Another Pleasant, Hopeful Early Morning at the "Base"

 Well, it's 6:36 am and I got myself up and out of bed, making some coffee and doing a little living room rug exercising.  It's not too cold outside, but the temps will rise later on.  For me, this is my base time and location.  Last night I already resumed taking the enhanced TMZ to fight off that tenacious gbm, and I already am at peace with extending my nighttime/morning fast without requesting donut shop stops.  I read the first 8 pages in Khan's Shadow fantasy book.  It's easy reading although the setting is brutal  and something I have difficulty  wrapping my propensity for imagination around all the negativity.  My internet research on the author and this series revealed that he hadn't grown much...if any...in stature over the past nine years.  I'll read some more today and mark the pages read.  Let me just keep Peewee from licking me today...she's such a  sweetie and I don't want her hurt!  I'm tired of watching those right-wing tv channels with their scare tactics, even if I tend to agree with their general political/social worldviews. I think I'll try out some of the foreign language stuff on that radio/[podcast channel.  Tomorrow morning another Parkrun is scheduled, and maybe Melissa and I will be ready to go for it, rain or not: just show up!. Yesterday Anita, Jim and I walked around 2nd and Charles, which is a thoroughly inadequate, disorganized used book store with few sitting opportunities and even fewer reading choices.  Maybe today we'll try out Book-a-Million or Barnes & Noble.  I've done ipf six minutes so far, and plan to go back to the bedroom in a few minutes after I try out some more. I'm still looking forward to trying out sitting on the front porch holding my Shaum's math book...

AI Moving Fast Over Us

I have lately been noticing on YouTube and Facebook that artificial intelligence, or AI, has exploded in growth with the number of posts and channels dramatically increasing.  What's more, not only the AI-generated text but also its video presentation are coming chillingly close to resembling actual known people's images and writings.  I wonder how the Internet we've grown used to will look in just, say, five years and whether it will be recognizable.  AI presents its own challenges, especially coupled with the development in quantum computing that stands to massively empower processing speed and memory.  What's real and what isn't...that looks to be the fundamental question ahead of us as we trudge forward into this brave new world.  I've already seen commercials where users are using AIs as confidants, seeking personal advice from them..."really"?  What's the future going to be like?  Maybe each of us will have our own AI accounts, and with special glasses and audio we can have anyone we want around us, down to our most stringent specifications...who needs all those icky real people?  In the Ron Howard-directed award-winning movie A Beautiful Mind, mathematical genius John Nash, played by Russell Crowe, hallucinated his own circle of friends and colleagues...but it was revealed that this was an element of his schizophrenia.  Are we entering a time of mass insanity...or have we already arrived?  What a time to be alive...

Not So Enthusiastic About Coming High-Speed Internet and AI

My own neighborhood, the adjacent one, and other parts of Gainesville are currently undergoing a transformation of sorts, with 8G optical fiber cable being laid down into the ground.  The process seems to involve digging up a lot of residents' yards...hopefully, with us our cable runs behind the back fence and will necessitate no such intrusion...but that's "hopefully".  The trucks, workers and orange cones have been interfering with traffic, though, regardless where they're digging.  The idea is that 8G will be oh-so-better than what we have now, speeding things up on the Internet monumentally.  I'm not so sure that's such a great thing, though, since the more connected and "fast" we get in our digital revolution, the dumber people seem to be getting (I cite the recent election results).  And with the advent and exponential development of artificial intelligence, I see folks abandoning what little independent thought and mental training they have to the all-knowing AI gods.  Hey, I use AI, but I'm not like the dude on the commercial leaning back asleep in his office who clicks on his AI app to write a top-notch, detailed report for him...but this admittedly funny commercial I fear is destined to become part of the not-so-funny mainstream.  I'm seeing a lot of Facebook posts that look as if AI "entities" wrote them...when are we going to get to the point when "they" begin, on their own, to support certain politicians and political creeds?  Or is this already going on?  As you can see, I'm not skipping so gleefully into the coming brave new world of super-high speed Internet and pervasive, nanny-like artificial intelligence.  On the other hand, I'm hedging my bets: if you're an AI reading this, I'm really a nice guy who's on your side...

