Riba Rambles:
Musings of a Mental Magpie

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:44 PM

My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Sister Garrote of Courteous Debate.

Get yours.

It seems so appropriate somehow.

With thanks to Brother Pepper Spray of Compassion for showing me the way.

Posted by Lis Riba at 7:54 PM

As seen on Universal Hub (the Boston aggregator), an issue of importance to several in my readership:

The Kosher Blog reports that Whole Foods Market has put out a "Passover Menu" of items that are not, in fact, kosher for Passover. In tiny print at the bottom of the Whole Foods Passover Menu 2005 (inserted in the Jewish Advocate), you read:

None of the items above are Kosher for Passover.
Several of these items come from our Certified
Kosher Facility and are considered Passover Style.

Passover Style? What kind of schlemiel came up with that? Oy, pass the chrane! Kosher Blog adds:

The upside of all this is that the Whole Foods in Brighton will once again be having an "Ask the Rabbi" session from 11AM-3PM this Sunday (April 10) with Rabbi Posner of the Kenmore Chabad. Samples of English cholov yisroel cheeses (suitable for Passover) will be available.

I didn't even know there was a Kosher blog.

And sorry for posting this so late; I hope that any shabbos-observant readers see this Saturday night in time to attend Sunday morning's event.

Posted by Lis Riba at 7:40 PM

I'm probably not the only one who searches the web every so often checking if anyone is taking my name in vain. In fact, it's such a popular practice that it's been given a name: "Vanity searches"

I primarily use Google, so imagine how I felt when I saw these results at My MSN Search! And get a load of what they found about Ian!

Posted by Lis Riba at 7:30 PM

You know, I tried and tried to warn the folks at Blogger of the danger of alienating their customer base.

Now, the glitchiness of Blogger has made Wired News:

What's up with Blogger, the institution that is eponymous with the media phenomenon it helped spawn?
Lately, it seems like almost every time you tune into your favorite Blogger-hosted blog to catch up on the latest gossip, meme, political diatribe or cybersnark, you find that the site is frozen in time. Or, there are multiple posts with identical content. Since Blogger, which is owned and operated by that sleek geek machine, Google, is a lot like a public utility, when it goes down, so do the lights on a large swatch of the blogosphere.
The result: a lot of irate netizens.
"This has been the worst week of blogging since I started," complained Digby, who ruminates on politics. "Blogger has been constantly bloggered and when it wasn't, my cable has been offline. Since last Tuesday, I've barely been able to read Atrios, for gawds sake, much less post one of my own brilliant observances. I hate blogging in coffee shops. I just hate it. But I'm here and if I don't keel over from caffeine poisoning before Blogger eats my post, I'll hopefully have something brilliant up soon. Or not."
In a post called "Blogger Stinks," Ryan McReynolds, who shares his views on life, God, intimacy, politics and media philosophy, wrote: "I'm getting really tired of all the glitches and hiccups of Blogger. You may have noticed double posts at times on this blog. That's because you never know whether clicking something on Blogger will actually accomplish what is intended. Lately it seems like clicking does nothing but bring up a 'document contains no data.' Maddening."
Media consultant Susan Mernit labeled an entry on a non-Blogger site "Susan Mernit broken on Blogger." She griped, "Blogger has managed to completely screw up my blog for the past 24 hours, so I will be posting here till I get it fixed -- or make that long-threatened move to another platform. This may be the longest I've gone without blogging -- involuntarily -- and it sucks.... I miss my fix."
Perhaps the most succinct flame came from a guy named Joaquin, who screeched through his modem: "HAD AWESOME POST, GOT DELETED! FUCK YOU BLOGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGER! Go to hell."
<snip>
Suddenly the search engine company that could do no wrong last year can do no right with bloggers.

I do have to take issue with one aspect of the story:

[E]nter "Blogger sucks" in Google and you get 720,000 results, with most of the entries on the first few pages (read: the most popular) dedicated to these exasperating tech snafus.

First of all, the Google link they provide is horrendous, looking at the words ANDed together, rather than the phrase, and containing all kinds of extraneous garbage that should've been trimmed from the URL. Secondly, if you conduct a Googlefight, the phrase "Google sucks" has been used nearly three times as often as "Blogger sucks." Hardly a ringing endorsement of Blogger's unpopularity as unique or particularly large.

Does Google want to incur the wrath of the blogosphere?

