Political Cherry-Picking in Florida

It looks as if Hillary Clinton's last-gasp attempt to wrest the Democratic nomination from Barack Obama will hinge on her efforts to get the party to seat delegations from Michigan and Florida, states punished for scheduling their primaries too early. In accordance with the party's punitive decision, the candidates all agreed to avoid campaigning in these states, and Obama and Edwards even went as far as leaving their names off the Michigan ballot. So the results of these two primaries are very suspect and, to any reasonable person, illegitimate. But now, since they both "went for" Clinton, she is now cherry-picking them as her "final hurrah" and even has the gall to include votes received from them as part of her claim to have won the popular vote over Obama. But this isn't the first time that my unfortunate state of Florida has been subjected to attempts to retroactively change the rules in order to favor one candidate over another.

In 2000, in the morning following the extremely close Bush-Gore election (both nationwide and in Florida), it was disclosed that, due to a "butterfly" ballot design flaw in Palm Beach county, independent candidate Pat Buchanan appeared to inadvertently receive thousands of votes that were intended for Al Gore. And many disgruntled voters there quickly affirmed this. There was a call to hold the election in Palm Beach again, in order to rectify this error. Of course, everyone knew that the almost certain result would be to tip the statewide total over to Gore, since not only would the accidental Buchanan votes mostly have gone to the Democratic candidate, but also most of those voting for Green Party candidate Ralph Nader would have switched to Gore as well. So this idea, which fortunately didn't take off, was the first ominous sign of what was to come. The Democratic Party then made the both political and strategic mistake in pushing for manual recounts in only the three south Florida counties (Palm Beach, Broward, and Dade) that Gore had carried, in the hope of adding previously rejected ballots to the statewide total (and thus throwing the total count to Gore). That rejected ballots in pro-Bush counties weren't to be considered showed this tactic to be a highly unfair example of political cherry-picking. Finally, by the time the election dispute had gone to the courts and a statewide manual recount (which should have been the first proposal) was ordered, state-imposed time deadlines had been reached and the U.S. Supreme Court essentially handed the election to Bush, an act that could also be described as a cynical act of cherry-picking (this time on the part of Bush's side). To me, it's too bad we weren't allowed to have our statewide manual recount in order to at least give some semblance of legitimacy to the process.

After the 2000 Election debacle, one might have thought that lessons would have been learned and actions taken to avoid a repeat. But in 2002, immediately following the statewide vote to see which Democrat would run in the general election for governor against incumbent Jeb Bush (Tampa-based Bill McBride vs. Miami-based Janet Reno). Reno's forces began to insist on south Florida-only recounts in that very close race. McBride could only look on helplessly as his opponent's forces cherry-picked counties loyal to her to try and add an advantage to her and give her the nomination. But it still wasn't enough, and McBride proceeded to run (and get creamed) as the Democratic candidate against Governor Bush.

In a close race, both sides can usually point to different factors that may have unfairly tipped the vote total to the opposing side. But this recurring cherry-picking of regions known to be supportive of one particular candidate over another in order to tip the balance is so obviously contrived that it makes me question the integrity of any candidate who seeks this type of a solution in such a close race.

Gay Marriage

One issue that I am certain is going to come back up during this presidential election year is that of gay marriage, with all kinds of ballot initiatives appearing, designed to "protect the sanctity of marriage", especially in key states that Republicans are depending on to win the presidency. This cynical ploy seemed to work well in 2004, when droves of people felt spurred to vote, not because of the crucial presidential contest that year, but rather because they somehow felt threatened by same-sex marriages becoming legal. So what is the big deal about gay marriage anyway?

For those believers of faiths whose scriptures disapprove of homosexuality, anything that would tend to bestow legitimacy on that lifestyle is going to be seen as a kind of abomination. And as far I am concerned, they are welcome to entertain their own beliefs on this subject. But it is quite another matter altogether to make the claim that gay marriage is a threat to the institution of marriage, especially when half of all marriages (heterosexual) end in divorce! It would seem to me that if those who wanted to protect the sanctity of marriage were serious about their principles, then they would first concentrate on making divorce much more difficult. But that would then be making restrictions on heterosexuals, wouldn't it? And after all, it's those "other people" who need restraint, right?! Plus, I have trouble picturing any divorce proceeding in which one or both of the parties claims that the marriage was ruined because some gays elsewhere were allowed to marry! And yet, this is the sort of reasoning (if you want to call it that) that seems to resonate with many people.

Another reason some are opposed to gay marriage is that they are afraid and repulsed by gay and lesbian couples being able to display the fact of their relationships with each other legitimately in public the way heterosexual couples currently do. One argument is that openly gay behavior would attract others to somehow become gay. This is the "recruitment" argument, implying that gay people are a kind of "army" that deliberately recruits new members. Well, I am in my fifties, and I can only say that, in my personal experience, I have known a few gay people, none of whom ever even remotely attempted to sway me toward their lifestyle. And if someone did, then so what? Don't I have the freedom and authority to politely and respectfully say "no"?!

So, I guess you may have already discerned that I don't see how allowing committed same-sex couples to commit their lives to each other in a solemn marriage ceremony and be recognized within the general society as a married couple is a bad thing. I'm sure that religious folk can point to this passage or that in their scriptures to "prove" what a bad idea that is. But I would also point out that scripture has been commonly used in the past to justify discrimination (and even enslavement) against other demographic groups. The widespread anti-Semitism in Europe that culminated in six million deaths of Jews under Hitler this past century was founded in centuries of church-sanctioned doctrine blaming the Jews for killing Jesus. In America during the years of slavery, black slaves were not permitted to marry. And then were judged to be living in sin because of this! More recently, in the early 1980's, when the emerging AIDS epidemic became public knowledge, homosexuals were often openly portrayed in the media as being ravenously promiscuous. The fact that many heterosexuals are ravenously promiscuous didn't seem to be relevant to the discussion, for some reason.

I think that much of the opposition to gay marriage is a backhanded pride issue. By that, I mean that many opponents see gays as "them", not "us", and aren't we so proud of ourselves that we aren't "them"! I think each of us has enough to worry about the "planks" in our own eyes without worrying about the "specks" in others'!

Favorite Songs of 1972

To fully understand where I stand on music in the year 1972, you need to take into account that, at that time, I was in the midst of my teenage years. As such, I tended to bond more with the prevailing popular music then than at other times of my life. So as a result, since I was 15-16 years old this year, 1972 naturally contains probably the longest list of "great" songs that I could amass. So, once again, I'll just comment on a few of my favorites and list the rest.

I listened in 1972 to a variety of radio stations (in south Florida) for my music. The pop/rock mainstays on AM, 560-WQAM, 790-WFUN, and 1580-WSRF, played most of my favorites. But 940-WINZ would also play songs that weren't necessarily top-40 but still were awfully good. Examples of this were Georgio's Son of My Father, Bob Dylan's George Jackson, and Apollo 100's Joy. On the FM side of the radio dial, a wide variety of stations had proliferated as well, giving me plenty of opportunities to surf around for good music. Bread had two sad, sweet love songs in Everything I Own and Diary. The Moody Blues, with the release of their Seventh Sojourn album, had two excellent tracks (often played end-to-end as a unit) For My Lady (later to become one of my top ten all-time favorites) and Isn't Life Strange. The group Yes hit the big time with their keyboard-frenzied Roundabout. Three Dog Night's Family of Man lightened my spirits in a personally-depressing spring of '72. Another spirit-lifter was Candyman by the inimitable Sammy Davis Jr., whose career was also enhanced this year by kissing Archie Bunker and diminished by hugging Richard Nixon. Commander Cody made me laugh with their resurrection of Hot Rod Lincoln. Looking Glass had their one big hit (and my #5 favorite of the year): Brandy. The Carpenters went a little heavy on the electric guitar with the sad, forlorn (and my #4 favorite of '72) Goodbye To Love. At the close of 1972, emerging superstar singer Carly Simon had her greatest song ever (to me): her hilarious tongue-in-cheek tribute to jet-setter friend Mick Jagger (and my #3 song of the year): You're So Vain. Elton John in 1972 came out with several hits, among them Rocket Man and Honky Cat. But my favorites of his that year were songs that I only heard played on one radio station (1580-WSRF): Levon and Tiny Dancer (my #2 song of 1972). Since these two are the ones now being played a lot on the radio, I feel sweetly vindicated! The greatest song to me of the great musical year of 1972? None other than the passionate, soulful plea of love by Eric Clapton, expressed through his group Derek and the Dominoes: Layla, a song which, moreover, really won me over for its long instrumental ending that wove together the keyboard and the guitar into a masterpiece of sound. And here are the other songs from 1972 that I liked a lot:

