Ten Years After in Song and Story

A speech given in Washington D.C. by the President of the United States on March 17, 2003, text in full:

My fellow citizens, events in Iraq have now reached the final days of decision.

For more than a decade, the United States and other nations have pursued patient and honorable efforts to disarm the Iraqi regime without war. That regime pledged to reveal and destroy all of its weapons of mass destruction as a condition for ending the Persian Gulf War in 1991.

Since then, the world has engaged in 12 years of diplomacy. We have passed more than a dozen resolutions in the United Nations Security Council. We have sent hundreds of weapons inspectors to oversee the disarmament of Iraq.

Our good faith has not been returned. The Iraqi regime has used diplomacy as a ploy to gain time and advantage. It has uniformly defied Security Council resolutions demanding full disarmament.

Over the years, U.N. weapons inspectors have been threatened by Iraqi officials, electronically bugged and systematically deceived. Peaceful efforts to disarm the Iraq regime have failed again and again because we are not dealing with peaceful men.

Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised. This regime has already used weapons of mass destruction against Iraq's neighbors and against Iraq's people.

The regime has a history of reckless aggression in the Middle East. It has a deep hatred of America and our friends and it has aided, trained and harbored terrorists, including operatives of al-Qaida.

The danger is clear: Using chemical, biological or, one day, nuclear weapons obtained with the help of Iraq, the terrorists could fulfill their stated ambitions and kill thousands or hundreds of thousands of innocent people in our country or any other.

The United States and other nations did nothing to deserve or invite this threat, but we will do everything to defeat it. Instead of drifting along toward tragedy, we will set a course toward safety.

Before the day of horror can come, before it is too late to act, this danger will be removed.

The United States of America has the sovereign authority to use force in assuring its own national security. That duty falls to me as commander of chief by the oath I have sworn, by the oath I will keep.

Recognizing the threat to our country, the United States Congress voted overwhelmingly last year to support the use of force against Iraq.

America tried to work with the United Nations to address this threat because we wanted to resolve the issue peacefully. We believe in the mission of the United Nations.

One reason the U.N. was founded after the Second World War was to confront aggressive dictators actively and early, before they can attack the innocent and destroy the peace.

In the case of Iraq, the Security Council did act in the early 1990s. Under Resolutions 678 and 687, both still in effect, the United States and our allies are authorized to use force in ridding Iraq of weapons of mass destruction.

This is not a question of authority, it is a question of will.

Last September, I went to the U.N. General Assembly and urged the nations of the world to unite and bring an end to this danger. On November 8th, the Security Council unanimously passed Resolution 1441, finding Iraq in material breach of its obligations and vowing serious consequences if Iraq did not fully and immediately disarm.

Today, no nation can possibly claim that Iraq has disarmed. And it will not disarm so long as Saddam Hussein holds power.

For the last four and a half months, the United States and our allies have worked within the Security Council to enforce that council's long-standing demands. Yet some permanent members of the Security Council have publicly announced that they will veto any resolution that compels the disarmament of Iraq. These governments share our assessment of the danger, but not our resolve to meet it.

Many nations, however, do have the resolve and fortitude to act against this threat to peace, and a broad coalition is now gathering to enforce the just demands of the world.

The United Nations Security Council has not lived up to its responsibilities, so we will rise to ours.

In recent days, some governments in the Middle East have been doing their part. They have delivered public and private messages urging the dictator to leave Iraq so that disarmament can proceed peacefully.

He has thus far refused.

All the decades of deceit and cruelty have now reached an end. Saddam Hussein and his sons must leave Iraq within 48 hours. Their refusal to do so will result in military conflict commenced at a time of our choosing.

For their own safety, all foreign nationals, including journalists and inspectors, should leave Iraq immediately.

Many Iraqis can hear me tonight in a translated radio broadcast, and I have a message for them: If we must begin a military campaign, it will be directed against the lawless men who rule your country and not against you.

As our coalition takes away their power, we will deliver the food and medicine you need.

We will tear down the apparatus of terror and we will help you to build a new Iraq that is prosperous and free.

In free Iraq there will be no more wars of aggression against your neighbors, no more poison factories, no more executions of dissidents, no more torture chambers and rape rooms.

The tyrant will soon be gone. The day of your liberation is near.

