Podcast Presents 7 Ideas for Increasing Focus on Tasks

On his Mindset Mentor podcast, Rob Dial recently gave a talk on some of the ways he thinks will help anyone focus more on whatever tasks they deem necessary...he has seven.  The first is to stay away from your phone, an incredibly distracting device: I wonder if some folks are capable of that, as addicted they are to it.  Two, "prepare the brain"...the mind is resistant to a change in focus. Dial suggests some breathing exercises as well as a brief, light transitional activity leading into the task.  Three, eliminate distractions from others by communicating with them (if possible) the need for you to be alone for a little while, and physically isolate yourself by going into another room and closing the door.  Four, Rob Dial opposes multitasking as a general principle because it dilutes the effectiveness and focus of the involved activities and produces less progress and more slipshod results.  Five, keep a notepad with you at all times in order to quickly jot down any significant ideas that come into your head that may be unrelated to what you're trying to accomplish right now...otherwise they tend to play around in your mind, offering distraction.  Six, Dial recommends putting on headphones and playing long tracks of instrumental music to blot out incidental noises that might interfere with concentration.  Finally, he advocates the Pomodoro Technique, in which one works with focus on something for 25 minutes and then takes 5 minutes completely off-task...and then returns to work for another 25 minutes as the cycle continues: this is supposed to be more effective than simply working straight though a task.  As for me, I agree with Rob Dial on most of his principles but have a disagreement of sorts with his exhortation to avoid multi-tasking.  From my experiences his advice is only sound when applied to two similar activities: listening to a lecture while composing a letter produces a conflict but listening to a Mindset Mentor podcast while exercising poses no problem and makes efficient use of time.  As for "preparing the brain" and using headphones more, these are probably the two suggestions I need to focus on the most...what techniques do you use to be able to concentrate better on the task at hand?

Speed Golf: A Viable Alternative to the Original Sport?

I was watching yet another PGA tournament this Sunday afternoon...with yet another group of completely different golfers vying for the title...when it occurred to me what was missing from the sport: timing, which would add more of an athletic dimension to it.  I had all the rules for this new sport worked out in my head, a kind of golf that used the same course, clubs and balls but was much faster and more action based.  And then, just before I set out to write my article on this great invention of mine, I decided to do an online search using the words "speed golf"...sure enough, it's already been invented with professional tournaments going on for ten years already.  According to "their" rules, in an 18-hole round each golfer gets the usual score of total shots, to which is added the total minutes taken to run the course...giving the final composite score.  I don't know if they time the interval between holes...I wouldn't, timing only between the tee and hole.  Also, according to "my" version, I would completely discount how many shots are taken and only go by the time taken to accomplish it...and I'd have the golfers on a particular hole all tee off and play simultaneously...no tedious breaks with players analyzing and lining up shots!  I think that adding the element of timing would make golf more similar to tennis in that the tournaments would tend to go more consistently to the sport's stars instead of being spread out so much among so many.  And, of course, I think it would be a lot more exciting to watch.  Will speed golf ever catch on as a major sport?  I don't know, but reportedly its major tournaments are shown on CBS and ESPN...next time they show one I'd like to see how they do it...

Just Finished Reading The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle

A few weeks ago I was listening to a Rob Dial podcast in which he referenced a book titled The Power of Now but failed to mention its author.  He is Eckhart Tolle, a German metaphysical philosopher and teacher now living in Canada who published the book, full title The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment, in 1997.  Reviewing it presents a sort of quandary, in that Tolle maintains that people in general place too much store in their thinking, and that what endures within ourselves is what he says is the "observer", rooted in the here and now.  One's thoughts, he believes, are just so much noise that tends to obscure our true nature. So in reviewing this book of his, I'm giving in to my thinking "self"...forgive me, dude!  The book's format is very readable, in question-and-answer dialog form as the author covers the main concerns about his philosophy, which seems to bear some resemblance to Buddhism although he claims that the kernels of all religions proclaim essential truths...you just have to know where to look for them.  That's the only part of the book I had a problem with: Tolle tends to give his own interpretation of various religions' scriptures...of course, all the references and quotes he uses conveniently fit his thesis.  Lately the notion of "mindfulness", where one pauses during his or her daily routines and worldly endeavors and focuses on what is immediately around them in the present moment, gets star billing here.   Tolle maintains that true enlightenment can only come by shedding the notions of past and future and embracing the here and now where dwells our eternal nature. There is a lot to cover for a book that forswears too much thinking, but Eckhart Tolle isn't against thinking per se...just doing so excessively to the point where one confuses their thoughts with their own true essence.  A very interesting and thoughtful book, one worth going back to but with some accompanying discernment.  A thinking person's book that eschews thinking: sounds Zen, doesn't it...

Quote of the Week...from Leslie Nielsen in the Movie Airplane!

I just want to tell you both good luck.  We're all counting on you.        ---Leslie Nielsen, Airplane!

One of my favorite movie comedies is the 1980 farce Airplane!, a satire of the preceding decade's airplane disaster flicks.  Toward the movie's end, Leslie Nielson's "And don't call me Shirley" character Dr. Rumack is trying to encourage low-confidence stand-in pilot Ted Striker (played by Robert Hays) as he and his co-pilot, flight attendant Elaine Dickenson (Julie Hagerty) try to land the stricken passenger plane safely.  He starts out with the above quote...then keeps repeating it until the plane is on the ground...and then says it again!  To me that was one of the high points of an already side-splitting movie...and the race I just ran this past Sunday reminded me of how preposterous it was.  I was running a half-marathon and had just cleared the hilliest part, with just about three miles to go as my body was aching all over and starting to run out of steam.  And that's when it started, Airplane-style, with people standing on the side of the course repeating the same mantra: "You're almost there!"  Over and over and over and over again, each of them apparently unaware that I still had quite some distance to go while repeating the same tired old line up and down the road.  Finally, just when I turned left on NW 1st Street for my final stretch run, a young woman volunteer yelled out, "You're almost there! I'm telling you the truth!"...apparently, she somehow knew that this had been going on for miles on the course.  I half-expected somebody to repeat it after I had finally crossed the finish line as Leslie Nielson did in the movie...oh well, we can't have everything!  Have you ever experienced this sort of thing, where you keep hearing the same often well-intentioned line over and over again to the point where you're just about ready to slug somebody? 

