Riba Rambles:
Musings of a Mental Magpie

Posted by Lis Riba at 3:45 PM

We've landed safely in Florida; I'm at my parents' house and boy does it smell wonderful. I can't wait to taste the dinner my mom cooked...

Anyway, here is one of the posts I wrote before leaving, to keep you from getting bored while I'm away...

As somebody who never used to modify her background for years at a time, my desktop is becoming quite dynamic.

Here are but a few of the images I've been swapping in and out over the last few months:

Astronomy Picture of the Day:

• Perseid in the Light (2006 August 11)
• IC 410 and NGC 1893 (2006 August 15)
• The North America and Pelican Nebulas (2006 August 16)
• Spitzer's Orion (2006 August 18)
• Blue Lagoon (2006 August 25)
• Barred Spiral Galaxy NGC 1300 (2006 August 27)
• Supernova Remnant E0102 from Hubble (2006 August 29)
• Gemini South Star Trails (2006 September 01)
• Green Aurora Over Lake Superior (2006 September 06)
• Colorful Moon Mosaic (2006 September 07)
• M33: Spiral Galaxy in Triangulum (2006 September 14)
• 11 Hour Star Trails (2006 September 15)
• Anticrepuscular Rays Over Florida (2006 September 17)

Nature photography:

• From my photographer friend, Joe Decker, what I call
  • Burbles, and
  • Waterfall
• And, by Ian's cousin Kim, a stunning closeup of a purple flower.
  
  The image is longer available online, and while I don't want to hinder its resale value or see it spread hither and yon across the web, I can't help wanting to show it off.
  So I've made this low-res version of the image, scaled down in a way that won't resize to wallpaper proportions:

Libraries:

• Boston Athenaeum from The Renaissance Library Collection
• From Hot Library Smut:
  • British Library, and
  • Trinity College Library

Aren't they pretty?

Now, can anybody recommend a safe freeware utility allowing the system to randomly rotate wallpapers on a regular basis?

PS: This is how I've taught myself HTML image maps...

Posted by Lis Riba at 7:20 AM

No time to blog (though I have several pre-written posts lined up if I have time over the weekend), but Radley Balko reports on a breakthru in the Cory Maye case.

Posted by Lis Riba at 7:00 AM

Boopsie likes to drink from the bathroom faucet.

When she hops up to the counter, she holds her tail straight up.

As she drinks, her tail slowly drops, and by the time she's done, her tail is practically dragging. It's like an old-fashioned gas gauge, metering how hydrated she feels.

But it's not just descriptive, it's prescriptive as well.

If you push her tail down while she's drinking, she'll look confused and stop.

If you pull her tail up after she's finished, she'll look confused and drink some more.

If you pump her tail up and down, she gets really confused...

So, is this just a quirk of Boopsie, or do other cats have similar habits? [Catsitter], if you wish to experiment further, be my guest.

Happy Friday everyone!

Posted by Lis Riba at 7:45 PM

Oh great, and just when I think I have most of my TSA concerns worked out, I see this account:

I bet you all are not aware, but there is a new test of nationality being performed when one enters the US. I arrived in the San Francisco airport on Monday night, passed passport control, picked up my luggage, and went to hand in my customs form, which is the last step in the arrivals process. The customs agent stopped me dead in my tracks. He first asked, "Are you an American." Obviously I answered "yes" straight-away. Then he asked, "OK, then, what is the square root of 98?"

...

So, after I gave my intelligent answer of "HUH," the guy burst out laughing and said, "Yes, of course you're an American. You don't know anything!"

[Via Elayne's Linky Love]

Do I now have to worry about math as well as physics (states of matter)?

For the record, my gut reaction upon seeing the question out of context was ‘just a fraction less than ten.’

I'm doomed...

Posted by Lis Riba at 7:00 PM

As I blogged yesterday, Healey's much touted 50-point plan is only available as a Flash presentation.

I can't link to specific pages, nor is any of the text copy-able to the clipboard.

Two further realizations about this:

(1) It's probably not accessible to the visually impaired. If there's no identifiable text (just pictures of words), can screen readers make any sense out of it?

(2) Because it's not copyable nor bookmarkable, the campaign can edit pages less noticably. If they revise several pages tomorrow, the only evidence against them may be some blogger's transcription

Just in case, I've downloaded a copy of the SWF file, and I may take screencaps of the pages, just as a precaution.

