The Levels of Potter

There is a dilemma I face every time I want to discuss a book, movie, or TV episode. In the first place, I want to stimulate interest in whatever I’m talking about. So, those who haven’t yet read the book or seen the show can’t be told of their outcomes. But it’s often the outcomes that I want to discuss! This is particularly annoying when I want to bring up something that happened within a series, such as Harry Potter, for example.

The Harry Potter series is especially obnoxious in this regard, since there are people at all kinds of different levels therein. First, there are those who’ve never read any of the books nor seen any of the movies. Then, there are those who are in various in-between stages. Finally, we have people who’ve passed the fourth book/movie Goblet of Fire but have yet to read the fifth installment Order of the Phoenix, people who’ve passed that level but still haven’t complete book #6 The Half-Blood Prince, people who’ve gone from #1 through #6 but haven’t completed book #7 The Deathly Hallows, and finally people who’ve read it all (like me)! I abhor plot-spoiling (I heard that movie critic Roger Ebert once gave away the ending of a movie on his movie review show). And the fact that this series is so spread out makes it almost impossible for two people in a group to discuss it without a third person being told something they hadn’t yet gotten to.

The only thing I know to do about this is to put a warning about plot spoilers right after my entry’s title and just before the body of the article. Then I could feel free to write my articles like the literature assignments I did in high school. Of course, when I did my book reports back then, I didn’t have to concern myself with spoiling the ending for the teacher. The idea was to describe the setting, characters, plot, and, above all, what I as a reader came away with from the story. And since I’ve done that so many times in the past with books that I did NOT want to read, I think it’s only fitting that I catch up a little and write a few reports about some books that I actually wanted to read. With the prefaced assumption, of course, that you, the blog reader, like my teachers of old, have already read the same material (or seen the same movie or episode). I know that if I had written a book that many people had enjoyed reading, then I would like nothing better than for them to freely discuss it a lot among themselves, without fear of “giving it away” to others!

With this end in mind, I will put a disclaimer “THIS ARTICLE MAY CONTAIN PLOT SPOILERS FOR ______” so that you can avoid having the story given away to you accidentally. The subsequent review then may not necessarily be comprehensive, and it might not even give away much of the plot, either (but better safe than sorry). And, of course, what I write on it are MY reactions. Each of us has our own personal take on what we read or watch, and that is equally valid as well. I’m looking forward to seeing how this works!

Kakuro

The Thursday evening before last, I was relaxing in my comfortable chair in the corner of my living room, with severe storms brewing outside, reading that day’s edition of my local newspaper The Gainesville Sun. It’s one of the benefits of living in Gainesville that I am able to have such a good newspaper as this! Anyway, I happened upon their weekly Kakuro puzzle and I said, what the heck, let’s see how far I can go in it before I get stymied. And, as the thunder outside was booming and lightning was crashing loudly right outside my window, I focused on the puzzle and, to my amazement, completed it successfully! It was my first Kakuro victory! I decided then to hit some sites on the Web that had more Kakuro, and I completed four more that stormy night.

The following days, when I had some free time available, I would sit down and try my hand at a Kakuro puzzle. Inevitably, I’d reach a point in the puzzle where I’d end up with the same two numbers in a row (which isn’t permitted in the rules). This was due to carelessness on my part. I went through about six puzzles like this. And then, a couple of nights ago, as storms were once again descending over my area, my concentration went into full throttle forward again and I zipped successfully through two more puzzles!

George Noory, the paranormal-accepting host of the late night radio show Coast-to-Coast AM, repeatedly claims that there are no such things as coincidences. But my gut instincts tell me that’s a lot of nonsense. Sure, sometimes there really is a cause-and-effect relationship between two hitherto-believed-to-be unrelated phenomena, and sometimes the events are tied together by their connections with a third, unknown event. But much of the time things just happen at the same time! Still, it’s a little spooky to me that my mental concentration was more enhanced when their seemed to be more electricity in the air! Needless to say, this bears more observation before I can make any reasonable conclusion about a connection.

I had written earlier that I would finish my Fiendish Sudoku book (I still have more than fifty puzzles left) before starting Kakuro, but the opportunity presented itself and I’m now glad that I’m doing Kakuro, too. Both puzzles are specialized logic problems with their own particular appeals. Kakuro does, however demand a certain elementary competence with adding numbers. So, if you’ve successfully completed the first grade, I think you’re qualified to start Kakuro. Obviously, it’s a bit more involved than that, but like anything worthwhile, you pick up insights and skills as you go along and gradually get better at it. I’m just wondering whether I’ll reach the point where it’s too easy (assuming I’ve overcome my tendency to make careless mistakes). Until that moment, which may never happen, I’ll enjoy my newly-found hobby!

Saturday Newsbreak: 8/18

A new weekly feature that I’m starting on this blog is my short take on some interesting (to me) stories out there, not in any particular order of importance. Nor do I plan to be comprehensive about “covering the news”. So, here goes….

--Much is being made in Gainesville of University of Florida football coach Urban Meyer’s recent statement to the press that (referring to his team) “we stink!”. But Gainesville Sun sports writer Pat Dooley (one of my favorites in the paper) noted that other coaches are doing essentially the same thing: openly criticizing their own teams before the media, apparently to get them to focus harder on coming together in preparation for the season, which for the Gators begins on September 1. But I think most of us take the criticisms with that in mind, and not as the coaches’ true sentiments. I’m looking forward to an exciting football season this year, with Florida hopefully being able to play for the Southeastern Conference championship at year’s end. I’m also hoping that Florida State and Miami can recover from their disappointing seasons last year and resume being the nationally-recognized powerhouses that they’ve been over the past few decades.

--Tropical Storm Erin just hit the southern Texas coast, and now the main forecasts have Hurricane Dean plowing into the same area in the middle of next week. It looks, at least at this point, like the western Gulf of Mexico is getting the same kind of “attention” that Florida received in 2004 with its four hurricanes.

--Arupa Freeman (a local advocate for the homeless) wrote a compelling piece in the editorial section of the August 17 Gainesville Sun about Gainesville’s recently-adopted policies against the homeless, which include evictions from public lands and anti-panhandling ordinances. She decries these actions and others, although the article’s title, “Gainesville’s reign of terror against the homeless”, is a bit on the melodramatic side. Freeman brings out a lot of information in the article, nevertheless, and if you can find a copy of it, I’d recommend you read it as well, for its message can apply to any other community in the nation. She correctly points out that some of Gainesville’s homeless have criminal records, which simultaneously makes them pariahs as homeless people and unable to get a decent job that could pull them out of their situation. Many of their crimes were drug-related. I don’t rightly understand why we have to force those who have been convicted of a crime to have the infraction “stamped” on them the rest of their lives, even after they have served the legally-prescribed penalty for it. This is a national-level problem that can only be solved through national leaders (or grass-roots leaders attaining national status). And our nationwide policy of processing mentally ill people through institutions and spitting them out onto the streets is, to me, nothing short of barbaric (I guess I’m starting to get a little melodramatic, too)!

--I saw Presidential candidate and Illinois Senator Barack Obama on C-Span the other day, speaking and answering questions outdoors somewhere in one of the three “pampered” states that perennially seem to be sites of the early campaigns. After hearing him, I came to the stunning realization that I agreed with everything that he said! I still think that Hillary Clinton would be a O.K. President and has been unfairly vilified in some parts of the media, but Obama has something that I see is invaluable to being a truly effective President that I don’t see in any of the candidates from either party (Republican Mike Huckabee is the only one coming close): he is a great communicator, in the tradition of Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan. Some have added Bill Clinton to that list, but I think that Obama is better than him at both persuading and even exciting an audience.

--It's dismaying to see the deaths and casualties accruing from the efforts made to rescue the trapped miners in the collapsed Utah mine. Don't we have technology available to supply each miner with a tracking or homing device that would make it much simpler to find them in the event of an accident like this? The last thing rescuers need is to spend any more time than is absolutely necessary down there looking for people.

Dorsal Lateral Prefrontal Cortex

Allstate Insurance Company just recently ran an ad in magazines explaining why young people seem to be greater risks for insurance. It seems that a part of the human brain called the dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex doesn’t usually completely develop until one gets into their mid-twenties. This part of the brain, according to the ad, is largely responsible for people being able to discern long-range consequences of their actions, and its immaturity reputedly implies that their ability to render serious judgments concerning the affect of their actions on their lives and on others is relatively impaired if they are still in their late teens or early twenties. To which I muttered to myself, “H-m-m-m!”

So people aren’t really capable of making truly responsible decisions concerning their own lives until their mid-twenties, huh? Then, why oh why, do we as a society push young people into making major career decisions right in the middle of this age group? Why do we insist on recruiting soldiers from them? Why is it such a great thing to see young adults marry in their early twenties and rush off to have children?

I believe that, along with the development of said part of the brain, the young person needs experiences that progressively enable him or her to properly integrate physical growth with personality, including emotions, intellect, and ethics. Both colleges and the military seem to recognize, and at least on some level, acknowledge, that their students or recruits receive beneficial training in handling stress and making decisions under varying degrees of supervision. Both societal institutions emphasize personal growth of the individual into a more responsible citizen in their appeals for enrollment. And I’m not against early marriage per se: I just don’t think people should be getting married because it’s “time to”.

