Not a "Rookie" Mistake

In the last exhibition game that they played, which was against the cross-town rival New York Giants, the New York Jets were still struggling with their quarterback lineup.  Not exactly inspiring the greatest confidence in the world, their quarterback for the past few years, Mark Sanchez, had a good enough preseason for coach Rex Ryan to announce him as the starter for this upcoming regular season.  Rookie Geno Smith, who many had touted as being the better quarterback, didn't do so well and was regulated to backup.  Sanchez played the first part of the Giants game while Smith came in later for the second half.  The Jets found themselves up 14-13 when they got the ball deep in their own territory, by their own goal line.  Smith went back to pass and, scrambling in the backfield, inadvertently stepped out of the back of his own end zone, causing a safety and giving the Giants a 15-14 lead.  Coach Ryan was evidently so miffed at this that he took Smith out of the game on the next series and put in his starter Sanchez...who subsequently suffered a shoulder injury in this essentially meaningless game.  Ryan came under a lot of criticism for his decision to play Sanchez, but to me saying and doing boneheaded things is what this dude is all about.  What bothered me about it all is what a (probably well-paid) football analyst on TV said about Geno Smith's safety: he called it a "rookie mistake".

I don't know how to play rugby, folks.  I'm sure the rules are such that if I were out on the field during a game, I would be lost as to what I should be doing.  But even with my profound ignorance about this sport, I already know, without having ever played it for even a minute, that I probably don't want to step out of bounds around my own goal while holding the ball.  Geno Smith was the class of the high school football world as a quarterback, which enabled him to attend a major college like West Virginia, where he succeeded so well that he was drafted as a top prospect into the National Football League.  After all these years of him practically living football, I think that he already knew that you don't step out of your own end zone holding the football!  He just made a mistake...don't we all from time to time.  But it had nothing to do with being a "rookie": they have end zones even in neighborhood sandlot games that little kids play!

It's true that as one progresses within a sport to a more advanced level, the tempo picks up and the strategies are more complicated, putting additional mental stress on the player.  But when a player who happens to be a freshman in college or a first-year rookie in the pros makes an error, it is often a simple lapse of judgement or perception and has nothing to do with lack of experience.  For announcers and analysts to throw out the "rookie/freshman mistake" line in these instances just makes me want to groan (and change the channel)...

Return to Outdoor Writing

It's been a while since I sat down outside to do some blog writing.  Either I write something on my laptop at home (at the dining room table) or I go inside a comfortable-but-noisy coffee shop.  Back in 2007 when I began this blog, I would be in the habit of writing blog articles after stopping off at one of two local Starbucks on the way to my work shift, which then began at 3:30 PM. The typically hot weather wasn't so pleasant, but it seemed that my ability to drum up topics and expound upon them was enhanced more with outdoor writing.

Maybe, especially with my old home town of Gainesville once again packed with tens of thousands of college students, I'll just forgo the indoors and hang out outside, where more seating is usually (but not always) available.  That certainly was the case for me today.  Besides, we're now nearing the end of August and cooler times, hopefully, are just around the corner...

Finally Finished Wizard's First Rule by Terry Goodkind

Terry Goodkind's books dominate the shelves in the fantasy section of bookstores.  His Sword of Truth series is his trademark achievement, spanning twelve (or more?) volumes, periodically putting him at the top of the bestseller list and no doubt making him a very rich man.  Yet when I recently got on the Internet and checked out a list of the top 25 fantasy series (George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire at the top of it), Goodkind's presence was nowhere seen...not even among the supplementary "honorable mention" list.  I myself had a bit of difficulty last year with the first book, Wizard's First Rule, getting through a few hundred pages (it is gigantic) and finally putting it down in frustration.  Not only did I discover that I felt an irrational aversion to this fantasy world of magic and swords (and the accompanying gore and violence), but I also experienced the same feeling that I had when reading Christopher Paolini's Eragon series: both authors probed the thoughts and intentions of their characters far too much instead of letting each story's actions and dialogue reveal their personalities as the plot progressed.  This, to me, took away some of the natural mystery and suspense that could have sustained me as a reader.  However, with Goodkind at least (Paolini is FAR too ponderous), I decided to give him another chance.  So I went back to Wizard's First Rule and read the whole damned thing from beginning to end.  And a funny thing happened: I began to like it!

It isn't quite so clear at the beginning of Wizard's First Rule, but as I read through it, I came to feel that Terry Goodkind is doing more than just spinning a yarn set in an imaginary fantasy setting.  He is also laying out a philosophy for living that involves people taking responsibility for themselves while redefining the notions of what truly constitutes compassion, and how important the method is to achieving one's means.  These are significant, heady topics, and Goodkind delves into them...at least in the first book.  I'm getting myself ready now for the second in the series, titled Stone of Tears... Oh by the way, I read up on Goodkind and he appears to be a follower of Ayn Rand's objectivism philosophy.  How that point of view is reflected in his writings should prove interesting to discover as I read on.

As for the title Wizard's First Rule, what does it mean?  Simply that, in the pantheon of rules that the wizards of Goodkind's imaginary realm have listed, there stands one principle high above the others: people are stupid and will believe whatever they WANT to believe, regardless of the facts!  You know what, that sounds like MY first rule as well!

Visible Nova in Delphinus Detected

Late yesterday afternoon I attended my third planetarium show at the facility in Santa Fe College, here in Gainesville.  Once again James Albury hosted the event, which featured a movie adapted for domed theaters about black holes...narrated by Lian Neeson.  It was O.K., I suppose, although I've gotten more information and enlightenment on the subject from watching Science Channel shows like Wormhole.  Still, I enjoyed the experience of going inside the planetarium, sitting down in a comfortable chair, and digging the surroundings.  And at the conclusion of the program, Mr. Albury once again gave a synopsis of the night sky for this time of year...and with a special addition.

Our host announced that a few days ago, a nova explosion was detected in the constellation Delphinus, located a little northeast of Aquila.  The star, which was originally "seen" at magnitude +17, much too dim for the naked eye, suddenly brightened to where it is, at last report, +4.9...not exactly bright against the background of stars but still visible to the naked eye and certainly detectable to one (like myself) who is very familiar with the normal star patterns of that region of the sky.  Last night I went out to see it, but as luck would have it, the sky was overcast...as it currently is today so far.  Later this evening I'll go check it out, if the clouds have cleared out...

Snowball Earth, Among Other Prehistoric Disasters

I've always been interested in the origins and development of the Earth, both in its geological context and in that of the evolution of life.  I am also a subscriber to Netflix, at least the streaming Netflix which much too often comes up severely lacking with its offerings of movies and shows.  This time around, though, I found on it a four-part television series titled Prehistoric Disasters that explored the Earth's distant past through four key disasters that struck it over the eons.

The four "disasters" were the formation of the Moon through the collision between early Earth and a minor planet, the 25-million year long lapse into a completely ice-packed "snowball" status covering the entire globe some 650 million years ago, the eruption of a supervolcano in what is now Siberia causing a chain of events leading to excessive global warming and mass extinctions 250 million years ago, and the hypothesized collision of an asteroid with Earth about 63 million years ago causing the end of the age of the dinosaurs.  I was especially interested in that strange "snowball Earth"...

Earth throughout its span of existence has gone through an extensive cycle of ice ages, when ice glaciers would flow far south of the polar regions and into more normally temperate climate zones.  But 650 million years ago the ice passed a threshold of latitude and went on to cover the planet with ice, and very thick ice at that (several hundred meters).  The cause: depletion of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere due to loss of this gas as it combined with solid material through excessive weathering from the then-single, huge continental mass lying on the equator and then settled on the sea bottom, far away from the atmosphere.  The advance of the ice sped up the process of global cooling because the ice's reflectivity of sunlight was much higher than the liquid ocean's, sending the sun's heat back out into space instead of absorbing it into the Earth.  Life at that time, for billions of years ongoing as a matter of fact, was composed of unicellular organisms, mainly bacteria.  Nearly all of the species died out, leaving only those few that could adapt through evolution.  After the ice cover eventually receded from the heat generated by massive volcanic eruptions 25 million years later, life began evolving rapidly into more complex forms...but only after the "snowball" period.

By all accounts, the "snowball" period in our planet's past was a singular, nonrepeating event.  That bothers me a little and keeps me from completely accepting it, even though there seems to be empirical evidence that it occurred.  I would have expected at least of handful of other "snowballs", too, in the records.  But if it was truly the only time that Earth was completely encased in thick, thick ice...and for millions of years at that, then to me this has to be the most incredible period of its past. 

