AM Radio Dx-ing

In late 1967, I was lying in my bed late at night listening to my transistor radio. Back then, almost anything worth listening to on the radio was on the AM band, with FM pretty much relegated to "elevator music" and school-run educational radio. South Florida's AM radio band was full of stations. I was just turning the tuning dial around to find something interesting. WFUN was one of my favorite rock stations, but it was based in South Miami and it's signal was weak at night to pick up. Still, I thought I had tuned it in to its frequency of 790 kilocycles, but a different station was on, and its signal was strong. There was Christian religious programming on it, which I enjoyed listening to. At the station break time, I found out that I was listening to Trans World Radio, broadcasting from the island of Bonaire in the Netherlands Antilles on 800 kc. Well, being a whiz kid in geography, I already knew where that was (in the Caribbean Sea just north of Venezuela) and was astounded that I could pick up a station that far away! So, I fiddled around the dial and came up with other stations like WBT-Charlotte, North Carolina on 1110, WSB-Atlanta, Georgia on 750, and WABC-New York on 770. After that, I began to use our larger, more sensitive family portable radio to pick up stations and began to compile a list. Thus began my hobby of AM dx-ing (dx is an abbreviation for "distance"). That Christmas, my parents went down to the local Walgreens and bought for me an inexpensive Juliette-model table radio. This radio was incredibly receptive! For a few weeks after that, I was adding many new stations to my list of "catches". Then it tapered off until one Sunday night in June, 1968, when I discovered that late Sunday nights, many stations went off the air for equipment testing and repair. Many of the frequencies blocked by strong local stations suddenly became opened up to pick up weaker, distant signals from other stations. Also, I found out that at this time, stations that only operated during daytime hours would come on the air with their equipment tests. That one night I think I picked up more than thirty new stations, and my dx-ing hobby was revitalized.

During that summer, I listened many, many hours at night hoping to pick up new stations. There were some obstacles to this. First, I couldn't understand Spanish then and living in South Florida, the AM radio band was packed with Cuban stations whose signals were overpowering and rarely left the air. Second, sports broadcasts and network shows like NBC Radio's Monitor program kept me from being able to pick up station id's, so I might be hearing a new station without ever knowing it. Third, there are six frequencies on the AM band, called "graveyard frequencies" (1230, 1240, 1340, 1400, 1450, and 1490), where, at night, if no local stations broadcast on them, then the frequency would be a massive jumbled mix of several stations from disparate places. And fourth, the summer of '68 marked the advent of interminably long songs such as Hey Jude, MacArthur Park, Those Were the Days, and Time Has Come Today. When I tuned in to a station that was playing one of these songs, by the time they were over, the station often had faded away and went unidentified. I'd also hear fragments that gave clues to either where a particular station without its call letters was or its call letters without its location. Then, one day I discovered that my father had an electronics hobbyist magazine that listed the U.S. AM stations by frequency! So, I was able to fill in many blanks and amass a couple of hundred stations in my radio log by the end of 1968.

While looking through my father's electronic magazine, I also discovered that dx-ers collected things called "verifications" which were acknowledgements from radio stations, in response to "reception reports" written them by the dx-ers that they were truly received. Usually these verifications took the form of little postcards called QSL-cards (also a hallmark of ham radio). Apparently, dx-ing is kind of like fishing in that if you tell a fellow dx-er (fisherman) that you received a certain station (caught a big fish) then just saying so meant nothing and proof was needed. Starting in 1969 I began to write reception reports and receive QSL's as well, but except for a good friend who shared this fun hobby with me, there was no real reason to keep doing it. I always had this idea in the back of my head, anyway, that, unlike with the case of amateur radio, the people at the radio stations were rather annoyed to receive my reception reports and requests for verification. And also, my enjoyment of dx-ing was personal and for the fun of the station-hunt!

I continued with my AM radio dx-ing off and on until about 1974. I used the same old radio throughout. The farthest station I received was 740-KCBS in San Francisco. I still have my station log book and all of the QSL's.

Existence, Skeptics, and Subjectivity

I have heard and read from many who refuse to subscribe to any belief pertaining to the ultimate nature of our existence except in terms of what the accepted current cumulative body of science has proven. When talk comes up about a person's sense of self, inevitably the response, with some possible variations, is that all that a person thinks or feels is determined by biochemical processes in their own body, particularly in their nervous system, and acted on by the other systems as well. Perhaps works are sited that show a person's spiritual experiences to correspond to heightened neural activity in specific parts of the brain.

Another objection these skeptics have to any nonmaterialistic view of existence, such as religion or spiritualism, is that they cannot accept knowledge of something that transcends our studied physical plane, especially when it concerns our mortality, by relying on the words of people who have claimed, whether it be from the ancient past or in the present, that they were closer to God (or, in the words of Desiderata, whatever they conceive him to be) then other people. For they see prophets, priests, shamans, imams, gurus, lamas, and all of the others who play this type of role as ordinary human beings tied to this material life and who are no further removed than anyone else from its restrictions, most importantly the restriction of eventual death. But the same skeptics should understand that this conclusion about religions and their leaders neither proves nor disproves the content of what the religions espouse. Subjective religious experience is valid and real for those who experience it. Which brings me to the problem I have with the first conjecture.

The problem I have with the explanation that all subjective experiences that an individual may have can ultimately be explained through biology and chemistry is that it is incomplete. Woefully incomplete, for there is a fundamental question that underlies the spiritual quest for meaning that I have not heard being asked. That question is not "Who am I?" or "What is my purpose in life?" (both obviously very important questions), but rather "What is the here and now?". This question can only be answered accurately by the person asking it and cannot be generalized or explained away. The answer is spiritual and real and it inspires a second question, "Why am I here and now, instead of there (another place, body) or then (another time)?" Science cannot answer the first question, and since the second follows directly from the first, it cannot answer either. For within the tenants of the philosophy of scientific investigation, the "here and now" is imbedded within the axiomatic role of the observer, a separate role on which depends the entire body of observed, empirical results of experiments that the totality of scientific expression rests. It also lies unanalyzed within the scientific process, not only as designer of the hypothesis and writer of the report, but also as the creative dreamer who conceives of which topic to investigate according to its relevance to science and society.

A doubter to this proposition may respond that any person's sense of here and now is due to their body's biochemistry, but this doesn't begin to address either the question of "what does here and now mean", or the corollary question of "why am I here at this time in this body and not someone else at another time?" I can address these questions by giving an honest answer: "I don't know! ---But I'm working on it."

One final point: when I earlier chose "skeptic" as a depiction, I used it not disparagingly, but rather to describe a generic belief system that many people abide by that discounts anything unproven by established science. However, there is a more precise usage of this term, whereby a skeptic does not necessarily believe something is untrue if scientifically unproven but rather objects to the unproven being portrayed as scientific. In this narrower definition I am a skeptic, too, acknowledging at the same time that reality cannot in its entirety be explained by science.

Sixties Sports As I Saw It

My first exposure to spectator sports began when I began to copy my father in collecting baseball cards from the backs of Post cereal boxes. He had already amassed a big collection, and he helped me out by giving me cards and letting me get some off the new cereal boxes. Actually, since I was only about six years old, that's just about the only way I could have collected them. One day, he took me to see the New York Yankees spring training camp in Fort Lauderdale. They were still winning the American League pennant almost every year and had their top stars like Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris at the camp. My father tried to point out the players to me and what they were doing, but (according to his recollection) all I wanted to do was whine because I had forgotten to bring my baseball cards with me! My interest in baseball cards gradually faded and it wasn't until the 1965 World Series between the Los Angeles Dodgers (who won it) and the Minnesota Twins, that I actually sat down and started seriously watching the game as it was played. Somehow, I missed the entire 1966 season. Starting around 1967, I became more interested in spectator sports. I remember the exciting World Series that year between Carl Yastrzemski's Boston Red Sox and the legendary St. Louis Cardinals with Bob Gibson and Lou Brock.

