Vacation, Illness, Blog

Melissa and I were to start a two-week vacation today...we still have still the time off, but our more ambitious plans were scuttled until a later date when we both fell ill this week...we're still smack dab in the middle of recovery, making progress with it.  When we're better, we can see about some alternate plans for the remainder of this period...for now it's rest, rest, rest. I'd mentioned in an earlier article that this blog would probably get a bit of a break during this time.  I still plan to take a brief vacation from it, but who knows: if I feel the urge to write and post something, don't be surprised.  But if not, I should be back by the end of the first week of August...

Quote of the Week...from Ernest Hemingway

I like to listen.  I have learned a great deal from listening carefully.  Most people never listen.

                                                                         ---Ernest Hemingway

In spite of my high school English class experiences practically ruining it all for me, I later came to read most of Ernest Hemingway's classic novels, among them For Whom the Bell Tolls being my favorite.  I especially appreciated his stated plain writing style, avoiding fancy and cryptic techniques employed by some of his contemporaries that often garnered them undeserved critical acclaim but made their works largely unreadable by the general public.  Today being his birthday, I thought I'd throw in one of Hemingway's quotes in celebration, and this one rang true to me...well, mostly true.  I think most folks, when engaged with others in conversation, are only half-listening, at the same time preparing the next thing they will say themselves.  On top of that, people tend to hold on to personal narratives concerning just about any person, place, thing, or issue.  They will be happy to "listen" for a while if the speaker is affirming that narrative and be equally happy to zone out or cut them off if they diverge from the script...and if the message is a mixed one, with some welcome information said along with some unwelcome facts, then it's a simple cognitive sleight of hand to accept the affirming stuff while ignoring the rest.  I can extend this all to reading, too, as well as whatever media channels one tends to prefer plugging their respective brains into.  If the message affirms a dearly held narrative belief system, regardless of reality, then they'll be a loyal audience...this is the world we live in today, where the population insulates themselves within comfortable belief bubbles where feedback loops reenforce distortions and lies as long as they fit the pattern.  Yet Hemingway died in 1962, so this sort of thing's long preceded the Internet and mass media manipulation tactics of today...

Podcaster Lays Out Ways to "Hit Goals"

Personal development coach Rob Dial, on his Mindset Mentor podcast, often recycles the same messages, and the best presentations often appear on this blog. I know I'm repeating some stuff here, but the way I see it, if it ain't worth repeating, it's probably not worth stating in the first place!  This podcast had him listing and describing "Seven Steps to Hit Any Goal", as it is titled.  Now I'm usually not into setting goals as be-alls and end-alls, but rather as incremental steps, or milestones if you will, in my transforming into the person I want to become.  That having been said, let's check out these goals...

1-Fixate on exactly what it is that you want.

2-Determine exactly what you will give up to achieve the goal (Rob's favorite point).

3-Figure out a date (deadline) you're going to hit the goal by.

4-Create a plan to hit the goal and start immediately.

5-Write a clear and concise statement...condensing the first four points into a mission statement.

6-Take the statement from #5 and read it out loud to yourself at least twice a day.

7-Determine how you can make it easier on yourself.

Does a lot of this sound obvious to you? It did to me...duh, these are all good suggestions toward achieving a felt goal.  Yet the host left out the most important step: once you've figured out and done these seven steps, you still have to work diligently and patiently to attain your goal's fulfillment. Of course, that one is also obvious to most of us, I believe.  Rob Dial gives credit to self-help book author Napoleon Hill in his book Think and Grow Rich for most of his pointers. The fact that Hill was something of a con artist in his day doesn't mean he didn't have some good things to say...you just have to filter it out from all the other crap...  

Weekly Short Stories: 1992 Science Fiction, Part 3

Here are some more of my reactions from science fiction short stories appearing in Gardner Dozois' anthology series The Year's, Best Science Fiction, Tenth Annual Collection.  1992 was the year of the Rodney King beating in Los Angeles and the subsequent riots that rocked that city.  It was also a year of economic turndown that doomed the Bush administration in his reelection bid that November...he had enjoyed extremely high approval ratings just the year before immediately after the Persian Gulf War that drove Saddam Hussein's Iraq out of Kuwait.  But let's get back to those stories...