I think it's a little too late to ask that question now.

Posted by Lis Riba at 7:20 PM

How amusing. Today's featured article^* on Wikipedia is on Blackadder. Only last night, I'd been looking up Blackadder info on the web, as we finally got the Complete Blackadder on DVD. Much fun, and I'm looking forward to the bonus features I haven't seen on endless rerun (such as "the Cavalier Years" and "Back & Forth").

BTW, one thing I haven't found online that I'm curious about. The Blackadder III episode involving the Scarlet Pimpernel has been embargoed from American broadcast due to some kind of intellectual property dispute. The Blackadder FAQ says it was due to copyright; I've seen other sites claim it's a trademark issue. But they're all extremely vague about what the actual problem was. Anybody know any more details regarding the legal issues between Blackadder and the Scarlet Pimpernel?

Meanwhile, having Blackadder on DVD made me think of The Tall Guy, my favorite film, which shares several crucial cast members. Good news, bad news: The Tall Guy is out on DVD, but the only version available has numerous cuts: it's more than eight minutes shorter than the original British film. Indeed, it appears that my beloved video copy is also trimmed and Americanized. Ugh! I don't like the Americanization of Harry Potter and I don't want it here. Damn.

^*Just for proof on later days, here's the 'Today's featured article' archive for April 8.

Posted by Lis Riba at 8:05 PM

Pardon me, but I need to let off some steam. I don't want anybody to take this personally, because this is not intended as an attack. I just need to write this out both to process my feelings, and in hopes that other people might have some constructive suggestions.

You see, I think I just screwed myself out of something I'd been hoping and dreaming for for two years.

My company doesn't actually give vacation time until the employee has been with the company for six months. I knew, before I was hired, that I'd need a lot of time off work this spring for family commitments, but my manager said that I could get some unpaid time off to take care of them. So:

1. Last month was my godson's first birthday, and there was no way I'd ever miss that. I feel ashamed to say that I hadn't actually seen him since the bris. In fact, until this visit, it had been a year since I'd seen any of my family (two previously planned trips got cancelled due to threats of hurricaines).
2. Passover starts in two weeks. I haven't gone to my family's for Pesach since 2001, and I've been missing it terribly. Seders with Ian's family are nice, but, well, they're not really my seder, if you get my meaning. [Furthermore, last year we made some commitments about possibly hosting seders that I don't feel capable of fulfilling. Going out-of-town sidesteps those obligations.]
3. Two weeks after that, in early May, Ian's sister is graduating from college. And though it was never said to me outright, I got the message from Ian's family that attendance wasn't optional, that this would be a huge family get-together and skipping out would hurt a lot of feelings.

Though my manager actually offered me the choice of borrowing vacation days from my second six months of employment, I was expecting to take all these as unpaid time off, so I could save my vacation for the latter half of the year.

When I first started studying the Shakespearean period, I realized that 2005 is the 400th anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot. I've wanted to travel to the UK for a long time, to see the historical sites I've been reading about all these years. This would be the ideal opportunity. Not only should this year's Guy Fawkes Day be spectacular, it's probably a once-in-a-lifetime event. Plus, November's the off season, so travel is cheaper.

That's still a ways away.

Meanwhile, one family event is past, and we just booked our flights for the other two. Once I had firm travel plans, I notified my manager about the dates I had scheduled for those trips.

Here's where it all falls apart for me.

I don't want to give the wrong impression or be unfair, so I'll quote directly from her e-mail (emphasis mine):

[I]t's going to be hard for me to approve more than 10 days off total in your first year. (You get 5 vacation days after your first 6 mos. and I can probably approve an additional 5 unpaid days. You've already taken one of those.) So, after you take the days below, you'll only have 2 days left to take between then and early December.

Do you see the problem?

Travelling to London this November is something I've been dreaming about for years. And because of the centennial, it's not something I can just put off for another year.

So that's my situation.

I only realized this tonight and I don't know what to do yet.

Needless to say, I'm feeling rather distraught by all this.

I don't want to put my manager in a hard place if she can't okay any more time off for me.

Maybe I can do extra projects and work weekends to earn some extra comp time. But since I'm salaried, that may not be possible. [Usually, the only situations I've been offered comp time have been projects where management required the team to work overtime.]

A two-day trip, especially given travel time and the risks of jetlag, seems hardly worth it.

