Riba Rambles:
Musings of a Mental Magpie

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:15 PM

So, attended the concert today. I'm sure Ian will blog about it more, since he spent the entire day volunteering (and has the sunburn to show for it), but IMO, turnout was disappointingly light. Most of the crowd were either HS students or friends of the organizers.

At any rate, among the tables selling stuff at the back of the field was a booth for a local environmental group. They had postcards to [Massachusetts Speaker of the House] Tom Finneran, asking him to act on some legislation or other. As I was filling out my address, the woman in the booth pointed to the voter registration forms and said, "If you're over 18..." with a tone in her voice that made it clear she wasn't sure and didn't want to presume either way.

I managed to keep a straight face as I thanked her and said that I was already registered to vote. But I think I was smiling about this for about a half-hour later.

BTW, for those in the Boston area, the Dresden Dolls are a really cool band.

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:01 PM

So, Ian and I had our friend undauntra over to see if she couldn't come up with some useful workarounds for our financial dilemmas.

One area we discussed is Ian's difficulty in finding work. Ian came to a realization that he's stuck in a catch-22:

If it's not important, it's not worth him doing. If it is important, he becomes so afraid of failure that he gets paralyzed.

As a matter of fact, he actually started to have a (mild?) panic attack as we tried to discuss ways of breaking that thought pattern.

Taking care of small children is something Ian enjoys. Therefore, we thought that giving him a week caring for small children (perhaps his niece and nephew in VT) might help him overcome his fears. Though it may not be pleasant to live apart, assuming he and the kids are alive at the end of a week (which I'm confident of, but he doubts), that could really help him overcome his anxiety, so he can find other gainful employment.

I got their phone number and tried to get them to dial, but he wanted to wait a day and consult with his LJ friends. I think its partly a stalling tactic and partly in hopes that somebody else will come up with an objection to get him out of this. [Hey, it is a major enough fear to evoke a panic attack during conversation.] I'm hoping, however, that he goes through with this and can overcome his fear (also giving his foster sibs some vacation) or that somebody comes up with a better idea.

Anyway, I'm going to sleep while he drives undauntra home, so I don't know that I'll see his post before morning. So, that's my side of the story.

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:49 PM

<Whew> Got this post in just under the line for Fair & Balanced Friday:

Don't know how many people outside the blogosphere noticed this, since the administration reversed itself so quickly, but yesterday, the Defense Department announced they were cutting the "imminent danger pay" and "family separation allowances" paid to troops stationed in combat zones. News articles on the subject paraphrase the Defense Department as saying that they have more important priorities. [I first saw this on Talking Points and DailyKos Conservative veteran Tacitus has some good comments, including other info on military pay.]

As mentioned, a PR firestorm quickly ensued and the administration backed away from the plan, promising to continue funding these bonuses for troops in Iraq & Afghanistan, even if they have to take the money from other programs. But don't let them fool you into thinking that was their original plan. Quoting a story in the Army Times:

What led to the criticism was a July budget document submitted by the Defense Department in which officials recommended rolling back the pays to prewar levels because they had not budgeted for the increased costs.

But this administration is inflicting other outrages upon the troops:

As Paul Krugman wrote Tuesday, soldiers in Iraq are dealing with temperatures well over 100 degrees, and yet due to shortages, "each soldier is limited to two 1.5-liter bottles a day." Although some bloggers have challenged that account (claiming it's 3 liters in addition to standard water rations), Krugman has defended himself and those assertions as coming directly from letters in Stars & Stripes. I don't know about you, but somehow I find a Private's first person account more plausible than a Sergeant Major giving a press conference about policy.

Several days ago, DailyKos pointed out that US Central Command has reported "three soldiers dead in their sleep in four days" and wonders what's really going on. In the comments, somebody (comments down at the moment, so I can't check the name) pointed out Needlenose, which noticed that one of these people died "in his sleep" the same day as "six powerful explosions shook" that base. Non-combat death? Remember what I posted last month (scroll down, last topic in that entry)about how deaths are being underreported...

And for other stories of insults added to injuries, here are three stories about wounded vets that should make your blood boil: one, two, and three (scroll down a little) (first two links were initially seen via South Knox Bubba)

Take Back the Media has produced a Flash Ad titled "Army of One" that you may find worth watching.

Bloggers at DailyKos, To The Barricades, Tacitus and USNDemVet are military veterans, so provide a useful perspective on military matters. [I know I know of other blogger-veterans on my list, but I can't think of them at the moment.]

Finally, this about wraps it up for my Fair & Balanced Friday. If you're curious, Blah3 is maintaining a list of participating sites. Really impressive.
At any rate, may your life be filled with fairness and balance, and have a pleasant weekend. If you're in the Boston area, be sure to stop by the Education First Jam Fest in Melrose, Saturday from noon til six.