A LONG NIGHT'S VIGIL AT THE TEMPLE by Robert Silverberg

In a far-off future, humanity worships the memory of three alien beings who visited many thousands of years earlier and who promised a glorious return.  The Warder Diriente, chief officer of the main temple that worships them, is bound to ritual...as well as a growing belief he has kept secret, that his faith's theology doesn't quite ring true.  But the temple's caretaker Mericalus has no such qualms about speaking his mind, and disturbs the Warder, one day suddenly appearing for him to follow...and shows something that turns it all upside down.  But it's the Warder's reaction to this that was the story's profound message: isn't that what all religions do when confronted with contrary facts...

THE HAMMER OF GOD by Arthur C. Clarke

In a future distant enough for humanity to have ventured out into far deep space, a ship "out there" is given a grave task: deflect a sizeable asteroid determined to have a 99.9% chance of hitting Earth and destroying all life there.  But what happens when they hit a snag in their mission? Hope all seems lost, unless... Clarke gives a grim science physics lesson on the effects of drag force at the end...

GROWNUPS by Ian R. MacLeod

This story reads like a fanciful Ray Bradbury coming of age story in what seems like good old apple pie Middle America...until the presence of "uncles" is revealed as an apparently third gender.  As young Bobby goes through adolescence and approaches the time when he, like his friends, will "grow up", he is apprehensive about the pain he will endure during those few days.  His friend Kay is skeptical about everything and doesn't want to leave childhood, and she is very suspicious of the bitter-tasting milk that all the children have to take.  And what about the uncles, they seem to be manipulating the whole situation...the ending is an eye-opener.  Good, suspenseful tale that makes one think about their roles gender-wise...

GRAVES by Joe Haldeman

In the Vietnam War, there is one detail duty no one wants...that is, unless they want to remain alive...and it's Graves Registration, where they find the killed soldiers' bodies and effects, bag them and ship them off for processing: pretty gruesome if that's all you see of the war.  One day two soldiers on that assignment come across a very peculiar corpse, looking like no soldier but rather more like an elderly man deceased of natural causes.  Suddenly gunfire erupts and their commanding officer is brutally killed while in mid-sentence. What happens at the end when the two finally are able to escape the battle scene and later come back is hair-raising...a speculation into possibilities of the biological strategy of mimicry...

The next two Wednesdays I will be on vacation and plan on a brief break from this blog during that time. I should be back reviewing sci-fi short stories from 1992 next month...

Constellation of the Month: Draco (the Dragon)

For most people, I'm guessing, if the name "Draco" evokes any image, it's that of Harry Potter's Hogwarts classmate and adversary Draco Malfoy (excellently portrayed by Tom Feld in the movie series adaptation), both a bully and snob but somebody I nevertheless felt a deal of sympathy toward.  But since much earlier Draco has been a prominent constellation in the far northern sky, best seen during clear July evenings.  Representing a dragon, imagine the connected stars as its sinuous body winding around the polar Ursa Minor (the Little Bear or Little Dipper) to its north, with Ursa Major (Big Bear/Dipper) to its south near the dragon's tail, finally ending with its easily discernible head near Lyra and its wonderfully brilliant star Vega.  Thuban (Alpha Draconis) many thousands of years ago used to be the North Star, due to the Earth's precession (akin to a top's wobbling while spinning). Draco, although clearly visible to observers in northern latitudes, possesses no first magnitude stars and only three at third magnitude or brighter.  One of the things I'd like to do if I ever get around to traveling south of the Equator is to observe the celestial South Pole on a clear night, along with the various constellations close by that are too south for me to see from Florida. Conversely, people living "down under" may experience difficulty seeing Draco if their own latitude is too far south. Going back to J.K. Rowling's memorable series, Draco Malfoy is (finally) one-up on Harry Potter in that he is named for a constellation...that's cool: I guess he thought so, too, since he later named his son Scorpius... 

Work or Vacation, It's All Good

Sometimes it's a good idea to just sit here and write some free-flowing stuff.  Right now, it's midmorning on a Monday, my workweek ahead of me before I begin a two-week vacation.  But I have found that, within my daily normal routines...and that includes going off to work...I can find a sense of purpose, balance, relaxation and refreshment in my life that many tend to believe can only happen with an absence of structure and accountability.  For me, a vacation is a break in my routines, time to experience something new and different, and possibly go on an adventure.  Whether I'm traveling or not during this period, I am content with the time off, as well as when I return to the "old grind" when it ends.  Structure's good...but so is adventure.  Things like this blog, foreign language study and an assortment of other daily routines I'm engaged in may take a brief break during that time, but there is also fun living in that present moment and experiencing whatever gets thrown my way.  It's all good...

