My May 2014 Running Report

A month ago, I had, as a goal for May, for me to cover more miles per run.  Although I haven't gotten the distance to between 5 and 10 miles, as I want, I did make an improvement, with me running a couple of times for 4 miles and amassing more than 3 on several occasions.  I ran on every day in May and had a total running mileage for the month at 103.3 miles.

Lately, my running has been more of an exercise routine than before, when I was striving for new personal records and participating in various races.  But I'll accept that, for it's still doing me some good.  Before March 2013, when my work schedule changed, I used to run late in the morning when the humidity had finally dropped to an acceptable level but the temperature had yet to heat up too badly.  And on weekdays, my neighborhood had very little traffic to contend with at that time of the day, so it made running more pleasant as well.  Nowadays, though, after I wake up and am the most prepared to go running, it is mid-to-late afternoon.  There is a lot of traffic then and it is usually the hottest time of the day, not to mention more likely to be raining than before, when I would run in late morning. 

So for June, my running goals are to continue to exceed my monthly target of 100 total miles.  I'm not, however, going to pressure myself to run every day.  Instead, I want to have more of a pattern of alternating days in which I run longer distances with days in which I run little or not at all.  Should be interesting...

The Government Knows It All and Won't Tell Us...Sure

I was listening again on the radio to George Noory's Coast-to-Coast AM late, late night show...which probably isn't the healthiest thing in the world to do...when he had as his guest Linda Moulton Howe.  Howe is a regular on the program and presents herself as an investigative reporter about topics in line with the show's themes: the paranormal, UFO's, conspiracies, etc.  I'd characterize her approach as distinctively sensationalist and encourage anyone hearing her reports to take them with a grain of salt.  The other night she was going on strong with a report about a hybrid breeding program that supposedly had been going on for decades between the U.S. government and reptilian aliens from Zeta Reticuli (somewhere out there in the great beyond).  She interviewed a woman who claimed to see one of these human/alien hybrids, but apparently the government was covering up everything about the program because there was no record of the people she claimed to be involved in it.  I've heard this sort of dumping on the U.S. government on this show before, whether the discussion was about UFO/alien contact disclosure, chem-trails, remote viewing, assassination conspiracy theories, secret societies, reverse engineering, strange disappearances, or whatever the guest of the night happened to be pushing as a topic (often with a book that he or she was touting).  It seems to me that anyone can claim anything, no matter how ridiculous it is, insist that the government is involved in it, make up any details they want to, and then accuse the government of engaging in a cover-up when, surprise, there doesn't seem to be any record substantiating the claims or of the people supposedly involved.  What would folks like George Noory and many of his guests (but not all of them, thankfully) do without our good ol' federal government to scapegoat?  They'd maybe have to go into something more (shudder) honest ...

The truth, I'm sure, is that our government does keep secrets, some of which may be necessary for our national security and some of which are possibly just self-serving.  I don't have a problem with legitimate journalists going out to gather specific information on improper government cover-ups.  But what I often hear on Noory's show sounds like a lot of nonsense that is also self-serving for those who perpetuate it...

The End Times, As I See It

I usually don't listen very much to George Noory's late night radio show Coast-to-Coast AM, but last night he had as a guest someone who was discussing a broad range of topics, which included the "end times".  Although it wasn't his main point of the interview, he brought up the same point of view that I have long held...

Many people... too many, in my opinion... cling to the desperate hope that we in this present world of ours are in something they call the "end times" or "final days".  Usually, this involves a Christian eschatological perspective and the books of Revelation and Daniel figure heavily in their analysis of current events and trends that they interpret to be biblically relevant. Things are going to keep getting worse and worse...until Jesus comes back on Earth to set things right, overthrowing the bad guys and keeping his people with him for a glorious thousand-year reign...after which the Final Judgment will take place.  I would personally be more interested in all of this were I, like the elves in much of fantasy fiction, essentially immortal.  But I have my own individual "end times" and "final days".  Besides, doesn't being a saved Christian mean that Jesus has already become my savior and that the Holy Spirit dwells within?  Whether I die today, next year...or I live to be 120, my end times on Earth are quite probably independent of most of what goes on elsewhere.  Which may be the key to why at least some are so concerned about apocalyptic prophecy...

During our brief span of life here on Earth, we come to share our time with others and have family, friendships, and associations.  We're all contemporaries...but each of us entered life one-by-one (unless we're twins, triplets, etc.) and each of us will leave it the same way.  I believe that a lot of people are fearful of dying anyway, but the idea of dying while life continues as usual for the rest of the world is unbearable for them.  So it is a comfort to feel that when they go, so will pretty much the rest of the known universe.  That's why it is almost unheard of for people to discuss "end times" as being far off in the distant future, beyond their own individual life spans.  They are in essence projecting their impending personal "end times" to everything else...

I'm not saying don't read the Bible and try to understand and live out its meanings.  What I am saying is that I don't think that it is a productive exercise to obsess about world events and the return of Jesus...especially if you have already invited him into your life as your lord and savior.  If you are already there, you don't need to be elsewhere!

Gainesville Needs a Bus Route Spanning West 34th Street

Florida's State Route 121 is a pretty interesting stretch of road.  For one, its name transcends state lines: as you go north on it into Georgia, you find yourself driving down Georgia State Route 121.  Then, as you keep going on, across the Georgia/South Carolina state line, you're then on South Carolina State Route 121.  It finally ends just a few miles south of the North Carolina border, not far from Charlotte.  Usually, the numbers of state routes change from state to state, but SR 121 goes through three of them.  It also goes straight through my home town of Gainesville, Florida, with the more commonly used name of West 34th Street. 

I live just a couple of blocks from Northwest 34th Street, in far northern Gainesville.  My workplace is on the far southern fringe of Gainesville, but on the same street: Southwest 34th Street (SR 121).  This is a very important, heavily traveled road that connects the northern to the southern part of the city.  Yet in the 37 years I have lived here, my city bus service has deliberately avoided servicing a giant area surrounding the middle part of this crucial traffic artery.  Instead of there being a route that goes straight up and down West 34th Street, one has to plot a very circuitous route to get from the north to the south (or the reverse) on it.  For example, were I to take the city bus from near my home to where I work, both of which lie on the same street, I would end up taking an hour and a half to cover the 7.5 miles on the bus.  Simply driving my car, though, is about a 20-minute proposition.  Guess which choice I make?  Even when I ride my bicycle, it only takes about 40-45 minutes max, and I own a very cheap, ramshackle bicycle!  But wait...even if I ran down 34th Street to my destination, I'd still beat out the bus!

My city bus service goes out of its way to cater to the University of Florida student needs...I don't mind that because they pay for it up front with their fees.  But permanent Gainesville residents should have a say in the route and schedule creation process as well.  Were there a route that just ran up and down West 34th Street, I would make liberal use of it, to the point where I would definitely purchase a long-term pass.  With the current situation, nobody wins...

Just Finished Reading the Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins, is the first novel in a trilogy with the same name.  It is in the science fiction/adventure/young adult genre of fiction and involves another of those strange, dystopian societies of the future which develops following a cataclysmic apocalypse.  North America is divided into twelve districts, tightly controlled and oppressed by the dominant center (around Denver) called The Capitol.  In the past, the districts had rebelled against their rule and, after having been conquered (and a thirteenth district completely obliterated), an annual punishment was set up to remind them of their subservient status.  Each year, each district is to supply, by the drawing of a teenage boy and a teenage girl as "tributes" to play against those selected from the other districts in a contest-to-the-death, called the "Hunger Games", in which the lone survivor brings material prosperity to their home district.  The story, written in the first person by protagonist Katniss Everdeen, describes how her little sister is selected and she volunteers to stand in for her as a contestant.  Katniss is in District 12, corresponding roughly to Appalachia, and in which the main economy is coal mining.  She is an expert hunter with the bow and arrow and is at home in the forest.  This will do well for her in the struggle to come. 

