By the time the clouds finally moved out after days of rain, and I actually had clear sunlight to see by, I could tell that autumn had reached its zenith. Under the shroud of gray rain, it had been hard to notice. Now, with the calico hilltops standing in relief against the powder-blue skies of early October, the full weight of color was easier to see.

Like most people around here, I wanted to glory in the richness of the color and had felt disappointed that the rainy weather had robbed me of my chance. Nothing mutes autumns colors like gray skies.

So thankful was I to finally soak in the spectacle that I almost didn’t notice: it was five minutes past autumn’s peak.

Amidst the reds and crimsons and maroons and yellows and golds and ambers and auburns and oranges and tangerines—brown had slipped in. Lots of brown. Plenty of it. Full Story »

We’re more than three quarters done with 2011, so, much like Oscar commentators—in fact, exactly like Oscar commentators—we’re more than prepared to start ticking off our candidates for nominations for the 2011 Hugo best novel award. Yes, yes, we still have three months to go, there’s an Iain M. Banks novel coming along in a couple of weeks, and there’s always the Christmas season, but as we survey the year so far, we’ve already got some pretty good candidates. In fact, the stuff coming along this year is going to make a much stronger list than this past year. This is turning out to be a banner year.

And Ian McDonald, who has yet to win a Hugo for best novel, leads the pack, as far as I’m concerned, with The Dervish House. I’ve loved his stuff for years—especially the Chaga series, which he still needs to get back to. His last two novels, Rivers of Gods and Brasyl, were about two non-western cultures (India and Brasil) that have both eagerly adopted western technology (virtual reality and quantum computing, respectively) and run with it, and how they might look in a couple of decades. Both were fantastic reads, yet neither won a Hugo.
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Sage

I am not my geography,
you say,
          but immure yourself
in dead country
retching your dreams into an open grave.  

Stands of aspen overwatch
Eagle Nest and Angel Fire.
Toward Cimarron
yellowjacket light immolates the sky.  

Listen: there are liturgies of geography where
no graves gouge the land.

Today would have been John Lennon’s 70th birthday. In his honor, S&R is hosting a monster mashup party. Let’s get it started in here.

Item 1: Guns? Screw guns. What we need is a mandatory five-day waiting period for the purchase of any audio or video editing software. Then again, happiness is a warm gun, they say. Although this is more about hammers and polyester than powder and hot lead.

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The story: Tape analysis: Pistol shots preceded 1970 Kent St. shooting deaths of 4 students.

Let me be the first to wade in with a caution here.

1. I need to know a good bit more about the person doing the analysis and
2. I would be interested in knowing if he’s being compensated.
3. If so, by whom?
4. There’s allegedly a 70-second gap? If I think I’m under fire it won’t take me that long to shoot back.
5. And let’s not forget that in the hearings it became clear that the soldiers fired in the opposite direction of where they said they thought they heard fire. Full Story »

Harvey Pekar would have turned 71 today.

I imagine that in between a phone interview or two, he would’ve found time to write a bit, listen to some old music, write some more, tape up his favorite winter coat, misplace his keys, complain about something frivolous, write some more, flash a grin at some point and end a sentence with “man,” and perhaps spend a few reflective moments looking out the window at the gray October sky of Cleveland Heights.

The esteemed chronicler of quotidian America passed away on July 12 of this year, surely having gained some measure of satisfaction that he contributed something worthwhile in life as he set out to do, and just as surely second-guessing that notion.

In tribute to Pekar, Scholars and Rogues has invited cartoonists and artists—among them distinguished veterans, rising stars, and enigmas from dark corners of the underground—to illustrate panels that will accompany text about events in his life, in the manner that Pekar produced his classic American Splendor series. Over the coming weeks, separate posts will appear, but they’ll all be gathered here permanently.

And bless you, Harvey, wherever you’re fretting… you gained much more than a footnote in history.

The computer worm Stuxnet didn’t exactly bore into the computers of workers in Iran’s nuclear program. In fact, whoever unleashed it — Israel or another state —  sprayed it indiscriminately like machine gun fire. John Markoff of the New York Times reports:

The most striking aspect of the fast-spreading malicious computer program — which has turned up in industrial programs around the world and which Iran said had appeared in the computers of workers in its nuclear project — may not have been how sophisticated it was, but rather how sloppy its creators were in letting a specifically aimed attack scatter randomly around the globe.