Just Finished Reading Hot Six by Janet Evanovich

Picking back up Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum mystery book series after several years, it took me a little bit of time to recall all the main recurring characters and circumstances...but after reading High Five last week, I felt that the next book would be a quick work of reading...it was.  In Hot Six, almost comically incompetent bounty hunter Stephanie Plum, who works for a Trenton, New Jersey bail bonds company to bring in people missing their appointment court appearances, still plies her trade...with the typically mixed results.  The story's main theme is the disappearance of her mentor Ranger, a mysterious man who seems to be always on the edge of the law and more of a James Bond type.  Ranger is being implicated in the murder of one of the sons of an aging local gangland boss.  One of Stephanie's competitors gets her company's assignment to capture and bring in Ranger...Stephanie herself cannot belief that Ranger could be a murderer and sets out to find him and investigate the killing on her own.  Weaving through the plot, as usual, is her family...including feisty Grandma Mazur who lives with her a spell, her friend Lula who works at the bail bonds office, and her cop/lover Joe Morelli, who seems secretly involved in the investigation as well.  Plus, Bob the golden retriever may have made his series debut here after Stephanie ends up virtually adopting him. And as usual, others are hounding her, including a creepy pair of men tailing her everywhere and often threatening her: they're after Ranger as well.  As good mystery books go, the plot undergoes a couple of interesting twists before it all gets turned upside down at the end.  I was okay with Hot Six, enough to go on to the next installment of Evanovich's series.  I enjoy the earthy first-person narration of protagonist Stephanie Plum, and the humor here is top-notch.  It does, however, portray violence as a more common, everyday occurrence than I'd like to imagine....

Enjoying My Day Off with Family and Learning

I've been enjoying my day off, first of two, with Melissa and my grown children...as well as exploring the learning opportunities provided by three Internet applications, one of them only instituted late last year.  As I've already written on this blog, YouTube is loaded with interesting educational content, and you can find out just about anything...as long as it isn't invasively personal...by searching their site.  While browsing them a few weeks ago, I came across polyglot Steve Kaufmann's endeavor of LingQ, a language-learning site designed to teach languages the right way (at least the way I see it), by gradually building a large passive vocabulary in the target language through reading and listening, with graded lessons and opportunities to insert my own material from the Internet.  They also provide tutors and teachers online, and the range of available languages for study is wide.  I may use this blog to write regularly about my progress here, much as I have done with my past running.  It's all very interesting and has become even more so through the very recent innovation, an AI chatbox called ChatGPT that searches the Web for textual material to formulate answers to an incredibly wide variety of questions.  It was on Kaufmann's YouTube channel that I first heard about ChatGPT...I asked it to write a couple of stories that I plan to translate into the languages I'm studying and then transfer them over to LingQ for study...pretty impressive stuff. I am also going back to the very beginning of this blog, back in April of 2007, and translating those articles I wrote to my target languages and studying them on the LingQ site: since this blog has more than 5000 articles, there is an endless supply of stuff from it I can use.  I also use the Kendra Listening Practice YouTube channel to improve my listening skills, as well as listening daily to brief segments of radio broadcasts in the languages I'm studying.  I can tell I'm making progress, but it's a long journey to proficiency and confidence in them...that's okay with Steve, whose observations and philosophy on language learning pretty much resonate with mine: his main emphasis is making it all interesting and fun...

Quote of the Week...from Ringo Starr

Well, actually here are two quotes from the great drummer for the Beatles, one short and one comparatively long:

The second side of Abbey Road is my favorite.

I've never been able to sit round on my own and play drums, practice in the back room, never been able to. I've always played with other musicians.  It's how I play, there's no joy for me in playing on my own, bashing away.  I need a bass, a piano, guitar, whatever, and then I can play.

A week ago, I was faced with a quandary: both Ringo Starr and science fiction writer Robert Heinlein had birthdays on July 7th, I picked the latter...but why not just feature the star of A Hard Day's Night today?  I totally get his take on Abbey Road, the last album recorded by the Fab Four before their acrimonious breakup that resulted in Paul McCartney suing the other members as well as their manager, Allen Klein.  When Abbey Road came out in 1969, I didn't hear it other than the singles release of Something and Come Together...I didn't care for either song.  But over the next couple of years, I began to hear other tracks, and was blown away by the Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight/The End medley toward its end...featuring mainly Paul.  I say mainly because the start of The End is nothing other than a Ringo Starr drum solo...in fact, the only drum solo he ever recorded for them.  And from what I've read about that recording session, he was very nervous and uncomfortable about it.  Of course he was, that's obvious if you read the second quote above.  Ringo was always an accompanier, fitting in seamlessly with the rest of the band and what they were doing, never demanding the spotlight himself.  And yet, when he was in that first movie of theirs, he was brilliant.  I'm very happy that he's still around today and doing so well...all the best to you and yours, Ringo!

