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.

Intentionality

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).
A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge. Tom Doherty Associates, New York (2000).
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

Ferocity Still

A fierce posed lionhead at Paxton Gate in San Francisco

A Passion for Fashion

My wife invited me rather pointedly to accompany her to an exhibit of the works of Jean Paul Gaultier at the De Young in San Francisco (through Aug. 19).  He's the guy that put the pointy cones on Madonna's breasts,  and clothed folks so exuberantly in The Fifth Element.  Here I'm taking him to refer to The Fates:

Hey, Clotho!… Lachesis, Atropos? Is That You?

Dead Set in the Archives

Archivist Nicholas Meriwhether, and why wouldn't an archivist be named Nicholas Meriwhether, left, working the crowd at the opening of the first exhibit of material from the Grateful Dead Archives, housed in McHenry Library at UC Santa Cruz, June 29, 2012.

August is Wœdmonð again

Giant Weeds of August, Santa Cruz, August 2012

Entomology Bleg, Yellow Caterpillar Category

A handful of these found in the backyard this morning.

The handheld caterpillar, April 2012

One of many local caterpillars, April 2012

One more hit ought to do it, then I'll quit while I can

Levon

Friday Funnyousness

Billy Crystal is 64. He isn't the last of the great East Coast storytelling Jewish comedians. That would be Myron Cohen, who's been gone awhile, and I have no idea who might be next in line. But he did grow up not just steeped, but marinated in that wonderfully fertile Jewish Catskills Broadway music business nightclub society that spawned the success of Cohen and the excess of, e.g., Jackie Mason. So he knows all the tropes by imitation, and he deploys them here to full force and effect, bringing it all to closure with what is not only a laugh but a lightly coded reference to all just kill me jokes.

The bear is awesome.

Yeah, I'll change yer flat tire, Merle. Don't you get your finger-picking hands all covered with erl…

Merle Haggard is 75 today. Happy Birthday, Merle. Keep on working, y'hear?

hashtag appleblossom

An audit of a Foxconn facility in China reveals serious and persistent violations of Chinese labor law at a plant in Zhenzhoug tied to the production of Apple Computer's products, products that lately have made the Cupertino company the richest in the world. Apple called for the audit in the wake of a tide of criticism of its dependence on the by-now notorious practices of the Taiwanese manufacturer. Apple CEO Tim Cook is on hand as well, taking the stern look.

Apple used Foxconn as an intermediary to extract labor from tens of thousand of Chinese workers making its enormously successful products, and those workers were worked hard by their bosses, excessively hard according to the Fair Labor Association, which conducted the investigation.

In other news, Apple Computer has announced plans to begin delivering quarterly dividends to its stockholders, beginning with a planned payout of $2.65 per share, and buying back $10 billion in stock over the coming three years, to be paid for out of the unprecedented hoard of cash ammassed by the Cupertino company, currently estimated to exceed, comfortably, 110 billion dollars, which is to say, $110 billion in cold hard cash in American money, itself the current nonpariel of monies. Apple plans to hand out $45 billion of its cash over the next three years persuing these ends, which, at the rate cash keeps accumulating at Apple, will be more than made up for, in the estimate of John Gruber at Daring Fireball. "At their current rate of generating earnings, even with these initiatives their cash war chest should grow."

He's estimating there that Apple will own significantly more that $110 billion in cash on hand in three years time.

Seems like it's bonus time for the workers who made Apple all that money. I mean, if guys who are trying to resuscitate the CDO market are getting bonuses at Goldman Sachs, shouldn't the people who, as it turns out, made Apple more money than it knows what to do with get a bonus for what they've brought about? Foxconn worked a lot of people like pack mules to fulfill orders for Apple's insanely popular line of products. Tim Cook should set up a card table at Foxconn's gate and shake the hand and pass over thousands in cash to every Apple worker who comes by, is what I'm saying.

Solaris Is A Novel Printed In Polish

tristero at Hullabaloo recommends Solaris The Definitive Edition, a recent translation made directly into English of Stanislaw Lem's Polish science fiction classic, Solaris, an edition commissioned by Lem's estate, and now available to read in Amazon's Kindle-delivered ebook format.

I understand that the version of Solaris I read years ago was only more or less adequately translated into English from somebody else's mediocre French translation of Lem's original, and not to be taken seriously for all the reasons. I don't remember it as a very remarkable read. Tarkovsky's Solaris, on the other hand, is a very good thing to see, even granting tristero's point that Tarkovsky is trying to make over Lem's material for his own purposes entirely, not to realize Lem's vison of Solaris on the screen, but to realize his own. Steven Soderbergh tried not to remake Tarkovsky's film, but fell into its gravity well and the result was an English language version inflected by a Russian version of Lem's Polish original, translated from print to screen.