Fascist Putin, Praised by Trump, Invades Ukraine

Fascist Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, as expected for weeks, today launched his country's invasion of neighboring Ukraine as tanks are rolling in and bombs dropping across this besieged nation.  Putin's biggest American buddy, fellow fascist Donald Trump...who tried to overthrow our dearly cherished free and fair presidential election a year ago...has been full of nothing but praise for Putin, calling his Ukraine strategy of aggression "genius".  And other right-wingers, most notable among them FoxNews' Tucker Carlson, have made no secret of their unbridled support for Putin...what has my country come to?  It's true that under Vladimir Putin and his predecessor Boris Yeltsin, Russia shed its previous aggressive communist ideology in favor of social conservatism...lining themselves up nicely with the political right on several ongoing issues in America.  But don't these people see what carnage, damage and disruption this military takeover of another sovereign nation is going to cause?  This isn't like some football game with folks choosing, say, the Rams or the Bengals...this is life and death, and some of my compatriots need to get their heads screwed on right and their hearts drastically changed.  As for my own heart, it goes out to the Ukrainian people in this time of crisis and suffering...

Weekly Short Stories: 1982 Science Fiction, Part 2

Today I continue my look at some of 1982's standout science fiction short stories as they appeared in Donald A. Wollheim's anthology The 1983 Annual World's Best SF, featuring his selections from the year before.  The prevailing national mood back then was a bit somber and gloomy, what with a deep recession going on, perceived loss of American industry to Japanese exports, and a scary return to the Cold War between Reagan and Brezhnev's successor Andropov...not to mention an explosive situation developing with Lebanon's civil war in the Middle East.  But here we still are, forty years later, with me reviewing four more sci-fi short stories...

PLAYING THE GAME by Gardner Dozois and Jack Dann

Jimmy Daniels is a little boy living in a small town...whenever he wakes up from sleep, he discovers he is in a different alternative reality with a different home and parents who, ostensibly the same, have different personalities, states of health, and jobs.  He seeks out the town's cemetery as one of the few places that seem the same regardless which "universe" he finds himself in.  No one around him seems to think anything is amiss, and Jimmy is careful not to let on about his different realities...one of the best really short stories I've read recently and a great ending... 

PAWN'S GAMBIT by Timothy Zahn

An advanced alien civilization, fearful of other intelligent life in their area of space developing into an aggressive threat to them, selectively abducts representative individuals from various worlds and subjects them to board games while analyzing their tactics and ways of thinking to determine their species' threat level.  An Earthman gets kidnapped as well and devises a unique strategy of saving himself as well as his fearsome opponent from another system.  I thought the author hit the mark, revealing humanity's great strength of being able to forge alliances in times of external threat...

THE COMEDIAN by Timothy Robert Sullivan

A very brief tale with a very abrupt ending, it appears that a sick serial child abductor is on the loose with seven kids already disappeared...and it increasingly looks like the man responsible is out to add to the total.  Yet from his viewpoint he is doing good and is doing the bidding of a strange shape-shifting entity who likes to impersonate famous comedians.  It all seems very sinister and dark...turns out that it IS very sinister and dark, but not at all the way the author builds it up...

WRITTEN IN WATER by Tanith Lee 

After a planet-wide plague wipes out almost every human on Earth, the only survivor is an embittered hermit of a middle-aged woman who lives her solitary daily existence as if nothing has changed.  Then one night a star falls from the sky onto the black field adjoining her home...but it is no star, but rather a young alien man.  She helps him recuperate from his shock of landing and although he does not understand her speech the two reach a state of rudimentary mutual understanding.  How the story culminates was pretty disturbing to me, and demonstrates how rigidly people can adhere to their old habitual thought patterns even in the face of cataclysmic change...  

Next week I conclude my look at science fiction short stories from 1982...

TikTok as Forum for Diverse Ideas & Opinions

I have had the short looping video app TikTok on my smartphone for a few months now, never putting out anything on my own but rather just scrolling through the randomly appearing posts of others.  My use of it reflects how I used Twitter: to get people's brief reactions to what is going on around us as well as their general philosophies of life.  Before, when I used Twitter...and social media in general...what I saw was pretty much set in advance by my choice of people I followed and was thereby inherently slanted. When I flick through video after TikTok video (I don't follow anyone or participate in their interactive options of reactions to posts), I'm getting more of a cross-section of viewpoints about most anything, but weighted heavily in favor of current events and issues.  And since the people putting out these videos are for the most part neither celebrities nor anyone I personally know, I am not having to deal with inner conflicts about those individuals whenever I happen to disagree with a posting (and that happens a lot)...I can focus on the message, not the messenger.  Some of the videos out there do stretch the standards of modesty and propriety a bit, but I suppose in a free speech environment it's better to err in that direction than in that of censorship.  Speaking of censorship, just about every mainstream social media platform practices some sort of content regulation and TikTok has its own issues as well...seems that criticism of some autocrats has been suppressed in the past and there was a recent scandal in which a site urged students to vandalize their schools.  I also know that Trump hated TikTok and wanted it banned in the United States...had it not been for him I probably wouldn't have even considered it: thanks, Donald, in a backhanded sort of way.  Is this app perfect? No way...not by far...but it is always interesting.  TikTok as I see it presented is a crazy, chaotic kind of digital bulletin board, a welcome, more grassroots kind of entertainment to check in on whenever I get tired of the contrived and narrative-driven mass media news programs I see on TV.  I'm not necessarily recommending it for you, but I've seen it as a good source for independent opinions and information...although as with everything else it's crucial to be discerning in filtering it all through and not automatically accept everything I read or hear...

