Fiat Lux

At the USF business school, faculty members have rectangular windows built into their doors; I assume it's to make the closed office doors less intimidating, but it could just be a fancy of the architect's. At any rate, many professors put paper over the windows to maintain their privacy. Thanks to this little gem of a one-act play, next time on campus I'll be looking at the papered-over windows in a different light.

One of the least attractive members of the faculty has both a papered-over door AND a couch in his office.... ugh. I'm going to think about something else for a while.

Whither the Blackberry?

The maker of the popular BlackBerry e-mail device is facing a critical decision: Pony up a lot of money to settle a long-term patent dispute or inform most of its 3.65 million U.S. subscribers that it may have to shut off service.

I would expect that they'll find some way to stay in business. After all,

The Department of Justice has asked for a 90-day grace period for federal workers if Research in Motion's BlackBerry e-mail service is shut down.

Maybe it won't be RIM, but somebody is going to keep running this business. With demand like that, it's too attractive to just toss in the trashbin.

Gimi and Bear cuddling up for warmth on a cool December evening.

So, I signed up to be listed at JewishBlogging.com.

It was a bit difficult trying to figure out which category to list this blog under, as my subject matter can vary wildly depending on my mood. I ultimately chose 'women,' since after all, that's what I am. Hopefully I won't stick out like a sore thumb amidst all the frum bloggers.

and finals (fortunately only 2 of them) next week. Light blogging forecast until Wednesday.

So today, Howard Dean said this:

"This is the same situation we had in Vietnam ... Everybody then kept saying, 'just another year, just stay the course, we'll have a victory.' Well, we didn't have a victory, and this policy cost the lives of an additional 25,000 troops because we were too stubborn to recognize what was happening."

In response, wingnut ex-Presidential spawn Michael Reagan said this:

Howard Dean should be arrested and hung for treason.

Reagan is way, way off the deep end here. Did he forget his Prozac today? Because if he was serious, you might as well go ahead and hang me too; I've been saying similar things for the last 2 years.

Hat tip: AmericaBlog

Note to Bert Prelutsky: You can't have your cake and eat it too.

Either the Jews in America are

an infinitesimal minority

Or they are so powerful that

When it comes to pushing the multicultural, anti-Christian, agenda, you find Jewish judges, Jewish journalists, and the ACLU, at the forefront.

[snip]

It is the ACLU, which is overwhelmingly Jewish in terms of membership and funding, that is leading the attack against Christianity in America. It is they who have conned far too many people into believing that the phrase "separation of church and state" actually exists somewhere in the Constitution.

In other words, somehow, this tiny little insignificant slice of the American population is so powerful that we're able to virtually singlehandedly turn "Christmas" into a dirty word. How exactly is that possible? The "Vast Jewish Conspiracy" that bigots like Henry Ford wrote about? Somehow, I think not.

The utter illogic of the thing gets my blood pressure up as much as its falsity does.

Prelutsky is right about one thing though. The First Amendment says, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." One could say that turning a religious holiday into a Federal one is an example of the establishment of a religion. But since I'm Jewish, I better not say that, or I might get accused of being part of a vast conspiracy.

From the archives: Tina napping on our bed. She left us a year ago today.

As I was doing my morning pass through my Bloglines feeds, I noted AmericaBlog's John in DC calling attention to a piece in the Washington Post about whether extreme bigotry should be considered a mental illness.

John takes that ball and runs with it:

We should set a long-term goal to get the psychological and psychiatric associations to officially make bigotry a mental disorder. The religious right would flip, fun in and of itself, but this would set the tone for an entire change in the culture, where prejudice of any kind of is considered the work of sick people.

I have two problems with that advice; one scientific, the other tactical.

First, the science. While it seems pretty clear that the people talked about in the WaPo are indeed mentally ill, I wonder whether the bigotry displayed isn't really just a symptom of the underlying disorder. Do we really need to create a new illness for this, or is it more likely that that the people in question are actually suffering from paranoia, or schizophrenia, or some other already-identified diseases?

Next, the tactics. Choosing "They're mentally ill!" as a tactic with which to attack the Religious Right is not helpful. For if you accept the underlying premise, then prejudice against bigots also falls into the illness category. In other words, when both sides get to flog the other with accusations of mental illness on top of all the other mud they fling at each other, nothing really changes. And the people who really need help still won't get it.

