Ran Gainesville's Depot Parkrun This Morning

This morning I went back to my more "normal" race location: Depot Park, just south of downtown Gainesville, where (almost) every Saturday morning at 7:30 they hold a five-kilometer (3.1 miles) race, free for anyone who wants to participate.  You can sign up online and they'll give you a barcode you can copy and take to the race so that your finishing time can be posted on their website.  Today was my 52nd Depot Parkrun finish...I wore my recently-acquired red tee-shirt displaying "50" for that recently-attained milestone.  The temperature at race time was 72 with a 97% humidity...not good but it could have been worse.  I decided beforehand to run the entire race without walking breaks...I wanted to test out my brand-new Brooks Glycerin running shoes.  Not feeling all that well physically (digestive issues), I managed to pace myself throughout the race and finish with a time of 27:25...click HERE to view the race results.  Looks like a lot of folks showed up for today's event, and many of them wisely walked it...maybe I'll do likewise next time around, we'll see.  Afterwards I tried going to the Starbucks near the University of Florida campus, which wasn't such a good idea.  It being opening day in the football season with the Gators at home in an afternoon game against Miami, the place was packed: I headed back north instead to the Dunkin' Donuts near my home...

Quote of the Week...from Stephen King

We've switched from a culture that was interested in manufacturing, economics, politics...trying to play a serious part in the world...to a culture that's really entertainment-based.               Stephen King

Stephen King is my all-time favorite writer...I've read more of his books by far than those by any other.  I'm not convinced, though, that this in itself means I would want to hang on his every opinion any more than I would anyone else...writing per se does not automatically impart supreme wisdom on the craftsman.  But that having been said, I am more or less in alignment with King's views on politics and society in general.  As far as the above quote of his is concerned, it's definitely an over-generalization of the state of our country, but since I grew up as his contemporary, immersed in it all, I totally get what he is driving at.  And I think the change from seriousness to entertainment began some time in the late 1960s when the drug/sex revolution, coinciding with the counterculture anti-war movement, went viral long before that term became common currency.  The seventies heralded the "me" generation that focused on self-examination and alternative lifestyles.  Then came the digital revolution and all kinds of entertainment became easy to access and portable...and here we are, all in our "safe spaces".  I remember the generation that came before me and it definitely had a different outlook on life.  I think that's one of the reasons that my all-time favorite novel of Stephen King is 11/22/63, a brilliant time-travel story that deeply examines those earlier attitudes and emphasis in our culture.  Try reading it some time if you haven't...not many books have literally made me cry, but this one did...

US Open Tennis Tournament Underway, How Much Can I Watch?

I was surprised to notice the other day that the US Open tennis tournament, held annually in New York and part of the sport's vaunted Grand Slam, had already begun with first round play.  Unfortunately, the regular channels on my lineup weren't carrying it...I'm assuming that some network wants more paying customers for one of their "premium" channels and was showing it there.  In any event, last night it was the second round and ESPN was finally showing it...sadly, by the time I got home from work they were done and back in football discussion mode.  Tennis, like horse racing, is a sport that I typically do not follow unless there is a special event going on.  With tennis it's the US Open, not the Australian, French or Wimbledon events.  I think that's in large part because three years ago I was home recovering from open heart surgery and had a lot of time on my hands to watch TV, and there it was, the US Open. I'm looking forward to seeing how the stars fare in their early play as well as take notice of this year's upstart underdogs...and there are always a few of those. For the longest time I refused to watch any tennis because the players in bygone years used to argue bitterly with line judges as to whether the ball fell in or out of bounds...in recent years computer technology has "virtually" eliminated that snag. Let's see how far good ol' Novak Djokovic gets this time around...

Weekly Short Stories: 1997 Science Fiction, Part 8

Once again it's time for a look at the short fiction I've been reading, although it's been creeping along recently at a terribly slow pace.  I'm going through a retrospective of the year 1997, using tales appearing in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Fifteenth Annual Collection and edited by the late Gardner Dozois.  Here are my reactions to two more stories as they appear in the book...