It is too late for Saddam Hussein to remain in power. It is not too late for the Iraq military to act with honor and protect your country, by permitting the peaceful entry of coalition forces to eliminate weapons of mass destruction. Our forces will give Iraqi military units clear instructions on actions they can take to avoid being attacked and destroyed.

I urge every member of the Iraqi military and intelligence services: If war comes, do not fight for a dying regime that is not worth your own life.

And all Iraqi military and civilian personnel should listen carefully to this warning: In any conflict, your fate will depend on your actions. Do not destroy oil wells, a source of wealth that belongs to the Iraqi people. Do not obey any command to use weapons of mass destruction against anyone, including the Iraqi people. War crimes will be prosecuted, war criminals will be punished and it will be no defense to say, "I was just following orders."

Should Saddam Hussein choose confrontation, the American people can know that every measure has been taken to avoid war and every measure will be taken to win it.

Americans understand the costs of conflict because we have paid them in the past. War has no certainty except the certainty of sacrifice.

Yet the only way to reduce the harm and duration of war is to apply the full force and might of our military, and we are prepared to do so.

If Saddam Hussein attempts to cling to power, he will remain a deadly foe until the end.

In desperation, he and terrorist groups might try to conduct terrorist operations against the American people and our friends. These attacks are not inevitable. They are, however, possible.

And this very fact underscores the reason we cannot live under the threat of blackmail. The terrorist threat to America and the world will be diminished the moment that Saddam Hussein is disarmed.

Our government is on heightened watch against these dangers. Just as we are preparing to ensure victory in Iraq, we are taking further actions to protect our homeland. In recent days, American authorities have expelled from the country certain individuals with ties to Iraqi intelligence services.

Among other measures, I have directed additional security at our airports and increased Coast Guard patrols of major seaports. The Department of Homeland Security is working closely with the nation's governors to increase armed security at critical facilities across America.

Should enemies strike our country, they would be attempting to shift our attention with panic and weaken our morale with fear. In this, they would fail.

No act of theirs can alter the course or shake the resolve of this country. We are a peaceful people, yet we are not a fragile people. And we will not be intimidated by thugs and killers.

If our enemies dare to strike us, they and all who have aided them will face fearful consequences.

We are now acting because the risks of inaction would be far greater. In one year, or five years, the power of Iraq to inflict harm on all free nations would be multiplied many times over. With these capabilities, Saddam Hussein and his terrorist allies could choose the moment of deadly conflict when they are strongest. We choose to meet that threat now where it arises, before it can appear suddenly in our skies and cities.

The cause of peace requires all free nations to recognize new and undeniable realities. In the 20th century, some chose to appease murderous dictators whose threats were allowed to grow into genocide and global war.

In this century, when evil men plot chemical, biological and nuclear terror, a policy of appeasement could bring destruction of a kind never before seen on this earth. Terrorists and terrorist states do not reveal these threats with fair notice in formal declarations.

And responding to such enemies only after they have struck first is not self-defense. It is suicide. The security of the world requires disarming Saddam Hussein now.

As we enforce the just demands of the world, we will also honor the deepest commitments of our country.

Unlike Saddam Hussein, we believe the Iraqi people are deserving and capable of human liberty, and when the dictator has departed, they can set an example to all the Middle East of a vital and peaceful and self-governing nation.

The United States with other countries will work to advance liberty and peace in that region. Our goal will not be achieved overnight, but it can come over time. The power and appeal of human liberty is felt in every life and every land, and the greatest power of freedom is to overcome hatred and violence, and turn the creative gifts of men and women to the pursuits of peace. That is the future we choose.

Free nations have a duty to defend our people by uniting against the violent, and tonight, as we have done before, America and our allies accept that responsibility.

Good night, and may God continue to bless America…

Saints Be Praised, the Anniversary Issue

To our knowledge, no one has successfully rebutted the opinion that St. Patrick was a real person, however much the snakes remain unconvinced by direct personal experience of the matter. They have their own measure, their own skein of consequential events stretching back to the beginnings of their snakey kind, and Patrick does not appear there among those events, in point of fact.

They are keenly aware they may be summarily removed, of course, the snakes. That knowledge is given to every living thing, and each incorporates the prudent list of tactics for eluding such potentialities, the snakes being no exception to the rule.

