5/27 Sermon on Daniel, Pt. 8

At the Family Church here in Gainesville, senior pastor Philip Griffin continued his study of the Old Testament book of Daniel, skipping Chapter 8 to go to the next one, which you can read via Bible Gateway by clicking on the following link: [Daniel 9].  The series title is Counter-Culture; this particular message, Prayer That Changes Things, examines a type of prayer that Daniel uses in Chapter 9 that isn't commonly used in our culture of today but should be...

In the opening verses of Chapter 9, Daniel, one of the most blameless and faithful people ever to appear in the Bible, uses these lines in his prayer to God: "...we have sinned and done wrong. We have been wicked and have rebelled; we have turned away from your commands and laws. We have not listened to your servants the prophets, who spoke in your name to our kings, our princes and our ancestors, and to all the people of the land."  Daniel could have made an exception to himself in this prayer, but he included himself by using "we".  In our times, we have a tendency to personally exempt ourselves from the social problems and prejudices surrounding us and instead place the blame squarely on others...following Daniel's example demonstrates a kind of humility and personal commitment to actually addressing these issues.  Pastor Philip pointed to God's promise in fervent, humble prayer, referring to Jeremiah 29:10-14 as God reveals that he will "prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.  Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you." So how do we pray for our own culture?

Pastor Philip laid out four important aspects to prayer for the society that we live in: refuse to blame others (remember, Daniel included himself), get honest about the present and past sins of the community, genuinely grieve and mourn the sins, and refuse to blame God, who is righteous in everything. We sometimes like to think that in our society whenever progress has been made in the area of civil rights and racial relations and reconciliation we can then just "move on" and forget about the past.  But that past continues to haunt us and needs to be properly and respectfully addressed.  This requires courage and humility...but God is always there to provide whatever we need...let us use Daniel's prayer as an inspiring example...

The Family Church, at 2022 SW 122nd Street, holds its Sunday morning services at 9 and 10:30.  There is the weekly sermon, along with praise and worship music, prayer, fellowship, and opportunities for discipleship and leadership training.  The hospitality room gives visitors a chance to get some coffee and refreshments while getting to meet some of the very friendly folks here.  This coming Sunday should be the final installment in the series on Daniel. If you'd like to watch Pastor Philip's 5/27 sermon, just click on the following link to the church's YouTube video website: [TFC Videos]...

Weekly Short Story: A Full Member of the Club by Bob Shaw

The very rich and the curious tendency of many of them to be actively engaged in accumulating private art collections is the background for A Full Member of the Club, a 1974 science fiction short story by Bob Shaw appearing in the anthology The 1975 Annual World's Best SF, edited by Donald A. Wollheim (DAW Books).  Protagonist Philip Connors, wealthy in his own right by most people's standards through his driven entrepreneurial work and wheeling and dealing, finds himself suddenly scorned and spurned by Angela, his love interest, after she becomes extremely rich due to an inheritance. Determined to win her back, he breaks into her new estate and notices the extraordinarily high quality of everything he finds there...cigarette lighters, cigars, television, everything...and they only have the letter "P" on them.  As it turns out, being able to afford this brand of "perfect" products places these people in a special club, and they...like Angela...have learned to reject the company of others on the outside...like Philip.  Well, our hero isn't used to taking "no" for an answer and he searches to find the source of these amazing goods.  Does he find whoever is making and distributing them?  I'll leave that to you, the potential reader of this intriguing tale, to discover for yourself.  I will only say this: the ending of the story reveals a great deal about our sorry human nature...and, yes, collecting art figures into it all in a funny sort of way...

When I went to high school we had the super-rich kids, most of whom were pretty cool and a few of whom were my friends.  But a small number of them ridiculed the less affluent of us, taking pains to point out where they lived and where we lived, as well as comparing things like wristwatches, clothes, shoes, etc. Note that none of these little snobs had ever done anything to earn their sense of superiority...nevertheless they had it imprinted on themselves that they were in a completely different "club" from others.  I once had a college roommate who expressed the same nose-upturned sense of entitlement because he came from a wealthy family down in Miami.  Which brings me to the concept of entitlement...

I find it ironic that "entitlement" is usually used in the media when referring to programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid that benefit lower-to-middle class citizens.  But among the super-wealthy, how many of those who feel entitled to that wealth actually worked to accumulate it and how many are just benefiting due to family connections?  I'm not envious of them, but it kind of grinds me how some folks will draw social distinctions between themselves and others when they themselves have done little to nothing to justify their good fortune...

Tuesday's List: Cast of The Great Escape and Their Movies I've Seen

On Memorial Day yesterday I worked and got off at ten at night.  Upon getting home I surfed the TV channels and rested upon Turner Classic Movies, which was showing the tail end of the classic 1963 World War II flick The Great Escape.  It's about a Nazi German POW camp composed mainly of British prisoners, along with several from other countries...including an American, played by Steve McQueen.  They plot an elaborate escape through a tunnel...those who get out must improvise to find a way to get to Spain or Switzerland as their pursuers gain on them.  A really exciting film this was...I was about ten when I first saw it.  At that time I was a big fan of the series The Man from U.N.C.L.E., so the character I focused on was that played by David McCallum, who portrayed Russian spy Illya Kuryakin on the popular spy series. Later it became clear that many of the cast in The Great Escape went on to become big screen stars and made several movies, some of which I saw (and a lot of which I didn't, not being a major moviegoer).  So I picked some from the cast and listed the movies they appeared in that I saw...as well as TV series they starred in...and ranked them in order of my liking.  The Great Escape was a great movie...watch it sometime if you haven't yet seen it...

STEVE MCQUEEN (1930-1980)
1 PAPILLON
2 THE GETAWAY
3 THE GREAT ESCAPE
4 THE TOWERING INFERNO
5 TOM HORN
Didn't see: The Sand Pebbles, The Magnificent Seven, Bullitt, The Thomas Crown Affair

JAMES GARNER (1928-2014)
1 THE GREAT ESCAPE
2 THE ROCKFORD FILES (TV)
3 MAVERICK (TV)
Didn't see: Murphy's Law

RICHARD ATTENBOROUGH (1923-2014)
1 THE GREAT ESCAPE
Didn't see: The Sand Pebbles, Doctor Dolittle

JAMES DONALD (1917-1993)
1 THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI
2 THE GREAT ESCAPE
Didn't see: The Pickwick Papers, David Copperfield

CHARLES BRONSON (1921-2003)
1 TELEFON
2 THE DIRTY DOZEN
3 THE MECHANIC
4 THE GREAT ESCAPE
5 DEATH WISH 2
6 DEATH WISH
7 MR. MAJESTYK
8 TWO (Twilight Zone Episode)
9 DEATH WISH 3
Didn't see: The Magnificent Seven, Once Upon a Time in the West, Murphy's Law

DONALD PLEASENCE (1919-1995)
1 THE CHANGING OF THE GUARD (Twilight Zone Episode)
2 YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE
3 THE GREAT ESCAPE
4 THE MAN WITH THE POWER (Outer Limits Episode)
5 HALLOWEEN II
6 HALLOWEEN
7 ANY OLD PORT IN A STORM (Columbo episode)

JAMES COBURN (1928-2002)
1 DUCK, YOU SUCKER! (aka A FISTFUL OF DYNAMITE)
2 OUR MAN FLINT
3 THE OLD MAN IN THE CAVE (Twilight Zone episode)
4 THE GREAT ESCAPE
5 IN LIKE FLINT
6 THE PRESIDENT'S ANALYST
7 MIDWAY
8 ....and of course all those Schlitz Light commercials
Didn't see: The Magnificent Seven

DAVID MCCALLUM (1933-)
1 THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. (TV Series)
2 THE SIXTH FINGER (Outer Limits episode)
3 THE GREAT ESCAPE
4 TEACHER, TEACHER (Hallmark Hall of Fame episode)
5 THE FORM OF THINGS UNKNOWN (Outer Limits episode)

As you can see, good ol' David McCallum is the only one of the above still alive...may Napoleon Solo's sidekick keep pushing on ahead!