Three Old Miami Dolphins Shun President

This past Tuesday the President received the 1972 Miami Dolphins team at the White House East Room as they together celebrated forty years of being the only team to go completely undefeated in a National Football League season...throughout that year's regular season, divisional and conference playoffs, and culminating with a Super Bowl victory.   Hall of Fame Dolphin greats Bob Griese, Larry Little, and Larry Csonka were among those there, as well as legendary coach Don Shula.  The current Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross footed the bill to bring them to Washington, which I thought was a nice gesture on his part.  But three of those '72 Dolphins players spurned the event because they said they were politically opposed to the sitting President.  Jim Langer, Bob Kuechenberg, and Manny Fernandez not only didn't attend, but they had to throw in some political trash talk into something that was a nonpolitical visit to their elected Head of State.  It could have been Republican President Romney instead of Democratic President Obama for all the difference it makes: in my opinion these three players, who obviously were under no compulsion from any one side to attend, are lacking in basic civics education and appreciation.  We live in a representative democracy, and as such, will sometimes collectively elect people into leadership positions with whom we, as individuals, have political differences.  Still, we should respect the PROCESS and the POSITION to honor the results of those elections and thereby respect whoever happens to be holding office at a particular time.  I wonder, had Romney been in there and held this commemoration, whether some of the more liberal members of that '72 Dolphins team would have shunned him.  There's no way of knowing for sure, but if that had happened it would have been just as wrong as what these three did.  For the record, by the way, owner Ross happens to be a proud Republican who clearly gets it when it comes to truly appreciating what it means to live in a democratic republic...as well as being a class act.  Too bad that some don't...

Football Teams I'm Rooting For and Against

I can't tell you which teams will be the best in professional and college football this 2013 season, but I still have my own favorites...some of them will undoubtedly flop!  I decided to pick at least one team from each NFL division and one from the major NCAA conferences to cheer for and boo against, and here they are:

NFL: AMERICAN CONFERENCE
EAST
Cheer: Miami Dolphins, of course
Boo: New England Patriots
SOUTH
Cheer: Jacksonville Jaguars
Boo: Houston Texans
NORTH
Cheer: Baltimore Ravens
Boo: Pittsburgh Steelers
WEST
Cheer: Kansas City Chiefs
Boo: Denver Broncos

NATIONAL CONFERENCE
EAST
Cheer: New York Giants
Boo: Dallas Cowboys
SOUTH
Cheer: Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Boo: New Orleans Saints
NORTH
Cheer: Chicago Bears
Boo: Detroit Lions
WEST
Cheer: Seattle Seahawks
Boo: St. Louis Rams

NCAA COLLEGE FOOTBALL
SEC CONFERENCE
EAST
Cheer: Florida Gators
Boo: Georgia Bulldogs
WEST
Cheer: LSU Tigers
Boo: Alabama Crimson Tide

BIG TEN CONFERENCE
Cheer: Michigan State Spartans
Boo: Ohio State Buckeyes

BIG 12 CONFERENCE
Cheer: Kansas State Wildcats
Boo: Oklahoma Sooners

PAC 12 CONFERENCE
Cheer: Oregon Ducks
Boo: USC Condoms

Oh, and I need to mention independent Notre Dame, a team that I traditionally root against.  I will be booing them again this year...

TV Science Shows: More Math, Please

I appreciate much of the science programming I see on television when it is available.  I especially like shows about cosmology, physics, and astronomy.  Usually it is the Science Channel that provides this programming.  Shows like Wormhole and Wonders of the Universe are great, and anything narrated by Morgan Freeman (admittedly NOT a scientist) or physicists Michio Kaku and Brian Cox are interesting to watch.  I like the popularization of cutting edge scientific research, and wish there was more programming available like this.  But although I enjoy the intriguing material that is presented, I feel that there is still a massive cognitive gulf between professional scientists and the lay observer.  The chief cause of this gulf is the massive difference in mastery of the mathematics necessary to fully understand much of the theory and method.

Unfortunately, mathematics in itself isn't that glamorous.  But if more complex and advanced mathematics are introduced and explained in combination with various discoveries and theories, I believe that many viewers, myself included, would be able to catch on and more fully appreciate not only the exciting scientific advances that are going on today, but also better grasp some of the limitations and disagreements that cause scientists within a particular field to go down divergent paths with their theories and speculation.

In no field is the need for a deeper understanding of underlying mathematics more felt than in physics, especially that which is concerned about the origin and nature of our universe.  For one physicist to enumerate more than ten dimensions (string theory) while another reduces everything to just one dimension makes me scratch my head in frustration.  I'd like a little more in-depth probing of their thought processes than just see them sitting around throwing out their ideas, which may or may not be sufficiently backed up by empirical research or mathematically reasoned theory...

Upcoming Running Race Prospects for Me

I thought it might be a good idea for me to list the upcoming running races that I have an interest in entering.  I'll stay away from most of them, I'm sure...not because I physically can't handle the race load, but rather because these events cost some money.  A little spent here and there is reasonable, but there is something to be said against overdoing it, too.  The locations are all Gainesville unless otherwise specified...

August 23 (Friday)...Fit2Run Cross Country Challenge (10K event) (off West Newberry Road)
September 28 (Saturday)...chORD Half-Marathon (on UF campus)
October 5 (Saturday)...Jacksonville Marine Corps Half-Marathon
October 20 (Sunday)...Running for the Bay Half-Marathon (in Apalachicola)
October 27 (Sunday)...Light House Loop Half-Marathon (in Port Orange)
November 9 (Saturday)...InnerAct Alliance Half-Marathon (in Lakeland)
November 16 (Saturday)...Tom Walker Memorial Half-Marathon (on Hawthorne Trail)
December 14 (Saturday)...Season of Hope 15K (on Hawthorne Trail)
December 29 (Sunday)...Jacksonville Bank Half-Marathon
2014: January 19 (Sunday)...Ocala Half-Marathon
February 16 (Sunday)...FivePoints Half-Marathon

I'm sure other races will sprout up from time to time, and Florida is full of half-marathons during the winter months.  But at least through February next year, the preceding pool of races offer me the best choices.  There are four half-marathons that I definitely want to run: chORD on September 28, Tom Walker Memorial on November 16, Ocala on January 19, and FivePoints on February 16.  Also, it would be cool to fit in a race that involved a little travel. That Jacksonville race on December 29 may be a stretch, but I've never run there before...

Good Ten-Mile Run Today

This afternoon I woke up (I work the graveyard shift) and felt a little out of sorts, but I resolved to go out anyway and try to run a bit.  It being in the oppressively hot 90's outdoors, I decided to go down to my local gym and run the treadmill.  First I was going to run 3-4 miles, but as I went along I kept going.  And going.  And going!  After a while, I realized that this was going to be a very good, long run...so why not go for 10 miles?  And that I did, at my usual pace and accomplishing it in 89 minutes 48 seconds.  I feel great right now, a few hours after the run.  And that includes my right foot, which had been giving me some problems going back to March.

Ten miles is the furthest I've run since the 13.1 I did in the Orange Blossom Half-Marathon in Tavares, Florida back in  March.  And unless I am actually running in an official half-marathon race, ten miles is my preset maximum for a run.  So I feel I'm ready for next month's half-marathon at the University of Florida.  I know this run I did today was a treadmill run and not a road run, but I am not going outside to do any long runs until the temperature comes down a bit...

Paynes Prairie, South of Gainesville

When I first moved to Gainesville in 1977, and for years afterward, the grassland area south of town known as Paynes Prairie was always striking when I passed across it, either on US 441 or I-75.  In this part of Florida trees dominate, but in Paynes Prairie they clear away and one can see far off into the distance.  In this sense it reminds me of South Florida, where I grew up.  About a century ago, it was the bottom of a shallow lake called Lake Alachua.  But when there is a heavy rainfall season, it once again becomes essentially a very marshy lake.  Alligators abound here, and there is a bison herd.  There is a state park here, as well as a park for University of Florida staff, faculty, and students at adjacent Lake Wauberg.

The grasslands are probably still around, but probably somewhere off from the two aforementioned through-roads.  From where we passed through, all I can see now are low-lying bushes...not as spectacular of a view as I was used to behold.  There is a pier running east into the prairie off US 441 northbound side, close to the northern end, where visitors can walk safely "into" Paynes Prairie and stand at its end, which is an observation platform.  I think this might be a good place to go star-gazing sometime.

Here are a couple of not-so-revealing shots of Paynes Prairie taken from I-75 while I was riding (not driving) on it the other day...

McDonald's Sign: Thirty Minute Sitting Limit

We were coming back yesterday to Gainesville from Lakeland when we pulled into a McDonald's off I-75 in Dade City.  It was one of the friendliest McDonald's I've ever been to and the service was excellent.  There was only one problem with the place as I saw it: there was a prominent sign there telling customers to limit their visits there to thirty minutes.  Longer than that they considered as "loitering".  I've seen this sort of sign at the McDonald's in Gainesville which is on US 441 a block from the University of Florida campus.  What gives here? Isn't that sign something of an affront, essentially telling customers to pay up and then get lost?

