Mo Tkacik tackles the conundrum that is Malcolm Gladwell. 

In that case, perhaps Gladwell’s intellectual compromises are neither commercial nor unintentional but rather a necessary outgrowth of his higher calling: to explore the secret workings of the world and impart the resulting data to its self-appointed stewards, the titans of industry. This conclusion, if true, may resolve many of the most puzzling incongruities riddling Gladwell’s articles: his continued defense of the pharmaceutical industry even as he advocates for single-payer healthcare; his refusal to indict the financial sector’s rigged “star system” as the engine of corruption that it is; the meticulous bleaching of his own prose so that he’s whitewashed out any real context, any framework in which wars and economic collapses can actually be understood as wars and economic collapses rather than simulations or malfunctions; his near total avoidance of academic thought that does not base its findings on things observed in labs (with the exception of Carl Jung, whose legacy he reduces to the popularization of personality tests); his coyness about politics; and most memorably, his irritating, unrelenting readability.

It’s a long and thorough piece that is certainly worth reading if you’ve ever given 15-minutes of your lifetime drunkenly debating the merits of Gladwell just before closing time at a seedy bar.

I don’t have anything insightful to say about the tragedy at Fort Hood yesterday except that the media’s handling of the event (blaming PTSD when he’d never been to combat, forcing events to fit into their narrative, the thinly veiled notion that he’s actually a terrorist or that jihadists have infiltrated the military) has been specious at best and at worst yet another reason to never watch network news. 

Still, when the early news broke yesterday, a conspiracy theorists co-worker of mine made the off-hand quip, “watch him turn out to be Muslim, possibly a sleeper terrorist that the right wing will use to their advantage.”  Odd, very odd.  Not that I believe that line of thinking. It’s just a tragedy all-around.

Nidal Malik Hasan’s religion says nothing more about Islam extremism than Timothy McVeigh’s and the Unabomber’s actions say about white men.

What’s better than one Slave Leia?  How about two catching some rays.  Kottke came across this photo of Carrie Fisher and her stunt double napping during the Tatooine shoot in Return of the Jedi. Enjoy!  But just know that I’m going to need a moment or two to catch my breath.  [via]

V has been the one show I was hoping would redeem this lackluster fall television season.  It is, afterall, based on a popular (cultish?) NBC science fiction show from the early 80s about lizard creations pretending to be humans with nefarious plans for our planet and population. 

It seems like an excellent premise to be reimagined with better effects and acting and more weighty themes to explore.  Why then, did I feel ho-hum about the show after last night’s premiere?

You can read plenty of recaps elsewhere, but suffice it to say there’s a lot going on.  The FX look up to snuff, the acting is all pretty darn good (how could it not be with Elizabeth Mitchell, Alan Tudyk, Morris Chestnut, Joel Gretsch, Scott Wolff, and Monica Baccarin) for a network television show and the themes are not disimilar from the recent Battlestar Galactica remake (religion, terrorism, identity, etc.). 

There were huge problems with the pilot episodes’s story arc: 1) the humans just accept the aliens with open arms, 2) the exposition/backstory is clumsily handled, 3) two of the main characters easily figure out that the lizard aliens are up to no good, 4) it’s too clean and polished.

Still, none of those complaints are what I’m having difficulty wrapping my brain around this morning.  I’ve never watched a show so anti-progressive as I did the one last night. 

And I’m not alone.  Both Time’s excellent James Poniewozik and Chicago Tribune reviewer Glenn Garvin made note of this: a telegenic messiah from a foreign and alien place comes to the United States with the promise of hope and change offers our citizens science, technology and — gasp! – universal health care. 

Make no mistake, the Obama parallel/allegory here is downright unnerving.  It’s so blatent I really thought some combination of Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh were show runners. 

Chew on this basic plot:  charismatic, attractive newcomers win the adulation of America’s youth with the promise of hope & change; they manipulate the braindead media and promise universal healthcare, but a group of real Americans are saavy to their evil (fascist?) hidden identity/agenda and will work to prevent the destruction of humanity. 

It would have been refreshing, or still can be, if the lizard aliens turn out to be the saviors of the human race.  But alas, I don’t think that will be the case.  And yet, and yet, I’m still going to tune in because there’s enough decent story threads that the show has my interest.