Posted by Lis Riba at 6:12 PM

I wish I had the time and money to take a stand.

Honestly, since the heightened airport security <cough>-theater</cough> imposed in August, we were hoping we could avoid flying until some of the hysteria died down.

However, family obligations compel us to make the trip down to Florida for the weekend.

The Identity Project is conducting what they call an investigation:

Help us help you determine whether the TSA told the 9th Circuit the truth. Can you fly without ID? According to what the government told the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in the Gilmore case, you can – you need only submit to secondary screening in order to fly anonymously.

Please try doing some or all of your travel by declining to show ID and report back about what happens to you. Our ultimate intent is to submit declarations from people such as yourself to the court and introduce hard evidence about what TSA's real policies and practices are.

[via FireCat; see also The Great No-ID Airport Challenge from Wired]

Unfortunately, our flight arrives the afternoon before Erev Rosh Hashonah. Missing our flight won't just inconvenience us, but many other people whom we care about. We risk ruining dinner or possibly making someone miss services.

For just over 72 hours in Florida, normally I'd try to do the entire trip with carry-on and avoid checked luggage altogether. I think we could manage, if we just mooched toiletries from my parents, and I'm still somewhat tempted to try.

But again, if I've misjudged and the screeners prohibit something and we have to run it back to the car and go back through security... we don't have much leeway and our family will bear the consequences...

Besides, it looks like Manchester airport has nearly doubled their recommended arrival time, which may put us right in somebody's rush hour traffic (~10am flight)...

For the record, since I asked, here's the TSA's current list of what's permitted and prohibited. Thanks, Matt!

I still haven't gotten an answer to my other airport security question, to wit: Since last month's London arrests and security crackdowns, how many false alarms have the airlines and airports experienced?

That suggests that nobody prominent has been compiling a list, and if I want one it's up to me. I have found the FlyerTalk Security Forum, but so many people are reporting on incidents they experienced or witnessed that it's a daunting task.

I'll just close with a letter from last week's "Ask the Pilot" column:

The Raed Jarrar case is especially troubling because it makes so little sense. Not only did security at JFK assume that Jarrar was potentially dangerous because of his shirt, they also assumed that making him remove the shirt would do away with the danger. When he finally agreed to put on a different one, they let him board the aircraft. The shirt was not considered a sign of some hidden threat; it was considered dangerous in and of itself. The only possible logic here is that security staff wanted to reassure anxious passengers. In that case, those passengers were effectively given veto power over what clothing a co-traveler might wear, regardless of whether that person was dangerous. ...

Again, makes me want to go to the airport wearing a t-shirt with the Bill of Rights translated into Arabic (PDF via JPFO). And yet again I'm reminded that my parents wouldn't thank us for getting into trouble with the TSA right before the High Holidays...

However, I am printing out several large copies of the Fourth Amendment, which I'm going to put prominently inside all our checked luggage. If a TSA screener should decide to open our suitcases and rummage through our bags, they'll have to go past a stern reminder of what our country stands for. [Thank Jeralyn for the idea, or consider buying her totebag.]

U.S. CONSTITUTION
AMENDMENT IV

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

It's not much, but it's something...

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:56 PM

“Never pick a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel.” — Bill Clinton

For that matter, it seems equally unwise to pick a fight with a comedian -- particularly one with an influential daily show that reaches large audiences.

Geraldo did last month, and while Jon Stewart did "apologize" it only happened after multiple segments of mockery:

• Hard Rain -- Stephen demands an apology from Jon to Geraldo.
• Jon's On Notice -- Stephen Colbert demands an apology from Jon on Geraldo's behalf.
• Jon Gets Called Out -- Jon Stewart becomes the first person to be put on the "Called Out" board.
• Jon's Apology -- Stephen makes Jon walk a mile in Geraldo's moustache.

Now, Bob Novak has insulted Stewart and you should see Stewart's response last night.

Ouch!

And I'm sure it's not over yet...

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:30 PM

It can be very frustrating listening to public radio on my commute, because I keep hearing tidbits I want to blog, but by the time I'm at my computer, they've gone out of my head.

I already recommended Charles Darwin and the Racing Asparagus and if you haven't listened to it, you really should...

