Sad to See Congress Polarized Against Country's Greater Interests

I have been watching the United States Senate floor proceedings off and on for the last few weeks on C-Span2, which on my Gainesville cable TV lineup is on channel 81.  As you may already know, after last November's elections, the Republican Party regained majority operational control of this body and now holds a 54-46 advantage over the Democrats.  This puts them in line with the House of Representatives, which has been with a GOP majority since 2011 and places Congress as a whole in opposition to President Obama.  They can pass bill after bill that they want, but if it's something that the President opposes, he'll most likely veto it...and it's highly improbable that either the House or Senate will be able to muster the two thirds super-majority to override...so what we have here is a stalemate if either side decides to take a strictly ideological stance.  Unfortunately, that seems to be what the Rebublicans have done, first by inserting (and later withdrawing under pressure) provisions overturning Obama's recent executive action concerning illegal immigration within a crucial Homeland Security funding bill...and most recently putting anti-abortion language into a human trafficking bill, language that the Democrats would very predictably oppose.   Now Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said that he will retaliate for the Democrats holding up that bill by refusing to bring to the floor the nomination of Loretta Lynch as Obama's choice for Attorney General to replace outgoing  Eric Holder...despite the fact that Lynch seems to have the votes for confirmation and is more highly regarded by the political right than is Holder.  The atmosphere in both bodies is becoming more heated and contentious, with each side drawing their own lines in the sand and refusing to step across.  It's more than a little disheartening to me when I see grown adults, who supposedly represent the highest elements of our society as they have been democratically elected to represent us in a constructive and mature manner, behave this childishly when they are in a position of such responsibility and authority to work together for the greater good...

Just Finished Reading Susan Hill's The Man in the Picture

If you've ever read anything by H.P. Lovecraft or Edgar Allen Poe and enjoy that genre of fiction, you might just want to get a copy of Susan Hill's 2007 short novel The Man in the Picture.  Simply described as "a ghost story", this engrossing tale traces the history of a mysterious, sinister painting of a Venetian carnival scene as it passes from one owner to the next.  The chief setting is Cambridge University in England, where Oliver, the primary narrator and an alumnus from years gone by, pays a social visit to Theo, his old professor, by now into his seventies and who has lived on campus for decades...and currently possesses the art work.  This picture has the quality of riveting observers' attention and creating the impression that different people depicted in it are looking back out at them in a calling, beseeching sort of way...as well as changing from one viewing to the next.  There is a background story to this painting, told first to Oliver by Theo and and then, as Theo relates, to himself years earlier by a former owner in her nineties, named Lady Hawdon.  As each account unravels, the forboding feeling of the story intensifies...and the ending is not a letdown in this regard..

The Man in the Picture is only 145 pages long, a very quick read.  I just happened to be browsing the bookshelves at my local (Millhopper) branch of the Alachua County Library, caught sight of it and checked it out...maybe it was "calling out" to me!  Sometimes you can strike gold perusing the shelves this way...it seems to have worked this time!  I recommend it if you're someone who's into that gothic horror/Night Gallery kind of storytelling...

NCAA Men's Basketball This Weekend: To the Final Four

Now the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament is temporarily down to eight teams, and that number after tomorrow night will be four.  Today, Wisconsin plays Arizona and Notre Dame plays Kentucky.  Tomorrow, Louisville faces Michigan State and Duke battles Gonzaga.  Of these teams, my top two favorites are Louisville and Michigan State (in that order)...naturally, they have to play each other, dang-it.  Still, should the Fighting Irish knock off my Florida Gators' nemesis, the UK Wildcats, I'll be rooting for them to win it all, just out of gratitude...I've been pulling for the New York Giants, for a similar reason, since 2008 when they ruined New England's quest for a perfect season with their last-minute Super Bowl victory.  Notre Dame has been a giant-killer before: they ended UCLA record 88-game winning streak in the early 1970s...let's see if they can do it again!  As for the other games, I'd like Arizona (another Wildcats team) to win, but it won't hurt my feelings if  the Badgers prevail as long as they put up a good fight against Kentucky should the opportunity present itself.  And Duke vs. Gonzaga...when I see such good teams playing down to the Final Four, I think to myself that Kentucky has some pretty high hurdles yet to clear before it can finally lay claim to its "perfect" season...

Today's two games are broadcast, starting at 6 this evening, on TBS.  Tomorrow's will begin around 2 in the afternoon and are on CBS.  Should be quite entertaining...

