Enjoying KenKen Puzzles

I am a puzzle enthusiast.  Specifically, I like numerically-based logic puzzles like Sudoku, Kakuro, and Hidato.  The keys to solving them are that each puzzle has only one, unique solution and that the filling in of each box with the correct number derives from eliminating all other possibilities.  No guesswork is needed to solve them, just logical inference.  So I feel a little like a Sherlock Holmes sleuth when I successfully unravel a solution.  I suppose that of the three types of puzzles I have enjoyed, Kakuro, which resembles a crossword puzzle (only with numerals instead of letters) is the most interesting.  It is also known as "cross-sums".  My local newspaper has a weekly Kakuro puzzle (each Thursday) and daily Sudoku puzzles.  Also, my HP printer has an application that prints out a Hidato puzzle and three Sudokus daily.  I have also gone through some Hidato, Sudoku, and Kakuro books...with the latter two I've enjoyed the Puzzle Wright Press series of books based on martial arts levels (white, green, brown, and black belts).  Now I'm embarking on a different numerical logic puzzle, called KenKen.

According to the intro in White Belt KenKen, KenKen was invented ten years ago by a Japanese math teacher, Tetsuya Miyamoto.  Its grid is similar to that of Sudoku, only that with KenKen outlined areas within the puzzle are marked according to the sum, difference, quotient, or product contained within...while as with Sudoku each line and column contain a unique arrangement of numbers.  I started with the easy level (5X5 an 6X6 grids) and have progressed to the Brown Belt KenKen book, expanding to 8X8 and 9X9 grids.  Try it out for yourself if you like puzzles like Sudoku...

My Recovery from Half-Marathon Better Than Expected

After running for 13.1 miles in the Five Points of Life Half-Marathon here in Gainesville last Sunday, I was prepared to have a difficult recovery period.  After all, I hadn't even run five miles at a stretch in 2014, and hadn't run a half-marathon (or anything close to it) for nearly a year.  But I'm happy to report that I am doing very well and that the recovery period after my race was startlingly brief.  Monday I ran 1.1 miles...some say that runners should take a break after a long race, but I subscribe to the view (among many) of ultra-distance runner Dean Karnazes when he says that a short run the next day after a race is helpful in recovery.  It worked for me, because on Tuesday I ran 5.3 miles and yesterday, 4.2 miles.  The only problem I ever experienced was that one of my right toes ached a little.  Not bad...

Now that I'm back on track with half-marathon running, I'd like to lose some weight (about twenty pounds) by eating more soundly and considering trying one more race before the Florida spring and summer heat overtakes the area.  There is an upcoming event on an island off St. Petersburg that sounds intriguing...

Finished Veronica Roth's Divergent (Book One)

As I mentioned a couple of days ago, I have begun reading the Divergent series by Veronica Roth.  It is apparently doing quite well with sales, as the final book came out last October and bookstores prominently feature the series as customers walk in their doors.  So from that alone I decided to read it...and discovered that it bears a degree of similarity with another series.

I read a description of Divergent that compared it to the popular Hunger Games.  Both are aimed at the teen/young adult market, both are presented in the first person by the teenage female protagonist, and both are deeply involved in the problem of survival within a very flawed, dystopian future society. But as I read through book #1, also titled Divergent, I noticed some similarity with a different series, also aimed at the same reading audience and presented in the first person by the teenage female protagonist: Stephanie Meyer's Twilight series.  I say this because in both Divergent and Twilight, what starts out as a very interesting and intriguing look at a different world and way of life transforms into a gushy adolescent romance tale.  But what should I have expected, anyway, considering that targeted readership?  The chief difference, though, between Divergent and Twilight, is that the former's Beatrice Prior maintains her integrity and sense of identity, unlike her vampire-smitten counterpart Bella Swan of the latter series.  Divergent, its percolating teenage angst notwithstanding, keeps the story interesting and suspenseful.  Beatrice, at the story's start, has to choose, upon turning sixteen, which of the society's five personality-based factions to join...after an aptitude test to steer her the "right" way is inconclusive and she is found to be "divergent".  Her selection entails a great deal of peril, but as the book draws to its end that danger changes in nature to involve the society as a whole, not just the faction.  It was all very interesting to me, and I am looking forward to seeing how well the next book, titled Insurgent, treats tough-as-nails Tris.

Oh by the way, I just discovered that the film version of Divergent is due for release on March 21...

Who are This Year's NBA MVPs?

One of the big topics circulating around these days on sports talk radio is the question of who is the most valuable player in the National Basketball Association.  The consensus opinion seems to be that the top two candidates for the honor, Oklahoma City's Kevin Durant and Miami's Lebron James, are both running very close to each other while being far ahead of any other competition.  I happen to agree, since both Durant and James are complete, versatile players who can effectively play any position on the court.  Also, each has carried his team in several games this year when the #2 players (Russell Westbrook and Dywane Wade, respectively) were out with injuries...and both teams are leading their respective divisions with excellent win-loss records.  There is a good chance that they also will be the championship final teams...wouldn't that be something to behold??!! 

Beyond James and Durant, who would be good enough for third place in the MVP running?  Lately I've been hearing a lot about how the Los Angeles Clippers have been carried by Blake Griffin...who has especially shined while compensating for the absence of injured point guard Chris Paul.  As a matter of fact, perhaps the key factor for most valuable player consideration, besides playing for a winning team, is to have an important teammate out due to injury and to perform well in his absence.  It seems to detract from a player's consideration for the top honor to enjoy having a healthy team and to play unselfishly for it.  As for me, others can have the MVP award; just let my team win, superstar or no superstar...    

And speaking of "my" team, exactly which ones fit that category?  Well, I like Miami and Brooklyn in the East...and San Antonio, Houston, and the Los Angeles Clippers in the West.  Oklahoma City is very good with Durant and Company, I confess, but I still haven't yet gotten over them deserting Seattle in their move to the Sooner State a few years ago...

Reading Chronicles of Narnia Series Again

Every now and then I'll pick up a book or series I like and reread it.  Recently I've been delving back into the works of Isaac Asimov, and now I am once again entering the fantasy literature of C.S. Lewis with his Chronicles of Narnia series.  Divided into seven little books, it explores the world of Narnia as the Christ-like Aslan the Lion created it, and how four young English siblings travel back and forth there to help the good guys and fight the bad guys.  My reading has been complicated by the recently started full-tech film series, which has three of the stories out already and which essentially replaced my own mental images with cinematically spoon-fed ones.  Also, the procession of Narnia films conforms to the original order in which Lewis published the books, not the actual chronological order (which I use to go through the series).  So I started off with The Magician's Nephew, which was the next-to-last book published. It is the logical book to begin with, though, since it lays out the foundation for the creation of Narnia, the origin of the evil witch queen, the involvement of the character Diggory, and the creation of the Wardrobe, crucial elements in the following story (and first published) The Lion, Witch and Wardrobe. 

Diggory, Polly, Uncle Andrew, Strawberry the horse, the cabbie, the evil queen, the wood between the worlds, the yellow and green rings, the dying planet Charn, the bell and the hammer, the origins of the talking Narnian animals, the magical apple tree...these all figure greatly into this appropriately first tale.  But ultimately, by far the main character, as it is with all of the other Chronicles of Narnia stories, is Aslan, the image of God in this strange land.  The characters struggle and struggle for most of each tale...but in the end it is always Aslan on whom they need to depend to make things right.

So, I just read The Magician's Nephew and will soon go through The Lion, Witch and Wardrobe.  My favorite section in The Magician's Nephew? The concept of a "wood between the worlds", an area connecting different universe/worlds but not belonging to any of them, where pools indicate the entry points (and you'd better be careful which one you jump into)...

Just Finished Gainesville's Five Points of Life Half-Marathon

Nearly a year after my previous half-marathon, I just completed the Five Points of Life Half-Marathon here in Gainesville, running through the entire course and finishing with an official time of 2:07:36.8 (here is a link to the results).  While this was about 17 minutes slower than my last run in Tavares, Florida, I was pleasantly surprised at how fast I did run...considering that over the past eleven and a half months I hadn't run any distance remotely close to 13.1 miles.  One of the factors that helped me in this race was unanticipated.  As the crowd of runners assembled before the starting line waiting to begin the race, I noticed certain runners were holding poles with signs on them...signs showing finishing times, like 2:00 and 2:15.  Pacers.  Then it hit me: all I needed to do was to stay close to the 2:15 pacer for most of the race, and then toward the end run faster to the finish line if I felt up to it.  And that's exactly how it played out with me running a 2:15 pace until there were about 3.6 miles to go ...and then I tore off down the road. 

One idea that I cultivated which helped me to go ahead and enter this race was that I could stop along the way and walk some distances to help me cover the course.  It turned out, though, that I had plenty of energy to complete it running...and I finished strong.  The only difficulty I had was toward the end when my lower legs and feet were aching pretty badly.  And soon after the race I experienced some leg cramping, a common occurrence for me. 

