My Neighborhood 8 Mile Run/Walk Today

Late this afternoon I continued my recent change in training to covering some lengthier distances on my home neighborhood streets, using courses I've already designed through the MapMyRun app and alternating two minutes of running with two minutes of brisk walking throughout the session.  I started it off from my own house at 5:20 PM knowing, with partly cloudy skies above, that there was a distinct possibility of rain showers at some time on my venture.  I put my earplugs in and set my Amazon Music to play a shuffle of songs by The Doors...and set off.  The temperature at the start was a hotter 88 degrees with 39% humidity...for about twenty minutes near the end it rained and that did cool it a bit to 81 with 66% humidity when I finished.  I covered a distance of 8.0 miles with a finishing time of 1:28:40...a slightly faster pace than my previous 7.2 mile outing this past Wednesday.  Unlike last Sunday I encountered much fewer people out and about, which suited me just fine...I think the showers also helped in that regard.  I also had a much quicker recovery than with Wednesday's effort.  All in all it was a positive experience and I plan to continue this twice-a-week system to complement my other workouts...

Ran This Morning's Depot Parkrun 5K Here in Gainesville

Amid excessive humidity (can't get much higher than 99%) and 65 degrees at the 7:30 race time, Melissa and I went down to Gainesville's Depot Park this morning to participate in their "Parkrun 5K" held each week, free (sign up online) and volunteer-run.  She walked the course (doing quite well, I might add) and I ran it, not trying to set a personal best but rather to enjoy a good sustained pace.  After the overcrowded start in which it was nearly impossible to break free of many slower runners boxing me in, I did reach that groove and rode it to the end, finishing at 28:19 with plenty of energy to spare.  It was pretty muggy out there, but both of us enjoyed the experience, Melissa's 6th Parkrun finish and my 41st.  Sometimes the organizers designate a theme for a race...today since it is May the Fourth, they made it Star Wars ("May the force be with you") with some folks dressing up for the occasion (but not too many).  Afterwards we went for breakfast at the 43rd Street Deli, a popular haunt for Gainesville natives.  For today's results, click HERE...

Quote of the Week...from Eleanor Roosevelt

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.               ---Eleanor Roosevelt

Eleanor Roosevelt, Franklin Delano Roosevelt's wife and the nation's First Lady throughout his twelve-year presidency that began with the Great Depression and took us through World World II, was a powerful speaker and activist, noted for her championing of marginalized peoples.  Rob Dial, in today's podcast, gave her above quote that dovetailed nicely with his assertion that others...especially those with toxic personalities...can only hurt you with their words if you sense their truthfulness for yourself and internalize them.  How such triggers are processed...between the time they are heard and your response...can determine the quality of your life as psychologist Victor Frankl once emphasized.  I tend to agree, not that my own reactions to such negative experiences have demonstrated this for much of my life.  I can remember numerous instances of encountering toxic people and allowing their barbs to cut me.  Yet at the same time I didn't necessarily feel inferior as a result but rather grew to hate those committing the offenses.  As Max Ehrmann in his prose poem Desiderata once wrote, "Avoid loud and aggressive people, they are vexatious to the spirit".  Yet Dial regards toxic jerks and their insulting bullcrap as a gift to aid in people's personal development...oh, please, I bet you were one of them, dude. By the way, "bully" can be substituted for "toxic person"...

My Wednesday Neighborhood Run/Walk

As I've already written, since the abandoned marathon attempt on April 7th I decided to add a feature to my running and walking training, involving going outside on the streets in my home's vicinity to run and walk.  So far so good...the idea is to do this on Wednesday mornings before work and on Sundays at dusk, weather permitting and no precluding special events, of course.  Last Sunday I covered 7.2 miles alternating two minutes running with two minutes walking...yesterday I did likewise.  Sunday's time was 1:21:03...Wednesday was 1:20:24.  Not much difference, but the conditions were, although in both days the temperature hovered around 80 degrees.  The humidity yesterday morning averaged around 52%...pretty good, but the sky was clear and the sun baked down on me the whole run/walk...quite a contrast to Sunday's sunset shadows.  But on the positive side, the little kiddies that littered the road with their playing were off at school and the motor traffic was immensely lighter...I pretty much had the course to myself.  Still, I had to cool down more after it was over, downing a few Gatorades and resting.  Because of the time constraints on Wednesday, I think 7.2 miles will likely be my maximum distance, It will be the weekend...most likely Sunday...during which I expand things to see how far I can go.  But in it all I intend to mix up the running with brisk walking at regular short intervals...

Oh, by the way, for yesterday's jaunt around the 'hood, I listened to a shuffle of Regina Spektor songs...