Posted by Lis Riba at 12:15 PM

Several stories have crossed my screen over the last week that for various reasons I can't or don't fully trust. Given those caveats:

I am working on a companion post, to be titled "Unfair," which will cover assorted administration slights and lies to the military and veterans. However, due to other commitments that will probably not be up until this evening after dinner.

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:23 AM

One of the common complaints about media consolidation is that when radio is no longer local, then listeners might miss important news. Cases where the automated or distant DJ continued to play tunes instead of issuing bulletins on tornado warnings because there was nobody to man the station.

I'm just wondering how Clear Channel acquitted itself in the blackouts last night. It was probably enough of a national story that it could get away with the same coverage nationwide (power still out; stay calm folks). So far, I've only found one article mentioning Clear Channel, saying that a Detroit TV station "allowed several Clear Channel-owned FM music stations to simulcast its news coverage, making its reportage available on radio."

I'll be interested to see if there's any followup on this after the immediate crisis ends.

Postscript: Both clauses in the title of this post are listed in the government trademark database as belonging to Fox News. If Fox sues me, I hope my opinions and writings become as popular as Al Franken's.

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:40 AM

Well, as those of you who read my feed from LiveJournal may have noticed, things are starting to work again. I suspect the blackout may have delayed some of the propogation, because while LJ (which is normally hairtrigger sensitive to any disruptions in my feed) is working, Weblogs.com, W3C and Feed validator are still unable to connect.

The brief explanation from the Verizon tech was that of the three nameservers for osmond-riba.org, I wasn't listed on two of them and the one I was listed on couldn't be found without going through its parent. So, he added CNAME records on the other two nameservers to point to osmond-riba.org, which should fix the problem as they propagate around. I'm still not sure whether we have to register the other nameserver (with its third level domain) separately from its parent (the second level domain we have registered) or if its a configuration issue on the server, or both, or something else entirely.

But for now, LJ can reach me again, which is good. Hopefully, by Monday the links at the top of this post will see my site again.

I do feel a need to plug the tools at www.DNSstuff.com, which provide some handy diagnostics.

And, finally, let me once again thank everybody who helped out. I couldn't've done it without y'all.

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:10 AM

An excerpt from the impending book about Fox News Channel:

It was a pleasure to flame.
It was a special pleasure to see foes beaten, to see names blackened and changed. With the crass microphone in his fists, with this great python spitting its venemous words upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history.

With apologies to Ray Bradbury.

This has been a salute to Fair and Balanced Friday.
BTW, the government allows you to Search all trademarks (search all fields on the phrase "Fox News"; there are 48), if you would prefer to mock other FNC slogans.

Posted by Lis Riba at 12:30 PM

Well, our cable modem was fixed last night. Turns out that when our downstairs tenants had their cable turned off, somebody shut off ours as well. Supposedly we have a resolution for the nameserver problem with osmond-riba.org, but that may take another day to percolate across the web. In the meantime, I've found an odd trick that seems to work. Open http://66.13.125.230/ in your browser and then, after that's loaded, see if you can get to http://www.osmond-riba.org/.

At any rate, during this time I've been accumulating a pile of interesting links at an alarming rate. I think I need to post them for my own sake, even if nobody else reads them 'til they're stale.

• Sing along with the California alphabet song!
• Several people in my office building subscribe to the Wall Street Journal. Since WSJ's content is not available freely online, I make a point of checking the front page headlines every morning on my way to the elevators. Yesterday, I saw something that made me stop and actually read the entire article. Titled "After Long Boom, Workers Confront Downward Mobility," it really didn't say much that I wasn't already aware of from personal experience or other reading. Still, the notion that our best days may be behind us (a) has certainly affected my outlook on things, and (b) may hurt Bush in the 2004 election. He doesn't have to just turn the economy around, he has improve people's justifiably pessimistic attitudes. Are you better off than you were three years ago?
• The Killer D's -- Texas Democratic Senators -- are still on the lam. Off the Kuff says the State Senate is threatening to fine the missing Democrats up to $5000 a day if they don't return. Texas is undergoing massive budgetary woes, but the Texas Leg can't address those problems until they resolve the issue they were called into special session for, which is redistricting. Needless to say, the Republicans are getting a lot of heat for pushing redistricting at the (literal) expense of more important issues. So, maybe this fine is the GOP's way of doing something to close budget deficits?
• Ruminate This found an intriguing incongruity:

  The Commerce Department's antiboycott regulations are administered by its Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS). Those regulations prohibit U.S. persons from taking actions in support of unsanctioned foreign government boycotts