Just Finished Reading Hunters of Dune by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson

About a decade after original Dune series author Frank Herbert died...leaving this series in an inconclusive limbo...his son Brian began to team up with another science fiction writer, Kevin J. Anderson, to write prequel books related to the senior Herbert's Dune universe.  Along the way, they discovered old outlines that Frank Herbert had prepared to conclude his series...using these and adding new material of their own, the son and Anderson decided to write two more books to bring everything to a more satisfactory ending: Hunters of Dune and Sandworms of Dune.  I just finished reading the former and am about a third of the way through the latter: this team's writing is easily more readable than that of the original author.  But I'm not surprised: when Brandon Sanderson took on the daunting task of finishing Robert Jordan's protracted and extremely convoluted Wheel of Time fantasy series, he not only was able to ingeniously tie together all of the loose threads that Jordan had created in the first ten books, but wrote in such a way that did honor to the series as a whole.  Now if only George R.R. Martin, author of the A Song of Ice and Fire ("Game of Thrones") series, would just relent and hire someone else to finish his work, we might actually find out what finally happens in that popular (and long delayed) series sometime during our lifetimes...

I can't describe the characters and events in Hunters of Dune without spoiling for potential readers of this series what happens in the books preceding it.  I will instead just say that a lot of the mysteries that Frank Herbert had created in the volumes he personally wrote are being explained.  Also, it is pretty clear to me that, although I haven't read any of the Dune prequel novels by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson, they drew upon these stories when they wrote Hunters of Dune as well as Sandworms of Dune.  Of particular interest is their 2002 book The Butlerian Jihad...that event, which in the timeline of Dune preceded the opening novel's setting by some ten thousands years, was something that Frank Herbert had alluded to in general passing but never deliberately focused on.  Well, turns out that it was a big, big deal after all...I might read that book after I've finished Sandworms of Dune... 

2017-18 English Premier League Season is Over

I began to follow professional league soccer in earnest during the fall of 2014, and have kept up with the English Premier League, Mexico's Liga MX, and the United States/Canada Major League Soccer ever since.  The  2017-18 season in England (the regular season determines the champion) saw Manchester City shoot to the top of the standings (or "table" as they call it over there) at the start and never look back, clearly the class of the league.  Their cross-town rival Manchester United finished second, followed in order by a resurgent Liverpool (who made it to the Champions League final before bowing to Real Madrid), Tottenham, last year's champion Chelsea, a slumping Arsenal, and upstart Burnley...closing out the list of teams qualifying for the Champions and Europa League tournaments in 2018-19.  "My" Leicester City finished in tenth place out of the twenty teams in the league after flirting with that seventh-place in the standing that would have won them a tourney spot.  The bottom three teams, Swansea City, Stoke City, and West Bromwich Albion, have been relegated (demoted) to the second-tier English league called the Football League Championship (a misnomer as far as I'm concerned).  Promoted up from that league are Robert Plant's favorite team Wolverhampton, Fulham, another London team, and Cardiff City from Wales.  So although Wales lost its Swansea City team in the Premier League lineup, they'll still have a representative in Cardiff City starting next year...

I have to admit that, although the level of play in English Premier League soccer is so high...much better than what I see in Mexico or the United States...this past season I have followed it in a hit-or-miss fashion.  Their matches have been faithfully shown on NBCSports (Cox Channel 33 in Gainesville) on Saturday and Sunday mornings, but it seemed that more often than not whenever I did tune in to watch the action, the league was taking that weekend off for tournament play.  Well, Mexico's Clausura season is over, too, with underdog Santos Laguna upsetting favored Toluca in their Liguilla tournament championship match...leaving Major League Soccer to watch through the summer until Mexico and England begin their new seasons in August...

Just Finished Reading Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

Les Misérables, Victor Hugo's extremely long 1862 novel on the conflict between legalism and grace in the context of the tumultuous early eighteenth century in France, was a reading project I had begun a few years earlier but had curtailed after a few chapters, being occupied by other things.  Studiously avoiding in the interim any film or TV adaptations...including the 2012 musical starring Hugh Jackman, Anne Hathaway, and Russell Crowe...I picked it up again recently and was rewarded with a wonderful reading experience...and a new perspective on France, its society, and history...

Jean Valjean, the story's main protagonist, is an unfortunate man who was caught up in the legal system, first as a convict for initially stealing a loaf of bread to feed a poverty-stricken family and then having his imprisonment extended to nineteen years after numerous failed escape attempts.  He is disillusioned and cynical, despised and shunned by others after his release for being an ex-con and forced to carry a passport branding him so, effectively barring him from employment or even lodging.  But after encountering the grace-filled and generous Bishop Myriel...about whom Hugo devoted a lengthy and very enlightening preface showing what true Christianity is...Valjean repents and embarks on a life of forgiveness and helping others.  But he has an adversary, police inspector Javert, who equates goodness and propriety with legalistically following the letter of the law without any regard to extenuating circumstances of those he pursues and persecutes.  Javert recognizes Jean Valjean from his convict days years after the latter had disguised himself as an industrialist and then economically transformed and reinvigorated a small city.  Along the way, while serving as the town's mayor, Valjean rescues from Javert's clutches an unfortunate woman Fantine, who had given her daughter Cosette up for care to an unscrupulous couple, the Thénardiers...and so progresses the plot in this tale for which I recommend you read it yourself in its entirety...

Although the story line about Jean Valjean, Cosette, Fantine, and Javert...to name just a few of the characters...was interesting, the thing I enjoyed the most about Les Misérables was when the author would digress into lengthy discussions about history or aspects of France.  His detailed description of the pivotal 1815 Battle of Waterloo between the victorious British under the Duke of Wellington and the resurgent French forces under Napoleon is something that no student of European history or the military will want to miss.  On the other hand, I probably could have done without Hugo's elaborate discussion of the sewer system of Paris, along with his notion that this system was wasteful in that it sent into the river...and eventually the ocean...human excrement that could have been put to better use in agriculture as fertilizer.  And although Hugo's preface about Bishop Myriel was about a fictional character, he described in a compelling way how someone who has turned to God to guide his life will correspondingly change his priorities to match that new direction...

Now that I've read Les Misérables, I'm ready to try out the film adaptation, and by that I mean the celebrated 2012 musical.  Of course, I don't expect the extensive commentary that Victor Hugo inserted into his excellent book to be in it and I do expect quite a lot of artistic license to have been taken by those responsible for the movie.  Still, I'm curious to see how they interpreted the characters and managed to create a successful musical out of it, of all things...

Quote of the Week...from Benjamin Franklin

If everyone is thinking alike, then no one is thinking.                   ---Benjamin Franklin

A couple of years ago I bought a book of cryptogram puzzles from the twice-a-year Alachua County Friends of the Library used book sale.  It wasn't too long before I realized that I could easily solve many of its encoded messages: a large portion of them were Benjamin Franklin quotes, and once I could see at the bottom of the quote the familiar pattern of letters in his name, the rest was too simple.  Well, at least I got acquainted with a lot of his quotes...

I fervently believe that it is a sign of maturity, as well as mental health, to be willing to listen to others with different opinions and ways of looking at things without feeling that my own belief system is being threatened or that I need to pronounce some kind of judgment against them for differing from me.  Yet it seems from what I'm noticing about people's behavior in the news/opinion shows on TV as well as on social media that the trend is going in the direction of intolerance, with many on both sides of the political spectrum making the deliberate choice to belittle those with divergent priorities or even condemn them, placing them in categories to which they do not remotely belong.  Last week I quoted the great French author Victor Hugo as saying, "I think, therefore I doubt."  Franklin's above quote is a corollary to this: if you only surround yourself with likeminded thinkers, you are not thinking but rather parroting a dogma.  This apparently appeals to many folks, who feel that only what they believe constitutes "right" thinking...

5/20 Sermon on Daniel, Pt. 7

Last Sunday at Gainesville's Family Church, senior pastor Philip Griffin continued the sermon series Counter-Culture on the Old Testament book of Daniel and how it applies to our times and lives, as we entered the prophecy section with Daniel 7...click on it to read it via Bible Gateway.  The message was titled The Truth About Kingdoms and Governments...

The Biblical text describes a dream of Daniel that he experienced near the end of the
Babylonian Empire...in metaphoric imagery it described the progression of earthly empires: the Babylonians, the Persians, the Greeks first under Alexander the Great and then his four generals, and then the Romans...followed by the rise of the Antichrist.  Pastor Philip pointed out that while humanity tends to regard earthly empires as majestic and enduring, God sees them as predatory beasts whose days are numbered.  All human governments are deeply flawed, Philip continued, and things are getting worse...there is no future in them.  There is an inherent problem with earthly governments: we cannot expect a political solution to a spiritual problem...human governments cannot establish by themselves the kingdom of God.  And as our pastor emphasized, they cannot abolish the sin that permeates the world.  But Daniel promises the advent of God's kingdom, when sin will finally be ended and the Lord will reign in his glory...