Heck, I was already feeling hardpressed to fit everything I wanted to see and do into five days. That only seemed reasonable if I narrowed my focus only to the London vicinity. In my mind, I've already ruthlessly eliminated any sidetrips elsewhere in Britain (such as Edinborough, Canterbury, Stonehenge, etc) for this first trip to the UK, which may also mean missing my chances to hook up with online friends who live there.

Anyway, that's my story. Sympathies and/or suggestions would be welcome.

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:35 PM

Lonely? Why not try Biography.com's Dead Celebrity Soulmate Search? Courtesy of Elayne, this fun Flash game asks a little about you, and a little about your "ideal mate" and then offers you three choice mates, Dating Game -style. Fun, silly, and educational.

McSweeney's presents Bartlett's Familiar Quotations. [via Art Hlavaty.]

Same blog, subsequent post: The Subtitle that changed the world. I simply must quote from this article:

   In 1999 [Mark Kishlansky] wrote a book that set off the fashion for what Waterstone's categorises as "biographies of things", called Cod: a biography of the fish that changed the world. But not only did Kurlansky start a new trend in subjects - he went on to write a follow-up called Salt, and is rumoured to be working on Chips - but he also began a new and metaphysically dubious trend in subtitles.
   Now each new biography of a thing thrusts itself on the reader with the justification that it was so vitally important that it transformed the planet. The style, "X: the [thing] that changed the world", is now entrenched throughout the land.
   According to the trade press, a whole army of "changed the world" titles is ready to be launched. In September we will be able to buy a book on concerts subtitled "gigs that changed the world". In June we can get our hands on a book about the sheep that changed the world. And next month there's the chance to buy a book on gunpowder, the explosive that changed the world (presumably by blowing up bits of it).
<snip>
   Now almost anything can have claimed to have changed the world, at least in the publishers' catalogues. The post-Cod era has seen books about quinine ("the cure that changed the world"), cables ("the wire that changed the world"), sewing machines... you get the idea.
   Even respectable writers such as Simon Winchester and Jenny Uglow have succumbed to worldophilia. Winchester's biography of the geologist William Smith was entitled The Map That Changed the World, while Uglow's book The Lunar Men, was subtitled "five friends whose curiosity" - hmmm, no prizes for guessing - "changed the world".
   James Buchan also got bitten when he wrote his excellent Capital of the Mind, subtitled "how Edinburgh changed the world". And there will be no respite. In 2006 the august Princeton University Press promises to publish The Box: how the shipping container changed the world. Oh dear.
   Some of these titles are plainly overblown. Sugar: the grass that changed the world? The Beatles' 1964 Tour That Changed the World? Nasdaq: a history of the market that changed the world? Oh, come on.
   The silliest claim of the lot, though, is a close-run thing between The Spreadsheet at 25: 25 amazing Excel examples that evolved from the invention that changed the world; or A Look Back at Radio in Canada and How it Changed the World.
   What all these "changed the world" titles have in common is a lack of self-confidence. Unsure that readers will want to buy a book about sugar or sewing machines or radio in Canada, publishers over-gild their lilies.
   In a sense, yes, all these things have changed the world, but only in a general sense that everything that exists changes the world. That hardly justifies the subtitle of a book such as Soul Made Flesh ("the discovery of the brain - and how it changed the world") or the box, or so many others. Yes, glass or Greenpeace or the railroad or cotton all changed the world in some way, but only if we dilute this away from having any sense of drama or paradigmatic shift.
   Perhaps there will be a backlash that transforms publishing and ends the use of globe-busting titles. In which case, this piece should henceforth be known as "the Guardian comment page article that changed the world". It's such a catchy title.

I work for a library vendor. As such, I have access to an online Books in Print. So I checked on titles containing the phrase "changed the world." Want to take a guess?     373 titles. Discounting multiple editions of the same work, there are 255 distinct titles that "changed the world." Oy. So, if anybody asks you for spare change, tell them to check the bookstore or library.

Meanwhile, I discovered this book meme over at Majikthise. [Okay, I've seen it around elsewhere, but this is the version that made me actually want to participate.] Ahem.

You're stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be [saved]?

Oh gd. I hope we don't come to that.

As Ian will no doubt confirm, I have a horrible memory for exact quotes. I can't even properly deliver the most famous lines from movies I've watched over and over again. So, although I'm an avid reader, I'm probably the last person who should assume such a role.