Finally, Shakespeare's Sister beat me to the punch with the excellent observation:

Bigotry isn’t a mental defect; it’s a learned behavior.

View of the pool area in the courtyard of our building. Back east, they call this Autumn. Here, it's just December in San Mateo.

I'm surprised that Governor Schwarzenegger denied clemency to Williams.

From the information I have currently, I think I would have granted clemency simply because it seems to me that Williams alive provides a service to society by continuing to speak out about why gangs are bad. Williams can't do that dead, plus his execution could polarize some members of the community in negative ways. I have not done an exhaustive review of the case though, so perhaps if I examined all the facts I might feel differently.

To be clear: I am not opposed to the death penalty as a concept. I believe that there are some crimes that display such a complete disregard for your fellow humans that it is not unreasonable to deprive the person who commits those crimes of his life as the price of their acts. That said, I am well aware that the American judicial system has massive systemic problems that result in the death penalty being applied unfairly. I think there should be a moratorium on its implementation until such time as we can fix those inequities.

Or put more simply, the system is broken, but I still think that some really evil bastards deserve to fry for what they did.

Echinde today:

Consider this seriously: a country where the majority of people are Christian, a country where Christmas advertizing starts right after Labor Day, a country where you cannot escape hearing "Dreaming of A White Christmas" has a war against Christmas, a war so powerful that this majority is on its knees, silenced, driven out of the public space. What utter crap. Who are these powerful enemies of Christmas, pray, tell me.

Long story short, this isn't really about Christmas. It's about insecurity and dominance, and much more the latter than the former. Some segment of the Christian population feels threatened by people who are different. Others, emboldened by asstards like Bill O'Reilly, feel entitled to be in-your-face about their dominance. They don't just want to celebrate Christmas, they want people to "just shut up," be ashamed, or even scared if they don't celebrate Christmas too.

These people seriously need to get over themselves.

In checking through my SiteMeter references today, I came across an interesting (if useless) factoid: apparently, I'm #888 of 4417 "Political" blogs in the Technorati system.

Something seems off to me there; you'd think there would be more blogs in that category. Plus, I don't use any Technorati tagging, so I'm not sure why I got classed as a Political blog over any other category. I've always maintained that this is primarily a personal weblog mor than anything else. But what the heck, it's always nice to be noticed.

8 is also a lucky number to the Chinese, and my Econ final is tomorrow. I'll take all the luck I can get with that one.

Woot! All finals are taken, all papers handed in. Time to relax and blow off some steam!

Two lazy boys enjoying the office couch.

I've got a bunch of stuff to get done today, let's see if I can stay motivated and get them done instead of lazing myself.

It's gratifying to be snarky at Trent Lott's expense with regard to his apparent turnaround on tort reform, but the partisan sniping can obscure the real point, which is that tort "reform" is not necessary.

Just as freedom of speech means that even people whose opinions I abhor have a right to voice those opinions, freedom to sue means that some people are going to file wacky lawsuits. Having to deal with that is a fair price to pay for the ability to sue an insurer who refuses to rebuild your home or the hospital that botches your medical care.

Here's hoping that Lott is finally learning this important lesson.

"The West Wing" wouldn't have been the same without Leo McGarry. And we lost him today. 58 is way too young.

There's a wave of outrage rolling across the lefty blogs right now regarding the NY TImes article reporting that for the last three years, President Bush has allowed government agencies to spy on Americans despite explicit laws against it. Honestly, as outrageous and disgusting as that behavior is, I can't find it in me to be angry about the whole thing. There have been so many outrages the past few years, and undoubtedly so many more to come, that it's really hard for me to get upset about any given one of them anymore. Call it "Bush Fatigue".

I AM unhappy about this. I'm disgusted that Bush thinks it's OK to ignore our laws and treat the Constitution like just a piece of paper. If you don't like a law, call your buddies in Congress get the law changed. It's not like Bush was having difficulty getting Congress to do what he wanted three years ago when this all started. (Which is NOT to say that spying on innocent Americans is OK, I'm just pointing out what a leader who cares about rule of law should do.)

But the bottom line is, I'm not surrpised by any of this. Seriously, you folks who are ranting and raving and calling for his impeachment -- is this at all a surprise? Or are you just surprised that it took so long for the news to come out?