During the NFL season that year, I got caught up in the divisional race between the Los Angeles Rams and the Baltimore Colts. The Colts, with Johnny Unitas as quarterback and Don Shula as coach, were undefeated that year, going into the regular-season ending game against their rivals with an 11-0-2 record. They had been my mother's favorite team for some time, too. But they lost that last game to the Rams, who ended up with an identical 11-1-2 record and beat the Colts in the tie-breaker to go on to the playoffs. Meanwhile, the Green Bay Packers, in their last glory-season under legendary coach Vince Lombardi, limped through their regular season and easily won their weak division with four losses. But they regained their preeminence in the playoffs, first easily knocking off Los Angeles and then winning the famous "Ice Bowl" game against the Dallas Cowboys with last minute heroics 21-17 for their second straight Super Bowl trip, which they easily won 33-14 over Daryle Lamonica's Oakland Raiders.

It wasn't until the following year that I really started following both college and professional football, from season's beginning to its end and from the viewpoint of a state of Florida fan. I rooted for Florida State, the University of Florida, the University of Miami, and the Miami Dolphins. The Dolphins were in their third year of existence under coach George Wilson and had a very good year (5-8-1) with that in mind. They were already forming the nucleus of the great Super Bowl teams of the early 1970s, especially with their offensive line, "no-namers" on defense, young quarterback Bob Griese, and running backs Jim Kiick and Larry Csonka (who I remember broke his nose that year). This was the year that the New York Jets stunned the Baltimore Colts 16-7 in the Super Bowl (I was rooting for the losers in that TV-blacked out game held in Miami). In college, the Miami Hurricanes started out well under coach Charlie Tate, although their early opponent USC ran all over them with their star running back O.J. Simpson. But a late season slump ended their year at a disappointing 5-5 and coach Tate retired after the season. The University of Florida had a moderately successful season (6-3-1), beating both of their cross-state rivals but getting creamed by Georgia. FSU, although they lost to Florida, had a great season at 8-3, winning a stunner at home over Houston (which had beaten other teams by 77-3 and 100-6 scores) 40-20 after leading at halftime 25-0. The Seminole offense was lead by the explosive quarterback/receiver combination of Bill Cappleman and Ron Sellers. Sellers would later star for the New England Patriots. FSU played in the first Peach Bowl ever in Atlanta, although they lost it to LSU 31-27. At that time, they were my favorite college team.

1968 also saw an extremely pitching-dominated season in major league baseball, where Denny McLain won 31 games for the Detroit Tigers and Bob Gibson pitched with a sizzling 1.12 ERA for the St. Louis Cardinals, who played for a second straight world series championship, this time against Detroit. But the Tigers, after being down three games to one, won the last three games and the Series, due largely to their other star pitcher, Mickey Lolich.

The spring of 1968 experienced my first watching of the Triple Crown in horse racing. I saw Dancer's Image win the Kentucky Derby, only to be disqualified with Forward Pass declared the winner. Then, Forward Pass won the Preakness outright, while Dancer's Image was disqualified yet again but for a different reason. So when the Belmont came around there was a good chance we would see a Triple Crown winner for the first time since 1948 (and in my first year of watching it). But the length of the Belmont course showed itself to be a big factor as Stage Door Johnny outlasted Forward Pass and the rest of the field to win it.

1968 was also the year of the first Olympic Games (winter and summer) that I ever saw, but I don't remember very much except that ice skater Peggy Fleming won the only U.S. gold medal in the winter games. I did get the feeling, even at that early point, that the games seemed to be more about the countries than about the actual athletes and their sports. Unfortunately, this feeling has yet to waver even to this day.

I did not begin to follow basketball until the fall of 1968, when the American Basketball Association's Minnesota Muskies decided they could do better down south and became the Miami Floridians (I still can't get over that stupid nickname) for the 1968-69 season. But I'll leave that for another time...

Asheville Trip

Last year, my family and I travelled to Asheville, North Carolina for vacation. We enjoyed ourselves visiting the Biltmore House, travelling along the Blue Ridge Parkway, and even crossing into Tennessee to spend a day at Dollywood.

We decided to make our Blue Ridge Parkway (which cuts right through Asheville) excursion going westward a few miles. The scenery was magnificent and we stopped at some places for picture-taking. We finally stopped at a town called Waynesville, where we were going to have lunch in a restaurant featured in their promotional brochure that we had. Only when we got there, that restaurant had shut down and other places were closed on account of it being Sunday. Finally, we found a very good family restaurant along that downtown strip and ate lunch. We decided that we would use the Interstate to drive back to Asheville. After leaving the downtown parking lot, turning the corner and going down a road a little bit, we saw stretching up and down the street a large number of eating places of the sort you'd see anywhere. And we were worried that we wouldn't find anything!

We went to Dollywood via the Smoky Mountain National Park. Dollywood is a wonderful, laid-back park that has something for everyone. There are musical, comedy, and kiddie shows going on all the time. There is a blacksmith demonstration as well as many craft centers. The rides varied in quality. I did not like the Tennessee Tornado steel roller coaster because it was too rough and pulled on my neck too much. Blazing Fury was a fun little indoor themed ride. The water rides were fine but we had to wait in long lines for those. There was an imposing-looking ride called Timber Tower that was really pretty mild to ride. But the ride that really impressed me was their wooden roller coaster Thunderhead. It combined smoothness with great drops, speed, and turns.

Although Dollywood was a pleasant experience, the drive back from Dollywood was harrowing, even though we took the Interstate back into North Carolina. It was dark and raining hard by the time we crossed over from Tennessee into North Carolina, with my wife driving and me navigating with a map. And, although we were on I-40, the road curved and dipped very treacherously. The visibility was very poor. To make things worse, the road was full of extremely huge semis driving like it was the Daytona Speedway! Just when it looked like we couldn't see our way at all, one of these trucks passed us and shortly thereafter turned off the road. We followed it into a rest stop that we never would have noticed if the semi hadn't led us there. We all got out, walked around, went to the restroom and bought some vending machine items. I looked at the "you are here" map that was posted. It was then that I discovered that we were only halfway through "The Gorge"! Despite that, the rest of the ride back, although difficult, was better. There was a bit of praying going on during that ride!

We toured Biltmore House, too. The four of us used their "headset" tour that really told us details about its history and its rooms we never would have known otherwise. I thought that if Disney ever bought that place they'd put in some of their audio-animatronics ("mechanized people") to make the rooms seem more "alive"!

Asheville is a very pretty town. The people living there should be proud of it. They also have a campus of the University of North Carolina there that we visited. In some parts of Asheville, though, you have to watch where you're walking or else you may suddenly find yourself tumbling down a steep hill!

This trip actually marked the first occasion ever that I flew in an airplane! We flew from Gainesville, Florida to Atlanta and then to Asheville. From all of the horror stories about delays and security check humiliations, I was pleasantly surprised at how smoothly the entire experience went. However, I am glad I had gotten some training with thrill rides at nearby theme parks the previous couple of years! The only outstanding problem I noticed anywhere was that, in the Atlanta terminal, the women's restroom always had a long line going way out into the terminal hallway. I hope they alleviated that problem for the sake of the female passengers. The four flights we took on our round trip all were on small Delta planes, not the bigger jets. The people working at the airport and on the planes were all true professionals who went about their job assignments calmly, politely, and confidently. I say this because a few days after we got back home from our trip, news came out that a plane of the same design as ours crashed taking off from Lexington, Kentucky, erupting into fire and killing its passengers. The pilot had taken off on the short runway there that was intended only for small private planes like Cessnas. Both the copilot and the assigned air traffic controller were distracted doing other things at the moment the pilot made his fatal decision to turn down the wrong runway. I looked at my Google Earth satellite shot of the Lexington Airport, and I couldn't fathom how anyone could have made such a stupid mistake. The entire airport had only two runways, and the long one was much longer and more prominent than the short one.

Maybe in the future, the next time I have the opportunity to fly, I'll just blow over that Lexington accident as a statistical fluke. But for now I'll just stick with my thrill rides. Or just watch my DVD of Airplane!

