Riba Rambles:
Musings of a Mental Magpie

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:49 AM

Here are some various cool things on the net that I think my sister-in-law and her boyfriend -- and others-- might be interested in. Some I've blogged about in the past, but I'm putting them here all in one place for convenience:

• Bubba Ho-Tep, a disturbing sounding movie, starring Bruce Campbell as Elvis & Ossie Davis as JFK.
  • Also, trailers for the Punisher and Underworld (a goth Romeo & Juliet romance between a vampire & werewolf)
• The Rube Goldberg Honda ad & an article on how they made it
• What if LOTR was written by others, and the Howard Hawks movie version
• Dogs in Elk (and, in fact, the whole Bad Pets site is good whenever you need a laugh)
• Ping Pong, Matrix-style
• Gollum's MTV acceptance speech
• A twisted little game called Stair Dismount - Porrasturvat [OMG! They've now got Truck Dismount! Heeee!]
  • And Orisinal has less violent but equally fun and creative Flash games. [I'm partial to Bubble Bees to relax]
• Neil Gaiman's journal and Coraline, his kids book we were telling you about.
• And if Iran wants digital photos of Ian, here's Ian right after he shaved his head.

That's all I can think of at the moment.

Added slightly later: I spoke too soon. Since everybody else in LJ is linking to it, how about a little Satyrday Night Fever with Disco Pan!

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:00 PM

This afternoon, I ran a search through Google News to see if there were any other stories on the computer analysis of Marlowe's plays. To my amusement, it turned up this excerpt, from today's National Endowment for the Humanities magazine:

[Federal Theater head, Hallie] Flanagan found herself defending her art as well as her ideology before the House Un-American Activities Committee.
...
In a moment that summed up the nature of this investigation, she was asked by Representative Joseph Starnes about an ominous figure named Christopher Marlowe. "You are quoting from this Marlowe. Is he a Communist?" "Put in the record," Hallie replied, "that he was the greatest dramatist in the period of Shakespeare."
The hearing room erupted in laughter. But Congress was unsympathetic to the project, and on June 30, 1939, voted 373 to 21 to eliminate it.

Christopher Marlowe has been called many slurs throughout history, atheist and sodomite the most common. Now we can add "Communist" to the list.

Posted by Lis Riba at 8:40 PM

This is a story that I find both inspirational and a sad indictment of modern society.

Like many parts of our country, our fair city of Melrose is suffering from extreme budget shortfalls. Readers may recall that earlier this summer, our city held an override vote to raise property taxes -- it failed.

Meanwhile, essential services are being cut, the regional school accrediting association has had Melrose High School on warning for over a year, and the town is in generally dire straits.

Several local high school students, including our friend, Jacob have organized:

So far, WBCN is going to be promoting their concert, and they've gotten coverage from the Melrose Free Press and Boston Globe. But they need publicity, they need attendees, they need vendors, they need donations. Whatever you can do to help, it's for a good cause.

As impressed as I am with them, I find it really sad that basic school funding comes down to this. Ian's grandparents lived in the area during the Great Depression and say the schools were well funded back then.

Take note of the following passage from the local paper:

"Many kids take it for granted Melrose will screw us anyway," said Lefton. "This shows we can do something else other than just complain. It can open some eyes and show we can do something."

To the adults, the students have a far more challenging and, yes, somewhat bitter message. In talking with the four, there's no escaping the fact they feel more than a little abandoned and betrayed by the Melrose community.

"Our society has a way of cutting out those who can't defend themselves," said Lefton. "As students, we can't defend ourselves at the polls because we can't vote."

They point out Melrose has two golf courses, but no skateboard park and noted, while there seems to be plenty of parental involvement in Melrose schools at the elementary level, the interest appears to drop off considerably by the time kids reach high school.
...
Crespo noted the YMCA opened an indoor driving range, but has no place for teens in Melrose to gather and socialize.

The very idea of having to do the concert is "kind of pathetic," Crespo said. "It's sort of saying to the city, 'If you're not going to do the job, we're going to do it for you."

I feel so sad that they have this kind of attitude, but I really can't blame them. America really is betraying its kids in numerous ways, from shortchanging them basic necessities to denying their civil rights to saddling them with an enormous national debt.

Recently, It's the Economy made note of a new economic measure, called the "Generational Imbalance (GI) index, which measures (in net present value) how much society will spend on the current generation over their lifetimes versus how much society will collect from that generation over their lifetimes." Alas, the study in question does not actually enumerate those figures by age bracket, because I really wonder just how big a bulge the Baby Boomers make, from the school-building boom to accomodate them in the 1950s (and now our schools are in appalling disrepair, with little money spared to repair them) to college financial aid (nowadays, grants have largely been eliminated in favor of loans which must be paid back) to all the rival prescription plans and beyond.

And we who come after are paying for their entitlements.

And keep in mind, these kids will be running the country after we retire. Do you really want your retirement being planned by youngsters resentful of your entitlements? Even though I think he's an jerk, I can't help being reminded of fidelity_astro's comment regarding the budget deficit and how his generation will pay for our retirements: "pffht. we're gonna privatize that shit and leave you in a ditch." And sometimes that doesn't seem so farfetched an outcome.

Here are some kids who care and are trying to make a difference, even though they know it's only a drop in the bucket. Please, do what you can to help.