Weekly Short Stories: 1996 Science Fiction, Part 4

It's Wednesday and time for another review of tales out of editor Gardner Dozois' anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Fourteenth Annual Collection, and featuring his picks from 1996.  This was the year that the Florida Gators football team under head coach Steve Spurrier, along with Heisman Trophy winning quarterback Danny Wuerfful, won the national championship, securing a rematch against rival Florida State after first losing to them and then incredibly seeing other schools lose upsets in their respective conference playoffs.  And now to those stories...  

THE LAST HOMOSEXUAL by Paul Park

This story takes a broad swipe at the junk science sweeping our society by suggesting a near future in which religious-based "science" carries the weight of law.  Very sarcastic, and it's really not about homosexuals, as one of the characters makes bluntly clear...

RECORDING ANGEL by Ian McDonald

An unforgettable, vivid tale about a gradual but inexorable invasion of a different kind of reality on the Earth, most prevalent in Africa.  The line of division between "our" world and that which lies beyond the creeping line is clearly marked as a reporter does a piece about the impending end of Nairobi while decadents there "party like it's 1999". It's thought the transforming Earth is a kind of alien terraforming for their own life forms, but someone has a different explanation.  Pretty damned profound, it all is...  

DEATH DO US PART by Robert Silverberg

The idea of being physically immortal, not susceptible to disease or aging, is examined as humanity in the not-so-distant future has achieved this prized objective...if the individuals undergoing the necessary treatment take to it, that is.  For the few that don't, what used to be an ordinary, long life span turns into an ordeal of exclusion and unwanted pity. And people's values certainly drastically change with their expanded lifespan, as the author clearly shows...

THE SPADE OF REASON by Jim Cowan

An inmate at a mental hospital, formerly a brilliant physicist, is about to be released as he explains to his friend, the facility's night janitor, what brought him to be institutionalized.  If you want your eyes opened to quantum mechanics, chaos theory and the limits to reason, then this one's for you.  Very instructive, made me think (but not too much, I hope)...

Next week: more from 1996...

My April 2024 Running and Walking Report

In April I ran every day and racked up the mileage, both in running and walking.  I had planned on running the Run Your Buns Off Marathon on the 7th but let it pass by chiefly because of an acute case of insomnia for the two nights before...and I had issues with that race's format which I discussed earlier on this blog.  Instead, on the 13th and 27th I ran Gainesville's Depot Parkrun 5K, last Saturday actually getting a "personal best" at that weekly event.  On the 20th I speed-walked it, accomplishing one of my walking goals by breaking 40 minutes in a 5K.  In mid-month I began an incremental process of building up my covered run/walk distance by taking Wednesdays and Sundays and covering my own created courses going through my neighborhood and the surrounding ones here in northern Gainesville.  I'm hopeful that this will strengthen me through the rest of the spring and summer while giving my body the needed recovery time. The outings, at least right now, consist of running for two minutes, then walking two minutes, then running two minutes, etc.  As for upcoming races, the only thing I see right now ahead of me for the next few months is that Depot Parkrun.  I omitted swimming from this article because, frankly, I didn't swim any during April...my local gym, which touts its pools to lure prospective subscribers, hasn't exactly been forthcoming recently in providing adequate pool opportunities for me: let's see if they can do something about that.  And if not, I'm ready to explore other options... 

About the Recent LIV Golf Tournament in Australia

This past weekend I watched some of the action on the LIV professional golf league tour, this particular tournament taking place in Adelaide, Australia.  The 54 golfers on the 54-hole tourney...they're all 54 holes instead of the standard PGA 72-holes, hence the Roman numeral "LIV"...were largely recruited and paid millions just to jump over to the new league, funded by Saudi interests. I'm no golf purist and, even if I "should", don't care about the ongoing controversies between the old and new leagues: let 'em duke it out.  No, I just wanted to watch an LIV event, which it turns out was easy enough.  The first round was streamed live on YouTube and the second and third rounds broadcast on CW, which I loaded for free on Roku...the Gainesville CW version didn't carry the LIV.  On one hand, I liked the fact that the coverage included most of the field of players while typical PGA coverage on the Golf Channel or major networks like CBS and NBC tend to only follow the leaders.  That's fine, but I was still taken aback at how fast they switched from one golfer to the next...almost like a mass assembly line of brief takes...and most of them were just putting the ball.  I saw very little of the Adelaide course and realized that showing the different courses in detail is one of the things that the PGA tour coverage is getting right.  The announcers were very gung-ho promoting the LIV and their prized golfers...it got to be a bit overwhelming, as a matter of fact.  And what's with the loud music on the putting greens, unless it's just the new league's way of saying that they're cooler than the PGA?  I'm still going to follow LIV golf...next weekend they're playing in Singapore.  But overall, in spite of my criticism that general PGA televised coverage is too narrow regarding most of the participants, I think I prefer their approach to the hack cheerleaders broadcasting on behalf of LIV and their cast of over-hyped stars...