Science Education Initiative

There was a debate taking place on the U.S. Senate floor yesterday about the need to mobilize ourselves as a nation and push for greater science and math education with increased federal funding. The reason given is that we are graduating a paltry amount of engineers and scientists compared to China and India while nationwide our children's performance on standardized tests in science and math is very low, compared to several other countries. We, say the senators, can look back in history after the Soviets successfully launched their Sputnik satellite into space in 1957 and our reaction to that as a guide for what to do. At that time, the Eisenhower and Kennedy presidencies signed bills passed by Congress greatly increasing the funding for more science and math education. Our heightened call to competitiveness dramatically culminated in a series of successful moon landings from 1969 to 1973 and kept our general level of technology far ahead of our competitors.

I agree that we should push for more and better education in science, engineering, and mathematics. However, it must be noted that a great political initiative like this is much more likely to succeed if there is a punctuated, dramatic event that provokes it. Sputnik was one such event. The 9/11 attack on our country was another that changed the political climate dramatically enough to push through other big changes, be they ultimately for better or for worse.

I remember throughout elementary school being shown films from a science education series funded by Bell Telephone and probably the government. These films, starring bald, bespectacled scientist/educator Dr. Frank Baxter, were produced in that post-Sputnik period that spurred political and nationwide interest in science. It featured very compelling and inspiring films about time, the sun, the weather, our heart and circulatory system, our nervous system, cosmic rays (as an introduction to subatomic physics), DNA and heredity, and language (I probably left out one or two). Another example of what happened then was when science fiction writer Isaac Asimov responded to Sputnik by embarking on a new career of prolifically writing primarily non-fiction science education books that introduced basic principles and facts in the various disciplines without drowning the reader (presumed to be a newcomer to the field) in intricate mathematics.

So, it is not enough to see a problem like this and pour a lot of money into it. That may be a necessary component of the solution, of course, but there are two other components to success as well. First, the problem in our nation's science education needs to be portrayed somehow in a vivid way that can, like Sputnik, serve as a symbol. Short of the Chinese landing their astronauts on the moon, I don't see this happening soon. Second, science education in the elementary and secondary school levels has to convey encouragement and inspiration beyond the technical expertise in the concerned areas. Besides television shows like Nova and some on the Discovery Channel that depict the excitement and fulfillment underlying scientific discoveries, I believe that this area is lacking as well. But the current undertaking is worthwhile nevertheless. And, with the financial underpinning in place, events may transpire that provide the social impetus to value these important educational fields as an indispensable investment in our national future.

Comets

When I was a senior in high school, one of the science news stories that occasionally appeared in the media, always buried under mountains of Watergate items, was the discovery and impending passing-by of the purportedly spectacular Comet Kohoutek, only a short time before discovered by a Czech astronomer. Comets bright enough to be visible to the naked eye, we were told, were exceedingly rare, and the only one that had been expected in the foreseeable future was Halley's in 1986. So there was a lot of hype going on about Kohoutek in 1973. My high school astronomy club even got hold of a good telescope that they used to go out into the local community and offer public viewing. But to the unaided eye, when this comet actually came, it was barely visible, and in urban settings, invisible. The aftermath saw Comet Kohoutek treated as a letdown, an act that fizzled like a fireworks display full of duds. So comet fever disappeared as the population turned away from the sky and got more into themselves during the 70's "me" decade.

Now let's fast-forward a little to late in 1975, when reports began to surface that a newly discovered comet, named Comet West, was going to be visible early the following year. Not surprisingly, no one seemed interested. But I was. In March, 1976, anyone who just walked outside a little before sunrise and looked eastward a few degrees above the treetops would have seen Comet West streaking across the sky! It looked as if someone had taken a very thick stick of chalk and smeared the sky with it. However, even though this show was spectacular, it went almost ignored in the media.

I had thought from much earlier on in my life that Halley's Comet would have looked like that display presented by Comet West. Ironically, when it did show up in late 1985 through early 1986, Halley's "bombed" (for its visual effect) just as Kohoutek twelve years earlier. In late 1985, I was able, though, to cross the street from my apartment each evening where a big field was (since then plugged up with a Wal-Mart and a Lowe's) and, with the help of my binoculars and my Field Guide to the Stars, locate and plot Halley's Comet's path through the constellations Aquarius and Pisces. But it was nothing compared to Comet West. To this day I have yet to speak to anyone outside my family who knows what I am talking about when I mention Comet West, a most spectacular comet!

A comet of this visual impact wouldn't appear again until 1996-1997, when we were greeted with the presence of two of them: Comets Hyakutake and Hale-Bopp. An amateur astronomer took a photograph of the latter during its approach that showed a common optical photographic effect of lines jutting sideways from a background star. I had seen this effect many times in the past and knew it for what it was. But some opportunistic people in the media who should have known better allowed the disinformation to be broadcast that this was an alien craft. And the leader of an insulated west-coast cult named Heaven's Gate took this as the sign that a spaceship was going to take them up. The cult members committed mass suicide because they thought it would release themselves from their bodies to join up with their alien buddies. Later, the involved media figures all made out like they were being unfairly targeted for criticism for promoting the asinine Hale-Bopp spaceship notion that led to this tragedy.

Earlier this year, for Southern hemisphere observers, Comet McNaught lit up the night sky. It earlier had a brief time of visibility in the Northern hemisphere as well, but I missed it. I think sometimes the simple day-to-day exigencies of living cause me to miss opportunities for experiences (like seeing comets) that could have enriched my life more. Since astronomy is an interest of mine, a little more consistent attention given to magazines like Sky and Telescope and Astronomy (or finding a dependable astronomy website) seems to be a awfully good idea! After all, you can't always depend on the general media to get you the information you're looking for in a timely and accurate manner.

Favorite Songs: #30 to #28

Ever since I learned to write things down, I've been making lists. And one of my favorite things is to make lists of my favorite things! Since beginning to follow popular music in the early-to-mid 1960s, I've rated and listed the music I liked. This has been going on more or less for over forty years now, with some gaps in there when I wasn't listening much to the radio. I've looked over my lists of hundreds of favorite songs over the years and picked out my "Top Thirty" list of all-time personal favorites, which I am going to reveal on this blog from time-to-time, going from #30 to #1. But since this is a "writing" blog, I will write some comments about each song as to what it means to me. This will be an ongoing project that I'll came back to from time to time. So, here we go with the first song:

#30 You by George Harrison (from Extra Texture, 1976)

When the Beatles hit the big time in America in 1964, people all around were asking each other, "Who is your favorite Beatle?" My answer then would be George Harrison. I liked his voice and his songs then. Two of my favorite tunes from 1964 were Happy Just to Dance with You and Devil In Her Heart, both sung by George. After the Beatles broke up in 1970, he came out with the blockbuster three-record album All Things Must Pass, which brought him both great artistic acclaim as well as very high expectations for his future works. Unfortunately, he couldn't keep up with those expectations and his later albums became successively less popular until several of them actually went out of print. Extra Texture was one of these. I never listened to most of the tracks on it, but I can say with certainty that if they were anything like You, then it would have been a better success. You was released as the promotional single to Extra Texture in 1976 and was a beautiful, emotional love song that made me feel happier after hearing it. George seemed to have two conflicting natures: on one hand, he tended to be reclusive in his private life, while on the other, he relished collaborating and "jamming" with other musicians on different projects. It was during those periods when he felt like he had to prove himself as an independent solo artist that, at least the way I see it, he showed the greatest strain in his recordings. But you would never know this from this wonderful track, You. By the way, Extra Texture is back in print, in CD-form, of course.

#29 Fall of the Peacemakers by Molly Hatchet (from No Guts, No Glory, 1983)

After John Lennon was shot to death in December, 1980, several artists who knew John well, such as Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Elton John, rushed in to write and record songs in his tribute. But, ironically, it took a died-in-the-wool rowdy Southern rock band like Molly Hatchet to pay the ultimate tribute with Fall of the Peacemakers, an unforgettable piece characterized by the repeating litany, "Stop the madness!" The somber mood is consistent throughout this lengthy song, which includes a long closing instrumental section after the singing is done. And this is one of the best closing instrumental jams I've heard, right up there on the same stage as the Allman Brothers' Rambling Man or Lynyrd Skynyrd's Free Bird. But what I like most about Fall of the Peacemakers is that it accomplishes what it sets out to do: deliver a heartfelt sense of appreciation for John Lennon, anguish for his death, and deep concern for the epidemic of gun violence in this country. Sadly, recent events render this song very timely today.