A story last night dealt with the Iraq "Study Group" led by James Baker and Lee Hamilton (former vice-chair of the 9/11 commission)

Within a few minutes, and with no irony, I heard that "The next three months are critical." and that "they would not be releasing their official assessment of the Iraq situation or their policy recommendations until after the mid-term U.S. elections in November to avoid their results being politicized. Do you see the contradiction here?

In contrast, I was quite impressed by their profile on General Chiarelli in Baghdad.

Also in today's news, Harvard's endowment earned a 16.7 percent return.
Too bad they won't open that fund up to average investors...

But mostly it's the little things that catch my... ear. Like the story of the first immigrant to disembark at Ellis Island, or witticisms about politicians meaningless wordbites or Ted Koppel reminiscing about the London Blitz in a piece on disaster preparedness.

I'm glad we have NPR...

Posted by Lis Riba at 7:47 PM

While verifying the URLs in this post, I decided to check on Amazon's suggestions and came up with several more titles:

• The Adoring audience : fan culture and popular media edited by Lisa A. Lewis
• Theorizing fandom : fans, subculture, and identity edited by Cheryl Harris & Alison Alexander
• Science fiction culture by Camille Bacon-Smith
• Fan cultures by Matt Hills
• The audience studies reader edited by Will Brooker and Deborah Jermyn
• Boldly Writing : A Trekker Fan & Zine History, 1967-1987 by Joan Marie Verba

And, in a related vein, from academic journals:

The January 2002 Journal of Community Psychology had a series three articles:

Sense of community in science fiction fandom, Part 1: Understanding sense of community in an international community of interest
Patricia Obst, Lucy Zinkiewicz, Sandy G. Smith
DOI: 10.1002/jcop.1052 — Abstract

Sense of community in science fiction fandom, Part 2: Comparing neighborhood and interest group sense of community
Patricia Obst, Lucy Zinkiewicz, Sandy G. Smith
DOI: 10.1002/jcop.1053 — Abstract

An exploration of sense of community, Part 3: Dimensions and predictors of psychological sense of community in geographical communities
Patricia Obst, Sandy G. Smith, Lucy Zinkiewicz
DOI: 10.1002/jcop.1054 — Abstract

Christine Scodari has written several interesting articles, including:

Resistance Re-Examined: Gender, Fan Practices, and Science Fiction Television
Popular Communication, 2003, Vol. 1, No. 2
DOI: 10.1207/S15405710PC0102_3 — Abstract

I'm glad academics are looking into this. Maybe a future con could hold an academic track and allow researchers to present their findings to those who are being described... At the very least, I'm sure we could suggest further avenues for study...

PS: One more discovery, this time about my "high-brow" fandom:

• Shakespeare after mass media by Richard Burt

Burt's name keeps popping up as I browse the virtual bookshelves. Have to keep an eye out for his works...

Posted by Lis Riba at 6:56 PM

Heard on the radio this evening that Kerry Healey's kicked off her campaign with a fifty point plan of proposals she wishes to implement.

Number one in this presentation formatted so bloggers can neither directly link nor copy the text of to individual items is:

I will repeat what I wrote in February when I first heard this inane idea:

I graduated from high school a few weeks before my 17th birthday. [Hey, I skipped a grade.] Graduated in the top 5% of my class and with various honors.

If I had been subject to the laws you're proposing, where would that leave me?

Would I be forced to waste an extra year in high school until I met your age limit? Would've been a tremendous waste of everybody's time, since I'd already completed all my requirements, and there weren't any more advanced classes in my favorite subjects.

Would you have forced me to attend a local college solely to stay in school? If so, would the state pay for that, or would I have to pay for it out of pocket under penalty of your truancy laws?

And if my situation would be sufficient to exempt me from the rules, what about other sixteen and seventeen year olds who take their GEDs because they're ready to move on?

In short, does your proposal take into consideration those students who leave high school before 18 because they've learned twelve grades worth of material?

I never did get an answer.

Nor does she address the point that many other programs use the mandatory attendance cutoff to define their target populations. Has she taken into consideration the ramifications of such a change on other agencies?

Looking over the rest of her list of fifty, it seems like a checklist of reasons why I don't want her in office:

Require voters to present a state-issued photo ID at the polls in order to vote

Federal and state judges around the country, as recently as yesterday have ruled such schemes unconstitutional.