The Hunger Games are not just a matter of survival against others: the Capitol leaders have made this event into a highly political national media extravaganza, with the entrants treated like celebrities and coached into how to present themselves to the public...even in the middle of their desperate fight for survival.  There is obviously something highly allegorical about all of this...I don't think I'll have to wait too long before some of this sinks in for me.  I already have a couple of ideas: one concerns society's almost obscene fixation on reality television with its characters and their contrived personalities and relationships, and the other concerns the truly obscene specter of young people in economically depressed areas feeling compelled to enlist in the military and go off to war just to be able to make a living.

The characters in The Hunger Games are quite compelling and unforgettable.  I haven't seen the movie version yet and now look forward to seeing how it portrays them.  But regardless how it all turns out, I don't think I will be satisfied at the end of this trilogy if the Capitol and its despicable despots aren't completely and utterly wiped out...

Just Finished Rereading Christopher Paolini's Eldest

Still plugging away at Christopher Paolini's Inheritance Cycle series of four fantasy novels, I just completed, for the second time, book #2, titled Eldest.  In it, young Eragon, along with his psychically-connected (to him) and talking dragon Saphira, go northward to live with the elves for a while and undergo training to improve their magical powers and develop a workable philosophy for dealing with both magic and war.  And it is war that he is facing, as his enemy Galbatorix is marching south to invade rebel-supporting Surda and crush the Varden rebel force there.  Meanwhile, Eragon's cousin Roran is trying to rescue the people of their hometown of Carvahall from the evil and (pretty scary) Ra'zac  by evacuating them and taking them to Surda on a boat.  Roran's trials are interesting; Eragon's training is boring.  But it all comes to a head at the climactic end of the story, which I have to admit pleasantly surprised me when I first read it years ago.  In Eldest, Paolini inserted a great theme: friends becoming enemies and enemies become friends. It set the stage for the next novel, titled Brisingr (named after a word of magic used in the series).  Brisingr was supposed to be the third novel in the originally-planned trilogy, but regrettably, Paolini decided he needed two books to express all he wanted for the series conclusion. I haven't yet read the last book, titled Inheritance, but Brisingr was so boring the first time around that I left it halfway through.  This time, though, I'm going to finish it!  But first, I'm taking a little detour by next reading the first book in the Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins, aptly titled The Hunger Games (I deliberately avoided the movie in order to read the book first)...

America Back on the Moon

Sometimes I think that people, when regarding other spherical celestial bodies like the moon or Mars, tend to impose their sense of scale based on what the Earth is like.  It's easy to do this, especially with the moon, as it truly looks from our vantage point like a worthy counterpart to our own planet, albeit a very dry and desolate counterpart.  The truth is, though, that it is much, much smaller than Earth...how much smaller, you ask?

If you were to impose a map of the continental United States on one showing the visible lunar surface, with the same scale of distance for each map, the U.S. would essentially cover most of it and would span the horizons from east to west!  Think of Miami being near one horizon and, traveling in a west-northwestward direction, Seattle would be clear on the opposite lunar horizon!  That, my friends, is pretty small...and once you realize this, then look out at the moon your next opportunity and you just might come to the same conclusion that I did.  Which is that our moon is a lot, lot closer to us than it seems!

By the way, regarding that superimposed map of the America on the moon, try this link to see
what I mean: http://www.trendhunter.com/trends/moon-scaling

I'd like to believe that my article's title wasn't so misleading, that we were actually going back to the moon.  Frankly, I don't see why they couldn't just send a couple of modest missions up there each decade, just to remind the folks out there that we still have the capability to get there and back.  I would have preferred we did what our previous president, George W. Bush, had set into motion, which was to work to set up a permanent base there.  But our current president Barack Obama scrapped that plan almost immediately upon taking office...and we're now going nowhere in a hurry...

More on My Radio Listening Options

I was writing a few days ago about how one of my local radio stations around Gainesville, 100.5/WHHZ/"The Buzz", switched its musical programming format back to independent/alternative and away from the hard rock it had been exclusively playing for about six years.  Well, after listening to it for a while, I have to make a slight correction in my assessment...

It's true that WHHZ is playing more of what I would deem to be indie/alternative music, but they are also continuing with some of the harder stuff...of which, incidentally, I also approve!  Recently, I wrote an article praising the old Seattle grunge band Soundgarden, so knowing that this station will also play some of their material, along with other acts like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots, Alice in Chains, Rage Against the Machine, Tool, and Linkin Park, adds to the appeal of its programming.  Of course, this tends to thin out the more indie type music that I'm likely to hear...so perhaps I should keep up with my Internet listening as well.  Also, the signal from WHHZ is relatively weak, and I can't pick it up on my MP3 player.  Instead, it is on my personal push-button radio station rotation when I'm driving. 

Speaking of my favorite stations while driving, what are they?

AM: 850 WRUF and 1230 WGGG (both sports)

FM: 100.5 WHHZ and 102.9 WOKV (both alternative rock)

Also on FM: 104.9 and 105.9 (oldies), 97.3 and AM-980 (conservative talk), 89.1 (public radio), and 90.5 (traditional Christian music).

Note that nowhere among my favorites are stations playing country and western, hip-hop/rap, electronic "party", or "top forty"  hit music.  Please also note that this is no accident, since I tend to steer clear of that stuff.   I also tend to shy away from contemporary Christian music in favor of hymns and older songs of faith, so I clearly prefer the 90.5 (BBN) station to the one on 91.7 (Joy-FM). There used to a station on AM-1390 that had liberal talk programming, but it seems to have left the air.  As did Alan Colmes and his evening show that used to be on AM-980. That's a shame: I like hearing different perspectives on the news and issues, not just one side slamming the other. In this area broadcast radio is abominably inferior to other types of media.

I don't listen all that much to the radio...except perhaps when I'm driving, so I really don't need too many good stations to listen to.  Well, let's be frank: I really don't need ANY of them...if they all went off the air tomorrow I don't see how my life would suffer at all!  After all, most of my favorite songs nowadays I have never heard played on the radio (and probably never will).  As a matter of fact, I can easily get all of just about anything I would want from radio off the Internet and television, and to a more satisfactory degree at that...

Camelopardalis Meteor Shower Late Tonight

On the ABC evening news show a little while ago, they mentioned that overnight will occur what many think should be a spectacular meteor shower.  Unfortunately, they devoted very little time to the story and missed out on important details.  Such as when and where.  So I looked up on the Earth and Sky website and got the scoop...

This is a relatively new meteor shower, called the Camelopardalis Meteor Shower.  Camelopardalis is a faint and obscure northern constellation representing which African animal?  You guessed it...of course, it's a giraffe!  Anyway, the central (or radiant) point of the shower will be in this nondescript section of the sky...just face due north and try to find Polaris (the North Star).  Then go down from it just a little and that's where you should train your eyes for the meteor shower.  The optimal time for the most meteors should be from 2 to 4 AM. 

I have no idea how spectacular or not it will be, and I won't be able to witness it.  Unfortunately, I'll be at work then, making eight hours of unsolicited overtime on my off day in spite of the claims of my organization that this sort of thing isn't going to be happening anymore.  But for most of humanity, this interesting-sounding meteor shower will be out there to see (well, that part of the population that lives north of the Equator, that is).  If you're in North America, then just look northward a few degrees above the horizon at the indicated time...

Still More Sci-Fi Short Stories from 1945

As I continue reading through Isaac Asimov Presents: The Great SF Stories 7 (1945), I am amazed at the insight and prophetic vision that some of these writers have shown.

