Riba Rambles:
Musings of a Mental Magpie

Posted by Lis Riba at 8:54 PM

Since I already created chibi icons for all the plays, I could also use that to compile a variant of this meme.

Sticking strictly to plays I've seen -- and lumping together stage, screen and video -- here are my numbers:

Of those I haven't seen, Shakespeare and Company is planning a production of Othello this summer.

And, of course, these numbers will change tomorrow, when I'm going to see The Tempest by Actors' Shakespeare Project.

Posted by Lis Riba at 8:00 PM

There's a Shakespeare meme going around.

Take a list of the plays and:

 bold the ones you've seen stage productions of,
 italicize the ones you've seen movies of (including video),
 underline the ones you've read or listened to,
 * asterisk the ones you've performed in or directed (including group readthroughs),
 + plus ones you've taught or done reasonably serious scholarly work upon

Here's what I came up with (though the underlining is approximate, because I can't entirely remember what all I've read):

All's Well That Ends Well Antony and Cleopatra As You Like It The Comedy of Errors Coriolanus Cymbeline Hamlet Henry IV, Part I Henry IV, Part II Henry V Henry VI, Part I Henry VI, Part II Henry VI, Part III Henry VIII Julius Caesar King John King Lear Love's Labour's Lost * Macbeth

Measure for Measure The Merchant of Venice The Merry Wives of Windsor A Midsummer Night's Dream Much Ado about Nothing Othello Pericles, Prince of Tyre Richard II Richard III Romeo and Juliet The Taming of the Shrew The Tempest Timon of Athens Titus Andronicus Troilus and Cressida Twelfth Night Two Gentlemen of Verona Two Noble Kinsmen The Winter's Tale

Posted by Lis Riba at 12:34 PM

Everybody's up in arms over LiveJournal eliminating free ad-free accounts for all but existing users, ignoring the once-so-promising advisory board intended to prevent such firestorms (reactions from Brad, danah boyd, Esther Dyson).

But another potentially-incendiary change is emerging:

According to Stewardess, SUP appears to have censored the list, removing interests related to sex, porn... and fanfiction.

BTW, what do people think about a sidebar of links for items I want to point out which aren't worth writing about. Something like the Particles and Sidelights on Making Light or Scalzi's Whateverettes?

I rather like the idea, because there are many links I wish to share but often don't have time for a more detailed writeup.

As a potential negative, those of you who read from LiveJournal wouldn't see them unless you actually came to my site (or subscribe to a separate feed for these links).

For now, I may try one of the "Daily Blog Posting" services, and see how that goes...

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:45 AM

• Got Medieval: Did They Have Fan Fiction in the Middle Ages?

• Some HTML tags and text I hope I never write

• Clever ideas to fulfill a need: DownForEveryoneOrJustMe.com (checks whether or not the requested site is down) and FillerItem.com (need to spend $X more at Amazon to qualify for free shipping? Find items in that price range).

• This natural radio seems like something my in-laws would like -- experimental technology that looks like it belongs in a zen garden. [See also Musical Rumba tables]

• As usual, Boing Boing has oodles of cool stuff, including Houdini on film, Bomb squad detonates suspicious turnip, a neuroanatomist studying her own stroke, 5,200 year old zoetrope...

Posted by Lis Riba at 7:30 PM

The Cute Cat Theory Talk at ETech:

Web 1.0 was invented to allow physicists to share research papers.

Web 2.0 was created to allow people to share pictures of cute cats.

[Aside: I need to create a sidebar where I can more quickly post these kinds of one-liner links...]

Posted by Lis Riba at 7:40 AM

We're just over one month out from Pesach, so time for my annual reminder:

Part of the Passover ritual involves the youngest person at the seder asking Four Questions, which is supposed to instigate the retelling of the Passover story. [For more information on this, see JewFaq.]

In too many families, the actual youngest participant is too young to actually recite the Questions. Usually, in these situations, the onus falls upon the youngest child actually articulate, but what if there were another way?

With this in mind, I've created a bib with the words written upon it. When it's the baby's turn in the spotlight, somebody can just hold the kid up for everybody to read!

Problem solved! And here's my CafePress shop!!!

Baby bibs for everyone!

And, since it's no more trouble for me, I've created infant/toddler t-shirts and one-pieces, although given it's really only for two days of the year and kids grow so fast, the bib is probably the most practical.

Anyways, if you know anybody expecting a small child at the seder, send 'em my way.

My other CafePress stores have a more literary bent:

   

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:00 AM

In case anyone was wondering, last night's sleep was Scalzi-free.

Although, upon further reflection I realized I can't really rememeber any of my dreams from last night.