The temperature at the start of the race was about 39 degrees and it was dry and clear.  It heated up to around 50 by the end, so the weather was very cooperative with us runners today.  Once again, when I looked around me I saw a lot of extremely healthy and very happy people who were totally digging this event.  The organizers did a great job, as well as the police who blocked off the roads and protected us from renegade vehicles.  I like this particular race because it runs though the heart of Gainesville and the University of Florida campus.  This year was different to me than the last time I ran this event in 2010 in that there were many more spectators and well-wishers lined up along the street this time to cheer us on. 

Now comes the post-race recovery period and the accompanying aches and pains...

Just Finished Reading The Girl Who Played with Fire

I have just finished reading The Girl Who Played with Fire, which is the second book of the late Swedish writer Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy.  As with the first book, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, we have the two main characters of Mikael Blomkvist, a journalist and publisher of Millennium, a magazine devoted to exposing scandals for the most part, and Lisbeth Salander, a computer hacking social outcast with a photographic memory.  In the book I just finished, the focus of the story is squarely on Salander while the first book deals mainly with Blomkvist.  Both books expose the scary ease with which the State (at least in Sweden) can declare an individual incompetent and deprive them of their freedom, putting them often under the control of another party who may not have their best interests at heart. This is certainly the case with Salander, whose history of going through the Swedish mental health/social welfare system is described and explained.  Certain facts about her early life seem strangely connected to a double murder (of which she becomes the main suspect) of an investigative journalism team employed by Blomkvist to write a book about international sex trafficking, along with an expose of the same for Millennium magazine.  There is a mysterious individual named Zala who seems to be the key to everything...and this is borne out at the end of the book.  But The Girl Who Played with Fire has a rather strange "ending", even for a book within a series: the story is cut off and the book ended with too many unanswered questions hanging in the air...supposedly to be resolved in the third and final book.  That disappointed me, for I believe that although a series naturally contains a larger story that connects the individual stories, each book within that series should contain a complete story within it (I note that George R.R. Martin totally disregards this in his A Song of Ice and Fire series).  With this second book in Larsson's series, it felt as if the final couple of chapters were simply omitted, leaving me somewhat perplexed.  Will he pick up where he abruptly left off here, or will he pass forward in time to a "new" story in the final book, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest?  I shall soon find out... 

Happy Birthday, Melissa

To my wonderful, beautiful wife Melissa, I wish you a very, very happy birthday AND St. Valentine's Day!

Diverging into Divergent Series

After finally getting through what George R.R. Martin has produced for us so far with his A Song of Ice and Fire series, I decided to begin a different series, albeit one that may be a bit lighter in nature.  So I picked Veronica Roth's very popular Divergent series to pursue.  Appropriately, the first book is also titled Divergent, and I've flown through the first few chapters already.  The targeted reading audience for Divergent is "young adult", a demographic category that I occasionally delude myself into believing that I belong to.

The setting in which Divergent takes place is off in the distant future in the heart of a decayed Chicago.  At some time in their distant past (and in our own more immediate future), an as-yet-unspecified apocalypse had occurred which sent civilization into basic survival mode.  A new societal structure was formed in which people were sorted into one of five life-long "factions" that conformed to their main personality types: Candor, for those seeking truth; Erudite, for those seeking knowledge; Dauntless, for those valuing courage; Abnegation, for those emphasizing selflessness; and Amity, for those emphasizing friendliness.  The protagonist is Beatrice Prior, who just turned sixteen and belongs to an Abnegation family.  But now she has to undergo a "test" to determine her real inclination before the upcoming Choosing Ceremony in which she chooses which faction she'll belong in for the remainder of her days. 

The writing in Divergent is smooth and interesting.  The factions remind me quite a lot of the four Hogwarts houses (Gryffindor, Slytherin, Ravensclaw, and Hufflepuff) in the Harry Potter series...it's easy to see that the author might possibly have derived from them when she conceived her own series.

The Divergent series is a trilogy, and the final volume was published last year...so unlike with Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire I won't have to wait very long for the next in the series.  The idea of dividing humanity according to personality types intrigues me, and I am looking forward to seeing how Veronica Roth handles it... 

Income Equality, Equality, and Equality of Opportunity

I am hearing recently a great deal of political discussion, especially from the political left and the Democrats, about something called "income inequality".  The term makes me wince, for unless those who want "income equality" are proposing to level everyone's income to the exact same level (probably a dream for some, I fear), a more accurate term for what they are trying to express would be "income disparity".   Most rational people, regardless of their political affiliation, recognize that it is important for our economy to encourage hard work and innovation in the workplace and marketplace...and to reward those successful in this with a larger income.  So being able to strive to make more money, and enjoying the benefits of that extra income, is a legitimate and crucial element in keeping a prosperous economy afloat and growing.  Also, just because someone earns more money than someone else doesn't mean that the "extra" money the other has just disappears...it circulates throughout the economy with spending and investment.  Even with worldwide investing, where money leaves the country, it eventually comes back along with foreign investments here.  So I am not particularly concerned with the idea of "income disparity" either.

As a matter of fact, let's bring the argument about "equality" to the floor and place it in its proper context.  What those who promote equality should be saying is that they support "equality of opportunity" and "equal rights".  But what one chooses to do with their opportunities and rights is up to them: this is where the important concept of the right to liberty comes in, as was so eloquently put by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence...

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

The political discussion should be about equality of opportunity of everyone, which means that education should be given a high place in our list of priorities.  A wealthy family is in a better position to bestow opportunities to its offspring, while the poor is less able to accomplish this.  It is important to realize that the children, whether rich or poor or in-between, are not themselves responsible for where they stand in this regard.  Equality of opportunity means that anyone, regardless of their family's economic status, has access to resources that they can use to contribute to society according to their own abilities and hard work, and make a better life for themselves.  It is here that I believe that Democrats should be focusing their attention, not protesting against income and wealth disparity...

Facebook Reactivated, Link to This Blog

A few weeks ago I reactivated my long-dormant Facebook account and am now using it to post links to this blog.  Along the way I used my personal memory and "friends of friends" to build up a "friends" list of people who would have more access to my writing.  There are a couple of reasons I'm back on Facebook...

One is simply that the area of personal blogging simply isn't what it used to be a few years ago; instead the potential readers appear to have rushed en masse to Facebook to accomplish what they would have been doing on Google's Blogger, Wordpress, or other blogging sites.  And Facebook tends to be insular in nature, encouraging its users to circulate within its system without the need to get out on the Web at-large and surf around.  So for that reason I've connected Facebook to this blog, which in April will be seven years old with 2200+ articles. 

Another reason to resurrect my Facebook account is to give myself a little "push" into the discomfort zone and engage more with the people I know (or who know the people I know) and stay out of the "cave of reclusiveness" that I have had the tendency to revel in for much of my life.  That having been said, I am not by habit a blogger who uses very much in the way of graphics in my presentations.  But I see that photos, videos, "posters" with snappy lines, and the like tend to dominate the Facebook news feed.  This is good for those who are inclined to do this, and probably fits in better with the vision that the designers of this social network had for its use.  So far, I enjoy Facebook and hope that those of you with links to this blog enjoy reading it, regardless whether you agree or disagree with what I'm saying...

Just Finished Reading Martin's A Dance with Dragons

It took me a while, but I have finally caught up with renown fantasy author George R.R. Martin in his protracted series A Song of Ice and Fire, just having finished reading his fifth book A Dance with Dragons.  As with the previous four volumes, a lot of very serious stuff happens at the end...and people die.   But I've grown quite accustomed to that, and would have been surprised had some momentous events not happened.  The temptation here is for me to go into more detail and discuss how the various characters have progressed...however, I'm not going to be a party to spoiling the story for anyone. Martin supposedly has two more books to publish before the series closes out, although I can't imagine how he intends to bring all of the divergent plot lines and characters together at the end...who knows, maybe he'll just leave everything hanging.   He already had so many different things going on that he had to split concurrent events into two separate books, eventually coming back all together a little past the halfway point of Dance.  I wonder if this is going to be a "last man standing" kind of epic, with just surviving all of the ordeals being the ultimate measure of success for the characters.  No one is too much of a protagonist in the series to be safe, as I once again discovered with this latest book.

The next book in A Song of Ice and Fire is supposed to be released sometime in 2015.  In the meantime I will probably keep my memory of the characters, geography and events fresh by occasionally referring to a "Wiki" version of it, totally devoted to the enormous quantity of information that Martin has generated about this completely imaginary setting...

FivePoints Half-Marathon Approaching Fast

It is now less than a week before the FivePoints Half-Marathon here in Gainesville...and I'm unprepared, not having trained to that distance level in recent months.  That being said, I think I'll enter it anyway, walking part of the way if I have to.  I haven't run this distance since early March of last year...actually, I haven't even approached it since.  But I have been consistently running on a daily basis and feel that I could swing a run/walk combo for 13.1 miles.  Of course, I might just be able to run through the whole distance should I slow down my pace a bit...well, I'll just have to see how things develop on race day.