And despite Arlen Spector's claims that his committee will hold investigations into these acts next year, somehow I suspect that by the time everyone gets back to Washington after the holidays, this will be old news and we'll just merrily roll along until the next time.

The inimitable Digby, as always, has taken outrage and turned it into art. If you're pissed off and havent read this post yet, it's worth a read. Here's a sampler:

Look, the problem here, again, is not one of just spying on Americans, as repulsively totalitarian as that is. It's that the administration adopted John Yoo's theory of presidential infallibility. But, of course, it wasn't really John Yoo's theory at all; it was Dick Cheney's muse, Richard Nixon who said, "when the President does it, that means it's not illegal."

Generally I think Digby's quite right about this. But one piece of the puzzle is missing here, and that's the fact that GW Bush is a recovering alcoholic. I think he has replaced the high he used to get from alcohol with the high of power. I truly believe he's become drunk on power, and since he is an addict, over time he needs ever-increasing doses to get the same high. Which might shed some light on why Bush didn't simply lobby to have the laws changed. Having to ask Congress to authorize these acts would lessen the sense of power he gets from ordering them.

I can't imagine that this can continue for three more years. But anyone who seriously thinks a Republican-dominated Congress is going to bring articles of impeachment against Bush is not thinking rationally. It was nice to see that a few Republican senators were not willing to vote to continue the Patriot Act, but that's a far cry from thinking they'll impeach Bush.

And on that downer note, I'm going to brew a pot of coffee and try to cheer myself up.

Over at Ezra's place today, Nicholas Beaudrot has a reality-based perspective on what should happen next regarding the President. Like it or not, the fact that Clinton was impeached does change the calculus as to whether or not Bush should be.

I think that the Clinton impeachment has raised the bar for what ought to be an impeachable offense. Politically, if the opposition party calls for every President's head, we will have turned what ought to have been a very solemn process into nothing more than a political tool.

The good news is, this bar hasn't been raised forever.

So right now, I'm inclined to think the best tactic is to call for a censure of the President and an end to warrantless domestic spying. Censure would show that the Democratic party is above the idea of turning impeachment into exercise in partisan sniping. It would still act as an effective wedge for Republican Congressional candidates in the 2006 elections, who will be forced to choose between standing by their man in the face of controversy on one hand, and admitting that he skirted the law on the other.

Sounds good to me.

Not enough sleep due to some questionable takeout food for dinner is makin me bleary today. So instead of more on the latest Bush shenanigans, here's a cute quiz I found today: The Where You Should Live Test

Here's how I did.

Rowhouse 'Hood You scored 29 out of 40 on urban-rural and 25 out of 40 land intensity.

People know you as: The Bohemian Gentrifier Quote: "That crack house just needed a little paint." Your score indicates that you are a city-dweller of the old-school. You like a dense, finely grained neighborhood with restaurants, churches and brothels all on the same block. Although you've never spoken to him personally, you know that guy Eddie down the street is a pimp and you're sure to tell your lame suburban friends about him at every opportunity, just to freak them out. The bad news is that as more and more people like you move into your neighborhood it gradually becomes less cool and more expensive. Enjoy things while you can, because in 5 years you're going to have to move to the next 'hood uptown. Examples of places you should live: Baltimore, Philadelphia All Categories Secluded Hideaway / Farm or Ranch / Small Town / Little City / Suburb / Streetcar Suburb / Rowhouse 'Hood / Downtown Loft

I am no fan of PETA and their "everyone should be a vegan but having an 80% kill rate at our animal shelter is just fine" hypocricy. However, even I have to wonder how the war on terrorism is served by this (emphasis added):

After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, John Ashcroft, who was then attorney general, loosened restrictions on the F.B.I.'s investigative powers, giving the bureau greater ability to visit and monitor Web sites, mosques and other public entities in developing terrorism leads. The bureau has used that authority to investigate not only groups with suspected ties to foreign terrorists, but also protest groups suspected of having links to violent or disruptive activities.

But the documents, coming after the Bush administration's confirmation that President Bush had authorized some spying without warrants in fighting terrorism, prompted charges from civil rights advocates that the government had improperly blurred the line between terrorism and acts of civil disobedience and lawful protest.