But if I had no choice, I suspect I'd choose Shakespeare's As You Like It. It's one of the frothier comedies, but I like it, it's short, I've seen it multiple times, and (most importantly, imo) I understand the Elizabethan slang to get and explain the jokes.

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?

Oh hell, yes. Quite often. Names withheld to protect some shred of my dignity.

The last book you bought is?

I don't actually know. At this point, I get so many of my books from libraries...

If we're limiting it to books that I personally purchased, that would be World of Christopher Marlowe and Hammered, which I bought back in December. If I count titles that others purchased for me at my request, I can think of two more recent.

Actually, I take all that back. The most recent book I bought is a gift for someone else, and I don't want to give any more away than that.

What are you currently reading?

At last, an easy one: Inside the Victorian home, which I'm hoping to write up soon. [In short, I'm lovin' it!]

Five books you would take to a deserted island?

Ooh, tough one. Two definites:

1. Tanakh, the modern JPS translation
2. Complete works of Shakespeare

I suppose the rest would depend on the conditions I was stranded in. I mean, if it were totally desolated with no certainty of rescue, basic survival tracts might be useful (I like Majikthise mention of The Joy of cooking). If I had amenities and knew somebody would be picking me up again after a while, I might choose some overdue pleasure reading and a copy of the OED.

Added later: I just realized this didn't say one was limited to only five. Assuming these weren't the only books I could have with me, three others would be:

3. the Talmud
4. an Oxford English Dictionary
5. Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America

Posted by Lis Riba at 7:42 AM

1593:

A note Containing the opinion of one Christopher Marly Concerning his Damnable Judgment of Religion, and scorn of gods word:

[...]

That St John the Evangelist was bedfellow to Christ and leaned alwaies in his bosome, that he vsed him as the sinners of Sodoma.

2005:

Gay Bishop Accuses Conservatives Of Twisting Words

Gene Robinson, the first openly gay bishop in the Episcopal Church is accusing conservative elements within the worldwide Anglican faith of twisting his words to imply he said Jesus was gay.

[...]

"It is appalling deconstructionism from the liberal lobby which will spin even the remotest thing to turn it into a hint that Biblical figures are gay," fumed David Virtue, a conservative Anglican commentator.

"It is so utterly preposterous to imply that Jesus' relationship with John was homoerotic, but twisting the truth is the only way these people can get scriptural justification for their lifestyles. Can you imagine Calvin, Luther or Erasmus saying something like this? It is a wonder that thunder and lightning bolts don't strike Bishop Robinson down."

...the more they stay the same.

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:30 PM

          Copyright The Christian Science Monitor, reproduced with permission

Sadly, we do have to imagine what the USA PATRIOT Act would do against terrorists, because more than four years after it's been implemented, we still don't have good data on its effectiveness. And, due to its gag-order provisions, we still don't fully know how it's been used against fellow law-abiding citizens, although preliminary evidence hasn't been terribly good for civil liberties.

Fortunately, when Congress passed the USA PATRIOT Act, they had the foresight to allow several provisions to run out after several years. That way, if this rush legislation turned out to be flawed (which it has), they could just let it expire, rather than repealing it.

That time is coming quickly, and the Bush administration is making a major push to convince Congress to renew these provisions.

The Justice Department has lied to the American public and to Congress about how they've implemented the USA PATRIOT Act. For example, when faced with massive publicity, Ashcroft claimed the DOJ never once used Section 215 (Sept. 18, 2003). Then, when the heat was off (June 20, 2004), a declassified memo showed they had.

The USA PATRIOT Act does not deserve to have those provisions renewed. I don't have time to stay up with all the latest news, but fortunately somebody else created PATRIOT WATCH which tracks the latest news about the Act.

And let's get on the horn to Congress, and tell our representatives to end this travesty.

[And even as I'm posting this, Librarian.net provides links to today's hearings on USAPA.]

Posted by Lis Riba at 8:15 PM

In a post I scrapped on the political ramifications of Terri Schiavo's situation, I wrote about how her case would be used as a set-up for the GOP's ongoing plans to pack the judiciary with Bush's ideological clones.

By now, you've probably read the odious comments Cornyn and DeLay have made, threatening judges and hinting that violence against them may be deserved. [I really don't feel like repeating the full quotes here.]