Post addresses and photographs of Level 2 sex offenders on the internet

I don't think an appeal to vigilanteeism really counts as "Getting Tougher on Crime"*.
And I still don't get why the disparate treatment of people who've served their time. Am I really in that much more danger from former flashers than murderers? Because there's no registry letting me know when one of those has moved into my neighborhood. If registries are such a good idea, why don't we do it for everyone with a criminal record?

I could go on... For example, results in other states have already shown that capping insurance awards has no effect lowering malpractice premiums and a Harvard study of malpractice claims shows most are properly decided.

And if she really wants to promote Massachusetts to employers and investors, a useful first step would be to get Romney to stop badmouthing the state to score cheap points with Southern voters for his presidential bid.

Oh, and one more question I haven't seen her address:

In the final Democratic debate, Jon Keller asked the candidates a yes or no question: Will you promise that absent family crisis, you'll serve out entire term and not even consider higher office?

Deval Patrick gave his word. Has Healey?

Posted by Lis Riba at 6:05 PM

This morning on NPR, I heard an entertainingly told story about Charles Darwin. I recommend it.

I looked up the author, David Quammen, thinking that if the rest of his Darwin biography is that lively, I might want to read it.

Turns out, he's written a number of interesting things, but I was most intrigued by Monster of God : the man-eating predator in the jungles of history and the mind, summarized as:

The author laments the decline of the big predators--animals that are capable of stalking and killing humans--wondering how our psyches will be affected when the last of these creatures is safely ensconced in a zoo.

Earlier this week, Ian blogged:

The things you learn when browsing Wikipedia. . .
"Another verified attack came when a careless zookeeper named Luke James, was brutally attacked and killed after not so subtly mocking the ferocity of the Cassowary at what was previously thought to be a safe distance."

His sister, who's been to Australia, commented:

There are only 24 left in the wild [...] It's sad, but this guy may be the last person ever to be killed by a Cassowary as they are on the brink of extinction.

Case in point, I suppose...

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:48 PM

Regarding tonight's primary election, a radio pundit* pointed out that November's election results will be historic.

Massachusetts will either get its first elected female governor or its first African-American governor.

Either way, it will be a first for the state.

I find that pretty cool!

*I was flipping between WBZ and WBUR, and don't remember which made this particular comment.

PS: Another radio pundit suggested Bill Clinton may spend a lot of time in Massachusetts stumping for Deval. I may just be a slithering reptile in the blogosphere ecosystem, but if he's considering more blogger get-togethers, I'm interested!

Posted by Lis Riba at 7:58 PM

It's primary day here in Massachusetts, although by the time you read this, the polls are probably closed.

I squeaked in with about a half-hour to spare, and according to the little counter on the machine, I was about voter 368 in my precinct

Thanks to WhereDoIVoteMA.com for giving me an advance look at my ballot, so I knew which races were contested.

Thanks to Dan Kennedy and particularly Universal Hub for links to endorsements. UniversalHub was also helpful with its links to less biased info on the candidates. Thanks also to Elias and Mabfan for posting their own endorsements. And finally, the bloggers from Blue Mass Group provided a particularly useful resource.

All were quite helpful in my decision-making process.

Posted by Lis Riba at 7:00 PM

While looking for something else, I came upon a recent article on the new McDonalds in Saugus.

This quote just cracked me up:

Of course, the first thing visitors will likely notice is the giant yellow arches incorporated into the building design. The arches illuminate at night and are large enough to draw the attention of motorists passing in either direction on Route 1.

"The idea behind the '50s style is to create another landmark on the highway, like Hilltop Steak House or Kowloon," [store manager Lindsay] King said. "There's no better place to build a crazy-looking McDonald's than on Route 1."

Heh.

For those unfamiliar with Route One in Saugus, two descriptions to try to convey the flavor...

Incidentally, it looks like the former Krispy Kreme on Route 1 and Lynn Fells Pkwy is turning into a branch of Saugusbank.

I'll confess to some disappointment.

The site used to belong to Russo's Candies, and I was hoping the site would remain some kind of food establishment.

Oh well...

Posted by Lis Riba at 6:45 PM

LiveJournal is definitely having fun with Talk Like A Pirate Day.

The interns are revolting (all puns intended) and have mutinied on their masters.