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:11 AM

According to this Boston Globe Online article, a team of researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center have been working on a program to measure similarity. They tested it by analyzed Elizabethan plays, inputting 50 plays by Shakespeare, Marlowe, Fletcher, Jonson, and others, along with some disputed works.

The computer then generated a tree -- accurately grouping all of Shakespeare's plays together in one section, and grouping each other author's works together as well.
The one outlier among Shakespeare's works is ''The Two Noble Kinsmen,'' which bears more resemblance to the language patterns of Fletcher, reflecting that the two men co-wrote the play.
''Edward III'' sits in the tree far from the Shakespeare, and is grouped with Marlowe, undercutting the idea that Shakespeare wrote the entire play. Many scholars believe Shakespeare likely wrote some parts of the play, perhaps a third of it, but the researchers did not test smaller sections of the play.

Given the amount of rewriting and collaboration in Elizabethan drama, that's not necessarily conclusive, especially with that final caveat. Also, I don't find it implausible that Shakespeare's early writings were influenced by the more-popular Marlowe. Still, I wonder how it mapped Henry VI (which is also believed to have a scrambled parentage).

Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center seems an odd source for such a discovery, though they point out that it's a purely statistical analysis, and is language-independent. I'll be curious to read the scientific paper once it's published, and I definitely want to see the tree it generated. [via BT!]

Posted by Lis Riba at 12:30 AM

Adam Felbers has a great line about Issa withdrawing from the California race after bankrolling the recall: "When you bash Democracy on the back of the head with a shovel and drag it into the town square, you ought to have the good grace to help bury it."

As a matter of fact, most of Felbers' posts this month are gems. So many people have already seen and linked to last month's Save my marriage that it's hardly worth mentioning, but get a load of his response to being called effeminate by the Freepers:

It's kind of hard to reply to this one. My first reactions are:
1) It isn't true, and
2) I wouldn't really mind if it was true, and yet
3) It's clearly meant to be an insult.

So it's a tough charge to wrap one's mind around. It's as though someone has whirled around, pointed at me, and sputtered, "You, you... damned Lithuanian, you!"

Read on -- it's funny and informative. Too bad he's married. Then again, so am I, and I'm not sorry about that.

Maybe those Freepers are just jealous. I noted last month (here and here) that Republicans have demonstrated a persistent inability to attract and satisfy women voters. I wonder whether they'd lose some of that bitterness if they could be as fabulous as those they resent. Sounds like a job for Carson and the Fab Five...
[via BT!]

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:45 PM

Salon.com is reporting that Ross Perot may get back into the race this time around. That could make matters a little more interesting, particularly since it was his 19% in the 1992 race that helped tip the vote from Bush Sr. to Clinton. Clearly, we need somebody to draw attention to how badly this administration has screwed up the economy. It's the Economy links to an interview with Nobel Prize winning economist George Akerlof:

I think this is the worst government the US has ever had in its more than 200 years of history. It has engaged in extraordinarily irresponsible policies not only in foreign and economic but also in social and environmental policy.

Ouch. I think I'd rather have Perot enter the race than Nader, but with both of them hovering in the wings, it should be an interesting, to say the least. [via BT!]

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:15 PM

Yeah, that's where I want to live...

Last night, I thought of yet another topic I'd love for the chance to study in-depth. I may as well post them here, both for my own memory, and in case somebody else already knows of such a study or wishes to pursue them on their own. In the latter cases, let me know the results, because that's what interests me most. My proposal to investigate the issue is just a means to finding the answers.

At any rate, the latest issue I'm curious about comes off of a discussion on Elizabeth Bear's journal:

It's now generally accepted that Christopher Marlowe had romantic or sexual feelings for men (modern terms for sexual orientation don't really apply to the period). How did that meme develop and spread through academia and into the popular consciousness? Others in the discussion have some ideas, but I'd love to trace back through the literature to see precisely how and when it propagated.

Ooh, and in the process I just discovered Sodometries: Renaissance Texts, Modern Sexualities, another book I'll have to read from the library.

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:23 PM

Ian and I decided to try to see the final performance of Midsummer Night's Dream tonight. [me: "And, hey! We don't really have to worry about being on time, since we already saw the first 45 minutes!"] Unfortunately, the traffic reports were saying 93 was backed up all the way to Rte 16, so we decided to say fck it and just go home. Oh well. I had wanted to see it, but it's not worth an hours-long traffic jam.

Meanwhile, I got my invite to BloggerCon in the email. As did several other bloggers. Elayne and Tom Tomorrow and Teresa Nielsen Hayden have been commenting upon it and don't sound terribly impressed.
Actually, that's a mild description: they're downright scornful, of the format, the invitation's presentation, and particularly of the cost.
I'm curious how this reaction will play among those running the conference...

I haven't been newsblogging much. I've noticed that my journal's focus seems to swing back and forth like a pendulum from the personal to the political. I wonder -- do people mind very much? [Seriously - I'd like to hear your comments: yea or nay.]
I worry sometimes that readers feel misled -- that they bookmark me expecting witty political insight and are disappointed by instead getting weeks devoted to inside jokes about Elizabethan playwrights. But, Shakespeare again has the perfect quote: "Do you not know I am a woman? When I think, I must speak!" And, clearly, these have been on my mind moreso than the news.
Also, many of the newsstories I'm reading about, I just don't want to think about, much less write on. I'm not burying my head in the sand, but perhaps this is my subconscious's way of distracting me to forestall outrage fatigue.