Neighborhood 7.2 Mile Run/Walk Successful But Sometimes Annoying

Since the Wednesday before last I have changed my training routine a bit, inserting outdoors road running (alternated with walking) for Wednesdays and Sundays.  The mid-week outing by necessity takes place in the morning before I go to work in the early afternoon, while on Sunday it looks to be more in the early sunset period...like today was.  I had already run this 7.2 mile course, which is an extension of the 3.3 and 5.0 milers I ran the last two Wednesdays.  It was 81 degrees with 36% humidity when I started out around 6:40 PM...not bad at all.  But what was vastly different from my mid-week runs were all the people out in the neighborhood...especially the children with their street games, remote control car toys and bike riding, although toward the end they tended to thin out as the evening shadows increased.  And I wasn't too happy to have to contend with the weekend traffic around me, either.  All in all, though, I felt good with my venture, alternating the running and walking at two minute intervals...my finishing time was 1 hour 21 minutes 3 seconds.  To help me along the way I asked Alexa on my Amazon Music to play a mix of Kasabian songs...that's a British alternative group I've followed for the past couple of decades.  My plan is to keep increasing the distance covered...at least on Sundays when I have more time at hand...while sticking with my 1:1 run/walk ratio.  Hopefully the brats wonderful kids will stay out of my way... 

Ran Gainesville's Depot Parkrun 5K This Morning

With the weather forecast hinting of morning rain, I woke up this morning to clear skies, and they lasted pretty much through Gainesville's weekly free, volunteer-run 5K (3.1 miles) walk/run event, held at Depot Park a few blocks south of downtown and appropriately called the Depot Parkrun.  It's part of a worldwide network of Parkruns, having originated in England and spreading across the globe: Florida now has five of them.  Today was my 40th Depot Parkrun finish, and unexpectedly was my fastest there, finishing at 27:10...it's also the fastest 5K I've run overall in more than ten years: click HERE to view the results.  I had decided just before the race to forego the usual Galloway Method of alternating running with brief, regular walking breaks and sought to gut it out in the old-style way we used to run in high school eons ago.  It worked: my endurance training paid off in the last two laps of the four-lap race as, although uncomfortable, I had plenty of energy to finish it strongly.  The temperature at 7:30 race time was 62 with 98%...I doubt that conditions will be any better during the ensuing months of spring and summer... 

Quote of the Week...from Zeno of Citium

Well-being is realized by small steps, but it is no small thing.            ---Zeno of Citium

Zeno of Citium, also know as Zeno the Stoic, was the ancient Greek founder of that school of philosophy.  I picked up on the above quote while watching a YouTube video explaining stoicism.  Zeno here speaks of what in our times is often referred to as "atomic habits"...thanks to the popular same-titled book by James Clear, a work that has strong stoic undertones.  People who are fed up with their lives and want to reinvent themselves, in the process throwing away everything they have built up over the years, might be well-advised to heed Zeno's dictum, especially when considering that another element of stoicism is the elevation of a sense and expression of gratitude for the things one has been blessed with in life.  No, better to start small and fit the little changes into daily routines...after some time the effects can be revolutionary.  But don't expect or even desire perfection: it's all a process, a grand, exciting adventure...

Yesterday's Neighborhood Run/Walk

Yesterday, Wednesday, I went on my second weekly "hump-day" running/walking outing in my neighborhood, again taking place in the late morning before I went to work in the early afternoon.  My initial goal was to step up the distance covered from last week's 3.3 miles to 4.1 by adding an extra block to the run/walk, which I did to about a 2:1 ratio in time spent with each. However, as I progressed...the weather was perfect at 72 degrees and only 50% humidity...I decided to add another block to make it a 5 mile session...felt good, worked well and finished at 50:03.  Along the way I met up with Jim, an old buddy from work who had retired a number of years earlier: he's doing fine, happy to say.  Later on Wednesday after work I went to my local gym and walked on their treadmill at 5.0 mph for two miles...I think I'm handling that speed pretty well now.  I'm looking forward to what this weekend brings, whether it's another Depot Parkrun 5K on Saturday morning or a lengthier neighbor run/walk...or both...

Weekly Short Stories: 1996 Science Fiction, Part 3

It's Wednesday, so time again for another retrospective look at science fiction short stories.  We're currently examining material from 1996, selected by editor (and sci-fi writer) Gardner Dozois for his anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Fourteenth Annual Collection.  In 1996 Bill Clinton ran for his reelection as U.S. President against Republican Bob Dole, then the Senate Majority Leader, and independent candidate H. Ross Perot. A surging American economy pretty much helped glide Clinton to easy victory...although truth be told, I kind of liked Dole, along with his VP running mate Jack Kemp, and voted for them instead.  I still think Dole would have been a good president.  But back to those stories...