People should not be put into pressure-cooker situations where they feel that it’s now or never, that whatever they decide at a particular “window” in time commits their lives inexorably in a certain directions and shuts out other possibilities or opportunities. And I believe that’s the situation that too many young adults find themselves having to deal with, but with their growth still too incomplete to enable them to get a better, more farsighted perspective on their true situation (and how much freedom they really have in their lives). I also believe that, in a more primitive or traditional social setting, there would have been a greater role attached to the sagely elders, whose advice to the youths would both have been more forthcoming and more accepted. Nowadays, though, it seems that young people are, in a sense, being encouraged to grow up at earlier and earlier ages, while their physical (and dorsal prefrontal lateral cortex) development still takes just as long as ever to mature.

Changing Rules Retroactively

When the 1981 major league baseball season began, there was a real danger of a strike in the middle of the season if management and the players’ union couldn’t come to a new collective bargaining agreement. But while the two sides were coming to heads against each other both behind the scenes and in front of the press, the teams went on with their schedules and played ball. Until about one third of the way through the regular season, that is, and then the strike began, ultimately consuming the middle third of the 1981 regular season. When the strike finally ended and play was to resume, the owners, trying to regenerate interest in all of the baseball cities, declared 1981 to be a split season. Whoever was ahead in each division at the end of the retroactively-declared “first season” was declared that division’s winner and was eligible for the post-season playoffs, which would also include the newly-invented second-half’s “winners”. The result was that the team with the best overall major league record that year, the Cincinnati Reds (66-42), missed the playoffs, while a team with an overall losing record, the Kansas City Royals (50-53), made the playoffs! All because of an expedient change of the rules without regard to the fact that none of the teams, up to the moment of the strike’s onset, had any inkling of the stakes involved in being ahead at that moment. So, in the National League West, Los Angeles had a 36-21 record while Cincinnati, feeling pretty good about themselves (Their ace pitcher Tom Seaver was having a banner year) was only ½ game behind at 35-21. Unfortunately for them, the greedy folks in charge of baseball changed the rules in mid-stream. Houston barely beat out the Reds in the “second season”, shutting the best team in baseball out of a chance to go to the World Series that year.

I think everybody gets a gut feeling of injustice when something like this happens. The ground rules are set for something in a particular arena of society, people act according to those rules, and then, after the fact, the rules are changed to effect a different outcome.

The 2000 Presidential Election is another example of this occurrence, with transgressions instigated from both sides. In the crucial, incredibly close state of Florida, Democratic lawyers, soon after the election, initially pushed for manual recounts only in the three South Florida counties that went for Gore, hoping that counting rejected, misread, and uncounted ballots in those counties would tip the scales for their candidate. In my opinion, this was a big strategic error on their part, in two ways. One, these actions tilted public opinion against Gore and for Bush. Two, they wasted too much time trying to do this when the only fair, viable option was a statewide manual recount, which the Florida Supreme Court finally mandated. But then the US Supreme Court stepped in, and in its Bush vs. Gore decision, overruled the State Supreme Court’s decision and halted the recount, effectively electing Bush to the Presidency. This, too, was changing the rules after the fact, since it was Constitutionally a state’s mandated responsibility that it decide for itself how it was going to choose its electors to represent it in the Electoral College! In the midst of all this grew the feeling that it wasn’t the people who mattered, but rather which side had the most aggressive lawyers and well-positioned judges acting on their behalf.

As a kid, have you ever found yourself playing a game of tag with another kid who refused to ever allow you to win? You’d be “it”, and, just as you’re about to tag him or her, the sore loser of a brat would suddenly find something to touch and declare it to be “base”. But the kid wouldn’t respect it if you did the same thing. That’s the impression I get of the people who pull the rug out from under others by changing rules after-the-fact. They’re immature, sore losers who have no right to be in positions of leadership. The only thing they’re good at is creating “bases” to shield themselves from accountability for their actions.

Reading on the Eights

Yes, I’m applying this recurring “on the eights” theme to my reading as well as running and piano. So, what’s been going on for the past eight weeks with my “pleasure” reading? As I mentioned on June 20, I had been reading Isaac Asimov’s Foundation and Earth, the fifth book of his Foundation series. Once I reached the surprise ending to this book, I decided to go back and read novels of his that were set in the same fictional “universe”, but whose stories predated the era recounted in the Foundation series. I started by reading his collection of robot short stories titled The Robot Collection. You may have seen the movie The Bicentennial Man (starring Robin Williams), which was based on a story with the same title in this collection. After finishing this, I started on his The Caves of Steel, a full-blown robot novel. There are more novels to come after this, covering the “Robot” era, the “Empire” era, and finally the pre-"Foundation" period. Plus, Asimov came out with novels that had a glancing connection to the others. Naturally, to be reading all of these works, I have to enjoy his writing style, which Asimov himself had described as plain. And that style worked for Isaac Asimov.

Plain is the opposite, though, of the style of another favorite author of mine. Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes is, for me, as much a celebration of the English language as it is a story about life, death, fear and love. I’m curious as to how anyone would go about translating Bradbury’s almost flow-of-consciousness way of describing things into another language. His style in this novel reminded me of his book Dandelion Wine, another of my favorites. Something Wicked is a novel that merits a more detailed analysis at a future time.

I’ve also been continuing my Stephen King readings, finishing his puzzling short novel The Colorado Kid and reading From a Buick 8, Pet Sematary, Rage, and Gerald’s Game. Of all of these, Pet Sematary was easily the best as well as the scariest. Rage was an earlier “Richard Bachman” work that King had pulled from publication because of violent student shooting incidents in high schools. From a Buick 8, I suspect, may somehow be tenuously connected to some of his other works, but that’s just idle speculation on my part (if you ever read Hearts in Atlantis, you may know where I’m driving at). I just finished Gerald’s Game and, to be perfectly honest, I found it to be the most difficult and wrenching of his works to get through so far. King used a total solar eclipse that cut through Maine in 1963 as a theme in both this story and Dolores Claiborne as well as making it a nexus linking the two stories’ protagonists with each other.

Finally, the crowning moment of my readings this past eight weeks has to be J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. What a great, exciting, fitting end (if it is truly the end) to this series! I was one of those fanatics who spent every free moment I had reading it, starting as soon as I arrived home with it in the wee hours of July 21. Truly, The Deathly Hallows was her best work of the series.

When browsing through bookstores or the book sections in grocery and department stores, I’m tempted to just start reading a completely different author, such as Nora Roberts, for example. Who knows, there may be a writer out there who says it all for me!

Top-Down and Bottom-Up

It’s always interesting to me how many different aspects of society are presented one way when in reality, they are the diametric opposite. One of the areas that this is so is when processes are presented as top-down or bottom-up, but in reality are the opposite. For example:

--In most elections for Congress, Governor, or President, it is the Party apparatus that usually stands behind a small number of candidates, who then campaign in the “democratic” process. In Presidential elections, the parties’ nominees have usually already been essentially selected before most people even have the opportunity to vote in a primary. On Election night, we’re all supposed to be so grateful that we live in a land where we can freely choose our leaders from “amongst ourselves”!

--In the old USSR, there were two parts to the State: the Communist Party, and the official government. Ostensibly a bottom-up democratically-elected representative body, the “government” consisted of elected candidates hand-picked behind-the-scenes by the Party (and the Party members were always answerable to their leaders (whom they supposedly “elected”) not the other way around).

--The more channels proliferating on the TV dial give the impression of a diversity of sources through which one can receive information and entertainment. In truth, most of the channels are owned by a very small number of large media corporations who coordinate what programming goes on their channels.

--Many forums that appear to involve popular voting, such as American Idol, in truth allow that only at the tail end of the process. The auditioning of participants is a completely top-down operation, with the final picks of winners the “veneer” (making it similar to our political electoral process). Many game show and reality show contestants do not reflect the "people" but rather the image that the media corporation wants to project as "the people".

--Corporations often maintain the fiction that they are democratically run by the stockholders, who in reality do not usually have any say in the managerial operations and decisions of the corporations.

--A corporation may often hold surveys among its employees, ostensibly to give them a “voice” into the corporation’s operation. In actuality, the survey results are often selectively interpreted to affirm whatever policies that corporation’s leaders want affirmed.

--During a heated election campaign, a supposed “grass roots” political action committee forms, putting on ads attacking one of the candidates. In truth, the opposing campaign is behind the PAC, itself a creation of that campaign’s chief strategists.

It’s not whether something is run top-down or bottom-up that I object to: it’s the deception involved in misrepresenting the process that I find manipulative.