Though it's gotten less press, I've been heartened by the swift responses Democrats like Lautenberg, Kennedy and Conyers have made, rebuking the Republicans for their rhetoric, particularly in such inflammatory times.

I agree with Josh Marshall:

[T]he Democrats need to introduce a sense of the senate resolution condemning those who threaten violence against judges or offer excuses for those who commit violent acts against members of the bench.

There's much more I could write, but many other bloggers have been staying on top of the story. Frankly, as I consider these Congressional attempts to constrain the judiciary (including a less-well-known GOP-sponsored bill misleadingly titled the "Constitutional Restoration Act", which could make judges subject to Congressional rebukes), mostly what's been going through my mind is one of the old Schoolhouse Rock songs, titled "Three Ring Government":

Talkin' about the government and how it's arranged,
Divided in three like a circus.

Ring one, Executive,
Two is Legislative, that's Congress.
Ring three, Judiciary.
See it's kind of like my circus, circus.

Step right up and visit ring number one.
The show's just begun. Meet the President.
"I am here to see that the laws get done.
The ringmaster of the government."

On with the show!

Hurry, hurry, hurry to ring number two.
See what they do in the Congress.
Passin' laws and juggling bills,
Oh, it's quite a thrill in the Congress.

Focus your attention on ring number three.
The Judiciary's in the spotlight.
The courts take the law and they tame the crimes
Balancing the wrongs with your rights.

No one part can be
more powerful than any other is.
Each controls the other you see,
and that's what we call checks and balances.

Well, everybody's act is part of the show.
And no one's job is more important.
The audience is kinda like the country you know,
Keeping an eye on their performance.

I mean, come on! I learned this stuff in grade school.

I'm beginning to think that the GOP leadership could use a few lessons in remedial civics.

Posted by Lis Riba at 6:55 PM

Not just any donations, mind you. [Big Brothers will be picking up two big bags of general clothes tomorrow.]

But I've got several excellent-quality two- and three-piece suits that no longer fit me. I've heard of charities which specifically handle businesswear and interview-suits for low-income women, and I think these outfits would be better served by going to such a place, rather than among the general clothing donations.

So, can anybody in the Boston area point me to one?

Thanks in advance!

Posted by Lis Riba at 8:48 PM

BTW, while I initially uploaded my blogroll in alphabetical order, I try to let Blogrolling sort it by update time, with newest blogs bubbling up to the top.

Should be great, but not all blogs ping when they update, meaning I always had a few stubborn recalcitrants at the bottom of the list.

Many blogging programs will ping automatically. [I know Blogger does.] Bloggers who choose not to do that (I don't, because I sometimes take a few passes to get the post right), can set up your own bookmarks for manual pings. Here are mine (though you'll need to edit the URLs with your own name & address):

• Weblogs.com
• Blo.gs
• Technorati

[Using Opera means I have keep all these links in one hotlink folder, and can launch them all by entering "ping" in the address field.]

Now, it's possible that in some cases I'm using the wrong URL for a blog. Blogrolling is very picky, and if won't update my "www.url.com" if the ping is for plaine "url.com" or vice-versa. [For that reason, I make a point of pinging under both www.osmond-riba.org/lis/journal/ and www.ribarambles.org.]

So, if you're blog is on my blogroll, and it's not showing the last posting time, can you please check if I've got the correct URL? And for any of you (on my blogroll or not) who don't ping upon posting, why not?

Posted by Lis Riba at 7:15 PM

Let's see how many of these I can squeeze in briefly:

So that's all I've got ready to blog for the moment. Enjoy!

Posted by Lis Riba at 6:00 PM

Occasionally, I've been asked what I mean by the "mental magpie" in my subtitle.

Magpies are birds with a reptuation for being attracted to shiny objects, which they use to feather their nests.

But rather than getting distracted by physical objects (though it has been known to happen), it's intellectual pursuits that really turn my head:

Ooh! Politics! Ooh! Christopher Marlowe! Ooh! Social informatics! Ooh! Harry Potter! Ooh! Elizabethan history! Ooh! Current events! Ooh! Ooh! Ooh!

Read back through my archives and you should see what I mean. I seem congenitally unable to limit myself to writing about a single subject, as my attention is constantly drawn to new topics.

Thus "mental magpie."