Ideas for Breaking Through Mental Barriers, As Related by Rob Dial

On a recent Mindset Mentor podcast hosted by Rob Dial, he laid out three ways to break through mental barriers...and he used for an example an area with which I am only too familiar: long-distance running.  According to Dial, a noted ultra-marathon runner is asked by someone to help his friend get over his running block: he can't surpass five miles for a single run without losing his energy and needing to stop.  The "ultra" man accepts the challenge to help him out but insists that he commit himself to three things: (1) repeat to yourself "I will never quit", (2) don't give your pain a voice, and (3) continually think of things in your life that you are grateful for.  The story goes like this: on their very first run together, the friend not only breaks his five-mile barrier but runs for 100 miles!  With the repeated mantra of never quitting, Dial explains that your body responds to the voice inside your head...another example is the placebo effect in which healing occurs seemingly because the mind is convinced that the ingested "medicine" is effective for the body.  With not giving pain a voice, the point is to not to focus on things you don't want, but instead to switch to emphasizing that which you desire.  And thoughts of gratitude cause the brain to release chemicals that benefit action and reduce anxiety and discouragement.  As for me, I employed these three principles during the half-marathon yesterday...and they worked, although had I not heard this episode of Rob Dial's podcast I think I still would have done all right.  Who knows, maybe I was already practicing these suggestions, albeit in a different form...

Ran Gainesville's Five Points Half-Marathon This Morning

 

This morning I ran Gainesville's Five Points of Life Half-Marathon, the sixth time I've run this event (2010, 2014, 2015, 2017, 2018) and my overall thirteenth half-marathon.  Last year's race was cancelled due to Covid, and the 2022 edition features a modified course that winds through the city but in a different direction...although the NW 16th Avenue stretch of hills and the stadium run remain on the course.  I woke up at 5 and managed to get out there in plenty of time, parking in front of the Thomas Center and walking the few blocks to Bo Diddley Plaza in the heart of downtown where the race was to begin and end.  It was cold, in the upper thirties with high humidity, but once we started running the weather wasn't any bother.  The Five Points Half-Marathon uses pacers who run the race just to finish at a specified final finishing time: the one I selected, who incidentally is an ultramarathon runner, held the sign for 2 hours 40 minutes, five minutes slower than my previous half-marathon time in 2019.  She told us up front that she would alternate two-minute runs with thirty-second walks...that was fine with me since I like those brief walking breaks.  After the race began a few delayed minutes past 7, we headed east on University Avenue, turned south on East 7th Street and made our way to Depot Road, which we took to the trail that passes over US 441 just south of the University of Florida campus.  Then we passed through the area of the various UF medical buildings, crossing busy Archer Road and beginning the hilly part of the course.  Eventually we passed Lake Alice, made it back to University Avenue and then ran through the Florida football stadium before running through the heart of the campus.  After that we went north to NW 8th Avenue, cut through to 16th and ran east to 441 before turning right.  After that it was more or less a matter of going back to the downtown area where the finish line stood near the Hippodrome Theater.  I liked our pacer's run/walk strategy until we began to encounter some substantial hills...then I found it tiring since she'd often run up a hill and walk down another.  By the time we reached 16th...home of the really "bad ass hills" as legendary seniors marathoner John Wallace has termed them...I had decided to abandon following a pacer and employed my own strategy of tackling the hills: it worked and my finishing chip time was 2:33:51, more than six minutes faster than the pace I followed for the race's first half.  My feet got sore early on, and by the end I was essentially focused on putting one leg in front of the other until it was all over.  The police (who regulated the surrounding traffic) and volunteers were all very friendly and encouraging...for the last three miles of the run people on the side would keep yelling at me that I was "almost there": that kind of got tiring.  But the end was sweet, and Melissa and Will congratulated me on getting through it...I even got a photo op with Albert, the Florida Gator mascot!  And now it's time for my poor sore, crampy body to recover from the ordeal before I get ready for the next one.  Click HERE to view the race results...

The Burden of Relevancy in Academic Conversation

I have a daydream fantasy, one that I believe few others have.  It goes like this: along with all the inane radio talk shows hosted by political extremists, self-proclaimed experts on money or the law, paranormal promoters, and sports know-it-alls there is one program in which the host, a master of informed questioning, has as guests people who are knowledgeable and competent in diverse academic fields, ranging from medicine to physics to language to mathematics to agriculture to mechanics to economics...or anything else. In each interview they spend the allotted time exploring the actual content of the field for discussion, not necessarily its applications or implications to society or the guest's life history. Now I know this is just cognitive reverie on my part, but what if I were to become like that host and ask those around me about their own fields of expertise?  My guess is that they would mostly be reticent about sharing many details of their specialized knowledge, trying to steer the conversation toward their own life narrative or what career achievements they have won...and question my own rationale in asking them in the first place.  And simple curiosity and a desire to learn new things just don't sound like good enough reasons...there has to be demonstrated relevancy to push the topic forward.  On the other hand, since I haven't tried this how do I know that would happen? I do know that there is an increasing gulf in society between those "in the know" about science and technology and the bulk of the population, which at best takes it all for granted and at worst outright rejects science and advanced learning in favor of nonsensical notions...