It's the Lines, Stupid

Three years ago, my family and I paid a visit to Disney World for a few days. We stayed at their Coronado Resort and were able to visit most of their parks (although we missed out on Animal Kingdom). The hotel was comfortable, its swimming pool was fantastic (with a fun waterslide), and we had no trouble getting around to and from the parks we visited. Over the span of the stay, we visited Epcot Center, Magic Kingdom, MGM Studios, and Blizzard Beach. Throughout our visits, whenever we went on rides, we thoroughly enjoyed them. The key word in the preceding sentence is whenever. Because, although they had a system whereby one could make appointments for rides to avoid long lines, there were crushingly long lines everywhere, including many of the times that we had made appointments! I remember going (with an appointment) on MGM’s Tower of Terror ride with my son. We both liked it enough to try it again later that day, but had to stand in the regular line for two hours to enjoy our two minute ride! Fortunately, I had a list of items that I was memorizing and my son had brought a pocket video-game player, so we weren’t just standing there like so many others were, staring off vacantly in space. One day, we had gone to Blizzard Beach, which was loaded with very long lines and no “appointment” system. After going on a couple of the rides, storm clouds began brewing and we left the park. But I hadn’t yet experienced their vaunted Summit Plummet extreme waterslide ride, so one morning I got my son up early and we went to Blizzard Beach at its very opening. When it opened, we rushed in, stopping only to put our stuff someplace safe. Then we rushed, as fast and as safely as possible, to Summit Plummet. And we still had to wait in line 15-20 minutes!!

Sometimes I like to watch the Travel Channel when they have shows spotlighting various theme parks. Disney World, of course, is one of the regular features. Apparently, when Disney World was being designed, the flaws experienced earlier in Disneyland over in California were taken in account. Since Disney World’s Magic Kingdom was divided into different areas that had different themes, they didn’t want employees from one area crossing another area in their costumes, messing up the “atmosphere”. So, they built what we experience as Disney World’s Magic Kingdom on top of an entire underground network that connects the entire park without anyone down there ever having to walk on the surface. Thus, a costumed employee in, say, Frontierland could go straight down without crossing other areas. They went to all this trouble in order to make the park look “right”. But to me, I couldn’t care less about that issue. So, to the big shots running Disney World, here’s one tourist’s input: I see one overriding eyesore at your parks: it’s the lines, stupid!!!

Homebodies

The renown eighteenth-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant, famous for his works on reason, was a notorious homebody who spent many years in his hometown of Königsberg (now Kaliningrad in Russia), following exacting routines. It was said that the locals around town could set their clocks by Kant’s actions. And yet he was the author of a series of travel guides! Kant understood an important principle that many people just don’t seem to get: it doesn’t matter that much where you go to do things, but rather what things you do wherever you are. I’ve come to be a believer in Kant’s (or Manny’s, as I like to call him) philosophy, at least that part of his philosophy reflected in his lifestyle. Especially in today’s world of digital cable TV, cell phones, Blockbuster Video, and the Internet with its e-mail, blogs, shopping, Wikipedia, and search engines, it’s becoming less and less necessary to go traveling all about in order to accomplish things. Still, I’m kind of disappointed that virtual reality technology hasn’t developed enough to where I can just slip on a helmet-like device and “transport” myself anywhere I have the machine programmed for. There’s got to be a huge demand for this: why hasn’t it exploded into the marketplace yet? I remember Disney World’s Carousel of Progress, where Grandma (in tomorrow’s world) is shown playing a virtual reality video game using special “goggles”.

There is an irony to traveling: although one often travels to get a sense of freedom and mobility, much of the time is spent confined and immobile, waiting in lines or for departure or arrival times. There are often prescribed tours, schedules, and routes that limit the traveler in both time and space to a much greater extent than if he had stayed home. Plus, the traveler is restricted, often severely, as to what he can take with him. Still, I recognize that there are certain places that my family and I want to go see, and I’m willing to forgo my comfort in the interest of the experience and new memories. But it still goes against my instincts!

Even when I’m traveling, I’m a bit of a homebody, but I think this may have more to do with common sense than personal predilection. I see no point in being shuttled around on whirlwind tours that give me no time to get a sense of the place that I am visiting. And usually, tours of that type are more expensive than just going someplace and staying there for a while (and really getting to know it).

I don’t need to go back centuries in time or even to another country to find an example of someone who, although a visionary, preferred a relatively “stationary” life. The late Isaac Asimov, author of about 500 books and confirmed New Yorker, was also a homebody. But his scope was a little different than “Manny’s”: “Ike” wrote books on a galactic scale!

Campaign Gripes

Doesn’t it strike you as completely asinine that people seeking the office of President in the 2008 election have had to campaign so early? I try to put myself into the positions of the candidates themselves and I see some problems. For one, the Democrats all feel as if they need to comment on anything and everything that President Bush is acting upon (or not acting upon). It’s not so much that they want to seem like nitpicking, chronic critics: the media that they struggle for access to and exposure in brings up these issues to them, demanding a response. Since I’m of the opinion that, Republican or Democrat, the President is going to act similarly in many situations, it forces opposition party candidates to often take unreasonable stances on issues, as well as creating the impression that they are all doomsayers and that every “silver lining” has a “cloud”! You don’t hear too many of them saying, “Yes, I agree with Bush on this issue” very much, do you? Republican candidates, it seems to me, don’t have the same problem as the Democrats, for whether or not they agree with the President’s actions on specific issues, they can opt for “supporting the office” of President by restraining their criticism of his performance. Democratic front-runners like Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Edwards, on the other hand, seem to have the irreconcilable task of simultaneously having “important” things to say in order to stay in the media spotlight while looking “presidential” all the time. But part of the image of a President is that he or she is a calm, wise, deliberative soul who weighs options, listens to sagely advice, and then acts decisively. The campaign, at this early stage, belies that image for which the candidates are trying to project about themselves. And in the midst of it all, they are all seeking money contributions, also belying a myth that we still like to entertain in America that it’s we the people who choose our President and elected representatives.

Funny thing, though, I have rarely ever voted in a primary election when the nomination wasn’t already pretty much wrapped up. I thought that, this time, all of the primaries had been moved up to prevent states like Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina from having an idiotically disproportionate role in the nominating process. So where are all the candidates campaigning this time around? Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina! I even heard that lagging Democratic candidate New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson proclaimed that the state of Iowa was a major target for terrorists (so they obviously need all sorts of extra Federal funding). I don’t suppose the impending Iowa caucuses had anything to do with that statement! What was the point of all the other states moving up their primaries several weeks if Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina move their votes up to stay ahead of them? I don’t know about you, but I’m really getting tired, in this nation of 300 million people, of the same obnoxious curmudgeons in small Iowa and New Hampshire towns being pandered to by my future “national” leaders! And Iowa’s isn’t even a legitimate primary election!

On-The Spot Storm Reporting

This hurricane season is about to get into high gear and I’m getting ready for my enjoyable hobby of sitting in front of my television set, watching foolish reporters standing on location in the direct paths of approaching dangerous tropical storms, and then letting the storms, when they arrive, soak them completely and buffet them all over the place (while they tell the viewers how dangerous this all really is). But because they’re in front of a camera, reporting for a TV station or network, that makes it O.K., I suppose. I’m still waiting for the time when somebody like the Weather Channel’s Jim Cantore is standing outside in the middle of a hurricane and is suddenly lifted up in the air, the last thing anyone seeing of him is his tiny, dwindling body disappearing in the clouds above. Maybe then, and only then, will this foolhardy competition to see who can get soaked and blown around the most on TV yield to more prudent (and informative) reporting. But I think this is really a deliberate strategy on the part of commercial broadcasters to bring in viewers. It’s the same kind of draw that an auto race has, where spectators may be ostensibly there to “follow the sport” and their favorite drivers, but furtively are there in the hope that they’ll see firsthand a terrible, spectacular crash (after all, the accidents are the big “highlights” shown on TV sports shows).

In spite of the danger of being in the midst of powerful storms, I think that the weather news organizations that send out these people sometimes overhype their on-the-spot coverage. I remember one recent storm somewhere on the East coast when a correspondent was on a beach babbling how the weather was deteriorating and how dangerous it was becoming. But you could see, all around him, people going about their own business as if nothing were happening. Finally, a man pushing a baby in a stroller walked close by the “intrepid” reporter, making his presence on that beach appear utterly ridiculous. And, as I recall, nothing of import did happen there.

Apart from the Weather Channel, the station I like to follow for good hurricane coverage is Channel 2-WESH in Orlando/Daytona Beach (which my cable service thankfully provides). WESH goes out of its way to provide detailed coverage, often going well outside its local area, if that’s where the biggest story is. My local Channel 20-WCJB doesn't seem to be as staffed as WESH, although it can help out with reports on flooding and other local conditions in Gainesville. But even with its meager staffing, WCJB also has sent people out to stand in the middle of storms. I guess it’s a case of nobody wanting to be left out.

So far, we’ve had a pretty light hurricane season. But it only takes one severe hurricane hitting at the worst possible place to turn a mild season into a calamitous one. I hope the brave souls in broadcasting will show a little common sense and not push their luck with their on-the-spot storm reporting too far. But I realistically expect them to make complete fools out of themselves once again, hopefully to my amusement and not my horror!