Footstompin' Music (Grand Funk Railroad)
I Wanna Be Where You Are (Michael Jackson)
Outa-Space (Billy Preston)
Doctor My Eyes (Jackson Browne)
Lean On Me (Bill Withers)
I Saw the Light (Todd Rundgren)
Too Late to Turn Back Now (Cornelius Brothers & Sister Rose)
Coconut (Nilsson)
Conquistador (Procol Harum)
Where Is the Love (Roberta Flack & Donny Hathaway)
Take It Easy (Eagles)
Go All the Way (Raspberries)
Garden Party (Rick Nelson)
Popcorn (Hot Butter)
Tight Rope (Leon Russell)
Freddie's Dead (Curtis Mayfield)
I Can See Clearly Now (Johnny Nash)
Papa Was a Rolling Stone (Temptations)
Me and Mrs. Jones (Billy Paul)
I'm Stone in Love With You (Stylistics)
Sitting (Cat Stevens)
Crab Dance (Cat Stevens)
Saturday in the Park (Chicago)
Duncan (Paul Simon)
Heart of Gold (Neil Young)
Summer Breeze (Seals and Crofts)
Living in the Past (Jethro Tull)

The entire Beatles White Album (which I heard in its entirety for the first time in 1972) dominated much of my listening later in the year, even though this work was released back in 1968. I was able to borrow the album from a dear friend and later bought it myself. In particular, I enjoyed listening through "Side Four", which included the ominous and sinister Revolution 9 and the tearjerking finale, Goodnight. The mood of much of this great work of the Beatles strongly resonated with how I was generally feeling at the time, and I'll always fondly identify it with 1972.

Rank Amateur Gaming

One of my son's friends, Jeff, delivered a speech recently at their high school graduation ceremony in which he described his experiences as a player on his school's basketball team during his senior year. Including the fact that he had never played basketball before going out for the team! He described his ability in basketball as "awful", but also stated that his experience on the team was the highlight of his school career. I identify with the outlook presented by this thoughtful young man, for there are areas that I would like to explore in my life for which I would equally qualify as a "rank amateur". One of these areas is the vast field of video gaming.

Although I'm sure that there are folks my age who are adept at video games, I think that being a part of the video gaming culture is basically a matter of which generation one is a part of. It wasn't until I was 20 that I actually played my first video game, the very simple Pong. And I never got much further than that. I remember playing, about twenty years ago, an Atari game called Qix, that my brother-in-law had on his old Atari system. And I got pretty adept at it, I'm proud to say. But when my son, and later, daughter, began their forays into the world of video games, I could not keep up with them, not even remotely! I'm not even sure which video game systems they are using now. I do remember, though, attempting (with mixed success) to get through the various stages in Sonic II (then on Genesis) during the mid-nineties. And later, I had some fun with the spin-off game Doctor Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine. But that aside, I have gone absolutely nowhere with video games. Until now. I have been inspired by Jeff's speech to join the ranks of other rank amateurs in their fields and have purchased a 99-cent used video game, Project Gotham Racing, which I will attempt to "get good at". I am sincerely hoping that my daughter will help to mentor me through the video gaming process and will not laugh at my pathetic failures too much! There may be a danger to me doing this, though: I've seen that playing video games can become highly addictive for some!

Duality

In the Oscar-winning movie A Beautiful Mind, directed by Ron Howard and starring Russell Crowe, mathematician John Nash hits upon an idea for his graduate thesis, an idea that would eventually garner him the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1994: the optimum economic result is achieved when each party works both for its own interests as well as for the group as a whole. This duality of purpose may, at times, seem to raise conflicts, but I believe that it has wider applications than Nash's economic masterpiece. Here are some examples:

--Within the context of a particular religion, a believer may believe that his/her faith is not only the exclusively true religion, but also that nonbelievers are doomed to eternal suffering after death as well as that those nonbelievers may be so evil that they do not even deserve to live. And yet, as functioning social human beings on earth, people of faith must necessarily get along with others who do not share that faith with them. So there must be a kind of division, or duality, that allows them to both believe in their own religion while being respectful of others. This is for the good of society as a whole.

--There is the duality of authority and guidance that all persons in positions of authority need to exercise, be they parents, employers, supervisors, teachers, etc. At times, there will be a strict command structure in which subordinates (children, students, employees, etc.) will need to "just follow orders". Other times, it will be necessary for there to be an open atmosphere of honest interaction. There needs to be both elements of this duality in a state of balance in order for the authority/subordinate relationship to have optimum effectiveness.

--Watching sports I as often do on television, I am also struck by how I see the best, most respected athletes portrayed. In the context of their sport, they display very aggressive behavior, but must instantly know when to quickly abandon that aggression for the sake of avoiding trouble with officials and competing athletes. This duality of sportsmanship and aggressive competitiveness is something that I've noticed has to be learned, for when I was in school, the competitive kids around me cheated, hogged the ball, and yelled at others whenever they "screwed up"!

--Every elected politician, in order to be an effective leader, has two sometimes conflicting constituents to satisfy: the first are those people who voted them into office and expect the politician to subscribe to a particular ideological canon that meets with their approval. The second are the people as a whole whom the politician was elected to represent, and this naturally also includes those politically opposed to him/her. So the effective politician will optimally work for the constituents as a whole while at the same time satisfying the most important concerns of those who elected him/her. Not an easy task, from what I've been able to gather over the years!

I could probably go on and on with examples of how people need to behave with a sort of duality in the real world. This doesn't mean that people need to be two-faced or hypocritical: as John Nash laid out in his paper on economics, duality itself is a principle that, when adhered to properly, creates the best result, ultimately strengthening each of its facets.

Monday Newsbreak: 5/26

--Today is Memorial Day in the United States. We express our appreciation for those many brave Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice to preserve our freedoms and way of life here in America as soldiers during times of war.

--Hillary Clinton has been lambasted for making a comment about Robert F. Kennedy's assassination in June of 1968 as part of her justification for remaining in the campaign against Barack Obama. Many have taken this as a statement meaning that Obama might be suddenly (and possibly tragically) "taken out" of the presidential race, leaving her in a position to assume the Democratic mantle. But I think that Hillary was only trying to refresh people's memories (or educate them for the first time) that in the past, campaigns for nominations often went on strong into the month of June. Her slip-up, as I see it, was to utter the word "assassination", although it was obviously (to me) only intended to point out the month (June) and not to imply anything potentially calamitous about the present campaign.

--Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy has been diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor with a poor prognosis. Although his personal life has been pockmarked with scandal at various times over the years, I have grown to respect Kennedy for his advocacy for the poor and the middle class, workers' rights, the environment, and his talent for reaching across the senate aisle and working with his Republican counterparts on legislation. His absence will be heavily felt. On a side note, after long-time (more than four decades) senate colleague Robert Byrd cried on the senate floor regarding Kennedy's terminal diagnosis, acerbic political radio host Michael Savage cruelly derided the West Virginia senator. And yet millions of American listen to Savage and subscribe to this obviously disturbed man's worldview! Scary!

--An unmanned NASA craft landed in the polar region of Mars yesterday with one of its main tasks being to extract some water in hopes of possibly determining conditions for (or existence of) life there. Unlike the recent landing of a probe using air bags to cushion the landing, this craft, called the Phoenix Mars Lander, used rocket thrusters and parachutes to make a soft landing. There had been concern due to previous Mars landing failures using this system, but the craft made it safely to the red planet's surface. Of course, there are many other things that need to "go right" in the next few days as well.