  I'm asking the same questions as Lisa:
  1. Boycotting is prohibited by the Federal government?
  2. Why didn't we hear about this when the target was France?
  I've found the government website for antiboycott compliance. I think I'm going to look into this further...
• Dr. Laura renounced Orthodox Judaism. And the general reaction among Jews seems to be "Good riddance."
• Matthew Yglesias and Kevin Drum have details on textbook publisher Holt, Rinehart and Winston editing biology textbooks to make them more friendly to creationism"intelligent design" in response to Texas demands. Because Texas is such a large and demanding state, their criteria for textbooks become nationwide standards by default and will end up in classrooms nationwide. Here's an online petition offering more information and protesting the change.
• Longtime conservative Philip Gold has written an essay he calls The Conscience of an (ex-)Conservative: a blow-by-blow report of a dissolution of a political marriage that is well worth reading. To quote:

  Over the last several years, I've become sadly convinced that American conservatism has grown, for lack of a better word, malign. Not exactly a congenial conclusion for someone who started out with Goldwater in '64 and ended up writing defense memos for Steve Forbes in 2000.
  ...
  It's about American conservatism in general - a 50-year movement that did some good, especially in taking down the Soviet Union, but ultimately splintered into several factions, each in its own way pernicious.

  Gold lists what he calls the "core principles" of conservatives and wonders what happened to them:
  • Limited government? ...
  • Civil liberties? ...
  • Seriously lower, majorly simplified taxes? ...
  • A foreign policy that does not presume the world is ours to remodel and redeem as we please, and that our resources of coercion and control are limitless? ...
  • A cultural commitment to tolerance, appreciation of difference and an inviolable private realm? ...
  • A commitment to cultural creativity at all? ...
  • Respect for the planet? ...
  Heck, I consider myself a liberal, and (though I'd want more specifics on "limited government") I could support this agenda. And yet, somehow, the current crop of neocons is moving in the opposite direction: enlarging the federal bureaucracy, reducing civil liberties, eliminating any support for the arts...
  It's a good essay, and I recommend it. I'm particularly amused with his comment about "libertarians, a pert little faction composed mostly of people who, when told about something going on in the world, reply, 'Yes, but how would it work in theory?'" [courtesy of See the Forest]
• Finally, Atrios found a useful quote to rebut those who talk about America as a Christian nation.

  "The defense that both Jefferson and Madison gave of the right to religious liberty depends crucially on a specifically Jewish and Christian concept of God. Theirs is not a Hindu, Buddhist, or Muslim concept" -- Michael Novak, 2003

  "[A]n amendment was proposed, by inserting the word "Jesus Christ," so that it should read, "a departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;" the insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo, and Infidel of every denomination." -- Thomas Jefferson, 1821

More links later.
I still have a mess of stuff to post about conditions for our soldiers in Iraq and at home, some odd stories about the administration, and further ponderings about privatization.

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:18 AM

Well, the text of the Fox-Franken lawsuit is online (courtesy of TalkLeft). A few gems:

• "Franken's reputation as a political commentator is not of the same caliber as the stellar reputations of FNC's on-air talent"
• "From the time of its launch until the present, FNC has been dedicated to presenting news in what it believes to be an unbiased fashion, eschewing ideological or political affiliation and allowing the viewer to reach his or her own conclusions about the news."
• "O'Reilly himself has become a national celebrity and one of America's most trusted sources of news and information.
• Speaking about the cover illustration: "A portion of the globe, similar to that used in numerous advertisements for Fox News, appears near "[the words Fair and Balanced]
• "Defendants' use of the Trademark also tarnishes the mark by associating the mark with Franken's sophomoric approach to political commentary. Such a use lessens the reputation of FNC for having a team of first-rate journalists and news personalities who gather, report, and analyze the news."

Posted by Lis Riba at 4:16 PM

Aside from repeating many of the same things others (including myself) have written, the Register article shares this fascinating quote by August Pollack:

"If Blogger and MT and LiveJournal all dissolved into the ether tomorrow ... I would still be trying to post news links and interesting things on my website. The only thing that would change would be the level of convenience. That's why I find the blogging paradigm overplayed.

The very purpose of blogging software is to increase the ability for as many people as possible to use it. ... The core element, to me, is still not the blogging software. It's that those people exist in the first place."

Posted by Lis Riba at 3:55 PM

Apparently, everything south of Virginia is considered "West Coast." Go figure. [Or, buy these people a map!]

To make a long phone call short, I was trying to reach them about the open ticket regarding our DNS problems. I'm calling from Massachusetts, so their automatic routers put me into the East Coast queue. But the DSL line is in Florida, which they consider West Coast. So the East Coast staff had to transfer me to the West Coast branch. Of course, they transferred me to West Coast residential, and I needed West Coast business support. So they'd transfer me again. And I'd start explaining the problem to the WCB staff, asking for the guy who had been working on the issue the previous night. The WCB rep would try to transfer me to another department, and I'd wind up right back into the phone queue for the East Coast again.
I think I must've made at least four circuits over 40 minutes before I finally got through to the guy who knew what he was talking about. And he explained the problem clearly and succinctly, and gave us two possible options that would resolve the problem. I won't go into the technical details at the moment.