Beatles Breakup

When I was thirteen years old, in the late spring of 1970, I was dismayed to find out that the Beatles were breaking up. I had heard rumors of breakups going back to 1966, but nothing had come of them and, perhaps, nothing would come of this, either. But it happened anyway. Back then, I didn’t know what caused it, but it came out when Paul McCartney released his solo album McCartney that year and revealed in a self-interview in its notes that he was leaving the group. Later, he filed a lawsuit against the Beatles’ manager Allen Klein has well as against his bandmates John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr. Why? McCartney had a number of reasons that he gave, such as that Phil Spector tampered with his song The Long and Winding Road on the Let It Be album and that the Beatles tried to interfere with his solo career by asking him to delay the release of his album so that it wouldn’t coincide with Let It Be’s release. But the real reason was pretty obvious: Paul was fed up with his manager, whom he vehemently opposed but was hired by the other three by a three-to-one vote. He resented the fact that the Beatles no longer performed publicly, something that Paul always felt was an energizing and fulfilling activity. He was also tired of the other Beatles who, one-by-one, had walked out on the group at various times, threatening to quit. I believe that Paul took to heart that John was serious about breaking up the band when he started ranting about wanting a “divorce” from the Beatles during a meeting the previous year. I also think that Paul disliked Yoko Ono and her constant presence with John whenever the band was together. He was used to informally collaborating with Lennon and putting out ideas for songs. But John had pretty much isolated himself with Yoko, whom he had recently married. John, likewise, expressed contempt for Paul’s new wife, Linda, and her family, the Eastmans, whom Paul had promoted to manage the band but had shown themselves to be both too snobbish and pro-Paul (so they were rejected in favor of Klein). George also had been in an antagonistic stance against Paul because he believed that Paul was trying to take over the band during recording sessions and interfered with his guitar playing on songs. Also, George resented that only two of his own compositions would be allowed on Beatles albums, in spite of his increasing critical acceptance. It seemed at the time that only Ringo was enthusiastic about keeping the Beatles together. But instead of trying to bring the bickering members together, he chose to take sides with John and George against Paul, giving Paul the excuse to consider himself as the isolated “victim”, justified in seeking legal recourse to his predicaments.

There is, despite the little feuds and resentments breaking out among the band members, no reason why the Beatles could not have stayed together as a band, at least until their contract expired in 1977 (or, for that matter, indefinitely). Even if they were not on speaking terms with each other, they could have recorded tracks on their own with an agreed-upon producer (why not George Martin?) putting everything together to give it a feeling of coherence. They had already been doing this for a lot of their recordings toward the end, anyway. George could have had his desired four songs per album, which I believe (since I like his music) would have only enhanced the quality of the albums. For some reason, Paul and John both seemed to feel in 1970 that they were on the spot, and it was now or never as to what had to be decided then. Nothing could have been further from the truth! The Beatles had lived under extremely tightly spaced, tightly scheduled conditions for several years and were understandably tired of each other. Why not have them all agree to take a year off (like 1970) do their own solo projects and their own “things” away from each other, and agree to meet together on such-and-such a date in 1971 to put together a new album? Then, they could disperse again, do their own solo work (and Paul could perform publicly to his heart’s content, still enjoying his popularity and status as a “Beatle”), and return sometime in 1973 to crank out another Beatles album! And so on, indefinitely. It would only have taken a few weeks out of every two years to do this. This is the type of pattern that wiser bands, like the Rolling Stones, adopted. And I challenge anybody to find a group that fought among themselves like they did! Yet they’ve endured as a band to this day.

The year 1970 would have been a very good time for each Beatle to take a “time out” and get as far away from the others as possible. And they did, but not enough. They couldn’t see that time was on their side, and because of that we’ve missed out on many good things that they would have contributed to popular music had they stuck together as an group.

Sequels and Series

When I was a kid, I rarely saw a movie on its first run, and there were no videos or DVDs to rent out, either. I would just have to wait until the movie I wanted to see was shown on TV, and if it wasn’t shown on TV, then I was out of luck. Even if it was, I could still be out of luck if it was opposite something that my parents wanted to see. There was a very popular science-fiction movie that came out in the late 1960s: so popular that four sequels were made, as well as a later spin-off TV series and a more recent remake of the first movie. But the strange thing about it is that the entire world on which everything in the movies was based gets utterly destroyed at the end of the second movie! With three more movies to go! That’s some trick! What else could they do but go back in time? That reminds me of one of the funniest skits I ever saw on Saturday Night Live. John Belushi played the captain of a wayward ship who was completely bonkers. The skit was narrated as if it were taken directly from a book told in the first person, with the skit itself being “Chapter One” of the story. At skit’s end, the narrator stated (more or less), “Stay tuned for Chapter Two: ‘I Was Eaten By Sharks’”!

Sequels are of two types, as I see it. One is the deliberate continuation of a series that the creator has envisioned from the start. The other is the tacking on of later stories, resulting from the unexpected big success of the original story. One can usually tell by the ending of the first movie or book whether or not it was intended to stand on its own as a complete work or as just the opening “round”. I believe 2001: A Space Odyssey was an example of a movie/book that author Arthur C. Clarke had designed as a work unto itself. It was only later, I believe, that he created an extended story line that completely changed the direction of the narrative. J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit is another example of a work standing on its own, followed up on its success later by the outstanding trilogy Lord of the Rings. But it’s obvious that J.K. Rowling had a series in mind after the first Harry Potter book came out; what isn’t so clear is how far ahead she envisioned its scope or outcome at that early time. The movie The Matrix, with its open-ended ending, gave promises of one or more future sequels to come. After some years of waiting, the two culminating movies came out in rapid succession and seemed to completely change the tone and direction of the story from the first movie. And, finally, there is the ultimately strange sort of sequel, which is one that takes place in a different, alternate reality from the original. To an extent, this is what happens in each of the four Space Odyssey stories that Clarke cranked out. The prime example of this strange phenomenon is with Stephen King’s two novels The Regulators (written under the pseudonym Richard Bachman) and Desperation. It’s not exactly that these stories happen in any order: no, they happen simultaneously, in different universes! But with the same cast of characters in both stories (but with different attributes)!

I think that, a lot of times, an author, trying to break into the big time, will write a novel that deliberately leaves some things hanging at the end, just in case the fans and the publisher decide that more needs to be written! If that happens, then the author is faced with the daunting (but pleasant) task of creating a world much greater in scope and detail to accommodate a larger series.

But sometimes, the promise of a successor to a work goes unanswered. Alas, when the Beatle’s album Let It Be was released in 1970, its jacket contained the proclamation (and promise) that “This is a new phase Beatles album.” And then, they broke up and….no more Beatles (although I did have a dream one time that I heard an entire “Lost Beatles Album” in minute detail. Of course, I rapidly forgot the songs soon after I had woken up)!

And, finally, the screwiest sequel is the sequel that nobody knew was one when it came out (with a different name at that) in 1977: Star Wars IV: A New Hope!!! Who knows the limits to the creative and sometimes mangled ways people can devise sequels? I’m sure that there are more exotic, if not outright silly, forms in the offing!

Vacation Hiatus

Later today, my family and I begin a vacation trip to South and Central Florida. We shouldn't be back until this Wednesday. I don't foresee any new blog entries until then, but you never know: an opportunity may arise unexpectedly! But most likely, my next entry will come on Wednesday evening.

Bombardment and Prisonball

When I was going to elementary school from the fourth through sixth grades, we had our customary recess/physical education period. And one of the games we used to play was Bombardment. This game used the typical outside, asphalt-surfaced, full basketball court, but instead of using the baskets, a bowling pin was placed underneath each basket on opposite ends of the court. The class was divided into two sides, each side relegated to one half of the court. The object of the game was to knock down the opposing team’s pin using those red, lightweight basketball-sized balls (usually with about four or five used per game) that were commonly used in elementary schools. In the process of the game, if someone got hit by a ball thrown by the other side before it bounced, they’d be out of the game (until the next game started). Unless they caught the ball, in which the opponent who threw it would be out of the game. So, as a game of Bombardment went on, fewer and fewer players would be actively involved, while more and more would be off the court. While “out” of the game, students would often make up their own games, talk with each other, or play on the monkey bars nearby. Apparently, to the faculty involved in overseeing this, that meant too much student freedom and not enough control, so a new game was later devised and called Prisonball. It was exactly the same as Bombardment, except that when you were “out”, instead of leaving the game, you had to stand in a small square inset on the opponent’s end of the court and wait for a ball to come to you (which rarely happened). If you were lucky and got hold of a ball, you then had to hit one of the opposing players with it to be “redeemed” and go back to your end to play. Can you guess what happened? As the game wore on, more and more players became “prisoners” and were cramped together, sometimes resembling “Black Hole of Calcutta” conditions, in the respective “prison” squares (with the more aggressive students jostling with others for positions on the outside). But this misery for the students was joy for the faculty, who once again had the students all under their thumbs. And it got to be that, at the beginning of a game, a teacher would loudly proclaim that it was to be Prisonball, not Bombardment. So one of my favorite games at school quickly turned into my most hated game there. Those responsible for this could control my participation, but they couldn’t control the contempt I felt for them then. It just made me, in the long run, less trusting of any school authority and more likely to go down my own paths, for better or for worse.