My instincts tell me that, as long as you are continually getting up and buying stuff from time to time, these McDonald's managers wouldn't care if you stayed there the whole day.  After all, they try to bring in longer-staying customers with their free Wi-Fi and the espresso coffee drinks they offer, obviously wanting to siphon off some of those free-spending Starbucks customers (who tend to stay glued to their seats for long stretches).  The problem I see that probably prompted the signs is twofold:  sometimes people will wander into an establishment like a McDonald's just for a place to sit...many of these may be homeless.  That probably applies more to the Gainesville location than to the one in Dade City.  Also, students tend to camp out with their laptops and books and monopolize seats for hours...and some of them have the nerve to not even buy anything!  I often go out to places to study, and I usually take well over thirty minutes there.  But if I'm done with what I had initially purchased and it looks as if I may need to stay there a little longer, I'll make a point of going back up to the counter and buying something else.  That I thinks soothes the worries of anyone working there who thinks that I am trying to take advantage of their seating hospitality.  After all, they're in it to make money and have a right to ensure good available seating for paying customers...

They're He-e-re!

Earlier this afternoon I was riding south on Interstate 75, which skirts the western end of Gainesville.  I got on it at Exit 390, which was the furthest north exit for my home town.  I passed Exit 387, which connects with Newberry Road and the Oaks Mall areas.  Then, less than three minutes later was Exit 384, which leads to Archer Road and the region of student apartments and condos.  Its northbound exit was so backed up that there was stopped traffic going well into the interstate lane.  It had begun: the annual return of University of Florida students by the thousands!

I'm sure this new collection of students will seem even younger than the previous ones (funny how that works).  Most of them will be confined more or less to the University campus, their own apartments/dorms/condos, and the surrounding shopping areas.  But when it comes to going to Starbucks again, I know I'll have an almost impossible task of finding indoor seating...because they'll be he-e-re, too!

Egyptian Violence Dismaying

Like many other people, I am very dismayed at what is happening in Egypt, with the elected Muslim Brotherhood overthrown by the military and massive violence intensifying between protesters and the police/army, resulting in many deaths and injuries.  Each side accuses the other of provoking the violence, and nobody is backing down.  And with such a conflict, there are inevitably scapegoats that are wrongly blamed for the situation.  Christian churches are being attacked and destroyed, and the old standbys of Israel and its American ally are once again also being used as scapegoats to foment agitation and hatred against us.

It's true that the Muslim Brotherhood was democratically elected, but I have a problem with newly elected parties and/or individuals in countries without democratic traditions immediately taking actions after taking office to enact laws restricting or even outlawing political opposition.  It is a widespread problem.  I remember Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe doing this as well as Russia's Vladimir Putin and Venezuela's late Hugo Chavez.  Apparently the (former) president Mohamed Morsi was trying to consolidate his power this way as well, and it didn't sit well with the military.

The Muslim Brotherhood is not going away, and the government's actions against it may officially marginalize it and its members while making it more radical and violent.  On the other hand, there is a sizable portion of Egypt's voting population that supported this organization in the last election, and whatever prompted them to give them their support needs to be taken into account by whatever party that holds the reins of political power...

Entering Local Population Congestation Zone

The summer still technically has more than a month to go, and certainly the oppressive heat and humidity that typifies it where I live is going to linger for a considerable time as well.  But in one important sense, for me, summer in one of its more positive manifestations is about to crash down to a merciless, bitter end...starting around now and then dramatically spiking in effect next Wednesday.  School is starting again.

No, I am not attending any school right now.  And I'm not driving either of my children to school in the morning or picking them up in the afternoon.  Those days are done, although who knows whether or not I'll someday decide to "go back" to enter a graduate level program.  The main effect of school returning will be the overwhelming congestion on two fronts: the return of University of Florida students by the tens of thousands as well as the return of public school, with its rush hours and buses stopping everywhere in the middle of the road.  Santa Fe College in the northwestern corner of town contributes a lot to the crowded streets as well.

With both UF and public schools, I particularly feel the congestion nowadays with my current work schedule as I leave my workplace at 7:30 AM and drive up a street, first passing through intense university student traffic in the southwestern part of town and then past schools and residential areas clogged up with buses and parents-with-kids (and slowdown school zones).  So next Wednesday it will begin anew...

There is another aggravation associated with the resumption of school, and it involves mainly the returning University and Santa Fe College students.  They tend to take all of the seats at the various Starbucks and other coffee houses in town, often camping out for hours there and sometimes not even buying anything.  Of course, there is a place that these students tend to overlook: McDonald's, which always seems to have plenty of seating and provides good-tasting, less expensive coffee anyway.  They also tend to steer clear of doughnut shops, which are more the habitats of gabby seniors.  Looks like I might as well start with these places if I want some assurance of seating when I go out to study...

Convention Center Enormous, Want to Run in It

The above (regrettably) slightly blurry photograph is of a very small section of just one of the buildings in the Orange County Convention Center, located on the southwestern outskirts of Orlando, Florida along International Drive.  I was there at a convention earlier this month with Melissa.  We stayed at the Embassy Suites, just a mile walking distance up the road.  The hotel was large, but this convention center astonished me by its enormity.  I mean, I could design my own marathon course within its confines running on the comfortable carpeting up and down miles of seemingly endless hallways while running the inner perimeters of the humongous rooms that they access.  And all of this would take place in very comfortable air conditioning!  Of course, this is just a fantasy...I'd have to get rid of all those pesky people first and then have this property all to myself in order to run any distance there.  But it is still appealing when I consider how utterly unpleasant outdoor running is during this staggeringly hot summer in Florida...

Summer Heat So Stifling, Alerts Issued

I just saw a weather alert for northeastern Florida and southeastern Georgia, and I'm not surprised.  It was to warn people of excessive heat.  No kidding.  I had just been to my local gym (Gainesville Health and Fitness Center) and run 6.2 miles on the treadmill without any problem in the air-conditioned environment there. But after the run, when I stepped out of the place to walk the few yards outside to my car, I thought this heat is almost unbearable, just being out in it for a couple of minutes.  I managed to get the car slightly cooled down on the drive home, but once again, after I parked and got out to walk the few feet to my front door, the heat was hard to withstand.  The temperatures are in the mid to upper 90's but the heat index has it around 104-105 degrees.

It has been a while since I have run any appreciable distance outside, on the road like I used to so much in the past.  The night is awful, too.  When I drove to work at a little past ten last night, the temperature was 82...and the humidity was stifling.  When I went out of my workplace building on my lunch break at 5 AM, it felt like a blanket covering everything outside, the air felt so heavy.  Yuck!

Planetarium and Perseids

Friday afternoon I woke up with a sense of purpose.  This time around I wouldn't forget the weekly planetarium show that Santa Fe College put on Friday evenings.  There were two shows, the first at 7 PM a look at the sky and interesting features and the second, at 9, more or less a light show done to the tune of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon album.  I chose the former, going there again with Melissa.  James Albury of the Miami Space Transit Planetarium was there again as well, presenting the show.  He reiterated some things from our visit there three weeks ago and showed where the planets and moon would be seen for the next few days (Venus and Moon were close to each other in the early evening sky Friday tonight).  Albury had also brought in for display a 75-pound meteorite, composed of iron and nickel...and very magnetic...and very dense and heavy.  Melissa got a photo of it, as well as one of the facility's two projectors, this one the simpler non-digital model that Albury used for Friday's show.  The digital projector, he told me after the show, had the ability to show the movements of stars against the sky's background over spans of hundreds and thousands of years.  But for Friday we stuck with the analog one.

I'm going to try to make at least a monthly habit of dropping by the planetarium to see what's going on.  This month, of course...and the reason for the meteorite...was August's Perseid meteor shower, which I was just outside observing (at 3 in the morning).  The peak observing nights would have been tomorrow, but I'll be at work then.  In any event, I stood out there in my freshly mowed back yard under ideal cloudless conditions eyeballing the constellation Perseus for a good twenty-to-twenty-five minutes.  For my trouble I saw one clear meteor, a pretty bright and very brief streak of light left of Perseus in the vacant part of the sky between Perseus and Polaris known as the constellation Camelopardalis.  That was at 3:18.  Well, that's one more meteor than I believe I've ever seen with this, the supposedly biggest meteor shower of  the year...

More Running Mileage, But Avoid Summer Heat

Earlier today I woke up as usual in the afternoon and tried to figure out the best way to get my running in.  The weather was very hot and not conducive to this kind of exertion, although in the past I wouldn't have had second thoughts about running in it, even for long distances.  But now is now, and instead Inwent to my local gym to run in air conditioning.  Later, though, I did mow my back yard in the 95-degree heat.  It seems that my run didn't tire me out at all, but that lawn mowing exhausted me terribly.

In the last two days I have run 7.6 and 6.7 miles, quite an uptake in the mileage.  The right foot doesn't seem to be causing me problems like it used to, but still I have to consider the rest of my body and how it responds to a higher, level of training.  No sense in overdoing it...

