Riba Rambles:
Musings of a Mental Magpie

Posted by Lis Riba at 8:20 AM

A story in The Telegraph complains that since YouTube launched its official Congress channel, politicians have been flooding the site with "cringeworthy" clips.

That may be true for other videos, but I disagree with them on Speaker Pelosi's Cat Cam video, which I find delightful:

[Okay, the annotations detract, but otherwise, I think she gets it.]

Posted by Lis Riba at 7:59 AM

Because I couldn't leave well enough alone, shortly after last night's entry, I found the answer to my question.

Last month, Noah Mendel wrote an essay for History News Network on When Did the Great Depression Receive Its Name? (And Who Named It?).

In brief, it acknowledges that "great depressions" existed before Hoover. [Depression being considered a less alarming description than calling it a panic.]

In 1931, Hoover referred to the economic situation as a great depression, and thus played a role in its formation.

The phrase, "the great depression," in reference to the 1930s, did not appear till after Hoover left office. Some historians argue that the true inventor of the phrase, the Great Depression, is Lionel Robbins, a British economist who lived during the Depression. In 1934, after Hoover's tenure in office, Robbins wrote the book, The Great Depression, which contains what some historians, notably David F. Burg, consider to be the fist usage of the phrase we now use to to describe the economic meltdown on the 1930s.

Robbins also deserves credit for being the first to capitalize the phrase, an important step in becoming a proper noun in its own right.

At any rate, we're talking several years after the stock market crash. It still seems too soon to try to assign some kind of official name to the current economic downturn.

Meanwhile, anybody know when World War I was first dubbed The Great War, or when World War II was declared World War II?

Posted by Lis Riba at 7:12 AM

Since I know you're reading this and it's a bit too early to phone.

Do you know roughly what Eli scores in bowling? Just an average...

I'm just curious, given the president's off-the-cuff quip last night...

Posted by Lis Riba at 6:30 AM

Lie down thinking about Hugos, and I dream of the nominees.

Charlie Stross was hanging out, and I think Elizabeth Bear was there too. But I spent most of the time with John Scalzi.

I simply must attend a kaffeklatsch with him at Anticipation. In RL, I've only ever run into Scalzi in passing, but we always get along like gangbusters in my dreams...

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:04 PM

View the list here

It looks like an interesting year:

• 3 of the 5 Best Novel nominees are children's or YA books (Little Brother, Zoe's Tale and The Graveyard Book)
  • I remember a certain anti-juvie disdain when Harry Potter won, and I wonder whether that attitude still holds
  • on the other hand, the shorter length makes it more likely I'll actually manage to read them all. [In fact, I've already read two.]
• Many categories seem to have an odd mix of styles within them.
  • Best Related Book includes several academic works alongside Scalzi's Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded
  • Best Graphic Story combines graphic novels from Vertigo and Dark Horse with Schlock Mercenary
  • Best Dramatic Presentation, long and short form, include big-budget movies and TV -- plus the more experimental works of Doctor Horrible and METAtropolis.

Anyway, kudos to all the nominees. Looks like I have some reading to do...

Addendum

I also just realized that none of the nominees are sequels. [Zoe's Tale is in the same universe as Old Man's War, but (a) it was designed to work as a standalone, and (b) I've already read the rest of that series.]

The first WorldCon I attended (MilPhil), over half the nominees were series books. Casting an informed ballot would've required reading over a dozen books.

Although Anathem's 900+ pages seem daunting, this is the most accessible list of Best Novel nominees I've seen in a long time.

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:40 PM

Does anybody know when the Great Depression became "The Great Depression"?

Lately, a lot of ink has been spilled regarding the need to name the current economic crisis. That has me wondering far along was the economy in what we now think of as "The Great Depression" before people started calling it that?

How long did it take for the term to gain general acceptance?

Scanning through historical papers, I see plenty of references to "great depression"s prior to 1929 (e.g. The New York Times archives), making it sound like a relatively generic term for really bad economic times.

Posted by Lis Riba at 8:58 AM

with a very important message from Serious Cat:

Does anybody know Morse Code who can translate what he's saying?

Posted by Lis Riba at 7:15 AM

Yes, everybody else is posting this vid... it's just that cool!

Posted by Lis Riba at 7:36 AM

In more recent news, Neil Gaiman was on The Colbert Report last night.

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:32 AM

For varying values of you:

• The Facebook Aeneid

• Rorschach's LiveJournal

• A discussion of the best comment encountered in source code

[And now I'm running late. Have to pick up Ian from Sunday school, and then we're catching a matinee of Coriolanus]