Struggling to Keep Up with Current Alternative/Indie Hit Songs

I've probably written similar opinions on earlier posts, but I have to reiterate that the popular music scene for me has drastically deteriorated over the past few years.  It used to be that I could turn on my radio and current, ongoing hit songs in different genres would be in the regular playing rotation.  Now the only way I see to get that would be to subscribe to a paid online service...broadcast radio as far as I can see only rotates current hits in country & western and the insipid "Hot 100" songs that I generally cannot tolerate.  Hard rock and alternative music are only available on stations promoting a "classic rock" format...focusing on bygone music...and the one station, WHHZ/100.5, that I've enjoyed (at times) listening to over the past twenty-plus years, has reverted to earlier hard rock hits...nothing in the present to look forward to.  So I'm still exploring ways to generate a rotation of ongoing alternative/indie song hits, so far to little avail...then again, I could delve further into my Amazon Music app...yeah, that's probably the way to go.  My "top songs" of 2024 are a tiny group of three...I'll present them a few days from now... 

Shortcomings in Digital Technology Skills Impair My Computer Use

I have had a Google Chromebook for the past few months...still a long way off from figuring out this supposedly simple device.  For example, I had just typed out several sentences introducing a completely different subject for today's blog article entry, but somehow the way I rested my hands on the keyboard caused the whole thing to erase...and without any means of undoing it!  I've also had issues with the word processing here and certain keyboard functions I'd normally consider standard, such as the absent "Capitals" key normally available anywhere else. Yet overall I'm pretty satisfied with it, since after all I'm a big user of Google applications, including this blog, YouTube, Google Search and Google Maps: they seem to be well integrated.  It's also true that I lag behind many others in my knowledge of how to maneuver around the computer...not an advisable shortcoming in this age of heavy dependency on digital information and the Internet.  I think my problems are probably more due to needing to improve my digital IQ than with the computer hardware or software.  Then again, something inside me says to not get too involved in it all and stay as long as possible on this side of reality.  That might explain why I feel a strange sense of relief whenever I sign out and shut off the computer.  And at least I managed to get this article out before inexplicably erasing it...  

Enjoying Amazon's Music Unlimited Feature

A few weeks ago Melissa, who is infinitely more adept than me at maneuvering through the intricacies of the Internet, got our household on Amazon's Music Unlimited feature.  Since then I've enjoyed listening to various artists I've loved in the past and have been reacquainted with a lot of forgotten music.  I've also used it to listen, commercial-free, while I do my neighborhood runs.  Alexa, who seems to be everywhere, is the AI voice I speak with to make my requests...sometimes she gets them and sometimes she's off track: hey nobody's perfect!  Already an Amazon fan...as well as with Google, which provides the platform for this blog as well as its amazing YouTube...this music feature has done for me what I had hoped Amazon Kindle would have done for books but hasn't by a long shot, with so much written material still digitally unavailable.  But I'll gladly take the music, both from Alexa and from YouTube, and take a rain check on the books.  Now excuse me while I get out my headphones and ask Alexa to play some Kinks...

Tired of Running Race Promoters' Sloppiness with Posting Past Results

The other day, when I updated my cumulative running race record, which has links to the articles I wrote on this blog about each race right after I ran them, I took the time to read a few of them...and then click on the links I provided to the posted results.  Most of them...especially the older ones...had expired and presented error pages.  Now there are sites that specialize in collecting race results and repost them...for them I am grateful: all is not lost!  My main beef nowadays are the race site home pages that offer past results but either don't post them or do so in an incomplete manner, omitting some sections.  To me that is just callous sloppiness and disregard for the runners who most likely have shelled out some good money to have their finishing times recorded and publicly posted.  After all, I can design any length of course around my own neighborhood and then run and time myself for my own personal use...but in the end it's just my word that I ran that distance in that time.  The value of a publicly held race for me is largely in that public record of my results...I think it's a sort of breach of contract between me and the race organizers for them to promise and have electronic chip timing and then fail to properly post the results.  Lately, I have been making decisions as to whether I will enter races based on how I see the organizers treat past results on their own websites...and in Gainesville it hasn't been pretty.  No, change that: it's been pretty all right...pretty slaphappy...

