Riba Rambles:
Musings of a Mental Magpie

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:10 PM

From the preface of my current read, Elizabeth & Leicester by Sarah Gristwood:

The King of France in Elizabeth's own lifetime would jest that one of the three great questions of Europe was "whether Queen Elizabeth was a maid or no." The fascination has not gone away. Indeed, in the course of writing this book, I found, somewhat to my consternation, that this was the one questioin every single person asked on hearing that I was to write on Elizabeth and Robert Dudley. (I had -- before I stopped counting -- been asked it by several journalist friends, a Cambridge paleontologist, a retired diplomat, an eleven-year-old, a brigadier and the man who came to mend the dishwasher. Several of them prefaced the question with: "I'm not really interested in history, but . . .")
...The massive interest in this point is not just simple prurience -- at least, I don't think so. (Anyone who just wants to read about the sex lives of royalty can do it without trawling through four hundred years of history.)

Later in the book, an interesting aside while describing the end of Mary's reign.

Elizabeth was not passive in these years (a point raised by the interesting question of what -- since she was richly endowed, and prudent, and yet constantly in debt at this time -- she was doing with her money). She was scheming, preparing, setting up a virtual shadow government. ... The picture of a powerful and professional opposition politician is at odds with the more romantic vision of a red-headed, white-faced girl transported in an instant from poverty to power.

Unfortunately for modern audiences, Elizabeth's need for secrecy during this period has left us with few written records.

I've only barely passed the point of Elizabeth's accession in this parallel biography (page 80 out of 350), but wanted to share.

Posted by Lis Riba at 3:33 PM

Speaking of lawless elite...

“Your enemy is not surrounding your country — your enemy is ruling your country.”

— George W. Bush, January 2003

At MilPhil, I attended a panel which asked: "Where Did Tom Swift Go? (Why are most YA writers writing fantasy, not SF?)" [recap]

The panelists commented how miniaturization has discouraged the kind of tinkering described in the classic stories. As Hal Clement put it, forty years ago, you could dismantle the clock, but now you can't dismantle the digital watch.

That may be true, but hacking seems to be filling the gap. Even if you can't make sense of your digital watch's physical innards, one can still modify it in ways its designer never intended.

Little Brother by Cory Doctorow feels like the heir to Tom Swift. [According to Doctorow, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, the book's editor, has referred to it as "Wikipedia Brown"]

In service of the story, Doctorow instructs upon such varied concepts as: l33t speak, tell behaviors, a trick for staring someone down, LARPing, gait recognition (and its limitations), files hidden from the OS [*], RFIDs (with a brute force way of disabling them), what a botnet is, and info on spoofing Caller ID. [Neil Gaiman describes Cory Doctorow as "one of the Explainers"]

Adding to my hopes for a new Tom Swift, Publisher's Weekly writes that "the DIY Web site Instructables will offer Little Brother-related gadget instructions before and after the book's release."

By the way, all the examples I provided above came from the first 30 pages, in the context of skipping school.

From there, things get really interesting.

The story deals with a terrorist attack on American soil and the resulting government crackdown on civil liberties "justified" on the grounds of anti-terrorism. Although this is a work of fiction, at times it feels all too plausible in ways that can make your stomach churn.

I've also never been more struck with the sense that a book will be challenged. It's definitely provocative -- one might call it seditious. Not only is the Department of Homeland Security the villain of the piece, but Doctorow often provides technical instruction and rhetorical defenses for taking action.

If that weren't sufficient, the book also contains strong language (a discussion of Up Against the Wall Motherfuckers), underage alcohol and sex, and brief mentions of drug use. I think the only major trigger it lacks is religion, though I may have forgetten a mention of Wicca...

Needless to say, this is a book that is going to make waves. Though officially targeted towards young adults, plenty of early readers would agree that grown-ups also enjoy it.

The story is a definite page-turner -- I had trouble putting it down, even at an hour when I could barely keep my eyes open.

And, who knows. Maybe, with luck, this could spawn a whole new generation of Edisonade adventure tales.

* Recommended *

Little Brother by Cory Doctorow On sale April 29, 2008 [Click here for a downloadable countdown widget] List price $17.95 Hardcover

Posted by Lis Riba at 8:45 PM

Oh noes!