In The Vanishing Venusians, by Leigh Brackett, settlers from Earth on Venus (well THAT wasn't exactly prophetic, was it) encounter dangerous life forms native to that planet that they must conquer in order to survive.  But leave it to human nature for people come up with the most ingenious ways to completely wipe out their biological competitors...while at the same time appearing to be heroic in the process. Decades later, a pang of guilt about what happened to native Americans and their culture, along the demise of the once millions-strong buffaloes in the American West would become an accepted part of our own national consciousness...but in 1945 Brackett laid it all out in this great allegorical tale.

Into Thy Hands, by Lester Del Rey, is a post-apocalyptic tale which involves a group of robots that a wise scientist/engineer had built and programmed to lay the foundation for the resurgence of humanity.  Yet there is doubt about the plan's success when one of the crucial robots, misinterpreting some Bible verses he is exposed to, mistakenly sees himself as Adam and begins to impose the Garden of Eden story on his environment.

The third story, Henry Kuttner's Camouflage, examines what it truly means to be human, when an engineer, after a terrible accident destroys the rest of his body, is reduced to essentially a brain with connections, within a life-supporting mechanical box.  In this story, this individual retains his identity...even maintaining his marriage, although many around him doubt his humanity.  An attempt to hijack an atomic plant he is guiding on a spaceship to the Jovian moon Callisto brings the debate to the foreground, as the criminals on board, trying to wrest control of the ship from him, simultaneously debate with him while trying to find where he is hidden in order to "turn him off"...like a machine.  That this story discusses a concept like an atomic plant twelve years before the first operational nuclear reactor in the world sounds impressive...until you realize that another science fiction tale from three years earlier discusses in detail a nuclear plant meltdown...36 years before Three Mile Island and even years before the atomic bomb was first detonated!   

I have five more stories to read in this book...and then I'll reach back into my big box of old sci-fi anthologies and randomly pull out another one...

Just Finished Rereading Christopher Paolini's Eragon

I've mentioned in an earlier article that I decided to go back to Christopher Paolini's Inheritance fantasy series, which I had previously put down (both figuratively in criticism and literally, "putting it down on the table") without finishing.  Now I'm determined to see the reading project through and have successfully reread the first book Eragon without too much pain.  But now I'm on book # 2, Eldest, and the pain is starting to coming back...

First of all, let me say up front that Paolini's writing is good.  Others seem to think, though, and with good cause, that he coopted much of the story of Eragon from two sources: Star Wars and Lord of the Rings.  I agree that he could have been more circumspect with that, especially his naming his main hero character Eragon with such striking resemblance to Aragorn, the name of Tolkien's ranger hero (I get what he was thinking, though: replace the E with D and you get Dragon).  That having been said, though, Paolini did a good job of creating his own new world, with its own "rules of magic", that is clearly distinguishable from other fantasy settings.  And let's just be frank about all this: all fantasy series feed off each other! Robert Jordan, one of the all-time great writers in this genre, was very forthright in admitting that his first Wheel of Time novel, titled The Eye of the World, was written with the idea of recreating much of the narrative present in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings first book, Fellowship of the Ring.  In fantasy literature, you have specially named swords, reluctant "chosen" savior/heroes, dragons, elves, dwarfs, wizards, talking animals, questions about the hero's true father, sorcerers/sorceresses, witches, tyrant kings/emperors, important dreams, cryptic prophecies, magic with various limitations, monster enemy hordes, harrowing chase scenes, epic battle scenes, the hero rescuing the captured damsel, healing by magic and herbs replacing modern medicine, court intrigues, exotic invented languages, strange names with diacritics....all of this isn't just Paolini being a copycat: it is PERVASIVE throughout this genre and ALL draw from it to a degree, some just a little more than others.

So I did finish reading Eragon and am now beginning the second of the four books, this one titled Eldest.  So far, so good, although there isn't a lot of interesting stuff here...mainly, political intrigues going on between the various factions that Eragon has to figure out, although Paolini is at least making things interesting with the subplot about Eragon's cousin Roran.  Oh, by the way, I think that one of the reasons for such vehement criticism leveled against Christopher Paolini is that he was only fifteen when he came out with Eragon and that he had to do very little himself to get it published and promoted...seeing how his own parents ran an established publishing company.  I think a lot of aspiring writers resent his fast track to fame and fortune and consequently are likely to be more negative about their reactions to his writing.  And having a generally panned movie come out for Eragon doesn't help much either...

Break from My Writing Today

This has been one of those days in which my brain simply has not gotten into gear with the writing.  Usually I can come up with one thing or another to write about...actually, I can think of a lot of things, but I just don't feel up to the task.  Let's see...I have three more short stories to discuss from my 1945 science fiction short story anthology.  Or, I could write some about the theological concept of the "end times" and how much emphasis it really merits in people's daily lives...and what "end times" means to me.  I could  talk about the disparate ways that the political left and right often frame the issues, to the point where it often sounds like the two sides are talking about two different things.  And there's other stuff, too, but it'll all have to wait...

Maybe I'll get around tomorrow or in the ensuing days to raise some of these topics.  For now, I think I'll just take it easy, sit back, and watch some baseball (another potential topic)...

Meteorologists Predict Light Hurricane Season in 2014

Recently, the weather experts in charge of hurricane prognostications have come out with their annual assessment of the upcoming Atlantic tropical storm season, which officially begins on June 1.  The prediction is (drum roll, please): fewer hurricanes than usual.  Whew, that's a relief, right? Wrong.  Last year they were predicting a heavy season and it died out, not that I'm complaining.  There's nothing to me quite as exhilarating as seeing a named storm, even a hurricane-level one coming westward in our general direction toward the Caribbean area...and then to suddenly be destroyed by wind shear and opposing weather patterns.  This seemed to happened over and over again last year, so in spite of the relatively large number of named storms, they tended to have a very inhospitable environment for continued growth...or even survival.  Only the ones who stayed put out in the Mid-Atlantic high seas seemed to hang in there. Since I am no longer in elementary or high school, the one incentive for me to want to get hit (or at least seriously threatened) by a hurricane, which was to get a day or two off from classes, has disappeared and I no longer have any desire whatsoever to see any of them come within a thousand miles.  Especially after the traumatic 2004 and 2005 seasons. 

Even in "slow" years for tropical storms, there need only be one that hits at the worst place and the worst time.  In June 1972, early hurricane Agnes, which by itself wasn't all that terribly nasty, slammed into the Florida panhandle from the Gulf of Mexico and merged with a severe frontal system that eventually caused catastrophic flooding in the interior of the eastern part of the country.  It was one of only four named tropical storms for that year.  Likewise, in another four-storm season, 1983, Hurricane Alicia slammed into the Houston/Galveston area and caused massive damage.  I'm sure the folks there couldn't have cared less whether it was a "light" or "heavy" tropical storm system for that year!

Gainesville, where I have lived pretty much the last 37 years, has within my memory never been directly hit by a hurricane, although it has experienced tropical storm weather.  The worst storms here were Dora in 1964 (while I was still living elsewhere, near Miami in West Hollywood) and the double combination of Frances and Jeanne in 2004.  The eye of Dora passed through (westward from the Jacksonville area) about 40-50 miles north of Gainesville while the worst of the 2004 storms passed to our west (although Jeanne approached closer with more severe winds).  After 2004, everyone in the media, it seemed, thought themselves a weather expert and that this type of hurricane-intensive season would become the norm (global warming getting the lion's share of the blame).  Well, it hasn't...at least not yet.  Hopefully, we'll dodge the bullet again this year, light season or not...

More on 1945 Science Fiction Short Story Anthology

As I reported a few days ago in an earlier article, I've begun to explore some of my old short story collections (of other authors, not me), which tend to focus on the science fiction genre.  One series is a year-by-year review of the best in science fiction stories, edited by Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg.  The one I'm reading right now, titled The Great SF Stories 7 (1945), contains the best of the best from that year.  Here are some of my reactions to more stories from it...