One F.B.I. document indicates that agents in Indianapolis planned to conduct surveillance as part of a "Vegan Community Project." Another document talks of the Catholic Workers group's "semi-communistic ideology." A third indicates the bureau's interest in determining the location of a protest over llama fur planned by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

Still not sleeping very well & feeling generally uninspired today.

I finally got a good night's sleep and am feeing a bit better today, but still not feeling very bloggy.

Part of this, I know, is directly related to the fact that I had a job interview Tuesday and almost the first thing out of the hiring manager's mouth as the interview started was, "I've read your blog".

That was the first time I'd encountered that phrase in an interview. It seems to me that when someone starts an interview off like that, the person in question probably has some ideas already set about you, and that has the potential to be either very good or very bad. Luckily for me, it was good, and I have already accepted a verbal job offer from the company (hard copy is being FedExed). It's only an internship, but it's also the first non-survival job I've gotten since 2002, and I'm very pleased about the whole thing.

It's also making me think really hard about this blog and what I can "safely" say here.

Despite the economic recovery of the last several years, this is still a tight job market, and doubly so for people like me who are, in essence, re-entering the workforce. I worry that personal details could be used against me in hiring decisions. A casual Google search on my name will bring this blog up in short order. I have to assume that anything I say here will be read, and potentially used in a hiring decision.

I don't really care if an employer knows what my politics are. If someone felt so strongly about my opinions on world events that they felt they couldn't hire me, well, I probably wouldn't have been happy working for that person anyway. I'm concerned about the personal stuff though. And thus we go full-circle to this week.

As mentioned, I've not been feeling very well this week. But if I start to blog about why, I find myself thinking, is this something I really want an employer to know? It's none of their business. And so the blog post doesn't get written.

Feeling that I have to self-censor in order to be employable is no fun. Now, maybe I'm being paranoid. After all, I got the job. But that's how I'm feeling.

And yes, I know there's a ton of other stuff I could be blogging about right now. Sorry, but I'm not feeling very inspired. Cruise my blogroll; the usual suspects are all kicking ass and taking names. If past history is a guide, I should be feeling more bloggy in a day or two.

Looking at this assortment, I'm tempted to call it the "WTF Edition". What a mess. That's what you get when you randomize the entire list though.

Iko Iko - Cyndi Lauper
Wide Open Spaces - Dixie Chicks
Windswept - Bryan Ferry
Carolina On My Mind - James Taylor
Don't Stand So Close To Me '86 - The Police
Shape of My Heart - Backstreet Boys
South Ferry Road - The Hooters
Baby Grand - Billy Joel
A Dream Is A Wish Your Heart Makes - Cinderella
God Save the Queen - The Sex Pistols

No new cat pix today, sorry to say.

Thanks to the kindness of some friends, Scott and I were able to see the new musical "Lestat" in San Francisco last night.

Overall, I'd give it three out of five stars. The show has a lot going for it, it was entertaining, and the majority of the flaws are fixable ones. Whether it will ever make it to 5 stars, though, I'm not sure.

First, some technical observations. The show is done with relatively minimal set; heavy use is made of projections onto various screens. It worked better for the Paris scenes than the other locations, but overall I was OK with it. Using projections on the screen as special effects when the vampires attacked was a nice touch; and I also liked that there were no fangs and minimal blood effects. Costumes were overall good, although Gabrielle's last costume was just weird, and I'm not sure why they chose to do the ensemble in black and white for "Welcome to the New World". It didn't fit. Lestat's costumes also could use a bit of help -- he seemed underdressed much of the time compared to the rest of the cast.

With one exception, the cast was very solid. I particularly liked Lestat and Gabrielle - both had powerful voices and did a good job with their roles. The actress who played Claudia was also very good - her number, "I Want More" was a highlight of Act 2 - but she was also obviously not 10 years old, and that bugged me a bit. Armand, Louis and Marius were also effective. However, the actor who played Nicolas was clearly not as good as the rest of the cast. His acting was weak and so was his voice. To be fair, Nicolas is a tough role - playing a depressed person isn't easy - but that doesn't excuse the vocal weakness. Perhaps he was having an off-night, but if that's as good as he gets, I hope they recast the role for Broadway.