I don't blame the phone reps; they don't have control over how the phone system is set up. But I do think it's a pretty shoddy setup. Makes me want to dig up Douglas Adams' Infocom game Bureaucracy, where somebody managed to mine those endless loops for comedy.

But, at least it's done for now.

Incidentally, this reminds me of one of those corporate culture differences I still have to adjust to between my current employer and Lotus/IBM. At Lotus/IBM people (officially, at least) worked an eight-hour day, and most people I know took lunch at their desks. At this place, I have to be here for nine hours -- 8:30 - 5:30 -- with the expectation that I will take an hour away from my desk for lunch. And yet, I'm so accustomed to eating lunch at my desk that I often end up missing lunch and working a nine-hour day. Diligent and dutiful, but I'm cheating myself.

Posted by Lis Riba at 1:50 PM

If you're wondering why so many sites added "Fair and Balanced" to their mottos over the last several days, it's because Fox News has sued Al Franken for trademark infringement over his upcoming book, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right.

That's right, Fox is trying to claim ownership over the phrase "Fair and Balanced."

Even on the face of it, that's ludicrous. A quick Google search for the words fair and balanced, excluding pages which mention Franken, Fox or Faux (a popular derisive term for Fox) turned up hundreds of thousands of references, even before the bloggers got ahold of it.

Fox doesn't stop there. Although so far I haven't managed to find a copy of the lawsuit online, the New York Times is reporting.

Along with mundane accusations of unfair competition, the lawsuit includes some especially derisive remarks about the defendant
...
"Franken is neither a journalist nor a television news personality," according to the complaint. "He is not a well-respected voice in American politics; rather, he appears to be shrill and unstable. His views lack any serious depth or insight."

The Atlanta Journal Constitution adds

The court papers refer to Franken, who is a former "Saturday Night Live" writer and performer, as a "parasite" who hopes to use Fox's reputation to confuse the public and boost sales of his book.

Franken is also accused of verbally attacking O'Reilly and other Fox personalities on at least two occasions, and of being "either intoxicated or deranged" as he flew into a rage at a press correspondents' dinner in April. The lawsuit says that Franken has been described as "increasingly unfunny."

Needless to say, Fox hasn't gotten a terribly positive response from the public to their complaint. The publisher, Dutton, issued a statement calling their actions "un-American and ... contrary to everything this country stands for." But they're laughing all the way to the bank. Since the controversy broke, Al Franken's book has jumped to #1 in Amazon.com sales rank. [This link shows its climb as a graph. Pretty impressive.] Franken himself is certainly taking it well:

As far as the personal attacks go, when I read 'intoxicated or deranged' and 'shrill and unstable' in their complaint, I thought for a moment I was a Fox commentator.
And by the way, a few months ago, I trademarked the word 'funny.' So when Fox calls me 'unfunny,' they're violating my trademark. I am seriously considering a countersuit.

Since forewarned is half-an-octopus, Neal Pollack has delcared:

This Friday, August 15, is Fair And Balanced day on the Internet. You are all hereby instructed to use the words Fair And Balanced in very creative ways on your various websites. My cosponsor in this effort, Atrios, informs me that many of you are already using "Fair And Balanced" in your taglines. Very good. Sometimes, I swear you don't even need instructions from me. But we can go further. Tell Fox News to take its Fair And Balanced slogan and shove it up its Fair And Balanced hole. Feel free to be more subtle than that, if you wish.

To repeat. This Friday is Fair And Balanced day. Use the slogan at will. I will not be keeping track of the uses on this site, because it made me tired last time, but I still trust that you will spread the virus in funny and creative ways. We cannot let Fox News beat us, people. If they sue one, they can sue all. Al Franken has resources. Fox News' next victim might not be so lucky.

All this raises a more serious question that I've been pondering. Off the top of your head, and leaving the blogosphere out of this, who are the best-known right-wing pundits. It's pretty easy to come up with some: Limbaugh, Coulter, etcetera. Now, try to name some left-wing pundits. Not quiet types who write the occassional editorial, but the folks who are big, loud, in-your-face and all over the media. Most of the names I come up with are humorists or entertainers: Al Franken, Molly Ivins, possibly Bill Maher, maybe Janeane Garaofalo or Arianna Huffington. Why is that? Can liberal viewpoints only get airtime if they're softened with a dose of comedy?
I'll have to see whether What Liberal Media provides any insight. [I just noticed a copy is "on shelf" at my local library; I'll try to pick it up tonight.] Counterexamples or explanations will be welcome.

Posted by Lis Riba at 12:49 PM

Well, chalk this up as yet another popular comedic movie musical making the jump to the stage. Broadway.com is reporting that Eric Idle will be turning Monty Python and the Holy Grail into a Broadway mega-musical. And, of course, it's long been known that Mel Brooks has been adapting Young Frankenstein. What's next? The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies? [via BT!]

