Riba Rambles:
Musings of a Mental Magpie

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:45 PM

I've been meaning to write about the latest NSA eavesdropping revelations since I heard about them Thursday morning, but the words just wouldn't come.

I rather like security guru Bruce Schneier's comment:

"The NSA would like to remind everyone to call their mothers this Sunday. They need to calibrate their system."

At any rate, kudos to Gary Farber, who gets major "I told you so" rights for predicting this about five months ago. Peter Daou's essay is also worth reading. And (as usual) Glenn Greenwald is on top of the legal aspects.

Of course, this wasn't the only NSA abuse of power in the week's news. It may have gotten buried by the story of everybody's phone records, but did you hear about this?

The government has abruptly ended its inquiry into the warrantless eavesdropping program because the National Security Agency refused to grant Justice Department lawyers the necessary security clearance to probe the matter.

According to NPR's Morning Edition, a 24-year veteran of the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility calls this unprecedented -- both investigators and subjects are part of the executive branch, meaning this could only have been shut down by someone above.

It all adds up. And I keep seeing more signs of trouble.

Read the story of HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson's little anecdote, and all kinds of troubling implications emerge. You heard about the OSHA director cracking jokes that workers do the darndest things, totally ignoring any responsibility of employers to provide proper safety equipment. And did you know FEMA is closing its New Orleans office, blaming delays that it caused?

Things overseas look even worse. Put the pieces together:

Think Progress:

Both the House and Senate have separately passed amendments ordering the Bush administration not to use any appropriated funds for the construction of permanent bases in Iraq. Congress's intentions have been crystal clear on this matter.

Via Susie Madrak:

[T]he 104-acre complex, known locally as 'George W's palace', is supposed to be secret, but it is impossible to disguise the cranes dominating the Baghdad skyline

Left I:

The U.S. government/military has been illegally squatting on Cuban soil for more than a century. ...

Iraq's interim government transferred the land to U.S. ownership in October 2004, under an agreement whose terms were not disclosed.

The interim government referred to was, as readers will remember, appointed by the United States, and while it was recognized by the United Nations as being the "sovereign government" of a "sovereign country," that can't really be taken seriously, any more than the Platt Amendment, signed at the point of a gun, by which the U.S. gained control of Guantanamo. Can we expect the U.S. to be occupying this fortress in the heart of Baghdad indefinitely in the future, even in the face of a future hostile Iraqi government? My money's on "yes," which is why they've already designed it for the security and self-sufficiency they had to build into Guantanamo years later.

And scariest of all, two US aircraft carriers are on their way to the coast off Iran, pre-positioning for a June attack. I've read articles that the executive branch theorizes they won't need any declaration of war from Congress if they just bomb from the air and don't actually send new troops. [via The Left Coaster]

How do we stop this? How can we get our country back before more people die?

[This is why I haven't been writing much about politics lately; it's all too depressing.]

Non sequitur to close the week, two other books I discovered today -- one in print, one forthcoming -- to add to my to read list:

• London 1945 : life in the debris of war by Maureen Waller, whose Ungrateful daughters helped me make sense of the Glorious Revolution
• Up, up, and oy vey!: how Jewish history, culture, and values shaped the comic book superhero by Rabbi Simcha Weinstein (via Jim Henley)

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:10 PM

Okay, for all Americans watching Doctor Who on the SciFi Channel.

Three stories from this season have been nominated for the Best Dramatic Presentation: Short Form Hugo. And as of tonight, they have all aired in the US.

The nominees are:

• Dalek
• Father's Day
• The Empty Child & The Doctor Dances (and shouldn't a two-part qualify for long form?)

Out of the three Doctor Who episodes, which would you vote for?

[The list of all nominees is here; this category has seven, instead of the usual five, due to a tie for fifth place.]

Also, have any previous Doctor Who episodes or tie-ins gotten Hugos? Or even been nominated? Just curious...

[I'm already rooting for School Reunion for next year's nominations.]

Posted by Lis Riba at 7:25 PM

Given some of the recent debates and disputes among the feminist blogosphere, I've started wondering how people perceive feminism. Not Justice Stewart "know it when I see it" gut reactions, but putting it into words: How do we define "feminsism"?

