Riba Rambles:
Musings of a Mental Magpie

Posted by Lis Riba at 5:00 PM

So, stopped by Outer Limits this afternoon to pick up my comics.

As we were parking, I saw a huge sign in the window:

And I exclaimed: "They're moving!? Again!?

Ian laughed at me.

"Dear... The last time they moved was like fifteen years ago!"

When we got in, Steve confirmed -- it was about fourteen years ago they set up shop in their current location.

How time flies.

The new location will be on the corner (not the vacuum cleaner/sewing machine shop, but the other corner, where the photo gallery currently sits, for those of you who've been to Waltham recently), a little further north than its location when I was in college. [A quick map of the relative locations]

No official date for the move has been set, but if you stop by and find an empty storefront, head about a block north.

More details in Outer Limits' official MySpace.

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:12 AM

It's Evacuation Day in Boston.

I was planning on going to the BPL today to see the John Adams exhibit (and check out several books available in no other libraries) but they're closed for the holiday.

Dang.

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:05 PM

Bill Maher:

New Rule: Mitt Romney must stop using the state of Massachusetts as a punchline unless he prefaces it with, "Y'know the state that is so horribly liberal I chose to live and raise my family there for the last 30 years..." You don't hear Bush shitting on Texas or Cheney making fun of Transylvania.

That quote, and more political humor excerpts, from DailyKos Cheers and Jeers.

Posted by Lis Riba at 6:46 PM

A few tidbits from hither and yon that I've been meaning to blog for a while:

Digby quotes a letter-writer on the incompetence dodge:

[T]he Bush disasters are a result of the administration's policies and not of some failure to effectively carry them out.

No one says, retrospectively, that Calvin Coolidge's failure to help the victims of 1927's Mississippi River flood was a result of incompetence. No one says that Mellon, with his inaction and insistence that the Great Depression would burn itself out through 'liquidation,' was incompetent. Both of these positions were wholly in keeping with the policies of the Coolidge and Hoover presidencies, policies that were not discredited until Roosevelt's victories and the institution of the New Deal.

<snip>

Insisting on the 'incompetence' of the Bush administration turns attention away from this linkage between policy and result. In fact, it insulates the policies while discrediting the men who are trying to implement them. It, thus, sets the stage for those policies to be enacted again.

Mark Kleiman has more on why government-haters shouldn't be in charge of governing:

The Federal Emergency Management Agency, on the other hand, has completed the round trip, from pork-and-patronage cesspit under Reagan and Bush, Sr., to superb disaster-relief agency under Bill Clinton, back to cesspit under Bush, Jr. Part of the difference is that Clinton appointed a disaster-relief professional to run FEMA, while Bush appointed first his campaign manager and then his campaign manager's old college buddy, Heckuva Job Brownie.

<snip>

When a Republican President presides over a public-management failure, he can use it to illustrate one of his basic political points: that government is bad, while private enterprise is good. That limits his incentive to secure good performance. A Democrat, by contrast, has no such excuse when things go badly, so he has much stronger motivations to make them go well.

Kevin Drum on how the administration's SOP led to this latest scandal:

It's remarkable. The Bushies quietly got a shiny new Patriot Act power to fire and replace U.S. Attorneys without Senate approval, so they went ahead and used it. Then they got called on it. So how did they react?

Well, they could have just said it was for policy reasons: they wanted people who were on board with administration policies a little more heartily, and these folks didn't make the grade. So we replaced them.

What would have happened then? A little bit of grumbling, probably. Some complaints that Bush was politicizing the office, perhaps, but since the offices are political appointments in the first place that wouldn't have gone very far. And the fired official themselves, who are all Republican loyalists in the first place, would have packed their bags and gotten other jobs. They know how politics works.

But no. This administration is so dedicated to spin and deceit that they just couldn't leave it alone. They figured maybe they could avoid any criticism by claiming the firings were for performance-related reasons. That should shut everyone up! But of course it did just the opposite. The fired attorneys, who were originally willing to suck it up and accept their political fate, were unhappy over being called incompetent. Who wouldn't be? And so the whole thing unraveled. Now it's a case of U.S. Attorneys being fired because they were too zealous about prosecuting Republican corruption, and the Department of Justice is reduced to feebly arguing that it's just a coincidence that so many of the Pearl Harbor Eight were investigating corruption cases.