Since I resumed running in 2007 at age 50, I have run and completed a total of nine races of length 10K (6.2 miles) or longer.  One was a marathon and six were half-marathons.  That one marathon, the Ocala Marathon in 2011, convinced me that I was more suited for shorter races. As far as FivePoints is concerned, ever since that first FivePoints Half-Marathon in 2010 something has come up each year preventing me from running in it again.  This year it looks, at least right now, as if I'll get a shot at it...but as I said before, my main goal will be to just finish it!

Rain Bothersome, But Will Help Prevent Fires

Since 1998, I have entered the late wintertime with a certain amount of trepidation...in that year we in northern Florida had experienced a drought severe enough to spawn several devastating forest fires in early spring.  Almost all of Flagler county on the east coast between St. Augustine and Volusia County was affected, while huge sections of Volusia were in flames.  For a time, it looked as if a firestorm would sweep into Ormond Beach and burn down whole neighborhoods...but the heroic efforts of firefighters kept it at bay.  In Alachua County where I live, we had our own fires to worry about, the worst of them being on the outskirts of Waldo, about 15 miles northeast of us.  When the wind was blowing in the opposite direction, it wasn't bad.  But one night it shifted suddenly in our direction and it felt as if the fire were right upon us...with ashes falling from the sky.  The threat of immediate immolation may be scary, but ultimately the chief long-term danger I see in these fires is in their detrimental effect on people's breathing...especially for those already afflicted with respiratory disorders.

I can't pretend to be a prophet or even a competent weather/fire forecaster, but this year at least it looks as if we will be spared this fiery and smoky fate.  We have had so much rain in the last month that not only is it inconceivable that we'll have any of those fires later on, but also the ground in many places is turning into muddy mush.  Oh well, I'll accept the trade-off: I don't have to breathe any of it, at least...just avoid driving or stepping in it...

Just Finished Reading Goodkind's Faith of the Fallen

I have just reached the halfway point in Terry Goodkind's twelve-part Sword of Truth fantasy series, having just read book #6, titled Faith of the Fallen.  The regular protagonists Richard, Kahlan, and Zedd are still in there, struggling against their own nemesis, the Imperial Order.  But this book diverges from the previous five in that the author takes up much of the narrative arguing, through the characters, his ideas of libertarianism and his disapproval of government-sponsored programs and laws designed to aid the poor.  Under the Imperial Order, personal initiative and economic freedom are suppressed; those who work and produce are stigmatized and made to serve those unwilling to work.  I understood Goodkind's viewpoint on all this very early in the story without him needing to make it the overriding theme of the book.  Frankly, I dislike reading books where the author is obviously on a soapbox spouting his or her ideology...with those characters agreeing with his opinions uniformly displaying virtue and those on the "other side" being dishonest, lazy, and treacherous (and in Goodkind's writing, sadistic).  I rather like to believe that people of different philosophies and opinions should be respected and not have their characters impugned just because they are seen as being on the "other side".   Still, I managed to get through Faith of the Fallen and look forward to giving Terry Goodkind another chance with the next book in the series, the title of which I believe is The Pillars of Creation...

Sochi Olympics to Start Soon

I have a tendency to go channel surfing on my radio while driving.  One reason for this may be that I have a diversity of listening interests and like to see what's happening on different stations.  But sadly, the main reason I switch back and forth on the radio dial is that the programming is so poor nowadays on broadcast radio that I have to search around to find something worth listening to.  This morning I was toggling back and forth between two AM sports talk radio stations when I heard one of the hosts make a suggestion that I thought was worth adopting...although I can't for the life of me remember who made the suggestion or which station it was!  The idea was to balance out the Summer and Winter Olympics by moving to the latter indoor events currently belonging to the former.  So indoor (traditional) volleyball would then be in the Winter Olympics while beach volleyball would stay in the Summer.  Basketball, wrestling, gymnastics...even swimming and diving could move over as well. 

I think that a major problem with following the Winter Olympics right now is that it is very geographically skewed toward countries with snowy, northern climates, the Jamaican bobsledding team notwithstanding.  Moving sports to these games from the Summer might help stir up more worldwide interest with more countries participating.  On second thought, though, basketball might better be left in the Summer since most of the participating athletes (and coaches) have their own leagues to play in during the wintertime.  Still, many of the more minor indoor sports might fit better in the "other" Olympics we're about to experience...

The Sochi Winter Olympics officially begin tomorrow with the opening ceremonies, but some events have already begun today.  I will probably be watching a few of the sports, none of which I have ever even remotely engaged in myself, largely due to the fact that I have lived here in Florida since infancy.  Curiously, though, I have found myself entranced by the sport of curling, which is something like team shuffleboard on ice...with broomsticks.  I noticed that some of those sports talk jocks said they liked watching it, too...when they weren't bashing the shoddy provisions provided to the press corps at Sochi...

Looking at Today's NBA Standings

At about the 60% point in the regular season, it seems to me a good time to check out the National Basketball Association standings and see how things are going with various teams.  The first, glaring thing I see is the imbalance between the Eastern and Western conferences.  This is important since the eight teams with the best records in each conference will make the playoffs, an important mark of success for many franchises.  As per this morning's standings, the Western Conference Memphis Grizzlies currently stand on the outside of the playoff picture in ninth place in their conference with a 26-21 record.  But were they in the Eastern Conference, the Grizzlies would have the third best record; were they in that conference's Atlantic Division, they would actually be in first place!  Denver and Minnesota, both in the West, would also qualify for the playoffs if either of them were in the East. 

The expected leaders like Miami, Indiana, San Antonio, Oklahoma City, and the Los Angeles Clippers are continuing to perform well, each of these leading their respective divisions.  Teams exceeding expectations are Toronto (which leads the Atlantic Division), Washington, Portland, and Phoenix.  Houston is doing better than last year, too, but that was to be expected after their acquisition of Dwight Howard following his one season with the Los Angeles Lakers.  Speaking of the Lakers, they are a major disappointment this season with their star guards Kobe Bryant and Steve Nash long out of action due to injuries (Nash is back now, though).  They are a dismal 16-32 so far.  Chicago is also having to go through another long stretch without their talented-but-brittle star Derrick Rose, out with injury once again.  But they at least are gamely fighting on and stand to make the playoffs.  Other disappointments are Brooklyn (albeit in a playoff spot right now), New York, Milwaukee, Denver, and Utah.  Teams currently with playoff positions in the standings that I haven't yet mentioned are Atlanta, Charlotte, Dallas, and Golden State.

A lot can happen over the course of the remaining 32 to 34 games.  Injured players can return and make an impact (although with the Lakers it will be too late) and players currently active can suffer injuries.  At this point I see conference finals between Miami and Indiana in the East and between San Antonio and Oklahoma City in the West.  An Indiana/Oklahoma City final championship series seems the most probable, at least from where I'm standing.  And if that happens, I like Oklahoma City...

Worst Super Bowl?

I have read and heard people claim that the Super Bowl this past Sunday was one of the worst ever.  No doubt the main reason for this harsh judgment was the lopsided score, 43-8, by which Seattle drubbed Denver.  Other contributing factors may have been that the expected offensive fireworks of both Peyton Manning and Marshawn Lynch were pretty much squelched by stingy defenses, and Seattle's defense was especially tenacious as they put on an incredible clinic with their effective tackling.  Defensive struggles often make for perceived uninteresting games...although I personally don't see it that way.  Also, the folks who were pulling for Denver had to be crushed by the fact that, from the first play from scrimmage, their team acted as if they had forgotten how to handle a football. I'm sure many of these fans thought this was one of the worst Super Bowls ever.  I also think that viewers were spoiled by the exciting Super Bowl games that were played in the last few years...the last blowout had been after the 2002 season when Tampa Bay drubbed Oakland 48-21.  In fact, though, taken as a whole, many past Super Bowls have been typified by one team dominating the other...and fittingly enough, one of the teams "most dominated" has been the Denver Broncos.  As for my opinion on the subject, I liked to watch both the play on the field and the well-done halftime show featuring Bruno Mars (with a little help from the Red Hot Chili Peppers)... what I didn't care for about this year's Super Bowl was in another area...

The commercials during the Super Bowl, usually hyped for their imaginativeness and effect, were to me a pathetic, collective bunch of duds, some of which made no sense at all to me.  The car commercials in particular seemed to be especially weird and puzzling in a negative way, throwing in all sorts of extraneous nonsense...if you're trying to sell a car, then talk about the car! And the beer commercial where the "unsuspecting" dude ends up playing ping-pong with Arnold Schwarzenegger...you mean they actually PAID some advertising whiz who came up with that one?  Really?