Just Finished Reading Daniel Abraham's The Widow's House

I have finally caught up with fantasy writer Daniel Abraham's progress in his presumably five-part series The Dagger and the Coin after just finishing the fourth book, titled The Widow's House.  I say "presumably" because series authors' best intentions regarding that "final" book can often unexpectedly change...not to mention the temptation to write prequels or even begin a "new" series based on characters and/or events from the original.  Still, I'm looking ahead for the fifth installment, due to be released in August this year, to also be the last.  And I also plan to promptly get a copy and read it, because to me this has been one of the best fantasy genre series I've read so far...

Daniel Abraham has left, after The Widow's House, a core of interesting characters who share of web of experiences and relationships and slip in and out of alliances and conflict.  The main thread in the story deals with the threat caused to the world (Abraham's imaginary one, that is) by a continually war-mongering "tainted" people...tainted by little spiders in their bloodstream (how utterly gross).  The source of this contamination is from an ancient, apparently long-dead dragon named Morade (you see, dragons used to rule this world thousand of years earlier, with humanity serving as their slaves).  Morade did this to create a weapon in a war he was involved with against another dragon, named Inys.  What happened to Inys is something that I would prefer any prospective readers to find out for themselves, as I am not in the habit of giving away stories.  Suffice to say that the series title refers to how history can be influenced by both the dagger (representing armed warfare) and the coin  (representing banking and commerce)...and that either aspect can be ignored only at one's peril.  Another interesting feature of this series, to me, is the presence of the wild-card character of Geder Palliako, whose ultimate role in the story's final resolution is a profound mystery...I'm thinking that, although he has allied himself with the villains for most of the series, he will play a crucial part at the end contributing to their downfall.  Should be interesting to see whether I'm right...

Interesting Four Games This Evening in NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament

Tonight's four games in the NCAA Men's Basketball Championship Tournament should be interesting.  Were I not at work, I'd most likely be watching them (they'll be on CBS and TBS).  North Carolina vs. Wisconsin, Xavier vs. Arizona, Wichita State vs. Notre Dame, and West Virginia vs. Kentucky all are worth watching, and anybody can win...despite some who predict that Kentucky will easily glide on to a perfect 40-0 championship season.  My preferences in these games are for North Carolina, Arizona, Wichita State, and West Virginia, but should Wisconsin, Notre Dame, or Xavier prevail in their contests and end up being the team that finally beats Kentucky...well, they'll suddenly become one of my favorite teams, too!

Mexican Soccer Premier League's Relegation System Questionable

In professional league soccer, during the regular season, standings are determined by the point system.  If your team wins a game, they get 3 points, lose and they get 0 points.  If a draw occurs, then each team gets 1 point added to their total.  In most leagues around the world, if there are one or more lower-level leagues around in a country, they have a process called "promotion and relegation" that rewards the lower league champions and punishes poor performance in the upper league.  In it, the worst-performing team(s) from the higher league in a particular season is/are demoted (or regulated), while an equal number of outstanding teams from the lower league get promoted. So in English soccer, we have three teams, Burnley, Queens Park Rangers, and Leicester City, who are at the bottom of their 20-team Premier League standings as the current 2014-15 season is winding down.  If nothing changes in the standings, they will be relegated for next year to the second-tier Championship League, while the top three teams in that league will get a shot at the Premier League.  I like the relegation system as it makes the late-season games more meaningful and that teams which aren't doing well can't just write off the season and expect to be rewarded with high draft picks, as is the case in many American professional sports leagues.  Unfortunately, in America, there is no relegation system as of yet in professional soccer, although there are three tiers of leagues here.  In Mexico, there is relegation, but the system seems confusing and unfair to me...

The top-tier Mexico pro soccer league is called Liga MX, with 18 teams in it.  They annually promote into it the winner of the second-tier league Ascenso's championship from the previous year and send back, through relegation, their own most poorly-performing team.  But in the Liga MX, relegation is determined by going back from three entire years of a team's performance and calculating the average points per game it has.  If a team has been in the league less than that time, like the newly promoted Universidad de Guadalajara Leones Negros, only the time they've been in the Liga MX is counted.  So a team like Morelia, which did well three years ago and tabulated a lot of points back then, but is by far the worst team in the league this year, hopelessly rock-bottom in the standings, is safe from relegation because its three-year average is higher than others.  Puebla and the Leones Negros, on the other hand, are doing reasonably well this year, far from the worst in the league...yet it is they who are battling each other to avoid demotion.  Puebla is actually the last in the relegation table right now, meaning that were the season to end today, they would be relegated down to Ascenso.  But at the same time, they are also in position to qualify for the league championship playoffs for the winter/spring Clausura season...and could conceivably win the Liga MX championship for the 2014-15 season while at the same time be demoted to the next lower league!  Now there is something  awfully, awfully wrong with such a system...