Some Wimbledon Comments as End Nears

Although my eyes aren't glued to the television, I've been generally keeping up with this year's edition of the Wimbledon tennis tournament taking place in England.  It's easy to do, since their afternoons are our mornings and, wouldn't you know it, my mornings happen to be free! It's reached the finals for the women's singles and the semis for the men's.  After the big stink made after the Azarenka-Svitolina match when both of them avoided the customary good-spirited interaction at the net, I bet a lot of folks were banking on a repeat of this scenario if Elina Svitolina, from Ukraine, faced up against Aryna Sabalenka, who is from Belarus, one of the aggressor countries against Svitolina's homeland.  As it turned out, both Svitolina and Sabalenka lost out in their respective semifinal matches against Marketa Vondrousova and Ons Jabeur, who will play for the title on Saturday.  The men's semifinals tomorrow pit Novak Djokovic against Jannik Sinner, and Daniil Medvedev against Carlos Alcaraz.  I had written a few days ago that I wasn't faulting Svitolina for saying in advance she wouldn't be speaking to anyone from Belarus or Russia, but while I sympathize with her, I believe that if each of us is an ambassador of our own countries, then we have a choice to make.  Either we can say it's war and march in lock step with our national leadership or we can choose, at least on a personal level, to promote peace and mutual respect.  In times of war, though, peacemakers are often severely criticized as sabotaging their country's resolve...even sometimes branded as traitors.  As for Sabalenka's loss earlier today, I'm a bit sad although I do like Jabeur, too...she's got to be the favorite in the next match.  I feel similarly about Daniil Medvedev...he's from Russia but, along with Sabalenka, never seemed to garner much fan support even before dictator Putin decided to invade and devastate a peaceful nation for territorial gain.  I think it's because they're both introverts, very intense with their game but not exactly the most outgoing of folks and pretty expressive when they get frustrated...I can relate to that!  Well, I can't root for Sabalenka anymore, but Medvedev is still alive and kicking.  It's gonna be fun watching it all unfold tomorrow morning on ESPN...

Weekly Short Stories: 1992 Science Fiction, Part 2

Today I continue my look at short stories from 1992 as they appeared in Gardner Dozois' anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Tenth Annual Collection.  1992 was a presidential election, and just a year earlier it looked as if incumbent George H.W. Bush (known back then as just George Bush) would glide to an easy reelection, his poll numbers being so high after the successful Persian Gulf War.  But the economy tanked into a recession, and the entry of populist businessman H. Ross Perot most likely took away more votes from Bush than from his Democratic Party opponent Bill Clinton...the later easily won election although he only garnered some 43% of the popular vote.  But back to more of those stories from that year...

TWO GUYS FROM THE FUTURE by Terry Bisson

The security guard at an art museum has no idea of her destiny until "two guys from the future", as they call themselves, suddenly materialize one night in her presence...just like on Star Trek.  This is a funny satire on time travel stories...yes, they're overripe for satire if not outright ridicule...

THE MOUNTAIN TO MOHAMMED by Nancy Kress

This story, even from 31 years ago, is an apt indictment of the deplorable state of health care in this country, showing the potential nightmare scenario of society split between the insurable and unisurable, depending on one's gene scan.  One physician with a conscience decides to buck the system and treat those refused insurance...in this case no good deed goes unpunished.  Yet the ending reveals an underlying logic to his suffering... 

THE COMING OF VERTUMNUS by Ian Watson

A struggling young art critic and author, living in a near-future when envionmentalism threatens to curb technological and industrial development, is offered a chance by a Texas magnate to enter an incredibly contrived conspiracy involving discoveries of pornographic paintings from the Austrian Hapsburg late sixteenth century.  I learned quite a bit of history here, unless of course the author made it all up.  The story also delves into counter-conspiracies, false flag actions, and the effects of mind-alterning drugs on people's perspectives.  Very disturbing but wonderfully written...

Next week: more from '92...