St. Patrick in a rich enough symbology might represent to your practicing snake the embodiment of that threat of complete and general extirpation: the summing metonym of all the forces tending towards its elimination. But mark this: there's no evidence whatsoever that snakes think that way. We must not impute to them a snakey hinduism in which the role of the Destroyer, Siva, is taken up by the Celtic Missionary. No.

But that is not to deny to snakes their willful slithery adherence to Patrick's hallowed plan, however little credence they give to its existence. It's a feature of their design, is what I'm saying, a predisposed quality of their being. All of them built aversive to Ireland from the go, built to never be and to never have been deployed in such a place.

That the snakes were not accessible for deportation did not trouble the foundations of the fellow's views on ridding Ireland of them in the slightest.

It must be noted that the command, "Remove the Snakes!" is one of the more universally agreeable pronouncements, even when made far beyond the slithering circuit of the things where the satisfying likelihood that they will never appear greets all such talk.

The Saint's hallowed plan allowed for an arduous time of it describing once again what a snake was to his audience before the common wisdom of the matter could be fully received. In the event, they opened their minds to his knowledges, accepting both the premise of the snake itself as described by his holiness and his proscriptive plan for each and every one of them as well.

The snakes weren't there when Patrick arrived to send them away. But after him, they went missing from the place they'd never been. He made his mark, Patrick, is what I'm saying.

Test Pattern

Repurposing in the Age Of Mechanical Reproduction

Entering Magnolia Week,  March 2013

A Fan's Lament

I burned off some nervous energy during the second half of the 49ers/Falcons game yesterday by swabbing down the kitchen, dining room and entryway floors. I settled a generous mist of Clorox Cleanup all over the place and then had at it. It's not a palace we're talking about here, it's easy enough to take a step or two one way or the other and see what's happening on the TV over in the far corner of the carpeted room where it lives, and it only takes ten or fifteen minutes to do, with the setting up the bucket with hot water and the bringing the mop back to it occasionally for a rinse, and the bucket's water geting grayer and grayer with progress through the kitchen, then over to the entryway and back through the dining room adjoining the kitchen and done. The longest part of the job, really, is the waiting for the floors to dry. Yesterday's weather was mild. I opened up the kitchen window and the front door and the sliding glass door in the room where the television lives that leads out into the backyard. To air it out, you see. Promote the process. I neglected to close the screen.

And then a hummingbird flew in and up and under the skylight. It was beyond the powers of the beast to resolve the conflict between what was perceptible and what was attainable, and it kept trying to reach the sky by darting up towards what the double glass of the skylight refused it. Trying to shoo it gently with a broom didn't work: I held the broom up very still, and it hopped on board, but went back to flying up against the glass when I tried to lower it down towards the sliding glass door. I suppose if it had been a blackbird I would have smacked away at it, but, hummingbird.

Meanwhile, 49ers/Falcons, fourth quarter. I sat back down across from the television, and looked up uncomfortably now and then as the hummingird flew up, over and over again, near-invisible wings bumping softly against the glass.

The 49ers won, and I put back the chairs around the dining room table and closed the kitchen window and closed the front door and left the house to pick up my wife at the Coconut Grove, and told her about the hummingbird on the way back.

It was still there, still flying, still flummoxed.

Sometime during the Ravens/Patriots game the hummingbird flew furiously against the ceiling, and settled slowly to the floor. I picked it up. I don't know if it was alive, stunned by exhaustion and what must have been despair. I took it outside and put it down on some soft soil in a big pot of succulents. It didn't move. When I went back out to look a few hours later, it was gone.

Hummingbird Trapped In Skylight

War and Justice Go Together Like Peanut Butter and Mayonnaise

War invites chaos. Sometimes the dead in war are soldiers, who may or may not have had a fighting chance. Often enough the dead are dead for arbitrary reasons having nothing to do with their fitness for or their deployment in battle. They are those, never adequately accounted for, who unfortunately chance to die in war. War's murderousness transcends its warriors, enlists mistakes and overzealousness and the unthinking catholicity of ferocity for which the male human is so justly renowned, in its service, to convincingly destroy.