Minnesota Bridge Collapse

The day before yesterday, during early evening rush hour traffic, the I-35W bridge spanning the Mississippi River in Minneapolis, Minnesota, suddenly collapsed, dropping traffic on it sixty feet down to the river and into it. As of this writing, searches for bodies are still ongoing, but there are already four confirmed deaths in this terrible tragedy, with the number expected to rise. When something like this happens somewhere, it’s not just a local problem, but one that has national ramifications. The Interstate Highway System, begun under the Eisenhower Administration during the 1950s and constructed over the next twenty-some-odd years, is beginning to age. And, other than resurfacing, or repairs to obviously damaged sections (the area of I-75 that runs through Gainesville is especially prone to sinkholes), what has really been done to assure that the integrity of these roads has withstood the long march of time? In particular, what about the countless overpasses one crosses, not just going down one of these Interstate Routes, but also those, many in number, that other roads cross the Interstate with? To be sure, the stress on a short overpass wouldn’t necessarily be as severe as one spanning a big river, but some of the larger interchanges in big cities contain some extreme examples of road design. In the middle of these enormous, intricate confluences of highways, there are usually long stretches of road that are elevated (sometimes very high up), giving them the equivalence with a bridge going over a river, as far as stress factors are concerned. The day after the collapse, I saw on WGN-Chicago that Illinois Governor Blagojevich had ordered a special statewide detailed inspection of Illinois bridges, and I suspect that this sort of reaction will be duplicated throughout much of the country. But that still leaves the question of whether bridges and overpasses that are decades-old shouldn’t just be torn down and rebuilt after a specified period of years, just as a matter of course. After all, car manufacturers urge owners to get various parts of their vehicles replaced after a specified period, so why not the same with crucial sections of road as well? The bridge that collapsed Wednesday was forty years old and had passed previous inspections. Which brings up another question. Since I’m only a layman and not an engineer, please forgive my ignorance if I ask how one can determine and certify the safety of a bridge or overpass on the strength of inspections, anyway.

I suspect that, after the news of this tragedy begins to fade, first from the headlines, and then from the news altogether, that any common sense proposals to effectively renovate our highways, especially where bridges and overpasses are concerned, will be quietly tabled or watered down to a point where they are meaningless. In the meantime, my heart goes out to those directly affected by this Minneapolis bridge collapse as well as their families and friends.

The Mission and the Corporation

When the United States made a full-blown effort in the 1960s to land humans on the moon and return them safely, with the end of the 60s being a self-imposed deadline, it was a mission requiring the devoted, self-sacrificial efforts of great minds and talents. The watchwords for this project could have been “only the best”. Scientists, engineers, astronauts, assemblers, and technicians were all to be the absolute best in their fields, for the success of the mission outweighed everything else. There was a sense among those involved that everyone had an indispensable role that contributed to the mission’s realization. And indispensable they were, looking back on the successful landing and return of Apollo 11 in July, 1969 and the gargantuan leaps in science and engineering required to reach this goal.

Since that era, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration had become more of a corporation in its organization than the facilitator of an ambitious mission. And in the business world, part of the philosophy is to structure one’s company so that, whether one speaks of its capital, its labor force, or even its product lineup, the elements thereof must be replaceable, or modular in nature, in order to insure the smooth continuous operation of the business in the midst of expected changes in those areas. In other words, corporations are structured with the rule that those employed by it are dispensable! This is the diametrically opposite sense from the view projected toward and held by the original Mercury-Gemini-Apollo mission workers! It’s not enough for today’s NASA executives to tack up a plaque on the wall or put something on a website giving an obligatory “mission statement”: the real mission of NASA nowadays is its self-perpetuation. Its scientists, engineers, technicians, and laborers are all expendable and replaceable as a deliberate corporate policy. But even worse than this, I believe that it regards specific missions as dispensable, temporary means to justify its own continuance as an organization. So, instead of having an organization established to coordinate the implementation of approved missions, we have now missions established to serve the purpose of serving the organization. The Hubble Telescope, satellites, planetary probes, special missions to asteroids and comets, the Space Shuttle, the Space Station, an envisioned return to the Moon, and an eventual manned trip to Mars are all examples of missions that NASA uses to justify its own existence. But I don’t think it’s in such a big hurry to bring them into fruition, do you? Just like a big corporation that plans the introduction of innovative products into the consumer world in a gradual, piecemeal manner, so NASA has now become an organization that’s always got something new going on to tease the public. But seen with greater scrutiny, their big accomplishments don’t seem to be serving a greater mission.

Now, NASA may think of itself as being like a corporation, but its income depends not upon the marketplace, but rather funding through Congress. And its decisions as to what kind of product it puts out, likewise, don’t depend on the marketplace, but rather on what the Executive Branch (and ultimately, the President) mandate for it. So, as a people, it’s up to us to come to a sense of collective understanding as to where we really want our space program to go and to hold our representatives accountable for implementing it. Conversely, as leaders, our elected officials can play a role by presenting visions of the future in space that can inspire us to support their efforts in bringing them about.

Piano on the Eights

It’s been eight weeks since I began taking piano lessons, so in the footsteps of my previous “running on the eights” entry, here’s my first “eights” about piano!

My lessons are based on three books right now. The first book, geared for beginning adult players, gradually introduces basic music concepts (such as the staff, notes, time signatures, and rests), fingering, keys, and chords. I’ve been introduced to the major keys C, G, and F along with their corresponding I, V7, and IV chords. Along the way, of course, I’ve been familiarizing myself with reading and playing music according to which key it’s in. It’s a gradual process, to be sure; I’ve been devoting an average of 30 minutes daily to practice. I suppose I could have been more fanatical and have practiced more, but I believe in the power of the mind to assimilate new things overnight in one’s sleep. Each new day has pretty much borne this out for me with piano.

My second book contains popular show tunes like Meet the Flintstones, Music Box Dancer, Star Wars, Take Me Out to the Ball Game, and This Land is Your Land. The third book contains adapted, simplified versions of some classical excerpts. So far, I’ve worked on Debussy’s Clair de Lune, Beethoven’s Für Elise, Chopin’s Prelude (Op.28, No.4), and Bach’s Menuet in G Major (BWH anh. 114).

My teacher is very attentive to my playing, correcting and encouraging me at the appropriate times. She’s pointed out that I need to play in a louder, more flowing way and pay more attention to ties and repetition of the same notes.

Each time I start learning a new piece (especially the classical ones) it feels like I’m starting over from scratch. But I know, despite this, that I’m making progress. I just wish I’d pass one of those thresholds beyond which I suddenly display more confidence and skill! It will come, though, if I keep working at it. One thing I’ve been doing, though, is to look ahead a bit in my lessons, just to be more prepared for them during my class time. And class time is pretty intensive and breakneck, with gobs of material covered during each weekly half hour period.

So, I’m forging on ahead, keeping up with my assignments, and expecting some breakthroughs in the future. I do feel I’m making progress and enjoy practice (especially when I get it right)!

Favorite Song #1

When the Levee Breaks by Led Zeppelin (from Led Zeppelin (IV), 1971)

By the time I heard my first Led Zeppelin song (Whole Lotta Love) in January 1971, this British hard blues-rock band had already issued three albums. I didn’t like Whole Lotta Love (I still don’t), and only heard three subsequent songs, Livin’ Lovin’ Maid, Immigrant Song, and Black Dog, until one day in 1973 when I heard Stairway to Heaven in its entirety. Like many others, I grew to consider it as a favorite of mine, and looked forward to hearing new Zeppelin songs. At the end of 1973, D’yer Maker was released, and I liked it as well. As the 70s wore on, album-rock radio stations (like 103.5 WSHE and 94.9 ZETA-4 in South Florida) saturated their playlists with Led Zeppelin songs. One of them had an exciting instrumental beginning and lead-up, but once singer Robert Plant started singing, I’d switch stations. Back then, I never listened to this song all the way through. It was When the Levee Breaks, the final track on their heralded “Fourth” album. It wasn’t until a period of Led Zeppelin revival in 1989-1991 that I heard it in its entirety, and by that time I was impressed! As a matter of fact, I’ve considered it to be my all-time favorite song since 1991!

When the Levee Breaks is actually a cover, rearranged to a great extent, of an old blues song with the same title by Kansas Joe McCoy and Memphis Minnie. Its subject is the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, which affected the Mississippi River area and caused great damage, more than 200 deaths, and a great dislocation of people. After Katrina, this song was played a lot as a fitting tribute to those suffering from the effects of the broken levees in New Orleans. It begins with a powerful, loud drum beat followed by a shrill, whining harmonica that keeps the listener company off and on throughout the song. Robert Plant’s singing, Jimmy Page’s guitar work (with bassist John Paul Jones), and John Bonham’s relentless pounding on the drums fill When the Levee Breaks with a sense, to be sure, of blues and foreboding, but also of endurance and survival. And I suppose that it’s this, on top of the dazzling music that this song is filled with, that’s made it my favorite for so long. From beginning to end, there isn’t a weak moment anywhere.