#28 Living for the City (full version) by Stevie Wonder (from Innervisions, 1973)

Don't settle for the shortened radio-play version of this song: to get the full impact of the drama contained within it, you need to listen to the complete version as it was intended to be heard. Living for the City depicts the lives of a poor African-American family from Mississippi who only encounter hardship there because of racial discrimination. Their son moves to New York to make a better life for himself, and he .... well, you have to listen to the song to find out what happens. Stevie really lays it on the line in Living for the City and pours out his feelings about the racial divide and injustice in his beloved country. This is a very disturbing song that is bound to provoke the listener into reflection long after it ends. And his singing is incredible! How can anyone hold a note that long?

More favorite songs to come...

Slippery Slopes

How many times have you heard or read arguments being made against changing something because it would begin a slide down a “slippery slope”? You can take almost any issue you want that involves a push to change something, and someone is bound to raise the specter of the fearsome consequences, as if doing something that is, by consensus, popular with people in general and seems rational and appropriate, would cause changes to accelerate uncontrollably until disastrous consequences result. Here are a few examples:

--In the 1970s, opponents used the slippery slope argument in arguing to defeat ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (which stated that a person’s rights could not be abridged because of his or her gender) by, among other things, suggesting that men and women would ultimately be forced under the ERA to share the same public restrooms.

--As the technology put into each successive generation of small arms becomes more advanced and deadly, there is a rational reaction to want to regulate their availability to the general public. But when any law is proposed to this effect, gun organizations and some owners say that this is but a step to the ultimate goal of the state confiscating everyone’s arms.

--The idea of teaching sex education in school with the aim of avoiding teen-age pregnancy and sexually-transmitted diseases, including AIDS, is a slippery slope promoting sexual behavior that will result in mass promiscuity.

--Any attempt by the government to regulate health insurance so that the population will be guaranteed universal coverage is the first step down the slippery slope of socialized medicine and state takeover of all medical institutions, with all freedom of choice eliminated and poor medical service provided.

--If embryonic stem-cell research is publicly funded, then this can only slide toward the nightmarish growth of an industry that grows and kills human beings for their body parts.

--The outlawing of the procedure in abortion known as intact dilation and extraction is but one step sliding down a slope toward the ultimate outcome of outlawing all abortions.

--If a community takes upon itself the compassionate goal of providing a more humane environment for its homeless population, then that will start the slippery slope slide of attracting others from outside, who then will hopelessly swamp that community and make it unlivable.

--Any sign of the U.S. reassessing its military policy in Iraq starts us down the slippery slope ending with the terrorists winning the war on terror.

--Allowing conditional amnesty for illegal aliens and implementing a guest worker program is just the start down a slope that will end with the U.S. being overrun by an invasion of people who would impose its language and culture on us without respecting our own.

--The authorized used of electronic surveillance to prevent terrorist attacks is just the first step in the slide leading to the curtailment of our fundamental freedoms as Americans and our subjugation to the state.

--If the minimum wage gets raised, then this will start the slide down a slippery slope with runaway inflation, mass layoffs, business bankruptcies, and economic devastation.

I disagree with the “slippery slope” arguments attached to each of the aforementioned issues. While it is rational and prudent to carefully explore the ramifications of changes we make in our society, we also need to avoid becoming hostages to our fears. That would only lead us down the “slippery slope” to utter stagnation!

Star-Gazing

One evening in early spring, 1964 (I was seven then), my father took me aside and brought out an extremely old boy scout handbook that he had kept from his own youth. He opened it up to the astronomy section and proceeded to explain to me how the stars in the sky have names and form patterns that, when connected with lines, make pictures. These patterns, or groups of stars were called "constellations", and by learning these constellations I could find my way around the night sky. He gave me that book to look at along with another one, Herbert Zim's Golden Guide to the Stars (remember the Golden Guides?), which had a section that showed and discussed the main constellations in greater detail. I took these books and studied them intensively. My father took me outside and showed me where to find constellations like Gemini, Orion, Canis Major, Ursa Major, and Leo. For the rest of the year and in 1965, star-gazing was a big interest of mine. When, at school, we were given time to draw whatever we liked, I always drew star maps (except for a phase when I was into drawing sailing ships with extremely complicated and, I'm sure, unseaworthy patterns of sails). One day in 1965 my parents, my sister, and I went down to Miami. One of the things we did there was buy some magazines at a large newsstand. One of them was a star-gazing guide that was much more detailed and interesting than the Golden Guide. I learned the names, configurations and positions of all 88 "official" constellations, even the numerous, obscure ones in the far southern celestial hemisphere. Now, anyone can draw any pattern they want in the stars and make it resemble something (in A Beautiful Mind, John Nash wooed his future wife this way). A pattern like this is called an "asterism". The Big Dipper is actually an asterism which is part of the constellation Ursa Major.

Still, there are the "official" 88 constellations. And these are the standards that need to be learned to be able to read a celestial map properly. But there are other things to know as well. On a celestial map, the lines of latitude are the same as on the Earth. But longitude is different with regard to the heavens, for it is expressed, not in degrees, but in hours. A full cycle measures 24 hours. Also, east is toward the left and west is toward the right on a star map.

Over the years, I've kept up with my star-gazing and passed on a little of my enthusiasm and knowledge to my wife and children. Learning about the night sky has two other educational benefits. Many of the constellation names are in Latin and quite a few of the star names are in Arabic, so you can pick up some foreign language vocabulary without even knowing it! And several of the mostly northern constellations are based on ancient Greek mythology, so that can get your foot in the door in that field of knowledge. With a knowledge of the stars and constellations, wherever your life leads you, you'll always have the familiar patterns of stars above, even if you're in an unfamiliar place far from home. I am grateful to my father for having shared this interest of his with me. And I recommend it to you and others!

NESFA

Many science fiction writers of the twentieth century invested much of their efforts into short stories that were submitted and published in pulp magazines, some better than others. Some of these writers, like Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, and Arthur C. Clarke, went on to write novels. The novels that these three writers put out were what gave them their fame and raised more interest about their short stories in turn. There were other authors who wrote great short science fiction literature, but who never achieved the widespread name recognition that the "Big Three" had. The great body of these short works, some of which were masterpieces, had fallen out of print along with the pulp publications that they had appeared in. The more famous authors, with their publishers, realized that they could buy back, compile, and sell collections of their own stories. But the others either didn't have the pull with their publishers or didn't amass a sufficient quantity of recognized works to assemble and publish a collection of short works. Excellence in short science fiction has been recognized over the years by the publication of "year's best" anthologies that at least exposed these less known authors and gave them a small share of the great legacy of the "Golden Age" of science fiction. Asimov himself, in collaboration with Martin H. Greenberg, collected and edited anthologies for a series titles The World's Best SF. Writer and editor Donald Wollheim put out a different series honoring the year's best stories. After Asimov and Wollheim died, this concept continued with editors David Hartwell,and Gardner Dozois putting out separate quality anthologies of the year's best short science fiction. But there was still a demand for the publication of the collected works for some of the lesser known writers.

This is where NESFA, the New England Science Fiction Association, stepped in to perform a great service to fans of this genre. Over the past few years, NESFA has published collections of the short fiction of many writers, notable among them Cyril Kornbluth, William Tenn, Robert Sheckley, E.A. van Vogt, Eric Frank Russell, and Fredric Brown. Some of these had published small paperback collections of short stories over the years, but NESFA collected these and put out definitive volumes of the authors' works. There are many other science fiction writers whose collected works are listed on their website. NESFA isn't the only organization doing this. North Atlantic Books has been collecting all of Theodore Sturgeon's works into several volumes, and SFBC (Science Fiction Book Club) took over the publication of Two-Handed Engine, a collection of the best short stories that the husband-wife writing team of Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore had written, either alone or in collaboration with each other (the classic story Mimsy Were the Borogoves was a collaboration). I think that, ultimately, the appropriate place for these types of collected works is the public or school library, but it's wonderful that you can now buy for yourself a comprehensive collection of your favorite science fiction author's short stories. Hats off to NESFA and the others!