It's the Bush administration in a microcosm: a too-clever-by-half expansion of executive power, spin and deceit when it's discovered, followed by a storm of backtracking and protestations of innocence that no one believes. It wouldn't be so bad if this weren't also the Bush administration in a macrocosm. But it is.

Finally, one other tidbit regarding recently released executive branch emails. It appears many White House staffers are conducting official business using non-whitehouse.gov addresses.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) have requested an investigation:

[T]o fulfill its statutory obligations under the Presidential Records Act, the White House email system automatically copies all messages created by staff and sends them to the White House Office of Records Management for archiving. It appears that the White House deliberately bypassed the automatic archiving function of its own email system that was designed to ensure compliance with the PRA.

Posted by Lis Riba at 5:35 PM

Just two links I thought worth sharing:

Farecast.com

A coworker pointed this one out to me. It claims to be an "airfare prediction website" looking at whether fares are rising or dropping, and offering suggestions on when to buy tickets. You can even create fare alerts for particular routes, or see suggested best times to travel.

It handles domestic fares only, right now, but looks pretty cool if it works as described.

Darn. Boston -> Tampa fares are expected to rise over the next week...

SeatGuru.com

This has long been a favorite of mine.

SeatGuru provides the seating configurations of most planes flown by the major airlines, indicating better and worse seats.

Except for Southwest (which is general admission), I've found it very useful.

Consider this a public service message. :)

Posted by Lis Riba at 5:14 PM

Given the inclement weather (impending blizzard) work let us out at 3pm.

I got home shortly after four, where I am safe sound and much warmer...

Just FYI. Hope y'all are doing well whereever you are.

Posted by Lis Riba at 8:10 PM

I know I'm posting this a wee bit early, but as a St. Patrick's Day gift, may I present the Leprechaun Brothers' rendition of "Danny Boy" from The Muppet Show:

via

You think these guys enjoyed their work?

Posted by Lis Riba at 4:40 PM

Update: a few more thoughts on The Tudors (see my previous post) after poking around the official website:

• Recognizable names in the cast include Sam Neill as Wolsey, Gabrielle Anwar as Princess Margaret.
  Henry is played by Jonathan Rhys Meyers, who I've seen most prominently as the coach in Bend it like Beckham, along with roles in Vanity Fair and Julie Taymor's Titus.
   
• And they'll be coming out with a tie-in book! Love the title: The Tudors: It's Good to Be King
   
• The scripts were written by Michael Hirst, responsible for the 1998 Shekhar Kapur movie Elizabeth (ably disemboweled by History Spork), just so you know what to expect.
   
• So, anyone want to bet on whether Anne Boleyn was sleeping around in this version? I'll bet that at the very least we'll get to see steamy dream sequences by the king of what he fears may be going on behind his back... Or maybe they'll just be prosecutorial reconstructions?

And looking around at the videos -- including a set of clips recut to Evanescence -- all I can do is ask whether it's warm out here or if it's just me...

Posted by Lis Riba at 4:20 PM

I've often remarked that I find it difficult to believe how boring high schools managed to make world history.

I mean, so much of it -- particularly the royal history I enjoy -- is high-stakes soap opera.

So imagine my delight to read on TV Squad that Showtime is planning The Tudors -- along the lines of Rome.

It's a journey through Henry VIII's kingship and many, many marriages with more tits, ass, intrigue and bloody violence than you can shake a royal stick at.

Showtime is offering a VIP preview of The Tudors' first two episodes online. (The password is "king.") The series, starring Jonathan Rhys Meyers, premieres on Sunday, April 1st at 10PM. The series focuses primarily on the king's affair with Anne Boleyn, his obsession with producing a male heir and the political intrigue of the court. And, did I mention that it's essentially softcore for the Anglophile set?

And just look at the publicity photo on the side. I can see losing my head over someone like that...

Here's a link to the official site.

[Further comments on the series in my next entry.]

Posted by Lis Riba at 2:59 PM

And I'm posting this at 3/14 1:59. [Blogger doesn't quite have the refinement to time posts down to the second, but ideally it's be :26.]