Before I go into the book, lyrics, and music, I want to talk about the big problem with the show, because it impacts all the rest and I'm not sure they're going to be able to sucessfully resolve it. That's the fact that they're trying to cram a tremendous amount of plot -- two 300+ page books -- into one three-hour event. The problem is, the plot has been cut down to the barest bones of Lestat's life story, and I'm not sure what else they could possibly cut without either ending the story sooner or deviating away from Anne Rice's story. And yet, there's just too much plot.

This impacts everything else. The evening felt rushed, like we were on a whirlwind tour and never had time to sit back and really enjoy the moment. The need to drive the plot forward hurt both the book and the lyrics (the latter moreso than the former; although Taupin's inexperience with the genre probably didn't help). The music was fine but could have been stronger in Act 1. All of the really memorable music comes from Act 2 -- I particularly liked "Welcome to the New World" and "Sail Me Away" (sure to be the single off the cast album when the time comes) -- but other numbers might have been better if they weren't so focused on driving plot, plot, and more plot.

The other problem caused by the deathmarch through all this plot is that there's a minimal focus on the emotional attachments between many of the key characters. There may be more purpose here than just driving plot, though. Readers of Rice's vampire novels are well aware of the significnat amount of homoerotic subtext in these books. I don't know if a conscious choice was made to de-emphasize that aspect of the story, or not, but this aspect of Lestat's life is virtually invisible. This missing part of the story becomes even more obvious when you see that the relationship between Gabrielle and Lestat is well laid out and their bond discussed in several different scenes, but virtually no time at all is given to Lestat's bond with Louis. One minute they meet, the next, they're living together and Louis is unhappy. Later, when Lestat talks about how happy he was in New Orleans, it's hard to see why unless you have your memory of reading the books to fall back on.

"Lestat" is only in the first week of previews, and is still being worked on. Much may change before its San Francisco run ends. At this point, I'm reasonably sure the show will make it to Broadway, but I also don't see any Tony Awards in its future.

UPDATE 12/30: I'm noticing an uptick in traffic to this page. Please be aware that the show has gone through some changes since I saw it and that my comments may not be a valid criticism of the show as it currently stands. Also, I'd love to hear some feedback from other folks who've seen "Lestat".

I've been saving this link for an appropriate time, and the holiday weekend seems as good as any. Besides, I'm feeling a little nostalgic for my long-ago days on the stage.

The Gilbert & Sullivan Quiz

Actually it is multiple quizzes, although you don't have to take all of them. If you're a little unsure as to whether you ought to click through the link, here's a pre-quiz:

1) Have you seen "Topsy Turvy"?
2) Do you know who 'The Slave of Duty' was?
3) Do you know what a 'Savoyard' is?

If you answered no to all three, don't bother clicking through. If you answered no to one or two, you might try clicking through for the heck of it. If you rolled your eyes at how insanely easy my questions were, you've probably clicked through to the quiz already, but if you haven't, go, have fun.

Here's some Chanukah fun for all. (Thanks for sending me the link, Shari!)

The menorah is polished, the candles are out, and the table is prepped for wax drips. All we need now is sundown!

ReddHead over at firedoglake has some excellent advice today. She directed it towards lawyers, but I think it's got applicability in the wider business world as well as the political one:

You do not adequately serve your client by telling him only those things he wants to hear. Period. The most important function you can have as an attorney is to tell your client all the things he does not want to hear -- for the sole reason that he must hear them in order to make a fully informed decision. To do less is to fail at your job.

Another cardinal sin is to believe that your argument is the only right one. One of the first things you learn as a litigator is that there is always another side. Always, always, always. And you must give due consideration to every side of an issue to adequately do your job.

I try to steer clear of meta-blog posts, and doing two in a week is definitely not usual for me, but given that Fiat Lux has recently been added to a few more blogrolls around the Internet, I though it might be a good idea to explain a little bit about my own blogroll and how one gets into it.

My Blogroll / Link Policy

I use Bloglines as my primary RSS feed aggregator. What I've been trying recently is this: I've self-imposed a limit on the number of blogs in my blogroll as a way of keeping my blog-reading habit under control. Any time I add a new blog to my Bloglines list, I force myself to remove an old one.