THE PIPES OF PAN by Brian Stableford

What if, in our distant future, humanity has advanced to where people are essentially immortal, with the aging process eliminated?  How would it deal with the twin facets of overpopulation and having children?  The author suggests a possible solution, which involves the protagonist Wendy, a thirteen-year-old girl trying to hide from her parents her "coming of age".  There's a lot of Peter Pan story references in this piece about a utopian future turned dystopian...

CROSSING CHAO MENG FU by G. David Nordley

As a prequel to an earlier story by Nordley titled Into the Miranda Rift (click on the title for my review), a young poet during the (future) pioneering ventures across our Solar System teams up with a group of professional explorers, engineers and scientists to travel to Mercury and climb down into a deep crevice, with all the accompanying perils, in the old hardy tradition of exploration.  The story, full of technical information over my head...especially about mountain climbing...reminded me, with its positive spirit, of Robert Heinlein's old optimistic stories about space exploration.  I wish there were more stories like this around.  But then again, maybe they are and they're just not getting picked for these kinds of anthologies...

That's all with the short stories until next week...

Last Saturday's College Football Opener

This past Saturday I discovered that, for some schools, the 2024 college football season was underway...a week before my hometown of Gainesville witnesses the University of Florida's opening game against cross-state rival Miami.  Florida State faced Georgia Tech in an Atlantic Coast Conference contest, but neither side was "at home".  No, for some unfathomable reason, the game was staged across the Atlantic in a beautiful stadium in, of all places, Dublin, Ireland.  For the life of me I cannot understand why both the college and professional American football establishment here in the United States keep holding games in Europe, essentially depriving hometown fans here from being able to attend them.  To the big shots who keep pushing this agenda, I say: get real, nobody actually plays our version of football in Europe.  They either go for soccer or, in some countries, add rugby.  Those are the sports kids over there grow up playing, not our version of "football" that has players all padded up and helmeted.  Well, anyway I decided to follow the FSU-Tech contest and they were continually reminding me that the Seminoles were such a great team...so why was Georgia Tech playing them to a draw?  It was then that I was reminded of the fact that it's much more enjoyable to watch televised sports with the sound muted.  As it was, Tech beat the 'Noles on a last-second field goal...I wonder how many of those attending Dubliners even knew what the hell was going on...

Ran the US Road Running 10K at Gainesville's Westside Park This Morning

US Road Running is a nationwide network of running races that are typically staged within various parks.  They usually involve limited course lengths with numerous laps and "there-and-back" instructions to complete the course.  I noticed them a few years ago when they called themselves "Medal Madness" and had races at Ocala's Baseline Trailhead Park that ranged up to half marathon in length.  I had often considered driving down there...some forty miles away...just to see what they were like, but alas, never got around to it.  They started one of their monthly races in Gainesville just a month ago, and the location is the very convenient Albert Massey "Westside" Park just a short drive from my home.  The Gainesville version is held on the fourth Saturday each month, and races for distances of one mile, 5K, 10K and 15K all begin at the same time, 8 AM.  I signed up for a yearly subscription, knowing that I'd quickly recoup my investment with the 50% discounts for each race.  Missing July's race, I resolved to try it this month, and this morning I completed their 10K (6.2-mile) event.  The temperature at race time was 73 with 100% humidity and mostly clear skies...unpleasant to put it lightly.  Along with some 20+ other runners/walkers (most of whom did the 5K), we took off pretty much on time.  There were only two people I saw working the race, which was very low-tech.  On the back side of the course I got a little lost a couple of times and had to backtrack, but ultimately figured it all out.  The 5K has you going down this winding path through and around the park for some .78 miles and then you turn around and head back to the starting line.  Repeat it for a second time and you're done...my 10K had me doing it for four laps.  I finished with a time of 1:00:45, which I believe was my fastest 10K performance since 2017...turns out only two other people signed up for that distance.  I liked the low-key aspect to US Road Running, and they tend to go with special themes throughout the year: Pirate, Viking, Ninja and (today) Luau.  I got a Luau participation medal for my efforts, and left feeling that maybe when the weather gets a little better I'd like to try their 15K distance (6 laps on the course).  Click HERE to view today's results from their website...