Obama Petulantly Snubs Putin

As the G-20 gathering in Saint Petersburg, Russia approaches next month, President Obama has regrettably taken a page from counterproductive actions that previous administrations have adopted.  He has canceled a planned summit meeting with Russia's president Vladimir Putin, immediately on the heels of that country's granting of temporary asylum to turncoat/whistleblower (depending on your point of view) Edward Snowden.  Obama mentioned other issues beside the Snowden asylum, such as stringent new Russian anti-gay laws passed under the pretext of protecting children.  But the obvious factor tipping the scales in favor of shunning this important country's leader was the asylum.

One of the worst human rights violators in recent memory, China under Mao Zedong, had shut itself off from the West (and even the fellow Communist Soviet bloc for that matter) in the 1960's.  But American president Richard Nixon, seeing the bigger picture, sent his envoy Henry Kissinger there in 1969 to open up relations between the two nations.  And this was in the middle of their Cultural Revolution, which makes any human rights issues going on right now in Russia seem trivial by comparison.  On the other extreme, President Carter in 1979 declared that the U.S. would boycott the Summer Olympics the following year in Moscow as a knee-jerk protest reaction to the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan.  That accomplished nothing besides punishing American athletes whose window of opportunity to achieve international recognition within their often-obscure sports came and went.  The USSR stayed in Afghanistan throughout the 1980's.  Maybe in retrospect they should have remained there.  Then, just a few years ago, the Dubya-Bush administration openly snubbed Iran's asinine former president Ahmadinejad, even going so far as the president's wife Laura Bush turning away from him when he was physically close by just to avoid acknowledging his existence.  Obama was going to change all that, though, with the philosophy that it was better to engage with your adversary than to cut off direct communications. I remember him back when he shook the hand of Venezuela's controversial president, the late Hugo Chavez, early in his first term.  Unfortunately, Obama seems to have forgotten his principle of engagement and reverted to petulant (and silly) Carter and Dubya shunning behavior...

It might be said that Obama can talk with Putin anytime he wants, or vice versa, just by picking up the phone, and that the canceled summit meeting was just a public relations/political show.  If so, then why not cancel the entire G-20 summit as well? Isn't all of it essentially just a lot of political posturing to prop up the regimes of the various countries involved by making their flawed leaders appear to be effective international statesmen?  What a joke...

Denomination Rumination

Earlier this week I attended the annual convention of a major Pentecostal Christian denomination.  Religion was not the direct reason for my attendance...but it does figure into things to a degree.  I'm not Pentecostal, either, but that wasn't necessarily a major factor in my reactions to the event. Apart from being amazed at the vastness of the convention hall we went to (Orange County Convention Center West), I experienced being inundated by the sheer number and intensity of humanity around me.  I also ran into some notions about "real" Christianity that I've experienced in the past, not just from this denomination either...

The preeminent message of this convention was BELIEVE...in Jesus Christ of course...and you will be saved and live eternally in his presence.  I dig it...this is the essence of Christianity as I see it. But then I had to be inundated by loud, loud, LOUD services that seemed more bent on piercing my eardrums than getting the message across or worshiping God.  This denomination openly distinguishes itself as being a living church...as opposed to all those other "dead" churches out there.  Apparently, extreme loudness is a prerequisite to being "alive" here.  It made me wish for a return to the monastic system when monks took oaths of silence for long stretches of time.  Also, being expected to stand up for very long periods in cramped quarters during the praise worship just made my legs ache badly (and I'm a runner!).  But see, that's "living" and I guess "sitting" and worshiping that way would be "dead".  So the events already were getting under my skin and actually interfering, not helping, me to get into a more spiritual mental framework.  But their beliefs, as well as the beliefs of many denominations and churches are such that they demand for a large mass of believing people to cram physically together in a space in order to enhance the presence of the Lord...talk about worshiping according to a formula.

The main focus of this denomination is missionary work, and although America-birthed, it now has many more members in other countries than it does domestically.  I am on board with religions being allowed and welcome to advertise and promote themselves through missionary work, although truth be told, I don't notice people in Christian-based Western societies showing that much openness to Islam or Eastern faiths expanding their numbers among THEM.

I have a different kind of issue with all that I've heard, though, and it concerns not just this denomination but others as well.  I happen to believe that one of the main problems facing our society in America these days is not workaholics overdoing it trying to materially better themselves, but on the contrary more and more people, especially the young, living in an economically dependent state and doing little or nothing to sustain themselves through work (which is Biblically important, according to the Apostle Paul) and rejecting employment opportunities when they do surface because they don't dovetail with their interests.  But when I hear testimonies, I get the message that somehow if you're a responsible, mature person who goes to work, earns your money, provides a home for yourself and your family, and occasionally likes to enjoy some recreation, then that's idolatry...worshipping the all-mighty dollar...and that you're going nowhere with your life.  I see all these young people growing up and being shunted off to Bible colleges...and then going into voluntary missionary work that depends on sponsorships from others.  I don't suppose that this is necessarily a bad thing in itself...please try to understand...I just resent the judgement I feel marginalizes ME as I responsibly live my own working life...which actually tangibly contributes to the functioning of my own society! But the mindset I detected at this convention is that unless you're doing something that has "Jesus" openly and clearly stamped all over it, then you're just wasting your life, spinning your wheels in the fallen secular world and in doing so denying the Lord.

One more thing: I am tired of denominations rolling out the number figures and computing the number of "Christians" in a given area by reciting their own membership numbers there.  In the early 1990's I ran across a Southern Baptist brochure calling for outreach in my own home state of Florida, where there were reported to be (then) nine million lost souls.  In other words, nine million unbelievers... as well as Catholics, Lutherans, Episcopalians, and any other non-Southern Baptist professing Christians.  Talk about living in a bubble. This denomination in their big convention did something very similar, equating their worldwide membership with the number of people saved through Jesus.   

It sounds like I'm coming down heavily on this particular denomination, but I'm not.  I'm happy that these people feel joy and purpose in their lives.  They stand for virtuous behavior and are against crime and sexual and drug abuse.  God bless them all.  I'd just like someone out there who is a Christian big-shot to accept me the way I am without regarding me as someone who needs to be changed...

Nix the Regret, Take Responsibility for the Present

I think one of the biggest delusions that some people hold onto in their lives is that their opportunities have passed them by.  Often people will look back on their adolescent and early adult years and harp with intense regret on decisions they made then that they now believe cut them off forever from attaining their dreams, especially in the area of careers.  But in truth, opportunities abound throughout one's lifetime for returning to those dreams; but it does take a personal transformation of a radical nature for many of these to see themselves as empowered and responsible for their own destinies and to behave in a positive and proactive way, rather than with the passive, critical, and reactive mindset that they have deeply become habituated to.

In fact, it makes no difference whether one got it "right" from the beginning, had great early success, or had personal obstacles to their ambitions.  It's a universal characteristic of a viable, individual, sentient being that when things aren't working out the way we want, then we, as personally responsible individuals, have to figure out how to change our situations for the better and then act on them.  Over and over and over again, throughout our lives! And the best time to realize that is RIGHT NOW...

Cool Disney Promo Video in Orlando

In the hotel I am currently staying at in Orlando, Channel 42 has instantly become my favorite...and all it does it play the same short program repeatedly.  But the subject and tone of this program has great appeal: an introduction to Walt Disney World for visiting tourists.

No, this time around I'm not visiting Walt Disney World.  But I have some pretty vivid memories of past visits, starting back in 1973 with my sister and some of her friends and progressing through the years to times with my adult family.  Looking back, it's been a while since my last visit, back in 2004.  Since that time, according to this little TV show, the Magic Kingdom added a New Fanatasyland section while the MGM Studios Park name was changed to Hollywood Studios.  And it looks as if that Downtown Disney section has grown, although I've never visited it.

But aside from the positive vibes I got from the announcer as she presented the different attractions (and going on many of the rides), I got a kick out of reliving some of those experiences in the parks I enjoyed.  Like Big Thunder Mountain Railroad and Splash Mountain in the Magic Kingdom and the Tower of Terror and Rock & Roller Coaster in "Hollywood" Studios.  Plus, I was reminded of other rides that the video didn't show, like those cool ones at Epcot (especially the ride inside the big golf ball) and the Blizzard Beach superslides...

Dolphins Exhibition Loss Disappointing

I know it's just an exhibition game, with no bearing on the official standings or playoff status.  And it's the FIRST exhibition game of the season at that, so the fact that the Miami Dolphins lost this game last night to the Dallas Cowboys shouldn't be that big.  But as I sat there I could tell that Miami has an very long way to go before it can boast of being a playoff-calibre team.  The final score was close, 24-20...but I want them to be successful and that means WIN GAMES, dang it.  And I also want them to show off their improvement to the nation, so this being a nationally televised game didn't help, either.