--In the "thanks but no thanks" department, Steve Newman's Earthweek feature reported that an Australian professor, Tim Flannery (field unspecified) who is a climate change activist, advocated gradually injecting sulfur into the atmosphere (through jet emissions) in order to deflect the sun's heat back into space. This would purportedly counter the carbon dioxide-induced increasing greenhouse effect causing our global warming (as well as turn the sky a yellow color). Flannery stated that he was unaware of how any negative effects could arise from doing this. To which I say, "Are you crazy, dude?!" Just look over to the next planet, Venus, and its sulfuric acid-enriched atmosphere to get a taste of what the future holds for us if loony ideas like this hold sway.

The WNBA

I discovered recently that the WNBA, the women's counterpart of the National Basketball Association, began its season of play this past week. I think that playing a spring/summer schedule is a great way to publicize this high caliber of basketball without interfering with the men's season. It also gives us basketball couch potatoes something to tune in to during the summer! Although the WNBA has been going on for a while (since 1997), this will be the first year that I will be paying attention to it. I'm going to watch a few games and then decide which teams I want to root for the most (I'm not geographically tied down to an area). The only thing that I want to make sure before I get in too deep following it is that the WNBA is on sound enough financial footing to allow it to endure long enough to establish traditions, rivalries, and memorable experiences. The fact that it has been around for over a decade, is under the NBA's protective umbrella, and has a TV contract bodes well for its future. Plus, girl's basketball is growing in popularity on a grass roots level across the nation. I saw some bits of the women's NCAA tournament and was impressed by the athletes' play. I felt, while watching the games, a sense that their manner of play resonated more with how I would play the game should I be on a team. When watching the men, I often get swept away by the almost superhuman level of athleticism displayed. There seems to be a slower, strategy-based flavor to the women's games. It should make for some good basketball! Of course, right now I am totally immersed with the men's NBA playoffs.

Later this summer, the Summer Olympics in China should also be interesting regarding both men's and women's basketball (assuming the television coverage actually allows me to watch games without hopping and skipping around too much to other events and features). Who knows, I may recognize the WNBA stars on the US women's team (temporarily pretending to be amateurs).

Factors in Liking Songs

If you've been reading this blog, you may have noticed that I review, on a weekly basis, my favorite songs of a specific year. And you also may have noticed that these songs tend to vary quite a bit as far as genre is concerned. So what makes a song memorable and appealing?

As I have lived through the years, contemporary popular music has traced a path parallel to my personal life. So, at any particular time, there were songs that were current then. As a result, I have come to associate certain tunes with certain periods of my life. And sometimes, it gets very specific with a tune evoking one vivid memory. For example, I remember, during my high school track practice in April 1973, someone had their radio on and the Stealer's Wheel hit Stuck In the Middle With You was playing. Now whenever I hear it, I go back to that time and "relive" it. Other times, I would just be running some cross-country practice on my own and I would begin to play a tune in my head. Now those tunes also automatically bring up my running experiences (Don't Pass Me By by The Beatles, Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy by Bette Midler, Loves Me Like a Rock by Paul Simon, and Changes by David Bowie). Since I've usually been permitted the use of a radio at my workplaces, I'll often instantly visualize an old work location upon hearing an old tune. The earliest example of this phenomenon of associating songs with personal events that I can remember was when I, as a seven-year old (in 1964), was playing out in my front yard by the driveway while someone had on the radio, which was playing a song titled White On White. When the oldies station plays Georgie Fame's Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde, I'm suddenly in the same spot four years later in 1968, but it's evening and I'm out star-gazing. Hearing other songs will give me instant associations with people such as my friends and family, when those have reacted either positively or negatively to the songs in question. So hearing old songs can serve as a tremendous memory aid, tying my life's span together into a tapestry of sorts and keeping memories afloat that otherwise would have faded into oblivion.

But there are simply songs that stand out on their own merit and don't necessarily bring out memories. To this category belongs music that resonates with the various emotions and moods that I tend to go through on a regular basis. And sometimes, strange as it may sound, it takes a song full of misery to lift my spirits when I'm feeling down myself (songs like Novocaine For the Soul by the Eels and Led Zeppelin's Dazed and Confused and No Quarter).

Some songs impress me for the virtuosity of the singers and instrument players (Minnie Ripperton's Loving You and The White Stripes' Icky Thump). Others have interesting stories to tell (Suzanne Vega's Luka and Tracy Chapman's Fast Car). Sometimes all it takes for a song to take hold on me is for it to contain a couple of witty or significant lines of lyric (for example, just about anything by John Lennon). I'm also partial to songs of a long, "epic" nature that take their time developing to rewarding climaxes (songs like Close to the Edge by Yes and Stranglehold by Ted Nugent).

There is a special category of songs that I am fond of: songs of inspiration and determination. These can reinforce positive attitudes and habits, and I like to listen to these repeatedly (songs like Tom Petty's I Won't Back Down, Pearl Jam's I Am Mine, and Steve Winwood's Back in the High Life Again).

So you can see, there are many different factors determining whether or not I like a song that I hear. And sometimes, I'll like one for no discernible reason as well!

Reading on the Eights: 5/23

Over the past eight weeks, it looks as if I didn't read with the same intensity as in previous periods. Why this was so, I don't know. I did reread J.K. Rawling's fitting conclusion to the Harry Potter saga: The Deathly Hallows (my daughter had recently read it and I was embarrassed to have already forgotten many of its details). I continued reading some old science fiction, although not at the pace I had envisioned. I read two short stories from 1931: P. Schuyler Miller's Tetrahedra Of Space and Clifford Simak's World of the Red Sun. Miller's story contained the unintended paradox of humans attempting to bridge the chasm of differences between species of entirely different forms while holding on tenaciously to commonly-held (in 1931) prejudices about people "of color". Simak's story was the better by far, with a time travel angle and a classic, unexpected ending. I remember this excellent sci-fi writer from childhood when I read his story The Big Front Yard, evoking imagery that has stayed with me to this day.

And, of course, I continued my Stephen King readings, concentrating on his Dark Tower series. I read through the fourth book, titled The Wizard and Glass, and must say that it was the best of the series so far. But the fifth book, Wolves of the Calla, of which I am in the middle of reading, is also quite engrossing.

I guess that I've let myself be distracted by some other things recently, often putting my reading on the "back burner". And to be brutally frank, the very old science fiction short stories (from the early 1930s) weren't anywhere near as good as the ones that began to come out just ten years later. I think I'll switch out my short story books and read something more recent. And as I get deeper into Stephen King's Dark Tower series, I'm predicting the pace of reading to quicken! Although, being in the midst of trying to figure out what is going on with this series, I have hesitated to try to analyze it, it looks as if King may have unconsciously borrowed one of Rawling's devices: the pensieve, which enabled the observer to "travel" back in time to experience events from the point of view of the person who "left" the memory behind. King doesn't use a bowl, and there are some differences, but the effect seems (to me) to be similar. Of course, she may have taken it from him or they both took the idea from another source. Or maybe it's all just a big coincidence!

Favorite Songs of 1973

As full of great songs as 1974 was, 1973 was even better! As such, I am once again resorting to listing many of them while commenting on a few of the (to me) best.