Quote of the Week...from Jack McTavish

Nonsense, go out harder and finish harder.             Jack McTavish, Dean Karnazes' high school track coach

Dean Karnazes is a famous long-distance runner who wrote the popular book a few years ago titled Ultramarathon Man...I've read it a number of times and it was a big inspiration to me when I returned to the sport in my early fifties.  In an early chapter he described his first high school track coach, Jack McTavish, who made a big impression on Karnazes.  McTavish's advice on running races was simple: always run hard...forget about pacing yourself.  The above quote was his response to Karnazes telling him that he needed some left-over energy for the race's final kick.  Although I'm not totally in the Coach's corner about this one issue, I do think something can be said for me going out harder at the start of the races I've been running.  One thing I've noticed in a race's early stage is that the simple presence of the other runners surrounding me produces an inhibitory hindrance to my speed...I have to intentionally run harder just to get through the crowd.  I've also had numerous experiences over the years with negative racing splits, that is, running the second half faster than the first...an indicator that I was erring on the side of caution earlier on.  I think having someone like McTavish at a formative time in a kid's life can have a great influence on them.  Unfortunately, I can't recall this happening for me.  But you know, that doesn't mean I can't derive some inspiration from someone else's experience.  Thanks, Dean...and Coach McTavish...

Pretty Much Ignored the Political Conventions in 2024

Have you been following the political conventions this year? The Democratic version is just finishing up and, as with the Republicans a few weeks before, I thoroughly ignored it other than happenstance momentarily hitting up on a station covering it while surfing the radio or TV.  When I did run across the convention, inevitably someone would be up there giving an insanely giddy and emotional speech, doubtless (accurately) assessing the susceptibility of the general population to manipulation.  Cynics like the late comedian George Carlin have expressed the futility of even voting, period.  I'm not at that point...I still vote...but beyond giving upcoming elections a brief-but-reasonable piece of my attention, I just let it go and let the fools freak out on Facebook, Fox and the other propaganda outlets.  And, as I am more and more getting accustomed to say, believe whatever you want to believe...

Weekly Short Stories: 1997 Science Fiction, Part 7

Once again here we are, another Wednesday and time to reflect on some sci-fi from 1997, as presented in the Gardner Dozois-edited anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Fifteenth Annual Collection.  Truth be told, in recent trying weeks I've not exactly been in a reading mood...not too keen on writing, either.  So this is indeed for me an exercise in personal self-discipline.  And it would help if I liked all the stories I encountered...but I guess that would be unrealistic...

HEART OF WHITENESSE by Howard Waldrop

It's an excessively stylized tale of alternative history set in around the turn of the sixteenth century in an England run by crime bosses.  A professional assassin from Cambridge sets out on his assignment, to silence (permanently) an outspoken free-thinker (and free-speaker) from Oxford.  I detect a lot of intended humor in this tale, but here a clear case can be made for clear writing... 

THE WISDOM OF OLD EARTH by Michael Swanwick

This one's set in the far distant future when humanity's evolution has made it more diverse.  Countless generations of space dwellers have developed to adapt to those conditions while Earth natives themselves have become differentiated...with the spacer dwellers regarded as "higher": in some ways humanity hasn't changed, especially with their pecking orders.  A space-dweller has come to Earth and a native guide is there to take him to old Philadelphia to look for a fabled ancient bell (obviously the Liberty Bell).  The guide, a Canadian, takes a dim view of her crew from south of the border.  Her client for his part is, due to his life in reduced gravity, feeble and breaks his leg, causing a crisis of sorts with two of the guide's Canadian colleagues.  But it's the story's ending that seals it: human nature can be pretty uncaring and expedient...