I'm no academic, but I've found quite a few definitions while searching the web and talking to people. But before I color your perceptions, ask yourself the question:

How do you define feminism?
And do you consider yourself a feminist by that definition?

And then, if you would, post your answer to my comments. Links to other definitions you've found and liked would also be appreciated.

I'll share some of the best and most interesting (from the comments and my own searches) in a week or two to give people sufficient time to think and answer.

Posted by Lis Riba at 6:45 PM

I'm continuing to look for a Jewish equivalent to How the Irish became white.

Amazon.com does link Ignatiev's book with How Jews became white folks and what that says about race in America, but the customer reviews are pretty poor.

Meanwhile, poking about I've found some other books that seem close. I haven't read any of them -- just going by the publisher descriptions and subject classifications -- so I'd really appreciate your comments (or suggestions for other works not listed).

• Taking root: Jewish immigrants in America by Milton Meltzer
• Adapting to abundance: Jewish immigrants, mass consumption, and the search for American identity by Andrew R. Heinze
• The Wages of whiteness: race and the making of the American working class by David R. Roediger
• Jews and the new American scene by Seymour Martin Lipset and Earl Raab
• The Invention of the white race: the origin of racial oppression in Anglo-America by Theodore W. Allen
• Whiteness of a different color: European immigrants and the alchemy of race by Matthew Frye Jacobson
• Fighting to become Americans: Jews, gender, and the anxiety of assimilation by Riv-Ellen Prell
• The Identity question: Blacks and Jews in Europe and America by Robert Philipson
• Working toward whiteness: How America's immigrants become white. The strange journey from Ellis Island to the suburbs by David R. Roediger
• The price of whiteness: Jews, race, and American identity by Eric L. Goldstein

Posted by Lis Riba at 6:40 PM

So, Tuesday at lunch, I finished The Book nobody read. So much for that title!

Fascinating book. Copernicus' De Revolutionibus was the book which set forth the heliocentric theory of the solar system in the 16th Century. In the 1950s, Arthur Koestler wrote a book in which he described it as "the book nobody read." This piqued Harvard professor Owen Gingerich's curiousity, leading him to spend decades travelling the world in search of all surviving first and second edition copies, in the process disproving Koestler's glib dismissal.

The book starts around 1970 with preparations underway for the Copernican Quinquecentennial, when Gingerich first got the idea for his survey. The book provides a biography of Copernicus and a look at astronomy and astronomers of the period, as Gingerich learns how the book and its ideas spread. Mysteries unfold and unravel, from identifying the source of certain annotations to tracking down modern thieves. Along the way, chapters are somewhat thematic, including foci on the publishing business of the time (printing to bookselling to binding), censorship, the influence of astrology, and a look at the Eastern bloc nations and the changes wrought by the fall of the Iron Curtain. Truly fascinating.

BTW, three weeks ago I checked out four nonfiction books from the library. I returned them all by their due date, no renewals needed, having finished three and gave up on the fourth in disinterest. Go me!

Since I seem to be in a history of science kick, when I returned these to the library, I picked up The man who found time: James Hutton and the discovery of the Earth's antiquity. Hutton is considered the father of modern geology: in the late 1700s, he challenged the biblical notion that the earth was barely 6000 years old.

Sadly, some days everything seems political. Just a few months ago, a creationist gave a lecture on "Evidence for a Young World" -- hosted by Sandia National Laboratories. We're talking about over 200 years of established science that they're trying to roll back! New Mexicans for Science and Reason describe the speaker and his talk, pointing out the errors and correcting the fallacies. Still, it's our tax dollars paying for these kooks. And the fact that he spoke at Sandia probably will be used to bolster his credentials...

Ugh.

Posted by Lis Riba at 6:35 PM

Here are a few of the topics on my mind this weekend. Don't expect much coherence; each paragraph is pretty much its own topic, although none are quite worth separate posts:

Spring is here! While driving around yesterday and today, I've noticed that lilacs are in bloom!!! My favorite flowers. Haven't had a chance to go for a walk to smell them, but believe me, I intend to. Last month, CostCo offered several varieties of lilacs for sale, so we finally bought a half dozen to plant around the house (along with some raspberry & blackberry bushes for along the back fence). It'll take a few years before they bloom, but I'm hoping...