There is a tendency for many believers...and even nonbelievers...to dwell on Biblical prophecy even to the exclusion of God's mandate for them to be a shining light to bring people into his kingdom and then to disciple them in the faith.  Pastor Philip urges us to avoid speculation about prophecy and to beware of complacency...God's kingdom is a work in progress, already here and still "not yet".  Philip warned against being a "date-setter" or "Antichrist-spotter".   As for me, I never did understand the appeal of eschatology, or last-days prophecy.  I already know that my days on this earth are numbered and then I will encounter the Lord, regardless of all the tumultuous happenings in the world around me.  God is omnipresent, but he is also personal...each of us are in our own personal "last days"...what is the need to get all wound up with the ongoing maneuvering of world powers and leaders?  Beyond conducting myself responsibly and constructively in my civic life and to be one of those shining lights,  I have to release the rest of what happens in the world to God, who is ultimately in charge...

The Family Church, at 2022 SW 122nd Street in Gainesville, holds its Sunday morning services at 9 and 10:30 with praise and worship music, the weekly message, prayer, fellowship and discipleship opportunities...and a nice hospitality room where visitors can get coffee and refreshments before and between services while getting to know some pretty friendly folks...

You can watch this past sermon by clicking on the following YouTube link: [TFC Videos]...

Weekly Short Story: Experiment by Fredric Brown

Previously on this blog I have discussed a couple of short stories by the twentieth-century science fiction/mystery writer Fredric Brown, The Weapon and Preposterous, and now it's "time" to bring up a third, Experiment.  But before I do, since this very brief story is in public domain and on the internet, why not first read it for yourself...just click on the following link: [link]...

Written in 1954 amid a rash of popular stories about time travel, Experiment focuses on the main problem of the paradox of travel into the past.  A professor has invented a prototype time machine that can project a small object up to twelve minutes into the future or past.  He has two colleagues present to demonstrate how it works, using a small square cube, placing it on the machine's platform, and setting it to travel into the future five minutes.  Presto, the cube vanishes and then reappears five minutes later...everyone is duly impressed.  Then Professor Johnson shows how the machine works transporting objects back in time.  Holding the cube, he tells his associates that in five minutes he will place it on the machine and send it back...the object promptly disappears from his hand and reappears on the machine...exactly five minutes before he was to place it there.  One of his friends, however, raises the "paradox" question...suppose the good professor decides instead not to place the cube on the machine five minutes later?  Tantalized by this, he refrains from doing so...and the story ends abruptly with one of the best final lines I've ever read (and I first read this one when I was a little kid)...

With time travel into the past (not the future), there is always the inherent paradox of the same object or person being there twice, with the "current" one in a position to affect its past...thereby affecting the "past" one's future to the point where the "current" one wouldn't be going back in time to affect its own past...that third Harry Potter book/movie The Prisoner of Azkaban examines this as well when Harry and Hermione use the latter's time-travel necklace to try to redress a past wrong. Experiment resolves the paradox in a different way that makes any attempt at time travel to the past not only unfeasible, but very, very dangerous.  A hint in case you haven't read it yet: that cube has a tendency to vanish...

Tuesday's List: My Favorite and Least Favorite US Senators from Each Party

The following list reflects my very subjective opinions of the current United States Senate and its members and omits past senators that I have liked or disliked.  A lot of my impressions have been formed by watching these people on C-Span 2, which broadcasts live Senate floor proceedings, and various committee sessions. I could have chosen to include more names, but instead decided to pick relatively few, including a little commentary next to each one.   In the "least favorite" categories, the senators are ranked by how much I dislike them, so number one is the worst.  Keep in mind when reading this list that I tend to vote Democratic...and also that all senators have their good and bad points: I'd expect you to come up with an entirely different list...

FAVORITE DEMOCRATIC SENATORS
1 TOM CARPER (Delaware)...breaks down issues dispassionately, appeals to reason
2 AMY KLOBUCHAR (Minnesota)...a master debater and very persuasive
3 CHARLES "CHUCK" SCHUMER (New York)...should be Senate Majority Leader
4 PATTY MURRAY (Washington)...good senator who works well with Republicans
5 RICHARD "DICK" DURBIN (Illinois)...persuasive orator, good on TV

FAVORITE REPUBLICAN SENATORS
1 ROB PORTMAN (Ohio)...his comity with Democrats and personality stand out
2 LINDSEY GRAHAM (South Carolina)...never know what ol' Lindsey will say next
3 JOHN CORNYN (Texas)...great speaker, should be party leader instead of McConnell
4 MIKE LEE (Utah)...very conservative yet very considerate of fellow senators
5 BEN SASSE (Nebraska)...unafraid to criticize Trump and still remain in Senate

LEAST FAVORITE DEMOCRATS
1 KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND (New York)...too pious and self-righteous, calls for others' resignations too often
2 JOE DONNELLY (Indiana)...status as Dem in a red state has compromised his politics
3 CORY BOOKER (New Jersey)...did an unseemly, phony flip-flop on Jeff Sessions, once friends now he acts horrified at him
4 EDWARD MARKEY (Massachusetts)...had early high hopes for this dull, often angry speaker
5 JOE MANCHIN (West Virginia)...caters too much to the FoxNews crowd

LEAST FAVORITE REPUBLICANS
1 MITCH MCCONNELL (Kentucky)...refusing to consider Obama's Supreme Court pick leaves him tainted in history...
2 CHARLES "CHUCK" GRASSLEY (Iowa)...no scruples whatsoever with his reasoning
3 STEVE DAINES (Montana)...seems only interested in ripping his fellow Montana senator (a Democrat)
4 JAMES INHOFE (Oklahoma)...the Senate's main climate change denier
5 JAMES LANKFORD (Oklahoma)...GOP's point man in attacking the Democrats

And finally, for you political junkies out there in social media land...especially the Facebook fanatics...lighten up, dude, it's all just one observer's opinions!

Slogging Through Rainy Day After Rainy Day

Carrying an umbrella around wherever I go has never been a habit for me...at least not until this week.  Day after miserable day here in the Gainesville vicinity it's been one rainstorm after another.  The ground around my house has become saturated with water...parking on the grass like I usually do is no longer an option if I don't want to have to call AAA to tow my car free of the muck.  I am glad that I managed somehow during a rare precipitation intermission to get the front and back lawn mowed, but it looks as if the breaks from rain with be few and far between for the foreseeable future.  One of my friends at work said that there was a tropical disturbance spinning off this moisture...sure do wish it would spin it off somewhere else.  The one bright spot with all this is that we're pretty much immune to any forest fires in this area that tend to accompany dry, drought conditions.  Well, I had to find something positive to say about this awful weather...

Just Finished Reading Chapterhouse: Dune by Frank Herbert

Chapterhouse: Dune is the sixth and final novel written by science fiction writer Frank Herbert for his Dune series, recording his imagined future of humanity as it populates the galaxy over millennia and undergoes all sorts of crises through different factions and movements.  There's no doubt that Herbert had not intended it to be the last volume...it came out in 1985 and he died the next year, leaving readers suspended wondering what would happen after the inconclusive ending of this book.  Some twenty years or so later, his son Brian collaborated with Kevin J. Anderson to write two more books, Hunters of Dune and Sandworms of Dune, that supposedly continue and wrap up this series (with the use of the original author's notes).  Guess I'll have to read these, too...

Many thousands of years into the future...and many more thousands of years before the events transpire in the first Dune novel...there is a galactic-wide revolution against the use of computers as the perception takes hold that they are supplanting humanity.  As a result, there is a regression in science and space travel and more emphasis placed on developing the human mind and its potential.  The Bene Gesserit is composed of women who are able to incorporate the complete memories of all past Bene Gesserits.  Some humans have been genetically modified to guide starships through faster-than-light travel...both they and the Bene Gesserit heavily depend on the mind-altering spice mélange to accomplish their aims.  And mélange has been produced solely by giant sandworms on the planet Dune, or Arakis.  Now a plot spoiler for this series (cover your eyes if you want to read Dune from the beginning): at the end of the fifth book, Heretics of Dune, Arakis has been destroyed...but one surviving worm has been spirited away on a ship to the Bene Gesserit's home planet of Chapterhouse.  But the Bene Gesserit are being wiped out by a much larger and more powerful sisterhood, the Honered Matres...what will happen as they try to recreate the desert world of Dune that allowed the mélange-producing worms to flourish?  Guess you'll have to read it to find out...