But still we're dealing with a team that wasn't completely out there on the field, either.  Many players are trying to make the squad and the coaching staff has to have them out there to see who's best qualified...not just to start, but also to be on the bench ready to fill in when events demand.  So the regular starters weren't always out there (but neither were Dallas' either). 

In 2007, the year the Dolphins went 1-15, they had a pretty good exhibition season, and hopes were up that this would translate into regular season success.  It didn't...and I have to realize that it's best to wait and evaluate this year's Miami team on how it does when the games actually do count...

Zimmerman/Martin Case Examined

It's been a little while since the verdict was read that acquitted George Zimmerman of the murder of Trayvon Martin, so now I think enough time has passed for me to stand back and look at this case.  Some observations...

--Many, especially on the political left like Al Sharpton, framed this entire case almost solely in terms of race.  Trayvon was racially profiled and followed like a crime suspect when he was just legitimately and purposefully walking down the street, minding his own business.  I happen to agree with Sharpton to the degree that Zimmerman appeared to presume guilt upon Martin largely from his race (that's called prejudice, by the way).  But the problem here is larger...

--I've gone running around my own neighborhood, and I'm not black.  No, I'm just some small middle-aged dumpy looking white dude with jogging threads...no hoodies are involved.  Yet I have experienced on a number of occasions the eerie, creepy feeling of seeing vehicles slowing down when they approach me and then linger around, often for several minutes, as I run down the road.  Maybe they're not all neighborhood vigilantes like George Zimmerman, but it scares me a little to think that people safely locked in their own enclosed motor vehicles, possibly if not probably armed, would view a vulnerable pedestrian such as myself to present any kind of danger.  To me, a legitimate neighborhood patrol would make a priority of challenging strange vehicles instead of relatively helpless people walking (or running) down the street.  But in any case, this problem isn't completely about race, although I'll be quick to admit that blacks have a much tougher time with this unwarranted scrutiny and suspicion.

--After the trial, a panelist guy on Fox's The Five show...the obnoxious and utterly humorless one sitting in the middle, angrily stressed that the trial had nothing to do with the Florida 2006 Stand Your Ground law.  But the fact is that the instruction that the judge gave the jury was directly from this law, which gave so much latitude to the defendant that all that was needed for a not guilty verdict was that he "felt" at some point like his life was in danger.  I wonder whether Martin would have been accorded the same latitude under the legal system as Zimmerman had he prevailed in the struggle and Zimmerman perished...

--This entire tragedy would have been avoided if an armed man, George Zimmerman, had decided to follow police instructions and not stalked Trayvon Martin in his vehicle...and then not gotten out and approached his imagined adversary with the full knowledge that he himself was carrying a loaded, lethal weapon.  Zimmerman completely provoked the confrontation, but the trial seemed to stress only the final fight between the two...

--I guess from the above that you can tell I'm not a big George Zimmerman fan.  But here is when I have to scratch my head at my own country's system of justice.  Or should I say, two systems.  A lot of people in the U.S. were outraged when Amanda Knox, who had been tried and convicted of murder in Italy but later released to return here after that conviction was overturned, was recently accused again of the same crime...something that other countries do but not the United States, with our prohibition against "double jeopardy".  But that's not entirely accurate, since in America one can be acquitted of a crime within the criminal system but still possibly have to undergo another trial in the civil courts: O.J. Simpson is a case in point.  And I think that Zimmerman will probably be subjected to a similar ordeal, which is a boon to lawyers but makes little sense to me.

Well, maybe I didn't get around to saying everything I felt about this case, but I think I got in the major stuff...

7.3 Mile Run

Today I managed a 7.3 mile run, another step in my attempt to return to half-marathon form.  It's a delicate balancing act with me not wanting to put too much stress on my right foot, as well as taking care to avoid the worst of this oppressively hot and humid summer we've been experiencing in northern Florida.  Could I have run further than I did today?  Probably, but as I said, there's little point in overdoing it to the point when I am forced to take more time off from running and then getting out of shape...

Follow-Up on Yesterday's Gutfeld Article

Yesterday I wrote how I missed the admittedly flawed (who isn't) but very talented Greg Gutfeld on Fox News Channel's The Five afternoon program.  And he was absent on it today as well, as I quickly checked and just as quickly changed channels.  But the reason he wasn't on it yesterday may well have to do with the fact that just a few hours later he guest hosted The O'Reilly Factor, in my opinion far out-performing that show's title "character" (whom Al Franken deemed to be a "lying, blotchy bully").   The question I have is whether Gutfeld will be on his own Red Eye show at 11 tonight...

Gutfeld Missed on The Five

After sleeping well into the afternoon today (I work the graveyard shift, so this is normal), I brewed myself a tasty cup of caramel drizzle coffee on my Keurig, sat down to finish my Times Square jigsaw puzzle, and turned the TV on Fox News to watch The Five.  A show like The Five, which on this "fair and balanced" channel consists of, naturally, five panelists, four of whom are ardent conservatives and one lukewarm moderate/liberal, normally would antagonize me to no end.  But I have found myself gravitating toward one of those right wing panelists: the very talented Greg Gutfeld.  In spite of his extreme partisanship against President Obama (whom I happily voted for twice) and Democrats in general, this guy is quite entertaining and witty.  Unfortunately, the rest of the panel stinks to high heaven (including its sorry excuse of a "liberal").  Today, the stench was unbearable as Gutfeld was absent, replaced by an equally conservative dude displaying no discernible personality.  Time to change the channel, which I did.

Greg Gutfeld is better on his other show on Fox, titled Red Eye, which he more or less controls and has guests that meld better into his style (like the comical Bill Schultz, for example).  The political atmosphere is still typically Fox right-wing Demophobic, but I get it and don't take things personally in spite of disagreeing with many of the opinions dominating it.  But Gutfeld wisely knows that at some point you just have to step back and laugh, something that far too many folks in the business on both sides of the political spectrum don't seem to be capable of grasping. 

Maybe Greg's on vacation, he had a schedule conflict...or just wanted to take the day off.  In any event, I'm off myself tonight from work, so I think I'll check to see if Red Eye is on and if he's on it...

Adjusting My Reading Priorities

I've mentioned before on this blog that I am currently in the process of reading George R.R. Martin's fantasy series A Song of Fire and Ice.  I just finished book #1, title A Game of Thrones, and am now well into the second, A Clash of Kings.  Knowing that five books have been published in this series, I wanted to "catch up" by reading through them all expediently.  Now, though, I have second thoughts...

Martin's acclaimed series is a little like Stephen King's Dark Tower series in that both authors have taken their sweet little time in writing and publishing the next installment (although King did finish the last three volumes of his series in a two-year flurry of writing).  With A Song of Fire and Ice, here is Martin's timetable so far:

A Game of Thrones: 1996
A Clash of Kings: 1999
A Storm of Swords: 2000
A Feast for Crows: 2005
A Dance with Dragons: 2011

The sixth volume is supposedly to come out in 2014; who knows when the seventh and final volume will eventually be released.  The bottom line on this is that there is no point with me rushing through the first five volumes only to wait a long time for the remainder.  Better it would be, I think, for me to take my own sweet time reading the series!

So instead of daily reading I'm going to read Martin twice a week...and use the other days to embark on new reading adventures!

My July 2013 Running Report

In July 2013 I continued to recover from my right foot injury as I ran a total of 90.06 miles, considerably higher than in the previous two months.  My longest run was for 7 miles.  I ran on 25 out of the month's 31 days.  So on all fronts my running output has increased, although I don't plan to return to the 160-200 miles/month standard I set in the first three months of this year.  I have noticed my endurance gradually increasing each week as I cover more distance.  And the foot seems none the worse through it all after I incorporated certain daily stretches and began wearing snug-fitting shoes with arch support.

I expect August to be much like July was, with an gradual increase in my mileage as I aim for a local half-marathon race that will take place the last Saturday in September.

In July I also did some non-running exercise, amassing 23.4 miles of "miles-equivalent" cross-training.  So in all, my physical activity appreciably increased for the month...

Ping Pong Fun

I always thought I was a good ping pong player, although I never practiced at it.  Not owning a ping pong table had a lot to do with this.  But I have been pretty good at just walking up to a table and hitting the ball well, with good placement and some "zing" on the ball.  However, in serious competition I know I wouldn't stand a chance.  But when I play ping pong, I am not shooting for the world or Olympic championship.  I just want to have some fun!

Recently, I did just that, enjoying the game with my family.  Sometimes we would play a real game and keep score, but mostly we enjoyed volleying the ball back and forth.  The best moments were when we would keep up an especially long rally. But the room we played in (see picture) didn't really accommodate us playing the game the way you might see it in official competitions on television: there simply wasn't enough room to stand far back from the table to be able to return strong shots.

I'd like to invest a little money and pick up a cheap ping pong table, one that folds up on one end and gives me the opportunity to practice by myself.  The game is really a good form of exercise, although it doesn't feel like I am "working out" but rather just having a good time...