I didn't happen to appear in any of your dreams, did I?

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:44 PM

Ian's been bugging me all day to blog about this, so I will.

Last night, I dreamed about John Scalzi.

I have no idea why he invaded my subconscious last night.

I mean, I do enjoy his blog and check it daily, but looking at my browser history sorted by popularity, I must admit his site doesn't make my top ten. The last time I read any of his books was when Last Colony came out ten months ago. And I've only ever met the man once in meatlife, just a brief introduction in a convention dealer room a year or two back...

At any rate, it was a pleasant dream; Ian and Krissy were also present and seemed to get along.

Anybody else have interesting dreams last night?

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:54 PM

danah boyd linked to the Facebook Anthem:

Are you getting bored of Facebook?

I certainly am. Though it was interesting at first to customize my profile and find old classmates online, I haven't logged in for weeks, and don't really miss it.

My blog and the communities I'm involved in on LiveJournal are far more interesting.

Incidentally, Friday's Robert X. Cringely column compares the social networking boom to the CB radio craze of the 1970s.

CB radio sales went from zero to tens of millions of units in under two years -- the highest rate of technology adoption ever seen in the U.S. before or since. Soon there was CB lore and a CB culture. CB was everywhere. When not breaking the law with it we were using CB as a huge social network to find the cheapest gas, the best hamburger or even a date for the prom. And then, quick as it started, CB was gone, worn to the bone from overuse and abuse and left to the truckers as it should have been all along. What killed CB radio was that moment when its annoyance factor exceeded its utility

He's mostly talking about social networking from the business perspective, explaining "[i]t's not that I don't see value to social networks, it's that I generally don't see ENOUGH value."

What do you think?

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:09 PM

Though I've often referred to myself as an information junkie, I never meant that literally.

This evening on Boing Boing:

Lee Gomes of the Wall Street Journal writes that recent research shows that a brain rewards itself with a squirt of natural opiates when it comes across new information that requires interpretation. That's why, he concludes, people stay on the Web for long periods of time.

The Wall Street Journal article (which may only be available for a limited time) describes "research conducted by Irving Biederman, a neuroscientist at the University of Southern California."

[C]oming across what Dr. Biederman calls new and richly interpretable information triggers a chemical reaction that makes us feel good, which in turn causes us to seek out even more of it. The reverse is true as well: We want to avoid not getting those hits because, for one, we are so averse to boredom.

It is something we seem hard-wired to do, says Dr. Biederman. When you find new information, you get an opioid hit, and we are junkies for those. You might call us 'infovores.'

For most of human history, there was little chance of overdosing on information, because any one day in the Olduvai Gorge was a lot like any other. Today, though, we can find in the course of a few hours online more information than our ancient ancestors could in their whole lives.

[... T]echnology is playing a trick on us. We are programmed for scarcity and can't dial back when something is abundant.

For what it's worth, I've been calling myself an infovore for as long as I've had this blog...

Checking my archives, I found a reference to Dr. Biederman's theory in 2006:

Neuroscientists have proposed a simple explanation for the pleasure of grasping a new concept: The brain is getting its fix. The "click" of comprehension triggers a biochemical cascade that rewards the brain with a shot of natural opium-like substances

I can't tell from that article whether it's describing the same research as today's WSJ or how much further he's advanced the knowledge.

I suppose I'll just have to look it up...

Posted by Lis Riba at 8:55 PM

Titus Andronicus, Act IV, Scene 2, in which Aaron taunts his lover's sons:

Demetrius: Villain, what hast thou done?

Aaron: That which thou canst not undo.

Chiron: Thou hast undone our mother.

Aaron: Villain, I have done thy mother.

Ian was talking about this quote -- one of his favorite passages in Shakespeare -- and how somebody else found it hard to believe Shakespeare actually wrote a "yo mama" joke.

Since I already opened a Titus-related CafePress shop for "If you're so Goth, where's my pie," so I decided to just create a hat with this slogan.

FWIW, Wikipedia identifies one other "yo mama" joke by Shakespeare, in the opening scene of Timon of Athens:

Painter: You're a dog.

Apemantus: Thy mother's of my generation: what's she, if I be a dog?

Any other examples from classical literature? I cannot believe Shakespeare invented this genre, but my knowledge of (and access to) earlier writers is spotty.

Posted by Lis Riba at 8:08 AM

Yesterday's Wall Street Journal included what Paul Kiel called "the closest thing I've seen to a complete explanation of the surveillance program the Bush Administration has assembled."