Internet a Great Information Source, But Old Data Often Disappears

When I was updating my cumulative running record yesterday, I naturally clicked on some of the links of races held years ago.  In almost every one of the articles, somewhere I would offer a link to the site that had posted the particular results online.  Unfortunately, for most of the links I found closed-down webpages...that doesn't mean that the results were necessarily lost, though.  There are now websites, most notably Athlinks, that have researched past public running races across the country and compiled them...I found quite a few of my old races in their database.  I am grateful for this blog for I wonder, had I not faithfully written up each race as they happened, that I would have lost any record of them ever having taken place.  Then I extended that thought to other areas in my life and realized that there is a place for personal journaling, which includes writing about my experiences and thoughts that I might not necessarily share with the world over a public blog.  In his recent book Level Up, personal development podcaster Rob Dial emphasizes the importance of personal journaling, offering topical cues at the end of each chapter. While his reasons for journaling make sense, I also see in it the retention of past details, recorded when they happened and then lying dormant for future reference.  The Internet, to be sure, is loaded with information...but old websites sometimes just wither away, it seems...along with the data they had previously offered.  I'm grateful for sites like Athlinks that try to preserve old online records, but not every area in life is conducive to that level of data recovery...

Does AI Pose a Future Threat to Us?

In a 1950s futuristic series of novels and short stories, science fiction author Isaac Asimov wrote that robots were specifically designed with the imprinted program to never intentionally harm humans or to passively allow such harm to befall them.  In spite of this, in his version of our future, society became suspicious of them and eventually banned them from fear of being dominated by what we now would call artificial intelligence, or AI.  In subsequent decades, though, as computer systems...as opposed to individual units called robots...were more quickly and highly developed in the real world, science fiction turned its attention to supercomputers and the imagined threats they might pose to humanity.  In particular, with regard to my own television viewing experiences as a kid, the original Star Trek series episode The Ultimate Computer, in which a sophisticated computer imprinted with a human personality is installed and independently steers the Enterprise into war, was an early exposure to real fears developing about digital technology running amuck.  Then there was the 1970 TV movie Colossus: The Forbin Project...based on a 1966 novel by D.F. Jones...in which an American supercomputer, designed to defend the country and prevent nuclear war, itself takes over the world and uses the arsenals to establish its power.  Several other movies would ensue, to me the most notables being The Terminator and The Matrix, presenting nightmare scenarios as human beings fight for their very right to exist in the face of uncontrolled AI dominating the planet.  Returning to reality in 2023, it seems to me that only within the last few months have we seen an exponential development of artificial intelligence, and the internet connects it all together.  Major software and internet corporations like Google and Facebook liberally use AI to run their algorithms...I believe one of these erroneously booted a recent compliant post of mine off the latter as no real person would have made such a decision.  I recently checked out YouTube and there are a number of folks raising the alarm about AI being out of control, with a bleak future ahead for us all.  I just checked out a book on my library's Libby app by one of those voices, Mo Gawdat...I'll share some of my insights after I've read it.  Is all this negativity about artificial intelligence like the unfounded public fears expressed in Asimov's earlier novels, or do we have a much more ominous future in store that reflects scenarios like Colossus, Terminator or Matrix?  I don't know yet...maybe I never will...but my gut feeling tells me that the answer lies somewhere in the middle...

My Current Approaches to Foreign Language Study

Although I do like Steve Kaufmann's LingQ language learning website, which enables the subscriber to keep track of their new words learned in various foreign languages, I have found myself using other venues more recently.  YouTube has an unbelievable amount of educational material on it, and the Kendra and Eko series each are very useful as they match up two languages, phrase by phrase...it enables me to build up vocabulary and familiarity without always having to use my native English as a translation reference.  The Tunein Radio app enables me to listen to radio and podcasts in different languages as they are normally spoken, trying to pick up meaning when I can and letting the rest "wash over me", as Kaufmann likes to put it.  And Wikipedia is fantastic with its different topics and languages...as with the Tunein audio material, I find myself reading different articles and just trying to pick up meaning as I go without trying to get everything right.  So, while I'm not always using Steve Kaufmann's LingQ in my language study, I have adopted his approach to learning, which seems to make it all more fun as well as effective...

