Riba Rambles:
Musings of a Mental Magpie

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:01 PM

So, has it stopped snowing in Boston? Did it stick or has it already melted away?

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:00 PM

Well, okay, Boopsie and Ian are home. I'm the one on the road:

• ASIS&T Annual Meeting, tomorrow - Nov. 1
• One day's respite working from home, Nov. 2
• London, Nov. 3 - Nov. 8

Still, if you see any links you think I'd like, or if you've written anything you want to draw my attention to, any links at all that you want to share*, please post them in the comments for me.

I'm going to be mostly offline for a while, and staying current seems nigh-impossible otherwise.

*I take exception to actual spam and will delete any such messages, but I do want to keep current on the news, commentary, memes, personal lives of friends, etcetera that may be going on in my absence.

Thanks.

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:50 PM

My flight didn't take off until about an hour after scheduled departure time in order to de-ice the wings. This was complicated by the fact that one of the guys working the machinery was apparently a novice (so saith over the intercoms) and got deicing fluid into the auxiliary engine somethingorother. So the pilots shut off the electrical systems for about 15 minutes to let that drain...

I took an exit-row seat for the extra legroom, so had a nice view of the deicing process. I can't help wondering how toxic that green goop they sprayed over the wings might be, and whether it causes problems for the environment around airports.

Anyway, once we finally took off, the rest of the flight was quite smooth. Got into Charlotte around 6:45pm. No airport shuttles, and the taxi cost more than I expected, though the skyline of the city was quite pretty (it was dusk, so the buildings were sorta shining). But the hotel room is nice, and there were free cookies at the front desk. :)

Then I did something possibly moronic -- no harm ensued, but I'm honestly not sure whether this was a dumb idea and if so, how dumb. [Please feel free to let me know.]

See, I was hungry. And after looking thru the various local brochures and picking up an area map, I decided to walk, on my own, after dark, in a strange city, downtown to find a restaurant. The sidewalks were almost entirely vacant, the streets moderately so, both were wide and well-lit... I can't really think of an analogous neighborhood in Boston to describe what it was like. I felt more-or-less safe; walked briskly, kept an eye out on my surroundings...

The restaurant I chose was Mert's Heart and Soul, which has apparently won local awards for best Southern cooking. Google Maps says it's 0.6 miles away, but it was a very nice walk. Sat down and got a sweet tea to drink. Ordered Mert's Famous Salmon Cakes, which came with two sides. I chose yams and the fresh greens. Didn't care for the greens, but I filled up fairly quickly.

And then I walked back to the hotel room, got my internet connection working, and am typing this up before bed.

How are you?

Posted by Lis Riba at 12:24 PM

I just looked out the window.

It's snowing!

It's not even November yet.

This so doesn't bode well for winter...

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:50 AM

I think it's time to change the hurricane naming scheme.

First, somebody on my friends list asked what happens if they need to retire one of the greek letters they're now using. Can we really have an alphabet with gaps?

But it was Kevin Fury (via another Googler) who pointed out the real problem:

Tropical Storm Beta. I hope they're accepting feedback on how to improve the tropical storm experience.

Yeah, that letter has connotations that don't apply well to natural disasters...

PS: Cool Google feature. Google on Weather in Charlotte NC or Weather in Boston. See the OneBox above the search results? Alas, it only appears to work within the United States (can't get London this way).

And since then I discovered that if you Google on two city names, say Boston Tampa it starts hunting down travel information.

Cool beans

PPS: More on the Fitzgerald investigation.

A lot of people seem to be confusing Fitzgerald's first public move for an end game. Either gleeful or despondent that he only indicted Scooter Libby. This guy cut his chops prosecuting the real mob -- in Chicago. Think that's a good training ground for the Mayberry Machiavellians?

Sure he didn't go after Libby for the original leak... but he laid all the groundwork for it in his indictment. To switch metaphors, he's holding that card in reserve in case Scooter Libby refuses to play along. The fact that the right-wing spin seems to be "see, it isn't a conspiracy! Scooter Libby was the lone gunman!" probably isn't helping Libby's team spirit. John Dean referred to Scooter as Cheney's firewall; Dick Morris also said this implicates Cheney. And Jane Hamsher (particularly the last five paragraphs of this entry) explains why it's logical to assume Fitz is still "gunning for" Cheney.