Among other revelations:

An intelligence official described more of a rapid-response effect: If a person suspected of terrorist connections is believed to be in a U.S. city -- for instance, Detroit, a community with a high concentration of Muslim Americans -- the government's spy systems may be directed to collect and analyze all electronic communications into and out of the city.
The haul can include records of phone calls, email headers and destinations, data on financial transactions and records of Internet browsing. The system also would collect information about other people, including those in the U.S., who communicated with people in Detroit.

Nothing like narrowly targeted searches to protect Americans' civil liberties.

I can't recall whether I blogged this when it originally hit the news, but in light of the monitoring of digital communications described above, it seems relevant to remind folks Bush has already eliminated the analog hole.

"President Bush quietly has claimed sweeping new powers to open Americans' mail without a judge's warrant.
Bush asserted the new authority Dec. 20 [2006] after signing legislation that overhauls some postal regulations. He then issued a "signing statement" that declared his right to open mail under emergency conditions, contrary to existing law and contradicting the bill he had just signed, according to experts who have reviewed it."

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:42 PM

Now there's an accusation I hadn't heard before:

Darnley's jealous suspicion of [David] Rizzio was only heightened by the fact that he himself may have been sleeping with the Piedmontese secretary.

Buh-whuh!?

I've read a couple books on Mary, Queen of Scots, and that's a new one on me.

Can anybody point me to other sources for this rumor?
[Unfortunately, Elizabeth & Leicester doesn't have detailed footnotes.]

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:15 PM

I'm trying to find an online essay I read ages ago, most likely somewhere on LiveJournal.

The essay talked about how J.K. Rowling's auctorial gaze combined with the third-person limited perspective from Harry's POV to produce a narrative very friendly to slashy interpretations.

Anybody else remember reading something like this?
[Even if you don't recall where you saw it, I might be able to narrow it down based on common community memberships.]

Posted by Lis Riba at 8:01 PM

Sarah Gristwood's Elizabeth & Leicester is a lot of fun:

To this day it is unclear what [Elizabeth] was trying to achieve [by trying to convince Mary Stuart to wed Robert Dudley]. Did she think Mary would find Robert as irresistible as she did? Was she really prepared to relinquish him, or did she never really mean for Robert to move north? Perhaps not: she actually suggested that she, Robert and Mary should live all at the English court (admittedly more important and more agreeable than the Scottish one) as an extended royal ‘family’, a virtual ménage à trois. There was always that strange near-flirtation, the thought -- voiced by Throckmorton in a letter to Robert -- that if only Mary and Elizabeth could marry ...

Yeah, I'm sure that thought occupied many courtiers' minds...

Posted by Lis Riba at 8:01 PM

Today's New York Times reports:

IN a scandal that's sending shock waves through both the publishing industry and academia, the author Franz Kafka has been revealed to be a fraud.

“'The Metamorphosis' — purported to be the fictional account of a man who turns into a large cockroach — is actually non-fiction,” according to a statement released by Mr. Kafka's editor, who spoke only on the condition that he be identified as E.

“The story is true. Kafka simply wrote a completely verifiable, journalistic account of a neighbor by the name of Gregor Samsa who, because of some bizarre medical condition, turned into a 'monstrous vermin.' Kafka assured us that he'd made the whole thing up. We now know that to be completely false. The account is 100 percent true.”

...

In a telephone interview, Mr. Kafka was contrite and tearful. “I know what I did was wrong,” he said. “I'm very alienated from myself, but that's no excuse to lie. I took someone's life and selfishly turned it into an enigmatic literary parable.”

In other literary news from the day's papers, biographer Joshua Kendall reveals: "[Thesaurus-compiler Peter] Roget suffered from obsessive-compulsive personality disorder, but he found a way to channel it. [Lexicographer and dictionary-creator Noah] Webster also had obsessive-compulsive disorder."

Who'd have thought...

Posted by Lis Riba at 1:30 PM

It's been a while, but I'll be getting new eyeglasses.

I ordered them yesterday, and expect to have them in a week or two.

Now, some people may not inform you when they get new eyeglasses, "testing" their friends and family to see when they notice...

But not me.

After trying some of the trendy new plastic frames that are all the rage, I ended up choosing the Exces 3015:

What do you think?

Posted by Lis Riba at 12:45 PM

Ian just returned from Sunday School, where he's been working on the Purim schpiel:

"I was sent home with rewrites.

"I have to write a death scene for Haman.

"He wants Mercutio's."

See Ian's earlier post on the creative process and initial draft script.

Meanwhile, I've been much of my morning trying to implement a honeypot captcha on a commenting script -- somewhat hampered by the fact I have no training in JavaScript, ASP or XSLT. But I think I've got it working now.