THIRTEEN PHANTASMS by James P. Blaylock

The closing scene in the great old Disney movie Pinocchio, in which Jiminy Cricket goes on vacation by jumping into a matchbox and mailing himself off to an exotic locale, somehow comes to mind with this wistful tale of a man who finds a strange, but tenuous link to the past, some fifty years earlier but with some very interesting people.  A thoroughly enjoyable read...

PRIMROSE AND THORN by Bud Sparhawk

Having read Herman Melville's classic whaling novel Moby Dick, I've already experienced detail overload about sailing with stuff I had no idea of what the author was talking about.  Ditto for this story about sailing competitors on a long race, except that their ships have been modified for the fluid-but-greatly-different conditions on the planet Jupiter's surface.  In spite of feeling over my head about the technical details, the author spun a very exciting tale about peril and rescue on the high "seas"...

THE MIRACLE OF IVAR AVENUE by John Kessel

After a Hollywood producer's corpse is fished out of the water, the investigator is surprised to discover that, even with the body convincingly identified, the producer himself is still alive and thriving.  Two identical bodies, the same person, what a mystery!  Well, it's solved of course, and as with today's other two stories, this one reminded me of something else: that comeback 2009 Star Trek movie starring Chris Pine...and the two Spocks...

Next week I will continue looking back at the year 1996 in short science fiction...

The End of the World as We Know It

Ever since COVID-19 made its grand entrance into our collective lives in early 2020, I have had the uneasy feeling of society's decline, both in terms of economic vitality and of people's will to succeed.  I know that's got to be difficult to measure or wrap your mind around, but it's a composite of a number of things.  For one, it seems that every business that used to operate later into the night now closes up measurably earlier, for some painfully early.  Housing and transportation costs have skyrocketed...young people nowadays must have a terrible ordeal with the narrowing choices they have for getting themselves independently established on a shoestring budget.  The availability of prompt medical and dental care...outside of emergency rooms and clinics...has deteriorated, with the professionals breaking appointments with patients and throwing their needed care sometimes months further into the future, and of course the costs of said care are soaring.  Speaking of decline, is it just my own subjective perception but are people more and more prone to voluntarily letting themselves get brainwashed politically by the mass and social media that they have now on their fingertips?  Furthermore, have people now redefined their view of reality itself to encompass virtual, digital realms instead of what is actually physically out there?  There's more I'm seeing as well, and it ain't getting any better, folks...but at least I'm still getting by (so far).  As Michael Stipe of R.E.M. prophetically wrote in a 1988 song, "It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine"...

Sports Coverage Biased Toward Faders over Finishers

As has been my general habit on weekends when a special event or traveling wasn't happening, I was watching the ongoing PGA tournament, this one being the RBC Heritage Classic taking place at pretty Hilton Head Island, South Carolina.  Already a little peeved with overdone coverage last week of Tiger Woods at the Masters in Augusta when his performance was predictably lagging behind most of the other golfers there, I noticed something else that bothered me...but this time I can't really blame the network coverage.  It's like this in a lot of sports, I imagine.  For most of the event, the coverage is on the small group of leaders of the field, to the general exclusion of those behind...even the ones just outside the top few.  Then inevitably some of the leaders toward the event's tail end fall back and someone surges at the end, virtually ignored throughout the event but there they are at the end right near the top.  I think this is unfair to the participants who have the bigger view in mind with a strong finish and high placing since they don't get all the ongoing coverage that the faster starters get.  Just one example: in this past weekend's golf event, Scottie Scheffler ended up running away with the title, but along with the deserved coverage of him there was a lot of attention to Tom Hoge challenging much of the time, only to collapse the last day and end up 11 strokes back and tied for 18th.  Meanwhile, Sahith Theegala and Wyndham Clark, practically ignored the entire tournament on TV although they were always playing competitively, surged on Sunday and ended up finishing in 2nd and 3rd place, respectively.  But it was Hoge who got the lion's share of publicity and was able to build up his brand and recognition...and to me that's not fair.  It's like that in racing as well, whether it's horses, autos, running, you name it.  For the contestant who comes strong at the end, if they don't manage to win the event outright, they tend to be completely forgotten while the ones who stick with the top pack for a while but then fade get remembered more.  Oh well, what can you do...

Using Own Blog Writing to Study Other Languages

I'm using my own writing, here on this very blog, to practice reading and building up (very gradually) comprehensible vocabulary in other languages, specifically Spanish, Russian and Chinese.  I'm using Google's easy translation device, available in the taskbar on the right upper corner of my screen. I copied and pasted each translation of today's article to present a kind of Rosetta Stone of the four different languages, giving me the opportunity to filter out the words and phrases I still need to acquire...