Once again, it’s time for National Novel Writing Month, the annual event where participants challenge themselves to write a 50,000-word novel in 30 days.

I’ve been wanting to participate for a few years now, but just haven’t made the effort.  It doesn’t look like it’s going to happen this year either, even though it’s not too late to sign up. 

“Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap,” the website warns. “And that’s a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. … To build without tearing down.”

For most people, the hardest thing is just having the gumption to plow ahead without worrying about the quality.  It’s just about getting that first draft done.  Afterall, all great writing happens during re-writing.

There are parties afterwards and it always seems like there’s a great community of participants.  I’m thinking next year my first novel will make an excellent birthday present to myself.  It sounds daunting, writing a novel in one month’s time, but if you pace yourself 50,000 words is only about 125-150 pages.  Five pages a day — no problemo!  Right? Right?

Cory Doctorow has just released his latest novel “Makers”, “a book about people who hack hardware, business-models, and living arrangements to discover ways of staying alive and happy even when the economy is falling down the toilet.”

Here’s where to find print versions of the book for sale and an electronic version can be downloaded for free under a Creative Commons NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.

I loved his previous novel, Little Brother, which was my first exposure to his fiction work.  Can’t wait to print off a copy of the PDF to read!

“The story is told through seven songs, each a brief glimpse into the world of our protagonist on his journey from bored night watchman to twisted, horrific cannibal. These glimpses are often poetic and obtuse, only obliquely fitting the narrative structure, so my recap / review is only one perspective on how to interpret these songs. No matter how you interpret them, though, they add up to a pretty chilling scifi horror narrative.”

I’m stupified as to how John Vanderslice and The Mountain Goats (John Darnielle) released a seven-song EP with a horror/sci-fi bent to it (the central thrust of the album concern organ harvesting colonies on the moon) and I just found out about it today.  Turns out it was a tour-only affair on vinyl and is no longer available, though with half an effort you can surely find it.

Cartoonist Jim Benton imagines what sort of children’s book Ted Geisel might write if he were alive today. [via]

Oh my god, so adorbz!  “Greatest cartoon ever? Greatest cartoon ever. I’m not kidding, if this was on TV, I would watch it every day until I began to gibber insanely… at its cuteness, of course.”

See also: io9 took the time to put together an introductory primer to H.P. Lovecraft — the man responsible for the tentacled Cthulhu creation.  He is considered, perhaps, the master of sci-fi-horror literature.

This is a much better trailer, at least now I get the gist of the story and it’s not so much “oh look at me and my fancy CGI” which was all the last trailer wanted to do.  I might be sold with this one — even if Cameron did plagiarize his story from an old pulp novel.

Not really much to go on here, but Elizabeth Mitchell was great on Lost. This premieres next Tuesday, so you won’t have to wait long to watch the entire episode.  To be honest, not much has grabbed me this television season, so I’m hoping V becomes that show.

There is no surprise anymore that fetishes have gone mainstream, or are at least accepted enough that when someone tells you they are into say, watching grandmas with chainsaws or pregnant women read books by a fireplace, neither of those scenarios are all that shocking.  And it’s not shocking because chances are there is  a website devoted to either of those fantasies.

Still, I was a bit taken aback by this magazine, Girls and Corpses, that is the amalgamation of sexy girls and dead bodies, because it acts no differently than Equire or whatever gentleman’s magazine you prefer to read.  If I were still nine years old, this magazine would have been my sweet spot.

This is why Autumn is my favorite season: “I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to get my hands on some fucking gourds and arrange them in a horn-shaped basket on my dining room table. That shit is going to look so seasonal. I’m about to head up to the attic right now to find that wicker fucker, dust it off, and jam it with an insanely ornate assortment of shellacked vegetables. When my guests come over it’s gonna be like, BLAMMO! Check out my shellacked decorative vegetables, assholes. Guess what season it is—fucking fall. There’s a nip in the air and my house is full of mutant fucking squash.” 

You best damn well better believe I’ve got a cornucopia of mutant fucking squash on my table.  I’d throw up some corn stalks and scarecrows if I lived in a house, but something tells me my condo association would throw me on the curb if I turned my hallway into an apple orchard. 

But honestly?  Colin Nissan’s piece is the funniest thing I’ve read in two weeks.