Next week...more from 1997...

Went to Vote in Primary Election This Morning

This morning Melissa and I went down to our local precinct's polling place...at the Senior Recreation Center across the street from Wal-Mart in far northern Gainesville..and cast our August 20 Primary ballot.  There were five races on the sheet for us: US Senate, US House (District 3), two school board seats and a city commission spot.  The Senate and House contests were to nominate the party's candidate for the November general election and the others were straight elections to office.  No need to tell how I voted or which (if any) party the two of us belong to...we just did our civic duty and left.  But not before being subjected to what I think is overkill with regard to security.  Our votes after more than 4 hours of the polling station having been open only amounted to votes #53 and #54, but the hoops we had to jump through just to get our meager little ballots to fill out were far and beyond anything I had ever experienced with an election.  And to boot, the little room was packed with election workers eyeballing everything: yes, I think overkill pretty much describes it.  

A Podcaster's Take on the Reticular Activating System

A few days ago Mindset Mentor podcaster Rob Dial discussed something that drew my attention.  Although by no means a trained scientist, he has made no secret of his interest in neurology, especially with regard to how cognition affects our behavior.  In that episode, he brought up the concept of Reticular Activating System, or RAS.  According to Dial, RAS is the means our brains use to filter out the enormous amount of information our senses pick up (he cited 11 million bits/second), down to what we can consciously take it (only about 55-120-bits/second).  I don't know the science behind his claim, but I see his point and agree with it.  People can make their own deliberate decisions as to what they see as significant and also choose to diminish awareness of things they perceive as irrelevant or trivial.  The problem is when people allow others to filter out things for them...there is a word for this: brainwashing.  In case you're not getting what I'm driving at, Dial gave a simple example.  Let's say you're driving down the road a few miles.  Someone later asks you about the red cars you saw and it's likely you didn't even notice them.  But if on the same trip you had decided that red cars carried some significance, you would have been taking notice all around you.  Political propagandists, be it on social or mass media, do something similar, especially when pointing out flaws or mannerisms of their imagined opponents.  What all this results in are separate threads of shared cognition among population groups, depending on their members' chosen sources of information.  Which in a sense is a voluntary form of brainwashing.  What Rob Dial suggests is that each of us can sit down with pen and paper and work out the things that we want to emphasize and take in on our respective daily walks of life...that is, self-brainwashing, but not as a dog on someone else's leash!  So for me I'm finished with all the political BS and bias...you can believe whatever you want and worship whichever personality cult idol you want.  I am not triggered by the kinds of things others use to arouse mass fear and outrage...be a sheep and follow that crap if you want!  Life is too short and precious for me not to stop and assess the things that I as an individual deem to be important.  This doesn't mean that I don't deeply value those close to me, and I still see myself as being in the larger community of society around me.  But enough is enough: if Dial is right, brainwashing is going to happen whether someone does it to me or I do it to myself: I'm choosing the latter... 

A Return Visit with Melissa to Local Planetarium to See Mesmerica

From my own records it had been several years since I'd paid a visit to the Kika Silva Plan Planetarium at Santa Fe College here in Gainesville, but Melissa bought a couple of tickets to their ongoing Saturday afternoon/evening presentation titled Mesmerica, created by and featuring percussionist James Hood.  The show we attended yesterday began at 6:15 but we got there about a half hour earlier to get good seating for this show, which was a series of computer-enhanced light and color patterns as well as a foray into exotic settings.  The idea of it all was to place the viewer into a state of relaxation and suggestion...sounds a little like auto-hypnosis, doesn't it?  We both enjoyed Mesmerica, but truth be told I've seen this sort of thing before and wasn't all that impressed.  There were three scenes there I especially liked in the 45-minute program, but I felt that it could have flowed a little more smoothly than it did.  So this wasn't a typical planetarium show explaining what was going on in the nighttime sky.  Yet director James Albury...who was there for the times that I (sometimes along with Melissa or Will) visited back in 2013, 2014 and 2018...is still in charge and it was a nice feeling to hear his enthusiasm and pick up on his friendly demeanor.  He did slip in that Mars and Jupiter are visible in the far east just before sunrise.  Being actually "of age", my senior discounts there nowadays are merited...unlike previous times years ago when they automatically assumed from appearance that I was an old geezer...