Finished Reading Asimov's Pebble in the Sky

I just finished reading Pebble in the Sky, Isaac Asimov's final novel in his science fiction Empire trilogy.  The stories in this trilogy are connected with each other only in the context of the backdrop of Asimov's make-believe future of the growing galactic empire of Trantor.  The characters, stories, and locations are all completely different and are separated by vast spans of time, one book having no discernible bearing on any of the others.  Pebble in the Sky takes place on Earth, with a visiting archaeologist from the Sirius system and an accidental time traveler from "our" contemporary Earth's Chicago making up a pair of highly unlikely protagonists.  The Earth's population has dwindled to number in the millions and residual radiation from a devastating nuclear war in eons past (i.e. our time) has polluted the planet.  The other star systems in the galactic empire treat Earthlings as pariahs and they respond in kind with a surly, rebellious demeanor.  Throw in a scientist's discovery of a formula for intelligence enhancement, a society in which people are put to death at age 60,  and an insidious plot against the rest of the galaxy, and you pretty much have the basic ingredients of this story.  It was more enjoyable to read than the previous two Empire novels, but I felt that Asimov threw too many gimmicks into his tale. Still, it's always fun to read others' speculations about our future.

There, I've read Asimov's Empire series again.  Now to continue with his much better and more cohesive Foundation series...which consists of five basic books, two prequels, and at least three posthumous spinoffs written by other authors...       

Super Bowl This Evening

Well, later on today it will be decided: the National Football League Championship of the 2013 season.  I suppose that, after it's over, I can finally get along with regarding myself as being in 2014!  This edition of the Super Bowl, taking place in East Rutherford, New Jersey, pits the Seattle Seahawks of the NFC against the Denver Broncos of the AFC.  Both teams are what I would term "complete" teams with solid offenses and defenses...along with some star players.  We all know about the great Peyton Manning for Denver, with his spectacular record-breaking regular season.  His cast of receivers has also become well-known.  Seattle's biggest star is their running back Marshawn Lynch...and here is where we see the strategic scenario developing for the game.  Seattle relies on their running game for three purposes: open up the passing game for their able young quarterback Russell Wilson, keep the potent and explosive Denver offense off the field, and last but certainly not least, score a lot of points for themselves!  On the other "side" of these teams, the Bronco defense has had difficulties stopping their opponents at times, but Seattle's has been truly remarkable with the cohesive, unselfish manner in which they work together as a unit to crush drive after drive.  I attribute most of their success to their head coach Pete Carroll, who has made this group believe and rally around him.  Sure, we hear from time to time about their star cornerback Richard Sherman and his showboating remarks reminiscent  of pro wrestler rantings, but on the field he blends well with his teammates.  Still, Seattle will have their hands full with the Manning-directed offense, and will have trouble rushing the quarterback if they can't stop the Broncos' effective rushing attack headed by Knoshon Moreno.  Oh, I haven't mentioned Denver's coach John Fox, another outstanding leader.

I am picking Seattle to slip by Denver in a close game and, like many of the other predictions I have heard on radio and TV, I think it will be in the "twenties" for both sides: Seattle 27, Denver 23.  I'll also be rooting strongly for the Seahawks...

Education for Life 5K Race at Westside Park

Earlier this morning Rebecca and I ran a local 5K (3.1 miles) race here in Gainesville.  It was called the Education for Life 5K.  I believe this was its fourth running.  There must have been about 200 runners, and for a change most of them seemed to be in the younger age categories.  The course, which began and ended behind Westside Park on NW 31st Drive, also involved running along NW 8th Avenue, cutting through Loblolly Woods Park, and returning down hilly NW 16th Avenue (where Marty Liquori used to train).   The hilliness and slopes of the course weren't the only challenges: although the race-time temperature was a pleasant 60 degrees, the humidity was a bit overbearing, being over 90%.  I think that factor bothered me more than anything.  This was Rebecca's first 5K race and she did a great job, especially considering the terrain and humidity.  Way to go!  For my part, I finished it at 25:53...pretty much maintaining my usual pace.  While running with my daughter was fun, I was also gratified to finally have entered and finished a race after so many months of skipping other opportunities (some beyond my control, to be fair). 

I felt that the atmosphere at this event was very positive, and volunteers were spread along the course shouting encouragement and cheering us on.  There was even a pre-race group stretching/warm-up session. They also were good at providing refreshment after the race, and not only handed out awards to the age/gender category winners, but also randomly drew for some prizes from the at-large pool of runners.  I'd like to try this race out next year.  Here is the event's website. 

And here are some pictures I took...

My January 2014 Running Report

A year ago in January, I ran in the Ocala Half-Marathon and amassed 200 miles for the month while running every day.  This year in January I only ran about half that amount, 102.08 miles to be exact. However, I somehow did manage to run on every day of the month.  And although I skipped the Ocala Half-Marathon this year and didn't run any races this month, I am going to run tomorrow's Education for Life 5K event with my daughter tomorrow morning, taking place here in Gainesville at Westside Park.  My longest single run in January was relatively short: 4.54 miles. 

I'm still entertaining thoughts of entering Gainesville's FivePoints Half-Marathon for February 16.  I'm not in the same running shape, though, that I was a year ago.  But to just cover the distance without concerning myself about my time would still be a pretty nifty accomplishment for me...and I love the course, which goes through much of Gainesville...

Isaac Asimov's Novel The Currents of Space

As I wrote a couple of days ago, I'm currently in the processing of re-reading Isaac Asimov's Empire trilogy of novels.  I just finished the second one, titled The Currents of Space.  In it, Asimov speculates that it will be discovered that in deep space, "currents" exist that contain relatively large amounts of various elements.  Also, when a star system passes through a space current possessing a large amount of carbon, the star becomes a prime candidate for a nova explosion.  I don't think, however, that this is where we are nowadays with our understanding of novas...but for this story at least, we just have to play along with our good author's notions on the subject.  This is important because in the universe of Asimov's fictional future thousands of years from now, a specialist in the field of space currents has a dire warning to convey to the leaders of an inhabited planetary system...but unfortunately someone wipes his memory away (using something called a "psychic probe") before he can get his message across.  The story develops as he gradually recovers his memory while he and two companions are pursued by two conflicting sides: the locally dominant Sarks and the galactic empire of Trantor.  There is an important subplot to this tale, in which the planet of Florina is under Sark domination and whose inhabitants, of a lighter skin pigmentation than other people in general, are subjugated and suffer racial discrimination.  This is a not-so-oblique analogy to what was going on in America (especially in the South) with its racial segregation and prejudice of the mid-twentieth century, when The Currents of Space was written.  To leave no doubts in the minds of the reader about what he is doing, Asimov then has the oppressed people group forced to grow kyrt, which supposedly is a variant of cotton that grows better on that planet than anywhere else in the galaxy.  I guess back then this exposition against racial bigotry would have been considered a bold move on the author's part, but it seems somewhat patronizing and redundant to me now. 

The Empire series contains stories told with the backdrop of the growing Trantor Empire, each one transpiring a substantial time span after the previous.  With The Currents of Space, the Empire is strong but only covering about half our galaxy.  The third and final book of this series, titled Pebble in the Sky, has Trantor dominant throughout...

Leon: A Cold and Stormy Character

For nearly a week already, the weather forecasts have been pointing to today as being a rather nasty day.  Initially it was projected to dip down into the twenties.  Then it looked as if we were in for an ice storm with freezing rain, icy roads and even a potential for the first appreciable snowfall here in Gainesville since December of 1989.  But as the day grew close, the forecast backed off about the severity of the impending storm, which I was astonished yesterday to discover possesses a name: Winter Storm Leon.

I had long thought that putting a name to something automatically makes it more memorable, and some of these wintertime frontal storms can cause at least as much destruction and injury as a hurricane strike.  Apparently, somebody in the weather bureau agrees with me; I wonder how long this naming of winter storms has been going on.  I don't recall hearing anyone refer to other such storm systems by a name, but Leon does start with the letter "L": doesn't this imply that there already have been winter storms A through K? And has this already been going on previous to this year?  My next proposal will be for them to start naming summertime heat waves!

In spite of temperatures giving us a break with Leon (at least here in Gainesville), we are still stuck in very rainy circumstances here and cold (for us)...it isn't supposed to get warmer than the low forties all day long.  Looks like I won't be running outside today!

Just Finished Reading (Again) Asimov's The Stars, Like Dust

The late Isaac Asimov was one of those writers who created his own fictional "universe".  It is common knowledge that, within the fantasy genre of fiction, authors typically reshape the planet with completely different maps of imaginary continents, along with their topography and political divisions.  As a matter of fact, one of the first things I do when I pick up the beginning book in a fantasy series is to look at the map of the area.  Sometimes, as with authors like J.R.R. Tolkien and George R.R. Martin of Lord of the Rings and A Song of Ice and Fire, respectively, these maps are very intricate and well thought out.  And then there are other maps, like those of Terry Goodkind in his Sword of Truth series, which are very sketchy and incomplete.  But Asimov was a science fiction writer, not confined to one made-up world...instead,  his created "world" spans the future history of our galaxy; his "map" is of time rather than geography.  This "Asimov Universe" wasn't created beforehand, but rather evolved over the span of decades as he wrote many different novels and short stories that fit together to form a cohesive picture of his vision of the future as to how it pertains to humanity.  These stories can roughly be grouped into three time eras: the Robot Era, the Empire Era, and the Foundation Era.  With the robot tales, you can read each story without too much concern about keeping "in order", but with Empire and Foundation (especially the latter) it's a pretty good idea to go from beginning to end. 