Isaac Asimov, besides editing this anthology, also contributes one of the stories, titled Blind Alley.  It is actually a tale embedded within a much larger one: Asimov's own created futuristic universe within which he wrote many memorable stories, both short and in novel form, about the development of robotics, the initial human explorer/settlers, called "spacers", the ensuing Galactic Empire, and then the famous Foundation series of novels.  Blind Alley deals with the bureaucracy and red tape that permeates life throughout the entrenched Galactic Empire...and how one bureaucrat is able to play the system in order to outmaneuver his opponents and surreptitiously accomplish the fulfillment of his own hidden agenda.  Fortunately, his aims are benevolent...but are so well concealed in the red tape and authorization requests that the ending to this story is truly surprising.  This isn't the last time that Asimov pulled this feat of literary misdirection: the novel Foundation is loaded with it...

In Correspondence Course, by Raymond F. Jones, a wounded war veteran, while convalescing and grieving his recently killed girlfriend, reluctantly responds to a mysterious letter advertising a correspondence course touting how to become a "power coordinator" and thereby attaining the ability to harness energy and use it in a manner unimagined.  After the first few lessons, he realizes that, contrary to his initial suspicions, the course is legitimate and highly technical, using advanced mathematics.  He decides to visit the return address of the course, only to discover that it is in an isolated, run-down Iowa town where no one knows anything about the school sending him the material.  Well, not one to give away the ending, let's just say that it accomplishes two things for him and one important thing for the party that sent him the course. And it's out of this world!

Murray Leinster's First Contact is a story that I first read in a different anthology years before, so I was quite familiar with it when I reread it.  The premise of the story is that space explorers from Earth, while researching stars deep within the Crab Nebula, unexpectedly encounter an exploration ship from a completely alien society.  Both sides feel that the only workable solution to the encounter is to destroy the other ship and trace its origins...and destroy the base of the other's civilization...all in the interests of self-defense since neither side knows whether the other side has malicious intent or is possibly vastly superior with its technological capacity to destroy.  Thus a stalemate ensues in which the leaders of each ship try to think of a workable solution that allows all to survive the experience. How does First Contact, which shares the same title as a Star Trek movie but is a completely different story, end?  You should know better than ask me at this point!

That covers six of the fourteen stories in this volume, and more are forthcoming here.  One thing I appreciate about this book is the prefacing to each story that contains introductory comments by editors Greenberg and Asimov about the story's author and its nature and context. For example, in the intro to Correspondence Course, Asimov refers to the literary device of the "double-double-cross", in which the author subtly hints at a surprise ending, which the reader begins to suspect...only to have that ending abruptly turned on its head. That sort of thing happens a lot in many of these sci-fi short story classics, and is one of the reasons I love reading them...    

Some Sports Observations

This evening, at 6:23 supposedly (why do they come up with these strange times) will occur the annual Preakness race in Pimlico Park, Baltimore...the "Second Jewel" of horse racing's Triple Crown.  All three of its races, the Kentucky Derby, Preakness, and Belmont, are spaced just a few weeks apart in the spring and pit that sport's best three-year-olds against each other.  No horse has won all three events in a single year since Affirmed did in 1978.  So we're looking at a highly improbable event this year as well.  Still, with a strong horse like California Chrome having just won the Kentucky Derby, it looks as if this may well be the year it finally happens.  I'll be pulling for the favorite, just to make the upcoming Belmont Stakes a climactic, exciting event.  Otherwise, as far as I am concerned, it will just be another horse race...

In the National Basketball Association playoffs, we've finally reached the point when the elite teams are facing off for the conference titles and a chance to play for the league championship.  After all of the maneuvering, team momentum shifts, and upset talk of the past few weeks, we are left with the very same four teams that many, if not most of us, predicted would survive to this stage: Miami, Indiana, San Antonio, and Oklahoma City.  Action starts tomorrow afternoon between the Heat and Pacers while the Spurs and Thunder play Monday evening.  This is going to be great!

And regarding baseball, I've still continued to watch games assiduously while trying to become familiar with each team's lineup.  This has become harder than I had thought because of the almost constant lineup changes caused by an epidemic of injuries afflicting the teams.  I understand how pitchers like Jose Fernandez, Matt Moore, Clay Kershaw, and C.C. Sabathia are so prone to injury: they are straining themselves throwing so many pitches, and each pitch hard in itself (especially those fastballs).  But what I don't get about this sport is that, except for the pitcher and catcher on defense, it is typified by everyone just sitting or standing around, be they in the dugout in out in the field.  Sure, every two or three innings a player goes up to bat and maybe even gets a chance to run some if he makes contact with the ball, and chances are that he'll get a limited number of opportunities to field the ball (unless he's the designated hitter, that is).  It is these players that I can't figure out the injuries: Carlos Beltran, Mark Teixeira, Bryce Harper...at this stage in their careers, they should have already figured out how to take a fall or slide, or the limitations of their bodies as they are extending themselves on a play.  But maybe the injuries are less a phenomenon of their increased frequency than of the tendency to get medical treatment and rest in today's age, rather than in the past when they'd just play through the pain...

Reading Paolini's Inheritance Series Again...After Earlier Abandonment

For a period of time a few years ago, I got myself into the disconcerting habit of picking up a book and starting to read it...only to abandon the project after just a few chapters.  There are books by Patricia Cornwell, Dean Koontz, Tad Williams, Sue Grafton, Suzanne Collins, James Grisham, Philip K. Dick, J.K. Rowling (with a non-Potter novel), Victor Hugo, James Joyce, and even my favorite writer Stephen King, among others, that have experienced this humiliating fate of me not reading them all the way through (fortunately, some of the authors are no longer around to have suffered through such disgrace).  In the past year, I have gone a long way in finishing what I had started (and left) before: recently, for example, I finished Terry Goodkind's monstrously huge eleven-volume The Sword of Truth series...after initially quitting only halfway through the first book. There's another fantasy series (a four-"parter") that I actually was determined enough to get all the way to halfway through the third book: the Inheritance series by Christopher Paolini.  I walked away from it because I became frustrated with the preponderance of passages loaded with mental introspection, to the detriment of dialogue and action.  I still stand by that criticism, but now I feel that I should have stuck it out to the possibly bitter end.  Well, now I've picked this series back up and will go on that reading "quest" with stalwart perseverance...in the spirit of its fantasy nature... to whatever end it takes me. 

That having been said, I don't think it would be a good idea, after a few years' hiatus, to pick up where I left off.  Instead, I'm going back to the very beginning, with volume #1, titled Eragon.  I'm about a third of the way through it, and it strangely seems this time around to be better written (although, if memory serves me, the bogging down of the narrative didn't become overwhelming until the third book).  Also, it's almost like a reunion of sorts with old friends that I haven't seen in years...

Just Finished Reading The Dragon Reborn by Robert Jordan

I just finished reading The Dragon Reborn by Robert Jordan, the third book in his fourteen-volume The Wheel of Time fantasy series.  In it, chief protagonist Rand is convinced he is the legendary "Dragon Reborn" after Moiraine of the Aes Sedai sect tells him so at the conclusion of the previous book.  Now, burdened with this realization, he wants to defeat his evil nemesis Ba'alzamon once and for all by claiming the sword Callandor in the Stone of Tear (yes, this all sounds like a humorous caricature of the fantasy genre, doesn't it) .  So he leaves his company of friends and allies to venture out on his own, rationalizing to himself that the evil forces are pursuing him and that separating himself from the others will make them safer (which only turns out to be partially true).  Instead, three different groups of "good guys" (1) Mat and Thom , (2) Perrin, Moiraine, Lan, and a new character Zarine, and (3) Egwene, Nunaeve, and Elayne, all go on to the same destination as Rand: the dreary city of Tear.  It is their adventures along the way that dominate the narrative in The Dragon Reborn; very little space is actually devoted to Rand.  So as a result, Jordan is able to develop other characters more fully...especially those of Mat and Perrin.  There is also an ominous trend revealed toward the end: the thirteen "Forsaken", who were the agents of the Dark One and had been imprisoned for centuries, are now showing up free and powerful all over the map...although in other guises. 