Estoy usando mi propia escritura, aquí en este mismo blog, para practicar la lectura y desarrollarla (muy gradualmente)...vocabulario comprensible en otros idiomas, concretamente español, ruso y chino. Estoy usando el dispositivo de traducción fácil de Google, disponible en la barra de tareas en la esquina superior derecha de mi pantalla. Copié y pegué cada traducción del artículo de hoy para presentar una especie de Piedra Rosetta de los cuatro idiomas diferentes, dándome la oportunidad de filtrar las palabras y frases que aún necesito adquirir...

Я использую свои собственные тексты здесь, в этом самом блоге, чтобы практиковаться в чтении и построении (очень постепенно)...понятный словарный запас на других языках, особенно на испанском, русском и китайском. Я использую простое устройство перевода Google, доступное на панели задач в правом верхнем углу экрана. Я скопировал и вставил каждый перевод сегодняшней статьи, чтобы представить своего рода Розеттский камень четырех разных языков, давая мне возможность отфильтровать слова и фразы, которые мне еще нужно усвоить...

我正在用我自己的寫作，在這個部落格上，來練習閱讀和累積（非常逐漸地）

其他語言的可理解詞彙，特別是西班牙語、俄語和漢語。 我正在使用 Google 的簡易翻譯設備，該設備位於螢幕右上角的任務欄中。 我複製並貼上了今天文章的每個翻譯，以呈現四種不同語言的羅塞塔石碑，讓我有機會過濾掉我仍然需要掌握的單字和短語...

Wǒ zhèngzài yòng wǒ zìjǐ de xiězuò, zài zhège bùluò gé shàng, lái liànxí yuèdú hé lěijī (fēicháng zhújiàn de) qítā yǔyán de kě lǐjiě cíhuì, tèbié shì xībānyá yǔ, èyǔ hé hànyǔ. Wǒ zhèngzài shǐyòng Google de jiǎnyì fānyì shèbèi, gāi shèbèi wèiyú yíngmù yòushàng jiǎo de rènwù lán zhōng. Wǒ fùzhì bìng tiē shàngle jīntiān wénzhāng de měi gè fānyì, yǐ chéngxiàn sì zhǒng bùtóng yǔyán de luó sāi tǎ shíbēi, ràng wǒ yǒu jīhuì guòlǜ diào wǒ réngrán xūyào zhǎngwò de dānzì hé duǎn yǔ...

For Chinese I used the Traditional script although the more commonly used Simplified is also available.  I liked the feature for Chinese translation that Google provides for the pinyin transliteration...very helpful.  This is still a work in progress because the aforementioned taskbar didn't quite work as I had planned and I had to copy and paste my English article to another Google Translate site, which worked quite well.  It's true that you can easily use instant translation programs to translate whole pages from one language to another, but I find it more more useful to see them at the same time side-by-side, and I like that pinyin for the Chinese...

Walked Today's Gainesville Depot Parkrun 5K

It's been a while since I speed-walked the Depot Parkrun 5K here in Gainesville, although for nearly a year I had intended to do it on a monthly basis.  Instead, today was only my third go at it, with the previous effort happening last December.  That doesn't mean I haven't been working on my walking during this period, and I recently decided to try again to get in at least one speed-walk per month.  So this morning I intentionally walked the four-lap, 3.1 mile course to see how fast I could do it.  The temperature at 7:30, when the race began, was 64 with a 99% humidity and a lifting fog.  I chugged along and ended up shredding my previous walking finish with a time of 39:43.  I wasn't in the least bit tired or winded and hardly broke a sweat, yet I did sense a limit that my body has yet to surpass in my walking progress to achieve a higher speed on solid ground, instead of a treadmill.  I think that an investment in longer distance walking on neighborhood personally-designed courses is the prescription for me to take it to a substantially higher level.  Click HERE to see today's results...

Quote of the Week...from The Weather Company

 Most of the evidence is lined up to suggest a very active and very impactful hurricane season in 2024.      

                                                            ---The Weather Company

The Weather Company is the organization behind The Weather Channel, probably my favorite channel on television when it isn't running those annoying weekend series instead of giving me the current weather like it's supposed to.  Yesterday morning they mentioned that it was only 44 days until the Atlantic hurricane season begins in 2024, and the prediction is: 24 named tropical storms, 11 full-blown hurricanes, and 6 major hurricanes.  That's a very high set of figures, indeed, and will...if it happens...spill over into the second round of designated names (no more Alphas or Betas).  The given reason is twofold: the La Nina effect has returned with cool waters in the eastern Pacific Ocean...supposedly an indicator of a strong Atlantic storm season.  And the measured Atlantic waters this year have been much warmer than usual, creating a dangerous environment generally favorable for strong and multiple storm development.  None of this, naturally, is anything I want to be hearing.  We barely dodged a direct hit from Idalia last year, and I'm not looking forward to more of this trouble...