Weather Here Still Sucks, By the Way

Let's see, the last article on this blog I wrote about the local weather sucking was on June 25...don't get any ideas that anything's gotten better: it hasn't.  The heat/humidity combination is the worst I've experience here in Gainesville, and it's been bad in summers past.  We're also getting bombed with torrential rains coming seemingly out of nowhere.  Early yesterday afternoon I was driving in sunny weather to work, planning to stop off at the Publix right next to my workplace.   But as I got to about a mile from my destination, I saw a rapidly moving zone of darkness in the sky headed straight toward me...suddenly I was in the middle of it, struggling to see through my deluged and foggy windshield on managing to finally park it at my workplace, abandoning any hope that day for a grocery visit.  And even though the rain finally abated some, the localized flooding it created made me have to walk through some suddenly very deep puddles just to get into my building.  Conditions like these recently have also contributed to my personal respiratory allergies, as weeds and other allergen-producing plants are rapidly growing out of control.  The only relief from this I see is to confine myself to air conditioning...and take a vacation out of the area starting July 23rd: looking forward to that...

Wimbledon Net Snub Set in Advance, Wrong Player Blamed

Victoria Azarenka is from Belarus, and her opponent this past Sunday in the Wimbledon's women singles tournament was Elina Svitolina, from Ukraine.  After their match, which Svitolina won, Azarenka did not walk up to the net to congratulate the winner...and the crowd booed her, reacting as if her actions were politically motivated because of the ongoing war being Russia and her country on one side, and Svitolina's on the other.  Of course, Belarus, is the ally of invading Russia, and Ukraine is the land and people being ravaged in an old-style imperial land-grab, the likes of which haven't been seen since Saddam Hussein's Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and the horrible conflicts in former Yugoslavia during the following decade. Svitolina, as Azarenka later pointed out in her own defense, had already announced that she would refuse to socially interact with any players from the two aggressor nations, even if they had given up their national affiliation as the Wimbledon authorities had demanded as a precondition of them returning to play after last year's ban.  I cannot judge Svitolina...what would I have done in her place...but neither can I criticize Azarenka, who is in a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" position.  On some level, these three countries will always neighbor one another, so I would prefer that individual citizens from them display a higher level of mutual compassion and respect for each other, even if their politicians...and I'm speaking mainly about the Belarus and Russian autocrats...don't.  Just the other day I wrote that EVERY match ended with the two sides, winner and loser, meeting at the net with friendliness, congratulations and encouragement.  Oh well, so much for that...

US Supreme Court Stacked, Ideological, Unprincipled

The recent rulings by a politically partisan, stacked United States Supreme Court have made a sick joke of our supposedly highest level of jurisprudence.  It was all foreseeable after Senate Majority Leader, Republican Mitch McConnell stole away a Barack Obama Democratic nomination in 2016 (nine months before that year's presidential election) on the excuse that "the voters should decide" who gets to nominate the new justice while in 2020 forcing through a Donald Trump Republican nomination just days before that year's election...which Trump incidentally lost.  And guess what? McConnell's very proud of what he did.  Now let's look at two rulings and focus on this court's leader, Chief Justice John Roberts.  In the 6-3 ruling striking down the Democratic Biden administration's planned forgiveness of up to ten thousand dollars of college student debt, helping 43 million Americans in the process...not just "billionaires" as Republican opponents like to argue...Roberts wrote that Congress had an appropriate role in the president's actions, which he claimed was denied them.  Yet back in 2010 when he ruled with the conservative SCOTUS wing to strike down a Congress-passed electoral reform bill that sought to properly regulate campaign financing, he had no problem interfering with both the legislative and executive branches, equating spending money with "freedom of speech" protected by the First Amendment.  As a matter of fact, this pretense version of a Supreme Court seems to like to invoke free speech whenever it wants to rule one way or another.  Another recent ruling, playing that First Amendment trump card, was to make an expansive ruling that a Colorado software entrepreneur was legally entitled to deny services to a gay couple due to the businessman's personal beliefs about their lifestyle. Yet John Roberts, from the beginning of his tenure as Chief Justice, always stressed that for a case to be held as worthy of a court hearing, the plaintiff needed to establish standing, meaning that some party had actually done something to them.  That didn't happen in this case, as our Chief Justice conveniently chose to ignore his cherished standard in favor of ideology.  And, sad to say, of all the six conservative justices sitting on the high bench, it is John Roberts who I regard as the most fair-minded!  Like I said, the US Supreme Court is stacked, ideological and unprincipled...truly a sick joke...and I haven't even started to discuss the alleged corruption on the part of Justices Thomas and Alito...