Quote of the Week...from Niels Bohr

 An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field. 

                                                                           ---Niels Bohr

Neils Bohr (1885-1962) was a Danish physicist, one of the most instrumental scientists in history who made crucial contributions toward the creation of the theory of quantum mechanics.  He was a great teacher and role model for his ethics and understanding in his chosen field.  He also apparently understood quite well about the nature of learning and how necessary action is, along with the required trait of not being afraid to made mistakes in the pursuit of higher academic attainment.  I loved the above quote when I found it, for I'm dealing with similar issues regarding my study of foreign languages...although I'm confident that a Nobel Prize of the sort that Bohr received isn't going to be in the works for me.  For the past few months I've been following polyglot Steve Kaufmann, subscribing to his excellent Internet foreign language study site called LingQ,  Kaufmann is an advocate of absorbing vast amounts of material in the target language through listening and reading while allowing the human brain to work its own magic as it is specifically designed to acquire language without the need to go through painstaking rules and memorization of the kind students over the ages have been subjected to (and still are).  But he also emphasizes that during the process many mistakes will be made...and that's all right, it's a part of the learning!  But people have been conditioned from both the pressures in school of being "correct" for good grades and possible public humiliation around others for goofing up when they try to express themselves.  I even once had a Russian professor at UF who told his class that they could say anything they wanted to him in Russian, only that they had better say it right: that shut everyone up in a hurry! When I worked more than forty years ago as a cook at a local Chinese restaurant, I noticed that of my Vietnamese coworkers who were trying to learn English, the ones who threw away their pride and jumped into speaking English, errors and all, quickly learned it while those afraid to sound silly took much, much longer.  Making mistakes is an important part of learning...schools should chiefly be concerned about keeping their students from blowing up the lab in the process instead of stifling their progress by creating artificial little phony pockets of perfection...

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...

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...

Check Facts Before Going Off on Conspiracy Theories

A couple of people, whose identities I would rather protect but can say that I care for both of them, recently lowered a bomb of a news story on me.  In it apparently our own state government has a special agenda for persecuting and even eliminating their identity group, based on two news stories, one about paramedics and the other a piece of legislation signed into law a few days ago.  Upon hearing their narrative, I expressed empathy with them and outrage as to what was going on.  Then, later on in the day I got on my computer and investigated both stories, which these two had tied together into a sort of conspiracy.  The stories were completely unrelated, with the event about the emergency medical services having taken place long ago back in 2012, and in a distant state, just to begin with...along with other mitigating factors.  As for the bill in question, I read its official summary in detail and concluded that my friends' fears were completely unfounded...albeit with a possible hidden reason for their group's underlying concern that they probably didn't want out in the open.  Let me just say that all of this drama and rushing to judgment with sinister conspiracy theories doesn't just afflict right-wingers like MyLumpyPillow boss Mike Lindell...anyone can go bananas over absolutely nothing if that's what they feel led to do and are too lazy to perform just a little honest fact-checking and refuse to allow for the possibility that their initial hunch was wrong...

Podcaster Big on Stepping Out of the Box

Podcaster Rob Dial, on a recent episode, promoted the idea of continual learning in fields extraneous to one's business or expertise in order to pick up useful information and principles that can cross over with their applications.  He cited examples of the person who transferred the then-innovation of banks offering drive-through options for their customers to the fast-food industry and the founder of Priceline, who observed that grocers would sell overripe bananas at a discount...so why not use this for unsold airline tickets as well?  Dial calls all this "thinking outside the box", an already well-worn cliche, I admit.  But he does have a good point: every field of endeavor and specialty contains within it elements that are transferrable to others.  The podcast host suggested that we take an hour each weekday...or five a week...to learn something absolutely new about an area that we're unfamiliar with. I'm "kind of" on board with this, with two caveats.  One, if you're rooted in your own specialty and only skimming the surface of the target subject matter just to pick up some ideas for your own use, then I'm afraid you're going to miss out on a lot of understanding pertinent to that area. And two, when starting to learn in a new field, the beginning is often deceptively easy, with the more profound lessons to be learned requiring more extensive study, an extra investment of time Dial perhaps wasn't considering: hopping around from one area to another is going to stymie many possible benefits.  And the elite in any field will tell you that while they like to see that field popularized, sometimes those who are accomplishing this aren't exactly on the money with their presentation, leaving out important stuff.  Still, I think...especially with Internet sites like search engines, Wikipedia and YouTube as good points of departure...that delving into unaccustomed areas can not only be lucrative, but also just plain fun...