Making Wednesday a "Neighborhood Run" Day

Keeping in line with my desire to expand and structure my running and walking to encompass set courses around my neighborhood, independent of "official" races, I did a mid-week walk-run in my northern Gainesville home subdivision of Northwood Pines, along with the adjacent Northwood Oaks.  I've done this course, which amounts to a 3.3-mile loop, a number of times.  It's the closest thing in my mind to the old Davie, Florida 2.9-mile looped course that encompassed my old elementary school (Nova Blanche Forman), junior and senior high school (Nova) and junior college (Broward Community College).  My plan is to either run this course each Wednesday or speed-walk it, as I gradually increase the distance.  Since I work through the weekdays and report in during the early afternoon, my Wednesday outings are late in the morning.  Yesterday the average temperature during my run-walk was 75 degrees with a 65% humidity.  I split my run:walk ratio at 2:1 and finished with a time of 33:40. I also am thinking of going out, when circumstances allow, on Sunday afternoons for longer run/walks.  Should be interesting...

Weekly Short Stories: 1996 Science Fiction, Part 2

Now that I've gotten past the first...probably of several...full-blown novellas in Gardner Dozois' anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Fourteenth Annual Collection, featuring his selections of others' works from 1996, I can review a few genuinely short stories.  To me 1996 was the year that we had a little baby, Rebecca, and our dear son Will, then 5-6 years old.  Now they are young adults and very precious to Melissa and me: we are very proud of them!  But enough of that mushy stuff about my family, back to those sci-fi tales, which tend to steer in the opposite direction, as the titles of all three would suggest...

THE DEAD by Michael Stanwick

This story is, I believe, a play on the notion that automation and machines are taking the livelihoods away from people and thus ruining their lives...those promoting their use instead point to greater work efficiency and the elimination of boring jobs.  Instead, here is a future when the dead themselves are resurrected as programmable zombies to perform menial functions.  On the other hand, I wonder, if they were human-appearing robots would they be any more acceptable?  A truly gross tale, both about the corpses everywhere and of corporate greed and intrigues...

THE FLOWERS OF AULIT PRISON by Nancy Kress

Our Earth's  medical science gets transplanted to a different world and abused to fit their own social power structures and culture, leading a young woman to think she isn't real because she killed her sister and must atone by going to prison to be an informer.  But did she really kill her sister? A complicated story that I still don't completely understand...

A DRY, QUIET WAR by Tony Daniel

A soldier returns after twenty years of fighting billions of years into the future at the end of the universe, only to find his own world...split among the beer brewers and liquor distillers...invaded by other soldiers coming from that same future.  A very creepy...and multidimensional and "multitemporal" tale, it reminded me a bit of that Douglas Adams restaurant at the end of the universe with its logic (or lack thereof),,,

Next week: more science fiction discussed from 1996...

From Own Experience, Work Settings Can Affect Social Attitudes

Over the course of my own work experience, I had been in different social situations, by that meaning that my assignments have been structured at times to where co-workers (and myself) work in regular, close proximity to one another to the point where regular conversation is not only available, but seems almost mandatory...if you don't want to appear antisocial to the others, that is.  In other scenarios, employees sometimes work side-by-side but mostly are on their own to perform their assignments, with space between them tending to be the rule rather than the exception.  It is this latter format that I have been enjoying for more than ten years at my workplace, and I have to say that it has been a blessing to me.  I also have noticed over the course of my now-37+ years working there that when people work "too" physically closely together for regular, long stretches that in those areas I pick up on a lot of negativity, dissension, gossiping and generally nasty attitudes coming from a lot of them.  There are some positions that, on the surface, may seem to be attractive were it not for this bunching together of workers, making for pressure to conform to others' negative and manipulative behavior patterns.  Better to be a freer spirit with one's own clear-cut objectives to get through the working day, that is, if you're able to choose that kind of assignment...

Podcaster Discusses Self-Disclpline

I've probably written here before about self-discipline and some steps that podcaster Rob Dial recommends to instill it.  His steps are pretty straightforward: one, finish what you started, not letting stuff linger afterwards to accumulate.  Two, plan ahead...making the actual execution of the task as easy and convenient as possible.  Three, design your environment...also making the required activity as effective, without obstacles and unnecessary distractions or interruptions, Four, focus on progress and not perfection...you're not trying to be the champ, but even a champion like Masters golf tournament winner Scottie Scheffler had his share of bogeys over the course of the 72 holes this past weekend.  And five, reward yourself for sticking with the program...taking strategic breaks is a positive step.  I've heard all this before but Dial reviewed it this morning and, at least for my own sake, thought it worthy of repeating.  With discipline, Rob Dial isn't talking for high achievers alone, but also for anyone who wants to raise the level of their living and invest in a better personal future...