Posted by Lis Riba at 12:50 AM

Occasionally, I take some of the random quizzes that pass my way, and make note of any results that seem interesting and I might want to blog. Here are a few that have been piling up.

Even though I have a blog, rather than an LJ, this one still seemed appropriate:

(*GASP*) ACTUAL JOURNAL: Congratulations! Your LJ is written by you, FOR you. You think it's all fine and dandy to share your thoughts with your friends, but you don't put on any kind of show or glory parade just because your friends read it. You're one awesome banana. What's the purpose behind your LiveJournal? (with pictures!) brought to you by Quizilla

Next, a pair of related quizzes that also amused:

What movie Do you Belong in?(many different outcomes!) brought to you by Quizilla

Everyone remembers the 'faked-orgasm-in-a-deli' sequence from your kind of movie When Harry Met Sally. It seems that you're falling for a buddy or have already fallen for them. Uh-oh. You're probably caught between the possibility of having a great relationship and wrecking the one you have now. You know what they say, it's better to regret something you did than something you didn't do. What Romance Movie Best Represents Your Love Life? brought to you by Quizilla

Mind you, I'm married to my best friend and it's worked wonderfully for us.

I think I'll just pass on all the Pirates of the Caribbean imagery, and sum up a couple of the results.
Suffice it to say,

• According to What character from Pirates of the Caribbean are you?, I am Elizabeth Swann. ("Clever and steadfast, you're too good to sell out for a politically useful marriage or a physically abusive undergarment, father's wishes be damned. And although you've been told your whole life to stay away from the bad boys, there's just something that keeps bringing you back to the booty ... ahem. Excuse me.")
• Who's Your Pirates of the Caribbean Love Match? Oddly enough, that was Commodore Norrington. ("it's clear that you're a traditionalist. No doubt, though, a match with him makes good sense. He'll keep you in luxurious style with his high salary, and definitely do your bidding. Just get him to ditch the wig.")

You can check out Which one of Captain Jack Sparrow's bizarre sayings from Pirates of the Caribbean are you? and What couple from Pirates of the Caribbean are you most like? (w/ PICS!) for yourself, if you'd like. It doesn't seem worth sharing my answers and images.

Posted by Lis Riba at 12:14 AM

Folks who know me personally, may know that my husband and I own a three-family house. Not a three-decker, but an old turn-of-the-century house that was divided into separate residences. We bought it with plans to recombine the units back into one large living area.

For the last three-and-a-half years, we've been living on the middle floor, the top and bottom leased to tenants who predated our ownership. [You can probably see where this is leading]

Well, we just got notice from our first floor tenant that they've found a new home and will be gone by the end of the month.

I'm in shock.

So, now we have to decide whether to re-rent that space, or finally move into the larger space.

On the one hand, we have way too much stuff for our apartment. We have many possessions that we haven't unpacked since we moved here four years ago. It would be nice to finally have room for enough bookshelves for all our books. And we would have room for socializing: places to host gaming, guest space for friends and family... Might be nice.

On the other hand, I'm somewhat bit scared financially -- their rent make a nice dent in our mortgage and bills every month that I'm loath to lose. And, though I know my current job pays much less than my old one (with ten years seniority and all those boom-time competitive raises), I still don't have a comfortable grip on where we stand financially as far as income and outflow are concerned.

I think Ian's already won over that we can finally expand. I'm a bit more reticent and hesitant.
I think I have to spend a lot of time this weekend crunching the numbers to get comfortable with the idea.

[While we are quite close to a commuter rail stop, I think we're a little too far out in the 'burbs for PAD's daughter.]

Posted by Lis Riba at 5:30 PM

Wow. Take a look at the chart on the U.S. Department of Education homepage, comparing reading scores to federal spending. An observant Atrios reader pointed out "It appears to neither be corrected for inflation nor population growth."

On the assumption that the DOE will eventually notice and remove or alter the image, I made a local copy of the graphic, including the original alt text from the page source:

Chart shows that since 1965, when Congress passed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), through 2003, the federal government has spent more than $242 billion to help educate disadvantaged children. Yet, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the average reading score for 9-year-olds across the nation in 1975 is not significantly different from the 1999 score. During those years, the annual appropriation for ESEA increased six-fold -- from $2.3 billion in 1975 to $13.8 billion in 1999 -- while the average reading score for 9-year-olds was 210 in 1975 and 212 in 1999. ESEA appropriations for 1966-1974 and for 2000-03 are provided in the chart, but average reading scores for 9-year-olds are not shown because they are not available for all of those years. The president's 2004 budget request of $22.5 billion for ESEA is shown.

Added later: another Atrios reader commented: "Could the placement of the '500' on the right-hand axis be any more arbitrary?" And is 500 good? 500 bad? What does that value signify, other than it's a relatively flat line?

Posted by Lis Riba at 12:25 PM

What to do after work?

Start attending the weekly Boston weblogger meetings at Harvard, or hope the rain holds off to hit the final performance of Midsummer Night's Dream in Southie?

Both start at 7 PM.

Decisions, decisions...