Sure he didn't name Karl Rove: that's proof Rove is still square in his sights. Associated Press has confirmed that "Official A" is Rove. In previous investigations, Fitzgerald used "Official A" to represent Governor Ryan, whom (as I pointed out earlier) he eventually prosecuted after working his way up through underlings. Furthermore, Billmon observes that Fitzgerald's indictment treats Official A "with studious neutrality."

Finally, though, the "what if" kicker, from Fitzgerald's press conference:

I would have wished nothing better that, when the subpoenas were issued in August 2004, witnesses testified then, and we would have been here in October 2004 instead of October 2005.

John Aravosis was but the first (that I saw) to note: "With the 2004 presidential election as close as it was, this could have easily - would have easily - swung the election to Kerry's favor."

Posted by Lis Riba at 8:35 PM

I did my best to make sure I was paid up on all the household bills before leaving on my trips.

Nationalgrid, our electric company, doesn't accept electronic payments, but have payment locations with local vendors.

I just discovered the store sent my payment to Keyspan (the gas company) instead.

So now I've got a credit with one account and the other is past due.

I phoned Nationalgrid to let them know, but the shop where I made the payment (which kept both the check which clearly stated "Nationalgrid" along with the Nationalgrid bill) is closed until Monday morning. Ian's going to have to take care of it while I'm away, which be problematic since (a) he's neither the addressee of the bill nor author of the check (though his name is on the checks) and (b) the location is close to my office, so not terribly convenient to him.

I so did not need this tonight...

Posted by Lis Riba at 7:25 PM

Everybody else is already saying the obvious about today's indictments and statements by Patrick Fitzgerald.

A couple less-repeated points caught my eye.

From Greg Saunders of This Modern World:

Scooter the patsy?

Considering that Libby consistently told the same false story to the grand jury and the FBI, I can’t help but think that he’s been set up to be the Administration’s sacrificial lamb. After all, according to the indictment “Official A”, Judy Miller, “the Under Secretary of State”, the “White House Press Secretary”, and “the Assistant to the Vice President for Public Affairs” all knew that Libby’s story about learning of Plame’s status from Tim Russert was without merit. Why would Libby be reckless enough to make his claims when any one of these people would have been able to discredit him? It defies logic to assume that Libby spoke to the FBI or the grand jury without discussing what he would say with his sources and/or fellow leakers. That being the case, did White House officials reassure Libby that they’d buttress his story only to later turn against him? If that turns out to be true, I’d expect Libby’s plea agreements to be…interesting, to say the least. There’s a damn good reason Fitzgerald says he’s “not quite done”. If Libby feels burned by the Administration, I think we can expect more fireworks.

Next, from Digby, over on Hullabaloo:

There is no reason to think that anyone else is out of the woods, though. In the Governor Ryan case remember, Ryan was the 66th person indicted --- partially on the basis of testimony of his closest aide

When I showed Ian this quote (out of a much longer post), Ian pointed out: "Fitzgerald is starting with Scooter Libby; there's not that much higher they can go."

Raw Story has the latest rumors regarding Rove's status. Can't guarantee their accuracy, but he's hardly in the clear.

The overall all-around best coverage I've seen of this story in the blogosphere remains FireDogLake (on LiveJournal at firedoglakeblog). In a recent must-read entry, Jane Hamsher takes an insightful look into the "positively Shakespearean" father-son dynamics between the Presidents Bush that form the root of this tragedy.

Finally, if you haven't heard, Cheney and Libby got caught in another lie this week:

Vice President Cheney and his chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, overruling advice from some White House political staffers and lawyers, decided to withhold crucial documents from the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2004 when the panel was investigating the use of pre-war intelligence that erroneously concluded Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, according to Bush administration and congressional sources.

Posted by Lis Riba at 6:54 PM

Two headlines in two days:

Yesterday:

Exxon Mobil Profit, Sales Soar to Records

(AP) Exxon Mobil Corp. rewrote the corporate record books Thursday as the oil company's third-quarter earnings soared to almost $10 billion and it became the first public company ever with quarterly sales topping $100 billion.

Today:

Exxon Workers Got Fake Flu Shots

(AP) Fake flu shots were given out last week at an Exxon Mobil Corp. health fair

Talk about clear signs of an unhealthy economy...

Posted by Lis Riba at 6:15 PM

What happens when you're mind's on one thing and you're dealing with another?

I got an email titled "Free Trial of CooksIllustrated.com"

My first thought was ‘I didn't even know they were indicted.’

Posted by Lis Riba at 7:25 AM

Penguins have made the news yet again.

This time we're dealing with the denizens of the Falkland Islands, the site of a brief war several decades past.