How many digits do you have memorized?

In high school, my pocket calculator only held eight digits -- 3.14159265 -- but I learned those by heart.

And get a load of the resources at PiDay.org. And WikiHow has a page on how to celebrate Pi Day, if you're stuck for ideas.

Posted by Lis Riba at 12:20 PM

You know, sick days felt much more relaxing before I had laptop and wifi, and before office email was web-accessible...

I can check in on work email from bed, and while that may be useful on snowy days when I've been able to work from home, it's not so conducive to days I'm actually taking off.

No, nothing seriously wrong -- just monthly cramps to an extent that I didn't feel up to leaving the house. Fortunately, I've got no major meetings today. And I'll be fine enough to return to work tomorrow.

I suppose I can work on some overdue travel planning for this summer while I'm laid up...

And tomorrow, I'll forward this Boing Boing entry to my coworkers. Usability testing with eye-tracking software can helpful at improving websites, but sometimes it uncovers some less savory facts about human behavior. [Actually, the original article on the findings does contain some more useful information.]

How are you?

Posted by Lis Riba at 7:54 PM

Haven't blogged about this in a while, but my manager did approve my registration at the Computers in Libraries conference in mid-April.

I'll be flying down the night of Friday, April 13th and returning on Wednesday night (April 18).

Though I haven't yet gotten tickets, I'm planning on seeing the following shows over the weekend:

     • Edward III by the Washington Shakespeare Company

Saturday, April 14th @ 8pm

     • Coriolanus by the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Kennedy Center

Sunday, April 15th @ 1:30pm
[This performance includes some limited availability $25 "balcony side" tickets]

     • Titus Andronicus by the Shakespeare Theatre Company

Sunday @ 7:30pm

[BTW, I noticed that several of the online box offices have "promotion code" fields; anybody know of some I could use?]

Don't know if or how much time or energy I'll have for museums on Saturday morning, but these exhibits caught my eye:

• Folger Shakespeare Library: Shakespeare in American Life
• Library of Congress exhibits
• National Building Museum: Reinventing the Globe
• National Gallery Of Art: Sources for Shakespeare's Plays (only thru Apr. 17)

Fortunately, they're all fairly close geographically and seem subway accessible.

Anybody else going to be in town and interested?

Aside: Given recent discussions with Ian regarding travel, I'm giving him the choice whether to join me for the weekend or not (which is one reason I haven't yet gotten tickets).

I will have fun whether or not he comes down -- his presence will make a difference, but I'll still manage to enjoy myself.

For his part, whether Ian chooses to travel (he'd take the train for the weekend) or stays home, I'm sure he'll experience moments of pleasure and misery (whether loneliness at home or travel-induced pains).

Ian's suffered from clinical depression for a long, long time. One aspect to this is that depression causes problems in remembering and anticipating pleasure. He can enjoy himself when away, but never looks forward to it.

We haven't really travelled much since he's started on some newer, more effective treatments (last year, he was diagnosed with a kind of unipolar bipolar -- he doesn't hit the manic highs, but experiences sudden precipitous drops). So part of me is hoping that we can build some more pleasurable memories that can make travel a less dreadful experience for him.

But this trip, at least, is not going to be one he's taking out of obligation. If he wants to come to DC, he has to make that decision himself.

He knows what I want to do over the weekend.

And if he does come down, I may ask him to spend an extra day in DC doing things for himself while I'm at the conference -- because I don't think he's ever travelled on his own, and want him to see he can entertain himself for a day in a strange city.

Anyway, that's where things stand right now...

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:27 PM

[I know... I'm sure some of you *wish* you had these problems]

Ian hates travel. Loathes it.

His family is renting a villa in Tuscany for two weeks end of June.

I've been half-heartedly looking at potential travel destinations, but it seems like time is rapidly upon us to make plans and reservations in earnest. [Some of the travel books actually say that we should've booked our flights in January or February for the best rates.]

So this evening, I seem to be carefully picking at scabs to determine what about travel is stressing him out so badly and why -- in part because I want to ensure he has as good a time as possible, but also hoping to figure out which tasks I can safely delegate...