There are other groups whose existence is at stake in this sixth book, including the mysterious Bene Tleilax who can regenerate copies of the dead (called "gholas")...with the ability to recover old memories.  Many of the Tleilaxu were "face dancers", able to assume the appearance and mannerisms of others to an uncanny accuracy...their ultimate fate is completely in the hands of Tleilaxu survivor Scytale at the "end" of this series.  And then there are the Mentats, humans who have an innate ability that enables them to reason like the computers that are no longer available.   Notable characters are the gholas Duncan Idaho and Miles Teg, Darwi Odrade, Murbella, and Sheenana, to name the more significant.  The Honored Matres have invaded from the "scattering", caused by the earlier tyrant Leto II...but are they really just invading or are they being pursued by something out there?  That question is left hanging at the end...twenty years later, hopefully, Brian Frank and Kevin J. Anderson have provided a suitable answer and series conclusion with those two books I mentioned...

Preakness Race Later Today

The Preakness, which is the second leg (or is it jewel) of horse racing's Triple Crown for three-year-old thoroughbreds, will take place later today at the Pimlico race track in Baltimore, Maryland.  I suppose this means that during the pre-race show on NBC/Sports from 2:30 to 5 pm we're going to go through more of the same cuisine/fashion/alcohol promotions...this time for the state of Maryland instead of for Kentucky two weeks ago before that leg (or jewel).  Of course, we don't have to watch any of that stuff, do we?  The race, to be broadcast on NBC, is scheduled to begin at 6:48 pm, giving everybody (at least in the eastern U.S.) a chance to fill up their afternoons with more constructive and enjoyable endeavors...

Justify, the Kentucky Derby favorite and winner of that twenty-horse race, is the heavy favorite in the eight-horse field for the Preakness.  Second place Derby finisher Good Magic is the clear second favorite for this event.  The rest of the field are either longshots who finished back in the pack two weeks ago or horses that didn't participate in that race.  The Preakness is the shortest of the Triple Crown races, not a problem for Justify, which ran strong at the head of the pack throughout the Kentucky Derby.  For all the hoopla that goes on with these races, the event itself is very short...one inopportune bathroom break and you've missed it...

I don't gamble, but in observing horse racing it's interesting to see how many people are hooked on it...I know someone who by his addiction to this insidious activity trained me from childhood in a reverse sort of way to avoid it, and I am much the happier today for that.  Still, it costs nothing to pick out a horse and root for it.  For today's 2018 Preakness I'm going for Justify in order to set up the possibility of a Triple Crown showdown at the upcoming Belmont Stakes, the final leg/jewel...

Quote of the Week...from Victor Hugo

I think, therefore I doubt.                               ---Victor Hugo

Victor Hugo was one of France's greatest writers, responsible for some of the most renowned books in history, including The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Les Misérables, the latter of which I am getting close to finish reading.  He was a man of faith, yet he did not allow that to keep him from deep thinking and meditation on many things.  And as he wrote in the above quote, you cannot think without entertaining the possibility of doubt...

In order to properly pursue a topic or issue, it is necessary to move one's thoughts around on it to see it from different vantage points as well as consider the differing perspectives that others have on it, including an attempt to place oneself in other's shoes in order to empathetically understand their underlying motivations.  This requires doubt...or at least a temporary suspension of one's initial beliefs on the matter.  If I am going to look at different things going on in the news today like Trump's presidency, the Black Lives Matter and Me Too movements, international conflicts and relations, gun regulation and violence, etcetera, it is not enough for me to simply indulge my prejudices on the topic and then search for media sources that only affirm them and give me talking points to spout out on social media or in the workplace or other venues.  I appreciate input from others on different issues; I would appreciate it more were they capable or willing to temporarily suspend their own passions and express how someone with a different perspective just might have a point or two as well.  Unfortunately, the world around me seems to filling up with "true believers" who see the concept of doubt...which can help lead to empathy and enlightenment...as a sign of weakness if not a betrayal of their belief systems.  They may believe that forcefully promoting their strong convictions by relying on spoon-fed details and contempt for those who dissent shows that they are "thinkers"...quite the contrary, they come across as close-minded and intellectually lazy.  Too bad...we could really use Victor Hugo's wisdom in our times...

5/13 Sermon on Daniel, Pt. 6

At the Family Church here in Gainesville, pastor Aaron Read delivered last Sunday's sermon, a continuation of the series looking at the Old Testament book of Daniel.  This particular message, which focused on Chapter 6 (click on it to read it through Bible Gateway), is titled A Counter Cultural Discipline...

The Persians and Medes have conquered Babylon, but Daniel has won the good graces of King Darius for his integrity and leadership: he is one of three appointed to administer the vast kingdom.  But some of the administrators and satraps (provincial governors) under his watch resent that honesty, for they wish to get rich off the king's wealth.  So they devise a scheme whereby they prod the king to proclaim that anyone seen praying not directly to Darius during a set thirty-day period will be thrown into the lion's den, already knowing that Daniel regularly and openly prays to his God.  Darius agrees, the trap is set, Daniel is accused and convicted...and the king of Persia cannot rescind his decrees and sadly forces his faithful servant into the den.  The next day Daniel emerges unscathed, and Darius angrily retaliates against those who had plotted against Daniel by throwing them...as well as their wives and children...to the lions, who consume them before they even reach the ground.  So what does this have to do with discipline?

Pastor Aaron listed three aspects of discipline, more specifically self-discipline: its choice, its challenge, and its cost.  He pointed out that you choose self-discipline by deciding to live blameless before God, you live up to the challenge of self-discipline by choosing to obey God instead of conforming to the prevalent culture, and that you face the cost of self-discipline when you are willing to lose you own life instead of saving it as the world sees you as its enemy.  Daniel exemplifies all of these aspects of discipline and as a result lived his life to God's glory and the building of his kingdom.  That all having been said, did King Darius really have to throw the wives and children into the lion's den...sounds as if he could have used some of this self-discipline for himself...

Thank you, Aaron, for your message, which anyone can view for themselves by clicking on the following link to the church's video webpage: [link].  The Family Church, at 2022 SW 122nd Street, meets for its Sunday morning services at 9 and 10:30. There is the sermon, praise and worship music, prayer, learning and discipleship, lots of friendly folks, and a hospitality room with free coffee and treats.  Looking forward to this Sunday and more from the book of Daniel...

Weekly Short Story: A Problem of Numbers by Isaac Asimov

If Dean Karnazes can make the claim as the most famous ultramarathon runner around (I haven't heard him do this), then the late Isaac Asimov could have also boasted of ultramarathon accomplishments within his field...he authored or contributed to more than 500 books in his lifetime and wrote countless short stories.  His fiction usually has a strong intellectual bent to it, but the characters can often seem a little shallow and undeveloped.  However, although Asimov isn't my absolute favorite author, his stories are always interesting and leave me with something to think about when I've finished them.  A case in point: his short story A Problem of Numbers, published in 1970 and appearing in the collection The Best Mysteries of Isaac Asimov (Ballantine Books, 1986)...

A chemistry graduate student approaches his accomplished professor and asks for his approval to marry his daughter.  The professor, knowing that the two have been romantically involved, replies that his blessing isn't necessary but that he will give it if the young man can decipher a numerical code he writes down...and then explain how he reached his solution.  I'm not exactly spoiling the story's plot by noting that the student does solve the problem and gives a reasonable explanation as well...it's what he says at the very end that is the "punch line" for this intriguing story, revealing a lot about how the great scientists and mathematicians (or writers, composers, artists, etc.) think, commonly-held public impressions to the contrary...

Intuition, or as some might called it, "gut feeling", accounts for a great deal of thinking in areas that you might believe are completely bound to precise, provable reason. Starting at the beginning and going from line to line is the standard way that logical arguments, mathematical proofs...and literature and music...are usually presented.  But when creating those arguments, proofs, and stories, the thinking is nothing but linear.  There seems to be a kind of well that great thinkers have learned to draw from, a source of enlightenment so to speak, that enables them to see around problems and detect the patterns that point toward their solution...this certainly was the case in A Problem of Numbers.  There are few things in this world as sweet as the "eureka" moment when everything comes together and becomes clear...or when a very simple solution to a seemingly intractable problem suddenly makes itself known.  I live for these moments...and recommend Asimov's clever short story...

Tuesday's List: Favorite Song Lists of Various Musical Acts from Earlier Blog Articles

For the past few Tuesdays on this blog I have been listing my top three favorite songs from various bands...but some of the greatest acts I left out because I had already listed in a more expansive fashion my favorites of theirs in earlier blog entries.  The following is a list of these artists, each name followed by my personal favorite songs.  If you click on the act's name, it will direct you to that earlier article I wrote, with a more extensive list of songs...