I just reread the first of Asimov's three Empire novels, titled The Stars, Like Dust.  It is set in our galaxy, with many worlds already having been settled for thousands of years, after the crucial ability to be able to "jump" through space/time had been acquired that made travel to the stars beyond our Solar System feasible (in Star Trek this advance is called the "space warp"). I feel a little uncomfortable when I speak of the future as past "history", but this apparent paradox works anyway.  The idea of future history becomes of paramount importance for the Foundation series, which is completely based on it.  But before Foundation could take place, a galaxy-wide united empire with a centralized capital city and government had to be established, and The Stars, Like Dust lays out the preliminary setting for the beginnings of this process by depicting a rebellion against a minor empire in a localized group of star systems.  The story involves an executed rebel landowner's son who finds himself sucked into a web of intrigue involving  rebellion, murder, romance, and revenge.  How it all ends is...well, to my thinking it ends pretty inconclusively, making me wonder why I invested my time in reading it a second time, much less the first!  I wasn't too happy with Asimov making such major efforts to scientifically describe the various technological innovations in his story as well as giving short lectures on chemistry and physics...I think he could have accomplished what he wanted to do without sounding so pedantic (I've had the same problem with Michael Crichton in his novels).  But it is the story's young protagonist, Biron Farrill, who bothered me the most with his childish emotional reactions to just about everything...only to reveal at the end that it was all just a ploy on his part to manipulate the behaviors of others to reach the higher objectives of discovering who betrayed his father and where the center of rebellion against the Tyrann empire was located.    But all in all, I'm glad I read it (and that it's over)...and am about to embark on a rereading of the (better) second book in the Empire series, titled The Currents of Space...

Referring to Super Bowls

This seems like an opportune time to bring up something that my vague memory tells me I already did on this blog in some form or another a few years ago.  And that is the ridiculous way that Super Bowls are designated. 

It's pretentious enough that those in the National Football League leadership chose to implement their own system of counting years starting with Super Bowl "1" (this Sunday it will be Super Bowl "48"), but to aggravate things even more they have insisted on using Roman numerals instead of the Arabic ones we are accustomed to.  So I can say "Super Bowl 48", but I write "Super Bowl XLVIII".  In spite of the NFL's efforts to replace the old B.C./A.D. system (or BCE/CE if you prefer) of marking the years with "BSB/ASB" (which kind of implies that somebody sees football is being akin to a religion, doesn't it), nobody I know actually refers to old Super Bowl games this way.  Instead, they have a different problem when they refer to the calendar year...

For example, Super Bowl XL (or "40") took  place early in 2006 to determine the 2005 NFL championship in which Pittsburgh handled Seattle, 21-10.  But someone who refers to this game by saying "the 2005 Super Bowl" may be mistaken as referring to the game played in earlier in 2005 to determine the 2004 champion (which was New England).  On the other hand, using the actual year that the game was played in could be mistaken for the 2006 season...the Super Bowl championship which Indianapolis won.  As far as I can tell, the most common way to refer to a Super Bowl year is to use the season's designation.  So this year's Super Bowl between Seattle and Denver, although played in 2014, will be generally known as the "2013 Super Bowl".  Got all that? Good, because I may need you to tell me what I just said!

I discovered something else relating to past Super Bowls that surprised me.  For the first four years of this game, for the 1966-69 seasons, the National Football League and the American Football League were completely separate entities who sent their champions to face off for bragging rights in an unofficial, essentially exhibition contest...never mind that it was called "Super Bowl".  It wasn't until the 1970 season, when the NFL and AFL officially merged to form the NFL with National and American Conferences that the Super Bowl became the NFL championship game starting with the fifth game of the series.  So in spite of the fact that the New York Jets upset the Baltimore Colts 16-7 in that famous "Super Bowl III" after the 1968 season, the NFL champion for that year was...the Baltimore Colts! The following year Kansas City in turn upset Minnesota 23-7 in their Super Bowl.  As it turns out, that season was Minnesota's turn to be NFL champions...in fact it has been their only NFL championship! Yet both the Jets and Chiefs have won a Super Bowl...although neither has ever officially won an NFL championship!                                    

Just Finished Reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

I just finished reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the first volume of the late Swedish writer Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy.  As you might suspect, the setting of this story is Sweden...and the trilogy's title refers to the name of the story's magazine that Mikael Blomvist, one of the two main protagonists, runs.  In this first story, he finds himself found guilty in the courts for defaming a seedy wealthy industrialist and readies himself for a short jail term.  He then finds his future plans radically altered by another aging industrialist, named Henrik Vanger, when the latter hires him to investigate the 1966 disappearance and presumed murder of his daughter Harriet.  Blomvist is chosen for this job largely because of the extensive background check performed for Vanger by Lisbeth Salander, an antisocial prodigy with a flair for getting in trouble with the authorities...and the other main protagonist.  The novel involves several other characters, including several "suspects' in the Vanger family...but Blomvist and Salander are the standouts.  The story eventually has them meeting up with each other and becoming a formidable investigatory team, eventually solving the Harriet Vanger affair...and then going further with other matters.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is one of the best written thrillers I've come across in recent memory...and I've gone through quite a few lately.  The protagonists are very likeable and unforgettable, especially the enigmatic Salander.  I strongly recommend it to anyone who is into the mystery genre of fiction.  It was also recently made into a movie...featuring among others the British actor Daniel Craig, performing between James Bond roles.  Perhaps you've already seen it; I haven't yet, but since it's on Netflix I'll probably watch it now that I've read the book.  And I will most definitely be reading the next in the trilogy, titled The Girl Who Played with Fire...

Campaigns for Local March Election Underway

Late yesterday afternoon I was driving here in Gainesville along NW 43rd Street, northbound.  As I approached the 16th Boulevard intersection I saw several people smiling, waving at the passing cars, and holding up signs touting the candidacy of Annie Orlando for city commission.  I thought oh no, here we go again.  March local elections.

It never fails to amaze me that, with the already pathetically low voter turnout we have in this supposedly democracy-loving country of ours, my home town of Gainesville regularly holds its commission elections in March...when voter turnout is almost certain to be around a quarter of total registered voters or less.  This gives candidates with more extreme views and a more hardline, committed following of a relatively small number of voters the opportunity to sneak into elected office when a November election with its higher (but still too low) turnout would more likely prevent this from happening.  We have three races for our local government body that will be voted for on March 11...one at-large commission seat that will represent the whole city of Gainesville and two district seats that will represent certain sections. 

Aside from the fact that Annie Orlando is a Democratic Party candidate who seems to have establishment support for the at-large seat, and the Democrats usually win city-wide elections here in Gainesville, the alliterative, geographical, pop musical, and American historical nature of her name will probably garner a few extra votes as well.  The name Annie Orlando has that sonorous, alliterative ring to it, the Joe-Montana-like geographical glamour, the Tony-Orlando-and-Dawn pop musical allure (for those old fogies among us), and, last of all, the Annie Oakley American western history appeal...although that one is a tad more obscure than the others. 

I don't know which candidates I'll be voting for, but at least I'll find out more about who's running in the next few weeks and go to my precinct and cast my ballot on March 11.  I take my this civic responsibility of voting seriously and haven't missed an election in more than thirty years.  Annie, your name has pizazz but don't count on my vote unless I discover there's more substance behind it...

Finished Reading Michael Connelly's The Lincoln Lawyer

I recently finished reading my first Michael Connelly novel, which I had borrowed from my local public library.  Always a little unsure when I begin a new author, I was encouraged when I stepped up to the check-out counter and the attendant began praising my selection, titled The Lincoln Lawyer.  Later I found out that many others also liked this novel, with some claiming that it ranks as one of the best of Connelly's works.  It was not only his first foray into writing a story about law, but was also adapted into a film...about which I knew nothing. 

The Lincoln Lawyer is told in the first person by young hotshot (and very cynical) Los Angeles defense attorney Mickey Haller.  He definitely has his own philosophy about the legal profession that leaves little room to think about lofty concepts like principles and justice.  Still, as the story develops, something interesting happens: he begins to feel the pangs of a conscience and sets out to right what he considers wrongs that he has done...unintentional wrongs, but wrongs nonetheless. 

The story involves the defense of a spoiled and irresponsible rich young man, backed by his rich family, who is charged with aggravated assault and attempted murder of a young woman.  The defense investigation, as do typical fictional investigations, rankles some people and causes some severe responses.  Ultimately, the trial takes place under very conflicted circumstances for Haller.  The author kept me as a reader interested and in suspense, wondering both who was truly guilty and how the protagonist would be able to get himself extracted from the dilemma in which he had become trapped.  But the biggest impact this story had for me was its probing into the thoughts of opposing lawyers as they relate to presenting their sides of a case to a jury.