I've been tagged for the Movie Quote Meme!

I may have to re-watch some of my favorite movies this weekend in order to find good quotes.

In the meantime, sit back and enjoy a little bit of Fry and Laurie:

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:44 PM

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world.  Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.”

— Margaret Mead

I've been thinking further about The Appeal of the Lawless Elite, one of the Boskone panels I wrote up Sunday.

Quick refresher: The panel was inspired by PNH's comment that "The Second Foundation and the X-Men - and, for that matter, the Scooby Gang and the Laundry - are all, to some extent, basically the Ku Klux Klan, except that the extrajudicial violence they carry out is (we're assured) merited and just."

Something I forgot to mention in my roundup.

One of the ways storytellers tilt the playing field to justify this kind of vigilanteism is by gifting the characters with secret knowledge or special abilities -- thus rendering them more qualified to deal with the situation than the rest of the sheep.

This, in turn, reminded me of a scene from Buffy, the vampire slayer. This happened near the end of "School Hard," an episode which aired early in the show's second season.

The high school had just been very publically attacked by vampires. After it's all over, the police chief has a private word with Principal Snyder:

Chief:	I need to say something to the media people.
Snyder:	So?
Chief:	So? You want the usual story? Gang-related? PCP?
Snyder:	What'd you have in mind? The truth?
Chief:	(considers) Right. Gang-related. PCP.

I remember that as a real jaw-dropping moment.

The powers-that-be knew what was going on!

But pitting the protagonists against a dishonest (and increasingly hostile) authority changed the story from the band of plucky volunteers plugging the gaps left by ignorant officials.

I'm not saying one setting is better, but they are different tropes.

The next point I want to make goes back to Karl Schroeder's remarks about victimization as a cause.

If matters were that straightforward, I'd expect to have heard many more stories about shtetl Jews getting their revenge upon the pogroms.

It's not just, as I blogged on Sunday, that the victims still have a certain amount of power and resources to call upon.

If we're dealing with people who have suffered loss, then they have memories of better times with which to contrast their current situations.

More to the point, they have hope that things can get better. And I think that may be the key.

It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.

The other way this plays out is by having an outsider's perspective.

In the stories, Moses was able to free the slaves in part because he wasn't raised as one.

Mahatma Gandhi was educated in London; Martin Luther King Jr. received his doctorate in Boston. Both spent several years living in a very different milieu, which may have enabled them to see possibilities that their stay-at-home peers may have missed.

In other words, it's not just victimization that leads to vigilanteeism, but also a sense that the situation can be changed.

Does that make sense?

Finally, only just found it, but here's the Making Light discussion from last year with the original quote.

Posted by Lis Riba at 8:15 PM

Some additional points regarding Monday's posts:

As far as Closing doors is concerned, Dr. Ariely observed:

"Closing a door on an option is experienced as a loss, and people are willing to pay a price to avoid the emotion of loss."

I also forgot to include Ian's observation that etymologically, "decide" literally means "to cut off"

And since I posted the Cory Doctorow quote that "perception of functionality trumps the actual function," Jeff Atwood provides the latest real-world example. In brief:

[Windows] Vista's file copy performance is noticeably worse than Windows XP. I know it's one of the first things I noticed. Here's the irony-- Vista's file copy is based on an improved algorithm and actually performs better in most cases than XP.

He then goes into an analysis of why it seems so much slower, along with further commentary on the user experience aspect.

Posted by Lis Riba at 8:30 PM

Speedtest:95 words

These were the results I got the first time I tried the test, I swear.

In middle school, I took a semester-long typing class, and can touch-type without looking at the keys.

How 'bout you?

• How do you type?
• How fast do you type?
• When and how did you learn?

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:01 PM

This morning, Writer's Almanac noted the birthday of Alexander Graham Bell with a quote:

"When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us."

This reminded me of some recent articles by John Tierney about decision-making, tied into the new book Predictably Irrational by Dr. Dan Ariely, an MIT professor of behavioral economics.

If you haven't already tried Dr. Ariely's 3-door experiment (this is not the standard Monty Haul puzzle) play it now (it's quick).

Further reading (for after you play the game):

• TierneyLab blog entry, February 20th
• John Tierney's published column, February 26
• TierneyLab blog entry, February 25 (after the column was posted to the web)

I may blog more on this later, but first I want to give you all a chance to try the experiment unspoiled.