Posted by Lis Riba at 12:00 PM

I was talking further this morning with Ian about the notion of pursuing a PhD, and I realized if I do this, there's really only one field for me: Social Informatics -- computers in society. My research interests are too techie for traditional library school programs and too touchy-feely for traditional computer science. I mean, rhetoric and online communities? Models of how people search for information? Blogging? Aside from my British history fetish, they're all right up the alley of Social Informatics! I took a class in it in the fall, and had a lot of fun. I suppose I should contact the professor and ask her opinion of programs and my chances of getting in and/or succeeding.

Poking around online, Indiana University seems to have a major Social Informatics site, including a list of academic programs. The closest geographically is MIT's Technology and Policy Program. However, (despite what Ian says that the only thing sexier than a woman with a doctorate is a woman with a doctorate from MIT) I don't think that really suits me. For one thing, their doctoral program only "enrolls about five advanced graduate students each year" -- a bit too exclusive for my blood. For another, the subject matter doesn't quite seem the right focus. Too technical; too narrowly focused on politics and economics.

Honestly, Indiana University's Ph. D. Minor in Social Informatics sounds most appealing, tied to their PhD in Information Science. [I mean, look at these program foci of the IS department alone: Information and Cognition, Human-Computer Interaction and Systems Design, Information Retrieval and Filtering, Information and Communications Systems in Society -- aren't they just what I've been talking about!? And how about some of those CSI courses: Philosophy of Computation, Politics of High Technology? Oooh!]

Not that I'd be doing anything like this right away, of course. Not only do I need to build some financial reserves before I can even think of giving up full-time work (To my parents: I know what you're thinking, and don't start!) but I need to seriously improve my study habits before attempting something dissertation-like.
[Incidentally, I know some of my friends have, are pursuing, or have pursued PhDs, or work/live closely with such people. I'd love to hear your opinions.]

Meanwhile, as reinforcement to this latest obsession, this morning's mail contained the program and registration information for this year's ASIST Annual Meeting. Full day seminar in Personal Information Management in Theory and in Practice (You know, I worked on Lotus Organizer for four years, but hadn't thought of combining PIMs with my research interests. hmmm...). Entire program tracks on User-Centered Design and Information Retrieval. Doesn't Information Behavior in Everyday Life: Research on Street-Level Sex Workers, New Immigrants, and Hair Stylists sound utterly fascinating? Or is that just me? And I'll need to check out Fast surfers, Broad scanners and Deep divers as users of information technology -- relating information preferences to personality traits, which may have bearing on my own search behavior modeling project.

Ahhh So much to do, so little time and money...

A few years ago, I came to a useful self-realization: I operate on enthusiasm. That's just a fundamental part of my nature. And with that discovery came a choice: I could either fight that, trying to smooth out the peaks and valleys, or accept it. And I've chosen to embrace it.

I'm a diligent worker -- I don't shirk on the job -- but I need frequent intellectual stimulation to truly come alive.

Though it does seem to me like I'm shifting more dramatically and rapidly and visibly this week than usual. Maybe I should change my description from "Musings of a Mental Magpie" to "Babblings of a Bedazzled Butterfly." [Added later: "Prattlings of a Polymath," perhaps?]

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:44 AM

"The outlines of body switch movies almost write themselves, although I'd like to see what would happen with an R-rated version." [via BT!]

Posted by Lis Riba at 8:14 AM

I realized as I went to bed last night (just after completing my previous post) that for all my desperate desire for BloggerCon Thursday through Saturday, it completely dropped from my mind once I got caught up in the excitement of Shakespeare research and considerations of a PhD in IR...

New thrill? Say farewell to former infatuation. I mean, I still want to attend BloggerCon, but not with the same fever-pitch I had barely four days ago. And I'm sure a few days from now, these interests too will wane from the foreground, only to be replaced by some other passing fancy.

And that illustrates why I don't feel I could complete a PhD -- I can't sustain an interest long enough.

Maybe I'll just settle for pursuing many, many Masters. Or, I just do as I have been with Tudor-Stuart England and continue learning independently.

Posted by Lis Riba at 2:01 AM

First of all, while looking for something else, I came across these announcements. The online journal Tangled Web Mystery Magazine is soliciting articles & reviews for its September issue which will focus on Shakespearean mysteries. Should I submit something? If so, since I'd likely have to write whatever it is from scratch, supplemented only by my blog posts, what?

Secondly, I was again thinking idly about the possibility of me getting a PhD. One of my areas of interest (in which I have actual professional and academic background, no less) is information retrieval.
Well, it turns out that UMass Amherst is home to the Center for Intelligent Information Retrieval. Mind you, it's part of the Computer Science department, and for all I can learn scripting languages and build small applets, I am not a coder by any means.
What I do have is a solid background in Library Science and UI design, readings in the literature of search behavior, my own theory/model I wish to explore, and preliminary tool concepts based upon these models to make searching easier for myself and others. I'm not a programmer; but I think I could do extremely well if I was partnered with one.

Mind you, information retrieval is only one area I'm interested in researching futher. I really don't know that I'd want to devote my life to it, but I do know that I've got certain nagging questions in the field that I've begun exploring and I wish the luxury of time and resources with which to answer them.

And if I need to a minimum of a PhD to be taken seriously and hired in certain research institutions, IR may be the easiest for me to achieve, given my background. [The requirements for Simmons PhD in LIS don't quite appeal.] But I wonder whether my lack of actual coding would bar me from admission altogether. Comments from those more experienced in research and academia are most welcome.