Future Blog Features

Please forgive the austere appearance of this blog. If you only knew how far I've come just to get to the point where I can publish daily entries in my own blog over the Internet... Surely as time progresses, I'll learn how to do stuff like putting in pictures and hyperlinks. I'm not sure what to do about comments (as far as the settings are concerned), but I welcome any that pertain to the blog entry and are written in good taste. I do regularly read a small number of blogs, so when I figure out how to do it, they'll be listed. I also understand there are certain things I can do to promote my blog to others. Something to do with "site feeds", "syndication" and "media aggregation". Nobody's advised me about this yet, so at this stage I've avoided activating them for this blog. And there are other things as well, but regardless of the various improvements that can be made to the site, I'll always keep my writing as its overriding theme.

Excellence and Engagement

I believe in standards of excellence in every form of constructive human endeavor. After all, who doesn't admire the star athletes, top scientists, model citizens, creative artists, and great inventors? They not only serve as inspirations for people as to what is possible, but also as pathfinders showing us the directions in their fields that hold the greatest promise. And their collective accomplishments are progressive in nature: they tend to build on what their predecessors did. Take machines such as the television or automobile. They are actually composites of many machines invented in earlier times for different applications that have been modified into more complex arrangements for new applications. One can observe the progression over the centuries of classical music into the baroque, renaissance, romantic, and modern forms, and the integration at various times of other world musical forms into the tableau. Sports have developed so much in recent years that it hardly seems worth the trouble trying to compare the athletic skills and accomplishments of our present-day athletes to those of-say, fifty years ago. The fields of mathematics, physical science, biology, medicine, and computer science all depend completely on this progressive excellence.

But that having been acknowledged, it must also be said that as a society, we tend to go a bit overboard in our competitive zeal for excellence. And sometimes excellence gets confused with perfection. I once took an intermediate-level Russian language class in college. At the beginning of the course, the professor made a statement that I found disconcerting: he said that, in his class, we students could say anything we wanted in Russian, but only if we said it correctly, without any mistakes. I suppose you may have figured out what happened: very few students spoke freely. For the correct way to learn and become fluent in a language, whether it is your first, native language or a second language that you pick up as an immigrant or visitor to a different land, is to speak us much as possible, assimilating as many words and concepts as soon as possible in as grammatically correct way as possible. Mistakes are a necessary part of the process. You encourage those who have mastered the language to correct you, nudging you to change specific areas when you err. But you never do anything to stifle someone's expression when they are trying to learn to speak the language.

About 26 years ago, I knew two Vietnamese women who came over to America during the mass boat exodus that was going on. One was very educated in her home country while the other was illiterate. The educated woman was very self-conscious about her speech and, although she could understand English quite well, she could still barely speak it even after one year here. The other woman, however, aggressively spoke to anyone who would listen to her, and she picked the language up rapidly! I'm sure that both of them eventually mastered spoken English because of its omnipresence in their lives. Personally, I am more like the one who didn't speak because she was afraid of being laughed at or ridiculed. I love foreign languages. I love to hear people speak them just to see how much I can understand. I also like to read them to see how much of that I understand. I have foreign language news broadcasts downloaded off the Internet onto my MP3 that I listen to often. One of my favorite TV shows is Despierta America, the weekday morning show that the Spanish language network Univision puts out, starring Fernando Arau and Ana Maria Canseco. In the past I've completed college courses in Spanish, French, German, Russian, Polish, and Japanese. I've studied Vietnamese and Chinese on my own and gained a little bit of confidence practicing speaking them with some wonderful people with whom I used to work in a Chinese restaurant. But I've never been out of this country and I've yet to become fluent in another language. By the perfectionist standards of some in our society, I don't measure up in this area. But that's somebody else's problem, not mine. I carry with me every day of my life a feeling of affection for these languages and their speakers. Maybe someday I'll attain fluency in one or more of them, but I don't feel that I have to be at the top in order to enjoy them as interests. I would like to get over my self-consciousness, though, and practice speaking them more to others. But I don't need to have becoming a super-linguist as a goal in order to enjoy studying foreign language at my own pace according to my own abilities! I appreciate excellence in areas of endeavor, but I also value engagement in them as well, even when this doesn't lead to the apex of achievement.

Comity

In case you haven't noticed, the level of personal, angry rancor in the national political arena has risen to unprecedented proportions. It's bad enough that the only reasonable radio show on a national scale that portrays political figures and issues dispassionately and objectively is the late late night Jim Bohannon Show. I can't turn on CNN Headline News Network late at night anymore without getting objectivity-challenged and agenda-driven Nancy Grace or Glenn Beck! I don't particularly like MSNBC's Keith Olbermann's viciousness, especially when he personally attacks irrelevant celebrities like Britney Spear or Tom Cruise, but he's also usually pretty excessive when knocking Bill O'Reilly (whom I don't care for either) as one of the "worst persons in the world". I'm usually at work when Sean Hannity is on Fox, but sometimes I accidently tune in to his radio show. The moment he determines that a caller has a different perspective on an issue from him, Mr. Hannity starts with the interruptions and name-calling. Radio is, as I alluded, almost hopeless. I had thought that Air America (when I could actually hear them on the radio) would counterbalance the meanness of right-wing hosts like Rush Limbaugh, Hannity, O'Reilly, Neil Boortz, and Michael Savage. But, except for Randi Rhodes, the talk show hosts that they had seemed as vicious and personal as the others (and she could get a little over the top sometimes, too). The current situation is unfortunate, because the lack of civility on the part of these people obfuscates the legitimate political and social opinions that they want to persuade others to adopt, be they conservative, moderate, or liberal.

So where can one go to get a reasoned, polite discussion of the issues where dissenting opinions are respected and those expressing them are even praised by their opponents? Just step right up, ladies and gentlemen, to C-Span 2, home of the United States Senate, one of the last bastions in this country of the precious commodity known as "comity": the maintenance of a climate of mutual respect and even friendliness among advocates of conflicting agendas, even in the midst of intense debate. The speakers during Senate proceedings get pretty passionate sometimes, and every now and then somebody steps over the line and makes an insulting reference to the other side. Often, when this happens the offended party will just brush it off, but sometimes the speaker is called to account for his statements and usually ends up apologizing for them. Most of the time you can really get the pros and cons on important issues from both sides, and sometimes an issue is such that the division of opinion isn't drawn on party lines. The drawbacks of using this as a resource for information are (1) the Senate usually isn't in session, (2) when the Senate IS in session it is in quorum call (a parliamentary maneuver to temporarily pause proceedings) much of the time, and (3) except for something called "morning business", where senators can speak a specified block of time about whatever they want, the issues discussed are limited to whatever is on the agenda at the time. Still, it is refreshing to hear issues being discussed in an environment of comity, as opposed to the aforementioned hosts and networks. I'd like to be able to say that our House of Representatives shows the same level of mutual respect that I see in the Senate, but that usually isn't the case, sad to say.

Diversity Education: Two Aspects

The movement to educate people about diversity that has taken place in our media, schools, and workplaces is one of the more positive efforts that have been made to improve society by working on changing the attitudes of people, one by one. There are, over the course of the calendar year, certain designated days, weeks, and months that focus on the accomplishments, goals, and struggles within various demographic communities. The most obvious expression of this is the presentation of biographies of famous and accomplished people in history who belong to particular groups. During diversity education events, people are often also encouraged to bring foods and perform music that reflect upon their backgrounds. To me, these are good things, but they are not enough if the ultimate goal is to eliminate prejudice and bring our society together. For I believe it is fear rising from ignorance that spurs bigotry, and although it may seem like a safe thing for promoters of diversity education to dwell upon the best in our society, it also needs to be shown that most members of each demographic population are basically average people whose commonality with the average people across group designations is much greater than that with the extreme "good" or "bad" in their own group. So, when a news event occurs that portrays someone in a "bad" light, it is important that the people already be educated to the fact that this "bad" behavior cannot be stamped across whatever group that "offending" person is identified with. This second aspect of diversity education is obviously a much more delicate and difficult thing to accomplish, which is probably why it, in my opinion, has been relatively neglected.