Hurricane Smith kicked off 1973 with an offbeat (and his only) big hit Oh Babe What Would You Say. Stealer's Wheel, featuring the talented Gerry Rafferty, spun out an intriguing record with a different beat (copied by Sheryl Crow on her All I Wanna Do): Stuck in the Middle With You. The great guitar-jamming, whistling, and (yes) yodeling hit Hocus Pocus (by Focus) came out in '73. My favorite Arlo Guthrie song, a cover of his father Woodie's hit Gypsy Davey, came out in late spring. Lynn Anderson's version of the Carpenters-penned Top of the World was, to me, vastly superior to the original version. The Allman Brothers jammed it up the way only they could with their Ramblin' Man. Stevie Wonder's epic story of race and injustice, Living for the City, grew in stature with me over the years until it is now one of my all-time favorite songs. Harry Chapin had a minor hit with W-O-L-D, a compelling, sad tale about an aging disc jockey. America put out two songs that resonated well with me (although they weren't their biggest hits): Don't Cross the River and Only In Your Heart. The Spinners had a beautiful tearjerker with Ghetto Child. Johnny Mathis likewise put out an emotional tune: I'm Coming Home. Nights in White Satin, originally released in 1968 by the Moody Blues, later became a singles hit in 1972 and a favorite of mine in early 1973 (the full-length version). Elton John and John Denver, both enjoying success with singles releases this year, had better songs hidden on their albums with Blues For Baby and Me and Farewell Andromeda, respectively. Chicago's innovative anti-war, pro-social activism song Dialogue has also grown to become one of my all-time favorites. My #3 favorite song from 1973 (as I lived through it) was Al Green's incredible Love and Happiness (which he belted out perfectly during the Atlanta Olympic Games' closing ceremonies in 1996). Although Led Zeppelin's classic Stairway to Heaven had been out for more than a year, it wasn't until late in 1973 that I noticed it. And then I became enraptured by this haunting and mysterious piece, making it my #2 song of the year. Speaking of mysterious, the duo Seals and Crofts produced my top favorite song of 1973 with their Hummingbird, which, although I never could ferret out the precise meaning of its lyrics, still somehow served to be very inspiring! And now, here are some other great tunes I liked back then in '73:

Dueling Banjos (Eric Weissberg & Steve Mandel)
Killing Me Softly With His Song (Roberta Flack)
Dancing in the Moonlight (King Harvest)
Also Sprach Zarathustra (Deodato)
Give It Up (J. Geils Band)
Peaceful Easy Feeling (Eagles)
Peaceful (Helen Reddy)
Cisco Kid (War)
Drift Away (Dobie Gray)
Wildflower (Skylark)
Pillow Talk (Sylvia)
I'm Gonna Love You Just a Little More (Barry White)
Oklahoma Crude Theme (Henry Mancini)
The Morning After (Maureen McGovern)
As Time Goes By (Nilsson)
Midnight Train to Georgia (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
Smoke on the Water (Deep Purple)
Paper Roses (Marie Osmond)
Out of the Question (Gilbert O'Sullivan)
No More Mr. Nice Guy (Alice Cooper)
Little Willy (The Sweet)
Uneasy Rider (Charlie Daniels Band)
Take a Walk on the Wild Side (Lou Reed)
Will It Go Around in Circles (Billy Preston)
Soul Makossa (Manu Dibango)
Send a Little Love My Way (Ann Murray)
Hello It's Me (Todd Rundgren)
Knockin' On Heaven's Door (Bob Dylan)
Kodachrome (Paul Simon)
Loves Me Like a Rock (Paul Simon)
All I Know (Art Garfunkel)
Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy (Bette Midler)
Whatever Gets You Through the Night (John Lennon)
Give Me Love (George Harrison)
Photograph (Ringo Starr)
Goodbye Yellow Brick Road (Elton John)
Daniel (Elton John)
Rocky Mountain High (John Denver)
I Got a Name (Jim Croce)
You Are the Sunshine of My Life (Stevie Wonder)
Space Oddity (Davie Bowie) (re-released)
Do It Again (Steely Dan)
Reelin' in the Years (Steely Dan)
Aubrey (Bread)
Clouds (David Gates)

NBA Conference Final

We have finally reached the stage in the National Basketball Association playoffs where there are only four teams left, with the conference championships to be determined next. And all teams are established winners, sharing among them many NBA titles. In the East, Boston and its recently-acquired (this season) superstar Kevin Garnett, having some difficulty during the playoffs despite its league-topping regular season record, is pitted against the gritty Detroit Pistons, who are highlighted by the entertaining and volatile Rasheed Wallace and the quick and steady Richard Hamilton. In the West, perennial playoff standout San Antonio, with its many stars (notably Tony Parker, Tim Duncan, and Manu Ginobili), are set to face this year's MVP, Kobe Bryant, and his Los Angeles Lakers, in what is sure to be an epic and highly entertaining and unforgettable series.

Although Detroit is the only team of the four I've been rooting for (I even supported them in the recent series against the "local" Orlando Magic), I will have to decide on either San Antonio or Los Angeles to pull for in that series. And I have a feeling that it's going to be the Spurs! Watching how they stuck with a remarkable New Orleans team in their last series and ultimately pulled it out in the end has made me admire them greatly and has put the memory of last year's controversial series victory against my Phoenix Suns into the distant background. I like scrappy, gutsy teams like the Detroit Pistons and the San Antonio Spurs!

Unfortunately, my work schedule is such that the games will be decided while I'm at work (except on weekends), so I'll miss out on most of them. But that's life, and watching basketball is just a pleasant diversion, of course.

A Father's Pride

I am very proud of my son, Will, for graduating from high school this past week. He was a diligent, responsible student and graduated summa cum laude (GPA 4.00) in his class. He was also honored by being selected to deliver an excellent, thought-provoking speech he wrote at the graduation ceremony. Will excelled in debate, drama (he wrote parts into a play his school performed), music (he played piano accompaniment for another school production with professionalism), writing, biology, and mathematics. When challenges and opportunities arose in school, instead of shying away from them, Will rose to meet them head-on. As a result, my son has transformed into a remarkable young man with diverse talents, as well as possessing a spirit of grace, generosity, and perseverance. It was obvious to me that Will was well-liked by his classmates and respected by his teachers. Although people usually ask how much influence a father has had on his son, I would have to remark on how much influence my son has had on me! In particular, one little statement that he would say: "Face the fear!"

Will also won an academic scholarship to the college he will be attending this fall and is still undecided as to what he will major in. But I'm sure that whatever he puts his mind and heart into will be a resounding success! The picture above shows Will flanked by his beaming father and mother.

Monday Newsbreak: 5/19

--So far, it has been estimated that more than 30,000 people have died in the China earthquakes that chiefly affected heavily-populated central China's Sichuan province. The country has begun an official three-day period of national mourning. My condolences go out to all affected by this terrible tragedy. Unlike the case with Burma after its cyclone calamity, China has welcomed international relief, to its credit.

--As I went through yesterday's Gainesville Sun, I was struck by the absence of articles about the presidential campaign. All that I saw was a piece about how women looked to the future in presidential politics and another article about the use of gas tax relief as a campaign gimmick. Which I think is kind of funny, given that we have almost come to the threshold where Barack Obama secures the nomination. Maybe the Sun recognized what is about to happen and is planning to drown us in political news next week (especially after tomorrow's Kentucky and Oregon primaries)!

--When President Bush, while speaking in Israel last week, made critical comparisons between appeasers of Hitler and those who would "negotiate with terrorists", all of the media seemed to immediately jump to the conclusion that Bush was referring to Barack Obama. But, to me, it seemed pretty obvious that the President, with whom I have had serious differences about his foreign policy, was alluding to former President Jimmy Carter's recent meeting with officials of Hamas, an organization commonly depicted as "terrorist" and today's most direct threat to Israel. Still, I think that Bush should have saved his criticism for when he was back in the United States. I agree with MSNBC's Chris Matthews for his assertion that using diplomacy with your opponents is not appeasement: you need to talk with your enemies in order to be able to lay the law down on them clearly!

--About one third of American corn is now being grown not for food, but rather for ethanol production. What happened to the United States as the world's "breadbasket"? I really don't think this diversion from food production to ethanol is a very good idea! In our gluttony for energy resources, we seem to have taken for granted that our collective food supply is secure when, in reality, it is in a very fragile state.

--In watching the NBA playoffs, I am continually amazed how differently teams play at home than when they are the visitors. Why should the game's location be any kind of factor at this level of play? And yet, regardless of who's playing, the home team seems to play like world champions! How can one team (the Atlanta Hawks) beat another (the Boston Celtics) by three points at home and then lose the next game by 34 in Boston?!!