Enjoyed Watching The Masters Tournament This Weekend

Congratulations to Scottie Scheffler for winning his second Masters golf title.  The course in Augusta, Georgia seems nearly impossible to fathom, but Scheffler somehow managed to secure a four-stroke victory over young Ludvig Åberg from Sweden with an eleven-under-par final score.  I had a great time watching Scheffler, Åberg, Collin Morikawa, Max Homa and other challengers shuffle around in the standings...and around the often confounding course.  Although most of the contestants were in the mainstream PGA tour, there were some from the breakaway LIV tour as well...Bryson DeChambeau and Cameron Smith doing the best among them.  I'd like to watch some LIV events in the future...possibly I'll get to see them on the CW channel.  In any event, I've come to enjoy watching golf on TV, although as I've stated before I never played the game beyond miniature golf and I don't think I'd ever want to count myself as one of the on-site spectators crowding around to catch some of the action... 

Ran Gainesville's Depot Park 5K This Morning

In Gainesville, Florida...as well as five other locations in Florida, every week we have a free 5K run/walk in which the finishers are timed with the results posted online.  Here it takes place in Depot Park, a few blocks south of downtown, and is appropriately called the Depot Parkrun.  The Parkrun concept originated in England where it is much more strongly entrenched while it is growing in the USA.  Volunteer-run, participation is free: you sign up online and they give you a barcode that you print and take to the race with you for scanning.  This morning was my 38th finish since 2019 when I started doing Parkruns.  The weather was pleasant at around 52 degrees with a tolerable 70% humidity.  I had already decided to run the 5K (3.1 mile) course when weather conditions were hospitable and walk it more as temperatures and humidity climb along with the approach of late spring and summer.  So while Melissa accompanied me today, she walked the entire course while I ran it, taking customary brief walking breaks at two different stages in the race.  My finishing time was 28:47...not my fastest, but quite acceptable to me: click HERE to see the complete posted results.  I'd like to get a Parkrun speed-walk in this month, so maybe I'll see if I can't get back here next Saturday to do just that...

Quote of the Week...from Soren Kirkegaard

Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.                               Soren Kirkegaard.

Soren Kirkegaard was a 19th century theologian and philosopher from Denmark.  Rob Dial, a personal development coach, used his above quote on a recent podcast while discussing the roles, both helpful and harmful, that anxiety plays in people's lives. According to Dial, it is our response to anxiety and the degree to which we make our own life choices, taking responsibility for them, that will eventually quiet our anxiety.  But I also just read the book Essentialism by Greg McKeown, which included being responsible for one's choices as a necessity for reducing our lives to the highest standards.  Both viewpoints involve stepping up to the plate and embracing choice and freedom instead of letting others choose for us and consequently run our lives instead of ourselves.  So while anxiety doesn't necessarily feel good, it also can be symptomatic of an effective and courageous life...just as long as it doesn't get out of control...  

Masters Golf Tournament Ongoing

I'm looking forward the next three days to watching the prestigious and over-hyped Masters golf tournament, taking place in Augusta, Georgia.  Thursday was opening day with action delayed a couple of hours due to bad weather (it afflicted us as well in Florida)...hopefully all will be straightened out tomorrow and we'll be able to tell who the real leaders are.  Not that I'm going to sit back in my living room and crash on golf, mind you, but it will be fun to keep up with my favorite players and see how they tackle the various challenging holes... 

Weekly Short Stories: 1996 Science Fiction, Part 1

This week I began another year of short science fiction as I move on to another book in the Gardner Dozois anthology series The Year's Best Science Fiction, this one titled Fourteenth Annual Collection and covering 1996.  His first selection for this volume, as is his apparent preference, is yet another long novella...

IMMERSION by Gregory Bensford

In the not-so-distant future, a scientist has published an academic paper putting him at odds with a European crime organization...he now seems to be a hit target of theirs.  Going with his girlfriend to Africa for relief and escape, they find themselves caught up in "immersion", in which their essences are temporarily installed in the bodies of certain selected and modified chimpanzees.  Enjoying the sometimes disturbing experiences, they repeat the immersions until one day they find themselves stuck in the chimps, unable to return.  This story may sound too familiar when considering the Matrix movie that came out only three years later.  But consciousness transfer to other places has long been a recurring feature in science fiction...it figured prominently in Clifford Simak's City novel nearly fifty years earlier.  This story by Bensford was written clearly and easy to follow, building up the kind of suspense that I expect from good sci-fi tales...

Next week I'll see if I can't come up with more, hopefully shorter, stories from 1996...