Quote of the Week...from Clint Eastwood

Maybe I'm getting to the age when I'm starting to be senile or nostalgic or both, but people are so angry now.  You used to be able to disagree with people and still be friends.  Now you hear these talk shows, and everyone who believes differently from you is a moron and an idiot.           ---Clint Eastwood

I'm a fan of Clint Eastwood's movies...especially the early westerns...and have noted his political leanings over the years as well. A pragmatic conservative who supports minority rights as well as avoiding overseas military conflicts, he is usually in the general center of the political spectrum.  And I've noticed that this position can bring out a lot of antagonism from folks mired in ideology and partisanship...although not from me.  That's why he disappointed me at the 2012 Republican Convention that nominated Mitt Romney for president when he ranted on for ten minutes at an empty chair onstage, pretending that President Obama was sitting in it and putting vulgar expressions in the absent president's mouth...to the ecstatic cheers and laughter of the attendees. It drew out my scorn for Eastwood...and most likely unintentionally helped contribute to Obama's reelection that year as it did NOT play well on TV.  The irony was that his objection to the president was rooted in the increased military focus on Afghanistan, something that many conservatives supported: politics can get pretty convoluted!  Anyway, fast forward eight years and we find Eastwood opposing Trump and endorsing centrist candidate Michael Bloomberg in the Democratic primaries...so his political leanings are by no means bound to one party.  I've forgiven the dude for that earlier diatribe and see his above quote as a marker for our times.  As for me, I tend to politically divide the people around me not so much by whether they lean Republican or Democratic as by how vocal and adamant they are about openly pushing their opinions on me and others.  Look, I watch the news and can read...I don't need someone regurgitating almost verbatim something they picked up on some talk radio or TV show, usually with an insulting jab aimed at the "other side".  I do know that the hosts of many of these shows specialize in demonizing the opposition, and if you're a regular listener then you're liable to fall under their sway and begin to emulate their contemptuous attitudes.  I used to listen to both conservative and liberal opinion shows but can no longer handle the vitriol that is disguised as public discourse. If that's your cup of tea then good luck with it... just keep it off my wave, as the late Chris Cornell of Soundgarden once sang ...

Constellation of the Month: Canis Major (the Great Dog)

 

If you think dogs are great and that's why the southern February evening constellation Canis Major is translated as "great dog", then you're missing the point that it is so named as to distinguish it from the nearby constellation Canis Minor...the "lesser dog".  Portrayed in the night sky as hunter Orion's dog forever pursuing the adjacent star group Lepus (the hare), Canis Major's greatest feature is Sirius, easily the brightest star in the night sky at -1.46 magnitude, only some 8.6 light years distant making it a celestial neighbor of ours.  Sirius is a binary star, the much dimmer companion a very dense white dwarf star, "the Pup", almost the exact size of Earth but much, much more massive.  The rest of Canis Major contains a number of readily visible stars, making it easy to find in the evening sky, just to the southeast of Orion with that constellation's three-star "belt" roughly pointing in Sirius' direction.  It also contains a Messier object, M41...an open cluster visible to the naked eye at 4.5 magnitude.  It shouldn't be too hard to find this constellation on a clear twilight during February...just look to the southeast (from continental U.S. latitudes) as the sun sets and Sirius should stand out as the first star to become visible as the blue background darkens...

Next month I will examine another constellation...

Weekly Short Stories: 1982 Science Fiction, Part 1

This week I begin my reactions to 1982 science fiction short stories as they appeared in the anthology The 1983 Annual World's Best SF, featuring editor Donald A. Wollheim's picks from the year before.  In 1982 I was single, living in an apartment in the southwest corner of town, across from a big, empty field which in just a handful of years would be converted into shopping center ringed by shops and restaurants...I had originally moved out there because it was quieter.  Now it's by far the most congested part of Gainesville!  Here are my reviews of the first three stories in the anthology...

THE SCOURGE by James White

A human couple has been sent to a remote planet to see if its intelligent inhabitants qualify for admission into the Galactic Federation.  This world is plagued by incessant meteorites showering down on the land, caused by the breakup of one of its moons over a thousand years before...the cause of that breakup is important. Martin lands on the planet's surface and soon meets Teldin, a high-ranking slave who reveals the regimented master-slave social structure there.  How can Martin communicate the Federation's agenda if they won't speak with him directly, since as a subordinate in his own job he is regarded as a "slave"?  Interesting scenario and story, with some lessons for us today in our real world... 

A LETTER FROM THE CLEARYS by Connie Willis

After a nuclear apocalypse a family in rural Colorado struggles to make ends meet while watching out for dangerous survivors roaming the area.  The daughter goes out to the post office to pick up the mail and discovers a letter from a family back east that was to visit them just before everything went down.  Her family's reactions when she reads it aloud reveal the whole dismal situation.  For such a brief story, the author did a fantastic job of gradually unraveling their plight to its greatest effect. This story reminded me of the 1980s TV movie The Day After...

FARMER ON THE DOLE by Frederick Pohl

On a depopulated Earth, due probably to the worsening environment, robots comprise the vast majority of the remaining "population" with humans disguised among them...but with clear social and legal advantages.  But a movement is growing, that of "robot rights", and robot Zeb, abruptly displaced from his farmer role and reprogrammed as a mugger (of other robots) is caught up in the middle of it. I think Pohl was definitely striking up an analogy to today's world with its underclasses and ruling elites...lots of satire here...

Next week I continue my look at the year 1982 in short science fiction...

Podcaster Rob Dial's Strategy to Manifest Whatever You Want

Podcaster Rob Dial, whose specialty is life coaching and strategies, recently had a show on his Mindset Mentor series in which he explored what he called the "Law of Attraction".  Dial maintains that you can manifest whatever you want by implementing its three basic elements: envision, strategize and execute.  With the first, it's important to not only spend time and effort visualizing whatever it is you want to accomplish as if it has already been attained...but to do so to such an extent that success in that area seems normal.  With strategizing, he suggests an investment of time, writing down the steps you need to take, both in the long run and the short.  And then focus on those more immediate things you need to do.  As for execution, it's all a matter of "getting off your butt", as he puts it, and getting serious: Ready, Fire, and Aim is his motto as he reverses the last two steps...emphasizing that it's important to get out there doing things even if you think you're not ready yet, with adjustments to be made afterwards.  All of this sounds reasonable to me, especially the "envision" part...I think too many of us get started with stuff without thinking it through to what we really want from it...and why.  And with strategizing, it's too easy to get hung up worrying or getting discouraged about long term goals not being fulfilled instead of concentrating on the now.  Which kind of brings up a contradiction: you work in the present to change your habits in the direction you want while visualizing the future as if it's already happened...if I got what Dial said right.  Well, since I haven't employed these principles in the more meticulous way he laid them out, who am I to say it won't work?  Better to test it out by picking one area I want to achieve and applying his Law of Attraction...