Lem hated versions of Solaris, print and film. He stood by the original.

The Kindle audiobook of the new English edition is more readily available than the text itself, a sign that the Lem estate not only commissioned this edition but also gave Amazon some exclusive limited right to distribute the thing. A collector's item in the age of mechanical reproduction.

The Once and Future Beach in Santa Cruz

The San Lorenzo River isn't notorious for its length. If you stretched it out on a ruler it wouldn't be fifty miles long. But when winter rains reach Santa Cruz County the San Lorenzo collects a prodigious amount of water from the steep hills on either side of the narrow valley it courses through. Characteristically enough, 17 inches of rain fell in Ben Lomond, about ten miles upriver from Santa Cruz, between Tuesday of last week and the weekend. All the other spots along the river, Felton and Brookdale and Boulder Creek, contributed their fair share as well, and the river, which carries hardly a creek's worth of water in the summertime, surged heartily out of the enclosing valley as is its annual habit and down onto the marine floodplain where Santa Cruz sits waiting to receive it year after year.

The river goes where it can, and has had its way with Santa Cruz many times. This year the river took an unexpected turn on its way across the last two hundred yards or so of beach to its meeting with Monterey Bay. Instead of barrelling directly through the sandbar that normally blocks its mouth in the summer, it swerved hard right, threatening the foundations of the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. Earthmoving equipment was brought in to build a levee of sorts to persuade the river back onto its normal course, but the river and the ocean tide are combining to make that a hard sell.

The San Lorenzo River passes under a railroad trestle on its way to the shore of Monterey Bay, March 20, 2012

A temporary levee attempts to contain the San Lorenzo River, March 20, 2012

Ocean waves lap the black bulkhead of the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, March 20, 1012

Not Not Rain Watch, Day 2

The Soggy Yard,  March 2012

It's Not Not Raining Today in Santa Cruz, CA

Plant life from last week, prior to the current rain delay

Near Pescadero, CA

Pescadero Creek empties into the Pacific Ocean, March 4, 2012

An area of bog extends to the north of Pescadero Creek, March 4, 2012

Two hovels hug the shore near Pescadero Creek, March 4, 2012

Just off Main, Watsonville, CA, Feb. 19, 2012

February in Watsonville

Tule in February in Watsonville, off Main Street

Public Service Announcement

Due to unforseen circumstances I was unable to watch the Super Bowl telecast this weekend, your honor. I assure you I made sincere plans to watch (in the company of others who might have served as witnesses should any question arise as to whether or not I'd conscientiously performed my necessary part in the thing again this year). Jury duty, yes your honor, that would be the other one.

Things came up. That's all I can say. No, not an excuse, your honor, no, I agree with you there: not an excuse at all. I did something else, plain and simple. Yes, your honor, I will as the court directs let people know I didn't see the game and bear the full benefit of their post-game insight into what exactly it was that transpired as one who is in no position to contradict anything they might venture to say on the matter for the rest of my natural days.

Occupy Mitt Romney

The signal advantage of a Mitt Romney candidacy is that he is so archetypically the 1% Occupiers have wanted everyone to talk about all along. Let's turn our attention to what Mitt Romney and the 1% mean for ten months,  please.

A Sand By Any Other Name Would Still Stick Swell

My mother, as a recent Albertan Chemistry graduate in the 1950s, published research on petroleum extraction from what back then was unhesitatingly referred to as the Tar Sands. If you’ve seen that shit, what is technically and politely referred to as Bitumen, you’ll understand the usage. Hint: Don’t step in it if you value your footwear.

Since then, in an effort to turn black sticky sand into clean refreshing profits, there’s been a furious re-branding in favor of “oil” not “tar”, ignoring what it looks like when it’s in the ground. In practice, this means that when anyone uses the term “oil sands” you can safely assume they’re in the pay of the pipeline promoters.

— Tim Bray, ongoing.

2012, Yours To Assemble. Have a Happy!

The Occupy Santa Cruz encampment on the San Lorenzo River benchlands below the County Government Center, Santa Cruz, Ca, December 7, 2011.

The Occupy Santa Cruz encampment, on the San Lorenzo River benchlands below the County Government Center, Santa Cruz, Ca., December 7, 2011.

Other people peaceably assembled, San Francisco, Ca., October 2, 2011.