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:42 PM

Long story short, my team has created an intranet page to act as an index for about 20 or so requirement documents for this major project.

It was written in a wiki which has a WYSIWYG editor.

This afternoon, when I updated links to some of my documents, I happened to click the button to reveal the page's source code.

This is an actual example of a typical line:

<P><SPAN><SPAN><FONT size=1><SPAN><SPAN></SPAN></SPAN></FONT></SPAN></SPAN></SPAN></SPAN></SPAN></SPAN></SPAN></SPAN><SPAN><SPAN><SPAN><SPAN><FONT size=1><SPAN><SPAN><SPAN><SPAN>&nbsp;</P>

Simply put, such sloppy code just offended my sense of decency.

Suffice it to say, I just spent the better part of an hour (of my own time at home) cleaning up HTML code which I'm probably the only person who would see, in order to return a page that looks identical to the original, but with a much more elegant back end.

That's just the kind of person I am.

Consider yourself forewarned.

[Well, what would you do under the circumstances?]

Posted by Lis Riba at 7:55 PM

Just finished reading Cory Doctorow's Eastern Standard Tribe.

Posting no spoilers, but wanted to share two passages that made me grin.

There was a cheap Malaysian comm that he'd once bought because of its hyped up de-hibernate feature -- its ability to go from its deepest power-saving sleepmode to full waking glory without the customary thirty seconds of drive-churning housekeeping as it reestablished its network connection, verified its file system and memory, and pinged its buddy-list for state and presence info. This Malaysian comm, the Crackler, had the uncanny ability to go into suspended animation indefinitely, and yet throw your workspace back on its display in a hot instant.

When Art actually laid hands on it, after it meandered its way across the world by slow boat, corrupt GMT+8 Posts and Telegraphs authorities, over-engineered courier services and Revenue Canada's Customs agents, he was enchanted by this feature. He could put the device into deep sleep, close it up, and pop its cover open and poof! there were his windows. It took him three days and an interesting crash to notice that even though he was seeing his workspace, he wasn't able to interact with it for thirty seconds. The auspicious crash revealed the presence of a screenshot of his pre-hibernation workspace on the drive, and he realized that the machine was tricking him, displaying the screenshot -- the illusion of wakefulness -- when he woke it up, relying on the illusion to endure while it performed its housekeeping tasks in the background. A little stopwatch work proved that this chicanery actually added three seconds to the overall wake-time, and taught him his first important user-experience lesson: perception of functionality trumps the actual function.

Art, the protagonist, describes what being a user-experience consultant means:

It's all about being an advocate for the user. I observe what users do and how they do it, figure out what they're trying to do, and then boss the engineers around, getting them to remove the barriers they've erected because engineers are all basically high-functioning autistics who have no idea how normal people do stuff.

Mind you, I've found the job also has something to do with diplomacy, which is why I'll probably never actually say anything so blunt when job-hunting...

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:20 PM

While following a tangent regarding the Founding Fathers (inspired by my writeup of the Lawless Elite panel), I came across this quote by John Adams from April 1776:

Fear is the foundation of most governments; but it is so sordid and brutal a passion, and renders men in whose breasts it predominates so stupid and miserable, that Americans will not be likely to approve of any political institution which is founded on it.

That reminded me of two other blog entries seen in the past week about people letting fear rule them:

Go read Bellatrys and Slacktivist

PS: While trying to come up with a title for this post, I found the following by Edward R. Murrow:

We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason if we...remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes which were, for the moment unpopular.

and by Eleanor Roosevelt:

You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, "I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along."...You must do the thing you think you cannot do.

Posted by Lis Riba at 8:12 PM

The Year in Physics and Astronomy

Saturday 5pm: Guy Consolmagno, Ctein, Jeff Hecht, Mark L. Olson

Physics basically covers three subjects: matter, energy, and what goes on between them. How exciting can that be, really? More and more all the time, as it turns out. Plus we keep watching the skies - and every year it pays off with fascinating new astronomical developments.

To the right, two photos of Saturn, taken by the Cassini spacecraft (click for fullsize images and more detailed descriptions).