It seems this conflict left behind several minefields, which are turning into veritable playgrounds for penguin courting and nesting. The birds are just too light to detonate the weaponry, you see:

Thousands of penguins and other feathered and amphibious friends choose to nest and rest in no-go zones. The British estimate that some 25,000 land mines, mostly sown by Argentine forces in the 1982 war with Britain, remain.

On a recent day, the squawking penguins were busily finding partners, preparing nests and waddling about the mating grounds.

Wildlife numbers in the mined areas appear to be on the rise and conservationists cannot hide their enthusiasm about this unorthodox form of protecting lands previously trampled by people or overgrazed by sheep.

Environmentalists are actually happy with the state of affairs, because it keeps tourists, shepherds and developers off the land, leaving it free for wildlife. And, I suppose if any of the penguins do need rescue, they can always call on Nils Olav...

More via Reuters, UK.

Meanwhile in London, a cute fox in a red coat has been spotted wandering the National Portait Gallery afterhours.

Artist Francis Alÿs released a fox in the gallery, recorded the surveillance camera observations of the animal's movements, and edited it together into a 20 minute film. The entire film, titled Nightwatch, is available online through Channel 4, and a portion made The Daily Show's "Moment of Zen" a few weeks back. It's also playing in special exhibit at the Gallery itself, so I may view it while in London.

The Art Newspaper breathlessly reports:

The Art Newspaper can exclusively reveal that the star of The nightwatch is no lowly specimen of wild urban fauna unleashed in the capital's halls of culture in the name of art, but an extremely handsome six-year old "professional" fox, Bandit by name, who has already appeared in numerous TV programmes including ITV's popular drama series Peak practice and Midsomer murders and commercials for Lloyd's bank. It is a relief to know that the NPG are not letting any random riff raff sneak into the gallery at night.

They include a closeup of the animal -- quite lovely. I didn't expect the artist would actually loose a wild animal into the galleries. [I could only watch a portion of the online version, and while it is adorable, I couldn't help cringing as it got a little too close for my comfort to some of the priceless works.]

And just think... within a week or so, I'll be the cute fox in those galleries...

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:20 PM

A friend posted this recently.

I haven't heard its like elsewhere, but thought others in my readership might be able to add to this account or spread the word so it can be confirmed or debunked:

Nasty Rumor or Extreme Truth?

I spoke with sailor_tech, who is still in the middle of Operation Cajun Freedom in New Orleans. He has heard rumor that he'll be home for Thanksgiving now.

Why? Because FEMA in it's wisdom is having everyone pull out the ships. Seems FEMA doesn't want to provide housing for the folks doing the rebuilding work anymore... of course the FEMA personnel have been staying in hotels and not stuck in dormatory style housing onboard the various ships like the construction people, longshoremen etc. Why suffer with the peons when you can live it up in luxery hotels?

It also apepars that FEMA has decided to make national policy.

The Port of New Orleans is evidently NOT BEING REBUILT.

No, they haven't told the press about this decision, but evidently the major port functions of the city are all being moved to.... TEXAS.

As in permanently.

That is the current FEMA plan. Why spend money on repairing the port when they can give a boon to Bush's buddies in Texas?

This is the word circulating among the sailors, longshoremen and various other port workers. They'll be working in Texas by the end of the year or out of work if they stay in the Big Easy. They should sell off homes etc and be ready to move, as they won't be coming back.

The public, to say the least, is being mislead by what is going on in the city. They news stories of "Fast Recovery" and quick restoration of life as it was in New Orleans, isn't what's happening. It's the Spin from the politicians and their staff in Washington. That's why they've been doing all these news stories about Bourbon street, the return of the 'nightlife' etc.

New Orleans will be relegated to a tourist trap and not much else when they are done. Much of the Excess population has been thinned out and they won't be handing out a whole lot of rebuilding money. (75% of all FEMA loans that have been applied for in New Orleans have been rejected according to a news story on CNN today).

Pass the word and let folks know about this travesty.

Has anybody else heard the like?

Posted by Lis Riba at 6:40 PM

This year's winners of the Lettre Ulysses Award for the Art of Reportage have recently been announced.

The third prize of 20,000 Euro went to:

* Riverbend (Iraq): Baghdad Burning. Girl Blog from Iraq, The Feminist Press at the City University of New York, New York, 2005. Published in the UK by Marion Boyars Publishers, London, 2005. Riverbend, a young Iraqi woman, writes an Internet diary, using a pseudonym. Her commanding gift for observation, her intelligence and her extraordinary language skills make her account of the life of a normal Iraqi family, which has also been published in book form as Baghdad Burning, one of the most uniquely critical documents of life in this abused country under the conditions of the war and the US military occupation.