Foot Strain Necessitates Break from Running

For the past few days, my right foot has felt a little tight and twisted, and a little swelling may have been going on there due to a strain.  In any event, I've indefinitely put off my running, starting yesterday, until it feels better...and then I can gradually build my mileage back up again.  In times like this, the wisdom of cross-training comes to the surface of my thinking, and while I am recovering I'm going out on some short bicycling excursions.  The main thing is to stay in as high a state of conditioning as possible while resting my foot from the high-impact running.  It's been a while since I rode my bicycle, which I deliberately bought cheap, as usual, for around ninety bucks at Wal-Mart (or was it Target) a few years ago.  I had to re-inflate the tires, lubricate it a little, and wipe off the acculumated grime.  But it's sitting out there, locked to my gate (we've had two bicycles stolen off of our property since living here), and waiting for a little ride around the neighborhood.  I'm also thinking of re-incorporating the elliptical machine (which is available at my local 24-hour gym), into my regular exercise routine, along with a light daily no-impact session designed to stretch my body and exercise most of my body's muscles, all of which need activity to avoid deterioration over time and to help prevent damage to joints and soft tissue in the long run.  There was a promotional show on PBS-TV the other day featuring a woman who sells DVDs in which she leads exactly this kind of workout: I think I'll check into it and get a copy...

...Well, I just finished a 6.3 mile ride around my neighborhood on my old ramshackle bicycle...a nice little workout on a lazy Sunday afternoon...

Recently Read Hermann Hesse's Steppenwolf

During the first few decades of the twentieth century, there was a movement in the arts, be it music, art, or literature, to shed the more traditional forms of expression and create new structures.  Sometimes this resulted in works whose meaning and significance were shrouded in ambiguity and uncertainty.  German writer Hermann Hesse's novel Steppenwolf is a case in point.  Written during the interwar Weimar period in the late 1920s,  Steppenwolf is a curiously constructed hodgepodge of psychological, political, and philosophical analysis focusing on the fictional character of Harry Haller, a middle-aged intellectual whose life has become that of a recluse and whose cynical view of the bourgeois society around him, with its nationalistic, pro-war fervor and its petty day-to-day concerns, has caused a personal crisis to come to a head.  This crisis is between his inherently benevolent nature and the Steppenwolf personality he has stylized to describe what his experiences have taught him and led him on as a singular entity, apart from society but passing through it just the same.  Unable to reconcile the two, as he considers his nature to be two-fold,  he is contemplating suicide as an option.  Then, he chances to meet in a bar a prostitute named Hermine (either her real name or the name he gives her) and she leads him on a convoluted path to self-discovery.  But it's a bit more complicated than that, for the author chooses to present his story in a form that belies understanding...

First, incredibly (looking back after reading the story), Hermann Hesse, in his preface to Steppenwolf that was written decades after its initial publication, decries the degree of misunderstanding that readers have come away with regarding his intended message.  Well, I say in response, if you're going to deliberately present your message in such a cryptic and cloudy format, what do you expect?  It begins with the third-person account about Haller from the viewpoint of a co-tenant who lives a conventional "bourgeois" existence and who sees Haller as rather disagreeable, with slovenly habits.  While snooping through the latter's apartment one day, he finds his personal journal and presents it in his account.  Then we progress to Haller's own words as he describes in detail, from his journal, the terribly cynical view in which he regards the world around him.  One day, as he relates, he comes across a peddler of "magic", who hands him a pamphlet, highly improbably titled "Treatise on the Steppenwolf"...which names Haller and goes into minute detail psychoanalyzing him with brutal detachment.  One of its premises is that each person, in refutation to  Haller's assumption about his own two natures, is composed of a multitude of "souls".  After presenting this "Treatise" in full, Hesse goes back to Haller's narrative and recounts his meeting with Hermine and her introduction to the other primary characters Maria and Pablo.  Initially critical of the two, Haller comes to appreciate aspects of himself that they represent, but which he has repressed.  In the context of a "magic show" with assorted fantasy experiences behind different doors that Pablo has concocted, Haller comes to more fully understand the treatise's view of the multiplicity of souls within each person, and there is much more to life than the simple and pessimistic model that he had constructed for himself, embodied within the Steppenwolf role.

It is unclear whether Hermine, Maria, and Pablo are "real" characters or just constructed aspects of Haller's own self...the story delves into the area of magical fantasy and, as such, the traditional literary notion of plot, based on some semblance of reality, breaks down.  This left me with a profound sense of dissatisfaction after I had finished reading it.  As for the message I came away with, who knows whether or not Hermann Hesse would agree?