In Saturn's Shadow If you look at the larger version, Earth is visible at about 10 o'clock

A Sight to Behold Titan viewed thru Saturn's rings

Science News, May 2007:

In the 20 years since the Chernobyl disaster, a colony of fungi has evolved inside the reactor capable of using the radiation as food/fuel.

And melanin may be the key to their success.

Most of the fungi are very dark, due to melanin, but they've also found an "albino" strain which produces no melanin.

Scientists tested these fungi under heavy doses of gamma rays. The albino fungi grew at a normal pace, while the melanin-enriched breed grew about three times as fast.

Yeah, I was making Incredible Hulk jokes, too.

On a related note, the high efficiency of photosynthesis among plants may be due to quantum principles. [Berkeley Lab, April 2007]

---

The Appeal of the Lawless Elite

Saturday 12noon: Alexander Jablokov, Beth Meacham, Paul Park, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Karl Schroeder

Editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden has said, "Much of the genre works by appealing to our wish that the world's extra-legal violence be under the control of the kind of smart people we admire. The Second Foundation and the X-Men - and, for that matter, the Scooby Gang and the Laundry - are all, to some extent, basically the Ku Klux Klan, except that the extrajudicial violence they carry out is (we're assured) merited and just." Discuss.

Posted by Lis Riba at 8:11 PM

Do the Hugos Need Fixing?

Sunday 1pm: Vince Docherty, Paul Melko, Patrick Nielsen Hayden

A number of Hugo categories (e.g., Best Related Book) seem to barely scrape up enough contenders each year. In other categories (e.g., Best Professional Artist), long-term reputation can seem more important than the year's work. Some meritorious parts of the field (e.g., web sites) aren't covered at all. And do we need a Grandmaster award? This could recognize the "best of the best," or serve as a prize for those who did great things, but were never recognized in an existing category. Do the Hugos have problems that need fixing, or are we just indulging in the fannish habit of fixing things that aren't broken?

Working in the Shadows: Influences

Sunday 12noon: Bruce Coville, Steve Miller, Dean Morrissey, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, David Weber

It's said that only a few thousand people bought the Velvet Underground's first album - but every one of them started a band. What creative people in our genres have had similar influence on our panelists? On the field as a whole? Do influences from outside the genre count? How about bad influences? Can one be influenced without imitating? As leaders in their fields, how do our panelists try to influence others?

Immortal Longings: Chasing Literary Fame That Lasts

Sunday 2pm: Bruce Coville, Bob Devney, David G. Hartwell, Elise Matthesen, Farah Mendlesohn

Will any recent writer of science fiction, fantasy, or horror still be read or widely studied 100 years from now? Mary Shelley, Verne, and Wells seem to be lasting well; what about more contemporary figures? Tolkien? Rowling? Heinlein? Pratchett? Le Guin? Miyazaki? Norman? Gene Wolfe once nominated Harlan Ellison. Any likely prospects at this con? What has characterized work that lasts? How exactly might you start making your own stuff timeless? Does it help to write for children? Must you be cinematized? Don't count out longshots: we await with pleasure the Lafferty revival of 2108.

Posted by Lis Riba at 8:08 PM

The way my life has been going (insanely busy), I've begun to doubt I'd ever manage to post my Boskone follow-up. [I still haven't managed to write up everything I intended to blog from Arisia!] But, here goes.

I'll start with some notes to specific people:

• To: gnomi
  • Yo, Wocky Jivvy, Wergle Flomp: the best poetry based upon the tale of Miriam Abacha. Be sure to read the comments.
     
• To: elaine_brennan
  • Ian's 2007 post on Arisia, Boskone and Boston fandom
     
  • Also, I can't find the quote, but Dreaming in Code had an amusing passage on disagreements over technical definitions -- by the very professions responsible for specifications [Was it systems engineers vs. systems design?]
     
• To: elisem
  • Ian tending bar for Al Franken (I had been trying to recall the devil-horns joke).
     
  • Also, your comment about "study questions" for your short story reminded me of Amy Tan's remarks on the CliffsNotes for The Joy Luck Club:

    At the end of the booklet was a list of questions. I read one: "Which daughter in the book is most like Amy Tan? Why?" What luck. This very question was often asked of me in interviews, and I had never known what to say. Here in my quaking hands, just one page turn away, was the definitive answer. But one page later, I discovered these were just discussion questions, no answers were given, and thus I was left to ponder my existential angst in the usual fashion.

