Damek.

Next Harry Potter installment has official title: Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. No sign of when it’ll be finished, though. The movies are not only taking longer to make, but even worse, J.K. Rowling can’t keep up with their pace. If the movie series is to be finished, I have to finally admit it’s looking more and more like different actors will end up playing Harry, Hermione & Ron. But who cares, it was always all about the books, anyway. I can’t wait!

Vatican endorses Kerry. OK, not really. But if you’re Catholic, be advised, the Vatican says (a) abortion is NOT the only important issue politically, and (b) voters are free to support pro-choice politicians as long as they are proportionately good on other Church priorities.

Forty Signs Of Rain review … and another one…

Kim Stanley Robinson remains my favorite author. His newest novel isn’t quite science fiction so much as fiction about science and its relation to society. Sure, it takes place a few years in the future, and as it picks up the pace at the end, the weather is getting very extreme due to global warming having progressed. But there is little to no attention paid to technology – the book could be happening now, as far as the tech goes. And The Day After Tomorrow it definitely isn’t.

One of the main characters is an aide to a Senator, and a stay-at-home “Mr. Mom.” His partner works for the NSF, and one of her coworkers has ties to a California university and a California biotech startup. So we get to see, as two of the section headings in the book point out, both “Science in the Capital” as the NSF and the senator’s aide separately deal with the intersection of politics and science, and “The Capital in Science” as the NSF and the biotech startup deal with funding issues and venture capital games, respectively. The book also touches on the purpose of science, and suggests that the goal of science has always been to help “others”, going back to the first people to practice primitive medicine.

These are vital concerns, and as usual, Stan adroitly gets to the root of them, while weaving in other relevant ruminations as the book progresses. I highly recommend this book, though it be the first in an as yet unfinished trilogy. I also recommend Stan’s other books, especially Red Mars if you’re into hard sci-fi, Escape From Kathmandu if you like humor and adventure, The Memory of Whiteness if you like music and philosophy, and The Years of Rice and Salt if you might like an extremely well-written exploration of a possible alternate history. And his other books are ace, too.

As for the rest of the summer, some of my other favorite authors all have new material coming out. Stephen King is finally finishing his Dark Tower series, with Song of Susannah out now and the final book, The Dark Tower due in September – I can’t wait! Ken MacLeod has a new stand-alone novel, Newton’s Wake, which looks great! BTW, for a preview of what the rest of the 21st century will be like, read MacLeod’s The Star Fraction. Alastair Reynolds is also finishing a series with his new Absolution Gap novel, and claims to have a stand-alone novel, Century Rain, due out by the end of 2004. Again, I can’t wait!

But of course there are older books to catch up on from my reading list, and non-fiction aplenty… More to come as I read them.

In my second favorite author Ken Macleod’s blog, he makes an entry titled Surveying Information Age Warfare, in which he comments on how the 21st century is likely to go, how no socialist revolution has been a proletariat revolution and no proletariat revolution has been a socialist revolution, how there are increasing numbers of proletariat revolutions these days – the working classes are more numerous and intelligent than ever – and hopefully they’ll soon get the hang of it. I’ve been thinking (much more incoherently) along these lines myself lately. Socialism as form of government and an economic system will likely never work, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t still class warfare going on. There are a very small number of people in the world who control and/or own an obscenely large percentage of the world’s resources. They, naturally, actively and consciously pursue class warfare on the lower classes in an effort to hang onto what they have – just as any human tries to hang on to what they have once they have it. Unfortunately, it is unjust to perpetuate this feudal system, and the working classes are getting stronger and smarter.

But because of this situation, the 21st century looks to be a bloody one, even if only metaphorically.

I guess my biggest fear, though I won’t live to find out, is that even the 21st century will turn out to not be the final resolution of the centuries-long class war, and even our great-great-great-grandchildren will still be fighting for the possible future of a peaceful, equitable society.

From a comment in this diary entry on Daily Kos

It’s so bizarre to me how liberals have gone off on this extended “we don’t need patriotism” kick since the 1960s.

This country was a radical, liberal nation at its inception. The idea that a monarchy was unneeded, and that the people could govern themselves– that was an incredibly forward-looking and progressive idea. Functioning democracy is the gift we have given the world. We need to be proud of it. And we need to recognize that we are patriots.

A patriot fights to defend freedom. Holding citizens without charging them? That’s not patriotic. Lying to the nation to goad us into a petty, personal conquest? Not patriotic. Colluding with enemies like Iran for one’s personal poltical gain? Certainly not patriotic, and even traitorous.

As liberals we deserve to derive our power from our nation’s strong progressive history. Walk around Washington and look at those monuments: Washington, Lincoln, FDR, Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt. These were all men who were considered tremendously liberal by the standards of their age. Read some of what Lincoln– the only Unitarian President– says about the corporate power of his time and tell me that’s not a liberal guy. Every just war we’ve fought– the Revolution, the Civil War, and World War II– has been fought under the aegis of a liberal President. Progressive politics gains its energy from the Spirit of 76, and no sustained liberal movement has taken hold in this country without wrapping itself in the flag.

So it disturbs and angers me that even today, American liberals wallow in their Howard Zinn/Noam Chomsky-informed conception of American history. Don’t get me wrong, both are intelligent men that deserve to be read and listened to. But we can’t build upon their ideas, frankly. We cannot form a governing liberal majority as long as we claim that America is truly a wannabe hegemon just waiting for world domination, none of our national heroes are worth our praise, and the ideals of our guiding documents (like the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, and the Reconstruction Amendments) are mild covers for greedy political corruption.

The best way for liberals to take back the flag is simply by physically doing it. Put a flag decal on your Toyota Prius (or your Volvo, as the case may be). Fly it proudly in front of your house, behind your John Kerry (hell, or even Ralph Nader) lawn sign. That flag is the symbol of your country, but it’s also the symbol of generations of Progressives who have fought, and struggled, and often died to make this country the nation that it is. Liberals have played an integral role in crafting America into a superpower, and it’s about time we stood up and acted proud about it.

I agree. I don’t hate America; I hate what Republicans have been pushing us and Democrats have been allowing us to become. But maybe I should just start wearing and displaying the flag. And to keep from being mistaken for just another blind Bush patriot, I can put it together with a Kerry button or something. Maybe just a note that says, like, “American liberal” or something.