Abroad or Republicans Abroad for a registration form.

So there are other options, but they require more hurdles, which will be a deterrant to many.

In an interesting coincidence of timing, today's Christian Science Monitor includes an article on growing anti-Bush sentiment among the troops overseas. Do you think these are at all connected? Other bloggers have been pointing out other examples of Republicans trying to reduce voter turnout in minority neighborhoods and politicizing anti-voter-fraud investigations. And now overseas voters are being denied registration information. Hmmm...

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:17 PM

All week long, Ian's been reading to me from reviews of Sims 2. I confess, I'm somewhat relieved that neither of our computers meet the minimum system requirements (according to this app). Because, I think I'd really enjoy the game, and for that reason am probably better off without that additional drain upon my time.

That said, I'm trying to decide whether or not to try installing the original Sims onto my main computer again. I tried it nearly two years ago and got CD errors (which I'm still getting hits for from search engines). I never resolved the problem and eventually gave up and uninstalled. However, when my computer was repaired last month, they also cleaned and fixed up the CD-Rom drive. And since the error involved the CD, maybe it will work for me now.

Added later: And the answer would appear to be no. Exact same error that I had the last time, even with my newly cleaned and repaired CD drive. Oh well...

Posted by Lis Riba at 3:35 PM

In response to my post on airport security, Matt made a comment I wish to elaborate on. I'm quoting his entire response to avoid taking anything out of context, but I'm primarily responding to the sentences I bolded:

To be fair, they thought the bookmark was a concealed weapon, not just a bookmark that could be potentially used as a weapon. They thought she had hidden it deliberately.

Now, obviously, they were wrong, and they didn't exercise very good judgment. But, if they'd been right, arresting her would seem reasonable, now, wouldn't it?

Remember that these screeners see thousands and thousands of people every day. They are going to make the occasional mistake, as does everyone in every job everywhere. I am a huge advocate of civil rights, yet I'd still rather see them err on the side of caution.

As you might guess by the lines I've chosen to emphasize, I disagree.

I mean, if airports erred on the side of caution by strip-searching every passenger, they might actually catch criminals once in a while, but that still doesn't make it reasonable.

I believe airport security as it now stands is a huge waste of time and money and opportunity. The current system is disproportionately showy and inconvenient when compared to their actual effectiveness. It's a Maginot Line against an event that probably won't happen again, while giving a false sense of security against threats that aren't being investigated and violating rights.

Current airport security tries to stop anything and everything that might possibly be a risk, and as a result does none of it well. IMO, reasonable security means targetting narrowly to what you really want to stop.

Let's step away from airplanes for a moment and look back at the MBTA security during the Democratic National Convention. The stated policy involved bag searches of all passengers on certain lines and random checks elsewhere along the system. I experienced several of those searches, and they were so cursory as to be insulting.

IMO, a more intelligent response would've been to think about what events they most need to prevent. From what I could tell, the big concern at the DNC wasn't individuals who might be carrying a knife or gun. They were worried about a repeat of the Madrid train crash or maybe the Japanese sarin attacks: the fear that somebody would either explode something underneath the Fleet Center or that somebody would commandeer the train and force a crash.

Now how well would random bag searches prevent any of these outcomes? Not terribly. By the time the guard recognized an explosive or chemical agent, the person could set it off -- maybe not hitting the Fleet Center, but still taking out part of the subway system.

A better response would be to obtain sniffers for explosives and chemical agents. Install them near the turnstiles at subway stations, and have guards there to search those who set off the alarms. To prevent hijackings, either station a guard on each train by the driver or just close off the front car so nobody can get access to the controls. Isn't that much more sensible? And much less intrusive.

As for the concern that someone might take a gun or knife on the T intending to attack the convention... well, there was other security in and around the convention itself to detect and deter armed individuals, so why did they need bag checks on the T?

So, back to the airlines. What is airport security designed to prevent? Anything that could bring down the plane: hijackers or suicide bombers.