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:00 AM

I want to thank all of you here and on LiveJournal for helping me troubleshoot the technical difficulties here on osmond-riba.org. We still don't have a solution or resolution, but you guys provided sufficient evidence to not only convince the guy from Verizon's technical support that there's a problem, but intruigue him enough that he wants to find a fix.

So, it may be another day or two, but soon we should have things better than before. [Hopefully, this will also address the problems some people have had of failing to connect on first attempt, refreshing and then succeeding.]

Posted by Lis Riba at 3:59 PM

AKA, I got it from folzgold...

Posted by Lis Riba at 2:51 PM

Not the most promising of days.

We're still experiencing technical difficulties with osmond-riba.org (see my previous message for details) so I don't know how many of you will see this in time. I don't have a background in this kind of networking. My domain registrar suggests the problem's with the hosting site; the hosting site suggests maybe it's some setting of the registrar's; I've looked at the Windows 2000 DNS settings and mine look similar to other sites on that host that are operating without problems... At this point, I may have to wait a day or two to for the tweaks to my nameservers to propagate, but I don't know that'll be sufficient. [By the way, the tools at DNS Stuff.com are really cool!]

Meanwhile, our cable modem isn't making connections with the outside world. Comcast is sending somebody to look at it tomorrow (Weds) evening. That means that (a) I can only troubleshoot this site problem from work (fortunately, call volume has been practically nil) and (b) we're being reminded how net-dependent we are.

Ran some of the financial calculations last night. At my current salary, we cannot make ends meet without the money we're getting from the first floor rent. Even though our current place is too cramped and we really want to expand into the two floors, we can't without bringing more money in. [No, we cannot raise the rent on our other tenants; they can barely pay the current amount and are having serious health problems at the moment.] Which leads into...

A few weeks ago, Ian interviewed for a job as a security guard. Today they rejected him with no explanation (just a postcard in the morning's mail). This morning, he also applied for a bartending job at a new restaurant and didn't come away from that with a terribly optimistic impression. He really wants to get out of our apartment so we can have room for all our stuff, but we can't do that without more income, which he can't seem to bring in.

Needless to say, Ian's feeling very down at the moment. He's really smart and has great skills, particularly interpersonal ones, but they're not skills that anybody's hiring for. Or, if they are hiring, they require a college degree, which he doesn't have. He's 29½, and whether you credit it to Saturn return or just ruminations on approaching thirty, he's feeling... well... rather worthless right now.

I don't believe he is, but then I'm biased, so Ian doesn't entirely trust my judgement where his value is concerned. He could use some egoboo about now. For now, I have created this entry, since I don't know whether he will be posting about things publically, and supportive comments would be appreciated.

And can I bitch for a moment about how much this whole thing sucks? I played by the rules and did everything right. I put ten-and-a-half years into Lotus/IBM, despite many offers to jump ship during the boom times. And what was my reward? I was sacked and the stock options they gave me weren't worth the strike price. It took me nearly a year to find another job. And now, here I am, with a Master's degree, and I'm not earning enough to pay the bills. Ian and I live modestly, so it's not like we have any extravagances we could cut. This really bites.

I'm not asking for a handout -- I don't want to have to rely on handouts. We should be capable of being self-sufficient at this point. I'm just pissed at a system that screws over people who follow the rules.

Posted by Lis Riba at 5:30 PM

Okay, so I can connect to osmond-riba.org from work and from Panix.com and via Blogger.com.

But apparently, other sites can't. Not only has LiveJournal failed to read my feed for the past two days, but now other sites are having problems as well.

I know that some of you readers are far more tech-savvy than I am. Do these error messages mean anything to y'all?

Weblogs.com

Can't open named stream because TCP/IP error code 11002 - Non-authoritative host not found. (Temporary DNS error).

W3C HTML validation

500 Can't connect to www.osmond-riba.org:80 (Bad hostname 'www.osmond-riba.org')

Feed validator

An error occurred while trying to validate this feed.
Possible causes:
1. The address may be incorrect. Make sure the address is spelled correctly. Try loading the feed directly in your browser to make sure a feed exists at that address.
2. The feed may be temporarily unavailable. The server may be down, or too slow. Try again later.
3. The validator may be busted. If the feed exists, the server is fine, and the problem is reproducible, send an email to feed-validator@diveintomark.org with details of the problem.

Lately, I've also seen a lot more bouncing mail, with messages like "Domain of sender address <my email address> does not resolve."

Do me a quick favor, please. Try to open my web page. If it doesn't work for you, check this site to confirm what your IP address is (the default in the text-entry field and listed in the Example beside the button), and send that to me. Even if you can't reach osmond-riba.org, you should be able to reach my comments, which are hosted independently. Your IP address and the time you tried to post.