Mathematics as a Diversion

In the old Sherlock Holmes movie Terror By Night, starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce, Holmes and Watson are deep in the midst of solving a mystery aboard a train. Searching compartments for suspicious characters, the two run across a rather stuffy, rude, middle-aged traveler who they discover is engaged in the totally-fun hobby of mathematics! That scene always struck me, because the way math was taught when I went to school made learning it nothing less than traumatic (in spite of the fact that I had exceptional SAT math scores of 780 and 800 in high school). I've written earlier, in the deep recesses of this blog, about the horrible way that I believe math is taught in schools (almost as a test of the student's character). Instead of encouraging high anxiety among math students, teachers of this very interesting field could very easily transform the learning experience into one of fun entertainment, because just about anything concerning mathematics can be converted into a game! I discovered, for example, that during classes like calculus and differential equations, it became quite fun to solve integrals and "diffy q's". As a matter of fact, there is a good series of "math puzzle" books, the authors of which would probably by horrified by hearing anyone referring to their works as such: the Schaums series. Schaums books cover an enormous range of highly technical topics while being structured in a very student-friendly manner. Anyone wanting to immerse themselves in an area of math may be pleasantly surprised at the way each chapter presents new concepts, has problems fully worked out, and contains a whole slew of supplementary problems to boot. It's just a slight mental adjustment for one to look at each of these "problems" as a game to play!

Can you guess where I'm going with this? Yes, I'm adding another "eights" to my self-improvement series (where I update my personal progress in an area every eight weeks on this blog): Schaums Math on the Eights. I'm sure that there are many other very fine publications that teach math well, but for my purposes, I want to have some fun in the process! I also have another motive for doing this: my daughter is going to be entering secondary school and I want to be fully equipped to help her master the new concepts she will be facing with as little trauma as possible. Since I already possess several Schaums math books, I can start up right off the bat!

Kakuro and Sudoku

Over the past few months, I have always made a point of carrying around in my pocket some sheets containing sudoku and/or kakuro puzzles. With both puzzle types, I have now reached something of a relatively advanced level, with me now doing sudoku and kakuro puzzles from the "Black Belt" editions of the Martial Arts Suduko and Kakuro series of books by Sterling Publishing Co., Inc., New York. No need to carry with me any solutions: if I "screw up" with a puzzle, a condradiction will inevitably crop up. Nowadays, the one overwhelming factor that will keep me from successfully completing a puzzle is simple carelessness.

I find that I prefer kakuro over sudoku, simply because it requires quick arithmetic and is also a more challenging logic puzzle than sudoku. In both puzzles, a row or column may contain non-repeating combinations of the numbers 1 through 9. With sudoku, each row and column contains all nine numbers, while kakuro rows and columns have variable lengths, with the sum of its numbers indicated next to them. So, for example, a three-space row with the sum "24" indicated will invariably contain the numbers 7, 8, and 9 in some combination. The key to solving the more complicated kakuro puzzles is to eliminate possible numbers for each square by cross-referencing the row and column that the square is a part of. It can be quite exacting and tedious at times, but it is also pretty rewarding to get all the way through a large, difficult puzzle.

I simply buy inexpensive sudoku and kakuro books, rip out a few pages at a time, stuff them in my pocket, and then work on them at my leisure or during times of interruption or waiting. It's a good way to take the edge off situations where I would be tempted to become impatient. I recommend this sort of diversion to others as well. Even if you don't care to do sudoku or kakuro, there are other types of puzzles, such as Jumble, crossword puzzles, word-find, or cryptograms. The idea is to find something that suits you and can challenge you as well.

Thresholds and Margins

As I go through life, I find that the concepts of thresholds and margins are crucial to my effectiveness. What do I mean by this?

Take school, for example. Let's say there are three students: X, Y, and Z, all of equal intelligence and ability. X gets slightly ahead in class and is already a couple lessons ahead for each exam. Y keeps even with class, while Z is about a week behind. When each assignment or exam comes due, X does the best, Y average, and Z fails. At the end of the course, all three may have learned the same amount of material. But staying ahead of the thresholds by giving oneself a time-margin made the difference between success and failure.

The same holds for financial management. Some households seems able to pay all of their bills on time while others struggle to find creative ways of juggling their expenses around. And both may have the same income. The successful household has built up a margin of safety with its finances that enables it to be in the black even at those times that expenses are the greatest. The idea is to first build up a financial margin, or buffer.

In sports, thresholds and margins figure heavily. In baseball, for example, one team can outplay the other, but in order to win, they have to pass a specific threshold (home plate) more than the other. In football, a team can be slow with their offense, but still manage to march downfield for a score as long as they can continually pass the threshold of ten-yard net gains per four downs. Golf, instead of being one extremely long course, is divided into eighteen holes, each one a threshold to cross. In all of these scenarios, thresholds tend to serve as an equalizing force between two unequal sides. I remember the 1960 World Series between the heavily favored New York Yankees and the upstart Pittsburgh Pirates. In one game, the Yankees would blow out the Pirates 16-3 and the next they'd lose a very close one. The final game was won by Pittsburgh 10-9. They won despite being a weaker team (NY outscored Pittsburgh by a two-to-one ratio in the series) because they were able to win the threshold battle. So how does this apply to me?

If I look upon my life as a sort of continual game, I'll find that each year, month, week, day, and even hour can serve as a type of threshold standard that I can use to determine success or failure. The idea is to get SOMETHING accomplished in a goal-area during each predetermined time period. So I should set aside a few minutes for piano, a set time for running, another period for foreign language study, and so on. By doing this, I can eke out productivity from small bits of available time over the course of a day. And the cumulative effect of this over time can be staggering!

Yes, I find that it's often the marginal, "extra" little things here and there that can ultimately make the big difference between success and failure in endeavors. Have I done this well in my own life? Not anywhere as much as I would have liked. But as the saying goes, each day is a new beginning. And it starts with doing things marginally better!

Favorite Songs of 1974

The year 1974 had so many great songs that I am going to have to resort to simply listing some of them. But I'll write a little about the top ones of this special year. Cat Stevens still had his musical and lyrical magic together with his Oh Very Young. Maria Muldaur's sultry Midnight at the Oasis made we wish for more hits from her. The Spanish group Mocedades had one of my all-time favorite Spanish-language hits with the beautiful Eres Tu. Jim Stafford came out with two memorable songs: the thought-provoking My Girl Bill and the thoroughly hilarious Wildwood Weed. Elton John's The Bitch is Back celebrated survival and revival. Billy Joel's sparkling career took off nationwide with his Piano Man and its fast-paced follow-up Travelin' Prayer. Seals and Crofts had We May Never Pass This Way Again (picked by many high schools as their theme song for 1974) and the introspective King of Nothing. I heard my first Electric Light Orchestra song in '74: Can't Get It Out of My Head. Although it was originally a hit in 1973, Marvin Gaye's slow masterpiece Let's Get It On grew on me the next year. John Denver's Back Home Again was a pleasant, cozy-sounding tune, but his Sunshine On My Shoulders was impressive enough back then for me to make it my #5 favorite song of 1974. The late Jim Croce had a posthumous hit with his sweet love song Time in a Bottle, #4 for me that year. The Japanese electronic musician Isao Tomita produced an album interpreting several of the French composer Claude Debussy's pieces, including my #3 favorite 1974 piece, Arabesque #1. If you've ever watched PBS's star-gazing show, Star Hustler (with Jack Horkhimer), you would recognize Arabesque as its theme music. My #2 song was by the dynamic new group Bachman-Turner Overdrive: their stuttering success You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet. And #1? None other than the great, late John Lennon's infectious, mysterious Number Nine Dream. And now, here are some other great tunes from 1974:

Ruby Red Dress (Helen Reddy)
Taxi (Harry Chapin)
The Way We Were (Barbara Streisand)
Until You Come Back to Me (Aretha Franklin)
Star (Stealer's Wheel)
Mockingbird (Carly Simon & James Taylor)
Tubular Bells (Mike Oldfield)
Rock Your Baby (George McCrae)
You and Me Against the World (Helen Reddy)
Nothing From Nothing (Billy Preston)
Beach Baby (First Class)
Do It 'Til You're Satisfied (B.T. Express)
I Can Help (Billy Swan)
Life Is a Rock (Reunion)
When Will I See You Again (The Three Degrees)
Laughter in the Rain (Neil Sedaka)
The Air That I Breathe (Hollies)
The Show Must Go On (Three Dog Night)
Band on the Run (Paul McCartney & Wings)
Taking Care of Business (Bachman-Turner Overdrive)
I'll Have to Say I Love You In a Song (Jim Croce)
I've Been Searching For So Long (Chicago)
Longfellow Serenade (Neil Diamond)
Ride 'Em Cowboy (Paul Davis)
Boogie On Reggae Woman (Stevie Wonder)
Don't You Worry About a Thing (Stevie Wonder)
I Love (Tom T. Hall)
Jazzman (Carole King)

Yes, 1974 was a very exceptional year musically!