The Siamese cattery's webcam (that I blogged Saturday) is one of the most addictive things I've seen. I can't help checking back to see what those kittens are up to... I don't know how the people working there don't spend their entire day just watching in aww... And the mother cat is so unbelievably patient, as the kittens climb all over her and fight over whose got the best nursing spot. [Yes, I've seen them nursing -- as cousin Mike said, it's kitty porn!]

On a goofier note, marvelling at the mamacat's patience, Ian and I started wondering how much calmer the world might've been if Rush Limbaugh got his hands on oxytocin rather than Oxycontin.

Saturday night, for a cousin's birthday, we went to a Brazilian BBQ restaurant: Fire Bull in Peabody. Yum. I think my favorite was the top sirloin. [I believe this is the cut, shown raw. So juicy... And the ridge of fat on the outside crisps to melt-in-your mouth.]

On Sunday, Ian and I went to see You Can't Take It With You by Theatre@First in Somerville. Funny play. We recommend it. Because of its three-act structure, it avoids the scene-changing pitfalls of last year's Merry Wives. I have vague memories of the mid-80s televised version starring Jason Robards. I couldn't remember much of the story beyond the fact that I really enjoyed it, so insisted on going with Ian to refresh my memory. We enjoyed ourselves a great deal, and the audience was roaring with laughter. [Only weird moment was when I asked Ian what he thought of the family's eccentricities, and realized how much his family resembles the Sycamores...] 3.5 hours (including two 15-minute intermissions) running through April 14.

If you have any interest in Boston-area public transit, Universal Hub links to an 1846 railroad map of the area, which looks awfully familiar to the modern purple line (commuter rail). Fascinating bit of local history.

I know of three Captain Jack's in SFF media: Captain Jack O'Neill (of Stargate SG-1), Captain Jack Sparrow (Pirates of the Caribbean) and Captain Jack Harkness (Doctor Who).* Two of the three have time/space travel capabilities that could allow them to meet the others. Who'd win? Has anybody written this kind of Jack-off?
^* Wikipedia lists several others on their Captain Jack disambiguation page, including Captain Jack Aubrey and the historical Indian chief.

In the Doctor Who story "City of Death" (1979, Tom Baker & Romana in a story written by Douglas Adams), an alien spaceship exploded on Earth 400 million years ago. The flame and radiation from the explosion touched off the primordial soup and created life on this planet. Furthermore, the alien pilot, Scaroth, was splintered in time, and has been secretly shaping human history so we could develop the technology to enable him to reunite and return home.

That's a pretty neat creation story. I know that the Pastafarianism is the popular theory du jour (Wikipedia), but I wonder if the myths might be compatible. After all, compare the appearances of Scaroth and the Flying Spaghetti Monster:

I can see a certain squiggly resemblance -- or at least enough cause for confusion...

Continuing to notice language influenced by science and technology. I've been working my way through Owen Gingerich's The book nobody read: chasing the revolutions of Nicolaus Copernicus and came upon this passage:

Even today our language contains fossil remnants of a sidereal and planetary vocabulary: consider, ascendancy, disaster, jovial, martial, venereal, mercurial, saturnine, not to mention the names of the days of the week.*

^* Consider == cum sidera == "with the stars"; disaster == "against the stars" (ill-starred); et cetera.

I'm still looking for other words with such archaic origins, such as those derived from the humours or steam-tech or roots like that...

Speaking of science, am I alone in finding the designs at Made With Molecules really neat and pretty? I like all the silver jewelry patterns (you can see most of them in charms). I only wish they had more options available.
Likewise, the fabric patterns from Infectious Awareables are pretty cool. Go to their showroom to see past and present designs. [Unfortunately for the dentists in the family, I prefer the retired patterns for dental plaque to the design currently available.]
Also, get a load of the colognes offered by Demeter Fragrance Library. Recreations of a huge variety of natural and artificial scents. Most bloggers are pointing out their Eau de Play-Doh, but I'm more intrigued by cocktail collections, and (of course) lilac.

Back to books, I've often heard praise for Noel Ignatiev's How the Irish became white, about the assimilation of Irish into American society. Can anybody recommend a similar book about the American Jewish experience and changing public perceptions towards Jews? Thanks.

And that's all I've got for now. Some other briefs about politics and current events buzzing about my brain, but that'll be a separate post.