History Or Tribute

One week in March, 2000, my family and I stayed in a cabin in northern Georgia near Blairsville and the North Carolina border. The terrain was very mountainous by eastern U.S. standards and our cabin rested at the top of a curved, steep climb. It didn't look too impressive from the outside, but once inside you could see that it was very attractive with two stories plus a basement and many of the amenities you'd expect from a good hotel (except cable TV and swimming pools). Everything in it was spacious, including a screened-in porch complete with a picnic table and rocking chairs overlooking the wooded valley below. In the master bedroom, resting on a large dresser were two large books about the U.S. Civil War. One was a nice picture-book account of the various stages of the war, something you might find in the discount large-book section of a Barnes and Noble or Books-a-Million store. The other book interested me in that, in discussing the performance of the various generals, political leaders and other participants in the war, only complimentary things were said. Every other account of the Civil War that I had read or watched or heard was full of stories of blundering and abject incompetence on the part of the same people who were portrayed in this book in such rosy terms. Even the greatest generals like Lee and Grant sometimes used incredibly bad judgement that cost their soldiers dearly. So, my first reaction to this book was one of indignation for this blatant whitewashing of history. I wondered whether or not the author had a hidden agenda. But after some reflection, I arrived at a totally different conclusion. The scope of this book was not to give a history lesson, but rather to serve as an impartial memorial for all of the participants in this tragic conflict. Just as a monument to a famous historical figure or a eulogy in a funeral service is a tribute and not an assessment, then so this book paid tribute while leaving analysis to the drove of material already out there. With this in mind, I was able to enjoy this book within its self-imposed limitations. And it did spur me on to a greater interest in the Civil War, too.

Blacksburg Tragedy

Today is indeed a most sad day for our country as we mourn the loss of so many innocent lives in yesterday's mass shooting at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia. My prayers and condolences go out to the victims, their families and friends in this time of unfathomable tragedy.

Jean Shepherd

In late 1974, I was working late one night in a traffic management company updating tariff books for the freight bill auditors who worked there. The nature of this job was flexible to the point that it could be done in the wee hours of the morning. The building then was mostly empty except for a handful of auditors who worked in some of the other offices. So I usually had the freedom to listen to the radio undisturbed while I worked. My station of choice was 1360-WKAT "The Talk of Miami". This station, based in Miami Beach, came in pretty weak at night in Hollywood where I lived, but the company I was working for was based in Miami Shores and WKAT's signal was strong there. Anyway, after the news that night, some classical music started playing and, after a couple of minutes of this a man began speaking over the music. I soon found out that he was Jean Shepherd, a renown satirist/author/radio star whose monologues on 710-WOR New York in the evening drew a sizable loyal following of listeners. WKAT would obtain these programs from WOR and rebroadcast them late at night. If you don't recognize him by his name, then you probably already know him as the creator and narrator of the largely autobiographical movie A Christmas Story (he spoke as the grown-up Ralph). I was immediately captivated by Jean's interesting monologues, which ranged broadly across topics like popular culture, funny and sometimes poignant stories from his childhood and early adulthood, understated satire, and general commentaries on society. I think the program that cracked me up the most was the one in mid-1975 when Jean related with great descriptiveness and hyperbole what happened one day in 1941 back in his childhood town of Hammond, Indiana when a certain species of bugs (I think they were cicadas), after being dormant for 17 years, suddenly came out in swarms enveloping and devastating (or at least seeming to devastate) everything in their path and terrifying everyone in the process. "Shep" was no shock jock: his speech was articulate, clean, and still managed to convey the feeling that he was just one of us, a fellow traveller through this struggle called life. But Jean showed that putting the edge of humor on the ordeals that we go through can add meaning, if not nostalgia, to their memories. And he was a sucker for nostalgia, as A Christmas Story demonstrates!

After I heard that first broadcast, I got into the habit of listening regularly enough to Jean Shepherd that I began to incorporate his worldview into mine. His talented way of expressing himself verbally was also something that I imitated, and to a significant degree this helped me conquer some difficulties I had with speaking. I didn't hear him on the radio after 1976, but I read that he retired completely from radio a little after that and lived somewhere in south Florida until his death in 1999. I never met Jean personally, but I still miss him. He was my friend!

A Kid's-Eye View of Politics and Pop Music

While I was seven years old, I was abruptly jolted into awareness in two areas: politics and popular music. For it was at this time that our beloved president John F. Kennedy was assassinated and the Beatles made their debut in the United States with an appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. When the first event happened, I was in the second grade at my school in West Hollywood, Florida. We had been back in our classroom a little while after lunch when someone came into our room and said something to my teacher. She left the room. Some of my classmates touched base with kids in the classroom across the hall (anytime our teacher left the classroom we pretty much did whatever we wanted) and the terrible news got out about the shooting. There was a lot of uncertainty, though, as to how badly the President had been hurt. By the time I got home that day, his death had been announced. My mother was there with the TV on, probably CBS, which stayed on with that story nonstop for a very long time that day (Friday) and what seemed like days afterward. Before that day, I had already been aware that we had a president whose name was John Kennedy, but it didn't seem significant enough to give much thought to. It was later when I found out that the answer to a mystery from early in the first grade had a lot to do with him. One day at school, without warning, our teacher had lined up our class, marched us out into the inner hallway that separated the classrooms and had all of us crouch down in a line on the floor against one of the walls with our heads dug down toward our knees and our hands clasped over our heads. We held this position for a few minutes and then went back into our classroom. We knew even back then that this couldn't be a fire drill, but what was it? It turns out that this happened in the middle of the Cuban Missile Crisis in October, 1962 and we were performing a civil defense drill. There was an imminent danger then of a nuclear exchange between the USSR and the US if the American blockade of Soviet ships coming to Cuba with reinforcements had escalated into open combat. And Kennedy had at that time established his legacy as a great statesman for standing up to the threat while resisting the prodding of many in this country to attack Cuba and overthrow Castro. This turns out to have been fortuitous because, from what we know now, Cuba already had access to tactical nuclear weapons that they were prepared to use against any invading US forces. Castro apparently wanted a US-USSR conflict and felt betrayed by Khruschchev when he backed down from the blockade. It was after this that the two superpowers began to take tangible steps to limit nuclear testing and increase bilateral communication to avoid catastrophic misunderstandings that could lead to a holocaust.

After Kennedy came Lyndon Baines Johnson. Like many people, I believe he would have gone down in history as a great president if he had resisted the advice of other people to engage in full-blown military combat in Vietnam. But then I was still a little kid and began to think less of this President when he kept choosing Sunday evenings for his special nationwide television addresses. And that usually meant interrupting and preempting parts of the Ed Sullivan show. At the time I was totally into groups like the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Supremes, Dave Clark Five, and Herman's Hermits, all of whom appeared often on that program. But my favorite group was the Animals, a British keyboard-based rock group fronted by a great vocalist, Eric Burdon. They had several hits, but broke up because of bad internal squabbling (later, Burdon formed another group with different musicians that he called "Eric Burdon and the Animals"). One Sunday, the Animals were going to be the special guest act on Ed Sullivan. When the show started, I couldn't wait. Only I knew I would have to, because Ed had this sly, nasty habit of waiting until the last five minutes of the show before he would bring on the hot rock acts while teasing the audience that they would be coming up soon. But on this night, that would never happen because, a few minutes into the show, CBS News broke in to give us President Johnson with his slow-drawling "My fellow Americans, blah-blah-blah etc" way of putting people to sleep. Only I wasn't ready to sleep. I wanted my Animals! But Lyndon wouldn't heed my brain waves transmitting this urgent need through the ether. He kept rambling on until the entire show was preempted. It was at this time that I decided that I hated Lyndon Johnson. In two or three years, many, many more people would join me in that feeling, but for a different reason. Still, looking back on it, because of his pushing through Congress and signing of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, Lyndon Johnson deserves praise along with the criticism (for Vietnam and knocking off the Animals).