Ran Gainesville's Weekly Depot Parkrun 5K This Morning

Folks were positively giddy this morning at Gainesville's Depot Park, just a few blocks south of downtown.  Each Saturday morning at 7:30 they hold a free event, the Depot Parkrun 5K...you just sign up online and they issue a barcode to take to the race for your finishing time to be posted.  As I was saying, people were happy because the temperature had actually dipped below 70 degrees...69 at race time to be specific, with a humidity of (ugh) 98%.  Still, I took advantage of the largely imaginary improvement in the weather to go on an all-out speed-run to see if I could beat 27 minutes...and I did, finishing at 26:51.  My strategy was simple: go out hard at the start and run hard the rest of the way!  In spite of my Parkrun personal record (my previous was 27:01), I finished in 33rd place...there were a lot of fast people there today.  Once again I was a little surprised (and dismayed) to not hear the usual cacophony of bird songs at the park...I've been accustomed to the many red-winged blackbirds, grackles, mourning doves and others: what's going on there? You can see today's results by clicking HERE... 

Quote of the Week...from Simone Biles

If you ever have a mistake, you try to just kind of forget about it because if you carry that with you for the rest of the routine, then the rest of your routine might not go as planned.  So you just kind of shake it off, and you continue your routine like you didn't fall.                              ---Simone Biles

Yesterday I wrote about the Paris Olympics and that I tended to avoid sports like gymnastics in which judges subjectively awarded scores to the competitors.  One exception: when American Simone Biles competed for the all-around women's gold medal.  During the whole time the NBC commentators would point out this mistake or that one, as if they themselves could even perform on the same floor as this group of the world's best.  Biles for her part made some "mistakes" but as the above quote of hers points out, you just have to shake it off and keep performing as if nothing happened.  That, along with other quotes of hers pointing to how simply having fun doing something challenging can massively enhance your life as well as performance, impressed me about her wisdom, far beyond her age.  Yes, I got a little tired of all the Google Gemini and pharmaceutical commercials, but that doesn't detract from my appreciation of Simone Biles...

About the Recent Paris Summer Olympics

Well, the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics have come and gone, and they pretty much went the way I expected.  Fortunately, extraneous political and terrorist activity didn't cloud the games although the argument can be legitimately made that with the exclusion of Russia (and Belarus) for their invasion of Ukraine, there was a huge gap in them with so many missing premier athletes.  For this alone, I thought that NBC, the network covering it all, was a bit silly with their overemphasis on national medal tallies and the "competition" between the USA and China for most gold medals.  Don't get me wrong: I tend to root for the "home team" but I don't get carried away with nationalism, either.  I think the shining moment, though, for me was in the men's track 1,500 meter final when, after all the preliminary drama about the two favorites (from Norway and Britain) having a bitter rivalry between them, the American slipped in there at the very end and won it...ha-ha-ha!  As I wrote before the Olympics, I tended to follow objectively measurable individual sports, enjoying the track and field, biking and swimming competitions the most and generally avoiding diving, gymnastics and team sports.  I dug the golf, although for some reason I veered away from the tennis and table tennis...well, the latter was obvious since I had trouble following the lightning-fast motion of the ball across the table.  I'm glad it's over...especially all those commercials featuring star American athletes.  I'm more in tune with participatory athletics over the elite elements of various sports, but often I can learn a lot about proper form from watching the best in the business...and for better or worse it's definitely a business these days....