Freckles, Cuddles, and Taffy

Two summers ago, we adopted Freckles (above), a mixed-breed puppy, for my daughter as a advance-birthday present that year. Gainesville has a non-profit organization called Puppy Hill Farms that takes in abandoned animals, cares for them, and puts them up for adoption. Freckles was already spayed when we got her from them. We weren't too sure how big she would grow, but she finally slowed her growth down to where she is about 55 pounds. Freckles is a very high-spirited, lively dog who loves to play with tennis balls or sticks, as well as having her belly rubbed. At the beginning, we took her to obedience classes, where she learned a few commands. Freckles apparently had some traumas before Puppy Hills Farms took her in, because she becomes petrified at the sight of any truck or the sound of any running machinery. Freckles has an older "sister" in Cuddles, another mixed-breed dog that we've had since 1997 (as my son's dog). While Freckles seems to have some greyhound and Aussie shepherd in her, Cuddles is more like a dachshund/basset hound combo and is stocky and close to the ground (but very fast when she wants to be). We adore our dogs. A year ago, Taffy, our miniature poodle, passed on after nineteen happy years with us. I love dogs, and I am not particular about breeds, either. If you live in a place that allows pets, I recommend adopting a mixed breed dog from one of the adoption agencies. Our lives have been enormously enriched by ours! Last month, our veterinarian picked Freckles as the pet of the month (entitling her to a free bath and nail-clipping)! Here are pictures of Cuddles (left) and a very young Taffy (with me, right):

Foreign Languages on the Eights: 5/13

For the past eight weeks, studying foreign languages has taken a back seat to other things in my life. But I still had plenty of opportunities to take a few minutes aside daily to study some. Oh well, that's the past and it's behind me: the question is what am I going to do now. As I mentioned a while back on this blog, I decided to narrow my concentrated study of foreign languages to those that I had the best chance of approaching effective mastery of: Spanish, German, Russian, French, and Chinese. It is very easy nowadays, by means of the Internet, to both read material in each of these languages as well as hear daily webcasts in them. I also have study material at home to study with. So I just have to lay a little time aside, as well as set up a study plan. The main push should be for me to rapidly build up my passive (reading and listening) vocabulary in each of these languages to the point where I can follow the gist of anything I read or hear in them. But that aside, I also need to practice being in "the flow" of each tongue as well. So in the next few days I will work out more details. And hopefully, this time around I'll actually begin to accomplish something more substantial in this area of self-improvement!

Monday Newsbreak: 5/12

--In the aftermath of the tragic cyclone hitting southern Burma, it does sadly seem that this country's military government is only interested in holding on to power and cares very little for the welfare of its people. Its intransigence in allowing relief aid to enter the country, along with widespread accusations that it refused to give preventative warnings to the people about the cyclone's impending strike, says all that I need to know about the moral bankruptcy of this regime.

--After last Tuesday's North Carolina and Indiana primaries in which Barack Obama convincingly defeated Hillary Clinton in the former and essentially broke even with her in the latter, the momentum has sharply shifted over to Obama. The tide of superdelegate support is overwhelmingly going in the direction of the charismatic young Illinois senator. I agree with the pundits I've read who state that Hillary's behavior over the next few weeks will determine her political future within the Democratic Party on a national level. A lot more tact and a lot less sideswiping would appear to be the right course of action for the New York senator.

--The local news is full of the woes of the University of Florida as it tries to figure out a way to implement a $47 million budget cut. Not only will faculty and staff be severely cut, but degree programs will also be affected with some eliminated, leaving some students stranded in the middle of targeted programs. I agree with one of the letters to the Gainesville Sun's editor, which raised the question: since the UF administrators knew for a while about the impending cuts, why didn't they take earlier actions to both warn people as well as to look for alternative private sources of funding?! UF President Bernie Machen, with his multimillion dollar salary, comes out of this appearing totally incompetent and insensitive.

--The first Walmart Supercenter in Gainesville opened this week, so naturally it looked as if this store was the "place to be" this weekend. I went there and liked how the grocery store looked. However, judging by the chronically sloppy appearance of the other Walmarts in town, I think I'll wait a while after the initial hoopla has settled before rendering any kind of judgement about the new store. Only that, with the deliberate placement of the store in sparsely populated eastern Gainesville far away from everything, coupled with the skyrocketing cost of gasoline, I don't see myself making the crosstown trip very often to save money on merchandise.

Paying For Public Legitimacy

I'm curious about whether I'm the only one in the world who notices this, so I'll just put it out here on my blog. But over the years, I've come to an unsettling conclusion. If I am out in public, and not actually travelling about, then I need to be somewhere in the act of spending money (or at least presenting the appearance of intending to spend money)! Now if I am at home, then that's all right. But other than being at a public library, I feel that the idea has been hammered into me that I am something less than human if I am not paying for the "privilege" of making myself visible in the public. Does that sound a bit farfetched to you? One of the things that police look for on their patrols are people who don't seem to be doing anything in particular (translate: either not spending money or not moving). This is commonly known as "loitering", and the "offenders" are often referred to as vagrants and either told to move on or are thrown in jail (remember Sylvester Stallone's Rambo character in that small Oregon town in his First Blood movie?). If I am sitting in a Starbucks as a paying customer, then that's supposedly legitimate. But just sitting out somewhere doing the same thing, but not shelling out money, is liable to get some bad reactions from people. Now it's possible to spend a good deal of time in public without handing over money to others. But it has to be done furtively, with masked intentions. So I could window-shop, or browse around stores without ever making purchases. Or sit in a parking lot in my car without getting out. But even with these scenarios, I could come under scrutiny and suspicion for illegitimate behavior.

Just what is it that I'm asking, anyway? Only that I can truly feel like a free human being to the point that my presence anywhere (in public) is legitimate and doesn't depend on what others choose to discern about my intentions or whether I have "bought" a legitimate spot out in public.

Many years ago, the late great science-fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke wrote a famous short story titled Pedestrian, where he took my premise to its logical extreme and depicted a future society where just going out to take a walk is viewed as aberrant behavior worthy of incarceration. So I'm not the only one who's discerned this developing social phenomenon. And by all accounts, it's gotten progressively worse over the past few years! What I fear is that we are, like sheep, allowing ourselves to submissively be herded into a police state.

Well, I for one don't want to live in such a society, so I'm going to do something about it. Each week, I am going to make a major effort to spend time out in public, not spending money or doing something like jogging or dog-walking. No, I'll just go to a park and do my studying there with some fresh-brewed coffee from home! At least doing this should help to dispel a little of the creeping paranoia that I'm beginning to feel about this society becoming more oppressive. But even here, I'm still paying up (through my taxes, supporting the city park)!

Piano on the Eights: 5/10

For the past eight (plus) weeks, my piano practices have been progressing a bit more sluggishly than I would have liked. And one of the problems that I see is that I haven't defined my short-term and long-term goals well enough regarding what I want to accomplish with piano. Ultimately, I want to be able to play any music that I have a memory of, and that comprises thousands of songs. Also, I would like to be able to play music readily and accurately from sheet music, though not necessarily the extremely demanding pieces. In conjunction with these two goals, I would like to deepen my training in music theory, understanding better how chords are constructed as well as why music is sometimes written the way it is. In the short-term, I need to more assiduously practice my lesson pieces while going ahead on my own learning to play in other keys. And I need also to begin practicing plunking out tunes from memory as well. Also, if I am going to ever be able to play competently, then I need to be better with my timing and rhythm.