When I served as a juror a few months ago, I got the feeling that the lawyers on both sides were manipulating the jury with behavior that was designed to play on our emotions instead of providing us with the evidence and sufficient testimony we needed to arrive at an appropriate verdict.  Connelly's depiction of how trials are conducted did little to change my opinion...it only affirmed it. Both sides act on the surface with an air of deference and respect to those serving jury duty, but actually hold them in low regard. 

I liked The Lincoln Lawyer and will definitely seek out more of Michael Connelly's works.  As it turns out, he was born the same year I was, grew up and went to school in South Florida in the same county as me, just a few miles away, and now resides here in Gainesville.  Those coincidences are interesting...and admittedly a little creepy as well...

Mid-Life Medical Field Career Change Options

Yesterday I paid a visit to Santa Fe College here in Gainesville as a part of that institution's outreach to people 50+ years old who may be contemplating mid-life career changes or are possibly looking for something interesting and productive to do after retirement.  The focus was on careers in the medical field for which Santa Fe offered programs, such as nursing, respiratory care, nuclear medicine technology, cardiovascular technology, dental hygiene, and radiography.  I am interested in some of these, especially cardiovascular technology, nuclear medicine technology, and radiography.  These are areas of professional growth that will only be in higher demand as the years pass and the "baby boomers" enter a period in their lives of more prevalent medical care...along with the advances in technology to diagnose and treat them...and with a corresponding increased need for those trained to handed those new technologies. 

My father retired in 1982, at age 56.  He lived another 31 years, which although making  up a pretty decent life span at 87 years, also was marked, after retirement, by a retreat from the world and an ever-increasingly reclusive life within the walls of his house.  I do not ever want to be like that, even though I am reclusive by nature myself.  But I do recognize that I am a human being, and being as such, part of what I am necessitates me being an active, participating part of society, as difficult and painful doing that can be at times.  Continuing after retirement with some meaningful employment that utilizes my God-given abilities is a good way to continue this social involvement.

The academic advisor, Scott Fortnoy, guided those of us attending the workshop/tour around the various classrooms of their programs, pointing out what the jobs demanded from employees as well as important aspects like pay, hours, available of jobs, and the prospects for their growth.  He did a great job with his presentation, and I came away from the experience even more interested in employment in the field of medical technology.  The programs I am interested in are two-year degree programs, and may not be practical for me to pursue until I actually retire from my current job...which may not be until 2017 or even later.  I'll have to further investigate my options, though, and Scott made it clear to us that his office is open for us to visit and get answers to our questions.  I think I'll take him up on that...

Changing NFL Extra Point Rules

The current National Football League commissioner Roger Goodell has just come out suggesting that the extra point after touchdowns is so nearly automatic that it should be eliminated and teams just be given seven points after a touchdown...with an option to pursue an eighth point with what we now call a two-point conversion.  If that play is unsuccessful, a further point would be deducted and the scoring team would get only six points for all their trouble.  I don't like that idea: no one deducts points in a game in any sport unless it is because a scoring play has been reviewed and overturned.  Instead, in my opinion, they  should keep the system basically the same as it presently is, with the only difference being that an extra point attempt would take place on the twenty-yard-line (as the line of scrimmage from where the ball is hiked to the placeholder, making the kick essentially 36-37 yards long)...still probable but certainly not a shoo-in. Also, successfully kicking extra points, even from the current close range of today, is more problematic in college football and very "up in the air" on the high school level.  Placekickers should keep their important role on the team and in the sport: my suggestion would make them even more a deserved focus of attention.

I remember the times back in the early 1970's when NFL teams that had accurate long-distance kickers could consistently get themselves into field goal range by just getting into the opposing team's territory.  My Miami Dolphins racked up a lot of points that way by running a ball-control offense, getting a few first downs to the point where they had gotten a little bit past midfield, and then sending in Garo Yepremian to boot another long three-pointer.  In reaction to the ever-increasing ease of scoring field goals, the NFL rules were changed and the goal posts were moved from the goal line to the back of the end zone.  My suggestion about moving the extra point attempt back to the 20-yard line is in keeping with this sort of change and doesn't dramatically change the nature of the game, as Commissioner Goodell's proposal would...

Broadening (and Diluting) the Meaning of Addiction

The other night...I mean LATE night, while I was at work, I tuned in to the Coast-to-Coast AM radio talk show hosted by George Noory.  He had as a guest the famous science fiction writer David Brin.  Brin was in the middle of discussing the nature of addiction, and was about to state what he believed to be America's greatest addiction...but Noory quickly interrupted and shrewdly broke to several advertisements while keeping the listening audience (the ones who were still awake, that is) waiting in anticipation.  When Brin finally got back to the topic, he laid it out bluntly: in his opinion, the greatest addiction in our country is "self-righteous indignation".  While agreeing with Mr. Brin that this is indeed a problem in the United States, I have a couple of beefs about his statement.  For one, self-righteous indignation is something affecting humanity as a whole, not just one particular country or culture.  Also, it is timeless: just look the Bible, which is full of people who get themselves in a self-righteous huff about others (and usually end up rebuked for it).  But beyond the common assertion I hear that Americans are collectively guilty of things about which other people in the world are virtuous, the very appellation of "addiction" that Brin uses is erroneous.  It would be better to term this phenomenon as a "thinking error", "attitude problem", or "character flaw" instead of the emotionally charged word "addiction".  On the other hand, David Brin may just be following a common trend, which involves broadening the meaning of a heretofore precisely defined word to the point that it essentially becomes meaningless.  Hence we get a television series titled My Strange Addiction that groups compulsive behaviors like sleeping with a blow dryer or eating toilet paper, along with eccentric choices like living around a bunch of hairless rats, all under the umbrella designation of "addiction".  But there's more...it's becoming more acceptable to describe any kind of attachment to anything or any activity that one has a special fondness toward as an addiction.  What ever became of the narrower concept of addiction as being deeply dependent on an ingested chemical substance like nicotine, alcohol, heroin, and the like?

That having been said, I appreciate David Brin for at least bringing up self-righteous indignation as a societal problem.  I think too many folks resort to it too quickly when dealing with opinions or behavior that they see in others and with which they differ instead of trying to put themselves in the other person's position.  And why not? Look at the professionals in the opinion media and how they go about with their pious posturing, regardless of their positions on the issues, conservative or liberal.  And don't get me started with Nancy Grace.  You know, those people make me so-o-o self-righteously indignant!

A Couple of Reverend King Quotes

Even though today is the official national holiday celebrating Martin Luther King's birthday, he actually would have turned 85 on January 15 had he not been assassinated back in April of 1968 and instead survived through the subsequent years.  Known chiefly for his important contributions to our national civil rights movement as well as being a worldwide inspiration for his advocacy of human rights, Reverend King also had much to say about life in general...and what makes up a life truly worth living.  He encouraged people, regardless of their socioeconomic station in life, to take pride in their work and not demean it with a sense of inferiority or succumb to how others may look upon it.  Here are a couple of quotes of his in this regard, which I gleaned off of the Brainy Quotes website:

Whatever your life's work is, do it well. A man should do his job so well that the living, the dead, and the unborn could do it no better.

and...

All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.

I think that's a pretty wise way to look at things...

Just Read My First M.C. Beaton Story

I recently discovered a prolific mystery writer going by the name of M.C. Beaton.  The book I read was Death of a Bore, which as it turns out is just one of a long series of short mystery novels featuring Scottish Highlands constable Hamish Macbeth and all of which sport "Death of a(n)" titles.  This story presents Macbeth as an amiable and protective, albeit uncomfortably nosy policeman of a small "backwoods" town called Lochdubh, reminiscent of the Sheriff Taylor character in the old Andy Griffith TV series.  And by the titles it is obvious that all of the stories are murder mysteries: no lost kilts or bagpipe heists here to solve.  I enjoyed the various personalities in Death of a Bore, and am confident that many of them resurface in other novels of the series.   The "bore" in the story I read is a self-important writer who visits Macbeth's town and starts a creative writing class: after taking submissions from the enthusiastic students and then mercilessly insulting their writing abilities, he is found shot to death...with suddenly a load of suspects.  Hamish Macbeth plods along and naturally solves the crime, although I wasn't satisfied with the solution. My  biggest enjoyment out of this novel was how Beaton depicts life in the Scottish Highlands.  As it turned out, she would know more than most, being a resident of Glasgow. 

Oh, by the way, M.C. Beaton is a pseudonym for Marion Chesney, who under the Beaton name is also responsible for the Agatha Raisin mystery series.  Chesney is still writing and enjoying life...and has her own Facebook page if you'd like to check it out...