Weekly Short Stories: 1997 Science Fiction, Part 6

We've reached yet another Wednesday as I continue plodding through the Gardner Dozois-edited anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Fifteenth Annual Collection and featuring his picks from 1997.  I remember around that time being a fan of alternative rock, with my favorite station, now defunct, on 97.7.  Rock/104 also played music to my liking: Naked Eye by Luscious Jackson and Everlong by the Foo Fighters were my favorite songs from that year. Also, 1997 produced two more popular songs I've grown to cherish: Building a Mystery by Sarah McLachlan and Sunny Came Home by Shawn Colvin.  But what am I doing...this is about sci-fi short stories! Onward...

MARROW by Robert Reed

Marrow was Reed's breakthrough novella for a much-longer same-titled novel and a subsequent series of books based on his particular science fiction universe: another reviewer compared it in that regard to Isaac Asimov's Foundation series, which also began as a shorter work.  But Marrow is much more complicated and harder to grasp than Asimov's fiction was.  It is many, many millennia into the future and humanity has undergone a vast genetic transformation into virtually immortal beings that automatically repair themselves as they go on and on for thousands of years.  They discover a vast Jupiter-sized "ship", built by an unknown race eons earlier, that was wiped out in an attack by another group.  The protagonist is a 
"captain" in the command hierarchy here and she is assigned to investigate a hidden, violent world just discovered at the ship's core: will it solve the mystery of who the Builders were?  Lots of plot twists and double-crossings here: humanity may have physically changed but their power-grabbing, petty and jealous natures haven't.  Personally, I greatly preferred Asimov's Foundation for its plain writing style...

Next week: more from the 1997 anthology of science fiction stories...

Ernesto Latest Atlantic Tropical Storm, Not a Threat to US Mainland

 

In keeping up with the Atlantic hurricane season in '24, we now have the fifth named storm, Ernesto, currently (at this writing noon today) at tropical storm strength with sustained winds of 50 mph.  Although Ernesto is about to pass through the US and British Virgin Islands and enter the open Atlantic just north of Puerto Rico, unlike its predecessor Debby, it is destined to be a hurricane of the open Atlantic...only Bermuda is remotely threatened.  Of course, whenever there is a hurricane churning through the western Atlantic, coastal warnings will abound along the US east coast about high waves and rip current.  Ernesto is a sign that the 2024 hurricane season may be about to get into high gear...not a pleasant thought...

Five Years Ago in Chicago

Five years ago at this time Melissa, Will and I were having a great time visiting Chicago...the above picture was taken at the Navy Pier there by Lake Michigan.  It's still hard for me to fathom the loss of my dear, wonderful son.  Melissa is also deeply in grief, not to mention enduring difficult postoperative chemotherapy for her breast cancer.  It's been a very sad and tough summer for us, and the months ahead promise to pose their own challenges as well.  But for us still here with our lives to live...and I include my beloved daughter Rebecca...while it is important to recognize our own universal physical mortality, feeling and expressing gratitude for what we do have in this limited time allotted for us is also necessary, deriving joy from one another and appreciating the simple pleasures of existence while living in the present moment.  May you likewise enjoy and cherish your own life as well...

Walked the Depot Parkrun 5K This Morning

Before going off to bed Friday nights, when I plan on doing the Depot Parkrun 5K the next morning I first check the local forecast for Gainesville...this time I knew it would be especially hot and humid.  And I was right: 79 degrees, 95% humidity...ugh!  So once again I easily decided to speed-walk the 3.1 miles instead of running it.  And like two weeks ago, I think I did well enough, with an identical finishing time of 38:19...click HERE to view the race results.  Yet I still feel that I can make some meaningful improvement in my walking form while pushing myself a bit harder.  My goal is to speed-walk a 5K at a better-than 12 mph pace: this would represent a 37:12 finishing time, so I don't have that much further to go.  This was my 50th finish at a Parkrun event, so I'm now qualified to get a "50" tee-shirt.  That's good, because I seem to have misplaced the "25" shirt I had been wearing.  The Depot Parkrun is a part of a wide network of Parkruns, having originated in England just a few years ago, spreading to several countries across the world.  Participation is free, although since it's completely volunteer-driven, they do encourage you to step forward in that regard.  To have your finishing time recorded and posted on their website, you first register online and then bring the barcode they give you to the race to scan along with the finishing token they hand you at the finishing line.  After scanning, the results are usually posted around 9-9:30.  On this particular morning, unlike the way it usually is at this pretty, partially nature park just south of downtown, I didn't hear any bird songs...maybe the muggy conditions had something to do with it... 