I've read the book and couldn't recommend it more highly. It truly is an excellent work, enlightening and entertaining.

I hope the award money helps keep her and her family safe in these dangerous times.

     [via Wampum]

Posted by Lis Riba at 8:20 PM

St. Crispin's Day

• 1415: Battle of Agincourt between England and France, immortalized in Shakespeare's Henry V
• 1854: Charge of the Light Brigade, memorialized by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
• Today, 2005: the number of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq reached 2,000.
  No known poem yet commemorates this milestone.

[Ian's take on this.]

Source: History Today.

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:10 PM

Scanning the latest news on Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation, a 1970s ad jingle has popped into my mind:

When it says Libby, Libby, Libby,
on the libel, libel, libel,
They will leak it, leak it, leak it,
[Swear] on the bible, bible, bible...

Of course, the problem I have with this association* is that Scooter Libby doesn't otherwise remind me of canned vegetables. Only one food comes to mind when I think of his current situation:

Toast.

*Aside from the extreme lack of adequate rhymes for "libel"

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:24 PM

BTW, just to update on this morning's post:

• The official hotel was booked, but thanks to the conference blog, I managed to find a cheaper hotel about a quarter away. Heck, I could've stayed under the official hotel cost and gotten an in-room whirlpool, but decided against that.

• And it looks like with enough enzyme cleaner (we buy it by the gallon) the urine stain seems completely gone from my purse and bags. My purse strap smells a little of enzyme-cleaner, but I'm far more comfortable with that than with the strong ammonia odor it had this morning.

So after more than a bit of quiet panic, everything in these areas appears acceptably copacetic.

And the third matter I mentioned will happen when it happens, and probably be extremely annoying when it does.

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:24 PM

I set my blogroll to sort by most-recently updated, as determined by pings to weblogs.com (and other sites).

I believe that Blogger users who use Blogger's comment system and have Blogger automatically ping Weblogs.com (Publishing tab > Notify Weblogs.com)... Well, I think Blogger pings Weblogs.com every time somebody leaves a comment.

Because I've noticed a lot of blogs bubbling up to the top of my blogroll without a new post. Sometimes, when I look closely, I see somebody's left a comment within the last half-hour. And almost every case, it's a Blogger-based page using Blogger's comments.

Very annoying.

And poor design by Blogger when they added the comment system.

[I don't use Blogger's auto-ping because I often will tweak posts for the first few minutes after posting. To prevent ping-sites from giving me nasty messages for pinging too often, I created my own manual pings with pre-filled forms. If people want, I can give y'all the code...]

Anyway, that's my gripe for the evening.

What's ticking you off?

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:05 PM

Recently, I compiled a list of Marlowe biographies I have read (I was factchecking a brief Marlowe bio geared towards schoolchildren, and the editor asked me to source my corrections). Thought y'all might find it interesting as well:

Marlowe biographies I have read (nonfiction, sorted by publication date) include:

• A.D. Wraight, In Search of Christopher Marlowe, 1965 (not recommended!)
• Charles Nicholl, The Reckoning (1st ed.), 1993
• J. A. Downie , "Marlowe: facts and fictions" (PDF) in Constructing Christopher Marlowe, 2000
• Constance Brown Kuriyama, Christopher Marlowe: a Renaissance life, 2000
• Stephen Orgel, "Tobacco and boys: how queer was Marlowe?", 2000
• David Riggs, The World of Christopher Marlowe, 2005
• Peter Farey, Marlowe website (highly recommended for source material & analysis, including this brief biography)
• Other articles and essays

Plus, I have read 25 fictional portrayals of the playwright (listed here)

Not bad for a hobby I've been pursuing fewer than five years.

And, of course, there are still more books on the way.

New and forthcoming Marlowe nonfiction (in order of US publication date):

• History play: the lives and afterlife of Christopher Marlowe by Rodney Bolt on 09/06/2005
• Debatable deaths by Gary L. Blackwood on 10/01/2005
• A Christopher Marlowe chronology by Lisa Hopkins on 11/19/2005
• Christopher Marlowe: poet & spy by Park Honan on 12/01/2005
• The World of Christopher Marlowe (paperback) by David Riggs on 01/01/2006

Most of these are released in the UK earlier than the US, meaning that all the new material will be on sale in London during my visit.