Just Finished Reading High Five by Janet Evanovich

Janet Evanovich is a prolific fiction writer whose Stephanie Plum mystery series has been very successful: Janet is eighty years old and just came out with the thirtieth Plum novel.  I began reading the series myself six years ago but drifted away after the fourth book.  I'm not sure why that was, since I liked the characters even if they seemed a little too much of a "Jersey thing"...it's all set around Trenton, and you might think from the dialogue that some of the characters just might be related to those on Jersey Shore.  Protagonist Stephanie Plum is a spunky if not very adept bounty hunter...too many of her efforts at dragging in bail jumpers on behalf of her cousin Vinnie's bail bonds agency end in failure, often dismally.  There are some ongoing back stories transferring from novel to novel, including her friendship with Lula, an ex-prostitute working now as Vinnie's clerk and who seems to possess more common sense than most of the other characters...especially Stephanie.  Then there's Morelli, a cop who's her main love interest and Ranger, a mysterious dude who helps her with some of the more daring, armed aspects of her trade.  In High Five, lots of different stuff is going on: Plum is assigned to bring in Briggs, a "little person"...of course, she botches it up and although he is turned in, his lawsuit threat causes Vinnie to temporarily house him with her in her apartment...that's hilarious.  The bad dude Ramirez (from the first book) has been let out of jail and is stalking our heroine for revenge...naturally, her ineptness prevents her from ever detecting him.  But what turns into the main story is the mysterious disappearance of her uncle Fred, who vanished in broad daylight while doing ordinary chores in town.  I liked the informal first-person narration by Stephanie Plum and the irreverent banter throughout the story was very funny, for the most part...especially with Briggs and Plum's inimitable Grandma Mazur.  High Five is a good, solid mix of humor and mystery...and of course, while there's danger you know that Stephanie will always be around for the next book.  Maybe I'll stick around longer to read the rest of Evanovich's series...if my reading can catch up with her speedy writing, that is...

Quote of the Week...from Robert Heinlein

One of the sanest, surest, and most generous joys of life comes from being happy over the good fortune of others.                                                         ---Robert Heinlein

Robert Heinlein, along with Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke, were the "Big Three" in science fiction writing during the mid-to-late twentieth century.  Heinlein, renowned for novels such as Stranger in a Strange Land and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (click on the titles to read my 2014 reviews) was also an ardent libertarian...but more principled about it than the phony politicians and rabble claiming that identity these days (but only when it is personally convenient for them).  Heinlein was a strong believer in personal responsibility for one's own life...to him anything less was self-victimization and servitude to others' agendas.  Do I agree with everything he's said or written? No way, yet the above quote of his is quite profound.  I've discovered that folks who put down others for achieving a success that perhaps they wanted for themselves have a tendency to be of this "woe-is-me, I'm a victim" mentality, and jealousy often crops up: here's another Heinlein quote to that effect: "A competent and self-confident person is incapable of jealousy in anything.  Jealousy is invariably a symptom of neurotic insecurity". Part of being a mature adult is displaying a dignified spirit of good sportsmanship, and not just when your own side wins.  Sore losers are perennial victims, glorifying in their own imagined martyrdom and seeing themselves as the center of everything...know of anyone in the news the past few years who fits this description? I've been watching the Wimbledon tennis tournament for the last few mornings and noticed something: in EVERY match, no matter how hard-fought, after they were over, the loser congratulated the winner and the winner in turn graciously consoled the loser.  Too bad some of our political "leaders" can't behave like that...