Quote of the Week...from Sting of the Police

"When the world is running down, you make the best of what's still around"...by Sting of the Police 

The Police, a highly talented British reggae/punk-rock/jazz trio from the late seventies and early eighties, is one of my all-time favorite musical acts...I was not at all happy when they broke up after only five (incredibly good) albums.  The above quote, penned by their chief songwriter and front man Sting (Gordon Sumner), is actually the rather long title of a track on their 1981 third LP, Zenyatta Mondatta.  It is also a heavily-repeated chorus that rams home the deep...but oft-neglected wisdom...of making do with what you have.  It speaks to the tendency of folks to let themselves become mired in discontent and grief over their situations instead of working in a more constructive manner with the circumstances they face.  This spring and summer has been especially difficult for myself and Melissa, and our "world" has definitely fit the parameters of this song.  Not that the rest of our little planet isn't undergoing some trying times as well, and I could easily slide into a state of hopelessness by focusing on one thing after another that is "running down".  Yet in the middle of this there is hope and much to be grateful for.  That doesn't mean denying the tragedy and troubles, but rather to place them in a broader perspective and to realize that life by its very nature is a struggle...and embracing that struggle is indeed the way to "make the best of what's still around"...

Had Fun Putting Together Jigsaw Puzzle

I recently bought a new jigsaw puzzle titled October Skies, a 300-piece painting by Alan Giana in the Memory Lane series.  It was pleasant to take an hour or so and put it together...I'll probably be back soon at Joann Fabrics off Archer Road to get another one, maybe with more pieces.  They have quite a collection there. This one is put out by Master Pieces, the perfect name for a jigsaw puzzle business...

Weekly Short Stories: 1997 Science Fiction, Part 5

Today I resume my weekly look at short stories I've been reading, slogging through the years in the genre of science fiction. I've reached 1997 and am in the middle of reading the late Gardner Dozois' series The Year's Best Science Fiction, this volume being the Fifteenth Annual Collection and containing stories from that year.  So without further ado, let's see my reactions to the next three tales appearing in that book...

ECHOES by Alan Brennert

A young woman, genetically engineered for high intelligence and artistic talent, begins to see images, or "echoes" of herself in her everyday life.  The disturbing phenomenon convinces her of the myriad lost possibilities as to what she could have become.  But is this simply in her mind, or is there a literal meaning to this all...

GETTING TO KNOW YOU by David Marusek

Sitting here reading this story in 2024 amid all the accelerating AI culture around us makes this tale more immediately relevant than many others.  A young jet-setting corporate investigator relies on her portable AI robot for information and direction, but Bug is getting just a bit TOO intrusive and testy...time for an updated model.  But after her "partner" acquits itself well in difficult circumstances, maybe that replacement model might not be the way to go. Being of mixed opinions about AI, I also had mixed feelings about this story...

BALINESE DANCER by Gwyneth Jones

A dystopian tale about a bickering couple, along with their young son, driving in a declining France looking for a camping site on vacation. The wife, a biological research scientist, has been summarily fired for simply reporting a find that her boss finds politically incorrect, and the husband is a moderately successful writer of children's books.  Their experiences on the road...and at camp where a cat they name "Balinese Dancer" befriends them...are a word picture of troubled times and an extension, in my opinion, of where we're sadly heading. It's also an indictment of how some people will twist objective scientific research to suit their own subjective agendas...