If you view the LiveJournal homepage in the new Horizon scheme, you may notice they've changed their logo:

"Baaaaahoy," says Frank.

Their mascot has also gotten into the act:

Highlight the goat (on the real page, not here) and he shows off his peg:

But most pervasively of all, they've tweaked the LiveJournal usericon.

No longer is it just a nondescript buttplug bust profile. Look closely, and you'll see...

      

I'm impressed... Yarrr you?

Added later: A few more modifications have been observed: On profile pages, they also changed "Friends" to "Mateys", "Member of" to "Crew Member of" and the Update button now says "Update Captain's Log"

Posted by Lis Riba at 7:40 AM

Friday, September 8th, NPR defined fanon for its listeners.

Saturday, the Wall Street Journal explained "shippers" and slash.

And yesterday, the Star-Ledger discusses Mary Sue:

["Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" is] also Aaron Sorkin's Mary Sue story.

Mary Sue, a term coined in the '70s by "Star Trek" fan Paula Smith, applies to any fan-fiction character who is a blatant attempt by the author to insert her- or himself into the world of their favorite show, and usually in a way that has all the other characters going on about how wonderful she or he is. Your quintessential Mary Sue would save the Enterprise from sure destruction, then seduce Kirk and/or Spock.

Now, because Sorkin -- the creator of "The West Wing" and "Sports Night" -- is one of the half-dozen or so writers working in television who could be called a genius without hyperbole, it's a good Mary Sue story. But there's no getting around the fact that "Studio 60" is, essentially, Sorkin imagining what it would be like if he and directing partner Thomas Schlamme were brought in to rescue "Saturday Night Live," with several of their friends, former colleagues and ex-girlfriends brought along for the ride.

Are we reaching a tipping point in public awareness?

[Via Teresa Nielsen Hayden]

PS: I suppose now is as good a time as any to mention this.

I've blogged several times in the past about the Oxford English Dictionary's requests for SF citations.

Well, they finally feel they've compiled a comprehensive enough list to announce:

Brave New Words: The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction

Publication in November, just in time for the gift-giving holidays...

In the meantime, the site is still available for all your browsing pleasure...

Posted by Lis Riba at 7:15 AM

Today is both International Talk Like A Pirate Day and Hermoine Granger's birthday.

Tom Smith, world's fastest filker, noticed this just in time to write a song:

Come here, ye lads and lasses, I tell ye, she's the one, Give a cheer and raise yer glasses, but not till class is done She'll go down in history, the one we're singin' for, Hermione Granger, the Pirate Queen, the pride of Gryffindor!

First spotted at wcg's

Posted by Lis Riba at 7:35 PM

As long as I'm writing about Henry Jenkins, I've been meaning to get around to responding to one of his recent blog posts.

Specifically, I wish to address Can One Be A Fan of High Art? (July 26) which was linked from his September 8th entry, "Behind the Scenes: Beautiful Things in Popular Culture (Part One).

It's hard to find a useful brief excerpt, but this captures the gist:

If high art is supposed to be so enriching and intellectually engaging, why do we respond to it in such predictable and predetermined ways? And if popular culture is supposed to appeal to the lowest common denominator, why does it generate such a broad array of different responses?

Italian critic Umberto Eco suggests that cult movies are rarely perfectly constructed nor are they treated with respect: "In order to transform a work into a cult object one must be able to break, dislocate, unhinge it so that one can remember only parts of it, irrespective of their original relationship to the whole." Most cult films fall apart in our hands and we have to work hard to make them cohere. It tis their incoherence that makes such works rich resources for reworking.

I have similarly suggested that fan culture is born of a mixture of fascination and frustration. The work has to fascinate us to inspire fan-like responses but if the work fully satisfied all of our desires, we would have no need to rework it in our imaginations. If you look at the most productive sites within any given fan culture, they often grow up around the very things that frustrate fans the most about the original source material. The author introduces a character and never realizes her full potential. We get a tantalizing bit of back-story and then it gets abandoned, never fully developed or integrated into the narrative. The character acts in a way that seems to contradict everything we previously believed about them. And so forth.