As Led Zeppelin, Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones, and John Bonham collaborated in a way that other bands could only dream of, with an uncanny sense of what worked and what didn’t. I own all of their studio albums now and am very familiar all of the material on them. My other “Zep” favorites are Your Time is Gonna Come, Dazed and Confused, Ramble On, Bring It On Home, Hey Hey What Can I Do, Traveling Riverside Blues, Friends, Gallows Pole, Bron-Y-Aur Stomp, Bron-Y-Aur, Battle of Evermore, Misty Mountain Hop, Four Sticks, Going to California, The Song Remains the Same, Over the Hills and Far Away, Dancing Days, No Quarter, The Ocean, In the Light, Candy Store Rock, In the Evening, Poor Tom, and Wearing and Tearing. If I had done my “Top 30 Favorites” fifteen years ago, many of them would have been Led Zeppelin songs. Although my interest in them has settled a little, I still greatly respect this band and their works. And When the Levee Breaks still tops everything!

With Fans Like These

There’s nothing to me like sitting back and watching a good sporting event, be it a football game, basketball game, the Olympics, one of the Triple Crown races, the baseball playoffs, or other events. It’s fun to watch how the different sports are played. But to really get into them, I need to be rooting for somebody to win (and against their opponents). Naturally, being from the state of Florida, I tend to root for teams that represent my state. If I lived in, say, New York, I’d be pulling for teams from that area. And within Florida, I support the University of Florida because I’m a UF alumnus and I happen to live here in Gainesville (where it’s located). It’s a good feeling when my teams win and it’s a bad feeling when they lose. But the effect, however I look at it, is short-lived and I go on afterward with other things in my life. That doesn’t seem to be the way some others handle sports, though.

Back in the early 1980s, the Florida Gator football team was making a comeback to prominence under Coach Charley Pell. One year, they were getting toward the end of the season and had a home game scheduled against cross-state rival the University of Miami, who were also doing well under their coach Howard Schnellenberger. Before the game, most fans here thought that UF was the slightly better team, but as the game wore on, the Hurricanes began to pull away from the Gators. Toward the end of the game, Miami had built up a 28-7 lead over Florida. Some Gator fans in the stands apparently thought that their opponents were “bad people” for beating their team, so they began throwing objects, including glass bottles, at the Miami bench. This so infuriated the Miami coach that, at the very end of the game when Florida fumbled the ball deep in their own territory, he had his team kick a field goal, just to run the score up on them. Afterwards, most of the outrage expressed in Gainesville was not about the fans’ behavior, but about the last-second field goal! I just don’t get it. Why do people get carried away so much like this? When the U.S. played soccer against Mexico in Mexico, the fans there behaved horribly against the Americans. And in 1971, an actual war broke out between El Salvador and Honduras because of rioting associated with a soccer game between those two countries. But the worst example of people getting carried away with their teams in sports has to be the Olympic Games, not only in how fans behave, but also how the teams are covered in television. How many times have you heard the phrase "America’s hopes in such-and-such an event are---" in the course of the Olympics? It’s almost embarrassing to me how the American fans at Olympics, whenever the U.S. is hosting them, whoop and holler whenever their team is doing well. Why not applaud excellence, regardless what part of the world it’s coming from? Whether my country of 300 million wins a medal in ski jumping or not, what difference should that make for me? The nationalism in this respect borders on jingoism, as far as I’m concerned. And it’s not just the fans. If you are from—say Norway, or Japan, and you win the Gold medal in something, then you are a celebrity in those countries. But in the U.S., no one knows or cares who you are. However, if an American pulls in the Gold, then rest assured that there are all sorts of lucrative endorsements and advertising deals in the works because that athlete showed that the U.S. better than all the other countries, at least for that event. Coverage of different events tends to be skewed toward areas where the U.S. is in the running for a medal. And I’ve actually watched coverage of events that virtually ignored the foreign leaders and instead concentrated on the Americans who were back in the pack. Aside from that, the American athletes are always given more human interest coverage in special interviews and “life stories”, although in recent years, they’ve tried to include some athletes from other nations as well.

Once, many years ago, I was at my local YMCA, which had an elementary martial arts class for little children. I was watching while the kids were paired off against each other to perform their exercises. There was a small, competitive girl there who was matched with a boy who had little experience. As they did their little mock fight-exercise, I heard a frenzied woman, apparently the girl’s mother, yell out, “Kill him!” To me, that says it all. If this is the direction that sports is taking us, then I’d rather foreswear it all and just stick to other interests. Yes, maybe I’ll just go down about five spots on my TV dial from ESPN to Home Shopping Network, where everybody’s a winner and they don’t care where you’re from (as long as you have money to spend on their merchandise)!

Moving On Up

Part of having a happy, meaningful life is making goals for oneself and fulfilling them. Some goals may be personal in nature, with only the person directly involved knowing them, perhaps along with close family members. With other aspirations, though, fulfillment may be expressed in a public environment, with titles or awards bestowed that give the achiever a sense of moving up in a social sense. A prime example of this is someone who graduates from college and can then attach abbreviations like B.A., B.S., M.A., M.S., Ph.D., M.D., etc., to their names. Getting a doctorate in anything entitles them the use of the socially honorific title “doctor” before their names as well. In the workplace, promotions up the hierarchical ladder or organizational flow-chart (or any other model that works for you) produce a similar effect. Sometimes such a person, who gets the feeling of “movin’ on up” (like the characters of George and Louise Jefferson in the 70’s sitcom The Jeffersons), will manifest this change by drastically changing his or her lifestyle to reflect the perceived rise in status. And, unfortunately, that change may also involve dumping friends who are perceived as belonging to the previous “level” (or at least changing the relationship with them to a more condescending tone).

Regrettably, I have experienced this sort of put-down in the past, particularly when I attended high school and during the immediate years thereafter. In school, I was moderately successful, with slightly better than average grades, but not to the point where I was winning special awards or competitions. This cut across both academics and athletics. After they attained greater acceptance and recognition from both teachers and fellow students for their achievements, a small number of my friends began to regard me as an unequal when I was around them. And being pretty sensitive to this sort of thing, I began to avoid them and to no longer regard them as friends. It’s sad that this sort of thing happens, because after graduation and the students disperse and go down their own personal paths through adulthood, often it is the last impressions one has about a fellow student that one holds on to through the many years to follow. I’d like to be an optimist and hope that some maturity and humanity may have filtered down through the years on some of my former friends, and maybe this has happened, who knows.

However, having said that about my own personal grievances, it also bears noting that those in any workplace setting who were formerly equal-status colleagues but now may have a supervisory or managerial position must, at least on the job, change their professional relationship with their colleagues. This is understandably a very touchy thing, since it’s within the nature of the work structure that superiors give orders to subordinates, and each change in the relationships in that regard involves some adjusting and maturity from both ends. That, however, is quite different in nature than the experiences I related from my school years.

But all that aside, I hope that my old buddies (the ones who are still with us, that is) have found the things in life that bring them happiness and meaning. Sure, I feel some resentment about the past, but I also know that sometimes “moving on up” in life entails some “moving on” as well. It’s good to work toward goals that bring rewards and titles. And attaining them is something that is worth sharing with friends and loved ones, whether I’m the one attaining them or the one being shared with. And that is also something that I have personally experienced (and am continuing to experience)!

Six Billion Points of Light

When we look out at a cloudless, moonless night sky far from city lights, it’s amazing how many stars there are visible to the naked eye. Even the planet Uranus is visible in this setting (if it’s above the horizon). But one of the more remarkable things in the sky is the Milky Way, which is just a view from our perspective of the more densely stellar-populated sections of our own galaxy. We can directly see how stars are distributed in the sky, at least above the horizon, and extrapolate what they are like below the horizon (for example, if the Sun on a hot summer noontime is above me, then it, at midnight, is straight down below). Just because stars “set” in the west doesn’t mean that they disappear, although as a child I emotionally felt that, even though I intellectually knew better. With this in mind, I’d like to play an “imagination game” for a few minutes.

Every living human being on earth is, at this moment in time, located in a specific place. From where I am, I can theoretically point to any individual on Earth (or even the few that are supposedly undergoing alien abductions out in space). Naturally, for nearly the entire Earth’s population, I would have to do this without the benefit of sight, since people are hidden because of factors like distance and physical obstacles (including the Earth’s curvature). But if somehow every human being emitted a type of light that passed straight through opaque matter, how would the distribution of humanity appear from my own perspective, where I am now located? I submit that the effect would resemble our night sky, except that the lights would be from below instead of above. Also, since the nearest people would emit the brightest lights, those brightest individual lights would be at or slightly below the horizon. They would also be clustered together in certain zones that reflected densely populated areas. And as I looked further down and around, I would see something like the Milky Way representing more distant densely populated areas. But as long as I stay put where I am, then, unlike the night sky, these human “stars” will not rise and set like the celestial ones. Instead, the brightest will change their positions and brightness very erratically, while the lower “Milky Way-like” hazes will remain largely unchanged.