• To: teenybuffalo
  • bard_in_boston
  • Marlowe in Modern Fiction
  • My notes on the Marlowe Symposium
  • gayatheistspy
  • Punctuation counts
  • And, the full ponyboy picture from Tamburlaine is behind the thumbnail.

A few quips and quotes heard around the con:

Did anybody manage to attend this 10am Sunday panel?

I Want My 20 Hour Workweek

Tobias Buckell, Alexander Jablokov, Paul Melko, Pamela Sargent

Older SF (including pop culture such as The Jetsons) held several perennial ideas of what the future would be like. One envisaged the flying car, subject of many past panels. Another - which we personally desired way more than any airborne auto - was the 20 hour workweek. Supposedly, automation and productivity advances would cut our hours on the job, gloriously freeing up tons of time for other things. OK, we've realized all those great gains in productivity. But the sad statistics say Americans are working considerably longer weeks, not shorter ones. What happened, dammit? And does any hope still remain?

We stayed up way too late Saturday night and missed this one; I'm very interested in hearing what was discussed.

Posted by Lis Riba at 2:54 PM

Some titles that have crossed my path in recent weeks which I want to read:

• Cincinnatus by Garry Wills
• Defensive design for the Web: how to improve error messages, help, forms, and other crisis points by Matthew Linderman
• The Game of kings by Dorothy Dunnett (Recommended, though I don't think I'm quite in the headspace for it now)
• Jane Boleyn by Julia Fox
• Miss Pettigrew lives for a day by Winifred Watson
• The Red queen's daughter by Jacqueline A. Kolosov (a YA novel about the daughter of Catherine Parr and Thomas Seymour; I thought she died in infancy)
• Swindled: from poison sweets to counterfeit coffee - the dark history of the food cheats by Bee Wilson

Also, a heads up on several novels coming out this summer:

• Superpowers by David J. Schwartz
• Midnight never come by Marie Brennan
• Ink and steel by Elizabeth Bear

Meanwhile, at the library yesterday, I picked up:

• Elizabeth & Leicester by Sarah Gristwood, and
• Eastern standard tribe by Cory Doctorow

Posted by Lis Riba at 2:12 PM

Wanna read something cringe-inducing?

From a New York Times article on mobile phone manufacturers:

"Design used to be inconsequential: just make it pretty, make it sell," said [Nokia's Senior Design Manager, Rhys] Newman, who, along with three members of his team, was interviewed at Nokia's design center near a strip mall in downtown Calabasas, north of Los Angeles. Now, he said, "we have to think about human fundamentals."

What, they only just realized this?

Did cellphone companies think they were a special snowflake among software and other consumer electronics?

<eyeroll>

I get my cell phone (yes, I have one) off my parents' group plan.

Apparently, they have a deal in which they can upgrade phones every two years, so they sent me a Motorola Razr to replace the Sony Ericsson Z520a I'd been using for the past year-or-so.

I really tried to like the Motorola, but found the user experience woefully inadequate compared to what I'd grown accustomed to.

After about a week, I've returned to my trusty older model cellphone and couldn't be happier with it.

In fact, I was so glad to be back to my familiar interface that I started playing around with their Themes Creator to customize my phone further:

External	Internal screens	Startup & Screensaver
		[I'll spare y'all the flashing animated gif; if you're interested, view it behind this link.]

No, I haven't gone so far as to use the theme music or TARDIS landing as my ringtones (although I didgrab a nice TARDIS door effect which I use as a message alert...)

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:15 AM

I dreamed that I was riding the commuter rail, taking home a new kitten.

It was a leettle kitten, still in the needle claws stage.

And I had no box, bag, crate, or leash with which to restrain it. I was just holding it.

Or trying to.

Because it wanted to explore.

So, I was chasing around the train car, trying to keep it from getting caught in the gears or falling out the doors, or annoying the other passengers.

Corralling the kitten kept me so preoccupied that I managed to miss my stop, and ended up having to phone my father at some ungodly hour to pick me up at some horrendously out-of-the-way station...

Oy.

How's your weekend been?