THE BEATLES
1 GOLDEN SLUMBERS/CARRY THAT WEIGHT/THE END
2 FOR NO ONE
3 ELEANOR RIGBY
4 STRAWBERRY FIELDS FOREVER
5 TWIST AND SHOUT

LED ZEPPELIN
1 WHEN THE LEVEE BREAKS
2 MISTY MOUNTAIN HOP
3 DAZED AND CONFUSED
4 OVER THE HILLS AND FAR AWAY
5 FRIENDS

THE DOORS
1 THE WASP (TEXAS RADIO & THE BIG BEAT)
2 PEACE FROG
3 TOUCH ME
4 ROADHOUSE BLUES
5 LOVE HER MADLY

PINK FLOYD
1 FLAMING
2 RUN LIKE HELL
3 FEARLESS
4 REMEMBER A DAY
5 WISH YOU WERE HERE

ELECTRIC LIGHT ORCHESTRA
1 LIVIN' THING
2 CAN'T GET IT OUT OF MY HEAD
3 SECRET MESSAGES
4 TURN TO STONE
5 BOY BLUE

ELVIS PRESLEY
1 KENTUCKY RAIN
2 CAN'T HELP FALLING IN LOVE
3 IN THE GHETTO
4 (MARIE'S THE NAME) HIS LATEST FLAME
5 VIVA LAS VEGAS

DAVID BOWIE
1 BLACKSTAR
2 CHANGES
3 SPACE ODDITY
4 QUEEN BITCH
5 DAYS

THE ROLLING STONES
1 IT'S ALL OVER NOW
2 STREET FIGHTING MAN
3 PRODIGAL SON
4 TIME IS ON MY SIDE
5 JUMPIN' JACK FLASH

THE WHO
1 THE GOOD'S GONE
2 MAGIC BUS
3 DOCTOR JIMMY
4 I CAN'T EXPLAIN
5 RAEL

THE MOODY BLUES
1 FOR MY LADY
2 LAZY DAY
3 LEGEND OF A MIND
4 ONE STEP INTO THE LIGHT
5 EYES OF A CHILD/FLOATING

RUSH
1 RED BARCHETTA
2 VITAL SIGNS
3 WORKING MAN
4 THE SPIRIT OF RADIO
5 ROLL THE BONES

THE MONKEES
1 PLEASANT VALLEY SUNDAY
2 SOMETIME IN THE MORNING
3 CIRCLE SKY
4 DAYDREAM BELIEVER
5 THE PORPOISE SONG

THE POLICE
1 INVISIBLE SUN
2 DARKNESS
3 SYNCHRONICITY I
4 CAN'T STAND LOSING YOU
5 THE BED'S TOO BIG WITHOUT YOU

R.E.M.
1 IMITATION OF LIFE
2 LET ME IN
3 THE WRONG CHILD
4 HALF A WORLD AWAY
5 FIND THE RIVER

Reported Discrimination Against Conservatives Speaking at Some Public Colleges

I was watching one of the C-Span channels this morning and there was a program featuring lawyers representing conservatives who claim to have been discriminated against at some public universities regarding speaking engagements.  Two colleges in particular...California @ Berkeley and Washington...were cited by the attorneys for stifling the free speech of conservatives who had been invited to speak on campus by student groups, usually the campus Republican group.  The college administrators' tactics were similar with politically right-leaning speakers: (1) charge an exorbitantly high security fee that is much lower or completely waived for liberal speakers, (2) force the conservative speaker to make his or her presentation in a remote location, often off-campus far from public transportation, (3) place a "curfew", often around 3 pm, as the mandated finishing time for the speech (which inherently creates a schedule conflict with students attending classes), and (4) impose a gag rule prohibiting the student group from promoting the event in the media.  The lawyers noted that speakers for liberal groups and causes were not treated in this manner, and they showed as an example how differently conservative and liberal guest speakers were treated during a calendar period.  I was impressed by the program, but so far haven't found it on the network's webpage...

Free speech as guaranteed by the First Amendment is NOT designed to protect speech that people want to hear: it's aimed at protecting speech that they DON'T want to hear.  If you're a professor, administrator, or student at one of these publicly-funded universities and can't handle someone with a different point of view expressing themselves, then why should you realistically expect those who disagree with your viewpoints and philosophies to respect you when you want to communicate them?  There are two forces going on that are making our society more and more divided and full of hostility.  One is the resurgence of racism and hate groups and the other is runaway political correctness, the adherents of which automatically slap "racism", "sexism", "hate", and other labels on people who don't fit the accusations but who have a different way of seeing things nevertheless.  It's a shame that so many folks idolize their own set ways so much that they are incapable of tolerating another perspective to the point where they fight to prevent its expression...

Mexico's Premier Soccer League Championship Series Set

In Mexico, unlike most other countries with top-tier professional soccer leagues, the year is divided into two seasons, the Apertura from August to December and the Clausura from January to May.  The 2017-18 Liga MX (their premier league) takes the top eight (out of the league's eighteen) teams from the regular season and has a championship playoff system called the Liguilla.  This 2018 Clausura season has Toluca, with the best regular season record, against Santos Laguna.  My favorite team, UANL (Universidad Autonoma de Nuevo Leon) Tigres, lost in the first round to Santos Laguna...and a curious trend going on for the last three years continues...

In the summer-to-autumn Apertura season for the last three years, Tigres has won the Liguilla championship series every time.  But then when the Clausura season comes around, Tigres still makes the playoffs but gets knocked off.  Upstart teams, for some reason, do well in the Clausura season while traditional winning teams like Club America and Tigres excel in the Apertura.  There shouldn't be any difference between Apertura and Clausura, but at least lately something weird has been going on.  Here are the Liguilla champions in each season for the past four years:

YEAR                APERTURA            CLAUSURA
2014-15            Club America            Santos Laguna
2015-16            UANL Tigres            Pachuca
2016-17            UANL Tigres            Guadalajara (Chivas)
2017-18            UANL Tigres            Toluca or Santos Laguna

It should be interesting to see whether Tigres can win a fourth straight Apertura title later this year.  In the meantime, I'm stuck with a championship series between two teams I care little-to-nothing about...

Just Finished Reading Heretics of Dune by Frank Herbert

Heretics of Dune is the fifth of six books in Frank Herbert's Dune science fiction series, published in 1984.  When beginning one of these books, you never know exactly what the time setting will be...it can get pretty erratic from book to book.  Book two, Dune Messiah, begins 12 years after the end of the first book...and then 9 more years elapse until the beginning of the third book, Children of Dune.  But that's nothing...a full 3,500 years pass before the events transpire in book four, God Emperor of Dune.  And then on to the book I just read, Heretics of Dune, with another 1,500 years gone by.  It's kind of hard keeping up with the changing characters in this series, although one of them, Duncan Idaho, appears in all of them either as his original self or as a repeatedly regenerated clone called a ghola.  Now I've just begun to read Herbert's final book that he wrote by himself for this series, titled Chapterhouse: Dune...and its beginning picks up right when the previous book ended with no elapsed time at all!

The sentient galaxy is ruled by opposing political factions that work hard to outmaneuver one another for their own survival and advantage...just like the nations in our current world jostle about with their ideologies, intrigues, and occasional wars.  As a reader I've come to dislike all of the groups and find their leaders morbidly rigid, selfish, and devious.  That's not to say that in Heretics of Dune there aren't any appealing characters: the bold, spunky girl on Rakis called Sheeana who talks to giant monster worms that obey her but destroy everyone else, Idaho's noble and honest character, and Miles Teg, a brave old soldier working for the women-dominated Bene Gesserit faction, are all very likeable and made reading this story less of an ordeal than it could have been.  The dominant story line in this book (beware, here comes a series plot spoiler) is that a rival women's group called the Honored Matres, much larger in number and ambitious and brutal in their aims of galactic domination, are returning from the "scattering" instigated by Leto II, the God Emperor of Dune (book four) and are attacking planets which are under the influence of the Bene Gesserit.  Rakis, formerly called Arrakis or Dune, is threatened as is the home planet of the Bene Gesserit, called Chapterhouse.  The climactic scene at the end of this book directly affects the beginning of the next...

In reading the Dune series, I wanted to get a sense of how humanity is progressing through the years, looking to the various characters along with those factions I referred to find any signs of accumulated wisdom and benevolvence...sadly, I've found nothing positive.  In book five, the forces are just as cruel and self-centered as the ones in book one, with only a few noble characters scattered throughout the series.  There is a lot of stilted dogma according to which each political faction adheres, and in my opinion the author goes way overboard in presenting it, making reading through this stuff an exercise in tedium.  Yet Frank Herbert's Dune series has been highly acclaimed critically and has consistently topped the bestseller lists.  I might have been more sympathetic toward it had the story stuck with the original "hero" of Paul Atreides instead of leapfrogging through time and characters.  Well, I've gone this far and plan to stick it out to see what happens at the end...