Bradley Manning released a helicopter gunship video documenting the slaughter of a bunch of people on the ground in Iraq, one such incident encouraged by war there. The victims were harmless people in retrospect, a couple of them worked for the Reuters news agency. Chaos is no respecter of war's aims, a clean kill, a chestful of medals, a quick successful campaign. Chaos undercuts all rationales when it comes, and it always comes when called in war.

Bradley Manning also released to the world a cache of diplomatic cables sent between its overseas posts and the State Department, situation reports and chitchat from stations in Tripoli and Baghdad and La Paz and all the where else on the globe the United States has itself positioned these days. It is claimed that the revelations contained in the cables from North Africa helped fuel the destabilizations of the Arab Spring.

Bradley Manning was apprehended and has been subjected to a measure of torture, well within the range of cruel and unusual, during his months of confinement awaiting trial. The judge in his case, Colonel Denise Lind, recognizing this slight, recently authorized a reduction of three and three quarters months in the length of any sentence imposed on Manning, ruling that there was no intent to punish behind the military's admittedly cruel and unusual behavior.

A

Recently Noted

West Cliff, Santa Cruz CA, August, 2012

KuKluxSheep, Santa Cruz County Fair, September, 2012

Happy New Year Alleged, Details At 11.

The Romans foisted their calendar on all of us so long ago that it's barely worth arguing over anymore, so this must be the day we agree it's all reset, begun again with the counting out of the precessional motion of what we have for a planet around its sustaining sun from this the first day, labelled with the initiatory month of the incrementally advanced year of it, all the way through to the death of it in the last counted day of December next complementing the planet's passage to the same spot beside our sun it holds just now for all of us. It's not that the Romans have the last word on when the calendar's first day may fall. There are any number of calendars that track the motions of our sun and its planets as well or better than the Roman calendar can, and arguments for them are neverending. But there you go. The Roman standard got taken up and here we are dealing with the first day of the next year in a indeterminate number of succeeding years left as the rest of it for any of us.

Go for it, eh?

Autumn Atum Egypt Watch

Someone arrogating all power to himself in Egypt.
It's not as if there's no track record of this sort of thing when the post lies vacant. Unsuccessful attempts at arrogating all power to oneself, for whatever good it's going to do, are followed all down the ages in Egypt by endless further attempts to do the same on the part of others. There's never been a recorded time when someone wasn't after the job.
So this round it's Egypt president, the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohammed Mursi making a grab for it in the aftermath of the suspended massacre in Gaza.
It is said that Patriarchy cannot fail Egypt, but that Egypt shall always fail Patriarchy given time.

Thanksgiving

All that moment come together
in shared wonder
at the sight of such delightful
parade

The Untraceable Lightness of Citizens United

It can't be the case that only Stephen Colbert's lawyer has figured out a way to channel money donated to a political SuperPac in the heat of the recently concluded presidential election campaign into a separate secret stash of untaxable cash by passing it to yet another non-profit controlled by Colbert, formed under a different part of the tax code not covered by the same Federal Election Commission filing requirements, which then passes it along to yet a third non-profit, still controlled by Colbert, the identity of which the intermediary non-profit is, as it stands, not required to divulge. The intermediary SuperPac is not required to divulge that the money it recieves comes from the original SuperPac to which it was donated, and the third non-profit is not required to divulge that its money comes from the intermediary. It doesn't have to say nothing to nobody about that money in fact. It's free.

Reading comprehension is why we have tax lawyers in the first place, after all, and it will be illuminating to see what percentage of money given to the bigtime SuperPacs leaks out in this direction when the Federal Election Commission lays down the count and the amount in its official report on the 2012 presidential race.

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

Man's Man and Attractive Woman Have A Bunch of Sex!

I'm wondering how this story failed to break before the election. Sure, Petraeus represented the Republican's best presidential hope going forward, but, for the off chance that the froth from the revelation of his affair with his biographer might shake up Obama's campaign just enough to ensure what Romney's team thought was going to be a very close win, shouting Benghazi! Petraeus! Benghazi! over and over in the last week before the election seems like it would have been the politic thing to do. It's a no-brainer, at least in terms of American politics, where we cusomarily destroy the future in order to ensure the present. But not a peep until after the vote. Hmm.

Here's Paula Broadwell on the Charlie Rose Show, talking to Charlie about All In, her book about David Petraeus, with a measure of circumspection suitable to the civilized tenor of conversation expected at Rose's table, given what we now learn.