Still Slogging Through Graveyard Shift

I am still slogging through my graveyard shift work schedule, with little chance of being able to change my working hours anytime soon.  So I'm left coping with staying awake and trying to fully function in the wee hours of the morning. I'm usually all right until around  4 AM and then things quickly begin to go downhill.  By 5-5:30, it becomes a real struggle until I leave the place at 7:30. In the morning.  This is an awful time to be driving home through the city as the work rush hour has commenced and, when classes are in session, the streets are clogged with buses and school traffic.  But the main problem with this schedule is the lack of deep nighttime sleep...

For fifteen of the first sixteen years I worked at this organization, I worked the graveyard shift.  Back then, once off from work, I generally slept whenever I could find the time.  This lack of a regular sleep time hurt me, and this time around I decided to change.  Now, once I get home from work, I go to bed about an hour later and sleep until mid-afternoon.  Then I am fully awake and functioning.  If later I fill like I need a nap, then I'll rest about an hour before I go to work.  It's worked for me, making my trials with this new schedule more or less confined to the early morning hours with me trying to get to the end of my shift.

Oh, and as for my days off, I quickly revert back to the time when I could sleep all night...by sleeping all night!

Local Gym Not to Provide Indoor Track Against Sweltering Heat

Today I ran one of my "standard" courses around my neighborhood, comprising 3.24 miles.  It was a pretty average run with me going the distance with my regular pace.  But although the humidity had dropped to about 60%, the temperature had risen to 87 and it was a very unpleasant run.  When, oh when will this sweltering summer heat end?

I've noticed recently an increased sensitivity to heat with myself when I am out running.  In times gone by it didn't seem to matter that much, but now it's getting pretty intolerable.  I don't always like the idea of resorting to the air-conditioned indoor treadmill to get in my running miles...and if it's not excessively hot outside, then it's excessively humid...if not raining.  Running in place in my house is an option, but I'd rather be covering some distance in the process.

At the University of Florida, they have a student recreation center that has a cool indoor track that would solve my running location dilemma, if only I were a member.  I AM a member of a local fitness company, called the Gainesville Health and Fitness Center.  They have plenty of treadmills but no indoor track.  But wait...they have been expanding their operation and the new, larger facility will open tomorrow with great fanfare...but alas WITHOUT an indoor track!  How regrettable, for them to ignore something that basic...

Finished A Game of Thrones, Starting Next in Series

I recently posted about how I was suffering from "fantasy fatigue" in reference to the increasing number of fantasy genre novels I had begun to read, only to put them down in frustration.  The same was happening again with my reading of George R.R. Martin's A Game of Thrones, the first volume in his ongoing series A Song of Ice and Fire.  But this time I was determined to finish this book to its end, and yesterday I accomplished that.  Today I started out on the second volume, titled A Clash of Kings.  There's still a problem here, though...if you want to consider it as a problem: I'm still rooting for the "bad" guys!  As a matter of fact, a new "bad" character was introduced at the start of this new book...and I found myself on her side....

I do have one correction to the previous article I had written about fantasy fatigue: the "bad" Lannister family is actually represented in how Martin presents the book's chapters, each one depicting the course of events from a different character's viewpoint.  With the Lannisters, it is the "imp" Tyrion Lannister with whom we can share his experiences and viewpoints.  However, at least at this junction, he is an essentially compassionate character, quite unlike the rest of his family.  Still, he is just as shrewd as any of them, easily the most interesting character I've come across so far in this series...

Vettel Right About College Athlete Pay

Yesterday afternoon I was listening to my radio, tuned in to sports talk radio station 850/WRUF-AM.  The local host, Larry Vettel, was discussing the push by some in college sports to pay athletes for their work.  His position was that it would be a mistake to pay all collegiate athletes in all sports across the board, since some sports don't take in the revenue to support paying them.  He doesn't believe that the higher grossing, more popular sports like football and basketball should be burdened with funding pay for athletes in minor sports.  I agree with him, as well as his contention that it would be fair, though, for athletes to be compensated in proportion to the amount of revenue that their sport was generating.  I remember just a couple of years ago when the usually dominant University of Florida football team was experiencing an off year, with their normally explosive offense in "sputter" mode.  Local businesses suffered as a result, meaning that they had been feeding off and profiting from the labors of the local athletes.  Those athletes have a marketable skill and should not be denied the opportunity to benefit from it.  On Saturday in the fall, college football fever generates enormous profits for its schools, communities, and the television networks and stations broadcasting the games. Something very similar happens the next day, on Sunday, when the professionals play.  Why should one group be discriminated against while the other rakes in the riches?

Mr. Vetell did make one caveat to his endorsement of collegiate athletes being paid for their work, besides the condition he made that they reflect the marketability of their sport.  Before anyone gets paid, those participating in the minor sports should receive FULL scholarships and not the flimsy HALF scholarships that are doled out.  Sounds reasonable to me; actually, I wasn't even aware of "half" scholarships in this area...

Ran Seven Miles for First Time Since March

Today I crept a little further up in my quest to resume my former distance running range by managing a seven mile run, something I hadn't accomplished since March, when I also last ran a half-marathon.  It's a bit of a psychological boost for me, seeing that the distance I covered today is a little over half the 13.1 mile half-marathon distance.  There's still that local Gainesville half-marathon looming at the end of September, and it would be a personal triumph of sorts to be able to run and finish it.  As for the foot problem I have been experiencing, I believe that by performing certain daily stretching exercises, wearing snug-fitting, supportive shoes, and keeping the runs to once a day (and at the same general time), the problem has stabilized and ameliorated.  But I still have to be careful...

Senate Nuclear Option Expedient But Unwise

Recently, the Democrats in the United States Senate under the leadership of Harry Reid expressed their determination to change the Senate rules on dealing with the President's nominations and eliminate filibusters, effectively ending the supermajority 60-vote prerequisite and allowing the nominations to be confirmed with a simple 51-vote majority.  The Republicans, for their part, cried foul and claimed that it would destroy the Senate as a deliberative body that, unlike the House of Representatives, accorded the minority party a degree of participation in the crafting of legislation.  Of course, the planned rule change wouldn't have applied to legislation, just nominations. The current Democratic administration claims its nominations are needlessly being held up by the Republicans under their leader Mitch McConnell.  Got all that?

Good, because just eight years ago the two parties were completely switched regarding their rules when it was the Republicans who were calling for a change.  They (including Senator McConnell) approvingly called it the "Constitutional Option" while Democratic opponents (including Senator Reid) denounced it as the "Nuclear Option".  It was nothing but comical the other day on C-Span as this station played clips of the pro and con senators back in 2005 expressing diametrically opposite opinions on this issue than they have today.  As it turns out, neither party exercised their threatened rule change.  Whew!

It never ceases to tickle me how whichever political party that happens to find itself in power seems to have the idea that they will ALWAYS remain in power and that those guys on the other side of the aisle won't someday put THEM in the minority.  As Tennessee's Republican Senator Lamar Alexander pointed out, changing the rule now may benefit the Democrats, but in a few years we may have a Republican president with control of both houses of Congress.  If that happens, those Democrats would rue the day they expediently changed the rules just to get a few nominees confirmed as we end up with some possibly "far out" characters confirmed to their posts...

Visit to Amicalola Falls, Georgia

During our recent trip to northern Georgia, we paid a visit to Amicalola Falls State Park, which is about twenty miles east of Ellijay.  We've been there before, but it has been several years.  The park is dominated by the beautiful falls and presents different hiking trails from the bottom (at the entrance) to the top.  The last time we went, which was in the 1990's, we took the longer-but-less-steep eastern trail.  This time we opted to go west...a shorter route that involved walking up 450 steps.  At the base of the steps was a bridge spanning the middle of the falls, and I got in some good photos (family pictured).  At the top was the rest of the park, including a lodge with a shop and a restaurant, where we ate lunch (the buffet was superb).  I took some pictures from up there, too, including the one here of the grassy field and trees.  Oh, by the way, at the entrance is a nice little shop, too and a place to eat...

Steep Driveways and Roads in North Georgia

Recently I stayed with my family in a cabin in northern Georgia.  The cabin itself is in a very hilly area, and I was not at all accustomed to getting around on this type of terrain, being from flat-as-a-board Florida.  When we first approached the cabin, we looked down at the driveway...way, way down! I'd be lying if I didn't say I was a little bit apprehensive at going down to the bottom, but with extreme care we made it.  Once at the bottom, though, the next question was whether we'd be able to climb back out of it!

For those used to these types of hills, this may seem a bit silly.  I honestly don't know how some of the people who live up there are able to get around on such steep roads and driveways...especially when it's rainy and the roads are slippery.