Enjoying Following Wimbledon Tennis This Year

A couple of years ago I was recovering at home from some extensive surgery, so I watched a lot of sports on TV, including the 2021 US Open in tennis, played in New York.  That's when I decided that high-level professional tennis was fun to watch, on a number of levels...and I'm speaking of the four annual Grand Slam tournaments held in Australia, France, England, and the United States.  Right now, I'm watching England's premier event, the Wimbledon Championships from southwestern London, played on grass...a surface that seems to favor certain players over others.  I like seeing the same faces in different tournaments, stars like Medvedev, Djokovic, Nadal, Tiafoe, Tsitsipas, Alcaraz, Kyrgios and Murray on the men's side and with women Sabalenka, Swiatek, Rybakina, Sakkari, Azarenka, Jabeur, Gauff, Halep and others. In 2021 dark horse unsung teenagers Leylah Fernandez and Emma Raducanu surprised their way with upset after upset, both reaching the women's US Open final, with the latter prevailing...Novak Djokovic was beaten that year in the same tourney's final by Daniil Medvedev.  Which brings me to a problem I have with tennis...as well as other sports.  It's the absence of certain big names that bothers me, chiefly caused by two factors.  The first, which is an element of high-level competition and training that strains the body, are the many injuries plaguing so many great athletes.  This year Andy Murray is back on the court following years of injury and recuperation.  But others like Raducanu, Simona Halep and Rafael Nadal aren't playing at Wimbledon because of injuries, and the great Roger Federer decided to finally retire from the active sport although he is a featured and honored spectator at Wimbledon.  The second factor is banning, whether it be from disciplinary action or as a political weapon.  Although Djokovic played in 2021 at the height of the Covid Delta Variant scourge across America that claimed so many lives, he was barred the next year from the same tournament because he refused a vaccine although the pandemic had greatly abated by then.  And last year, because Russia and its ally Belarus invaded neighboring Ukraine, the Wimbledon Tournament authorities, under pressure from the government, banned players representing those countries...so no Sabalenka, Medvedev, or Azarenka.  This year they came to their senses and allowed them to participate, albeit without national affiliation.  Well, if you've read this blog, you might have picked up that I tend to avoid identifying athletes anyway by which country they're from...so I'd go a step further and remove all those national flags on TV next to each player's name. As for Covid, I think the bans have all lifted, finally, from Australia and the US (France and England didn't impose them on unvaccinated players). It's still in the early stages of Wimbledon, and I'm working...yet my "free" time in the morning just happens to coincide with London afternoons, when most of the action is taking place.  So let the tennis continue...

Weekly Short Stories: 1992 Science Fiction, Part 1

And now it's time for me to move on to the year 1992 with sci-fi stories, and to a new book in Gardner Dozois' excellent annual anthology series, The Year's Best Science Fiction, Tenth Annual Collection.  At that time...and for three more years...I was working at my local post office processing center (I'm still there) sorting mail on their flat sorting machine on Tour I, which is postal jargon for the graveyard shift.  Let's see, I started working there in 1987, and in the nearly 36 years since then, I've done that shift in varying capacities for half that time...I'll have to write an article sometime about the pros and cons of working the wee hours of the morning.  But for now, here are my reactions to the first four tales in the anthology...

GRIFFIN'S EGG by Michael Stanwick

On a future sparsely populated Moon relying on natural resource production, industry and research, the leading team there endures a special bomb attack from a warring Earth of which the exploded agent turns most of the population into a hypnotic/paranoid trance state.  The fight for survival is on...how will the war back home end, and will it happen in time to rescue them?  The ending of this long, pretty contrived novella with numerous subplots delivers a surprise regarding the possible future of humanity, but I admit to having some difficulty tying it all together...

EVEN THE QUEEN by Connie Willis

Only a woman could have gotten away with writing this brief satirical piece about a future in which a new innovation has "liberated" women everywhere from having to undergo the vicissitudes of menstruation as well as its accompanying PMS.  But wait, a new feminist group has formed, trying to "liberate" women from their "liberation" and returning them to their monthly cycles.  As a male reader, I was content to just sit back and let them duke it out...

THE ROUND-EYED BARBARIANS by L. Sprague de Camp

Suppose that China's Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) had developed the technological innovations and seafaring impetus just decades before the Europeans began their colonial assaults on the Americas.  The "round-eyes", as they're called in this alternative history tale, would surely be in an entirely different and less advantageous situation. A Chinese official relates his experiences regarding one such soldier as Chinese, European, and Native American cultural norms clash in the New (and Different) World...I thought it was kind of boring, to be perfectly blunt...

DUST by Greg Egan

A story with an interesting premise that lets itself get muddled toward the end with a lot of esoteric metaphysical mumbo-jumbo.  A man, Paul Durham, narrates it in the first person present as he wakes up and soon discovers that he is a digitally created copy of himself: it soon becomes apparent when he discovers the limits of his new world with the backgrounds necessarily vague and artificial.  He knows of his creator's every motive since, of course, he is a copy of him!  What the original Paul Durham doesn't know, though, is that this copy has life and a sense of identity in spite of his non-biological nature...which leads the (copied) Paul down that long and winding road of metaphysical cognitive reverie.  But then again, the ending helps to make up for all that...nice surprise!

Next week: more from 1992...

Happy Fourth of July

Whoopee, I'm off from work!  Now that I got that off my chest, let me just wish you and your loved ones a happy American Independence Day.  Stay safe with the firecrackers and on the road.  As a dear recent president would say on many occasions, "God bless you, and God bless the United States of America."  And may I just interject one little word of advice to those getting carried away with politics and perceived conspiracies: set aside a little, teensy-weensy bit of time in your hectic schedule to try first to get your facts straight, and then to try to see things...if only for a couple of minutes...from the other guy's point of view.  I think if enough folks did that, it would make my beloved country stronger and healthier...whad'ya say, all you patriots out there?