Happy Birthday, My Dear Sweet Melissa

Well, Melissa, it's that time of year again...Happy Birthday!  It's also that time of year for me to reflect on how grateful I am to have been so blessed with such a wonderful, beautiful woman as you.  May the days, weeks, months and years ahead be full of joy, love and health for us and those around us...

Just Finished Reading Murder in the Manor by Fiona Grace

It seems that Fiona Grace is a prolific English author of numerous cozy mystery book series.  With the one I'm starting, the Lacey Doyle Cozy Mysteries, she has already published a prodigious 9 novels in just the past three years...but that's nothing: her aggregate total, the way I've figured it, is 33 books from 2019 to now!  You might think that this would interfere with the quality of her writing, but from what I gather after just finishing reading her first Lacey Doyle novel, Murder in the Manor, her writing quality is just fine, thank you. I was curious, though, about how other readers reacted to this story and checked out Goodreads...my eyes were opened.  Review after review dismally panned the book, and there was a consensus that there is no Fiona Grace. Her apparent prolificity is explained by there being a multitude of anonymous writers penning the many books bearing that name.  Makes sense to me, although in the final analysis it doesn't really matter, only the story itself.  Lacey is a 39-year old American woman whose dirtbag husband just pulled a no-fault divorce on her because she hasn't born him any children...and then has the gall to demand for spousal support from her.  She's an antiques dealer working for a New York company...to get a break from her domestic drama she travels to England, to a small quaint village she once stayed at as a child with her family.  There she quickly opens her own antique shop, gets to know various characters...both good and bad, and then a murder happens (she is initially the top suspect).  The narrative progresses to the crime's solution...naturally, Lacey figures it all out.  As stories go, I liked it...especially considering that the book's series title advertises it as a cozy mystery...no pretense here.  If you're going for a literary classic instead of pleasure reading, you probably won't give it raving reviews on Goodreads, either.  Armed with the knowledge that "Fiona Grace" probably isn't writing these stories, I'm still open to exploring other books attributed to her...including other series...

Just Finished Running Gainesville's Depot Parkrun 5K

I had been putting it off for the previous three weeks due to excessively cold weather and my wimpy Florida sensibilities.  But this morning I had no excuses as the temperature was a reasonable 49 with humidity around 95...so I got up early and headed across town to Depot Park for their weekly free Saturday morning 5K (3.1 mile) race.  I've run it five or six times in the past, beginning in early 2019 right after they established it.  Although not so long before (while in my fifties) I had run faster races...dipping down to times in the mid-twenties...my Deport Parkrun personal record is only 30:00.  Back in December I ran a tad slower than 33 minutes, but this morning I was a lot faster, getting my finishing time down to 31:28.  I'm writing this about two hours after finishing the race and feel like my body's making a smooth recovery...that's good since I'm going to work on my day off a little later.  I am always impressed by the beauty of Depot Park, which is just east of Main Street in Gainesville and just south of Depot Road, on the south side of the city's downtown area.  And birds seem to love it here...I heard all sorts of bird songs, including red-winged blackbirds which seem to thrive around the park.  Next weekend will be the Five Points of Life Half-Marathon and I'm still entertaining hopes of running it...we'll see what happens between now and then.  As for the Depot Parkrun results for today, click HERE to see them...

Quote of the Week...from Tony Dungy

As big a deal as the Super Bowl is, it's not the most important thing going on in the planet.

                                                                                 ---Tony Dungy

I've always respected and admired Tony Dungy, the National Football League Hall of Fame coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Indianapolis Colts.  Focusing on revamping the Bucs' sagging defense in the late 1990s, he built them up into the talented and cohesive unit that won the 2002 championship under his successor Jon Gruden and then went on to bring a Super Bowl title to the Colts after the 2006 season.  His style has always been one of soft-spoken dignity while still demanding quality from his players...proof that you don't have to be a jerk to coach a football team.  I obviously picked his above quote since this coming Sunday will be the next installment of the annual Super Bowl spectacle, this time pitting the Los Angeles Rams against the Cincinnati Bengals.  It doesn't matter to me who wins, but just for the sake of having a side to root for I am going with LA because (1) I have always believed that their quarterback Matthew Stafford was very underrated because he played for so long with an unsupportive franchise (Detroit) and (2) I always liked the Rams' cool helmets with the horns...it was the first NFL team I rooted for in a game, back in 1967 when they played the 49ers during that regular season.  Much ballyhoo has been made about the Bengals' second-year quarterback Joe Burrow as if he's going to be the next Tom Brady...maybe he will, but do I really care?  And then there is the overhyped halftime show and the numerous expensive commercials, some of which are so contrived that not only do I often not understand them but also fail to even see what product they're selling.  I don't necessarily think that Tony Dungy wants us to sit around, instead of watching the Super Bowl, dwelling and worrying about Covid, politics, the environment, social change, Russia, or other running news stories...but they are more important than some dumbass football game.  Also, knowing what an introspective man of character and honor Dungy is, I imagine he was also referring to the fact that although spending a little time on Sunday watching a game is okay, fun entertainment, each of us has our own personal lives and relationships that dwarf it in significance.  Anyway, the day after this game the focus will be on next year and the champion will be something receding into the past to merge with the lengthening (and increasingly forgotten) list of earlier winners: it never ends...