Yet, if great works of art are great because they represent the accomplishment of perfection or near perfection within a particular tradition, then perhaps they don't have the kinds of loose edges that we want to keep playing with. I suspect this is not really the case -- there are, for example, a fair number of fan stories about the characters and situations of Jane Austin for example, and critics, directors, and actors have struggled to make sense of some of Shakespeare's characters for centuries. Rather, I think we are taught to think about high culture as untouchable. We appreciate it. We may even love it. But we rarely approach it as a fan.

In his book, Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America , Lawrence Levine describes the process by which Shakespeare's plays moved from being a living part of the culture of 19th century America -- where they were freely appropriated and performed by a wide array of different groups -- and became a sacred and untouchable aspect of our culture in the 20th century. Shakespeare was once thought to be emotionally accessible to all; increasingly, Shakespeare has become something we have to be taught how to appreciate, rather than something we instinctively love.

In response, I want to start by pointing out the existence of LiveJournal communities shaksper_random and bard_slash, both of which take a decidedly fannish approach to Shakespeare. [There's also gayatheistspy, for fictionalizing Christopher Marlowe.]

I very much consider myself a Shakespeare fan and would categorize my attitude towards Shakespeare (and Marlowe) as analogous to my appreciation of Harry Potter or Firefly.

And I've found a community of other fen -- including graduate students and professional authors, as well as enthusiastic amateurs like myself.

So, I suspect attitudes may be changing and Shakespeare's starting to come down off his pedastal into a more approachable form.

Minor Digression: Have you seen Actors' Shakespeare Project of Boston & Cambridge? One of their goals is to make Shakespeare accessible; I've enjoyed all their productions I've seen, and have frequently noticed atypical theatergoers in the crowds. They're also making the theatrical process itself more transparent, with their own blog to discuss the rehearsal process and other matters. If you haven't seen them, I strongly recommend it.

I'm watching avidly as fellow fen (of Shakespeare and more SFnal subjects) enter academia, and I wonder how the crosspollination will influence both fields.

Though not an academic, professional editor Teresa Nielsen Hayden has written:

Mary Sue literary theory has changed my professional life. Before, when discussing manuscripts with my colleagues, I had to say things "You know, one of those books that keeps telling you how wonderful and talented and perfect the main character is and how much everyone loves her, but aside from that there's nothing at stake and nothing really happens? No logic, no causality, no narrative development, just that character being wonderful every barfy step of the way?"

Generally they knew what I meant; we see a lot of books like that. But those conversations have gotten much easier now that I can say things like "See if the author will agree to rewrite it from another character's point of view—that main character is a screaming Mary Sue." Or: "I sent it back. The agent was all excited about how the author's 'expanding into a new genre', but it's just a Mary Sue with jousting scenes pasted in."

So yay for the fanfic universe for putting a name to that. They came up with the idea of formalizing the role of the beta reader, too, which is another piece of really useful literature-generating technology.

I've heard Midrash referred to as Bible fanon (which it clearly is), Marlowe's Edward II as RPS, and I sometimes point to Virgil's Aeneid as a classic Mary Sue. Heck, I recently noted that the opening scene in As You Like It is effectively an "As you know, Bob." And people not only understood what I meant, but pointed out other examples from other plays.

It's still only happening on the fringes, but I'm really excited to see how academia evolves as such terminology becomes more accepted by the mainstream...

Postscript, added later: Regarding frustration and loose edges, Ian reminded me of Jasper Fforde's The Eyre Affair which is partly about dissatisfaction with Charlotte Bronte's masterpiece.

Posted by Lis Riba at 6:06 PM

I've noticed several people are linking to How to Watch a Fan-Vid by Henry Jenkins (an MIT professor focused on "media convergence"). He discusses the genre in general and focuses on a particular video that's recently been making the rounds.

An excerpt:

For [my 1992 book, Textual poachers: television fans and participatory culture], I interviewed a pioneering video artist, identified in Textual Poachers as MVD. MVD described her videos as "half-and-half things," neither "a Reader's Digest of the shows we love" nor "fancy pictures to entertain the eye while we listen to our favorite music." She explained:

Images pull out the words, emphasize the words, just as the words emphasize the pictures. If I've done a good job with a video, I can portray an emotion and I can hold that emotion throughout the song. I can bring a new level of depth to that emotion through my images and I can make you think about the program in a different way.

