The new Ian McDonald novel is here! The new Ian McDonald novel is here! Well, okay, the novel itself isn't coming until next summer; but the official cover was just released by publisher Pyr this week, done by their stunning regular contributor Stephan Martiniere. For those who don't know, by the way, this latest by "third-world cyberpunk" master McDonald is set entirely in a day-after-tomorrow Turkey, and promises to be just as complex and fantastic as his India-set River of Gods and South American Brasyl. You can check out more details at the official Pyr blog.

Below are simple links to other interesting stuff I've come across on the web in the last day or two; they may or may not concern literature or photography, or indeed the arts at all. You can click here to learn more about how I compile this list and what software I use, if you're interested.

Gitmo detainees cleared to be tried as American prisoners
Why this is important: 1) It will finally lead to the closure of the Guantanamo Bay torture compound, one of the biggest marks of shame in the entirety of American history; 2) it makes the proceedings subject to the rules of US law, versus the weird Orwellian limbo these detainees were in while being classified under Bush as "enemy combatants;" 3) it's being done so under the official approval of Congress, giving the teabaggers one less conspiracy theory about Obama's "unchecked power."

Politico: "Real goal of Obama/Fox feud -- remind moderates that nutjobs run the GOP"
An interesting article from Politico this week on the White House's controversial decision to start actively marginalizing such conservative radicals as Rush Limbaugh and Fox "News;" their main point is that the Obama administration isn't doing this to try to silence these people whatsoever, as is commonly argued by others, but rather to constantly remind moderates and independents as we head into the 2010 midterm elections that the Republican Party is in fact still being run by a bunch of superstitious, neo-fascist nutjob radicals. When you look at it in those terms, then, the recent attack campaign is a rousing success, especially when viewed from the aspect of how these radicals have responded to the attacks. And speaking of which...

More and more Republicans deeply worried over nutjob takeover of party
...Here's part two of that Politico article, basically arguing that the White House's attack campaign on radical conservative nutjobs is working; that the more the Obama administration forces these teabaggers into the corner, the crazier and crazier they're sounding as they lash out against it, precisely making the moderates within the GOP get more and more worried about the future of their party. As conservative columnist David Brooks has been arguing, it's more than time for these intelligent conservatives to finally stand up to the dangerous nutjob wing of the GOP, and to forcefully no longer let them have an active say in party politics, just like Rockefeller did in the 1960s with the John Birch Society, yet another ultra-radical conservative group who eventually became dangerous and violent in their rhetoric, exactly like what is happening these days with Fox and the teabaggers.

The real victim of Perestroika: Soviet propaganda artwork
Fascinating article in the NYT on a new art show in Berlin, basically centered around the concept of saving the vast wealth of artwork created for propaganda purposes in the Soviet Union between the 1920s and '80s, much of which was quickly either put into basements or outright destroyed with the onset of Mikhail Gorbachev's "Perestroika" era. Say what you want about their political underpinnings, say this show's Italian curators, but the artwork of the Soviet Union is historically important, and also presents a intriguing mirror to the various movements over the 20th century we are already familiar with in Western society.

Facebook user arrested for "poking" stalking victim
Brillilant: Although ordered by a court to have no further contact with a recent victim, Tennessee stalker Shannon Jackson simply couldn't resist sending a "poke" to said victim via Facebook, which for those who don't know is essentially a little text message saying "hi!" The result? Arrested! Don't f-ck with your restraining orders, people! (Via Slashdot.org.)

NBC's new CEO: "Leno experiment is a disaster"
Well, NBC has a new chairman, named Jeff Gaspin; and in one of his first talks in that position, he officially acknowledged what the rest of the industry has been gleefully crowing about, that the network's previous strategy of filling the airwaves with inexpensive lowbrow programming in order to increase profits (i.e. canceling an entire third of their prime-time programming in order to run a nightly variety show by Jay Leno) has been an unmitigated disaster, and that under his reign they will be going back to ultra-high-quality, relatively expensive original programming again. Of course, he gave no details on how exactly this is going to work with a network that's almost out of money; but he did admit that they recently hired both JJ Abrams and Jerry Bruckheimer to develop new high-profile shows for the coming 2010 season.

Jordan rapidly becoming the Silicon Valley of the Middle East
Another fascinating article from the always great GlobalPost.com, this time on the rapidly expanding role the liberal country of Jordan is assuming in the world of Middle Eastern tech industries. Reasons? Much less government censorship than most other Islamic countries; a huge emphasis from the top down on nurturing start-ups; and a certain desperation for a big national industry, since this is an oil-poor country.

"Flip your house" reality shows taking a radical turn during recession
For international readers who don't know, one of the fastest-growing types of "reality shows" American cable television saw in the '90s and '00s was of the so-called "flip your house" variety -- the idea of going up to your eyeballs in debt by buying a slightly run-down McMansion, living in it for three or four years while you renovated the inside, then selling it for a profit and starting all over. Well, we all know what came of THAT mindset; and now these struggling reality shows are completely changing focus in these bubble-bursting times, now shifting to either shows about renovating in a serious way that McMansion you're suddenly stuck with for good, or schadenfreude shows that highlight the moment of disillusion when arrogant yuppies are shown proof of just how worthless their McMansion actually is. (Think of it as the anti-"Extreme Makeover: Home Edition," where the point is to show on-camera the exact moment when uppity middle-classers are told that they will likely be filing for bankruptcy within the next year, instead of making that tidy 100-percent profit they were promised in the Bush years when they bought that house in the first place.) Oh, cable television, is there any tragedy you won't take advantage of for cheap gain?

The newest studio lackey: "Donnie Darko"s Richard Kelly
Utterly fascinating article in the NYT this weekend on cult director Richard Kelly (whose last movie Southland Tales is one of my all-time favorite trainwrecks), who now plainly admits that he desperately needs a straight-ahead studio-style hit in order to continue having a career as a director, and that he's utterly sick and tired of being forced to rely on the whims of nerdy festival crowds and nervous acquisition executives in order to get a decent paycheck. Will his newest movie The Box, opening next week, finally be this mainstream hit? We'll see, I guess!

Obama's network of pragmatic realists slowly taking over DNC
Interesting article on how, behind the scenes and with very little fanfare, various key players of Obama's 2008 election campaign have been taking over nearly every important position within the Democratic National Committee, bringing the same kind of pragmatic, tech-friendly realism to the national organization that got Obama as an individual elected in the first place. Are we in store for a BIG liberal-sweep surprise in the 2010 midterms? This article certainly hints that that's exactly what's going to happen, and that the DNC is keeping ultra-mum on the subject precisely so to not ruin it.

Geocities officially closing today
For those who don't know, for almost a decade I ran my personal website through the infuriating yet oddly-loved Dot Com relic Geocities, first when it was an independent startup and then later when bought for three billion freaking dollars by Yahoo (which this article speculates they didn't nearly even begin to recoup in ad revenue afterwards, one of the many reasons the company is so close to bankruptcy now); and today Yahoo is officially shuttering the service and its several million very badly designed homepages, an unusual decision in that the service overall is still within the top 200 destinations on the entire web, according to this article. Geocities, you will be missed...you know, very slightly, and with a lot of caveats to that statement.

Netflix Streaming coming to the PS3
And thus does the world domination of movie-rental service Netflix continue apace.

7 out of every 10 nonprofit employees are women
Reverse sexism? Systemic lack of "aggressive business practices?" Get yr daily dose of indignant offensiveness at this ridiculously badly-written Daily Beast article, unusual for an organization that usually turns out quite great pieces.