Which brings me to the second eye-opening cultural phenomenon that happened when I was seven: the coming of the Beatles and the British Invasion. In February, 1964, my sister, who was eleven years old at the time, suddenly began to speak of a rock and roll group from England called the Beatles that were coming to the U.S. and were going to be on Ed Sullivan the next Sunday. This was good for us, because we had one and only one TV set and my parents determined which of the four channels it was going to be on. "Good", because they happened to like the Ed Sullivan Show! As it turned out, the Beatles had such an impressive performance that evening and on a subsequent appearance that within a few weeks, my mother and father went to W.T. Grant (our local 1960s equivalent of Wal-Mart) and bought Meet the Beatles and The Beatles' Second Album, not to mention the Twist and Shout and Please Please Me singles. We played them over and over again in our house. My father also began to record Beatle songs off the radio with his gigantic tape deck, and one time recorded us kids singing Beatles songs. When the movie A Hard Days Night came out that summer, we saw it and got the soundtrack album. During the next two years my parents, because they themselves loved the Beatles, bought Beatles '65, Beatles VI, Help!, Rubber Soul, and Revolver.
When the Beatles decided in late 1966 to stop performing in public and just make studio albums, my parents cooled off on them, but my sister and I didn't. Between us, we eventually bought the rest of their studio albums. But back in 1964 my family was pretty much on the same page concerning pop music. Radio was fun to listen to, the big rock stations in South Florida then (560-WQAM "Tiger Radio" and 790-WFUN) interspersing current hits with golden oldies. My sister and I each received transistor radios that Christmas, and we wore out a lot of batteries! I even found some groups that I liked more than the Beatles, tops among them of course the Animals!

Gators as Champions

In case you've been following college football and basketball for the last couple of years, you're probably aware that the University of Florida Gators have been extraordinarily successful, capturing national championships for football in 2006 and for men's basketball in 2005-06 and 2006-07. When your school wins a championship, there is an up-side and a down-side to it. It's easy to see how this can be a good thing, but there is a danger with a championship as well. It can unreasonably elevate the expectations for future UF football and basketball teams to the point that a string of moderately successful seasons becomes grounds for a coach's dismissal. And it takes away the excitement of going into a game as an underdog with a chance for an upset when you're always considered to be top dog. But winning it all every now and then is great!

Before the last two seasons the Gator men cagers never won the NCAA championship and the football team's only other national championship season was 1996. In 2006, UF held celebrations honoring that season along with the coaches and players who were a part of it. Notable among them were Heisman Trophy winner Danny Wuerffel and former head coach Steve Spurrier, who left the Gators after the 2001 season to coach for the Washington Redskins and then for the South Carolina Gamecocks the last two seasons. For the ten-year anniversary celebration, though, Steve was once again a Gator! And I guess, in his heart he still is, because after the recent 84-75 triumph of Billy Donovan's team over Ohio State in the basketball tournament final, Spurrier said that "we" (speaking for UF but apparently including himself) were turning Ohio State into "Runner-Up U." It's become well-known how Steve Spurrier would often make provocative statements taunting opposing teams and their colleges while he was UF's coach, but he left at the end of 2001 and is still provoking antagonism on behalf of the Gators! Still, although he's now a rival coach in the same division of the SEC as the Gators, I appreciate what he's done for us and wish him the best in the future (except in games against UF). I truly believe he feels the same about the Gators.

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Beach Break

During the next few days I'll be with my family at Ormond Beach. If I can get access to a computer with Internet somewhere, I'll post. Otherwise, this will be a short blog break!

Teachers and Children

One of my favorite old-time cartoons was a Merrie Melodies from Warner Brothers titled "I Love to Singa". In it a stuffy, pompous old musician owl and his wife witness their four little owlets hatch, one at a time. The first, already dressed for a concert, immediately starts to sing opera. The second hatches already holding a violin and bow and begins to play with virtuosity. The third has a flute and plays a classical tune on it, right out of the shell. All of this pleases ole papa owl, who expects his children to be perfect from birth. Then the last little owl hatches and starts singing jazz, which infuriates daddy owl, who hates jazz. And the story goes on from there (I don't want to give away the ending in case you ever see it).

Aside from the great animation, endearing characters and funny moments, this cartoon had another impact on me. It illustrated how children are typecast and judged from early in their lives according to their perceived potentials for success in the eyes of adults. And the two main categories of adults that yield the power to either help or hinder children in their development are parents and schoolteachers. As a child, a human being must take life as it comes and, unlike the baby owls in the cartoon, doesn't come automatically equipped with flashy talents to show off and impress the grown-ups with. In infancy and the preschool years there is usually a sort of grace period, but once the kid starts its formal education the categorization revs up. Smart kid, dumb kid, well-behaved kid, unruly kid, shy kid, popular kid, athletic kid, good-looking kid, ugly kid, kid with important parents, kid with unimportant parents. A professional teacher would never admit to doing this to children, but the kids can pick up on things like this. And it influences their relationships with each other. A teacher's job is not to pick out the cream of the crop and discard the rest, but this has been the rule nonetheless, at least from my experience. And by that I mean this: from the beginning of the first grade though elementary school and junior and senior high school, there was never even ONE single occasion when a teacher praised me to my face or gave me some encouragement or direction. At least in the first three grades the teachers did provide structured instruction that enabled me to excel in arithmetic and to read well. But in 1965 my parents sent me to a new "experimental" public school that was supposed to provide a better education. Apparently, this school and its teachers were of the belief that students should be treated in a "hands off" manner; students were reputedly already motivated and focused and needed to be treated with the attitude that they were all little adults who knew what they needed to do with the emotional composure and discipline to follow through with their little adult goals. But kids aren't little adults: they're just kids! They're immature, they're clueless about many things, they usually don't know what they want to do when they grow up, and they're bound to parents of every conceivable variety who directly affect their emotional development and who may or may not hold them to a regimen of discipline regarding their homework. They need kindness and encouragement from the adults in whose care they are entrusted, but more than that they need to feel that they matter for who they are as individuals. All of the time that I attended this school (which was named for an exploding star), I felt that I was unworthy to be a student there and that I was hopelessly behind, with no hope for the future. Looking back on it, I think that at any moment during my time there if just one teacher had just walked up to me and said something like, "Billy, you're a good, smart kid with a great future, I'm rooting for you!", that would have totally transformed my life. I know that's true because my children have had good, caring teachers like that and it's made the world of difference to them. Unfortunately, my own childhood experience with "educators" revealed them to be a caste of indifferent elitists for whose attentions students had to prove to them that they are worthy. Like so many people, I can look back upon my childhood experiences with a adult perspective and either forgive or simply laugh off classmates who showed cruelty and bullying, because I see that in a sense we were all clueless (although some of us pretended not to be) and had issues going in our lives that others would never know or even not be able to understand. But I do find it difficult to forgive my so-called teachers from back then, who should have known better. When I went on to college, I experienced varying degrees of competency in my instructors, but I never knew one who was even remotely like the negligent excuses for teachers in that "titanic" school from the fourth through twelfth grade.

Theme Park Rides

When I was about six years old, my elementary school in (then) West Hollywood, Florida held a little carnival. And somehow , they managed to erect a tiny roller coaster ride as part of it. I vaguely remember riding it once and being completely terrified. That was around the year 1963. In 1973 I went to Walt Disney World and was very proud of myself for undergoing rides of such scariness as Dumbo, Peter Pan, and Eastern Airline's If You Had Wings. But I wasn't going to be one of those fools who rode Space Mountain! In 1986, while visiting Busch Gardens in Tampa with my wife, I pointed casually over at the Python roller coaster and suggested that we ride it. She instead led me over to the Monster Mamba, a twirling kiddie ride that is no longer there. After a few seconds on that ride she had to frantically signal and yell at the conductor to stop the ride and let me off. She spent the next 15 minutes sitting with me on a nearby bench until I stopped shaking. In 2002, my 12 year-old son suggested that we, as a family, visit Wild Adventures theme park in Valdosta, Georgia, where he had recently gone with his school class as an end-of-the-school-year trip. So my wife, my two children (my daughter was almost eight at the time), and I went there on a late August Saturday. And it was there, 39 years after my previous (and only) roller coaster ride, where I faced my fear and rode the little red Ant Farm coaster with my eyes shut and me chanting repeatedly "safe!...safe!...safe!...". From then it was just a matter of facing more formidable fears on later rides on that visit and on subsequent visits there and to other theme parks. The result is: I love theme park rides now! The more they flip me over and the faster they drop me, the better!