Bloglines also happens to have a neat little feature that lets me paste a bit of JavaScript into a template and my current list gets automagically updated on my website. It's less work for me that way, but it does have the drawback that I can't easily do "courtesy" blogroll additions unless I break my self-imposed rule above, get funky with my Bloglines setup and/or manually maintain that list.

The exception to this plan is the list of personal weblogs written by people that I know in real life. I keep their blogs in a private folder on Bloglines and manually maintain a selected list of those here on my weblog.

In short, if you want to get into my blogroll, you have to be better / smarter / funnier / more interesting than somebody on the current list, or you have to be a friend or family member. I do read blogs that are not on my blogroll, generally by clicking through other people's links and blogrolls, but that's reserved for days when I have more time on my hands.

So that's how my blogroll works. If I come up with a better way of managing things, I'll switch to it; ultimately this is about keeping things easy, informative and fun for me. Incidentally, that's also why I do not use Technorati tags. Writing posts is fun; messing around with tags isn't.

And while I'm at it, here's two other meta-blogging bits and pieces:

Comment Policy

I have a very simple comments policy. I reserve the right to remove any comment left on this site, for any reason or for no reason at all. I pay for the web hosting; I get to decide how my disk space and bandwidth are used. However, I do not edit comments; that seems unfair. If they do not get tossed into the bit bucket, they remain as their authors wrote them.

Advertising

At one point I had a tip jar up here; it's not anymore. I decided that this site is a hobby, and I'm not going to ask people to subsidize my fun. If my traffic were to rise to the point where I had to pay significantly more for hosting, I might reconsider and put up some ads, but for now, this site stays ad and tip jar free.

Of the many bits of macroeconomic esoterica I studied this semester, one that particularly caught my interest was the bond yield curve. Normally, long-term bonds pay more interest than short-term ones, because you have to lock your money up longer (this is also known as the time value of money). When you plot these prices out on a chart, you generally get a nice upward curve to the line.

However, in recent months, this hasn't been the case. The yield curve has become virtually flat. A flat yield curve means, among other things, that people believe that the economy will continue to decline.

The Big Picture goes into a great deal more detail of why this has the potential to be a problem. The piece is a bit technical but not horribly so. Here's his bottom line:

While not every inversion leads to a recession, every recession has been preceded by an inverted yield curve.

In other words, it's a sign that as 2006 fast approaches, the American economy is treading on very thin ice indeed. We may get through it unscathed, but getting back on course is going to be damn tricky.

Nine years ago tonight, Scott and I stood under a chuppah, surrounded by the people most important to us, and were married. Here's a not-very-good photo of that event (one of these days I'll scan & upload some better ones...)

Happy anniversary, honey. I love you more than words can easily express. But then, I think you already know that.

As seen on ACLU.com and in the New York Times today.

Next week, the Washington Post?

Hat tip, AMERICAblog.

Well, I broke my Tungsten C some three months ago and I still haven't decided whether to get the damn thing fixed or not. With 2006 fast approaching, I need to finally make a decision, because if I do go back to paper, now is the time to go buy a planner.

Scott found a link to a highly-rated guy on eBay who apparently repairs Palm PDAs for less than what it would cost to send the Tungsten back to PalmOne for a repair. I'm thinking about it.

I'm also thinking that since I survived all semester without a PDA, I probably don't really need one. I miss the games and being able to read e-books a bit, but the ability to do those things is not really worth $75-$125 to me right now. Especially when I can get a perfectly good 2006 Day-Timer for under $25.

Someone with psychology training might point out to me that not making a decision is also a decision, and that's quite true. In essence, by going three months without my PDA, my decision has already been made. I just need to admit it and move on.

Since moving to the new place, Gimi has spent a lot of time lolling around on the carpets. He loves to roll over and show us his belly.

Woe betide the person who actually decides to pat him on that belly, though. CHOMP!

So Intel is revising its branding. OK. I'm not doing cartwheels about the new logo, but it's no better or worse than the old one.

But who on earth thought it was a good idea to ditch the "Intel Inside" tagline for "Leap Ahead"? "Intel Inside" is a good, memorable tagline that adds value to the brand. "Leap Ahead" is one of those eminently forgettable taglines that adds no value to anything other than the bank account of some misbegotten branding consultant.

Here's hoping 2006 is better in all ways than 2005.

Peace, happiness, health and joy to you all.