Posted by Lis Riba at 6:59 PM

<gnash>

Chores need doing, books insist upon being read, yet I feel I simply must respond to this (and correct the incredibly false statements made about Judaism through misusing the term Judeo-Christian) and I've been meaning to write something incredibly insightful and educational building upon material in these three posts and adding my own research to it.

I guess we'll see what I manage to accomplish...

Added 11:50 PM Nope. Didn't get to any of them. Did have fun this evening and (hopefully) helped other people, though. Which was good.

Posted by Lis Riba at 5:10 PM

Note: This post was begun before my 90 minute hell call; so the tone may be a bit inconsistent.

As I mentioned this morning, I was looking for information on the Elizabethan belief that fairies tithed to Hell. My searches uncovered mention of a 1588 witchcraft trial in Scotland, referenced in an 1833 book. Shortly after noon, I obtained those pages. To excerpt:

and that he before tauld hir how he wes careit away with thame out of middil-eird: And quhene we heir the quhirll-wind blaw in the fay, thay wilbe commounelie with itt, or cumand fone thaireftir; than Mr. Williame will cum before and tell hir and bid her keip her and fane hir, that fsho be nocht tane away with thame againe; for the teynd of thame gais ewerie yeir to hell.

Yes, I can actually read that.
There's a footnote marker beside the word "teynd" in which Pitcairn (the 19th century author) elaborates:

A tithe, or tenth part of them. This singular part of the prevailing superstition, the Editor has seldom before met with. It suggests a strange idea of a kind of intermediate state of existence, maintained by the 'guid nichtbouris,' through the medium of evil spirits and for this extraordinary privilege, they were annually decimated, or forced to pay tithe to 'Sathanas,' their lord paramount. The wallydraigles of this foul next were no doubt pitched upon for payment of the annuity, and Maister Williame was jealous of the fate of his unfortunate relative, Alisoun. In the introduction to the Tale of Young Tamlane, Sir Walter Scott remarks, 'This is the popular reason assigned for the desire of Fairies to abstract young children, as substitutes for themselves in this dreadful tribute,'

'Then I would never tire, Janet, In Elfish land to dwell;
But aye at every seven years, They pay the teind to hell;
And I am fae fat and fair of flesh, I fear 'twill be my fell!'

The Editor begs to refer the reader to the Essay 'On the Fairies of Popular Superstition,' in The Border Minstrelsy, edit. 1821, vol ii, p. 109.

I also see several mentions of "sewin yeir ewill handlit in the Court of Elfane" but those are just how long William was there and/or Alesoune was dealing with him; there are also two references to "Sanct Androus" that he seems to be appealing to.

I'm tempted to translate the entire three-and-a-half page verdict just for my own curiousity's sake.

And then, of course, somebody else pops up with a response, not only including the Pitcairn excerpt, but quoting other "various notes, book, and photocopies" with further background that they had just lying around at home. Cool stuff.

Though it's all based upon personal reading rather than a prescribed scholarly course of study, I have a fairly good background in Elizabethan and Jacobean court politics, Elizabeth's spy network, Marlowe & Shakespeare's lives, the theater companies, sexuality and homosexuality, fairy folklore and magical beliefs of the period, a little on the explorers, plus various modern novels (fantasy and mystery and alternate history) set in the period. [I think I may shortly make a bibliography-timeline.]

For a while, I thought that I would be well equipped to write my own Elizabethan fantasy, if I only had a story to tell.

Right now, I'm helping somebody else out with research and having an absolute ball doing so. I enjoy researching rare minutia of Elizabethan history for others.

This got me thinking over lunch.
Maybe I should write to Folger Shakespeare Library and ask their advice. What areas of expertise do they look for in reference librarians? I'm not much for literary criticism, but I doubt that would be necessary. [I would think most people consulting reference librarians would be doing their own analysis or would be looking for other people's reviews, so in that case, the librarians' opinions, or lack thereof, shouldn't matter.] Instead, I would think that skills like knowing how to read Secretary hand and understanding the people and culture would be more relevant for the researchers they might attract. But what areas in particular? What do they recommend or require their new hires to read or know?

They don't have any openings now; I probably won't move to DC even if they did; in fact, I probably never will do this professionally. But it's something I'm enjoying as a hobby, I wouldn't mind at least knowing what are the proper skills best background, even if I don't choose to pursue them.

On the other hand, there are also so many other areas that I also want to research:

• I still owe a letter to a Library Science journal documenting errors I found in one of their published articles.
• I still want to investigate the relationship between rhetoric and ethos in online communities (BBSes, Usenet, discussion databases, blogs, LiveJournals).
• I still want to study models of online searching behavior.
• Professors have suggested I revise papers I wrote for classes and submit them to journals.

<sigh> There are so many avenues I want to pursue.

That's all I can think of at the moment, but these are just areas I've actually started working on and had to drop due to a lack of time. I haven't even begun studying Constitutional law or politics, or even JavaScript and XML, as I'd like to. And meanwhile, I've also got a list an arm-long of books I desperately want to read. And that doesn't cover the maintenance-level tasks, such as sending my computer off for repairs; dealing with finances; organizing and weeding my wardrobe, or even staying on top of the daily news...

I've come to the realization that: I need time, and money so I can do what I want with that time.