Interesting. DNSReport says I've got "lame nameservers" along with missing CNAMEs, SOA records, and no glue. Whatever the heck those mean. [And its mail test doesn't seem to be terribly happy with osmond-riba.org either.]

I've just modified my nameserver records at my registraton site. It'll take 24-48 hours for those changes to propagate, and we'll see whether that resolves any of the problems.

I know it's probably a coding problem in the Blogosphere Ecosystem, since the number of inbound links has dropped to one-sixth of Friday's, but for one brief shining moment, Riba Rambles has evolved into an Adorable Little Rodent, ranked #515.

Even odder and more annoying. WHOIS is now listing that my domain is inactive... And I'm getting yet more errors from DNSReport than before. The only thing I changed earlier was my name servers, removing two invalid ones. Now it seems like nothing is working.

Added later: Well, left messages with the registrar, but nobody's answering the phones directly and they only promise a 72 hour turnaround. <grumble> Add to that the fact that our cable modem at home isn't working and I probably won't see any of you until tomorrow morning when I arrive at work. Hope you guys see me before then...

Posted by Lis Riba at 1:10 PM

Boy, I seem to be writing a lot of short posts this morning.

Valuable articles on Mike Hawash (read the comments here as well) and Jose Padilla and the reason why the Lackawanna Six in Buffalo pleaded guilty.

Echoing Patrick's comment: Is the Bush administration conducting a War on Terror, or a Reign of Terror?

Posted by Lis Riba at 12:57 PM

Uggabugga is known for creating diagrams to explain complex situations. Well, the latest is this nifty keen diagram of the Wars of the Roses. I need time to process it fully, but nifty keen! [via BT!]

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:55 AM

By now, most have read or heard exerpts of the official Vatican statement on homosexual unions, particularly this statement:

[T]he absence of sexual complementarity in these unions creates obstacles in the normal development of children who would be placed in the care of such persons. They would be deprived of the experience of either fatherhood or motherhood. Allowing children to be adopted by persons living in such unions would actually mean doing violence to these children, in the sense that their condition of dependency would be used to place them in an environment that is not conducive to their full human development.

In other words, children need both a mother and father.

Logically, if that's the case, shouldn't the church be equally vehement at removing children from single parents, who also deprive children access to both mother and father? Shouldn't they demand that widows and widowers must remarry immediately so not to deny their children the experience of two parents?

And how about all those convent-run schools and orphanages run by priests? Again, you've got children cared for by members of only one sex. Are those also doing violence to children?

Just follow the argument to its logical conclusion, and its hollowness is exposed.

Taking a strong stand only against this one situation in which children are "deprived of the experience of either fatherhood or motherhood," and ignoring all the others, proves that this is a rationalization, not a reason.

How stupid do they think we are? How stupid are they?

[Building upon a comment by Matthew Yglesias]

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:04 AM

Well, Ashcroft has announced his sequel to the PATRIOT Act: the Vital Interdiction of Criminal Terrorist Organizations Act, or VICTORY Act.

Just Ew.

I really don't want to be thinking about this, but I figure the more people who get the word, the quicker this can be stopped. More info from TalkLeft and BillMon, with mockery by Atrios.

I feel a need to quote a recent Usenet post I saw:

From:	Ross Smith
Newsgroups:	rec.arts.sf.fandom
Subject:	The authors of our misfortune

We're not living in a simulation. We're living in a collaborative SF novel.

Jules Verne started it in the 19th century. H. G. Wells took over for the first quarter of the 20th century, Michael Moorcock for the second, Robert Heinlein for the third, J. G. Ballard for the fourth, and now, of course, it's Philip K. Dick's turn.

In a back room somewhere, Vernor Vinge and George Orwell are currently arguing about who gets to take over in 2025.

In a conversation the other night, Ian pointed out that we still haven't definitevely named this decade. Maybe we should just follow Heinlein's example and call this "the Crazy Years."

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:20 AM

Been meaning to blog this for ages, as it fits nicely with one of the many areas my professional background (in software design) aligns with my schooling (library science). [Years ago, I even wrote a couple school papers on aspects of this issue.] And once I read the article, I recognized the author's name as a customer of my current company -- somebody with whom I've spoken on the phone a couple times. Cool beans. [via BT!]

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:55 AM

Yaaay! Today's Washington Post covers the hackability of the Diebold touchscreen voting machines. It look like this story is finally hitting the mainstream. [via BT!]

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:35 AM

Avedon Carol shares this exerpt from a recent speech by William Rivers Pitt to Veterans for Peace:

This is America. At bottom, America is a dream, an idea. You can take away all our roads, our crops, our people, our cities, our armies - you can take all of that away, and the idea will still be there as pure and great as anything conceived by the human mind. I do very much believe that the idea that is America stands as the last, best hope for this world. When used properly, it can work wonders.