Maps

I have always felt a deep affinity for maps of all kinds. World atlases, road atlases, fold-up maps, fantasy-book (like Tolkien's Middle Earth) maps, and star maps all hold great interest for me. When I was around four or five years old, my sister and I used to play a game in our yard we called "Mapland", in which we would imagine different sections of the yard to be exciting, exotic lands, full of adventure, of course. I remember playing a lot of "imagination" games like this as a child, and I wonder whether today's children aren't being deprived of an important growth experience with their video games that provide ready-made images and narratives for them. Once, also when I was a kid, I began to etch, for no particular reason at all, some lined grooves on the seat of an old wooden chair of ours. Soon the idea took hold that I was drawing a map of sorts, and I began to imagine a city corresponding to the roads I was etching. There were schools, stores, the library, my "home", and friends' homes on this street or that. Soon I had covered the entire seat of this chair with a strange, web-like etching. I think it's still there at my old home. I don't think anyone in my family ever knew what that was all about. No one ever asked me and I never told them!

Also, around that time, I caught "collector's fever" and began to collect all sorts of different things. Naturally, road maps became one of my collector's items. On Saturdays, I would leave my house and make the rounds, walking to different gas stations (some pretty far away for a little kid to walk to) and asking the attendants whether they had some road maps (all of which were free then). So I soon amassed a pretty sizable collection of fold-up road maps, although they were mostly either of Miami, Florida, or the Southeastern US. For some reason, even though Broward County (lying directly north of Miami's Dade County) had a very large population, I never could get road maps of Hollywood or Fort Lauderdale back then. It was as if only Miami counted for anything in South Florida!

Nowadays, sometimes I have fun playing around with GoogleEarth on my computer. It really is quite an amazing feature, and seems to be continually undergoing updates and improvements. I remember reading somewhere that foreign governments, such as the Soviet Union, once would deliberately insert errors into their own maps, in hopes of making military conquest by others more difficult. Well, nowadays you can just forget that! What I would like to see in the future with GoogleEarth is a regularly-refreshed view of the Earth, or at least have them update their pictures more often.

Favorite Songs of 1975

1975, a year full of great songs, began for me with a flashback from the past. For some reason, local Miami radio began playing David Bowie's old hit Changes regularly at the beginning of the year. As a result, I'll always associate that great tune with 1975. Donny and Marie Osmond had one of their rare songs I liked with a collaboration, Morning Side of the Mountain. One of the Doobie Brothers' best-ever, Black Water, also came out at 75's start, as did Linda Ronstadt's forceful, angry You're No Good and Minnie Ripperton's sweet, intimate Loving You. As the year went on, other songs came to the fore. Michael Murphey's painful story of a girl and her horse, Wildfire, received a lot of radio play. War became more mainstream with two big single hits: Low Rider and Why Can't We Be Friends. C.W. McCall had a big country/CB radio/trucker hit with his hilarious Convoy. Alice Cooper had a rare subdued, emotional piece in Only Women. The group America's inspiring Lonely People was my all-time favorite of theirs. The Hustle, by Van McCoy, was the best disco song of the year as well as a regular fixture on CBS NFL Football that fall. K.C. and the Sunshine Band had another good dance tune with their Get Down Tonight. John Denver sang the pretty, romantic Fly Away as a duet with Olivia Newton-John. Olivia earlier in the year had a very pleasant singles hit with Have You Never Been Mellow. Love Rollercoaster, by the Ohio Players, was one of my favorite "soul" songs of '75. The German group Silver Convention had another good disco song: the very repetitive Fly Robin Fly. The Scottish group Pilot sounded an awful lot like the Beatles with their Magic. Bob Dylan raged against social injustice in his classic Hurricane, a song about a boxer whom he felt had wrongly been convicted of murder (and who was ultimately exonerated). My #3 song of 1975 was by the Spinners: their philosophical They Just Can't Stop It (Games People Play). The British group Queen had their first stateside hit (and my #2 song of the year) with their wild Killer Queen. And Elton John continued his march to greater and greater superstardom. His Philadelphia Freedom, a tribute to his friend Billie Jean King and her tennis team, was a pleasant, upbeat tune. But my top favorite song of 1975 was Elton's exciting two-part epic Funeral For a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding, still my all-time favorite piece of his.

Weight Loss and Maintenance on the Eights: 5/7

I have been keeping my weight pretty much at the same level (low to mid-160s) for the past eight weeks. Unfortunately, I've been slipping a bit into binge eating from time to time, although at the same time I've picked up my exercising intensity (mostly by running). I would like to get my weight down to around to 145-150 lbs, which I believe is the optimum level for me to be effective with my running. And then stay there, not dipping below 140. But I'm going to have to watch my caloric intake to accomplish this. One thing that has helped me is that I have begun to drink more water, which helps to take the edge off my "compulsion" to raid the icebox! Also, I need to resume regular weighings, but in general, my weight has stabilized between 163-165 lbs.

Reverend Wright Revisited

If you've been reading this blog, you may have come across a rather rosy piece a few days ago generally praising Reverend Jeremiah Wright (within limits). Well, I wrote that piece just after his interview with Bill Moyers and before his speeches to the NAACP and the National Press Club. In those speeches, Wright tended to revert back to the old aggressive "preaching" style that had brought on so much criticism. The result was that Barack Obama finally had to publicly disassociate himself from his former pastor.

I have to admit that I do not appreciate the way that Wright ridicules other people to make a point. To me, this sort of rhetoric reminds me more of characters like Archie Bunker and George Jefferson. Maybe Wright is still rooted in the 70s and believes that this sort of talk is still generally acceptable. Well, it isn't! I believe that someone can make a point, even one very critical of others, and still be dignified and respectful about it. Adding a tinge of ridicule and cruelty only serves to make the target of criticism seem to be an unfair victim of the speaker's vitriol. In the Moyer interview, Wright restrained himself and, as a result, was much more compelling. But he now seems bent on making as much noise as possible and attracting as much media attention as possible to himself. But why should that necessarily have anything to do with Barack Obama?

Sure, Obama named his book The Audacity of Hope as a sort of tribute to his former pastor, and cited Wright as an inspiration and a source of counsel. But Obama is Obama and Wright is Wright. Neither speaks for the other. How would you like it if some friend of yours made a public spectacle of him/herself and everyone automatically put you down as a result, just because of your past association with that person?

But I recognize the politics of this situation as well. For the sake of argument, let me generalize a little. If all the McCain and Clinton supporters want Obama's campaign to fail, then at this time about three fourths of the people out there are currently "against" the Democratic front-runner. And so the "buzz" is going to be heavily weighted in trying to magnify anything that could remotely be used against him. I expect the situation to change after the Democratic Convention, but I'm sure we'll still have to endure television ads linking Obama and Wright during the general campaign.

Finally, my problems with Jeremiah Wright's beliefs and speaking style notwithstanding, I also believe that he has every right in the world to respond to the severe public attacks and insults aimed at him during the past few weeks. Of course, he's totally wrong in saying that it had nothing to do with Barack Obama, when Obama's success is the only reason anyone bothered to dig up Wright's old sermons in the first place.

Monday Newsbreak: 5/5

--A terrible cyclone swept into Burma causing deaths in the hundreds and possibly the thousands. Quickly, reports came out of the public's dissatisfaction with the military government's slow response to the disaster. Which makes me wonder how much of this sort of thing is real news and how much is contrived to serve an end (in this case, the end of Burma's military dictatorship and return to democracy).

--Tomorrow, for the Democrats, here we go again: another "crucial" primary that's supposed to have a critical effect on who gets the nomination. This time it's North Carolina and Indiana. There has been a problem dogging the Democrats, which is that since the Republicans already have decided on their nominee, many Republican voters are crossing over to vote (usually for Clinton) in the Democratic primaries. Hopefully, this won't happen next election season if party rules are made stricter, to eliminate this cynical manipulation (supported by Rush Limbaugh) of the nominating process.