And, oooh! I've had high hopes for the Chronology, based upon both the title and other works I've read by the author on Marlowe. Take a look at this advance excerpt (PDF) from the publisher's catalog.
Unfortunately, it lists at £55 in the UK (while the US edition will be $80) so not the most favorable exchange rate.

Posted by Lis Riba at 6:15 PM

Rick Steves' latest travel column for ABC News focuses on "Affording London's Sights." [He also recently devoted a half-hour on his radio show to the city, which gave me a couple good tips. [Try to visit the Tower of London in the morning, because it gets very crowded with tourbuses in the afternoon.]]

BTW, somewhat tangential, but I have found two different companies offering Shakespeare-themed walking tours. The Original London Walks and an independent Shakespeare City Walk. In both these cases, the tourguide's primary occupation is actor (or actress). Is that supposed to be a draw? Maybe I'm missing something, but wouldn't a historian be more appropriate?

At any rate, I'm probably not going to take any of these guided Shakespeare walks. I know enough about the subject that I suspect most of the patter geared towards the general public will be old hat for me. The self-guided Walking Shakespeare's London is far more suited to my tastes, though I wish I could find a copy for purchase which I could mark up (I may be returning some well-travelled library books...).

That's not to say I won't glom onto some other walking tour, for one of those subjects that I have interest but less understanding. [Perhaps one of the guides to Jewish London, which feels like something I ought to see...] So if anybody has experience with and recommendations for or against any of these walking tours, I would be most interested.

Posted by Lis Riba at 6:00 PM

So, Saturday night, I posted an interesting revelation regarding the Corpus Christi portrait from the London Times review of Park Honan's new Marlowe bio:

It seems the painting was not found, as hitherto reported, in the Master's Lodge at Corpus. In a letter of May 2000, a former undergraduate, Peter Hall, described how the panel was discovered in his rooms in 1952, by workmen stripping out an old gas fire. His rooms stood on the southeast corner of Old Court -- precisely where the "Parker Scholars", of whom Marlowe was one, had their quarters.

Then a friend from the UK replied:

Gas fires in Oxbridge College rooms were mostly installed in the early decades of the 20th century, usually where the old coal fireplace had been. The coal fireplace was usually removed, the chimney blocked up and the gas fire installed where the coal one had been. Why did the workmen who installed the fire not find the panel?

As I understood it, the Parker scholar rooms weren't originally designed as living quarters, so maybe they didn't have standard fixtures.

I checked Riggs to confirm, and he describes Marlowe's rooms thus:

John Parker renovated a storeroom on the north-western corner of the college quadrangle to house the students who held the last of the scholarships that his father had endowed.

Southeast corner of Old Court vs. northwestern corner of the quadrangle??

Different reference points (southeast corner of a building in the northwest corner of the quad?)? Or are they describing different locations?
This may be an avenue for further investigation, both for where the room was located, and the history of work done on that room.

I'm also curious why it took more than fifty years for this seemingly-crucial discrepancy in where the portrait was found to come to light.

I've posted this to h.l.a.s. to see if the regulars of that group can offer any more insight.

Meanwhile, the question makes me regret all the more keenly that I cannot attend either of Park Honan's talks/signings.
For anybody who will be in London, Park Honan will be speaking:

• 2 Nov, 6pm @ Cottlesloe Theatre
• 8 Nov, 8pm @ Waterstone's Gower St.

PS: Another sigh... An adaptation of Tamburlane opens at Barbican Theatre, London starting 9 Nov... Another near miss. I wonder if they're holding any preview performances during my stay? Otherwise, my timing definitely leaves something to be desired...

Posted by Lis Riba at 12:10 PM

• Worst thing to discover when rushing out the door. The cat's weak bladder expressed itself over my bag and pursestrap (fortunately, the purse itself doesn't seem too fragrant). Wiped the pursestrap down with enzyme cleaner and borrowed Ian's (clean) bag, with mine going into the wash. Good thing she's cute and has got history on her side.

• Woke up in the middle of the night thinking about the conference that starts Sunday and trying to remember if anyone ever made hotel reservations. Just checked; I was supposed to, didn't, and now the hotel appears booked. Scramble-time to find a neighboring hotel...

• Finally, is there any way to hurry along one's period? No scare or anything; it's only a couple days overdue, but I really wish it would get here so I don't have to deal with it while travelling...

That's all for now, but isn't that enough?