That idea, that dream, is in mortal peril. You can still have all our roads, our crops, our people, our cities, our armies - you can have all of that, but if you murder the idea that is America, you have murdered America itself in a way that ten thousand September 11ths could never do. The men and women within this current administration are murdering the idea that is America with their Patriot Acts, their destruction of civil liberties, their lies, their daily undermining of even the most basic tenets of decency and freedom and justice that we have tried to live up to for 227 years.

That really resonates for me, and with discussions that I've had recently with Ian. [via BT!]

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:25 PM

Wow, it was interesting to see how quickly and nearly-uniformly the blogosphere heaped scorn and derision on BloggerCon. Alterman writes:

Harvard Law School punks acting like Harvard Law School punks: Come to our “incredible once-in-a-lifetime” conference on blogging and we’ll only ’charge you “a mere $500.” The mass invite actually reads: “And it’s Harvard so you know it tastes good and is good for you too.” Blech. What’s next on the blog horizon? A “mere $1,000” to see the view from Andy’s bathroom?

Personally, I had to think about my decision. And it came down to a realization Thursday night that I couldn't answer a very simple question about the con: what is BloggerCon's purpose? I could think of several possible motivations for holding/attending such a gathering:

• There's the chance for solitary bloggers to get together and chat, but that doesn't require a $500 attendance fee. Heck, the Harvard Law group is already holding such gatherings for Boston-area bloggers Thursday nights.
• There's an educational how-to aspect -- technologically, journalistically, how to be a better blogger. Something like that, though, would be more like an adult education course for beginners. For existing bloggers, I would expect something more hands-on, with experts reviewing our blogs and making suggestions for how we could improve. I don't see BloggerCon taking that approach at all.
• Third is also educational, but on a more theoretical level. Discussions about how blogging is changing news-gathering; social connections forged through blogs, and so forth. But that's not the purview of Harvard Law School... I could envision the Center for Social Informatics holding such a conference, with presentations from academics and researchers. And that would be tempting. But again, BloggerCon doesn't seem to be going this route.
• BloggerCon seems to be advertising its celebrity guests. But as genehack wrote, blogging is "the most democratic and egalitarian form of publishing ever invented." [I'm no expert on the history of communications to assess the absolute accuracy of this statement; blogging does require one to be on this side of the Digital Divide, which remains a barrier for many. But I digress.] We really don't have major celebrities the way other fields do. I wouldn't pay $1000 for a meal with the the president. So, why should I spend $500 to meet Joshua Micah Marshall? I mean, I'd like to meet Marshall, whom I've been reading since the 2000 election, probably first week or two of his journal, but not at that price.

Needless to say, I've decided not to go. In short, I realized that I will not get $500 in value from attending. [And, though I was 95% convinced anyway, discovering it was Yom Kippur weekend cemented my certainty.]

Dave Pollard (I previously quoted his What The Blogosphere Needs More Of in this long essay of mine) has now written a flowchart of the Blogging Process.

I'm going to have to think on that for a while. That seems far more organized than anything I do with respect to blogs. He actually budgets time in his day for blogging? I'm constantly scanning my environment for interesting information. A few items, I blog immediately (often using BlogThis!, so those posts are identified by the BT! at the end). Many items, I copy their permalinks to recall for later. More items, I IM to Ian. And most I just file away mentally without commenting at all. And then, either when I've accumulated enough links, or I'm bursting to say something, I post.

At any rate, I perceive my own experience as much more holistic, and not in such discrete steps. But his breakdown does appear to be a reasonable one. As I said, I'm going to have to ruminate upon this, and possibly work out my own model.

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:40 PM

Blogging is often a perverse experience for me, swinging like a pendulum between a personal diary and a source of news. Just as I come to accept one extreme and try to find ways of maximizing its effectiveness in that format, something comes along and pushes it in the other direction.

And then, real life events come up that prevent me from blogging altogether. I accumulated all these links on Thursday night and Friday morning, intending to blog them fresh... and then remembered I was in a training class Friday without a net connection. Then, I was busy over the weekend, and well...

I'll begin with some quotes that struck me as well-written and/or appropriate, and then get into some meatier matters:

• Tom Spencer shares a brilliant quote from Joe Conanson's new book, Big Lies:

  If your workplace is safe; if your children go to school rather than being forced into labor; if you are paid a living wage, including overtime; if you enjoy a forty-hour week and you are allowed to join a union to protect your rights -- you can thank liberals. If your food is not poisoned and your water is drinkable -- you can thank liberals. If your parents are eligible for Medicare and Social Security, so they can grow old in dignity without bankrupting your family -- you can thank liberals. If our rivers are getting cleaner and our air isn't black with pollution; if our wilderness is protected and our countryside is still green -- you can thank liberals. If people of all races can share the same public facilities; if everyone has the right to vote; if couple fall in love and marry regardless of race; if we have finally begun to transcend a segregated society -- you can thank liberals. Progressive innovations like those and so many others were achieved by long, difficult struggles against entrenched power. What defined conservatism, and conservatives, was their opposition to every one of those advances. The country we know and love today was built by those victories for liberalism -- with the support of the American people.