Quote of the Week...from Viggo Mortensen

There's no excuse to be bored. Sad, yes. Angry, yes. Depressed, yes. Crazy, yes. But there's no excuse for boredom, ever.                                          ---Viggo Mortensen

Viggo Mortensen is the actor, in case you didn't know it, who so brilliantly played the character of Aragorn, or "Strider", in the wonderful film adaptation to J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings a few years ago.  I don't know much about him or his opinions...I haven't even seen him in any other movies...but this quote of his I just found happens to strongly resonate with me. And you know what?  It's the kind of thing I would have expected Strider to say...

I was doing some Internet research on the word "excuse" being used in quotes.  Most of them seemed to tie in the making of excuses with being a failure...sorry, but I'm not totally convinced of this "lift yourself by your own bootstraps" pop philosophy.  There are many factors that can impede people from living the kinds of fulfilling lives they would like to, including disabilities, persecution because of race, gender, physical appearance, religion, having to grow up in an abusive family and/or in extreme poverty or in violent environments, and so on.  If folks are just supposed to shrug off their own negative experiences and plow on, then that sounds to me as if the many problems plaguing human society will never be adequately addressed and solved.  On the other hand, in order to function as an independent adult, one must come to the conclusion that, legitimate excuses notwithstanding, they can still make choices to improve their lives and those of whom they love.  But as Viggo stated, whenever I hear someone come out with the plaintive whine "I'm bored", I wonder what the heck is wrong with them...

There is so much of interest in this limited time that we are accorded in our mortal lives that it simply astounds me that there are people...apparently many, many people...who are incapable of experiencing any wonder at all of the amazing and interesting things around them.  To appropriate a tired old cliché, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to be entranced by space travel, as well as by the wonders in our vast universe.  Look at all the varieties of life on Earth, the different kinds of terrain there are, the different countries and their absorbing histories, the biographies of countless people, the almost endless number of stories...real and fictional...available to us, music in all its forms, and that's just scratching the surface.  No it's absurd to ever be bored...but I think the main reason some like to roll out this lament is that they are so into themselves that the idea of thinking about anything that doesn't directly factor into their own inflated egos is something to be avoided.  So maybe the main cause of this boredom isn't as much a lack of imagination as it is a sense of personal insecurity.  Letting go of oneself for a few minutes and getting into something that doesn't necessarily prop up their self-image apparently is a pretty scary thing for a lot of people, so they end up "bored"...

5/6 Sermon on Daniel, Pt. 5

This past Sunday at the Family Church in Gainesville, senior pastor Philip Griffin continued his series titled Counter Culture about the Old Testament book of Daniel.  The sermon, Am I at the Right Party?, was based on Daniel 5, which you can read through Bible Gateway by clicking on the passage...

Daniel Chapter 5 is about the infamous Belshazzar's Feast and the Writing on the Wall.  King Belshazzar, the final king of Babylon, held a banquet for thousands of his nobles. They drank wine from golden cups taken from the Jerusalem temple...and then proceeded to toast to pagan gods.  God's response? A hand materialized out of thin air and wrote on the wall the words MENE, MENE, TEKEL, PARSIN.  There was a sense of panic in the air, and the king found Daniel, who gave his interpretation, which signaled the end of the Babylonian Empire and its replacement by the Persians...

Pastor Philip connected the events of that night with what is going on in our culture: the party our culture throws celebrates pleasure, power and possessions, and pride.  The possessions Belshazzar brought out, the golden cups looted from the temple, he treated as trophies...we have the tendency to show off our own "trophies" as well.  Then there was that mysterious hand, the "party crasher" as Philip put it: what was written on Belshazzar's wall is also written on ours: MENE: our days, too, are numbered as we all will die, TEKEL: we have all sinned and been found wanting, and PARSIN: everything we have in this world will be divided among others after we're gone.  But our pastor pointed out that there's another kind of party, the one that God throws, which celebrates repentance, humility, and grace: the celebration of salvation through Jesus Christ.  To get a sense of this party, read the following verses from Jesus' Parable of the Prodigal Son: Luke 15:22-25...

You can watch this sermon via the church's website, which uses YouTube...just click on the following link: [TFC Videos]. The Family Church meets each Sunday morning and has the weekly message, praise and worship music, prayer, and opportunities for fellowship and discipleship.  It's a good place to get to know some wonderful people and form friendships...

Weekly Short Story: A Suppliant in Space by Robert Sheckley

A suppliant is defined as someone who makes a humble plea to an authority or power.  Science fiction writer Robert Sheckley's 1973 short story A Suppliant in Space carries this meaning and provides a piercing satire on the state of our contemporary society with regard to doctrinally rigid social mores and militarism.  The inflexible dogmatism is from the world of Ferlang, in a nearby galaxy.  One of its inhabitants, named Detringer, has been convicted and banished to deep space for basically thumbing his nose at his society and acting out in a foolish manner.  He manages somehow to cross the void between his galaxy and ours...and lands on a planet about the same time that humanity's first interstellar expedition...replete with a military team in case they feel they have to destroy somebody...gets there.  And then the fun begins...

The dialogue between Detringer and Earth's bellicose Colonel Ketterman is classic, with the Ferlang exile twisting logic into contortions around the military man.  How it all ends...well, you'd better read it for yourself.  Instead I'd like to point out that the military and war have always been themes of not only our space program, but also of most of the movies we've seen about space exploration.  The race to the moon in the 1960s was an outgrowth of the grim competition in the Cold War between the East and the West for ballistic missile accuracy and range.  No doubt once permanent stations and settlements begin on the moon, Mars, and other worlds, the rumbles of war will never be very far away, sad to say.  Part of me is very enthusiastic about what seems to be America's renewed commitment to manned space travel and exploration...and part of me is anxious about the weapons of war spreading to space, not only creating the possibility of armed conflict there but also casting a threatening shadow over the only planet we currently have to live on, our precious Earth...

I found A Suppliant in Space in the anthology Donald A. Wollheim Presents the 1974 Annual World's Best SF (DAW Books).  It also features Detringer's talkative robot companion, who predates Star Wars' C-3PO by four years...as well as the socially-challenged scientist/civilian commander of the Earth crew. This story is probably in other collections as well...you'll probably get a kick out of it like I did...

Tuesday's List: My Top Three Songs of Various Musical Acts, Pt. 5

Well, seeing that it's Tuesday again I guess I'll continue with this series of listing my personal top three favorite songs from different musical acts.  I know I left out quite a few of the more popular artists, probably some that you like.  For many of these, I may like one or two songs over the course of their careers...but three? Maybe if I were to listen to all of the tracks on all of their albums I'd like more...but I neither have the time nor desire to do this.  The following list breaks down this way: other than the first entry, which I should have included a couple of weeks ago, the artists are generally known from the 1990's up to this day.  My musical interests during the nineties and up through 2002 were mainly in the genre of hard rock...from 2003 onward it changed to alternative rock/indie music...it's been a very long time since I've followed "top 40" pop music.  This list reflects that shift...why not try listening to some of the acts on it you might not have heard?

MELANIE
1 RING THE LIVING BELL
2 LAY DOWN (CANDLES IN THE RAIN)
3 BRAND NEW KEY

THE PRETENDERS
1 MESSAGE OF LOVE
2 MY CITY WAS GONE
3 BACK ON THE CHAIN GANG

THE B-52'S
1 ROAM
2 LEGAL TENDER
3 ROCK LOBSTER

METALLICA
1 SAD BUT TRUE
2 ONE
3 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS

RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE
1 RENEGADES OF FUNK
2 KILLING IN THE NAME
3 BULLS ON PARADE

SUGAR RAY
1 SOMEDAY
2 FLY (with Super Cat)
3 EVERY MORNING

KORN
1 HERE TO STAY
2 MAKE ME BAD
3 GOT THE LIFE

FOO FIGHTERS
1 EVERLONG
2 SOMETHING FROM NOTHING
2 I'LL STICK AROUND

INCUBUS
1 STELLAR
2 DRIVE
3 TALK SHOWS ON MUTE

DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE
1 SOUL MEETS BODY
2 CATH...
3 I WILL POSSESS YOUR HEART

TOOL
1 VICARIOUS
2 SCHISM
3 STINKFIST

SYSTEM OF A DOWN
1 SUGAR
2 ARIELS
3 CHOP SUEY!