I enjoyed The Dragon Reborn more than the first two books in this series.  I expect more character development in the next book as well as the introduction of new characters.  This series is beginning to resemble more George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire, with more and more sub-narratives simultaneously going on among disparate peoples.  I'm fine with all that, as long as it all comes back together at the end...

Deluged on Facebook with George R.R. Martin Spam

I was stunned today when I woke up (in mid-afternoon after working the late night/early morning shift), eventually checked out my Facebook page, and was bombarded with posting after posting devoted to Game of Thrones creator and author George R.R. Martin...and how he uses a primitive DOS work processor to write his novels.  It's not his decision that surprised me.  I already know the value of writing "away from the Internet": I'm writing this on an even more primitive AlphaSmart portable word processor!  No, the shock was in the flooding over of my Facebook with this essentially unsolicited spam, coming in from sources whose "friendship" I never sought and which never sought me.  I stopped counting, after forty, the number of posts about Martin's late-night TV interview...which naturally crowded out the postings I wanted to see of my actual "friends". The only link I see with Martin and myself is that I have written about him and his A Song of Fire and Ice fantasy series on my blog in the past, to which I have posted links on Facebook.  So just by dint of that connection, Facebook has snowed me under with this Martin/DOS stuff. 

In his recent interview that apparently caused such a stir, Martin revealed that he tired of the auto-correct features of more modern word processors, which tend to second-guess the writer and often make unauthorized revisions to the written material.  I agree with him on that: when I copy my AlphaSmart writings to my main computer, either directly to my blog or to a Word application, my text tends to be altered and I have to assiduously observe the copying process to make sure that what I wrote actually gets copied in the form I had intended. Also, this ever-increasing tendency for Internet companies like Facebook, Google, and Twitter to flash what they themselves deem as related links to what I'm posting on them is, to me, an unwarranted interference in my writing as well.  If I write an article about Greg Gutfeld (which I did a few days ago) and post a link to it on Facebook, I don't want to see related material others put out about him grouped together with MY article: I don't know what others have written or said about him.  For all I know, it could be the opposite of what I am trying to express and could even be slanderous, profane, or obscene in nature. And yet there it is, right next to my posting and associated with me whether I like it or not.

I think that computer applications and social networks make far too many assumptions about my choices and writings.  They need to back off and let my work stand on its own, apart from their own "standards" of writing and without the intrusion of extraneous, unwelcome material piled on top of it... 

Began Reading Great SF Stories of 1945

For some reason, the initial article I had written here, which was quite extensive and involved a review of sorts of three short stories from the book Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 7 (1945) (they are The Waveries by Frederic Brown, The Piper's Son by Lewis Padgett, and Wanted--An Enemy by Fritz Leiber), was mysteriously deleted...with no trace of it remaining.  I don't remember ever doing such a thing, so I'm not very happy about this, as you might guess.  I'm backdating this entry to the original posting date (May 13) even though right now, as I am writing this, it is May 18.  I don't know what happened to that other article.  What follows is a replacement...

Anyway, this book is part of a series covering, year-by-year, the period from 1939 to 1963.  I selected the one for 1945 at random: I just reached into my box of books and pulled out this one! As for the first three stories in it...

Frederic Brown was a great science fiction short story writer and was my favorite when I was a kid, since my father had a couple of his collections that I was able to read several times over.  The Waveries involves what happens when aliens composed of radio waves invade Earth and feed off humankind's own radio waves and electricity, essentially permanently shutting down everything in technology dependent on them.  How humanity ingeniously adapts to its predicament is the positive message from this story...

The Piper's Son presents an interesting situation: a worldwide nuclear holocaust has already been envisioned in this 1945 tale, the very year that such a weapon was first produced and sadly used.  One byproduct of the mutations that the radiation from this disaster produces is a number of people who possess telepathic powers.  How these people balance the fears of others about their abilities with their obvious use to society is a theme of this story...and how one of their children's vivid daydreams may imperil everything.  The author Lewis Padgett is actually a pseudonym for the husband and wife writing team of Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore.  Under the name Padgett, they also wrote Mimsy Were the Borogroves, my all-time favorite sci-fi short story, in 1943...

Wanted--An Enemy, by Fritz Leiber, examines how close to being a warmonger a pacifist can be. Such a pacifist travels to Mars to try to coax the Martians he finds there to stage a mock invasion of Earth in order to end its own wars and unite the planet in the face of a common enemy.  Of course, his scheme backfires, but how do things go wrong and what does he do about it? Read it...the final line in this story is unforgettable.

Well, this replacement article doesn't do justice to my wiped-out original, but it covers the basics.  Maybe I'll just have to back up my future writing in another file as a precaution to avoid a repeat erasure...

The Major League Baseball Standings So Far

When I was younger and used to follow major league baseball, I was rapt up in the standings and studied them in detail every day to see how "my" teams were doing.  While still interested in the standings, my emphasis this year has been to simply enjoy games as they unfold on TV, half-inning by half-inning,  and get to know the different players on the different teams.  Yes, there is still this backdrop of the "standings", with some of the teams I follow the most doing well (like Atlanta at 21-15 and Miami at 20-18, three straight losses notwithstanding) and some on the "other" end (like Tampa Bay at 16-22 and the Chicago Cubs at 12-24).  For the most part, the teams are bunched around each other, playing around .500.  Even those who have spurted ahead of the pack in their divisions, like Detroit and Milwaukee, could well see some slippage down the line.  I can't say the same, though, about last place teams Houston (12-26), the Cubs (12-24), and Arizona (15-25) significantly changing their positions.  These don't seem to have very bright prospects for the future, at least regarding this season...although in the games I've watched them playing, they seem to be competitive.  Still, I recall that at one point early in the 2003 season, the Florida Marlins were mired in the bottom of their division with a dismal 19-29 record...only to go on a late-season tear to make the playoffs as a wild card team, eventually making it to the World Series (thanks to that Chicago Cubs fan) and beating the Yankees.  So even with these, you can never be too sure whether that elusive team chemistry might just catch on and make a major difference down the stretch of the regular season (like it did with the Pirates and Indians last year and the Orioles and A's the year before)...

Baltimore (20-15), Detroit (21-12), and Oakland (23-15) are leading their respective divisions in the American League while Atlanta (21-15), Milwaukee (24-14), and San Francisco (24-14) are on top in the National.  The biggest surprise so far has to be the Brewers, who at this point are far ahead of three teams in their own very competitive NL Central division that made the playoffs last year.  But the season is still early, and I expect at least the St. Louis Cardinals to give them a run for their money...