About Monday's Solar Eclipse

Yesterday a solar eclipse occurred, this time affecting a large section of the United States.  The path of the total eclipse was restricted to a curving belt going northeast from Texas, while here in northern Florida we were able to view a partial eclipse, all taking place in early-to-mid-afternoon. In Gainesville where it happened while I was at work, the skies were partially overcast, which didn't help.  A solar eclipse happens when the moon gets between the sun and Earth, covering up the former to the extent that blockage is more complete from our perspective.  So when you're observing a solar eclipse...hopefully through filter glasses or one of those pinhole box devices...you're not just seeing the sun, but also the "dark side" of the moon.  So is it a coincidence that Eclipse is the final track to Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon album?  I hardly think so.  Usually I'm the one going around talking up an eclipse to those around me, but this time I shrugged and said to myself (and others), I'll just wait for the pictures and look at them. Now I wonder what they're going to do with all those cheap filter paper-and-plastic glasses that piled up?  You know, all you people who think you want see another solar eclipse in your lifetime, it's probably a better idea to just read up on them and how folks through history reacted...usually pretty unfavorably! But if events like these spur some young people to take a more active interest in astronomy, then I'm all for it...

A Fork in the Road with my Running

I mentioned earlier on this blog that regardless of the outcome, yesterday's marathon in Hawthorne would be a fork in the road regarding my future running...and walking, for that matter.  After skipping it in the end for a number of reasons, severe insomnia being the chief one, it still holds true. Number one, I will not enter a future race that requires an extensive amount of preparation, including tapering my training for days beforehand and ingesting excessive carbs to build up glycogen stores.  I will avoid marathon races like Sunday's where organizers discourage walkers and place unreasonable caps on finishing times. This is because I've decided (after this fork in the road) that if I do any future marathons, walking will take up a substantial portion of my efforts.  Another outcome of this weekend is that I intend to be more selective about the races I sign up for and that I need to do more weekend outdoor training...equally mixed running and walking...in my surrounding neighborhoods, with a run/walk lasting possibly several hours.  The ratio of running to walking will depend in part on the weather conditions...I intend to be flexible in that regard. It's a shame that in north Central Florida, where we once had a tradition of two great marathon races...the Ocala Marathon and Gainesville's Five Points of Life Marathon...we're left with three races in Hawthorne, each covering the same remote trail eight times on a 3.27-mile-long there-and-back course with the organizers capping finishing times or discouraging walking...pathetic.  Well, I have my own priorities, and they exclude that sort of nonsense...  

Body Tells Me to Skip Today's Marathon Race

Today was going to be my return attempt at a marathon race, but during the last two days I suffered from a great amount of insomnia...and sleep deprivation is not an advisable preparation for running 26.2 miles.  So instead of arising at 5 this morning...with hardly any sleep...I decided to chill out and skip the event, precipitating a good, healthy night's sleep.  I'm disappointed that, although I seemed to be preparing for the race the way others advise, my own body ended up casting the crucial dissenting vote for participating in it.  I do like running, but at this stage in my life I think that half-marathons are probably going to be the maximum distance I'll be doing...

Volunteered at Gainesville's Depot Parkrun This Morning

Since I had already signed up to run another race tomorrow morning, I decided to forego my customary Saturday morning Depot Parkrun 5K and volunteer there, in the singular role of standing at the scanning table sorting the plastic little finishing tokens as they came in.  I've done it before and it doesn't require me downloading anything on my phone like some of the other roles do, so that's what I picked to do.  It all seemed to go well, but I did notice...in accordance with some of the ideas in Greg McKeown's book Essentialism that I just read...that there is a psychology, or perhaps better stated, an ideology here in the volunteer sector that places unreasonable demands on people who are already volunteering to keep saying "yes" to even more demands.  Something like this happened to me this morning, but I stood my ground and asserted my boundaries.  I don't think the attitudes of some of the people here necessarily stand out as bad, and I see this sort of thing in other areas in other groups: once you're pegged as a contributor, then instead of just saying thank you and being done with it they keep going on guilt-riding you into taking on and giving more and more...I was glad to get out of there when my "service" had ended.  Still, I get that fact that volunteers are who make events like the Parkrun possible and will most likely do more of this as the year goes on...

Quote of the Week...from Mark Twain

Golf is a good walk spoiled.                ---Mark Twain

I've quoted Mark Twain on this blog several times before...I don't think I've used the above one yet.  I have never played golf, not in the pure sense: I don't count miniature golf, which I think I'm reasonably good at (at least against others in my family). But I'd like to learn to play the big game...seems like it would be fun, as long as the players following me on the course have a lot of patience with me taking a lot of shots and time.  But I get what Twain wrote about golf...and walking, for that matter.  When I watch these major PGA golf tournaments on TV, most of the golfers seem way too intense and exhibit the utmost suffering when they miss a shot.  I'm getting to where I'm supporting the ones (like Scottie Scheffler) who just smile and shake their heads when their shots miss the hole or go flying into the water...it's just a game, dudes! As for walking, I can do that just fine...it's WHERE and WHEN I can go on a nice, long walk that I'm a little hung up on.  I still get a lot of cumulative steps in over the course of a day, but that's because my job and general lifestyle tend to be more active and ambulatory.  But just briskly walking somewhere...I'll never tire of that...