COLDPLAY
1 MOSES
2 CLOCKS
3 ADVENTURE OF A LIFETIME

FRANZ FERDINAND
1 TWILIGHT OMENS
2 ELEANOR PUT YOUR BOOTS ON
3 THIS FIRE

THE KILLERS
1 ALL THESE THINGS THAT I'VE DONE
2 THE MAN
3 HUMAN

SUFJAN STEVENS
1 DETROIT, LIFT UP YOUR WEARY HEAD
2 CASIMIR PULASKI DAY
3 JACKSONVILLE

REGINA SPEKTOR
1 US
2 FIREWOOD
3 MAN OF A THOUSAND FACES

ARCADE FIRE
1 NEON BIBLE
2 WINDOWSILL
3 ROCOCO

KASABIAN
1 SWITCHBLADE SMILES
2 REASON IS TREASON
3 TREAT

GORILLAZ
1 TO BINGE
2 STYLO
3 REVOLVING DOORS

METRIC
1 CALCULATION THEME
2 SOFT ROCK STAR
3 LOVE IS A PLACE

ANDREW BIRD
1 FIERY CRASH
2 FITZ AND THE DIZZYSPELLS
3 FAKE PALINDROMES

PJ HARVEY
1 THE WHEEL
2 THE ORANGE MONKEY
3 THE COMMUNITY OF HOPE

THE STROKES
1 12:51
2 REPTILIA
3 THE END HAS NO END

SPOON
1 THE GHOST OF YOU LINGERS
2 MERCHANTS OF SOUL
3 GOODNIGHT LAURA

LINKIN PARK
1 BLACKOUT
2 BLEED IT OUT
3 FAINT

CAGE THE ELEPHANT
1 COME A LITTLE BIT CLOSER
2 SHAKE ME DOWN
3 WHOLE WIDE WORLD

MGMT
1 TIME TO PRETEND
2 KIDS
3 ELECTRIC FEEL

TWENTY ONE PILOTS
1 RIDE
2 HEAVYDIRTYSOUL
3 HEATHENS

Stormy Daniels News Not High on My Priority List

I got up this morning and flicked on the TV news...guess what they were talking about?  The Stormy Daniels affair, Trump lawyers Michael Cohen and Rudy Giuliani and what they said, along with what the president said.  Excuse me, but in the grand scheme of things...who cares?  Years before he ran for president, Trump had a brief affair with this stripper/porn star and had Cohen pay her $130,000 to keep her mouth shut about it.  This rather seedy business nonetheless, at least on the surface, has the appearance of legal propriety.  At first, naturally, the president denied any involvement with Daniels...now the affair seems to be acknowledged by all sides.  But while I'm disappointed that a man with such a low moral compass was elected to be my president...and sadly with the full support of many who claim to hold personal morality and accountability as important traits in their leaders (quite a few of whom took Clinton to task about Monica Lewinsky)...this simply does not merit, in my opinion, continual coverage on the news channels.  Stormy Daniels is not a Russian agent and has nothing whatsoever to do with the much more serious issue of past and potentially future Russian interference in our elections, which should always be front and center stage.  But there are other issues as well that actually affect us in our lives and will determine our future in this country and on this planet...for example, climate change should be getting much, much coverage than the meager amount it gets.  And other issues like firearms regulation (authorized under the Second Amendment) and our national immigration policy only seem to come up whenever there is a shooting spree, demonstrations, or a Trump tweet.  The televised news media seem nowadays only to react to prompts from others instead of proactively investigating in detail the important issues of our day and producing informative and compelling journalism...

Just Finished Reading Warcross by Marie Lu

Marie Lu has already earned a name for herself in the fiction series business with The Young Elites and Legend...I've yet to read either.  She has begun a new one and the first book is titled Warcross.  Warcross is a ten-year old interactive virtual reality video game...some 90% of young adults worldwide are avid players and the number keeps growing.  Each year there is a world championship tournament played in Tokyo, the home of the game's inventor...a young man by the name of Hideo Tanaka.  The story's protagonist is a young woman, Emika Chen, who since her arrest in high school for hacking the accounts of people in retaliation for persecuting a friend of hers, has lived on the outskirts of society, struggling to earn a living in New York City as a bounty hunter whose main focus is finding gambling law violators, usually in relation to Warcross.  She is very likable and sympathetic, and is also a big fan of Warcross, both as an anonymous player and a follower of the top world professional leagues and players.  At the opening of the world championship, she impulsively hacks into a game, which is being broadcast worldwide...but she is exposed in the act, with her image visible everywhere: now almost everywhere people recognize her. Very shortly thereafter Hideo Tanaka contacts her and invites her to Tokyo...and so continues the rest of the story, which you're invited to read for yourself...

There is a tone to Warcross that is glaringly apparent to me, a outsider in the world of video gaming. My video game playing pretty much ended with Sega's Sonic the Hedgehog series, which my son Will stoically conquered as a little kid.  His generation is totally tuned in to video gaming...mine isn't, a truly substantial generation gap.  I know folks around me who are totally into this activity and they seem differently wired mentally than those like me who aren't...that's not a criticism, just an observation.  I kind of wish that I had gotten into them earlier in my life, but they seemed kind of pointless back then and, well, I still hold to that viewpoint to an extent.  But it would have served as a sort of generational conduit had I been a little better versed in the different games.  Warcross seems to make the assumption that "virtually" everyone is into video gaming, though...an assumption that I would beg to differ with.  Still, it is set sometime in the future...maybe the author thought that by then "my" generation would have already gone by the wayside.  I liked Warcross, though, and plan to follow this blossoming series which I expect will be adapted to movies...

2018 Kentucky Derby Has Wide-Open Field

Once again it is the first Saturday in May and voilá, here is the Kentucky Derby horse race, held at the Churchill Downs track just a couple of blocks south of the University of Louisville.  In the 2018 edition of this time-honored event that represents the first of the three-race Triple Crown for three-year-old thoroughbreds, there will be 20 entrants, with several horses bunched together as favorites and many more as longshots.  At this writing the favorites, in general order of betting odds, are Justify, Mendelssohn, Magnum Moon, Audible, and Belt d'Oro.  Sometimes I get a "feeling" about a name and that horse mysteriously wins...Tonality in the Belmont Stakes a few years ago was one such example.  Magnum Moon is my choice this time around, based on complete ignorance and only a hunch...but it's all for fun!  As for the horse with my favorite name, it's one of the longshots: Free Drop Billy...

The Kentucky Derby is supposedly slated for 6:46 pm and will get 2:30-7:30 coverage on NBC.  I'll probably watch some of the prerace programming to get a better sense of the horses and to see any late changes in the lineup and odds.  In any event I'm hoping that whichever horse wins this race will also win the Preakness, setting up yet another exciting Triple Crown scenario for the Belmont.  We'll see...

Quote of the Week...from John C. Maxwell

Life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it.           John C. Maxwell

John C. Maxwell is a famous leadership development trainer/teacher...I picked the above quote of his because he is discussing the concept of "react".  We all react at every moment of our lives to what's going on around us...otherwise we wouldn't survive.  Most of our reactions we are unconscious of...what I will discuss are the conscious decisions we make to react to cues we encounter...

Maxwell is making the strong point that the quality of our lives is largely a matter of personal choice.  It is important to realize this, for the more successful one becomes the more exposed he or she is to criticism from others...just look at all the businesses with their multitudes of Yelp reviews and authors with similar critiques from Goodreads.  You accomplish something worthwhile and somebody's certain to pan it...reacting negatively to this inevitability won't accomplish anything...

There are people that I would term "reactive personalities".  They tend to allow any prompt they see or hear lead them to determine what they feel, say, and do.  If there is a terrorist attack somewhere, they overreact as if they themselves are about to be attacked.  If they see some folks enjoying greater economic prosperity than themselves, they feel resentment instead of rejoicing in their friends' good fortune.  If they see someone on TV who reminds them of a negative aspect about someone they know, they're liable to suddenly turn cold toward that person for no apparent reason. These people are more likely to be regarded as "drama queens" or "prima donnas", wanting to be recognized as the "top" of whatever group they happen to be in...our president has one of the worst reactive personalities I've seen in anyone.  Another characteristic of reactive people is that they are consumed with themselves and only listen to others in order to judge them or if they themselves are the central topic of discussion.  These people are a drudge to be around, demanding loyalty without reciprocating...

The opposite of a reactive person is what John C. Maxwell is suggesting: a proactive individual lives by guiding principles that strengthen them in the face of outside pressure or influence.  Such a soul recognizes that they cannot please everyone and that there can be fulfillment in solitude and as a follower...and that true empathy with others requires a release from reacting to what they say or do and instead try to see things from their perspective.   If an election goes the wrong way, somebody cuts you off in traffic, or the president tweets something characteristically offensive, you would still be okay in not liking it but you could keep your focus on what you stand for and want to do.  This path sounds more attractive to me, not that I always make the right choices in this regard...