• Teresa Nielsen Hayden via her husband, Patrick:

  "I deeply resent the way this administration makes me feel like a nutbar conspiracy theorist."

• Molly Ivins:

  The "Watch on the Rhine" quality of our public life these days deserves serious attention. As one who studies the small, buried stories on the back pages of major newspapers, I am becoming increasingly uneasy. This is more than just, "Boy, do their policies suck." There's a creepy advance of something more menacing than bad policies.
  
  I keep thinking of Mussolini's definition of fascism: "Fascism should more properly be called 'corporatism,' since it is the marriage of government and corporate power." When was the last time we saw this administration do something that involved standing up to some corporate special interest in favor of the great majority of the people?

• Fortunately, George Soros, after spending billions to promote open societies in other suffering nations of the world, has announced an initiative to defeat George W.Bush.
• Robert X. Cringely on talk of moving U.S. tech jobs to India: "'offshoring' is another word for age discrimination."
  In fact, to stay on the topic of offshoring and outsourcing for a few minutes, apparently one of the reasons the U.S. military has been having so much difficulty providing themselves with basic services in Iraq is that the military is no longer providing such services for itself. Supply and support personnel have been replaced with contractors. This includes the most basic functions such as cooks and mail delivery.
  And the notion that the GOP will protect American jobs? [T]he Republican Party outsourced its phone fundraising efforts to a telemarketing company in India. They can't be part of the solution if they're contributing to the problem! [via Ed Cone]
• TalkLeft has found something you ought to know about the bestseller lists. You know why certain right-wing books rise so quickly to the best-seller lists? Because right-wing organizations (I could provide links, but I'd rather not bless them with any more traffic. Ask in my comments tag if you want evidence) buy copies in bulk. Sometimes they offer them as free gifts with subscription, other times its just a way to help put friends on the bestseller lists. Fortunately, the NYTimes is trying to cut thru the deceit by marking such items on the list with a +.
• Hesiod provides some sneak peeks of how Republicans will attack Dean, and some advice on pre-emptively respond. And Kevin Drum points out some less-than-helpful GOP advice that Democrats might be wise to avoid.
• Regarding the California election, Skeptical Notion writes about how jealously (and judiciously!) Arnold Schwarzenegger has prevented the press from prying into his personal life. Morat's wondering what scandals he's been hushing up. Tom Spencer suggests " Schwarzenegger's past regarding womanizing makes Bill Clinton look like a choirboy." I'm just wondering what happened to all the conservatives who were so insistent just a few months ago that actors (such as Janeane Garofalo and Martin Sheen) have no business meddling in politics
  Ian and I had an fascinating discussion last night about Schwarzenegger's popularity of a candidate as a triumph of Image over substance. and as a failure of the American educational system. [In a democracy public education's fundamental role is to prepare children for their future governance responsibilities.]
  If you're interested, CalPundit samples statements by other candidates.
• I finally finished reading Samurai William, my 40th book for the year. This time last year, I had already completed over 100 books. On the other hand, I was also unemployed. Having now read two of Giles Milton's books on the early Elizabethan explorers, Samurai William and Big Chief Elizabeth, I can't help my astonishment that humanity survived to the present day. I mean, these guys were unbelievably incompetent. Adventurers going to America more concerned with bringing a stylish wardrobe than with stocking food for the voyage. Lines like "Browne would have been a fine choice [to accompany a trading mission to Japan] had it not been his misfortune to suffer from acute seasickness."
  Every chapter, I wanted to bury my head in my hands at the sheer idiocy of somebody-or-another.
• On top of everything else on my plate, Librarian.net has informed me of Stone Reader, a movie that I feel a need to see. It's currently playing at West Newton, though I don't know for how long. Anybody else interested?

In my personal life, I came to some realizations about BloggerCon on Thursday night that I think deserve a dedicated post. I have once again failed to evenly estimate a tenth of a tube of medicine, and after the requisite period, again had plenty of leftovers. I then (perhaps unwisely) probably used too much that tenth night, which has demonstrated to me that the medicine does have an effect. But it's very frustrating that for 20 days now, I haven't been getting the doctor-prescribed dosage. I'm trying a different method of dispensing with this third tube that I hope will be more accurate.
Oh, and Truck Dismount is a disturbingly fun little game.

Finally, although in many respects, my life is an open blog, I feel rather reticent about posting personal details about other people's lives, except where they directly impact me. Unlike LiveJournal, I don't have the ability to restrict certain posts. It's all or nothing, and its easier to refrain from posting something than to retract it. There are things I'd like to say, but without explicit permission, I'm not gonna. That doesn't mean I'm not thinking of you and don't wish you the best; but just that I'm trying to show a little discretion...