If I looked straight down, there would be no lights, but with me facing north, a little to the left of straight down would show increasing clusters of lights, indicated that my imaginary gaze is sweeping eastern across Australia. About sixty degrees north of straight down, there would be an enormously bright patch of “human haze”, representing the Far East. Another bright patch, reflecting Western Europe and its dense population, would be much closer to the horizon, in the northeast direction. America’s own population centers would shine just below the horizon from my north-northeast to the west-northwest. But most of the area below me would be empty or almost empty, reflecting our vast oceans and sparsely population areas. Indeed, although humanity is very adaptable to vastly different living conditions and climates, we tend to bunch up together to an extreme level in some places!

Now what is the point of all this? Aside from the fact that I have a tendency to drift off into reverie, this exercise points out that humanity is “out there” like the stars, even if we can’t see it. As humans, we tend to be tribal by nature, ascribing traits of legitimacy and importance more to those we can see and be around the most, while those who never cross our sights don’t seem quite as “real”. I think this is one of the problems we have when there is a war going on somewhere in the world, but all we seem to care about are the casualties that our own country accrues, which, although they are important to be sure, usually pale in comparison to the amount of suffering incurred by the population at the site of that conflict. And wars that we don’t have forces directly involved in? They might as well not exist, for all of the attention we give them. The same goes for natural disasters as well. In 1969, Hurricane Camille devastated coastal Mississippi, bringing about 259 deaths, a tragedy no doubt. But the following year a hurricane (cyclone) hit East Pakistan (soon to be Bangladesh), killing around 100,000 people! But very few people over here even knew that this occurred, much less cared about it! Nowadays, though, the situation has changed somewhat (but not enough). Look at the extensive coverage given the tsunami that killed more than 100,000 in Southern and Southeast Asia in 2005. This is due, of course, in large part to the more speedy and mobile communications technology that is progressively binding the population of our planet together more tightly and intricately. To the extent that we can respond more appropriately to emergencies affecting others not in our own area, this is a good thing. Anything that helps us to see the others dwelling on Earth with us as equally legitimate and valuable individual human beings, no matter how disconnected in distance or culture they may seem to us, only bodes well for our future collective survival and prosperity.

Novelty and the Norm

It seems that there is always something on the horizon in our lives that isn’t quite within our grasps, but it sure would desirable to have it. Whether it’s the latest new phone/computer/MP3/game system, the newest car/minivan/SUV/pickup truck, the next book or movie in a popular series, or anything else that rings novel to us, obtaining it seems so important at first. But our nature as humans is such that we instinctively and unconsciously adapt ourselves to things that enter our lives and linger. We take whatever around us that is unusual and, without thinking, accustom ourselves to it to the point where it is no longer a novelty, but rather has become the norm. While this human trait carries with it survival value for us, it also presents a dilemma that many of us apparently do not and, perhaps, will never understand.

Do you remember as a child going shopping with your family and seeing a toy somewhere that was so new, so different, that you absolutely had to have it? Even to the point when, long after you’ve left the store, you would dwell in your thoughts on how much you wanted it? And then, behold, on your birthday or at a holiday like Christmas, there it was, yours at last! And do you also remember playing with it a while until, after the novelty wore off, you lost interest and put it away, rarely to be seen again? Well, as children, this sort of infatuation with the new is common, but it lasts throughout our lives as well. Just look at all those people who lined up recently to purchase the new iPhone. But as adults, we get quickly accustomed and finally jaded to technology that will seem obsolete within five years. Every new computer model seems to have more new bells and whistles to make it the “next big thing”. I remember thinking how cool it was in 1988 to have my own personal computer that I could run programs and store information on 3½ inch diskettes. What a relic that machine is now!

So this quick ability to adapt to the new can inadvertently create a sense of restlessness in society. Doesn’t it seem that, with each new product that quickens things for us, people end up just becoming more impatient? There may be a microwave to quickly cook our food, but it’s a drag if we have to wait our turn to use it!

Conversely, humans have the capacity to adapt to adversities as well, even to the point of tolerating situations that would normally seem completely intolerable. I am always amazed when I read something or watch a show about how the European Jews who, having to live under Nazi domination and horrible persecution during World War II, living under excruciatingly deplorable conditions in ghettos or, worse, concentration camps, nevertheless would have their own daily routines and patterns. This, on one hand, helped them to survive through their ordeal, but on the other hand gave a perverse sense of normality to their wretched treatment. And speaking of wretched, who at one time or another hasn’t heard of a home being discovered whose owner lived surrounded by scores of emaciated animals living in unbelievable filth and stench? In a case like that, it may have just started out with one or two dogs or cats, and through progressive negligence, the owner just got used to the situation and never really consciously noticed the deteriorating living conditions.

So, being able to adapt to the new is both a blessing and a curse. Like any tool, it can be used or abused. Part of growing into adulthood involves learning to be able to discern the limits to which a principle may apply, and to beware of situations that may call for different lines of action. Doing things solely for the sake of novelty just desensitizes people to novelty. Doing things solely for maintaining the norm just desensitizes people to what the norm really is. Better to learn to abide by more meaningful guidelines when making decisions, don’t you think?

Languages on My Blog

During the late 1970s, there was an interesting small magazine called Quinto Lingo, which was devoted to languages. Not linguistics per se, but the actual study of foreign languages and publication of foreign language material that various contributors sent in. In any particular issue, there would be several articles about different languages, some in the languages themselves, along with some elementary material from time to time about a particular language’s grammar and vocabulary. There was also a readers’ letter section, which was pretty illuminating. Hardly an issue went by when at least one letter didn’t point out mistakes in an article from a previous issue. It got to the point where I would just presume that any article from Quinto Lingo that I read would not be "perfect". Which was all right with me! I was just happy to be able to peruse a publication that celebrated languages. And in that spirit, I intend to write, from time to time on this blog, material about foreign languages, material in foreign languages, and a record of my studies learning certain foreign languages.

To be able to do this in the way that I intend, I will need to familiarize myself with other fonts. Russian uses the Cyrillic script, which I’ve been adept with since 1976, but not on a computer keyboard. For Chinese and Japanese, I may need to confine my writings in those languages to their Romanized versions, at least until I can figure out how to put characters and syllabaries on the computer screen. Even with the Romanized Chinese pinyin script, though, I’ll need to delineate tones in an effective way. Languages such as French, German, Spanish, Polish, and Vietnamese have special diacritic marks. I am hopeful that eventually I’ll be able to write on this blog material in these languages that is in their full scripts as they would be read by their own native speakers.

I already have a lot of study material in these aforementioned languages in my possession at home. I plan to dig them up and create an organized study plan using them and a few more items that I plan to purchase. Also, I plan to make use of material, both printed and audio, off the Internet.

My piano teacher just recently told me that learning to play the piano is just like learning to speak a foreign language. And that hit me hard, since I believe I’m making a pretty good amount of progress with piano, but over the years have allowed my foreign language study to slide. But no more! There’s nothing quite like learning how to do something and practicing to the point when, suddenly it seems, a threshold is reached beyond which a much greater level of understanding and ability is attained in that endeavor. As Bilbo Baggins said in Lord of the Rings as he was about to board the elfin boat, “I think I’m quite ready for a new adventure!”

So, at some time in the future, you may see a blog entry apparently written by me in another language. If you happen to know that language well, you’re welcome to submit any constructive comments about my bedraggled attempts at it (or just laugh a lot, if that’s your preference). Oh, by the way, there seems to be a project to resurrect Quinto Lingo, but this time it would be on the Internet. I’m looking forward to seeing how that turns out!

Favorite Song #2

Building a Mystery by Sarah McLachlan (from Surfacing, 1997)

Building a Mystery is a song that sneaked by me when it came out in 1997. It had a lot of cross-over appeal and was played on radio stations of widely different formats, from pop-rock to contemporary adult to alternative rock. It wasn’t until early in 1998 when it hit me like a rock how incredibly good this song was. And I had heard it many times before! I think that tastes in music do change over time, which may account for part of my turn toward liking Building a Mystery, but also this song has, in my view, many interesting elements to it. The narrative has Sarah singing to her lover, a man who has charted his own path of spiritual discovery that captivates, and at times, bewilders and frustrates her. The melody is beautiful in itself, and the instrumental accompaniment is appropriate to the song’s mood. And Sarah McLachlan’s voice, to me, is matchless: she is one of today’s very few performers whom I actually would look forward to seeing in a live concert (and I despise concerts as a rule of thumb). But more than any one contributing factor, it was the combined effect of everything just mentioned that created a feeling of eeriness along with sweet intimacy that sold me on Building a Mystery. And I bought the album Surfacing as a result. It contains some other good tunes, most notably Sweet Surrender and Adia. Sarah McLachlan led a very successful concert tour series in the late 1990s called the Lilith Fair, which spotlighted female performing artists such as Sheryl Crow, Jewel, Fiona Apple, the Indigo Girls, Paula Cole, and Lisa Loeb, among many others. Sarah has come out with some other songs I like, such as I Will Remember You and Fallen. A couple of years ago, I saw her compelling performance of Fallen on one of the late night network shows. She is, to me, the greatest popular singer around today. And I just love Building a Mystery more and more each new time that I hear it!

Next favorite song: #1 !