Posted by Lis Riba at 3:38 PM

I just finished a 90 minute support call crossing 3 products (one of which we no longer make, is rarely used and we will soon no longer support, so I wasn't trained in) <gleeble>

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:31 AM

There's a legend that appears in Tam Lin that the fairy courts pay a tithe or tiend to hell (every seven years). Someone I know was looking for other references to that tradition.

I happen to own Katherine Briggs' book The Anatomy of Puck: an examination of fairy beliefs among Shakespeare's contemporaries and went searching. From the index, I found a brief quotation in King James' Daemonologie, and a paraphrase of a 1588 witchcraft trial.

Probably sufficient. Dayenu.

But not for me.

Briggs footnotes her source for this trial as an 1833 book by R. Pitcairn, titled Ancient Criminal Trials in Scotland and provides the volume, part and page number.

I went to OCLC and looked up which libraries owned the book. The closest are Harvard Law & Smith. I emailed reference requests to both libraries.

And, within an hour, I get a reply that somebody has found the passage, but rather than transcribing it ("[t]he text is written in what appears to be the Scots dialect, which makes exact transcription a laborious process"), is willing to fax me a photocopy of the entire five-page trial transcript. Mind you, I'm not sure how legible or intelligible it will be, and it's probably excessive and mostly unnecessary for the other person's purposes.

But still, I'm getting it.

Cool.

And who knows what other uses I may find for it.

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:30 AM

• Regarding BloggerCon: Thanks to the link in Alan's response, I realized that I may actually have something worth presenting at BloggerCon. And if I can pitch the hosts that they want me to present, that should mean reduced rates, right?
  This is the email I sent them (the recipient also attended Simmons, so knows the professors by name); we'll see what response (if any) I get:

  I just realized that I may actually have a topic worth presenting at the conference.
  
  For my Subject Analysis class this spring, I created a subject index for (6 months of) Talking Points memo, including a paper and presentation on the issues involved in indexing weblogs. Candy suggested that I revise my article and submit it to The Indexer (the magazine published jointly by American, British, Canadian, and Australian societies of indexers).
  
  It might make a useful presentation at BloggerCon, because traditional web indexing guidelines don't work for blogs.
  
  Other things in my background that might be relevant:
   * Took Robin Peek's Social Informatics/Computers in Society class; papers are posted at http://www.osmond-riba.org/lis/writing.htm
   * Have a long-time interest in online communities, and have been researching issues of rhetoric and community-building, such as how ethos is established through writing style.
   * Members of Lotus Research and the IBM CommunityBuilders group have praised the depth and breadth of my experience with online communities.
  And a few of my blog entries that might be of interest:
   * My thoughts on Dave Winer's Long Bet
   * Summary of NEASIST's blogging conference this spring
   * An exploration of why and what I blog
  
  I'd really like to be involved and attend BloggerCon, but having only recently returned to the land of employment after a jobless year, I'm not sure my finances are up to the $500 fee. Is there anything we could work out?

  And you know, that background sounds almost impressive. I wish I had the time/money to actually conduct such research more formally.
• As far as my ongoing technical problems with LJ are concerned, I've been making certain that my RSS feed validates. I'm suspecting the problem lies with intermittent outages at my hosting site. Given the reports by other people having problem reaching my journal and even other pages on my site, I suspect that may be why LJ has trouble reading my feed. It's Verizon being flaky and hosing us all.
  However that does not totally absolve LJ. There are still design problems with how long it takes for LJ to update a feed once it fails. It shouldn't wait three hours after a failure. [Especially since I once could attribute a failure to me posting an update at the same time as LJ checking the site; LJ couldn't read the feed while it was being written-to, and then timed out for the better part of a day.] If LJ fails to read, it should wait 5 to fifteen minutes and try again to see if it's an intermittent outage.
  Better yet, to ease their load, LJ should time their updates to the pings at Weblogs.com. After all, why do they need to check blogs hourly that only update fewer than a couple times a day? Just check the feed about 5 to 10 minutes after Weblogs.com has been pinged, so they aren't failing to read while the user may still be posting.
  For blogs that don't ping Weblogs, in those cases, LJ needs to set their own regular checks. But I have gotten the impression that their servers are overloaded by checking too many feeds too often. But they're checking every feed hourly, and most of those are probably unnecessary.
  I've been meaning to submit this as a suggestion for ages, but haven't gotten around to it.
• Although I forgot to mention it, I did actually try to schedule a meeting with Rep. Flake while in DC. I called his office the week before we left, only to discover that Congress was in recess during our visit so he wouldn't be available. Oh well. But at least I tried.
• And, though I did mention this earlier, Ian helped me break my reading paralysis by suggesting I prioritize the books that must be returned first. Sure, I can and often do renew library books, and this may mean that I own some books I never get around to reading, it did give me a useful place to start.
• Finally, for those who are trying to follow my comment threads, there is an RSS feed for them, at . I don't think it's worthy of being syndicated to LJ, but if you have other aggregators and want to keep track when somebody posts a new response, you might want to bookmark it.

That's about all for me for now.

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:28 AM

This is Not a Blog links to two of the funnier sites I've seen this morning: Dullest Blog in the World and the Single Bitter Announcement Blog. Hope you enjoy them as much as I. [And Ian, for all you complain about being boring, you really don't hold a candle to this. Face it, darling, you actually have interesting things to write about.] [via BT!]

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:12 AM

On the drive up from Florida, Ian and I had a lengthy conversation dissecting the differences between the 1969 movie of the Producers and the modern Broadway version. Came up with some fascinating revelations about what the changes say about how times have changed. I'd love to share these with others to get more opinions/observations.