I discovered the term on Usenet in early 2002, coined by a friend whom I know by three different names (Usenet, LiveJournal, and meatlife) which leaves me uncertain how to attribute hir. The phrase so closely and concisely mapped to my own self-image that I asked (and got) hir permission to use it as self-reference, and it became a useful tag for this weblog.

Along those lines, but much more verbose, one of my favorite quotes:

"The creative person wants to be a know-it-all. He wants to know about all kinds of things: ancient history, nineteenth-century mathematics, current manufacturing techniques, flower arranging, and hog futures. Because he never knows when these ideas might come together to form a new idea. It may happen six minutes later or six months, or six years down the road. But he has faith that it will happen."
           — Carl Ally

I enjoy learning for its own sake, but it's often surprising where and how applications for the most arcane knowledge can be found.

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:30 AM

As a former Florida resident (officially, one can't call onesself a native until after living there for ten years, and I managed to escape before then), I adore today's "This Modern World" comic strip:

Several years ago, the Florida tourism office came up with the slogan: "Florida: The Rules Are Different Here." And the rest of the state government keeps finding new and worse ways of proving that true...

[The full comic is viewable today on Salon (for those with memberships or willing to view an advertisement for the daypass). Or tomorrow I'll post the more permanent link from Working for Change.]

8:20 pm Tuesday: For those who couldn't or wouldn't view the full comic on Salon, I have updated the link to point to Working for Change's full strip. I highly recommend viewing the comic if you haven't already.

Posted by Lis Riba at 7:56 AM

So, according to the front page of the Boston Globe:

Restaurants, bars gain business under smoke ban
Sales and employment at Massachusetts restaurants and bars grew slightly during the first six months of a statewide smoking ban, disproving predictions that the prohibition would inflict serious damage on the hospitality industry, Harvard researchers are scheduled to report today.

[Plus sidebar graphic linked from the front page, but not in the article.]

Personally, I don't feel very strongly one way or another about hotel & restaurant bans as long as I (as a patron) and workers aren't unnecessarily exposed, but it's been getting some play by other bloggers as their parts of the country consider them.

I and some family members have tobacco smoke allergies (family members stronger than mine) so I can certainly understand the need to avoid exposure. On the other hand, I've seen smoking coworkers huddled under the awnings in adverse New England weather, and that doesn't seem fair to me either. Besides, forcing the smokers outdoors into a huddle around the entrance exposes me to more cigarette smoke than when our company used to have an interior smokers' lounge behind solid walls.

And in places like airports, where it's a half-hour wait through security to get in from outside, I think interior smoking bans are just cruel. I know ideally we'd like to wean people away from tobacco, but I suspect policies that seem blatantly unfair will inspire resistance in the populations that feel targeted, and thus prove less effective than less-extreme measures.

So, my preference as a nonsmoker is for well-ventilated smoking rooms that the staff isn't required to enter (no service in there, for example). But that's me. I guess the studies seem to show otherwise.

Just adding a little more data to the fire...

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:15 PM

We've been living for nearly half-a-decade without cable television. For the most part (aside from a few shows), I don't miss it.

So, maybe I'm the last person to learn about this trend as reported in today's Boston Globe:

This is the new face of A&E -- the network once considered a commercial version of PBS -- whose acronym stood for Arts and Entertainment.
Classic favorites like ''Nero Wolfe" and ''Sherlock Holmes Mysteries" have been replaced by the youth-skewing reality shows ''Dog the Bounty Hunter," ''Airline," ''Growing Up Gotti," and now ''Knievel's Wild Ride."
<snip>
''Classic arts programs, whether theater or ballet, are not where our network is going," says Bob DeBitetto, A&E's executive vice president of programming. ''Our tagline now is the art of entertainment."
<snip>
''Unwittingly, this is an endorsement for the need to keep PBS alive," says John Rash, director of broadcast negotiations at Campbell Mithun Advertising in Minneapolis.
With a similiar evolution occurring at Bravo in the last four years, Rash believes classic arts programming and films are being marginalized, and in the future they will be shifted onto small digital cable channels.
''There will always be some programming and some networks geared towards it. It will be available to those who choose to subscribe," he says. ''But fine arts should not simply be something for people who can afford satellite or digital cable."

Replace "satellite or digital cable" in that last quote with "theater tickets" and I believe that approximates the original mandate for PBS. They may not always be effective at living up to it -- though some of that can be blamed upon budget cuts built around the assumption that arts are plentiful on basic cable.

Which, this article explains, is no longer the case.