Living in Gainesville, Florida puts me within a reasonable driving range of parks like Wild Adventures, Wild Waters (in Silver Springs), Busch Gardens, Cypress Gardens, Universal Studios, Sea World, and Walt Disney World. So far, my favorite coaster rides are Dueling Dragons Fire at Universal Islands of Adventure and Montu at Busch Gardens. My favorite wooden coaster ride is Thunderhead at Dollywood, where we visited last summer. My favorite non-coaster ride is Power Surge, which is at Wild Adventures and Cypress Gardens. My favorite water ride so far is the Tornado at Wild Waters (we went to Blizzard Beach three years ago, but the long lines and bad weather kept us from experiencing most of the rides there, although I did get to go on Slush Gusher and Summit Plummet). Except for Dollywood, my theme park experience is pretty much confined to South Georgia and Central Florida. Maybe we'll try some other places in the future like Cedar Point, Ohio and that park in Muskegon, Michigan with the very long wooden coaster.

Popular Fiction

One of the things I like to do is read popular literature. I've come to be a Stephen King fan over the past year. I've read The Stand, Salem's Lot, Different Seasons, Hearts in Atlantis, Thinner, The Regulators, Desperation, Everything's Eventual, and It. I'm currently working on Night Shift. So far, my favorites of the bunch are Thinner and It. I've also recently read Dune by Frank Herbert, Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, Sue Grafton's "A" Is For Alibi and "L" Is For Lawless, the Left Behind series, Christopher Paolini's Eragon and Eldest, some of the Series of Unfortunate Events books (I'm about halfway through The Hostile Hospital), Timeline by Michael Crichton, the four-volume Otherland series by Tad Williams, The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown, and an assortment of science fiction, mystery, and horror short stories and novellas. Stephen King's It was the last book I finished. I had previously seen little snippets of the movie version on TV and even saw the tail-ending. But I forgot that I had seen the ending until I read the end of the book, and then it came back to me. If you've read It, this may sound a bit familiar since memory loss played havoc with the story's characters, too.

I am also an avid Harry Potter reader, though a bit belatedly. In the late 1990's I was becoming increasingly aware of the Potter phenomenon, but it didn't enter my full consciousness until the day in 2000 that the fourth volume The Goblet of Fire was released. I was just making one of my little excursions to the Gainesville Books-a-Million for some flavored coffee and a little browsing. The place was packed solid with people, some of them, adults and children, dressed and made up like Halloween in witch and wizard outfits, complete with flowing robes. The store's employees were all dressed up in the part, too. And there was a long line of people getting their copies of the new book. I remember sitting in the diner area with my coffee and looking over at a woman who appeared to be in her thirties sitting down at the table to my left. She had just gotten her copy and sat there looking at it with adoring, bulging eyes. Then she carefully opened it up and began reading with an expression of total rapture. To be honest, at the time I thought this was pretty creepy, but since then I've come a long way toward reaching her level of appreciation for this delightful series! I've already ordered the final volume that comes out July 21 at midnight and plan to be there at Books-a-Million with the rest of the Potter crowd to pick up my copy.

Some Popular Assumptions

It seems to me that people base their beliefs about many things on simple popular assumptions, or myths. Here are some examples (in no particular order):

--If the U.S. withdraws from Iraq at a publicly announced time, then all the enemy there has to do is wait us out until after we leave (cut and run).

--The U.S. has to publicly announce a future date for its withdrawal from Iraq in order to force the present regime there to assume its needed responsiblity for taking care of itself.

--When our enemies do something to us it's terrorism and we want to mobilize and fight them: when we do something to them it's "shock and awe" and that's supposed to make them want to capitulate.

--Our court system is infested with liberal judges who legislate from the bench.

--Our court system is infested with judges who are beholden to a corporate and Christian fundamentalist agenda and want to overturn civil rights laws.

--The 1969-1973 moon landings were a hoax.

--Paul McCartney died in a car accident in November 1966.

--If the U.S. talks with opponent nations then that will encourage terrorism.

--The way to fight drugs is to criminalize and imprison users and sellers at home while pressuring foreign governments to engage in military combat with drug growers, processors, and exporters in their countries.

--Bill O'Reilly is not a conservative but is really a traditionalist.

--Conservative radio talk shows do better since the Fairness Doctrine was repealed because conservatives beat liberals on the issues.

--You can take any disputed issue, organize a structured public debate event with time limits, and expect to attain a resolution.

--Colleges are infiltrated with professors who are waiting to pounce on and ruin our good, moral, conservative children with their ultra-leftist secular humanistic indoctrination.

--To critically assess anything about U.S. foreign policy means that you hate America.

--Any criticism of U.S. policy during a war means you don't support the troops.

--Expressing hate or derision toward the President means you care and are a discerning, sensitive person.

--Bush stole the 2000 and 2004 elections.

--Gore almost stole the 2000 election.

--Kerry would have won the 2004 election if he hadn't been swiftboated.

--Something fishy was happening on the grassy knoll in Dallas when Kennedy was assassinated.

--China keeps getting stronger while the U.S. keeps getting weaker.

--The overall quality of television is better now that we have so many channels to choose from.

--Poker is a sport which people want to invest hours watching on TV.

--You can determine the standard of living of a segment of the population by looking at numbers.

--The old days were the good old days because everything was cheaper.

--Our collective survival on Earth is constantly under dire threat from asteroids, comets, gamma bursts, doomsday germs, global warming/cooling, supervolcanoes and solar flares.

--Because an ancient Mayan calendar ends a cycle in 2012, that means something cataclysmic is going to happen then.

--If I go to a bookstore and pick up a new book about dragons, elves, dwarves, wizards, and a messiah-like boy, then this is good original literature (especially if it contains a map of an imaginary place), and even more so if it's part of a trilogy.

--Paid television and radio sports analysts have a better handle on which are the better teams and athletes than the average Joe sports fan does.

--Having a handful of large corporations dominating markets and determining prices and wages with a minimum of regulation is free-market, free-competition capitalism.

--Religions that were founded in the ancient past carry precise prophecies for today encoded within their scriptures.

--We are at the crossroads of history.

--If your health has become worse, that means you must have been doing some wrong things.

--You're a victim, and it's because of those bad ____ (fill in the blank) guys out there.

--Bill Clinton attacked the terrorists in 1998 to deflect attention from his Lewinsky scandal.

--Bill Clinton didn't fight the terrorists enough when he was president.

--Bill Clinton was bad because he got involved with nation-building in Bosnia.

--George W. Bush is good because he is committed to nation-building in Iraq.

--You can't do anything but either stay-the-course or escalate during a prolonged military conflict, because if you do anything else that means the soldiers died in vain.

--Politicians who work with others to build concensus and achieve compromise on important issues are unprincipled and have betrayed their party.

--The space program won't work because it's boring to watch and doesn't hold a candle to the special effects in today's science fiction movies.

--If some of these old rock and roll groups that broke up got back together again and recorded new stuff, then they'd be like they were decades earlier.

I think there is, of course, more truth in some of these than in others, but what really matters is that they seem to have lives of their own, and the people who adhere to some of these assumptions, (as well as many unmentioned) will resist contradictory input that could, at the most, overturn the assumptions and, at least, reveal some complexity imbedded within the issues underlying them.

The First Day

So here I am, beginning my first blog ever! I have one overriding purpose to this venture: to practice expressing myself through the medium of writing. As I go along, I hope my writing abilities will improve to the point where I look back upon the early entries here with some embarrassment. The range of possible subjects is unlimited. If you read this blog regularly, I think you will find, in the short term, a great jumping around from one topic to another. Over time, though, the patterns of my interests will surface and there should emerge a kind of character to this blog. As of now, though, I have no idea where this road will take me!