But writing them up would spoil many aspects of both play and film, including the conclusions. If so many readers weren't using RSS, I could make the spoilers white text on a white background, but I can't trust the aggregators to respect such formatting and hide the text accordingly. So I run a strong risk of spoiling things for everybody if I do post.

Anybody out there desperately interested in our comparisons and contrast? Anybody really not want to have the endings spoiled?

Let me know, so I can decide what to do.

Posted by Lis Riba at 8:01 AM

Just for the heck of it, I tried Yahoo's online palm-reading tool (after seeing it in AGrumer's LJ). Even though I don't terribly believe in palmistry, and probably didn't do it quite right (is that chained, broken or branching?), here are my results:

You have a good imagination, and often exhibit sensitivity to others.

At times, you may tend to be overly sensitive to criticism. You can be excessively cautious or narrow in your outlook unless you receive the right kind of encouragement.

You have so many interests that you may have trouble deciding which ones to pursue. This can become a problem when you allow yourself to be overly influenced by other people's opinions.

The general flexibility of your character is a useful attribute. At certain times in your life, you may have romantic conflicts and difficulty maintaining friendships. You will overcome these problems after a little introspection.

You are a warm hearted person, with much love to give.

There may be times in your life when you give in to feelings of sadness or depression.

You are likely to make decisions based on intuition or feelings rather than intellect.

You are naturally charming and inclined to be flirtatious.

At certain times in your life, you may have romantic conflicts and difficulty maintaining friendships. These problems are not likely to last long.

There are inconsistencies in your energy level, possibly triggered by external factors or emotional changes.

You have a basically strong constitution, and should enjoy good health most of the time.

You were probably given a good start in life by your parents. This could be based on your general upbringing, or on physical characteristics you inherited.

You are likely to make many changes in the direction of your life. This may be based on interruptions due to health problems, or it may be that you just have trouble focusing your energy. The most productive time in your life will probably occur in middle age.

A major illness or setback is predicted near mid-life. You have the ability to recover from this. The most productive time in your life will probably occur in the second half of life.

There is a strong intuitive side to your nature, which may border on psychic or mystical ability.

So, how many of these statements sound like things I've said in this journal; how many do you think describe me based on your knowledge of me (through these writings or other experiences); and how many are completely off-base?

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:45 PM

So, we went to see Midsummer Night's Dream in Boston Common. The goal of these productions is to make Shakespeare accessible to folks who otherwise might not ever see a Shakespearean play. So they performed it in 1950s dress. Costuming was great -- not only could I immediately recognize who was who, but I thought they made excellent shorthand of the roles for newcomers as well. Demetrius dressed like a prep and Lysander more casual and a bit jock-like -- making it easy to see why Hermia prefered one and her father the other. Hermia was a blonde in a pink dress with a sweater over her shoulders; Helena a pony-tailed brunette in thick-rimmed glasses, wearing a navy dress and white gloves -- the picture of the good girl who might both be jealous of her best friend's looks and the type to tattle. The mechanicals were hilarious; Puck and the fairies still looked appropriately wild and fairie-like; Titania appeared regal in a white dress and Oberon strutted about the forest wearing a black leather jacket over a t-shirt, which just seemed utterly perfect.

Mind you, the production wasn't flawless. I think too much of the action took place on the ground in front of the stage, which -- for a performance in a park without elevated seats -- were impossible to see from the audience. And the sound system flaked a couple times; some players were poorly miked and hard to hear; other times it went in and out during somebody's speech (mostly for Bottom, though, whose voice was appropriately bombastic for us to still hear him). Still, Midsummer Night's Dream is one of my favorites, and I adored every bit of it.

I brought along my Dover Press copy of the play and read along at times. The script was trimmed, of course, but intelligently so. For example, in the original, Lysander says:

...therefore, hear me, Hermia.
I have a widow aunt, a dowager
Of great revenue, and she hath no child:
From Athens is her house remote seven leagues;
And she respects me as her only son.
There, gentle Hermia, may I marry thee

They trimmed it down to

...therefore, hear me, Hermia.
I have a widow aunt, a dowager
From Athens is her house remote seven leagues;
There, gentle Hermia, may I marry thee

They cut the fact she's rich, childless and adores Lysander, but that still gets the important gist across, which is that he has a relative outside Athenian jurisdiction where they can flee.

Unfortunately, about 45 minutes in -- at the end of Act II Scene I, just as Demetrius and Helena left the clearing and Puck returned to Oberon with the flower -- the sky opened with a downpour. They called a halt to the play, and invited the audience under the shelter of the stage. Impressively enough, though, despite the need to huddle under umbrellas or blankets or up on the stage, nobody in the audience left until they actually cancelled the play about ten minutes later. The audience was enjoying things so much we were willing to sit outdoors in a thunderstorm to watch. Besides, hadn't they just finished saying that Oberon & Titania's enmity had thrown nature out of joint? This was atmosphere!
Still, the troupe needed to protect its sound system, and the show couldn't go on. Pity. [As they were taking down the stage, I overheard "Titania" telling "Oberon" she was glad that at least they got to perform their scene before getting rained out. <grin> Actors.]