You're Welcome

I congratulate myself on the acuity of the previous post, which not only called an Obama win at least an hour before the networks noticed it, but also reported an even earlier case of the call, made in person by me out loud in public. I submit that the outcome was any surprise at all only because the major news sources willingly duped themselves into the breathless narrative excitement of a close race pandered by the Republicans, just in case in might become one, but on election night, swiftly, as election nights go, states one by one brushed Romney aside, and from the moment Ohio fell to Obama the hot air it took in the newsroom to misremember what had just happened lasted far into the weekend [it is predicted here. p.r.] 

Early on the West Coast

I called it for Obama some months ago, saying, "Obama's going to win" out loud and within hearing distance with the sort of conviction that passes for prescience if the deed foretold is done. I made no prediction regarding Elizabeth Warren, who is just now projected by NBC to be the winner of the Senate race in Massachusetts over Scott Brown, the incumbent, who to my knowledge avoided the pitfall of the explanatory word about rape which a number of fellow Republican males running for Federal office found it necessary to indulge in during the course of their soon-foundering campaigns, and yet, still lost to Warren, who was denied the chair of the newly created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau  she'd helped bring about in the wake of the financial meltdown that ushered out the Bush Era, and ushered in our first African-American president four years ago. Financial interests strirred up the Republicans to block her appointment to the post, which went to another, but left her free to challenge Brown, a one-term Republican in his first re-election bid. So now the financiers and Republicans have a Senator instead of a Bureau chief to contend with.

Hunter Moon Man

In Game 2 of the 2012 World Series, Hunter Pence scored one run and drove in the other in a 2-0 San Francisco Giants victory. In total, he scored three of the 16 runs scored by the whole team in their four-game Series sweep over the Detroit Tigers. So there is that about him.

Offensively, he gets almost all the credit there is for winning game 2, as much as Pablo gets for lighting things up in game 1. In game 3, after stealing second base in the top of the second following a leadoff walk to open the inning, Pence scored on Gregor Blanco's triple. Blanco soon followed with the only other score of the game, another 2-0 Giants victory.

In the fourth game Pence took second on a double and scored on a triple by Brandon Belt. Hitting a triple after Pence takes second is in all the playbooks. It worked again here, giving the Giants their first run of a game which surely will be remembered more for the astonishing strikeout of Melky Cabrera by Sergio Romo that sealed the win and the Series for the Giants than for what Hunter Pence accomplished. Still, he showed up. He did good.

He appeared cleanshaven at the Giants Victory Parade in San Francisco yesterday, perhaps making good on some promise about ever winning the World Series.

Powell and Market Streets, San Francisco, October 31,  2012

The Year in Review in Giants Baseball

Check list for an acceptable year
☒A. Beat the Dodgers
☐  1. Every time
☑  2. Most of the time
☑  3. Foil them in their quest for the pennant

☒B. Win all games at least half the time
☑  1. Half the time
☑  2. More than half the time

☒C. Win The Pennant

☒D. Win The World Series

October Surprise

All sources point to a devastating landfall for Hurricane Sandy this weekend along the Atlantic coast of the United States. That's where many if not most of my fellow Americans live, and I wish them all well, even the Republicans.

I hope all levels of government respond to the thrashing Sandy is about to deliver in a timely and effective way, too. A litmus test doesn't usually require this much water, but it would be good to confirm that America as a nation can at least still handle some things that need massive coordinated government effort, like a big, big storm and its wake.

The Curious Incident of the Unforeseen History Lesson

[Cue Twilight Zone music]

By some agency unknown to me the following scrap of newspaper settled on my lawn this morning. I found it when I went out to get today's paper, brought it inside and took this picture of it, which is unretouched, although it may get downsampled by Blogger a couple of times before it gets posted. Notice up in the corner a few line of Wallace Steven's "Notes On A Supreme Fiction," which is a fine effort in its own right, of course, but the eye is drawn to the headline on that page of the Santa Cruz Sentinel for May 8, 2011 that somehow found its way to my lawn, given over to a prominent report of another expression of excellence entirely, a no-hitter (his second) thrown by Justin Verlander of the Detroit Tigers against the Toronto Blue Jays on the previous day. Verlander is pictured getting a post-game dousing by teammates. Below that story is another picture, featuring what would prove to be a rare sighting of Freddy Sanchez playing second base for the San Francisco Giants above the happy news of another Giants win.