Russia, Authoritarianism and the Populist Rabble

If you're wondering why I haven't been writing about the Russian military buildup along their border with Ukraine and the imminent possibility of a full-scale invasion, there's a reason for that. I am figuratively holding my breath to see which direction my own country, America, takes during the next two major election cycles.  Will we return to our often fractious and quarrelsome, but ultimately peaceful political debate that acknowledges and respects election results or will we move toward a fascist, authoritarian system typified by an increasing number of regimes in the world where the leader panders to a certain element of his constituency?  This element is found in large numbers just about anywhere...composed of people, whom I term as the "rabble", who are essentially xenophobic and imperialistic as they believe that the only true leader is an aggressive strongman and that his political opponents are by definition traitors who should be punished accordingly.  Before the 2020 U.S. presidential election and its immediate aftermath, a lot of us here thought that the United States was immune to this sort of thing...but events since then have proved otherwise.  In our nation's past history it was manifested in populist movements that came and went, but in some other countries the rabble component of the population is much larger than ours, setting up a kind of ironic political situation: authoritarian regimes that won't allow free and fair elections that would most probably reflect the general approval of their population.  Until corrected with evidence to the contrary, that's where I believe countries like Russia, China, Turkey, the Philippines and Venezuela...among many...stand today.  It's not just secret police or restrictive laws propping up their governments...a huge bloc of their own people stands solidly behind them as well.  As does a substantial bloc of our own people behind efforts to transform our democratically represented republic into one in name only.  I hope nothing violent comes out of the Russian troop buildup, but I think that in spite of that country's leadership making it out as an external matter between them and the West, it's most likely rooted in inner political struggles that have been submerged by that great nation's abandonment of free and fair elections in favor of authoritarianism...

Weekly Short Stories: 1981 Science Fiction, Part 4

Today concludes my examination of some of the choice 1981 science fiction short stories as they appeared in editor Donald A. Wollheim's anthology The 1982 Annual World's Best SF, featuring his selections from the preceding year.  One of these days I'm going to need to make up a list of my all-time favorite short stories...most of them I think will be either from Wollheim's series, which covered the years 1964-89, or that of Isaac Asimov and Martin Greenberg, which featured tales from 1939 through 1963.  Well, here are my reactions to the final two '81 stories from the book...

THROUGH ALL YOUR HOUSES WANDERING by Ted Reynolds

This novella consists of a man's succession of telepathic communion with other species across vast expanses of space as his consciousness enters their bodies and experiences how they live their respective lives...each time for two hours before briefly returning to his laboratory.  His colleagues are skeptical of his recollections, some thinking that he has gone insane.  But at the end he puts it all together, and with an unexpected twist on astrology.  Funny, but this story reminded me of an old SpongeBob SquarePants episode where the title character invades the dreams of his fellow ocean-bottomers...

THE LAST DAY OF CHRISTMAS by David J. Lake

An interesting story written by an Australian, centered around that country.  A mysterious young Australian man has developed a special perfume that brings out sexual urges from anyone smelling it...the resulting complete transformation of human society horrifies him and he works to remedy his mistake.  But who is this guy really and what is his agenda?  The ending reminded me of Agent Smith's conversation with Morpheus in the Matrix movie...

Next week I begin my look at science fiction short stories from the year 1982...

Gainesville Bookstores of the Past

I'm sitting here reminiscing on Gainesville bookstores from years gone by...there have been a lot of them and some were outstanding.  Funny, though, although with audio media, phonograph records went through a number of digitilizations, first with compact discs and then to MP3 and now streaming, printed material is taking a while being synchronized with our computer era.  Sure, Kindle is prospering and it's easy getting books on it...that is, if they are still in print.  Unfortunately, most of the ones out of print are unavailable in the digital era and you have to get the hard copy to read them.  Amazon has largely supplanted local used bookstores as a source of these old books, but as one who likes to browse shelves and pick up books and leaf through them, it falls short in that respect. In Gainesville, we still have some bookstores, but I remember times when there were some awfully good ones, like...

Book Gallery---This store, the "original" Book Gallery until it spun off into Book Gallery West on NW 16th Blvd (that one still stands), was in the Publix shopping center on N. Main St. between 10th and 16th Avenues.  In the late 80's we'd go there as our number one source of used books...the used book collection was vast.

Goering's---Situated on the NW corner of University Avenue and 13th Street, it was loaded with all sorts of books and magazines, one of my favorite browsing spots.  Before the building was torn down for construction, they had opened a second store further west on University past 34th Street but both closed down.

Gainesville Book Company---Located in the industrial park on NW 97th Blvd off 39th Avenue, this small shop was loaded with ultra-cheap used books...I especially liked the science fiction collection and bought many of the Stephen King books I would read through this period during the 2000's decade.  They were open every other weekend.

Borders---A huge store with new books now occupied by the equally-excellent DSW shoe store on Newberry Road near I-75, I loved browsing through it and found some excellent puzzle books...and got hooked on the Magicians series by Lev Grossman.  They also had a great CD and DVD collection as well as a big coffee shop/sitting area.

Media Play---Across from K-Mart off Newberry Road just west of the Interstate, this store...like Borders...featured books, CDs and DVDs.

Barnes and Nobles---On Archer Road right near the also-now-defunct Atlanta Bread Company...where I used to hang out for their excellent coffee and sitting area, I spent a good amount of time here.  B&N has their own "Kindle", which they call "Nook".  My take on the two is that until out-of-print books are available on them, then they are going to continue to be secondary to hard copy books.

The Florida Bookstore---Right across from the University of Florida campus on University Avenue, it was a primary supplier of textbooks, class material and school supplies.  Of course, other companies have sprung up in the area to replace it, but I wish this one was still there.  Once it briefly had a second outlet on SW 34th Street, but now there's a Sherwin Williams paint store at that spot.

The "First" Books-a-Million---Replacing the Skeeters restaurant on NW 13th Street, Books-a-Million was my primary stopping place before my graveyard shift job in the 1990s...I'd always get the flavored coffee of the day and then browse around.  I read the first four Harry Potter books sitting in there, a few pages at the time, as well as some others.  It's been replaced by the used bookstore 2nd and Charles and still has an outlet on Newberry Road near the Oaks mall.