A Visit to Santa Fe College's Planetarium

Yesterday evening Melissa and I visited Gainesville's Santa Fe College and their planetarium, officially named Kika Silva Pla Planetarium after a late benefactor.  The show, taking place 44 years after the first manned landing on the Moon, was titled "Florida Skies: Around the Moon".  James Albury, himself a co-host on the PBS show Star Gazer (the continuation of the late Jack Horkheimer's show Star Hustler), hosted the event.  It featured live "space" music composed and played by established musician John Serrie in the background as storytellers related old folk tales from various parts of the world relating to the night sky.

Despite the date and the title, the show itself didn't delve into the Apollo landing...or even our space program in general, for that matter.  It was more a primer on nighttime naked eye star gazing, explaining rudiments like altitude, azimuth, the meridian, the zenith, and where the planets are currently standing against the backdrop of the constellations.  If you get up just before sunrise (and it's not cloudy) and look toward the eastern horizon you'll see Jupiter and Mars in "conjunction" (appearing very close to each other).  Also, our next lunar eclipse with be in April, 2014.  For  Gainesville, the next solar eclipse will occur sometime in 2017; if you travel up to Nashville, Tennessee, it will be total.

I haven't been to a planetarium in decades, and this was my first visit to the one at Santa Fe College.  The star projection technology has vastly improved over my last planetarium experience, with it actually resembling a real night sky! Kudos.  Albury was a great host, the storytellers did their presentations well, and Serrie was perfect with his meditative, dreamy music.  The show was for one hour and cost me $5.  Pretty good deal, I think!

Before this past March I was always at work during the weekly Santa Fe Planetariums shows.  Now, though, I may be taking more of them in...

Fantasy Fatigue Setting In With A Game of Thrones

At the enthusiastic urging of my son, I recently began reading George R.R. Martin's enormously popular fantasy series A Game of Thrones.  I'm about three quarters of the way through the first book, but am once again struggling with a phenomenon that I have come to call "fantasy fatigue".  What's that, you might ask...

In just about every fantasy novel I've started, the setting is exotic and interesting.  Usually the book features a map of the make-believe land, something that strongly appeals to me from early in my childhood when my sister and I would play a fantasy game called "Mapland" and we would imagine different parts of our front and back yards to be separate countries with various geographical features like jungle, mountains, oceans...and various animals to contend with as well.  I like this element of fantasy literature.  As a matter of fact, J.R.R. Tolkiens's very detailed mapping of Middle Earth was a very important factor in my affection for his Lord of the Rings series.  As far as the characters and the way that fantasy fiction societies are inevitably presented are concerned, though, the fatigue sets in pretty quickly...

I am sick and tired of being expected to root for hard-ass, sword-swinging, and autocratic protagonists who only want to protect the established aristocratic, anti-democratic order against the evil enemy, who as often as not attempts to rally the "common" people to its cause.  After finishing Tad Williams' wonderful, eerily prophetic, and unrecognized four-volume science fiction series Otherland, I decided to try out one of this primarily fantasy-genre writer's other works.  I got through the first few chapters of the first book in one of his series and had to put it down.  It wasn't the writing per se that was bad; no, the society that I as a reader was being expected to support was abhorrent to me.  The same thing happened when I started Terry Goodkind's Wizard's Rule series.  It occurred again with Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn series.  And now the fatigue is rising again with Martin and his "throne game".  In each of these experiences I began to have the unsettling experience of rooting for the "bad guys" because I could not bring myself to accept the status quo that the "good guys" were trying to preserve.  With Martin, this problem is compounded by his alternation of chapters, each presented to expressed the personal experiences and view point of a protagonist character.  The antagonists, though, get less "fair and balanced" treatment than even the liberals on Fox News Channel.  So what does Eddard Stark, the supposed main character of A Game of Thrones, want more than anything? To preserved a brutal kingdom that puts down women and the poor. In "his" proper world, men can father children out of wedlock with impunity, but a woman caught so doing can best hope for exile. And don't get me started with how prostitution is universal here for poor women with no other means of support...

There are different royal houses vying for power in A Game of Thrones.  The "good" Houses of Stark, Baratheon, Arryn, and Tully are ruled by fools who let emotions govern their actions instead of reason.  The "bad" Lannisters, for their part, although brutal themselves, display a feistiness and cunning that I admire.  At my stage in the reading, I know as a reader I'm supposed to be rooting against the Lannisters, but guess what? I hope they wipe everyone else out!  Fat chance of that happening, I suppose...

I am going to continue trying to get through this series in spite of my objections, though.  It leaves a bad feeling within me to start books only to abandon them.  George R.R. Martin's writing is very good, but I fear for those "bad" Lannisters as I read on...  

Enjoyable Treadmill Workout

Tonight I enjoyed the beginning of my weekend as a severe thunderstorm descended over my area, sending temperatures plummeting 20 degrees and giving me the excuse to forego running through my neighborhood and instead go to my local air-conditioned gym and use one of their treadmills.  This I did and easily amassed five miles, wondering to myself if maybe I'm not so out of shape after all (I could have run further).  It could well be that I have just become more sensitive to very hot weather over the years.  I looked back on my records with awe when I saw that I had regularly gone out on ten-plus mile runs in stifling summer mid-nineties conditions.  And then put in full, strenuous work days!  Of course, my mind back then was set on me getting in condition to run 26.2 mile marathon races, a feat I briefly attained early in 2011 but then quickly abandoned in favor of the more reasonable 13.1 half-marathon race. 

Although the treadmill is good to me, I still feel the need to do road running as well.  I may just take some days and run shorter distances on the road and alternate these with longer treadmill workouts...

Summer Heat, Out of Shape

The dog days of summer are definitely here in northern Florida, with the temperatures daily climbing into the low 90's.  Right now the temperature, according to my weather station on TV, is 91 degrees although just below that figure is shown the predicted high for today: 86!  We're getting some relief from time to time, though, with some thunderstorms bringing some welcome coolness.  The humidity is low at 44 %, so despite the heat I went outside running.  My main problem with running isn't the summer heat, or even the right foot pains that I've previously discussed here.  No, dang it, I am out of shape, having put on a few pounds and then having to carry those extra pounds each time I take a step.  Time for me to shape up...

Announcer Crosses Line Ripping All-Star Game

I usually drive to work around 10 pm and last time was no exception.  While on the road, I often fiddle around with my car radio with the usually vain hope of finding anything worthy of listening to.  One of my regular "visits" while radio surfing is WRUF-AM, a local sports talk station on 850 kHz.  When I tuned in last night, some announcer was carrying on about how uninteresting and irrelevant the annual Major League Baseball All-Star game is.  To drive home his point he asked the listening audience who among them would really be willing to pay the asked admission price and attend the game, without someone else footing the bill for them.  Then he said that he himself sure wouldn't.  Fine, I tend to agree with this dude's viewpoint on the subject.  Then, however, he went on to call the next pitch...OMG, this guy who was just ripping apart the All-Star Game was one its PAID play-by-play announcers!

That crossed a line, in my opinion.  When you're on the job getting paid to promote your business, you don't go public with your negative opinions.  I've watched sporting events before that quickly became lopsided, with the eventual winner assured early on.  And each time the announcers would make the best of the situation, using their skill as professional broadcasters to liven things up and make it more appealing for the viewer to keep tuned in.  Not trash the event and then not blame the public for disliking it, too.

By all accounts, anyway, last night's All-Star Game turned out to be pretty interesting, I hear, with the American League pitchers putting on an appropriately "stellar" performance with a strong 3-0 win over the National League.  I probably would have enjoyed watching at last some of it had I not had other things occupying my time then...

Too Much Sitting Harmful to Health

I happened upon a Runner's World magazine the other day, this August's issue.  On the cover was a teaser heading asking if sitting wasn't the new smoking.  What were they talking about?  Well, at the time I couldn't delve into the magazine. Later, though, at a local bookstore, I found a copy, SAT DOWN, and read the article in amazement.  It turned my view of the concept of "rest" on its head.

Sitting for extended periods of time apparently has the effect of shutting down the body's metabolism, essentially negating the positive effects of exercise (even long-distance running) and exposing the body to increased dangers of all sorts of maladies, heart disease, diabetes, and even cancer among them.  Concurrent with this charge against extended sitting was the warning that watching TV for long stretches was bad,too...unless the viewer was standing, of course. 

We here in Western culture are a sitting people by habit.  We sit when we drive, when we study, when we eat, when we watch movies or TV, when we socialize...and for many of us, sitting dominates our work time.  Yet too much of it can slice years from our lives and make what we do have a time of worse health.  But what can I personally do to reduce my daily sitting time?

The article didn't exactly go into the idea of lying down instead of sitting; I've heard, though, that lying puts less strain on the spine.  Still, unless you're using the time that you lie for necessary sleep, I don't think you're going to eliminate the bulk of the hazard associated with sitting by just getting horizontal.  So we're left standing with...standing!