A Ghost of Baseball Past

After Pagan's angle shot off third base in last night's game, I'm prepared to believe we're now entering the very black and orange nimbus of Samhain itself, and the appearance of this curious page on my lawn does little to disuade me.

Noted

Here's an unexpected best of the web bobbing up in a stream of otherwise typical post-game conversation following the Giants victory over the St. Louis Cardinals in tonight's seventh and deciding game of this year's National League Championship Series, found deep in the thousands of comment appended to the game at ESPN's MLB site:
Mr. Jesus Christ
How'd you guys like that little broken-bat number I came up with for Pence? Man said a little prayer walking to the plate and I didn't want to disappoint him...
FastBallEddy I thought he made a deal with the devil.
Mr. Jesus Christ I know, right? Surprisingly I'm involved in most of the sports-related stuff. Goes back to my love of the chariot races....

George McGovern

You should have seen the crowd in line to vote for McGovern in my precinct in San Francisco in 1972.  Ah.

Giants Watch

Checklist for an acceptable year:

☐ A. Beat the Dodgers
☐  1. Every time
☐  2. Most of the time
☐  3. Foil them in their quest for the pennant

☐ B. Win all games at least half the time
☐  1. Half the time
☐  2. More than half the time

☐ C. Win The Pennant

☐ D. Win The World Series


Many's the year when only a mark beside A3 has saved the Giants from having an unacceptable season, not that there haven't been a disagreeable number of those over the years to bear with as well. But, yes, foiling the Dodgers makes for an acceptable season, whatever other indignities may have been endured. Winning the season series and knocking them out of contention in the same year is doubly satisfying.

 Your B2 season is just fine with me, of course. I'm not a greedy man, though the utter charm of checking D has not yet dimmed in my otherwise spotty memory. So, Go Giants.

Inentionality

Heller probably is the best-known and the most heavily criticized of Justice Scalia’s opinions. Reading Law is Scalia’s response to the criticism. It is unconvincing.