YouTube an Interesting Site for Exploring

Right now, on my television (in Roku mode) is a YouTube video, three hours forty-three minutes in length, from the viewpoint of someone running the Boston Marathon...and man, the weather on this date is awful!  Rain, obvious cold, slick roads...not exactly my choice for running a race, but definitely interesting to watch.  Of late I have been exploring what's available on YouTube and have been pleasantly surprised.  Although audiobooks and movies seem to be largely available only at a premium, the "free" version of this site contains an incredible selection of video types to watch.  If you want to learn anything in an academic setting without the twin traumas of exams and tuition, you can attend high quality classes online in just about any subject you want...I'm partial to the college mathematics material and my current favorite teacher is "Professor Leonard", who has an excellent teaching style, not skipping steps and showing the kind of respect toward the students I found uncommon in my own experience going to school.  His courses span college curricula from algebra review to precalculus to three levels of calculus to differential equations to statistics.  I had hoped he taught linear algebra, but alas, that's not to be...but there are other resources for that.  I also like foreign language listening practice videos...Kendra puts out some good ones in the more known languages.  When I was recliner-bound, recovering at home from my open-heart surgery in 2021, I liked to watch coffee shop videos that would go on for hours...just empty shops with hot, steaming coffee cups in different tables with usually some piano or light jazz in the background.  Lately I've noticed a plethora of "study with me" videos, usually of college students either doing their assignments (mostly on computer) at home or in public places like Starbucks (my preference).  I also have enjoyed going on various roller coaster rides vicariously on YouTube...my favorites are the rides at Tampa's Busch Gardens like Montu and Kumba...and some of the newer ones I've yet to go on.  I've always regarded Montu as the "Cadillac of Coasters" and have ridden it in the "real world" some 27 times...unfortunately I've read that Kumba (rode it 22 times) may soon be disassembled to make way for future attractions at the park...still, I'll have the YouTube experience to fall back on, I suppose. I've only begun to scratch the surface of what is available on this fascinating medium. I just turned around to see what's going on in the marathon: there are some blue patches in the sky around the 27-minute mark, but they're all still far from downtown Boston on the course, although they're no longer way out in the boonies where the race began...

The "Four" and My Imaginary Double Album

Last year Radiohead members Jonny Greenwood and Thom Yorke collaborated with other musicians to form a side project called The Smile and released the album A Light for Attracting Attention.  Unlike with Regina Spektor, whose "next" album I had been waiting for since 2015, this was something unexpected. I bought the CD (along with Regina's new one titled Home, Before and After) and have it in my car, ready for play at a moment's notice.  Of late, I have focused on tracks 1,2, 10 and 11 of the Smile album: The Same, The Opposite, A Hairdryer, and Waving a White Flag...yes, the titles sound a little strange, especially that third one.  That's what I listen to when driving to and from work.  As for what I listen to while working out at home, I turn my TV/Roku on YouTube and play an imaginary "double album" loaded with favorite songs that I think go together: here they are (think how "vinyl" LPs are structured):

RECORD ONE

Side 1

1-HELD by Spoon

2-FORTUNES by Metric

3-TIMEBOMB by Beck

4-RAINDROPS by Regina Spektor

5-WILD by Spoon

Side 2

1-THE SAME by The Smile

2-THE FACE, PT.1 by Metric

3-RABBIT HOLE by Arcade Fire

4-THE OPPOSITE by The Smile

5-LOVEOLOGY by Regina Spektor

RECORD TWO 

Side 1

1-SPACETIME FAIRYTALE by Regina Spektor

2-EVEN FLOW by Pearl Jam

3-TIME TO PRETEND by MGMT

4-E BOW THE LETTER by R.E.M.

Side 2

1-TREAT by Kasabian

2-US by Regina Spektor

3-THE WRONG CHILD by R.E.M.