Equal-Area and Equal-Shaped Surface Sectors on Spheres

During times when I’ve been engaged in mundane, repetitive chores or assignments, there’s been a tendency for me to speculate on things that don’t necessarily connect directly with my life, but still hold some interest for me. For example, I’ve allowed myself to be nagged with an apparently trivial problem that someone out there (maybe one of those math “educators”) has probably trained himself or herself well to be able to solve. And that problem is the following:

If you take any globe and divide it by lines of latitude and longitude, then you will notice four things:

--Each line of latitude intersects each line of longitude at right angles.

--All latitude lines run parallel to each other.

--All longitude lines converge at the North and South Poles.

--The areas bounded by these lines (separated an by equal number of degrees) are greater the closer one gets to the Equator and smaller the closer one gets to the Poles.

Now my question is this: How can I devise a way of dividing a globe (or sphere) into sectors (of the surface) that are shaped in the same way and have the same area? Other then completely disregarding latitude and dividing sectors by lines of longitude, I can see no apparent solution to this. I’ve read about geodesic spheres, but the projections on their surfaces are not all equal to each other, only approximate at best. Is there an intuitive answer that would have been obvious had I not been trained to be oriented toward straight lines and two-dimensional grids? Could this be just one example of shortsightedness when it comes to training children in spatial perception and reasoning? Well, I’m throwing out the problem to some of you hard-working homework-doing alumni/scholars out there! Comments, either in the form of solutions or perplexed reactions, are welcome!

And there are a couple of other questions that I’d like to toss out while I’m at it. What, mathematically, is the difference between the celestial “sphere” as I look around me in any direction (counting “looking” down at the Earth as part of it) and the surface of a three-dimensional sphere? And furthermore, is there really such a thing as an absolute shape (since it appears that any shape depends upon the perspective of the observer)?

There is actually rhyme and reason behind these questions. There is a certain disconnect I see between the real world as I perceive it and the way people have been trained under formal education to quantify and analyze it. First we learn to count numbers and model our reality as if it were a one-dimensional number line. Then, the more advanced we go into math education, the more we learn to interpret reality as a two-dimensional plane. This would be suitable if we all lived in Flatland! Even our so-called computer-generated three-dimensional models are only projections onto a two-dimensional screen. We seem stuck in a two-dimensional framework with straight lines and an “objective” frame of reference that denies the perspective of the observer. It is the transcending of these limiters to thinking that interest me a great deal. I want to think with a subjective three-dimensional understanding on a complex level. In other words, nothing less than a complete overall of how I view things!

Release of Final Harry Potter Book

I usually get off from work at midnight. Last night, when the clock struck twelve, I rushed to my car, tore down the road (in a legal manner, of course), miraculously made all of the traffic lights (about twelve of them), and pulled into the Books-a-Million (on NW 13th Street) parking lot, eventually finding an empty space far from the store. There were ecstatic people going to their cars from the store, swinging around white plastic bags containing their prizes: the last Harry Potter book by J.K. Rowling: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I had come by here two years ago at the same time to pick up the previous Potter book, but instead of going inside to stand in line, this time there was a long line going down the sidewalk outside the store! I got in line at 12:16 AM, and after entering the store and snaking around in line through several aisles all over the store, I finally redeemed my voucher ticket 35 minutes later and walked out the door ecstatically, swinging my white plastic bag with my prize, in the tradition of the silly fans who preceded me! While in the store, I noticed that, without exception, everyone was in good spirits. You could tell that Books-a-Million had put a lot of planning into this event. There was plenty of staffing, and everyone seemed to know exactly what to do to facilitate the book’s speedy distribution. They even had some characters running around the store playing Sirius Black (who looked more to me like “Weird” Al Yankovic), a Death Eater, and an unknown wizard. Their antics were hilarious, and they made the waiting more fun. There was a relatively small number of customers who dressed up playing different Potter characters, including one little boy who looked like a dead ringer for Harry Potter from his first year at Hogwarts.

Well, once I did get home, I began reading this seventh and final Harry Potter book. And you won’t get anything from me about what happens. Since I was off yesterday (Saturday), I could devote some time reading it, covering 334 out of 759 pages. All I will say is that so far, Rowling has written a very exciting, suspenseful novel! She has stated before that this would be her final Harry Potter book, and that’s all right by me. But, as far as I’m concerned, I feel duty-bound to read whatever she comes out with in the future. If the rest of her works are only half as good as her Harry Potter series, then it will have been worth it!

Hurricanes Donna, Cleo, and Betsy

From 1957 to 1977, I lived in South Florida, first in a little town northwest of Miami called Opa-Locka (1957-60) and then in Hollywood (1960-77) a larger city lying a few miles further north. The first three (and only) hurricanes that I directly encountered during my childhood occurred in the relatively compressed span of 1960 to 1965. The first, Donna, hit while I lived with my family in a modest apartment complex in 1960 while I was three. I remember very little from the storm, except that my parents seemed a bit wary of it. Fortunately for the Miami area (and unfortunately for others), Donna sideswiped us, although it did cause a lot of wind damage in the area.
A few months after Donna hit, we moved north to a house in West Hollywood (annexed in 1965 by Hollywood). In 1964, Hurricane Cleo made its way across the Atlantic, devastated Hispaniola, and then cut through Cuba, making a direct beeline toward Miami (and West Hollywood). Fortunately, we’d already had awnings installed on most of our windows, and we boarded up or taped the rest. Like Donna, Cleo struck at night, and it appeared at one time during its worst part that it would blow down our front door! Unfortunately, we got the hurricane’s eye and the associated severe eyewall. And even though our house was situated on a slight elevation, water nevertheless seeped through and covered our (fortunately) tiled floors. I remember being moved to the back bedroom with my sister and listening to hurricane updates on the portable radio. The station we listened to was 1580-WWIL out of Fort Lauderdale (a little to our north), which a few years later would change its name to WSRF and its format to cool rock music. But we and our house survived Cleo. A few weeks later, Hurricane Isbell crossed the state from the Gulf side, but, although we experienced stormy conditions, we escaped most of that hurricane’s fury.
The next year, I was ready for some more hurricanes, with my tracking map ready. I’d keep up with each new storm that appeared. And it didn’t take long for a doozy of a storm to appear on the scene. Betsy had a very strange path that gave forecasters fits. Twice, in the western Atlantic, it appeared to be making a turn toward the north away from Florida, and each time it made a 360 degree loop. Finally, it bore down on the Miami area. But it was more like Donna than Cleo in that its worst area went though extreme south Florida and into the Gulf of Mexico (eventually to hit New Orleans). Betsy, it turned out, was the only really prominent storm in a short season that year.
Not being a particularly happy camper at school, I found myself keeping up with hurricanes in the news during the next few years. But, alas, my hopes of getting time out of school went unrealized when none came close to striking the South Florida area (except maybe in October 1973, when Gilda flirted with the possibility for a little while). My subsequent encounters with named tropical storm systems would be as a resident of Gainesville, here in north central Florida.

Bumper Stickers

Bumper stickers are an example of symbols that people identify themselves with and exhibit publicly in order to give themselves a sense of relevance in society. Whether it’s one’s favorite sports team, a candidate for political office, or just a view on the issues (like “I’m already against the next war”, “Your ‘choice’ takes my life” (anti-abortion), or “Your ‘heritage’ is my slavery” (against use of the Confederate flag)), they identify not only themselves, but whoever happens to be driving the vehicle as well, with that particular point of view. And that may cause others who disagree with the sticker’s message to feel uncomfortable driving that car. That is one pitfall of slapping stickers with messages on cars. There are others as well. This is supposedly a free country, with the First Amendment apparently guaranteeing freedom of speech, but I once heard a policeman say that he and his colleagues, when on patrol, would be much more likely to pull over a driver whose car carried provocative bumper stickers than one that didn’t. The reasoning was that such a car might be more likely to contain illegal controlled substances. Also, if somebody puts on a sticker trying to persuade the public to vote a certain way or adopt a certain opinion about an issue, then he or she had better drive in a competent and courteous manner, else the other annoyed drivers may just automatically lean toward the opposing point of view! I remember just before the Presidential election of 1988 being very abruptly cut off in traffic by a driver in a car which had a “Dukakis for President” sticker on its back fender. I’d already decided how I was going to vote, but if I were teetering as an undecided voter, that just might have put me over into the Bush camp (and I resented that driver, since I was supporting Dukakis, too!).

I, for one, don’t want drivers behind me to get so distracted trying to read my bumper stickers that they lose their train of concentration behind the wheel. And there are some drivers who can’t resist the temptation, once started, of plastering sticker after sticker on their car. To me, when I see a car like this, it reminds me of Ray Bradbury’s Illustrated Man, whose main character, played by Rod Steiger, was cursed with “skin illustrations” covering every square inch of his skin below his chin (except for a mysterious blank spot on his back). As for me, I have a small UF Gators decal on the back windshield, and that’s it. Personally, as long as people who want to slap stickers on their cars don’t do it to the point where it interferes with their vision as drivers, then I really couldn’t care less about the content, unless, of course it contains extremely offensive language or overtly hateful material aimed against certain groups.