Fortunately for me, my job doesn't necessitate sitting.  As a matter of fact, none of it, sans the break periods, allow it!  So I don't need to come up with special strategies that office workers might need to stand up on their jobs.  Good.  But I still have to drive...riding a bicycle doesn't present itself as a practical, reliable form of transportation.  Maybe in 1980, but not now.  And when I am with other people in social settings, often I will need to sit just to fit into the group.  So where can I reduce my sitting? 

The big area is when I am at home watching TV.  This may take a lot of intense effort to undo a lifetime of brainwashing, but I will work to replace the deeply ingrained habit of sitting in front of the television set with that of standing.  Keep tuned for my progress in that regard. Along with curbing sitting while watching TV, I also need to replace the idea that sitting is necessary for "rest" and a "break" and instead see how far I get standing instead. 

I don't know which will be harder: changing how I watch TV or taking breaks while standing.  Should be an adventure of sorts... 

TV Pickings Slim, Where's the WNBA?

I was doing my "coach potato" thing last night, channel surfing around the television universe.  It was slim pickings, sad to say, with the Al Pacino celebration of gratuitous violence, Scarface, on one of the channels being the best selection available.  But although Pacino's performance as the anger-management-challenged thug Tony Montana was riveting, I just couldn't take the lengthy scenes with Michelle Pfeiffer's languid, flat performance.  So I did what many others probably did: I switched to my DVD/Blue Ray collection, picking Lord of the Rings to watch.  Oh, there could have been a different option for me had the NBA Channel not been displaying a bit of sexism in its programming...

For years the National Basketball Association has been promoting its own sister league to the men's...the WNBA (Women's National Basketball Association), which wisely plays its schedule during the summer to avoid conflicting with the men's league play.  I've watched a few games so far this year during the rare times that they've seen fit to broadcast any, and I was impressed with the skill and spirit shown by the players.  So far, I like the Phoenix Mercury, but I haven't seen enough of the other teams to really settle down to follow one particular team over the others.  You might think that a Saturday night might be a great opportunity for the league to showcase its women's basketball and increase its popularity.  But you'd be wrong...

Instead, the NBA Channel kept the WNBA off and showed men's Summer League games.  These feature players who are trying to make the regular teams; not even the second stringers are here!  But that's what was shown, so I opted for Frodo, Gandalf, and company instead.

Maybe the NBA Channel (or even possibly ESPN) will choose today to show some exciting WNBA action.  There are some interesting scenarios taking place in the league.  The Phoenix Mercury are doing better than last year, while last year's champion, the Indiana Fever, had a terrible start due to several key injuries in their starting lineup.  Can they get back on track in time to make the playoffs?  The Atlanta Dream are dominating the East, but to me the Minnesota Lynx, who lost in the finals to the Fever last year and are leading the West, seem to be the dominant team in the league so far.  But even if they show some other teams playing each other, I'll watch.  Who knows, I just might find "my" team!

Rare Saturday Morning at Starbucks

As I write this, it is late morning on a Saturday.  I am sitting in my "spot" at the local Magnolia Parke Starbucks studying and writing.  It's just like the good old days, before I switched my work hours to the graveyard shift back in March.  But last night I was off and I reverted, like always, to my habit of sleeping the night away.  So I'm pretty refreshed right now, as opposed to how I usually am at this time of day: worn out and sleepy.

I had been experiencing second thoughts about having changed my work hours from the afternoon/evening shift to the late night/early morning hours.  As it has now turned out, though, I would have been reassigned to this time slot anyway by management and to a location that I have been trying to avoid working at over the years.  So now the hours aren't so cool, but the duty assignment works just fine...so I think I came out on top, considering the circumstances.

I'm fortunate that I came into Starbucks today at the moment I did, for that empty seat I like so much was available in spite of the place being very busy.  And soon after I got here it became even busier.  Saturday is a busy, busy time for this Starbucks!

The remnants of tropical storm Chantal are forecast to spread through and sit over Florida this weekend, dumping copious amounts of rain on us.  I have a few outdoor projects that I would like to work on.  Right now the sun is out, but I see the clouds starting to accumulate.  Oh well, I have some "indoor" projects to occupy myself, too...

Running Progress and Upcoming Half-Marathon

I have been continuing to make some progress with my recovery from a right foot injury, increasing my daily running without noticing any increased pain or discomfort levels.  But I still need to carefully monitor my situation and be prepared to slacken off the running should things begin to worsen (hopefully it won't).  Just having lightened up on my running during the last two months, though, has taken its toll on my endurance, with just getting through previously easy distances something of a chore.  Still, I am making progress with this as well, managing somehow to run 5.1 miles earlier today.  The stifling hot, muggy summer weather we're experiencing right now in northern Florida isn't making it any better.  When it gets too bad, though, I can run indoors on the treadmill (which is what I did today). 

It looks as if there will be a half-marathon race staged right here in Gainesville, on the last Saturday morning in September.  The course will wind all through the University of Florida campus, something that has great appeal to me, a Gator alumnus.  I'm assuming (perhaps wrongly) that this event will take place on a Saturday in which the UF football team will be out of town, playing elsewhere.  Considering what I have recently been through with this foot problem, being able to enter and finish this race would be a great personal victory. But regardless I'm still going to have to continue taking things one day at a time...

Zimmerman Trial Spin on the Five

I was watching The Five on Fox News yesterday afternoon, and they were discussing the George Zimmerman murder trial, which is winding down and will be soon going to the jury for deliberation.  Greg Gutfeld made a comment that I have to take great issue with.  He said that the confrontation between Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin, which culminated in the latter's death by a gunshot wound, shouldn't be viewed in the context of race, but rather as simply a fight between two men.  Leave race out of it, Gutfeld maintained.  I see it differently, though...

Had Zimmerman not been profiling this young black man walking through the neighborhood and then pursued and openly confronted him, armed, then we wouldn't be having a murder trial...or a death.  No, although I am seeing a great amount of emphasis being placed during the trial about who was "on top" during the final struggle between Martin and Zimmerman, and whether the killer performed his deed in "self-defense", the conservative spin-doctors are actually, in my opinion, displaying racism by surgically removing the subject from their analysis.  It's really very similar to saying that, since blacks have a tendency to be profiled by the police for arbitrary traffic stops, then any ensuing complication to such an encounter that results in arrest or injury to said citizen can't be interpreted in a racial context.  But the profiling creates the situation!

Then the "Five" panel (not just Gutfeld) kept going on about how "race" was being injected into this case by the media.  No, as soon as I heard of this story, I immediately saw what was going on myself without the need for any further "assistance" from the media.  But if I or anyone else takes the information that is presented and arrives at independent conclusions, then that is supposedly the media manipulating me.  I beg to differ with such hogwash.  Especially when those espousing that viewpoint are themselves shoveling in the manipulation...

Petty Political Spinning Undermines Deeper Issues

If you tune in to various political shows on television or radio, you're bound to get immersed in a lot of banter aimed at disparaging those political leaders or media commentators with differing views.  On TV, Fox News and MSNBC feed off each other's programming, regularly and derisively quoting snippets of comments their own commentators disagree with.  Leaders or candidates for political posts have their statements, personalities, and personal lives torn to shreds by their opponents in the media.  Sometimes the criticisms are relevant, but regardless the aim is to create doubt in the mind of the viewer as to the trustworthiness of the targeted individuals. To a degree I can understand this as, after all, nobody wants to elect someone who is incompetent, ignorant, or dishonest.  Unfortunately, our current electoral process seems to force candidates into showing themselves to be these very things. So for a voter to say that a candidate whose political orientation doesn't fit with their own viewpoint is speaking out of both sides of their mouth is really just a little bit ingenuous and self-deceiving when, after all, "their guy" is in all probability doing the same thing.  The only difference is the free pass being given to the latter.

Apart from being careful to avoid electing someone who is criminally insane to office, I think that, instead of harping on gaffes and the tedious political spinning dominating the media,  it would be a better idea for each of us within the electorate to decide where we stand, not only on the various issues that concern us, but also on the underlying political philosophies that underpin the parties which provide us these admittedly imperfect candidates (and they are ALL imperfect).  I can't make others deal with politics like this, but at least I can for myself...  

My June 2013 Running Report

It's been a few days since I have had access to a computer to file a blog article, so my June 2013 running summary is a little bit delayed.  But here it is anyway...

In June, I still had the ongoing issue with my right foot.  Still, I seem to have learned how to manage it by following prescribed daily stretching routines, wearing sturdy shoes, and applying ice to the heel after running to keep down inflammation.  There is still some pain, but it isn't intensifying.  And my running has been increasing: I ran a total of 43.97 miles for the month, running on 19 days.  That's an improvement from May's bleak totals.  My longest run was 4.3 miles.  Taking into account alternative "MECT" (see earlier article) activities, the total June mileage goes up to 54.57 miles.

I can feel that my endurance has slipped quite a lot over the last couple of months. And I don't enjoy running and its effects as much as before, with this problem of foot pain nagging me like this.  Still I plod on, hoping that in time I'll return to an earlier level of enjoyment...