Walden and B.Dalton at the Oaks Mall...I usually didn't go to these unless I happened to be walking through the mall on other business, but they were always fun to stop at and browse.

Archer Square bookstore...I don't remember this business's name, but it was in the Archer Square shopping center on Archer Road just west of 34th Street that featured a Winn-Dixie and Tony and Pat's Pizza, along with a kiddie's place called Fun Factory.  It was in the 1980s and I would walk across the field from my nearby apartment and browse around...it was here that I bought my first Isaac Asimov sci-fi anthology paperbacks.

Westgate Plaza used bookstore...I don't remember this one's name either, but they had a great selection of books...I bought Frank Herbert's entire Dune series here.  Now the whole plaza, along SW 34th Street just south of University Avenue, has been demolished and is being rebuilt, but the bookstore left a while ago.

I'm sure I'll think of more, but it's kind of sad to see these fine establishments come and go...they deserved better...

   

Rob Dial's Podcast Discusses Overthinking

The other day on the Mindset Mentor podcast I listen to regularly, host Rob Dial discussed how folks tend to overthink, and he suggested a constructive way of looking at it: we are not our thoughts.  That tends to conflict with the commonly held view that people's learning, experiences and accomplishments define them.  For me, I've long had this notion of separating the "I" as a separate identity from how I mentally process my ideas and experiences...unfortunately, whenever I bring this up in conversation with others I get nowhere.  I even wrote about it many years ago on this blog and got an angry response from an old high school buddy of mind who got the idea somehow that because he was good in mathematics then that made him an expert in everything else...that's like some I know who are under the impression that, because they have money and/or worldly status, this makes them somehow more spiritual than me.  Both cases are examples of people who confuse who they are with external manifestations of their lives...and that includes their thoughts.  Dial encourages us to do what I believe is called "mindfulness" at various points of our day: whatever we're doing, wherever we are, stop and get notice of what is around us, even to the point of noticing things we'd discard as irrelevant to our functioning.  This, he maintains, will help to turn our often-wayward thinking back to our control instead of it controlling us as it often does.  The particular show I listened to also brought to mind how I can often over-analyze situations and scenarios to the point where I'm too discouraged to even engage in them...enough is enough with that...

Just Finished Reading Maui Murder by Jasmine Webb

A couple of days ago Maui Murder, Jasmine Webb's second installment in her Charlotte Gibson mystery book series, became available to me through my library and I wasting no time checking it out and reading it.  I like the earthy, irreverent 30-year old protagonist "Charlie", who has fled back to her home island in Hawai'i after shooting a gangland robber of a Seattle bank where she was employed.  Now she works at an ice cream shop...when not taking on murder mysteries, that is.  In this story Jo, a young woman, has been killed and found in the ocean...her bereaved father, hearing of Charlie's success at solving the last murder, is offering her $100,000 to go after Jo's killer.  Without going into plot details, she enlists the aid of familiar characters like her best friend Zoe and septuagenarian women Dot and Rosie while crossing paths with the cops and having to deal with her loving, but sometime overbearing mother.  My only problem with Jasmine Webb's writing as Charlie interviews Jo's coworkers at her software development company or encounters her ex-boyfriend is that men tend to be treated as stupid, sexist creeps while the women are smarter and much more socially enlightened.  I noticed this some in her first book, but now it's forming an unpleasant pattern...still, I plan to continue reading this entertaining series when the next book is available as Charlotte Gibson will no doubt encounter a fresh set of male idiots...

Ongoing Beijing Olympics to Me a Big Yawn

I'm guessing that if you grew up in the north (or far south of the Equator) you may be much more acquainted with the various sports comprising the Winter Olympics...you may even have participated in some of them.  For me, I grew up in the Miami vicinity of southern Florida, far away from ice and snow and mountain slopes.  I have never skied, ice skated, snowboarded, ridden on a bobsled or luge, played ice hockey or curling...or any of the other peculiar areas spotlighted every four years, often in a country loaded with its own controversies.  In 2022 the Winter Olympics are being held in Beijing, China...causing objections from others concerned about what they consider to be human rights violations in that nation.  The network presenting them, NBC this time around, usually focuses on the Americans there with the greatest chances of winning medals, I guess they expect me to root for them...after I figure out what the heck they're supposed to be trying to do!  Since I usually don't watch NBC very much anyway...or CBS, ABC and FOX for that matter...I won't be missing preempted shows I normally would have been watching.  At least last summer during the Tokyo Olympics they had sports I could relate to, several of them from personal experience.  Oh well, the Winter version will be over before I know it and I am supremely confident that I will carry with me few, if any, substantial memories of it...

Quote of the Week...from Brian Flores

God has gifted me with a special talent to coach the game of football, but the need for change is bigger than my personal goals.                                             ---Brian Flores