Just Finished Reading Terry's Goodkind's Book Confessor

I have just completed reading the eleven-volume Sword of Truth fantasy series by Terry Goodkind, after finishing the final book, titled Confessor.  I was impressed with how Goodkind was able to tie up all the loose ends and arrive at a satisfying (as well as surprising) resolution to the dire circumstances that were simultaneously taking place on so many levels with Richard, Kahlan, the Imperial Order, the Chimes, the Chainfire spell, the Beast, and so on (I'm sure that you don't have a clue about any of this).  But don't expect me to relate here what happened; you're welcome to trudge through the entire series like I did!  Still, I'll give you one hint about how things end, although it's no secret: the author has begun a new series featuring Sword of Truth protagonists Richard and Kahlan.  I wonder whether I should start on it soon...maybe not, I'm in the middle of another series, The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan.  And there are other genres of literature I'm pursuing as well.  Still, its faults notwithstanding, I was generally pleased with Goodkind's efforts in this series and feel that he probably deserves a bit more respect on the Internet sites that rate fantasy fiction than what I'm been seeing him get.  I suspect that one of the reasons for the criticism of his work is that he makes no apologies about strongly making his philosophical beliefs known, chiefly through his main character Richard Raul...beliefs that stress the need for individuals to have economic freedom and to assume complete responsibility for their own lives.  That seems to rattle some with other ideas about how things should be, sad to say...

Going to the Beach Today

It's a beautiful, warm and sunny day today, and Melissa and I are heading out to the beach...Daytona Beach, that is.  Specifically, to Daytona Beach Shores and the hotel we stayed at back in early March. With my back feeling much better than the last time we went, I'm looking forward to swimming some and running on the beach.  Plus, just relaxing around and enjoying the ocean and sand...

Also, there's something special about going out on the beach at night, with the stars overheard and the dark surf crashing ashore on one side.  During the last few years, it has been more pleasant with the hotel lights dimmed in order to help out the sea turtle population, which apparently needs darkness at night.  Good, I never did like all of those blinding lights anyway...

When I was a kid, the big attraction for me at the beach was to venture out into the ocean and go up and down with the waves, occasionally doing battle with them as they broke just before reaching me.  As a father, I'd also go out there...with my own kids, who had the same sense of adventure.  But quite honestly, given the choice, nowadays I'd just as soon confine my oceanic forays to wading in the water at about ankle-level!

Just Finished Reading Patricia Cornwell's Novel: At Risk

Two or three years ago I bought a cheap used paperback copy of one of novelist Patricia Cornwell's Kay Scarpetta's novels (and I can't for the life of me remember its title).  Scarpetta is a forensic pathologist/investigator who is featured in a long-running series of Cornwell.  I'm not sure why I didn't finish it, other than that I got tired of the open antagonism expressed between its characters.  It gets a little tedious after a while reading that, almost as if the people themselves were surrounding me arguing.  Well, I decided to give Cornwell another try and got a copy of her short novel At Risk.  Dr. Scarpetta is nowhere to be found here; the protagonist is a young man named Win Garano, who is an investigator and whose mixed-race status sadly seems to rattle some people, even in the supposedly more enlightened 2006 setting of the story.  Win is working for a Massachusetts district attorney named Monique Lamont and has been sent to Tennessee to further his crime-stopping education.  He also is trying to solve a cold case murder in Knoxville more than twenty years old.  A new company that Monique is touting is providing cutting-edge DNA technology that can help to solve such mysteries, and Win, with his assistant, work to employ it to solve the case.  Meanwhile, Monique is attacked in her apartment and raped...what is the tie-in between this and what Win is doing...and that company in question?  Don't worry: in stories like this, nothing takes place by happenstance and everything ties in together...all to be resolved at the end.  And it is resolved.

But although I managed to get through this novel of Patricia Cornwell, and the characters were different this time around, they were just as argumentative and negative around each other as in the Kay Scarpetta book I had put down years earlier.  "Snippy", a term made famous by Al Gore when he briefly argued on the phone with George W. Bush on election night in 2000, would be an appropriate designation to describe the conversations these folks typically have: with At Risk, just imagine such a conversation between Gore and Bush that lasts about four hours....ouch, my ears!

Hiding Businesses from the Street, Following Instructions

The other day I was in the crowded Hunter's Crossing Shopping Center parking lot, back in the corner during a heavy rush hour period in the late weekday afternoon.  This place, which features a Publix, Piesano's Pizza,  Ace Hardware, and a Starbucks among other businesses, has three entry/exit points.  Depending on the traffic and where I'm coming from, I choose which one to use that will save me the most time and hassle.  But across the street from here (across NW 43rd Street) is another shopping center: Hunter's Walk.  Hunter's Walk is an example of that annoying type of shopping center...almost invisible from the street, hidden by trees and bushes with no store signs advertising their presence there.  Only a Walgreens, which was built almost up to the street, is visible from the road.  This place contains, among other businesses, a Cedar River seafood restaurant and a Little Caesar's.  The only access, in or out, is an intersection with a traffic light on 43rd.  The only indication that there is a shopping center here is an unobtrusive, low sign right there at the entrance...by the time you see and notice it you've probably already passed it! Why am I saying all this? Well,...

As I was saying, I was in that crowded parking lot late one busy afternoon.  I had returned to my car and was about to pull out when I heard a horn tooting behind me.  I looked back and saw a middle-aged man gesturing to me from his car.  It seemed he was driving around, fruitlessly looking for that Cedar River restaurant...could I please tell him how to get to it?  No wonder, I thought, that he couldn't find it with it hidden like that.  I then told him that he was in the wrong shopping plaza and for him to go back around and go to the nearby traffic light...and then go straight ahead, directly across it.  After that, I said, he would be able to turn into the shopping center with Cedar River.  And, oh, I said, it's at the end of the building closest to Walgreens.  He thanked me and went on and I congratulated myself on having been such a good Samaritan.  I pulled out of my parking space and drove up to the light into the left-turn lane (you see, I wasn't going to Cedar River, but rather home). As I approached, I saw the car with the driver I had talked to in the correct lane...to go straight across.   Then I saw him turn his head to the left, where he could see the Walgreens store.   Immediately he cut over in front of me into the left turn lane, apparently thinking he could get into the place from that direction.  No, no, no, I thought...dude, why couldn't you just follow my instructions? I almost put my car into "park" and got out to tell him of his mistake, but held back, realizing that some people just think they know better and have to learn things the hard way.  When the light changed, I saw him turn and then look for another entrance...which he never found.  I drove on home, wondering whether he had enough sense to go back to my explicit instructions and enter the shopping center where I had told him to.

One of my pet peeves in life is this tendency for some communities to put on a highbrow pretense and force incoming businesses to hide themselves from the public behind rows of hedges and trees while restricting their use of signs...as if their existence were somehow a blight on the aesthetics of the area.  Melissa and I were driving down I-75 near Tampa a while back and saw a sign on it advertising a Red Lobster at the next exit.  We got off the Interstate there and searched high and low for it.  Even with a GPS in the car, we kept approaching the spot it was supposed to be at and then would suddenly be leaving it behind.  Finally, after a few frustrating trials, we found it.  The restaurant was actually very close to the highway, but was hidden by bushes with no signs advertising its existence.  And to get to it you had to turn down a road off the highway and wind your way back around.  That's ridiculous, but, sadly, all too common!