—Richard Posner in The Atlantic

We do not note nor long remember…

I read, I can't help myself. My wife and I have books in the low thousands in bookcases all over the house, and boxes brimming in the garage (there are no bookcases in the bathrooms, although now that I think about it, what's up with that?). A bookcase in the living room displays a note from Schopenhauer of particular relevance to me: "Many learned persons have read themselves stupid."
Listed below are the contents of three boxes stowed in the garage, consisting of mostly paperback science fiction titles, some fraction of that particular strain of reading I've cared to waste time with over the decades, appearing here in the disorder in which they were originally stored.
The plan is to bring the lot down to Logos in downtown Santa Cruz this next week and get some store credits for the ones they'll take, and bring the rest of them over to the Main Library, where the bottomfeeders can have at them in the free bin.
Queen City Jazz by Kathleen Ann Goonan. Tom Doherty Associates, New York (1996). It had the Bees, I think.
Forever Peace by Joe Haldeman. Ace, New York (1998). Winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards, it says on the cover.
I can't remember most parts of any of the books listed here. Some of them I gave myself permission to admire a long time ago for some reason or other, and I do remember admiring them, if few specifics of plot or character. I'm sure it's just as well that I don't remember many of the rest of them in the least. I want a jolt of the old imaginative when I read this kind of stuff, and often enough, after more than 50 years at it, I end up dissatisfied to the point of cranky with a lot of the science fiction I've managed to end up reading anyhow. Not every written work has to be as imaginative as Finnegans Wake, imaginative all the way down to the level of syllabification, no. A credible spaceship or life form or the workings of some cleverly crafted cultural formation will do (characters so thin you can see right through to the clockwork they're operating on chafe my hide. But as long as the invention specific to the work is rounded successfully in other ways, I don't mind too much the inevitability of constructing a character, or squadrons of them, if needs be, from the stock currently available to the genre, as long as they're formed of the higher-quality papier-mâché).
Without further interruption…
The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. LeGuin. Avon Books, New York (1973).
The Raj Quartet by Paul Scott [The Jewel in the Crown, The Day of the Scorpion, The Towers of Silence, A Division of the Spoils]. Avon, New York (1979).
Brightness Reef by David Brin. Bantam Books, New York (1996).
Child of Fortune by Norman Spinrad. Bantam Books, New York (1986).
Trouble And Her Friends by Melissa Scott. Tom Doherty Associates (1995).
Expiration Date by Tim Powers. Tom Doherty Associates, New York (1996).
On Stranger Tides by Tim Powers. Ace Books, New York (1988).
Half the Day Is Night by Maureen F. McHugh. Tom Doherty Associates, New York (1996).
To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis. Bantam Books, New York (1998).
Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge. Tom Doherty Associates, New York (2007).
The Judas Rose by Susette Harden Elgin. DAW Books, New York (1987).
Against A Dark Background by Ian M. Banks, Orbit Books, London (2009).
The Number of The Beast by Robert A. Heinlein. Ballantine Books, New York (1982).
Tripoint by C.J. Cherryh. Warner Books, New York (1995).
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon. Picador USA, New York (2001).
Dying Inside by Robert Silverberg. Tom Doherty Associates, New York (2009).
The Well of Lost Plots by Jasper Fforde. Penguin Books, New York (2004).
The Riddle-Master Trilogy [The Riddle-Master of Hed, Heir of Sea and Fire, Harpist in the Wind] by Patricia A. McKillip. Ace Books, New York (1999).
Misery by Stephen King. Viking, New York (1987).
Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian. Norton, New York (1990).
H.M.S. Surprise by Patrick O'Brian. Norton, New York (1991).
Post Captain by Patrick O'Brian. Norton, New York (1990).
Pavane by Keith Roberts. Ace Books, New York (1982).
The Cat Who Walks Through Walls Robert A. Heinlein. Ballantine Books, New York (1986).
The Color of Magic by Terry Pratchett. Harper, New York (2007).
Hogfather by Terry Pratchett. Harper, New York (2008).
Accelerando by Charles Stross. Ace Books, New York (2006).
The Children of the Sky by Vernor Vinge. Tom Doherty Associates, New York (2012).
The Atrocity Archives by Charles Stross. Ace Books, New York (2009).
Glasshouse by Charles Stross. Ace Books, New York (2007).
The Dream of Scipio by Iain Pears. Riverhead Books, New York (2003).
Darwinia by Robert Charles Wilson. Tom Doherty Associates, New York (1999).
Camouflage by Joe Haldeman. Ace Books, New York (2005).
The Scar by China Miéville. Ballantine Books, New York (2004).
Anathem by Neal Stephenson. HarperCollins, New York (2009).
Ilium by Dan Simmons. HarperCollins, New York (2005).
Olympia by Dan Simmons. HarperCollins, New York (2006).
Perdido Street Stationby China Miéville. Ballantine Books, New York (2004).