As I wrote a few days ago, I was greatly dismayed at the announcement that three-year Miami Dolphins head coach Brian Flores was being fired following his second straight winning season...the first time that's happened with this franchise since 2003...and winning five games in 2019, a year the team was widely expected to go winless after it had deliberately divested itself of its star players. And it was that 2019 season that soured Dolphins owner Stephen Ross, an incredibly wealthy New York real estate magnate (~$70 billion), to prematurely end Flores' tenure.  You see, Ross, who apparently holds no appreciation for the sanctity and dignity of the game and doesn't care about Dolphins ticket holders who shell out their money and attend games expecting a reasonable effort from their team, WANTED Miami to tank that year in order to pick up star quarterback Joe Burrow in the next year's draft. Earlier this week Flores announced he is suing the National Football League, the Miami Dolphins and two other NFL franchises for racial discrimination as well as what he alleges Ross offered him in 2019: $100,000 for each game he lost...Flores did NOT give in to this affront to the game's integrity and instead inspired his players to play beyond their talent level.  The lawsuit is designed to be class-action, apparently intended for others to come forward with their own stories about racial bias and abuse with coaching in this league. One ex-coach, Hue Jackson, has already stepped forward, claiming that while coaching the Cleveland Browns that club's owner paid him the same hundred grand for losing games. Also, after Flores was fired, he applied for an open head coaching job for the New York Giants...they scheduled an interview but before that happened, he discovered that the team had already decided on another candidate and that HIS interview was only a cynical formality to comply with the 2003 Rooney Rule that mandated teams have at least one minority candidate interview for vacant coaching positions.  Brian Flores alleges discrimination in NFL coaching hiring...the figures confirm his stance since the number of black head coaches in this 32-team league has dwindled in 18 years from 3 to just 1 while the vast majority of players in the league are African American.  But noting disturbing trends and relating an unprovable conversation may not be enough to convince a civil court of one's allegations, however compelling they might be.  Still, for my part I believe Brian Flores is a man of integrity...and Stephen Ross is quite the opposite.  May the good guy win this time around...and that Flores will continue to be able to exercise his obvious coaching gifts in the future.  But I don't think I'll ever again be willing to follow the Miami Dolphins while this amoral and manipulative owner is running things...

Just Finished Reading Aloha Alibi by Jasmine Webb

Before checking out the short novel Aloha Alibi by Jasmine Webb from my library I had never heard the term "cozy mystery" before, but now that I've read it I'm pretty sure about what this subgenre of mystery fiction is all about...and I like it.  Aloha Alibi, published just this past year, is billed as the first book in the Charlotte Gibson Mysteries series...but this author is really churning out the books, with the fourth one already coming out this year! Charlotte "Charlie" Gibson is a young adult millennial, an intelligent underachiever in school who works at a jewelry store in Seattle when it is robbed one day, the criminal being a hood from an area crime family.  Forced to shoot dead the man who is about to kill her, she has to flee to her childhood home on Maui, Hawaii after his brothers swear vengeance.  There she lives with her doting mother (who is always trying to get her to sleep with men to produce grandchildren), gets a job at an ice cream store, is reacquainted with her old school friend Zoe (now a doctor) and of course gets embroiled in a murder mystery.  Along with two eccentric, but highly capable and shrewd elderly ladies who are vying with her for the reward money, Charlotte dives into the case...since this is "Book One" in the series you can surmise that she survives it all.  Aside from the mystery itself, I was charmed by the social interplay between the characters, giving the story a very warm and funny aura that attracted me to the characters...I could especially relate to Charlotte's early adult struggles with economic independence.  When the next Charlotte Gibson mystery is available from my library for me to read (I just put it on hold), I'll continue with this series, which I recommend as fun, "cozy" reading....

Weekly Short Stories: 1981 Science Fiction, Part 3

Today I look at three more science fiction short stories from 1981 as they appeared in editor Donald A. Wollheim's anthology The 1982 Annual World's Best SF with his picks from the previous year.  My song of the year in '81 was the huge Kim Carnes summer hit Bette Davis Eyes.  To me, Hall and Oates hit their peak this year with three songs: Kiss on My List, Private Eyes, and I Can't Go for That.  Rush's masterpiece album Moving Pictures also came out in 1981 (with the songs Tom Sawyer, Red Barchetta, Limelight and Vital Signs) as well as the Moody Blues' comeback LP Long Distance Voyager with its superb track Gemini Dream.  I could go on and on about the great music back then, but I'd better get back to reviewing these stories... 

OUT OF THE EVERYWHERE by James Tiptree, Jr.

This novella gets a little creepy as an incorporeal alien being, while fleeing an equally incorporeal alien predator, descends on Earth and splits its consciousness among three people: a business leader father, his baby daughter and his secretary.  The three, although still ostensibly "themselves", nevertheless seem to make their respective life decisions in a strange kind of harmony that ultimately leads to the story's climax surrounding a massive block of ice in the ocean.  I didn't dig the notion of possession by another entity, but maybe some whose religious beliefs entertain this idea might go for it. On a more general level, though, it does give food for thought: are my opinions and hunches my own, or am I being manipulated through the media and news according to someone else's agenda? 

SLAC// by Michael P. Kube-McDowell

A human exploratory party is on a distant planet to establish communications and relations with a humanoid species there...but their language in places is difficult to translate, eventually putting the party in peril.  The story's title is actually their name for the flying predator/enemy they must contend with...only what is the true nature of "Slac//"?  An examination of our tendency to ascribe intelligence to other species based on their similarities to our own instead of more objective factors...

THE CYPHERTONE by S.C. Sykes

If you had never read the wonderful-but-disturbing 1943 Lewis Padgett story Mimsy Were the Borogoves before reading Sykes' much-too-similar tale, I think you'd like this story of a boy who becomes addicted to a computer game...it certainly captures the way a video game can take hold of someone to the point where they can't stop playing.  The father detects something wrong...his son's personality and outlook is drastically changing...and he knows it's this game he's playing making it happen.  My suggestion: read Mimsy Were the Borogoves first...it's a lot better and more profound, and The Cyphertone strikes me as a major ripoff...

Next week I finish my look at 1981 in short science fiction...

My January 2022 Running and Walking Report

In January, 2022 I ran a total of 150 miles, missing but two days running out of the month with 10 miles being my longest single run.  With walking I covered 130 miles in the same time span, most of it coming from walking back and forth over the course of my normal work day.  I had planned to enter and run a couple of races in January, but very cold mornings on race day during the past three weeks presented a most unattractive picture to me and I demurred, waiting for a more auspicious, warmer time in the future (maybe this Saturday).  I feel pretty good about my running progress so far and look forward to continuing at about the same intensity as I have for the past two months.  Aside from the free, weekly Depot Park 5K held every Saturday morning here in Gainesville, I am seriously considering running the Five Points Half-Marathon on Sunday, February 20th...if the weather cooperates, that is...