Just Finished Reading Not Cool! by Greg Gutfeld

Well, I just resisted the temptation of titling this article "Greg Gutfeld's Not Cool!", but I had to throw in the line anyway.  Gutfeld is a Fox News Channel commentator, host of his own show Red Eye, and a regular panelist on the late afternoon show The Five.  He is funny, feisty and very opinionated, but doesn't automatically subscribe to the Republican Party's talking points as others on this channel do.  Instead he takes a generally libertarian view of the issues (like being in favor of the legalization of marijuana and gay marriage)  while siding with the general Party leadership on issues like business and bank deregulation, gun rights, national security, and empowering police to fight crime.  But in Not Cool!, his latest book, while a making partisan conservative spin on some things (e.g. he profusely lauds John Bolton, one of Fox's "contributors" who consistently spins Obama's ongoing foreign policy efforts into the ground and then stomps on them), is more about how a certain segment of our society, which he terms as "the hipster elite", continually screws up things by making heroes out of terrorists and other criminals, making crime victims out as being guilty, trashing important life-saving scientific and technological advances like genetic modification of foods, effective insecticides like DDT, and vaccinations, refusing to recognize the Islamic element in so many of today's terrorist attacks and wars,  the propensity to call anyone in disagreement with them as "haters",  the refusal to support the domestic exploration, extraction, and transportation of our own energy natural resources like coal, oil, and natural gas, attacking the traditional American family and glorifying "alternative lifestyles", demonizing our military and national defense efforts and seeing all overseas problems as somehow being America's fault, the irrational embracing of foreign despots (but only if they're on the left politically), the stereotyping and ridicule of the South and its traditions, the elevation in stature of irresponsibility and shallowness in youth culture, jumping on the-pro-gay-bandwagon-and-anyone-who-isn't-on-it-is-retroactively-a-hater, stigmatization of openly conservative entertainers, and using news stories of shootings to attack people's legal rights to own guns.  Whew!, that's a lot of ground for Gutfeld to have covered, and in a relatively short book at that.  Plus, he goes off into other subjects as well (including a section in the end where he recommends a number of musical artists that I've never heard of).

I don't agree with all that Greg Gutfeld has presented here, but we're on the same wavelength on many of the issues.  I salute him for expressing his views, and look forward to seeing him on TV..it's obvious to me that he speaks his mind and isn't just trying to tow some party line or please his employer.  Plus, I like his flowing, conversational writing style, which I also try to use here in this blog...albeit without Gutfeld's sprinkling of profanity.  I recommend Not Cool!, although, if you're one of those "hipster elitists" you may want to ditch it after a couple of pages....

Gainesville Radio: 100.5 "The Buzz" Switches Back to Indie/Alternative Rock Format

My radio listening time of late has been pretty much confined to when I'm driving.  Due to the lack of interesting musical programming, I have been generally listening to sports talk shows, on the AM band: Gainesville's 850/WRUF and 1230/WGGG.  The political talk shows on the other stations usually leave me cold, be they on the left or right side of the viewpoint spectrum, since they typically feature commentators determined to spin the news and manipulate opinions primarily for the advantage of one political party over the other.  And the music stations...what a disaster.  Rock 104 (WRUF-FM) switched over to a country and western format a few years ago and now the light jazz station is simultaneously playing the exact same electronic dance music as another (100.9 and 99.5).  I don't understand how the owners of these stations see any profit in that, but this broadcast radio industry IS peculiar.  And the local Public Radio station, also a few years ago, decided to dump its great classical music format in favor of excruciatingly boring news/talk.  But the biggest disappointment I experienced was when 100.5/WHHZ "The Buzz" abandoned its fantastic indie/alternative rock format in 2008 to be a (then) Rock 104 clone.  Ugh.  Still, after the latter switched to country, I occasionally surfed it on the radio to see if any good songs were on.  But gone were acts I enjoyed like Arcade Fire, Spoon, Gorillaz, Franz Ferdinand, The Vines, Metric, The Hives, Death Cub for Cutie, MGMT, Muse, and Kasabian.  It was this abandonment by them of my favorite music that led me to abandon broadcast radio and embrace the Internet for my musical interests.  By surfing around musical sites there, I discovered talents like Sufjan Stevens, Regina Spektor, and Andrew Bird.  So in a roundabout way The Buzz did me a favor when they switched their programming.  Still, I wished I had at least one local station that played my kind of music...

A few months ago I was pleasantly surprised to hear that the Jacksonville station on 102.9 had switched to a format that included alternative rock.  But that was nothing like a few days ago when, driving in my car, I tuned in to The Buzz on 100.5 and heard them playing the indie/alternative act MGMT doing their old 2008 hit Kids.  Immediately, I knew that they had switched back to their old, sweet format of independent/alternative rock.  And I was confirmed in this by subsequent songs.

So now, when I start fiddling around with my radio dial, the first place I go is 100.5 to see what they are playing...and only after that do I check out the sports stuff on AM.  Whoopee, happy days are here again on the radio!  Now if the good folks who own 99.5 and 100.9 would please just switch one of those stations to a hard rock format to serve the many local fans of THAT genre...

Just Finished Rereading The Last Battle by C.S. Lewis

I just finished reading the seventh and final book in the Chronicles of Narnia fantasy series by C.S. Lewis, appropriately titled The Last Battle.  When I had first read this book a few years ago, I was naturally expecting Lewis to wrap things up so that the series could be presented as a whole collective work, from beginning to end.  The degree to which he "wrapped things up", though, was a bit of a jolt!  When surprise endings in stories are first encountered, there can be that kind of shock.  But since I already knew what was going down (or up, depending on how you look at it), this time around I was just in it for the ride.  The Last Battle takes place at the end of the Narnian age, when the final king there has a crisis after a wayward ape presents a disguised donkey (in old lionskin) as Aslan the Lion Lord of Narnia and himself as his prophet.  This ape, named Shift, then proceeds to turn the kingdom of Narnia upside down with his false claims, in the process unwittingly inviting the barbarian kingdom of Calormen to invade them.  The Calormenes don't follow Aslan, who in essence is an allegory of Christ; instead they worship his opposite, the brutal entity called Tash.  In order to fool the native Narnian talking animals about Tash, Shift makes the claim that Tash and Aslan are one and the same, and that by worshiping one you are in fact worshiping the other as well.  This results in a "new" god in Narnia: the composite creation "Tashlan", whom the native Narnians are duped into following, but whom the invading Calormenes reject, knowing the separate nature of their Tash.  In order to convince the Narnians that Aslan has returned, Shift parades the donkey, Puzzle, out of a stable each night for a few minutes...and then back in.  Later, after Puzzle leaves the charade, this stable becomes the focus of the story...and different things happen to different folks who enter through its doors. 

The humans from Earth who were in featured in the six previous Narnia stories make their appearance in The Last Battle...except Susan (this is explained).  Eustace and Polly from The Silver Chair return early on to free King Tirian and help the Narnians see through the deception and to fight the Calormenes in the "last battle".  Aslan makes his indispensable appearance at the right time, but this time he has company: the rest of the Earthling cast from the other stories.  Whoa, I'd better leave something for you, the reader, to discover for yourself!  And what I'm leaving for you...well, it surprised me when I first read it.

There are two subplots in The Last Battle.  One involves the intransigent refusal of the dwarfs to believe in Aslan or the world he created, even when it is right in front of their eyes to see. This sounds to me like Lewis is pointing out the spiritual blindness of skeptics...although I may be mistaken about his intentions here. The other is the Calormene soldier who practiced a virtuous and honest life, but in the name of the false god Tash.  Aslan, though, while emphasizing that he and Tash are distinctly different, still credits that soldier's good behavior as having been in his own name.  I thought this was very interesting of Lewis to put in this story, especially in light of the way many evangelicals tend to view this sort of thing, regarding people brought up in other religious settings as automatically being lost...

The Chronicles of Narnia is fun reading, and each book is pretty short and as such isn't very much of a time commitment.  There have so far been high-budget movies made for three of the stories, although I don't know whether they'll get around to covering the entire series on film if the box office receipts don't keep up with the expenses.  Regardless, I think people should take the time to read the stories before they watch the movies: they'll get a lot more out of them if they do... 