NFL Conference Championship Games Tomorrow

Tomorrow will be the day of the National Football League conference championship games for the 2013 season.  Winners will face off in the Super Bowl.  In the National Conference, the Seattle Seahawks will be a formidable opponent at home against the San Francisco 49ers, who went to the Super Bowl last year (and very narrowly lost).  In the American Conference, the Denver Broncos will host the New England Patriots.  I like the NFC teams, largely due to their coaches, and dislike the AFC teams for different reasons.  I'm a big fan of Seahawks coach Pete Carroll and his positive enthusiasm, which is pretty infectious.  The 49er coach Jim Harbaugh is somebody that I initially didn't care for, as I felt he was a bit too abrasive.  Now I've come to a different conclusion: he is a man of his convictions and won't back off from them just to get to placate others...and he does have a blunt demeanor to his personality.  But I kind of like that, though.  I also like the San Francisco quarterback Colin Kaepernick and the way he socked it back to the Carolina Panthers in last week's playoff game.  He's got spunk, and unlike Lou Grant...I like spunk!

On the other side, I dislike Denver for various reasons.  For one, I'm sick and tired of the way their quarterback Peyton Manning, who never could beat my Florida Gators when he played in college for Tennessee, is always treated as some kind of superhuman football Einstein.  His baby brother, though, has won more Super Bowls than him and I'd like to keep it that way.  I also dislike the way that the Denver organization, led by John Elway, allowed Tim Tebow to turn the franchise around in the middle of the 2011 season from a last-place loser to a division and first-round playoff game winner...and then unceremoniously dump him in favor of King Peyton.  I do like their coach John Fox, though, and share with him the same medical situation, albeit not to the degree that he had it before he successfully underwent corrective surgery in the middle of the season.  Still, overall I dislike Denver and would have an easy time rooting against them tomorrow were they playing anyone else besides the New England Patriots, a franchise whose arrogance and historical disregard for the rules dwarf anyone else...except possibly the New Orleans Saints and their "bounty" scandal of last season.  Illegally videotaping other teams' sidelines during games in order to cheat on their strategies makes all of their three Super Bowl victories (for the 2001, 2003, and 2004 seasons) suspect in my mind.  I admire qb Tom Brady and his skill and poise...too bad he doesn't play for the Miami Dolphins, their divisional rival and the NFL team I root for the most (mostly in vain).  So I'm not sure who to pull for in this game...but right now I'm leaning toward Denver (while holding my nose).  Regardless who wins it, though, it will be the SF/Seattle winner that I will want to win the upcoming Super Bowl...

Weight and Work Schedule Hamper Long Distance Running

I've tried to determine exactly why it is that my running seems to be leveling off at a relatively short daily mileage and I never seem quite ready to undertake a long distance race like a half-marathon.  One reason is that I have gained some weight over the past few months and could stand to lose about twenty to twenty-five pounds.  Another is that, since I changed my working hours to a graveyard shift last March, I have had a degree of difficulty with my time management.  I used to either be at work or sleeping for most of the nighttime, with my "free" remaining discretionary time occurring during daylight hours.  This larger daytime "window" gave me a greater opportunity to regularly go out running.  Now I have a narrow time window after I awake in mid-afternoon before the sun sets...and I do not want to run in the dark.  But since I don't see my work schedule changing anytime in the near future, I will have to adapt to this problem. 

Another advantage I enjoyed when I used to run in the late morning/early afternoon was that, during weekdays, my home neighborhood was almost empty, with most residents out at work or school.  The traffic level was pretty low, so I usually could run without having to pay undue attention to cars either passing me or pulling in or out of driveways. 

I do have the option of going down to my local gym (Gainesville Health and Fitness) in the evening hours to run on one of their treadmills.  But treadmill running, while being useful as a way to run during conditions that would otherwise prevent doing so outdoors, isn't an optimal way to consistently train for road running races. In "normal" running, there is the action of my feet pushing off against the hard surface of the road and the need for my own mind to take authority in my pacing, things that treadmills remove from the running experience.

Sometimes at night I'll just run a few minutes in place inside my home or run a short distance back and forth across the living room/hall area.  Still, this isn't the same thing as getting out on the road...

I suppose that I could still run during late mornings/early afternoons with my current schedule, but that would entail me either splitting my sleeping hours around my running time or going to bed immediately thereafter, neither prospect sounding very pleasant or feasible.  So for now I'm just going to have to be very disciplined with my running and keep my eyes open for the cars late in the afternoon...    

Finished Reading Terry Goodkind's Soul of the Fire

I have just read the fifth book in Terry Goodkind's lengthy fantasy Sword of Truth series, this one titled Soul of the Fire.  As with the previous volumes, the protagonists Richard, Kahlan, and Zedd spend a great deal of time traipsing around various lands trying to deal with crises that they are usually responsible for creating in the first place.  This is so because the solution to the crisis at the end of one book almost inevitably creates a dire crisis for the next book.  In the preceding book, Temple of  the Winds, Kahlan had summoned something called the "Chimes" to heal Richard of the plague.  After the healing, though, these denizens from the underworld present a major problem as they go about sucking magic from the world.  And in a fantasy series, you just can't have critters running around depleting the world of magic.  No problem, though...the heroes in Soul of the Fire eventually figure out how to deal with them...and I'm confident that whatever they did will come back to bite them in the "aft end" in the next book! Also, there is usually some new country or kingdom introduced that is the focus of the story, and in Soul of the Fire this is more true than ever.  So in reading each successive book I feel as if I'm not really getting anywhere: volumes 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12 are upcoming and I don't know how anything will change substantially.  Still, I must be a glutton for literary punishment as I plan to push through to the bitter end...

The Polar Express a Hit With Me

Last month I was walking through my living room on the way to do something or other when I noticed what my wife and daughter were watching on TV.  It was another one of those Christmas shows, a movie whose title I was familiar with but never got around to watching: The Polar Express.  I quickly forgot what I was doing and became deeply engrossed in it, even though the movie was about halfway through already.  A boy was riding a magical train to the North Pole where Santa and his elves lived...only this boy had stopped believing in Santa. The story was poignant and typical Christmas: what mesmerized me was the way animation, computer enhancement, and real-life acting were seamlessly mixed together to form a unique type of cinema with its own special appearance.  Tom Hanks was ubiquitous, playing the train's conductor, the story's narrator (the boy grown up and looking back), a  mysterious transient on traintop, and Santa himself.  The focus of the story was four of the children riding to see Santa...along with that conductor.  Each child had an important lesson to learn from their experience, a lesson revealed by the message that Hanks the Conductor punched out on their magical tickets.  Later on I watched The Polar Express again, this time from the traditional starting point, to complete the experience.  For such a movie that emphasized special effects, thrill ride scenes, and graphics, I was surprised by how deep both the story and characters were.  The movie, as I later discovered, was an adaptation from a written story by Chris Van Allsburg.  This was a real tear-jerking experience for me and I would recommend The Polar Express to anyone, at any time of the year...

Look East at Early Evening Sky

I just stepped out of the house to discover the early evening sky is crystal clear...not to mention very pleasantly cool.  I looked out to the east and saw quite a spectacle.  Directly east and high up from the horizon is the moon, almost at its full phase but still technically gibbous waxing.  Just left of the moon (toward the north) is Jupiter, the two forming an impressive sight together.  To the right (south) of the moon is Orion, easily the most striking constellation with its bright stars Betelguese and Rigel situated on opposite sides of its three-star asterism "The Belt".  Rising just above the east-southeastern horizon is Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky.  Up higher from the moon is the constellation Taurus with its red star Aldeberan and the smudgy-looking famous cluster Pleiades close to the zenith.  Left of Jupiter are Gemini's twin bright stars Castor and Pollux, and up (west) from them is Capella, another bright star...in the constellation Auriga. 

It seems that lately the skies have been more cloudy than clear, which is unusual for this time of year.  But during the next few nights we in northern Florida may be treated to some very clear nights...conducive to some fun winter sky-gazing...

Personal Time Management a Priority

In the course of my daily life, I find myself needing to reconcile three often opposing forces: daily routines, non-routine "things to get done", and special events. Routines are those activities that are either basic to my daily health and maintenance or are interests, the nature of which lend themselves to incremental improvement over day-to-day practice. In the latter category I place daily activities like running, foreign language study, reading, and writing (hence this blog).   An extension of this  category are activities done on a weekly basis, like attending church, small group meetings, or mowing the lawn. "Things to get done" are the items that, given any particular day, are peculiar to that day but taken together figure into my life maintenance.  Examples of this are doctor/dentist appointments and having my house re-roofed (which will actually occur on Wednesday).  The third category, special events, is similar to the second but tend to take up great parts of a day...or even several days.  Going on trips with the family, or travel of any kind for that matter, belong to this type. Since all three forces place demands on my already-scarce time or confine me to a place when I want to be somewhere else, they tend to arise at each other's expense.  Being more or less a creature of routine, I have thus a tendency to experience anxiety when events lend themselves to crowding out those daily routines that I want realized. Part of the efforts of "self-improvement" that I am engaging in now involve both managing my own time in order to accommodate, to a realistic but optimal degree, those daily routines which I value while effectively negotiating the often stressful (to me) torrent of punctuated or special time-consuming events that tend to arise around all of us to varying degrees.  I am not one of those people who will ever make the complaint "I am bored"....I frankly don't understand people who allow themselves to feel that way, much less express the sentiment to me as if I am somehow responsible for making their life more interesting.  There is so much around me that is interesting...I simply do not have the time to cover it all!