Before 9/11, the standard strategy for dealing with hijackings was accommodation, cooperation and nonconfrontation. Maybe the plane would take an unscheduled detour to Havana or the MidEast, but eventually the plane would land and law enforcement could take over. Nobody expected hijackers to intentionally crash the planes, killing everybody onboard. However, I think air travellers are aware of that possibility now. I have no doubt the next time there's a hijack attempt onboard an aircraft, the passengers and crew will take it upon themselves to stop the attacker. So why would anybody even bother trying to do so, when the odds are so small? And notice that everything I've described here results from a change in people's attitudes -- not by what gets stopped by the metal detector.

So how much damage can be done by a pocket-knife or a small weighted club? And how much time and money and effort are we spending in keeping those off the airpline? Is that really the best possible use of our resources?

Meanwhile, I've heard several reports that security for maintenance crews and airport employees is still trivial to bypass. Outside the airport, security doesn't even touch upon the risk of shoulder-launched weapons fired from the ground. And don't get me started on the (lack of) security in our seaports and cargo handlers.

So that's my notion of reasonable searches: intelligently targetted and as narrow as possible to maximize efficacy while minimizing any infringement of rights.

[Speaking of stupid measures, the City of Boston bought extra security cameras for the DNC. Of course, once the convention ended, no sense letting the "investment" go to waste, so they started talking about putting them up in high-crime neighborhoods for regular surveillance. Again, officials are offering a solution first, and then coming up with a problem to solve based upon their tools. When you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. And Ian and I are still trying to figure out what crime a security camera can reasonably stop or prevent that a neighborhood beat cop couldn't deter as well, if not better.]

Posted by Lis Riba at 2:25 PM

Looking over the discussion spawned by my previous post, I find myself thinking of individual vs. societal solutions. What is it about America that finds it preferable to say 'every one for themselves; eat at your own risk' rather than large-scale efforts that would make food safe for all?

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:05 AM

Friday's All Things Considered included a story on some recent good omens for the Red Sox. And I remember thinking upon listening to it, 'Shh! Don't make a big noise about it! You'll jinx it!' And sure enough, we just lost two out of three games to the Yankees -- badly.

However, one of the best Sox/Yankees observations I've heard this season wasn't in the NPR story. A series of observations has been making the rounds that ties the pennant race to the political campaigns: Naturally, Kerry is linked with the Red Sox, but Bush tied his fortunes to the Yankees by holding the RNC Convention in NYC and by invoking them before his acceptance speech. After that, the Yankees lost their worst game ever, 22-0 and steadily declined in the rankings, while the Red Sox correspondingly excelled.

Clearly, the teams and candidates are connected, but which way? Will a rising tide lift all boats, meaning the Red Sox and Kerry will triumph or lose together? Or does the city only have enough luck for one, meaning either the World Series or the presidency? After much discussion, Ian and I firmly believe that one of those options will definitely happen. [Think about it.] I recall one news reporter criticizing the notion of Kerry as Boston's "favorite son" by pointing out that most Bostonians would prefer the Sox take the Series than Kerry win the presidency. Ian and I winced and said that wasn't fair, and we hoped we'd never have to choose.

At any rate: Go Kerry! Go Red Sox!

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:31 PM

No I'm not, nor am I actually trying at the moment. But I have found several articles on the subject I wish to share and save for a later point when they might be more relevant.

Last week I found Slate's Food Fright to be fascinating. The article is subtitled, "Today's pregnant women are afraid to eat sushi, tuna, peanut butter, aioli, coffee, bologna, and more. Was it always this way?" I've often noted that I was born before mothers were put on such a strict abstinent and prohibitionist diet -- I'm sure my mother drank moderately while preganant with me, and I turned out fine. Yet nowadays I hear stories of waiters refusing to serve and even publically humiliating pregnant women who order a single glass of wine with their meal.

Slate points to "the overwhelming notion that no action a mother takes is without direct consequence for the baby" and "the emphasis on fears of a poisonous environment, rather than on positive steps that can help the baby's development" that apparently fill modern pregnanacy advice.