Thus, perhaps because of a perceived time crunch on the part of the creators, it created what Markoff called “collateral damage” as if it were a military attack. Now for a riddle: name the weapon which never causes collateral damage? Nuclear weapons. Civilians, of course, form the better part of their intended targeted and are in no sense of the word collateral. Full Story »

There’s lots to like about the BBC. They piss off the Conservatives now as much as they pissed off New Labour not too long ago. The still take seriously their mission to provide as broad a range of news, features, and entertainment to the entire country—and, through the World Service, much of the world. Their television and radio broadcasting are gold standard. They don’t produce everything that’s great about British television, but they do most of it. And the world of British radio is amazing—the BBC has lord knows how many radio stations, all serving different constituencies. It’s another great thing about being able to live in London. But, of course, the BBC is pretty much anywhere and everywhere in Britain. It comes to you. And anywhere in the world, it comes to you, in fact, through the miracle of the intertubes.

And then there’s BBC iPlayer. Which is simply the link on the BBC website, right along the bar at the top, that takes you here. And here we have a whole world. Full Story »

The other night I’m settling back to watch the game and out comes Kelly Rowland to sing the national anthem. And to nobody’s surprise, we’re treated to … the obligatory butchering of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Such is the mode of pop music these days – it isn’t acceptable, where a G appears in the sheet music, to sing a G. No, no. Instead, the diva (and everybody is a diva these days) runs a G scale or two, performs a series of vox acrobatica in the general vicinity of G, then moves onto the next note, which also apparently needs a good bit of “interpreting.” Not “arranging” – some actual arranging wouldn’t be a bad idea at all. But arranging and freelance improvisational histrionics are not the same thing.

I guess it’s imperative, if one expects to be respected in the disposable world of pop music, that one must make the song one’s own. And as much as I hate to say it, I think we have to blame Hendrix. Full Story »

It’s bad enough that Israel, along with North Korea, Pakistan, and India, maintains an unacknowledged nuclear arsenal outside the Treaty on the Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). But, unlike the other three, which are all too happy to trumpet their possession of nukes to their neighbors and world, Israel continues to keep up the farcical, not to mention insulting, pretense that it’s nuke-free. Worse, the United States enables it in the ultimate game of don’t ask, don’t tell. Full Story »

Lately I’ve caught myself saying things like “if a culture gets poetry right, its politics will take care of itself.” Kudos to Bruce Jacobs and our friends at The Agonist for their Poem for Tuesday feature, which reminds us each week of the true, transcendent power of words. Today Bruce offers up something from Mark Doty. A snippet:

What these salt distances were

is also where they’re going: Full Story »

Cadogan Hall was an inspired venue for this evening’s Intelligence2 dialog between Cory Doctorow and William Gibson, given the themes of Gibson’s last three novels (including the most recent, Zero History, which Gibson is on a tour for). It’s right off Sloane Square and the shopping haven of King’s Road, home of some of the greatest concentrations of flashy brand stores in London. And Gibson has been pondering the meaning of brands, and their increased pervasiveness in, if not dominance of, modern culture. Which has produced some entertaining reading that, while not science fiction, deals with many of the same themes that science fiction writers deal with—particularly the role of those individuals in society, any society, that want out, or want to remain marginal.
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Come Tuesday, Nov. 2, it will not matter whether you vote Democratic, Republican, Independent, Green, Tea, or write-in. That’s because the winning entity will not be on the ballot — and hasn’t been for a very long time.

Come Wednesday, Nov. 3, anchors and pundits alike will announce, pronounce, anoint, or castigate individuals wearing the colors of the Red or Blue parties. Few, if any, will comment on the real winner. The newly elected or re-elected will mouth platitudes such as “the people have spoken” or “we’re here to do the work of the American people.”

Nope. The winners will have been chosen, as they have been on average for half a century by less than half of the voting-age population, to serve the corporate dollar.

That’s because come Nov. 3, the winner of the mid-term elections — and statewide races across the nation — will have been well-hidden corporate and billionaire money.
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And now, newspapers’ newest problem: The vultures have descended.

Newspapers continue to lose money and advertising – the New York Times Co. reported print ads would decline 5 percent in the third quarter across all its media. But investors are actually buying newspaper properties, often through bankruptcy sales.

What gives? Are they vultures just picking over already tattered carcasses for spare change? Or do these investors expect to make significant money – somehow?

The New York Times’ Julie Creswell reports that

A handful of hedge funds, as well as some big banks, are vying for ownership or have already gained controlling interests in newspapers across the country, including The Los Angeles Times, The Minneapolis Star Tribune and The Chicago Tribune.

And it’s not just newspapers or newspaper companies. They’re buying supermarket tabs, television properties, radio and big publishers. Creswell’s story identifies who’s buying what. But a secretive investor is the most active.

Creswell calls Randall D. Smith a pioneer of vulture investing. Full Story »

From 1974 … the Consolation Lakes in the Valley of the Ten Peaks near Moraine Lake.