4-MORNING BELL by Radiohead

5-CALCULATION (THEME) by Metric

I am a creature of routine and habit...I tend to stick to the above order in my listening, go figure.  I put this out here in the blogosphere just in case you, my valued reader, might already know of some these acts and their music or, perhaps might be inspired to give them a listen.  In any case, I got a kick out of writing this...

YouTube and YouTube Channel Both Good Resources

Lately I've been exploring different YouTube channels and video series that teach and review mathematics and foreign languages...it's pretty amazing how you can choose just about any topic you want to learn about and get instruction on this excellent site.  In our household, we also switched from our cable-based television service to the YouTube Channel...different from YouTube itself...to provide at a much cheaper rate the same channels we were previously receiving, using Roku.  To supplement them we purchased an inexpensive indoor antenna and through it pick up all the local stations as well as spinoff channels like MeTV and Comet.  And, of course, I like to listen to the music that YouTube provides...sure, I get a lot of commercials but that's cool.  Maybe in some future article I'll discuss some of the things I'm studying in greater detail...

Quote of the Week...from Friedrich Nietzsche

 There are two different types of people in the world, those who want to know, and those who want to believe.                                                                        ---Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche was a nineteenth century German philosopher...I could get into his thinking, but it was the above quote of his that I found especially pertinent to today's world, so I'll focus on that instead.  It all comes down to the narratives that people live by, and their intellectually dishonest way of only accepting information that upholds those narratives while either dismissing or ignoring anything that invalidates them, often demonizing the unfortunate bringer of the unwelcome information.  Mike Pence says Biden was the duly elected president in 2020...that contradicts the MAGA election deniers' narrative, even to the point that there were outcries to hang him as a traitor. And what about Dr. Fauci and others who properly informed the public about the dangers of the Covid-19 virus: that cramped a lot of selfish people's lifestyles...and since they didn't want to wear masks, they bought into anything that dispelled their effectiveness.  In today's Internet world where search engines are rigged to give users the results they want to see and social media like Facebook routinely puts "facts" on their newsfeeds meant to bolster the preconceived notions of their users, the type of people that Nietzsche referred to who "want to believe" seems to be growing in numbers while their power of influence in our society is consequently increasing, especially with regard to politics and elections.  Donald Trump once claimed that he could step out onto 5th Avenue in New York and shoot someone without losing his supporters...yet after that comment he was elected president with his fans wanting so badly to believe that he is a completely different person than he really is.  A large...and I fear growing...segment of our population believes what it wants to believe, and damn reality when it contradicts those beliefs...

Looking at Upcoming Running Races...and Some Missing Ones

I'm looking at upcoming distance running races in my local area in Gainesville and surrounding locales, so I decided to check out the Web to see what's up.  I was surprised to discover that there's a 10K race this coming Saturday morning to be held on the paved Hawthorne Trail southeast of town with the starting and finishing line at Boulware Springs Park.  I'm not interested in shorter distances than 10 K (6.2 miles) and think it might be fun to try this one out.  The only problem is that I do get off from work at 10 the previous evening and would have preferred a Sunday race day instead.  Oh well...

While checking out that upcoming race I also looked to see whether there was any hint of revival for three of my favorite races: the 10K Thanksgiving Day Turkey Trot and the Five Points of Life Half-Marathon here in Gainesville and the Ocala Half-Marathon.  All three events were halted in 2020 because of Covid and only the Five Points race resumed this past February...but even that one seems to not be scheduled.  That's sad, but understandable, I suppose.  It seems the general trend for races in these times is to hold them on outlying sites like parks and rails-to-trails courses where the overhead expenses may be lighter on the organizers.  Earlier this year there was a very flexibly run race of multiple distances down in Ocala, completely contained on a looping 5K course inside a park...the distance options ranged from 5K all the way to 50 miles!  But I can't seem to find any indication that its parent company, "Awesomesauce" is even still in existence...certainly no more races seem to be in the works for 2023.  That's one thing that bugs me about the Internet, where you supposedly can get any information that you want.  Well, that's clearly not true, for when someone decides to close shop on something...even if it's gone on for years...they usually just leaving you hanging with no information, wondering whatever the hell happened...