My friend Rivka recently became pregnant and has seen this trend firsthand. She observes "the ways in which the the pregnancy industry lays the groundwork for a lifetime of double-bind guilt for women. Pregnant women are assigned infinite responsibility for the protection of their fetuses - without, I can't help noticing, actually having much real control." And, she notes, that these books take a much stricter line on the woman's diet than external environmental factors that may be greater dangers yet culpability isn't so easily assigned. It's easier to tell somebody 'don't eat that' than to force a corporation to clean up their Woburn dumping site, for example.

In the New York Times, Alex Kuczynski called it "pregnancy paranoia."

The notion of going through pregnancy sounds stressful enough without having to give up most of my favorite comfort foods: sushi, Caesar salad, blue cheese dressing and Cobb salads, hollandaise sauce, eggs over easy (or poached or soft-boiled), cookie dough, licking cake batter from the mixer...

Hopefully by the time I ever get pregnant, things will have calmed down to some semblance of reason.
And in case it's not, I'm keeping these links as a reminder of how much guesswork and fearmongering lie behind the advice.

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:40 PM

Today's Globe had Fall Preview Arts listings, so I found several upcoming Shakespeare performances, which I've blogged about at Bard In Boston. Anybody interested in making plans to get together to see Richard III or King Lear or Marlowe's Dido this winter?

Every so often when I'm bored, I hop onto Google News and search for the latest news on Shakespeare. It's usually primarily theater announcements and reviews, but I generally find some buried gems within the morass.

The Royal Shakespeare Company recently held a poll of its members on such questions as greatest Shakespeare play (Hamlet), greatest film version (Throne of blood) and funniest scene (Midsummer night's dream Act V, Scene I: the mechanicals' play). Read the whole piece to see other results.
In separate articles, the RSC has announced they will perform all Shakespeare's works over the course of their 2006 season. Wow.

At the same time as that's going on, the National Portrait Gallery will also have a Shakespeare exhibition, and are working to display as many portraits of Shakespeare as possible, including the Chandos, Grafton, and Flower portaits and the Sanders (recently discovered in Canada).

I wish I could get out there to see them.

JUST FOR FUN:
Silly Shakespeare: Paul Estin pointed me to this classic alternate ending to Hamlet that is well worth reading.
Smutty Shakespeare: If you have more of a prurient interest, thanks to jadasc for helping me find this study guide to Shakespearean porn.

Posted by Lis Riba at 5:35 PM

I know several of my college friends will want to know the news:

WordsWorth Books, a Harvard Square institution for 29 years, filed for bankruptcy protection, as its owners seek a buyer or investor to help the independent bookseller compete with giant rivals like Amazon.com.
-- Boston Globe

According to articles, they have $1.5 million in debt and only $1 million in assets and inventory.

Supposedly, they're keeping the primary original WordsWorth bookstore separate from their Curious George kids store, which seems to be doing more okay and may outlast the crisis. But things don't look terribly optimistic for their main location. WordsWorth has been declining in quality for a while -- the shelves have been getting emptier and emptier, more books displayed cover-out to disguise the lack of books. But the notion of a Harvard Square without WordsWorth as its anchor seems incomprehensible.

I meant to share this earlier, after my last trip to Square, but I suppose it shocked me so badly that I blocked it from memory.

For folks who haven't gone shopping in Harvard Square for a while, the atmosphere is very different than when we went to school. Just in terms of booksellers: The Coop is now owned by Barnes & Noble, which gutted several floors of the building for a beautiful (but empty of books) open-air atrium. The Harvard Bookstore (and its basement of used & remainder titles) still exists, as do the Grolier Poetry Book Shop, Pandemonium (SFF & gaming), and scads of comic shops. Out of Town News has stopped carrying American newspapers, because online news has made that less profitable (though you can still buy foreign papers). I remember Paperback Booksmith -- equally large as and across the street from Wordsworth -- but that's long gone. McIntyre & Moore has moved to Davis Square, and I don't even know what happened to the scads of other used booksellers we used to haunt back in college. [Wasn't there one where the basement snaked underneath a Chinese restaurant?]

Over in Boston, Avenue Victor Hugo finally closed its doors, though at least Brookline Booksmith is still holding on strong in Coolidge Corner. But overall, my hangouts are disappearing one by one. It's incredibly depressing.