--Both John McCain and Hillary Clinton have supported a summertime lifting of the 18-cent/gallon federal gas excise tax as an election-year ploy to attract more voter support. Barack Obama, to his credit, doesn't support this tactic. Instead of encouraging consumption, we should be investing in alternative, clean, and renewable sources of energy. Otherwise, we're going to be talking more than five dollars per gallon! All that temporarily lifting the gas tax will do is increase demand, which will in turn increase the price of gas right back up!

--I am enjoying the National Basketball Association playoffs, but I have to admit to quite a bit of disappointment at seeing my Phoenix Suns bowing out so early, losing to San Antonio four games to one. Now I'm on to other teams, and I am very impressed with the New Orleans Hornets this year. And in the East, although I live relatively close to Orlando, I can't help rooting for the scrappy, feisty Detroit Pistons!

Observers of People

About fifteen to sixteen years ago, I attended, at a different church, a Sunday school class run by a middle-aged couple there. This couple was keen on helping younger couples get through the first years of marriage by giving advice and using Biblical precepts. I liked both of them and appreciate their efforts to help others. The woman (to whom I will give the fictional name Doris) one day described herself as an “observer of people”, and explained this through the use of an example. It seems one day that she was eating out in a restaurant somewhere and a pretty young woman happened to walk by. Doris, being the observer of people that she was, set about noticing the reactions of the males around her. And lo and behold, just about all of them looked up at the pretty woman as she passed them. Doris was trying to make the point that men tend to be visually oriented regarding women. But wasn’t she also playing around with her eyes, too? And she had nothing to say about what the women around her were looking at, either.

Many years ago, I was watching one of those ten o’clock prime time TV network newsmagazine shows such as 20/20 or the like. Featured was a segment about an angry woman who videotaped men sitting out in public, obviously on their lunch breaks from work, looking at a pretty woman as she walked by. She would then confront any “offenders” she “caught” on tape and then proceed to yell at them, making a public nuisance as well as a fool out of herself in the process. And the woman passerby? A setup, sent by the embittered, disturbed woman herself to provoke the desired looks from the targeted men. So who stepped over the line here with their eyes?

When I go into a place like a coffee shop, diner, library, etc., invariably I will cast my own eyes around at the people there. It’s not a male thing or a female thing. It’s a normal, human thing. And just as often as not, I’ll notice women sitting around looking at me and others. Sure, men probably tend to rely on visual stimulation regarding the opposite sex more than the reverse. But looking at people doesn’t have to mean anything. Now just staring someone down, that’s an entirely different matter! But neither was happening with the men observed by “Doris” or the video crusader!

Discussing a Religion With Its Believers

I will come right out and admit that, with most of the world's religions, I don't know very much. I know a little about Islam and Judaism. Christianity is the religion that I have the best grasp of, in terms of its doctrine, scriptures, and history. But there is something that I find rather interesting about religions which may be applicable to all of them.

Adherents of a particular religion often point out that if an unbeliever reads their scriptures, then they are likely to get a completely different meaning from them than if they were "in the faith". In other words, the act of reading itself is different between believers and unbelievers. The unbeliever will tend to read a scripture analytically, first trying to understand the passages and then attempting to reconcile the message with his/her own knowledge of how things really are. On the other hand, the believer will uncritically and reverently read the same scriptures, using analysis not to ascertain the truth value of the scripture, but rather for its application to interpreting the real world in the context of the expressed doctrine.

I remember two different items regarding Islam. I remember reading, around the 1980 Iranian hostage crisis, something to the effect that Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini once exhorted Muslims, that if they ever saw an unbeliever reading the Holy Qu'ran, then they were to rip the book out of his hands! But then, after 9/11, I also heard that the North Carolina state university system, for a brief period, required its incoming students to read the Qu'ran (apparently to understand Islam better in order to mitigate anti-Muslim paranoia). But if the message rings differently, depending on whether one reads from within or without the faith, I don't see how that would have done much good.

When a believer and an unbeliever of a particular religion sit together to discuss the content and meaning of its scriptures, it needs to be understood and respected by each side that the other side is looking at things from a vastly different perspective. The believer, focusing on the faith's doctrines, has already crossed over from questioning the scripture's truth, while the unbeliever will often dwell on his/her doubts regarding its validity. This can make for a situation where two people are basically sitting together talking past each other. Which doesn't really accomplish a whole lot, does it?

Favorite Steel Roller Coasters

What is my favorite steel roller coaster ride? Busch Garden Tampa’s bottomless roller coaster Montu. I call it the “Cadillac” of roller coasters because of its incredible smoothness. I’ve experienced some really jerky rides on other steel coasters elsewhere, most notably with Dollywood’s Tennessee Tornado and Wild Adventure’s Hangman, Boomerang, and Swamp Thing. Cypress Gardens has the best, in my opinion, “kiddie’s” steel coaster with their Okeechobee Rampage. Disney World’s MGM Studios has a pleasant coaster in Rock N’ Roll with Aerosmith, but my problem with that one is that it is enclosed, with my view very limited. And seeing how high up in the sky I am is one of the fun parts of riding a coaster (as well as seeing the world turn upside-down during loops)! Magic Kingdom’s Space Mountain is also indoors, and is too jerky as well. Universal’s Islands of Adventures contains two good coasters: The Incredible Hulk and Dueling Dragons Fire (or Ice). The Hulk shoots the passengers out like a rocket at its start, while I prefer a slow gradual rise. And with Dueling Dragons, another bottomless coaster, there is a slow initial rise before the dramatics. But then, that ride is a bit too short for me. Shortness is also a problem with Busch Garden’s much-hyped Sheikra. Their Python coaster is too rough and extremely short. I do like Busch’s Scorpion, though, which though short is very well-designed. I guess my second-favorite steel coaster ride would be Busch Garden’s Kumba. I think that I could spend all day at that park just alternating between Kumba and Montu (with occasional forays over to their great double wooden roller coaster Gwazi). Oh, by the way, another thing making my roller coaster experiences at Busch Garden more enjoyable is that I usually don’t have to wait very long in line to ride them!

Favorite Songs of 1976

During 1976, I grew to enjoy German pioneer techno-rock band Kraftwerk's Autobahn and Radioaktivität, which had come out previously. The same can be said for Elton John's hit Someone Saved My Life Tonight, a long, slow, emotion-laden piece. Al Stewart hit the big time with the release of his Year of the Cat album, which contained several good tracks, notably Lord Grenville, On the Border, Broadway Hotel, and One Stage Before. But earlier in the year, his historical epic Roads to Moscow introduced me to this talented, creative musician with frequent album-rock station airplay. Michael Murphey's Carolina in the Pines was, to me, a better song than his previous release Wildfire. The Canadian band Heart had my favorite of theirs with Crazy on You. The Dutch band George Baker Selection had a pleasant, upbeat summer hit with their Paloma Blanca. The Steve Miller Band went "far out" in terms of imagery and consciousness-raising with their Fly Like an Eagle. Andrea True Connection's More More More was my favorite disco song of the year. Right behind on the dance music scene was Vicky Sue Robinson's boisterous Turn the Beat Around. Judy Collin's Send in the Clowns, another slow, emotional piece, has continued to grow on me through the years. Even more so has George Harrison's sweet, compelling You, becoming one of my all-time top favorite songs now. Emerging superstar Billy Joel, with his Turnstiles album, had two very good songs in 1976: Summer Highland Falls and my #3 favorite song of the year (as I lived through it), his refreshing and exciting piano show-off piece Angry Young Man. John Miles, who briefly had some small fame on the album rock stations, had his best song (and my #2 favorite of the year) with Music, a long "epic", orchestrated piece that more than anything simply expresses the artist's love for his craft. Electric Light Orchestra's Strange Magic was a pleasant diversion early in the year, but they made a big impact on me later on with the release of their New World Record album, and from it, the beautiful single Livin' Thing (my top favorite song of 1976).