MVD suggested that the best fan videos could produce "layers of meaning," being accessible at first glance to anyone with a casual familiarity with the program, offering a deeper experience to anyone who knew the program well, and a still deeper experience to someone who has been part of the fan community's discussions around the show or read through the fan fiction surrounding a particular set of character relationships.

Whether or not you've ever seen a fanvid (and I know I've linked to a few), it's worthwhile reading.

I only wish I had the time to read his books and study the subject...

Should the occasion arise, a few titles in the field that look interesting:

• Textual poachers: television fans & participatory culture by Henry Jenkins
• Science fiction audiences: watching Doctor Who and Star Trek by John Tulloch and Henry Jenkins
• Interacting with Babylon 5: fan performance in a media universe by Kurt Lancaster; foreword by Henry Jenkins
• Hop on pop: the politics and pleasures of popular culture edited by Henry Jenkins, Tara McPherson & Jane Shattuc
• Communication ethics, media & popular culture by Phyllis M. Japp, Mark Meister & Debra K. Japp
• The Democratic genre: fan fiction in a literary context by Sheenagh Pugh
• Fan fiction and fan communities in the age of the Internet: new essays edited by Karen Hellekson and Kristina Busse
• Convergence culture: where old and new media collide by Henry Jenkins
• Fans, gamers, and bloggers: media consumers in a digital age by Henry Jenkins

Sounds like cool stuff!

Further recommendations along these lines will always be welcome.

Update: Recommended in the comments:

• Technoculture, edited by Constance Penley and Andrew Ross
• Enterprising women: television fandom and the creation of popular myth by Camille Bacon-Smith

Posted by Lis Riba at 6:00 PM

Sometimes I come up with truly horrid concepts...

Based upon:

Although my original idea existed solely for the pun, I think this actually would be a worthwhile subject for a book:

Explore the background and traditions of the ritual, special forms for holidays (including the four cups at Passover), how the prayers may have changed over time, regional variations and customs (is the plural minhagim or minhagot?), myths and classic tales, related art and crafts*, and that kind of thing.

Maybe throw in a history of the kosher wine industry* and some recipes from the shtetl.

I'd certainly be interested in reading a booklet like that, though I don't have the knowledge to write one... [Anybody interested in a collaboration?]

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:05 PM

And now, yet again, I'm stuck in my perennial dilemma, what do I read next?

Just for the record, here's what I've currently got out and on request from the libraries:

• Overdue and missing: The amazing adventures of the Jewish people
• Overdue with no more renewals, but I still want to finish: Richer than spices; how a royal bride's dowry introduced cane, lacquer, cottons, tea, and porcelain to England, and so revolutionized taste, manners, craftsmanship, and history in both England and America
• Finished reading and ready to return: Disraeli: the Victorian Dandy who became prime minister
• Finished reading, though I think Ian would enjoy it: Victoria and Disraeli: the making of a romantic partnership
• The Princess of Denmark (the only work of fiction in the list)
• Misquoting Jesus: the story behind who changed the bible and why
• Queen Victoria: a personal history
• Beyond fear: thinking sensibly about security in an uncertain world by Bruce Schneier
• Plus five requests in transit:
  • Am I a woman?: a skeptic's guide to gender
  • Flushed: how the plumber saved civilization
  • The Making of the national poet: Shakespeare, adaptation and authorship, 1660-1769
  • Oberammergau: the troubling story of the world's most famous passion play
  • Wellsprings: a natural history of bottled spring waters

Posted by Lis Riba at 7:08 PM

Today was our town's annual Victorian Fair.

And this morning before we left, I finished Theo Aronson's Victoria and Disraeli -- a parallel biography of the two, bent upon showing why they worked so well together.

I enjoyed it far better than Hibbert on Disraeli (review).

It had a breezier, faster pace, and provided context for the surrounding events. It describes Gladstone and his evolving conflicts with Disraeli and the Queen -- both the issues involved and the personalities. While Hibbert provided some detail about Disraeli's time at the Congress of Berlin, Aronson provided a better explanation of why he went.

Yes, many things are glossed over and the author is probably spinning certain things to fit his theories, but I finished this book feeling much better informed about the issues of the period than I got from Hibbert's book alone.

The library called yesterday to inform me that a few of my requested holds were available. As much as I enjoyed the opening chapter of Hibbert's Victoria, I don't want to exhaust the subject. I think I'm onto something else...