Yesterday's Treadmill Run Encouraging

Yesterday evening, for the first time since February 25th this year, I went to my local gym (Gainesville Health & Fitness Center) and ran on the treadmill.  It was part of my project to step up my running and regain the level of endurance I had achieved from back in 2010 to early 2013.  I wasn't sure how well I would do, but I set out running at my usual pace and would just take it one mile at a time.  After covering 3.7 miles, I stepped off...not because I couldn't go further, but rather because I understand the value of recovery and of not overdoing it, especially since I hadn't been on the treadmill in a while.  This was an encouraging run for me, and I plan to use the treadmill more often this spring and summer.  I had been breaking up my runs into smaller distances, but decided that there is a benefit to covering the same distance in a single run.  So with that in mind, I have been consciously going about running longer distances during the last few days. Neither lower back pain, which was bothering me the last couple of months (especially in March) nor foot pain (which temporarily sidelined me from running last spring) were factors in my treadmill run yesterday.  Hopefully, this trend will continue and I can gradually step up the mileage per run, both on the treadmill and on the road.  The payoff for this will be a planned string of half-marathon races for me to run in this coming fall and winter...

Just Finished Reading Phantom by Terry Goodkind

I just finished reading Phantom, which is the tenth book in Terry Goodkind's eleven-part fantasy series The Sword of Truth.  The book's title refers to the character of Kahlan, who is the chief protagonist Richard's wife.  A spell called "Chainfire" has been placed on her, hence the title of the previous book.   This spell, placed by some really evil women called "dark sisters", is designed to remove the memory of her existence from everyone in the world.  It also makes Kahlan forget her own past and who she is.  Only Richard, who was touching his magic sword when the spell was cast, knows about Kahlan.  So in a way, Kahlan is a "phantom" of sorts.  The term also applies to Richard's D'haran army as he changes their strategy against the enemy Imperial Order by having them abandon their defensive strategy of trying to hold on to D'hara and instead go on the offense as "phantoms", engaging in widespread brutal guerrilla warfare on the Imperial Order's home territory in the Old World.  There are many, many plot twists and turns, so convoluted that I honestly don't know how Goodkind is going to be able to resolve it all in the next (and final) book in the series.  On top of this, in Phantom the magically advanced Nicci and Zedd discover all sorts of obscure, complicated rules of magic that imperil not just Richard and Kahlan, but the future of all existence.  Make one false move and "poof", it's all over.  This frustrated me reading it all, because by the end of Phantom I really don't know what's going on, at least as far as the "rules of magic" that Goodkind invented for this series are concerned.

Richard in Phantom has finally convinced his friends of the existence of Kahlan, although they still have no memory of her.  Other subplots are the interference of a witch-woman from the south called Six, the boxes of Orden and their implications, the taint on magic caused by the Chimes, a beast from the underworld that Jagang (the ruler of the Imperial Order) has unleashed on Richard, and a troublesome character named Samuel who is wreaking havoc with Richard's magical sword of truth.  If you don't know what I'm talking about, that's not surprising if you are unfamiliar with the series. I've read it and much of it doesn't make sense to me.

Phantom is the middle book in a trilogy embedded within the larger series.  As such, its ending is very, very incomplete with very little to mark the end of a book, except that the book ended.  So I got hold of the final book, Confessor, and began on it...

Soundgarden: One of the Greatest Rock Bands in Its Heyday

One of the greatest rock acts of all time, in my opinion, is the Seattle-based grunge group Soundgarden.  Fronted by gifted vocalist and songwriter Chris Cornell, Soundgarden had three incredible albums in the early-to-mid-1990s: Badmotorfinger, Superunknown, and Down on the Upside.  Of these Superunknown is, in my opinion, one of the very superior albums ever produced in this genre.  I remember how, after purchasing it in 1995, I would listen to it over and over (and over) again...never tiring of it.  A real masterpiece (if you're one who likes very hard driving, intense, irreverent, and raucous music, that is).  Well, after the release of Down on the Upside, at the apex of their popularity and name recognition, Soundgarden went on a very frustrating (for themselves) concert tour, after which they broke up for whatever reasons.  Cornell then put out his own solo album, which was much softer and subdued than what he did while he was with Soundgarden.  It was a pretty piece of work, but I think his followers (including me) were expecting something a little more hard-edged from him, and it didn't do as well as he might have wanted.  Later he was able to hook up with remnants of another successful-but-defunct 90s band, Rage Against the Machine, to form Audioslave. That act was more successful for Cornell (although not with me).  Now Soundgarden is back together and they even released another album a few years ago...but I never heard anything from it.  Maybe I should give it a try... maybe it's the best ever work of theirs, but I doubt it.  Rather I suspect that the band members, seeing the cash cow in their old successful brand name, resurrected it in order to resurrect their own flagging careers.  But that's O.K. with me...because I still have those other three great albums of theirs, on my MP3 no less.  My favorite Soundgarden songs are My Wave, Face Pollution, Mailman, Mind Riot, Somewhere, Fresh Tendrils, Dusty, Boot Camp, and Switch Opens...

Just Finished Reading Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch

The Goldfinch drew my attention a few months ago when, week after week, it was at the top of the New York Times book list.  Now it's won for author Donna Tartt a Pulitzer Prize...and I can see why.  It is meticulously written, well researched, brings to life vivid, memorable characters, and pushes the plot along without getting involved in assorted subplots, a pitfall of some other novels I have read recently.  Its protagonist is Theo Decker, a young man who as a teenager endures a traumatic terrorist bomb attack that kills his mother.  The (fictional) fact that it occurs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art is crucial to the story, since there hangs the famous painting by seventeenth century artist Carel Fabritius titled The Goldfinch (an actual, existing work portraying, quite reasonably, a goldfinch).  That this work of art is physically relatively small is significant, because after talking with a dying elderly man nicknamed Welty (who just moments before was standing with an intriguing little girl who caught Theo's interest) right after the explosion, Theo accepts the man's ring that he offers him and takes The Goldfinch painting off the wall and out of the museum.  He later finds that his mother, from whom he had been separated in the museum just prior to the bomb attack, had died in it. He is put in the care of the family of a school friend, and later moves out west to Nevada along with his father (who had left his mother and him before the bombing) and his father's girlfriend.  Out there he forms a friendship with another "half-orphan" named Boris...all along taking with himself the spirited-away masterpiece.  Later he moves back to New York to stay with and work for Welty's longtime business partner, an expert antique restorer named James Hobart (or "Hobie").  But the plot and all of its twists and turns (and numerous details), along with the culmination of this story (which naturally focuses on the painting The Goldfinch), I leave to you, the reader.  I'd like to examine something else here.

Theo Decker is someone who, even before the disaster that changed his life forever, always acted on impulse, in direct response to his feelings.  And then he'd sit around and muse on what he'd done.  This set into motion more feelings in reaction, leading directly to consequential behavior.  Since he generally feels pretty crappy throughout the story, you might surmise (and you'd be correct) that his behavior isn't generally very constructive or healthy.  It isn't until he decides to turn the equation around and let his thoughts dictate his actions...letting the feelings follow those actions...that he is able to overcome his extreme despair.  But in spite of that, it is clear that despair or not, Theo Decker is constitutionally a pretty melancholy sort of human being. 

The novel seems to make the claim that each of us has to define reality for ourselves and be true to it, even if it involves antisocial and self-destructive behavior.  I don't buy into that: even I, as reclusive as I can be, recognize that while we all have our own individual natures, we also exist as social creatures and as such need to recognize as part of ourselves an appropriate sense of "good" and "bad" regarding what is acceptable behavior in that context.  While Tartt, speaking through Theo as he relates the story in the first person, does at least elevate the concept of honesty in business dealings as a social virtue, it seems that pretty much everything else should be up to individuals to decide for themselves.  One thing that I do stand with the author about, though, is that, like Theo, there are people out there who just have generally pessimistic...if not cynical...demeanors, and it's a waste of time to try to change them.

The Goldfinch, like any good story, opens up a world about which many readers may not be familiar.  It examines with a great amount of detail the antiques and art "industry" that is entrenched in New York and other cities, as well as the more seedy side of it as it relates to the criminal underworld along with its thefts and forgeries.  Having visited Manhattan in 2010, it was fun "walking" through some of the places along with Theo...