4/29 Sermon on Daniel, Pt. 4

At the Family Church here in Gainesville Philip Griffin, our senior pastor, continued his Counter-Culture series this past Sunday about the Old Testament book of Daniel with a message titled The Conversion of Nebuchadnezzar.  The focus passage was Daniel 4: click on it to read it via Bible Gateway.  In examining what happened to King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, Pastor Philip brought up some points about the price of pride...

Once again Nebuchadnezzar has an unsettling dream, although this time around he is a bit gentler about asking for an interpretation.  Daniel seeks God and the dream's meaning is revealed: for a time Nebuchadnezzar will become like the animals and leave all of the power and possessions that he has taken so much pride in because he has arrogantly refused to acknowledge God's role in all of his earthly blessings. In the end he is restored to his throne, has repented of his pride, and now understands the love of God.  Like him, we can be caught up with what we are proud of but still be insecure and empty...as Philip remarked, we cannot get soul-level contentment from anything this world offers.  He also pointed out that pride diminishes our humanity when we come to the belief that we...not God...are masters of our own fate.  Our pastor continued, listing five characteristics that Nebuchadnezzar shared with all who are consumed by pride: his identity was wrapped up in his possessions and accomplishments, he was blinded to his sin, he believed he was better and more deserving than others, he overlooked the vulnerable and oppressed, and he took credit for what God had done.   But, as Philip concluded, once Babylon's wayward king experienced the life-changing love of God, he expressed his gratitude to his Lord for humbling him...and this applies to us as well...

You can watch this sermon for yourself by clicking on the following link to the church's YouTube video website: [TFC Video].  The Family Church, at 2022 SW 122nd Street (Parker Road), meets on Sunday morning at 9 and 10:30...each service has the weekly message, wonderful praise and worship music, prayer and discipleship opportunities, a hospitality room with coffee and refreshments, and lots of friendly and interesting folks.  Daniel continues this Sunday...

Weekly Short Story: Nobody Lives on Burton Street by Gregory Benford

The notion that it is a good thing for people to release their pent-up frustrations by acting out in an aggressive manner seems to have become a generally accepted part of our popular culture.  The 1970 Gregory Benford short story Nobody Lives on Burton Street...which appears in the anthology World's Best Science Fiction 1971 (Ace Books)...bears this out.  It is at some point in the future and we're seeing a dystopian society where the economy sucks and the state has not only perfected autocratic ways of controlling dissent and protest, but also can manipulate the disaffected masses into channeling their discontent into carefully-directed areas: Burton Street is one such set-up...a completely artificial place.  When the government's Force encounters rioters entering this street, which is lined up on both sides by businesses (or fake businesses), we see just how manipulative a controlling power can be with its people...as well as the implementing of this idea that if folks can let out some steam over their miserable lives then they will become more submissive and content in the long run.  Guess what?  I disagree...

It has been my life experience with others...as well as with myself...that the more people behave and think in an aggressive and hostile manner, the worse they become in this regard, not better.  That's because they are reinforcing the negativity underlying their behavior, as well as that behavior.  What I think has confused some well-intentioned people about this is that intense physical activity, such as competitive sports, will tire out the participants to where they cannot...at least temporarily...engage in aggressive behavior while they rest and recover.  Children who get outside the home to play or, while at school, have a time allotted to go out on the playground and run around, are more likely to be attentive and respectful to others...deprivation of this can make Johnny a rowdy little boy.  But here we're talking about physical activity, not hostility and anger...big difference!  Screaming behind the wheel at the other drivers bugging you is no "release"...it just builds and reinforces upon itself...curiously, the mind will find itself seeking out imaginary offenses to continue the established behavior.  So yes, get out and do sports...but don't confuse that with aggressive and hurtful actions and speech, in spite of commonly promoted beliefs...reinforced by our plague of reality TV and our overly reactive and touchy president...

Tuesday's List: My Top Three Songs from Various Musical Acts, Pt. 4

Here are a few more musical acts with my top three favorite songs from each of them...I continue to plod along chronologically in very rough fashion as I go from the 1980s into the 1990s, although many of the songs are from outside that range.  I considered some artists who had one or two songs I really liked...but dang it, I couldn't find a third song that appealed to me so I left them off the list.  And don't forget: I'm not necessarily listing the "greatest" songs...only the ones that have personally stuck with me.  Here goes...

WHITNEY HOUSTON
1 SO EMOTIONAL
2 THE GREATEST LOVE OF ALL
2 HOW WILL I KNOW

VAN HALEN
1 HUMANS BEING
2 FEELS SO GOOD
3 AND THE CRADLE WILL ROCK...

PET SHOP BOYS
1 WHAT HAVE I DONE TO DESERVE THIS (with Dusty Springfield)
2 WEST END GIRLS
3 ALWAYS ON MY MIND

THE BEASTIE BOYS
1 SABOTAGE
2 INTERGALACTIC
3 BRASS MONKEY

BILLY IDOL
1 CRADLE OF LOVE
2 EYES WITHOUT A FACE
3 DANCING WITH MYSELF

DEF LEPPARD
1 ROCK OF AGES
2 HYSTERIA
3 ANIMAL

EURYTHMICS
1 LOVE IS A STRANGER
2 WOULD I LIE TO YOU?
3 HERE COMES THE RAIN AGAIN

MISSING PERSONS
1 DESTINATION UNKNOWN
2 WORDS
3 MENTAL HOPSCOTCH

JEFFERSON AIRPLANE/STARSHIP
1 WHITE RABBIT
2 MIRACLES
3 WE BUILT THIS CITY

JANET JACKSON
1 MISS YOU MUCH
2 ESCAPADE
3 RUNAWAY

ZZ TOP
1 VELCRO FLY
2 SLEEPING BAG
3 SHARP DRESSED MAN

JOHN (COUGAR) MELLENCAMP
1 CHECK IT OUT
2 CHERRY BOMB
3 PINK HOUSES

SHEENA EASTON
1 YOU COULD HAVE BEEN WITH ME
2 WE'VE GOT TONIGHT (with Kenny Rogers)
3 9 TO 5 (MORNING TRAIN)

NIRVANA
1 SCENTLESS APPRENTICE
2 DUMB
3 COME AS YOU ARE

PEARL JAM
1 OCEANS
2 CORDUROY
3 EVEN FLOW

SOUNDGARDEN
1 MY WAVE
2 FACE POLLUTION
3 FRESH TENDRILS

ALICE IN CHAINS
1 AGAIN
2 GRIND
3 HEAD CREEPS

STONE TEMPLE PILOTS
1 SOUR GIRL
2 BIG BANG BABY
3 VASELINE

TRAVELIN' WILBURYS
1 HANDLE WITH CARE
2 MARGARITA
3 END OF THE LINE

COUNTING CROWS
1 MR. JONES
2 A LONG DECEMBER
3 ROUND HERE

DAVE MATTHEWS BAND
1 THE SPACE BETWEEN
2 CRASH INTO ME
3 ANTS MARCHING

COLLECTIVE SOUL
1 WHERE THE RIVER FLOWS
2 PRECIOUS DECLARATION
3 GIVING

THE SMASHING PUMPKINS
1 TONIGHT TONIGHT
2 BULLET WITH BUTTERFLY WINGS
3 TODAY

SARAH MCLACHLAN
1 BUILDING A MYSTERY
2 SWEET SURRENDER
3 FALLEN

STEVE WINWOOD
1 BACK IN THE HIGH LIFE AGAIN
2 HOLDING ON
3 THE LOW SPARK OF HIGH-HEELED BOYS (with Traffic)

RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS
1 GIVE IT AWAY
2 TELL ME BABY
3 SCAR TISSUE

GEORGE THOROUGHGOOD (and the Destroyers)
1 WHO DO YOU LOVE?
2 MOVE IT ON OVER
3 BAD TO THE BONE

BLACK CROWES
1 REMEDY
2 HOTEL ILLNESS
3 HARD TO HANDLE

DEPECHE MODE
1 ENJOY THE SILENCE
2 EVERYTHING COUNTS
3 POLICY OF TRUTH

GREEN DAY
1 GOOD RIDDANCE (TIME OF YOUR LIFE)
2 HOLIDAY
3 BOULEVARD OF BROKEN DREAMS

GARBAGE
1 STUPID GIRL
2 PUSH IT
3 SPECIAL