Podcaster Spells Out Ten Mistakes Language Learners Make

Although I've only recently been listening to Steve Kaufmann's podcast, I have access to many he's done in the months before I heard of him.  Kaufmann is a polyglot...he speaks some 20 languages at last count...who founded a subscription-driven website, LingQ, that uses his techniques of language learning and offers it to others: I recently signed up and like it.  One of his earlier podcasts, from a couple of months ago, dealt with mistakes that language learners make.  Listed, they are:

(1) Expecting you can learn fast (don't have unrealistic expectations).

(2) Expecting to never forget words or grammar patterns you have learned (but learning is itself a process of forgetting and relearning).

(3) Trying to master the grammar rules in detail up front (nothing wrong in looking them up from time to time, though).

(4) Expecting the language to become clear too soon (patience, patience).

(5) Sticking with learning content that is too easy (good for review but need to challenge with more difficult material).

(6) Thinking you can get by with just a few words (once a native speaker starts to talk back to you then you'll realize you need to learn a lot more).

(7) Thinking you should speak well even if you don't speak often (it takes a lot of practice).

(8) Being afraid of making mistakes when you speak (Kaufmann just came back from Poland where he gave two interviews IN POLISH and laughed about all the mistakes he made).

(9) Speaking with only non-native speakers (non-native speakers tend to limit the range of their vocabulary).

(10) Dealing with the challenge from native speakers when they want to practice their English on you (either find some willing to speak in your target language or make an arrangement to alternate languages with those wanting to speak English).

Steve Kaufmann impressed me by his emphasis on the gradual assimilation of large amounts of words by reading and listening.  From time to time, I'll let you know how I'm doing on the LingQ site...

Sad About Loss of Late-Night Business in Gainesville

My work shift ends at 10 PM, and sometimes I like to chill out a bit at a coffee shop before heading on home.  Unfortunately, my hometown of Gainesville, Florida has, ever since COVID-19 hit us in 2020, become one of those places that roll up the sidewalks in mid-evening, with very few late-night spots left open.  I used to frequent a couple of Starbucks on the southwest, UF student-intense part of town that is close to my workplace.  Now they're closed by the time I get off from work, although rumor has it that the Target store on Archer Road has a Starbucks in it that still stays open late...I'll have to check it out.  Gainesville used to be known as an all-night kind of city, especially with its tens of thousands of University of Florida students as well as a sizeable Santa Fe College population.  When I was a student at UF in the late 1970's I spent many late hours studying at the 24-hour Krystal on University across from the library.  Except for Waffle House, though, in the northern part of Gainesville where I live everyone closes up shop far earlier than before.  There used to be a 24-hour district just north of Gainesville High School on NW 13th Street (US 441) that had all-night restaurants, a pharmacy, a doughnut shop and a couple of grocers...none of the places there now stay open late except convenience stores.  It's a shame, because that's one of the things I liked living here.  I'm not greedy about places staying open late: just give me to 11 o'clock and I'm out of there! Shoot, before COVID I could slip over to a Publix on Archer right near where I worked and replenish groceries, but no longer.  Now, not even the WalMart where I live, formerly 24 hours, stays open past 11...

My June 2023 Running and Walking Report

This past month has been a bit of a trial regarding my running and walking...halfway through I experienced some back trouble that not only sidelined me from most any strenuous exercise but also made me miss work.  I'm still in recovery, so I'm afraid that not much will be happening in early July...and at the end of the month Melissa and I will be going out of town on vacation.  So, I don't see myself returning to a regular routine in running and walking...and that includes any races...until after the first week in August at the very earliest.  As for early June, I ran Gainesville's Depot Parkrun 5K on the 3rd and 10th, and occasionally visited my local gym after work to do treadmill jogging and speed-walking work...I reached a sustained 5 mph speed with the latter.  Of course, when I do return there in August or later, I will need to resume my training at a lower level...but I'm optimistic.  In any event, right now my running has taken a necessary back seat to my walking due to my back recovery. But I still intend to participate in local fall running races like the Florida Track Club's 10K event in October followed by a half-marathon in November. And when I'm ready to go back to Depot Park for their Saturday morning runs, I'd like to continue with a least one race each month being a full walk with the rest being runs...