The Year of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson. Bantam Books (2003).
Forty Signs of Rain by Kim Stanley Robinson. Bantam Books (2005).
Sixty Days and Countingby Kim Stanley Robinson. Bantam Books (2007).
Seeker by Jack McDevitt. Ace Books, New York (2006).
Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett. Harper, New York (2010).
Postsingular by Rudy Rucker. Tom Doherty Associates, New York (2009).
Mort by Terry Pratchett. Harper, New York (2001).
The Female Man Joanna Russ. Bantam Books, New York (1975).
Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman. HarperCollins, New York (2003).
by Iain M. Banks. Night Shade Books, San Francisco (2006).
Men at Arms by Terry Pratchett. Harper, New York (2000).
The Stainless Steel Rat Returns by Harry Harrison. Tom Doherty Associates, New York (2011).
Kraken by China Miéville. Ballantine Books, New York (2010).
The City & The City by China Miéville. Ballantine Books, New York (2010).
Railsea by China Miéville. Ballantine Books, New York (2012).
The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman. Knopf, New York (2002).
The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi. Night Shade Books, San Francisco (2010).
The Drowned Cities by Paolo Bacigalupi. Little, Brown and Company, New York (2012).
Ship Breakerby Paolo Bacigalupi. Little, Brown, New York (2011)
A Night in the Lonesome October by Roger Zelazney. Illustrated by Gahan Wilson. Avon Books, New York (1994).
The Hacker and the Ants by Rudy Rucker New York (1995).
Giants' Star by James P. Hogan. Ballantine Books, New York (1981).
Arlsan by M.J. Engh. Warner Books, New York (1976).
Green Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson. Bantam Books (1995).
The Testament by John Grisham. Random House, New York (2000).
REAMDE by Neal Stephensen, Harper Collins (2011).
Sorcerers of Majipoor by Robert Silverberg, Harper, New York (1998).
Lincoln's Dreams by Connie Willis, Bantam Books (1992).
The Rise of Endymion Dan Simmons, Bantam Books (1998).
Terminal Café Ian McDonald, Bantam Books (1995).
Fifty Degrees Below by Kim Stanley Robinson, Bantam Books (2007).
Flux by Stephen Baxter, Harper (1995).
Caldé of the Long Sun by Gene Wolfe. Tom Doherty Associates, New York (1995).
Endymion by Dan Simmons. Bantam Books, New York(1996).
Invader by C. J. Cherryh. DAW Books, New York (1996).
Destinies vol. 1 no. 2 edited by James Baen. Ace Books (1979).
Exodus From The Long Sunby Gene Wolfe. Tom Doherty Associates, New York (1997).
Foragers by Charles Oberndorf. Bantam Books New York (1996).
The Edible Woman by Margaret Atwood. Popular Library (1976).
Earthfall by Orson Scott Card. Tom Doherty Associates, New York (1996).
Infinity's Shore by David Brin. Bantam Books (1997).
JOB: A Comedy of Justice by Robert A. Heinlein Ballantine Books (1985).
Earthborn by Orson Scott Card. Tom Doherty Associates, New York. (1996).
Fools by Pat Cadigan. Bantam Books, New York (1992).
Virtual Light by William Gibson. Bantam Books, New York (1994).
Red Dust by Paul J. McAuley. Avon Books, New York (1995).
Moderan by David R. Bunch. Avon Books, New York (1971).
Carlucci's Edge Richard Paul Russo. Ace Books, New York (1995).
Empire of the East by Fred Saberhagen. Ace Books, New York (1979).
Flight from Neveryon by Samuel R. Delaney. Bantam Books (1985).
Nautilus by Vonda McIntyre. Bantam Books (1994).
The Penultimate Truth by Philip K. Dick. Bluejay Books, New York (1984).
The Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg vol. 1 Secret Sharers by Robert Silverberg. Bantam Books, New York (1992).
Dark City by Frank Lauria. St. Martin's Press (1998).
Life, The Universe and Everything by Douglas Adams. Pan Books, London (1982).
Lord Prestimion by Robert Silverberg. HarperCollins, New York (2000).
Kiln People by David Brin. Tom Doherty Associates, New York (2002).
Donnerjack by Roger Zelazny and Jane Lindskold. Avon Books, New York (1998).
Only Forward by Michael Marshall Smith. Bantam Books, New York (2000).
American Gods by Neil Gaiman. HarperCollins, New York (2002).
Ring by Stephen Baxter. HarperCollins, New York (1996).
To Sail Beyond The Sunset by Robert A. Heinlein, Ace Books, New York (1988).
Blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson. Bantam Books, New York (1997).
Against A Dark Background Iain M. Banks. Bantam Books, New York (1993).
Manifold Space by Stephen Baxter. Ballantine Books, New York (2002)
Antarctica by Kim Stanley Robinson. Bantam Books, New York (1999).
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The Chronoliths by Robert Charles Wilson. Tom Doherty Associates, New York (2002).
Darwin's Radio by Greg Bear. Ballantine Books, New York (2000).

Fortified Melk

Gaaah.

"Mars, Bitches!" #12 and 35

Open this link[*] on an iOS device that contains a gyroscope sensor — like the iPad 2 or third-generation iPad, iPhone 4 or 4S, and fourth-generation iPod touch — and navigate the panorama by tilting and moving the device.

[*] via Tidbits

Noted in Passing

Painted Head in San Lorenzo Park, Santa Cruz, August 12, 2012

Mt. Shasta from the tarmac at Weed Airport

The Nominally World-Famous Sundial Bridge of Redding, Ca., August 2012

The Nominally World-Famous Sundial Bridge of Redding, Ca., August 2012