Posted by Lis Riba at 8:39 PM

BTW, anybody else having problems that Blogger doesn't appear to recognize Daylight Saving Time?

I've had to manually adjust the hour of all three posts I've made this evening -- and I now can't recall what time I made yesterday's posts to know whether those are correct or not.

Posted by Lis Riba at 8:37 PM

A brief political post on current events:

• A handful of ports to be controlled by a Dubai-based company == major national security issue
   
• Primary troop support in Iraq to be controlled by a Dubai-based company == *crickets*

Halliburton has decided to move their corporate headquarters out of the United States and into Dubai.

Posted by Lis Riba at 8:20 PM

I just discovered read_hp, and have to decide whether I want to do this:

Oh my. It starts today.

And I'm already in the middle of several other books at the moment.

Posted by Lis Riba at 3:05 PM

It's been six weeks since I discovered ZoomClouds, which creates a tag cloud from my RSS feed.

Here's what the tag cloud looks like:

And for the record, I've once again captured a static image of how it currently looks (since the tag cloud will change dynamically as I make future entries).

For those who wish to compare, here's a screencap from January 27.

One lesson I can take from this:

I need to spend much more time talking about Marlowe.

He's currently got only 58 mentions, in contrast to Will's 90.

I'll start with a little ditty:

Did you ever see a Marlowe?
Kiss a Marlowe?
On the Marlowe?
Marlowe's Marlowe
Tastes of Marlowe
Marlowe Marlowe
Books

There. That ought to spike the numbers.

Posted by Lis Riba at 1:44 PM

In short, Clockpunk:Steampunk::Renaissance:Victorian

For those who prefer language to logic,

Clockpunk is a genre of science fiction similar to Steampunk (some people even consider clockpunk to be a sub-genre of Steampunk). Clockpunk can be divided into historical and non-historical Clockpunk. Historical Clockpunk explores how the world would have turned out if certain technological developments that occurred later had happened in the Renaissance and or certain inventions in the time of the Renaissance were created on a mass scale in the time period. Non-historical Clockpunk is set in settings similar to the Renaissance but on alternative worlds, planets etc.
The suffix punk is actually misleading but the name has stuck just as it has stuck in the case of other sub-genres of science fiction that were inspired from Steampunk. While there is sometimes overlap between Clockpunk and the fantasy genre, for the purpose of the current blog we shall try to keep these overlaps separate.

From Da Vinci Automata, a blog devoted to the genre which I previously didn't know existed.

The creator hasn't yet posted a bibliography, but I wonder how this will affect my Elizabethan SF/Fantasy List.

And now that folks know the genre exists, I wonder what new stories people will be inspired to write. [Why am I now picturing a semi-borgified Kit Marlowe with a cybernetic eye?]

Posted by Lis Riba at 12:40 PM

A few weeks ago, I mentioned learning about a clinical trial for a new FSD treatment.

I've found a bit more information.

According to ClinicalTrials.gov, it's a Phase III trial on an antidepressant called flibanserin which has shown some efficacy against female sexual disorder in early testing.

Aside: ClinicalTrials.gov is a really great site, allowing you to find any current or scheduled clinical trial by condition and/or geographical area, among other criteria.

Just as Viagra was originally tested as a heart medication that showed positive sexual side-effects, flibanserin

BusinessWeek has a more detailed account of the drug development history in relatively plain language.

For those with a more technical bent, Wikipedia has the chemical formula and a molecular diagram.

And if anyone has access to Medline articles, you can read further on the pharmacology of flibanserin.

At any rate, the clinical trials will be taking place all over the country.

If you're interested, check out the eligibility requirements to see if you qualify and get on the horn.

I'm not certain I'll apply even if I do qualify. Given the hormonal nature of my problems, I doubt I'll find relief from any nonhormonal treatment. While that may be of good benefit for science (showing that one-size doesn't fit all), I don't know if I want to waste that much of my time pursuing a treatment I don't think will work.

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:22 AM

Two years ago I had an idea...

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

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

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

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

Baby bibs for everyone!

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

Since last year, CafePress has added colors, so the shirts and onesies are available in pink, blue, or yellow, for those who prefer pastels.

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