To deal with these three aspects of personal time management, I need three tools...they can either be in "paper" or computer form or internalized within my head...but they all require some advance planning at the start of the day:  (1) A calendar which I can fill in and refer to regarding special events, "things-to-do", and weekly activities, (2) a list of things that I want to accomplish each day, prioritized by the importance and urgency of the activities, and ultimately (3) a time map of each day, with hourly blocks filled in by planned activities, based on what is on (1) and (2).  It is (3) that I can then carry around with me to guide me through a day and ensure that much, if not all of I want to do gets done...and with as little anxiety as possible in the process.

Advance planning of my day's activities may seem at first to be a bit cumbersome, but like other things if made into a timely, daily habit then it will come naturally to me.  And this is what I am currently dealing with now...

Mixed Results with NFL Playoffs, My Running Plans

I'm sitting here early Sunday evening, considering a few things and enjoying life.  The NFL playoffs look as if, with only one game left this weekend to finish and that result looking to be in Denver's favor over San Diego, what many pigskin prognosticators and the beginning of the season had forecast will be proven true: San Francisco plays at Seattle for the National Conference championship and New England plays at Denver for the American Conference title, with the winners of those games facing off in the Super Bowl.  It almost never happens like this, but this year it looks as if the favorites will prevail.  I had wanted that Seahawks/49er pairing in the NFC, but the AFC has been pretty disappointing.  First I wanted Miami to make the playoffs, but they blew it playing poorly in their final two regular season games.  Then I wanted Kansas City to advance in the playoffs, but they blew a 38-10 lead over Indianapolis and they're out, too.  Now I'm left with San Diego, but alas, they are currently behind Denver 17-0 in the third quarter with little sign of an offense so far.  Oh well, it looks as if I'll be pulling for the NFC in the Super Bowl!

The weather today was beautiful, reaching a high of 65 with very low humidity.  I went on an afternoon run of 3.25 miles around my neighborhood.  I had plenty of energy throughout, but didn't feel that I was ready to try a 13.1 mile half-marathon anytime soon.  Unfortunately, I need to decide very soon whether to enter the Ocala Half-Marathon, scheduled for next Sunday morning.  I'm thinking instead of running a 5K race here in Gainesville with my daughter on February 1 in preparation for next month's local FivePoints Half-Marathon, an event that for various reasons I haven't been able to run in since 2010...

Finished Reading David Baldacci's The Collectors

After skipping from the first to the fourth in his five-volume (so far) Camel Club series, I decided to go back to David Baldacci's second book The Collectors with the hope of realigning myself into the "proper order".  Still, I already know some crucial things that won't unfold until the third book, titled Stone Cold.  After finishing The Collectors, I am especially glad that I didn't read book three first, as the ending evidently flows directly into the next book.  I would have been lost had I skipped around further.

Having said that, I found The Collectors to be a worthy successor to volume one, which was also titled The Camel Club.  John Carr, the protagonist ex-CIA agent with the assumed name of Oliver Stone, once again finds himself embroiled in shady goings-on in the Washington, D.C. area among the various national security agencies there, this time with the Library of Congress being a murder site.  A mystery involving spies passing secrets to enemies combines in this book with the introduction of a "new" character named Anabelle, with whom I am already familiar after reading book four, titled Divine Justice.  She is an expert con artist who runs afoul of a major underworld gangster after conning him out of forty million dollars.  But to see how that subplot resolves itself, I'll have to read Stone Cold.

In The Collectors, Oliver Stone and his three pals in the crime-busting Camel Club once again work to solve assorted mysteries while trying to avoid kidnapping, torture, and imminent death.  My pleasure in reading Baldacci's books in this series, however, derives more from his characters and how they relate to one another than the action and adventure.  I haven't considered any of the three books I've covered so far to be especially deep or memorable, but they were enjoyable experiences nonetheless.  Maybe you'd think so as well, so why not start with book one, The Camel Club?

NFL Playoffs Down to Eight

The National Football League playoff field has been whittled down to eight remaining teams, and I'm sad to say that I don't care for most of them.  Still, I plan to follow the four games this weekend and root for one team in each game.  Last week, Kansas City, which at the start of the playoffs I had wanted to represent the AFC in the Super Bowl next month, blew a third quarter 28-point lead to Indianapolis and lost 45-44.  That leaves San Diego as the only team left in that conference that I like.  In the NFC, Seattle and San Francisco are still there, hopefully to play each other the following weekend to see which one goes to the Super Bowl.  On the negative side, my least favorite teams New England, New Orleans, and Denver are still in the running as well. In the upcoming games, I want Seattle to beat New Orleans, San Francisco to beat Carolina, San Diego to beat Denver, and Indianapolis to beat New England.  Regardless who advances to the next round, though, I'll always have a favorite lined up for whatever games are scheduled.

Here is a list of the teams according to my preference:

1 Seattle
2 San Diego
3 San Francisco
4 Carolina
5 Indianapolis
6 New England
7 Denver
8 New Orleans

I wasn't always a fan of the Seattle Seahawks, but last year I came to admire and respect their head coach Pete Carroll.  He is very engaged with his players and generates great enthusiasm from both them and the fans.  You can see the imprint of such a leader when you notice how the team is almost unbeatable in their home games due largely to the fan presence there.  I used to feel the same way about New Orleans Saints coach Sean Peyton, but became disenchanted with him when it came out that under his leadership some of the players were being paid extra, under the table, for injuring opposing players in games.  Who knows, maybe Carroll is involved is some kind of insidious subterfuge as well, but at this point I have to evaluate him according to what I see.  And based on that, I wish he were coaching "my" Miami Dolphins instead of the Seahawks...

Just Finished Reading Great Expectations

I just finished reading Charles Dickens' novel Great Expectations.  At the risk of being visited in my dreams by the ghosts of high school English teachers past, present, and future, I'm going to attempt a semblance of a review...

In Great Expectations, which is set in mid-nineteenth century London, Dickens examines the then-very strongly delineated class distinctions in England of that era.  Pip, an orphan boy, is taken in by his strong-willed sister and her amiable, easy-going husband...who becomes a strong friend to Pip.  He grows up in a working class neighborhood and has a scary run-in with an escaped convict.  Later, after becoming bonded as an apprentice in his brother-in-law's smith craft, Pip is notified by a crafty lawyer and his equally crafty clerk that he is the recipient of an endowment from an anonymous source, with the intention of making him a gentleman in the upper class, with "great expectations".  The story then winds on, examining Pip's ordeals and pretensions as he tries to reconcile his former and present lives with the people he had come to know on both sides of the social divide.  Along with this is a recurring subplot focusing on an eccentric reclusive elderly woman and her adopted daughter, with whom Pip falls in love.

Great Expectations has a great range of emotional expression, with a generally sad feel to it that has a great amount of humor nonetheless.  I think I enjoyed the characterizations more than anything, especially those of the aforementioned lawyer and clerk.  I couldn't help thinking that, as a child, Pip displayed more common sense and reason than when he had moved away to become a gentleman.  The adults in this novel at times reacted in a very irrational, childish manner, creating a scenario that reminded me of the cartoon satire series South Park and how they generally portray adults.  As a matter of fact, after reading Great Expectations, I wonder whether the creators of that series might have been thinking of it...after all, they even at one time had a character named Pip who was patterned after this story.

I think that, regarding Great Expectations, the population is divided three ways about it:  the overwhelming number who never read it, the number who only read it because they were assigned it by an English teacher, and like me, the number who read it on their own.  I belong to that last category, which in all probability is also the smallest.  I'm glad I read it, though, and regret that high school, at least for me, tended to make what could have been fun reading into something of an ordeal...

Expedient Political Attacks on Hillary Clinton and Chris Christie

I can't help but take the current political news and attacks on perceived 2016 presidential front-runners Hillary Clinton and Chris Christie with anything more than skeptical disdain.  I'm seeing the political spin war going on full blast between Democratic and Republican advocates on TV, almost three years before the election...and of course neither Clinton nor Christie has expressed whether they are even leaning toward running.  But public opinion polls are driving the media furor, first by revealing that if Clinton gets the Democratic nomination, then the only Republican with a chance to beat her is Christie...while with a Christie GOP nomination, Clinton comes out as the only one with a chance.  Therefore both sides see it as an imperative to ruin the credibility and consequently the political viability of their "opponent" by pushing anything that hints of criticism.  So former Defense Secretary General Robert Gates conveniently comes out now with a "tell-all" book that paints then-Secretary of State Clinton in an unfavorable light, while (New Jersey) Governor Christie is being depicted as something of a vindictive, hot-tempered dictator with the current "lane closure" scandal being pumped through the media.

The irony of all this is that there are elements within each party that dislike their own opinion poll leaders and would like to promote potential candidates more suitable to their ideological leanings.  As for me, I think I can handle either a Clinton or Christie presidency, individual drawbacks and party ideology notwithstanding.  Both of these seem to be capable leaders and interested in appealing to the political center, which just so happens to be where I see myself...