Next week: more from 1997...

About the Upcoming August Primary Election

Before the general election in November, my state of Florida is holding a primary election on August 20th.  I opted out of the vote-by-mail system and plan to cast my ballot in person that Tuesday morning.  In partisan nominating contests, the US Senate seat currently held by Republican Rick Scott is being contested, although I doubt his GOP challengers will garner many votes.  On the Democratic side four candidates are vying to replace Scott next January when the new term begins. US representative, state representative and Alachua County sheriff constitute the other partisan contests on the August ballot.  Then we go on to the county school board, with two incumbents being challenged.  And there is one county commission race and one city commission race there as well.  I'm not sure what good my one vote will do with each of the available races, it being just a drop in the bucket, as the cliche goes. But as with other elements of my life, I've grown to consider consistent, reasoned voting whenever the opportunity arises to be a worthwhile personal discipline that ties me in...no matter how tenuously...with the society around me.  May the best candidates win, and may all the eventual winners perform their duties conscientiously and ethically while I wish them success regardless of whether I voted for them...

On Developing a Second Brain in Foreign Language Learning

As Steve Kaufmann, a Canadian polyglot who fell in love with language learning early on during his ongoing 77-year existence on this planet, has reiterated that achieving a meaningful level of understanding in a foreign language requires a dedicated amount of listening and...hopefully...reading time whereby one's neural pathways are redrawn to develop what is essentially a "second brain" in that language. I am probably studying too many languages at the same time with Chinese, Russian and Spanish currently on my plate, but that's a lot fewer than the number I had been pursuing. Progress is difficult to measure or report since it isn't easily quantified: sure, I can count the words I've learned, but actually comprehending the spoken language in real time is a completely different matter. I would be better served in this regard were I to habituate myself to deeper, concentrated listening and reading with available translation...Kaufmann's LingQ website can be a help with this, and until recent difficult events arose demanding my attention, had been using ChatGPT to generate practice sentences in my target languages on different levels of proficiency.  Yet I'm a little too tentative with computer apps and maneuvering through the digital quagmire that others seem to effortlessly glide through. But if I can intentionally learn to better use productive apps and functions, then this can be a great help.  In any event, I do enjoy studying these three languages, and I guess that's the most important thing... 

Tropical Storm Debby to Soon Become Hurricane, Hit Florida's Big Bend Region

Before all this recent travail and tragedy entered my hitherto happy-go-lucky existence, I had remarked on this blog that I might just follow this 2024 Atlantic hurricane season more closely than in past years.  I'm still sticking to that idea, and we have the fourth named storm, Debby, churning and intensifying in the eastern Gulf of Mexico as it makes its way to an early Monday morning landfall at my home state of Florida's swampy "Big Bend" region.  Sometime this evening Debby will gain hurricane status and may intensify further before landfall.  It's dropping a horrendous amount of rain and Gainesville is currently expected to get around possibly 8 inches of water, creating localized flooding threats.  Once Debby passes through Florida tomorrow, it is expected to veer eastward and, as it slows down, cause much flooding in southeastern Georgia before inflicting itself on South and North Carolina.   As for Gainesville, tonight and all day tomorrow will be the window for concern.  Right now at this posting around 5:17 PM, Debby has maximum sustained winds of 65 mph with the barometric pressure at 992 mb, traveling northward at 12 mph...

On Present Personal Storms

I seem to be passing through a period in my life reminding me of the travails of Job in that Old Testament book of the Scriptures.  With my wife's illness and son's passing, for me it has been a time of "life, interrupted", with a grave challenge for me to either grow through it all or begin a withdrawal into inaction and hopelessness: I choose the first path.  I will never forget my dear boy Will and will cherish his memory...and the hurt will always be there, I am sure.  And I am determined to see Melissa through this medical storm in her precious life, and to come out of it stronger and looking forward to each new day as we enthusiastically face them together...