As we were all packing up, I heard another audience member say they were hoping to schedule a rain date, but (a) the final performance is Thursday, and (b) finding another slot in Boston Common may be tricky. Still, I enjoyed this enough that I'm tempted to go to the 7pm Thursday showing in Southie.

Ironically enough, before the play it was bright and sunny and really unpleasantly hot. It was actually much more comfortable in the rain, which cooled everything down. Paraphrasing the evening play (which we didn't bother sticking around for), "Fair was foul, and foul more fair."

[For those who are interested, here's Ian's account of the play.]

On the ride home, I had one of those sillier thoughts to which I'm prone. I was jokingly singing "Let me be your spaniel" to the tune of "Let me call you sweetheart." [Don't knock it! It works!] Then suddenly, I envisioned Miss Piggy wheedling as only she can. "Oh please Kermie! Let me be your spaniel! Pleeeease!" So, if Piggy was Helena and Kermit Demetrius, I pictured Annie Sue as Hermia and Scooter as Lysander. I see Sam the Eagle as the Hermia's stuffy father concerned with propriety, and Rowlf as a well-meaning but regal Theseus.

Animal seemed obvious for Puck, which made Dr. Teeth a fitting Oberon, though I can't quite see Janice as a suitable Titania... [Though I can picture Zoot and Floyd as fairy attendants, so maybe...]

Link Hogthrob as Bottom, Fozzie Bear as Snug the joiner (who begs for a script in order to roar like a lion), and Gonzo as Flute, forced to play Thisbe (though I see him far more enthusiastic about playing the lady, beard or no beard). Ian pointed out that in terms of character, the mechanicals could be played by Fozzie, Fozzie, Fozzie and Fozzie. They all really fill the same role -- they desperately want to be on stage, yet have more enthusiasm than talent, making them the object of both sympathy and laughter from the audience.

Getting close to the end of Chasing Shakespeares. Don't get my last post wrong; I am enjoying it. Like many earlier SF stories, it's primarily trying to convey certain ideas, but then as the Which SF Wavelet Movement Do You Belong to? quiz pointed out, I'm an old-school junkie anyway. I don't have a problem with that style of writing so long as the idea is interesting (and as a biography of Oxford, I'm finding it fascinating) and presented well.

Besides, I am seeing a lot of myself in the reader-surrogate character. He's a Shakespearean scholar gone to London for the first time; he's interested in the same places I've talked of going when I travel to England (such as the pilings of the Rose Theatre and St. Paul's Churchyard, where the booksellers were) and is experiencing the same cognitive dissonance I expect I would over the everyday mundanities overlaid upon such sites. He goes to a real English pub and as visions of Dickens dance through his head, orders steak and kidney pie... and after two bites ends up sharing his companion's chicken biryani instead. It all feels exactly like what I want to do when I go to London, and I can just tell that these were the author's experiences, too.

A clever and amusing line of Ian's, apropos of nothing else in this post: "Thank goodness you're here Captain Exposition. Maybe you can explain what's going on!"

Posted by Lis Riba at 12:32 PM

So, I took some advice from Ian on how to break my reading logjam, and started with the book I have to return first. Mind you, this puts me at risk of never finishing (or much starting) the titles I was interested in enough to buy -- a common problem, meaning I own far too many unread books bought with the best intentions.

At any rate, I'm now about halfway through Sarah Smith's Chasing Shakespeares. I met the author at Arisia and shared some fascinating conversations with her. Lovely/delightful/fascinating woman; I really liked her a lot. And I'm enjoying her book.

Yet I also find myself reading very cautiously, trying to keep some distance from it and taking frequent breaks to notice the craft. [Not easy for me, since I normally just get sucked into books.] I'm treating it like a ticking piece of propaganda, because to some respects, in my mind, it is. Sarah Smith is an Oxfordian -- one of those people who believe that Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, wrote the plays attributed to Shakespeare. And I know that part of the story in this book involves a Shakespearean scholar discovering evidence to support Oxfordianism. And part of that is based on Ms. Smith's actual experiences discovering and researching the Elizabethan poem "The Paine of Pleasure," something she describes in detail, here.

I don't want to get sucked into Oxfordianism, so I'm trying to be careful. And I'm noticing techniques such as the frequent deprecations of loony Oxfordians in order to make other evidence appear more reasonable by comparison. The lead character is a cynical skeptical well-educated Stratfordian with whom we're expected to identify. So, as he slowly begins to doubt his convictions and warms to Oxfordian evidence, that's clearly supposed to convince us as well. About a third of the way into it, as the leads (and, by extention, we readers) are getting a gradual biography of Oxford, another character points out how rigid Stratfordians can be and suggests that agnosticism and openmindedness are the only way to go, before presenting another tidbit that supposedly favors Oxford.

At any rate, so far I do find Oxford's biography interesting, as he's not a courtier about whom I've read much about in the past. But I'm not interested in being pushed into any belief-changing epiphanies. I really like Kit Marlowe, too, but I thought Wraight's In Search of Christopher Marlowe was so over-the-top in its praise that it became more hagiography than biography. At any rate, those interested in reading more about Chasing Shakespeares, including exhaustive footnotes and bibliography, should check the author's website for the book.

That's all I have time to write for now. This afternoon, Ian & I are going for the free Shakespere double-feature in Boston Common by the Commonwealth Shakespeare Co: Midsummer Night's Dream followed by Macbeth. Ian's in the kitchen assembling a picnic basket. I hope the weather holds.