To some, the Steppenwolf persona represents going one's own way against the flow of the world.  Combine that with the book's implied endorsement of mind-altering drugs like cocaine, opium, and hallucinations, along with abolition of restrictions on sexual behavior, and you come up with a cocktail custom-mixed for the counterculture movement of the 1960s...which may explain why a rock group in that era changed its name to Steppenwolf...

Close Games Characterized Yesterday's NCAA Hoops Tournament

60-59, 60-59, 66-65, 66-65 (in overtime), 67-65, 69-65, 57-56, 56-53...and 75-72 (in overtime).

These are the amazing scores of yesterday's NCAA Men's Basketball Championship Tournament.  There were, to be sure, other games with wider margins, but the sheer number of these nail biters was incredible...and even the identity of scores as well.  I did get to see a couple of them, but had to be at my job during the late afternoon and evening games.  Not that I would have spent all of my time glued to the TV had I been off, mind you. Still, this flood of fantastic, competitive games is something to behold, and it continues today...

One of the above contests was a "sad" pairing for me: LSU against North Carolina State.  For although I wanted the Wolfpack to win (which they barely did), I also would have liked to see the Tigers advance further in the tournament.  Today I see another such matchup, with Georgia set to play Michigan State at 12:30...I'm going for the Spartans with the same degree of melancholy, knowing that one of these two teams won't be going any further.  But right this minute, I'm watching New Mexico State going up against Kansas, a team I generally root against...

March Madness: NCAA Basketball Tournament in Full Swing Today

After the initial four-game elimination round yesterday and Tuesday (one of which saw the only Florida entry, the University of North Florida Ospreys, losing their game), the NCAA Men's Basketball Championship Tournament begins in earnest, with sixteen games today and sixteen more tomorrow.  Right now, as I get myself ready to go to work (reporting time 3:30 PM), I'm toggling back and forth between TruTV and CBS as I watch the University of Alabama at Birmingham-Iowa State and Northeastern-Notre Dame contests, both very competitive and close so far in spite of the fact that they are both 3-14 seed pairings.  UAB is even leading at halftime against their favored opponent, but I expects both favorites to eventually win and advance.   Unfortunately, I'll miss the bulk of the schedule today and tomorrow, but should have more opportunities this weekend as the field gets narrowed down, after Sunday's games, to the "Sweet Sixteen"...

My Favorite and Least Favorite Teams in NCAA Men's Hoops Tourney

Yesterday I mentioned on this blog that I had a group of "favorite" college basketball teams that I tend to root for during the NCAA men's basketball tournament.  Well, here's the list of those teams, in order of preference.  Florida wasn't good enough to make the tourney this year; still, I put them (and any other schools I like that didn't have a good season this year) on the list...

1 Florida (not in tournament)
2 North Carolina
3 North Carolina State
4 Louisville
5 Michigan State
6 Florida State (not in tournament)
7 Miami (not in tournament)
8 Other Florida colleges (this year it's just North Florida)
9 Tennessee (not in tournament)
10 Virginia Commonwealth
11 Georgia Tech
12 Villanova
13 Georgetown
14 The Rest of the SEC Teams (except Kentucky)...this year it's Texas A&M, Georgia, LSU, Mississippi, and Arkansas (in no particular order)
15 Wake Forest (are they in the tournament this year?)
16 Virginia

At the other end, representing teams I root against the most, is this list:

1 Kentucky
2 Kansas
3 Connecticut (not in tournament)
4 Notre Dame
5 Michigan (not in tournament)
6 Duke

Note that nowhere are there any Pac-12 teams...I used to go against UCLA, but, since the "experts" seem to think that they don't belong in the tournament this year, I might support them this year just for the sake of being obnoxiously contrary...

I don't have any predictions for the tournament, but plan to keep up with it and pull for "my" teams!

Brackets, No Gators, and the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament

Last year at this time, bracket fever had swept into Gainesville for basketball's NCAA Men's Basketball Championship tournament, which comprises 68 teams in single-game eliminations for the next few weeks until only the champion is left standing.  I would hear conversations going on around me like "Have you done your bracket yet?" and people discussing which teams they thought would upset others.  There was then (and most likely now) a prize offered nationwide to whoever had filled out their bracket perfectly.  That possibility ended very early in the tournament in 2014 with some highly unlikely upsets early on.  Oh, maybe you're unfamiliar with the concept of "filling out a bracket".  Basically, it involves taking the initial games in the first round, picking the winners of those games, and based on that, go to the next round and pick those winners...and then the next round...and then the next, this way until you are left with the last two teams...setting up the championship finale, for which of course you pick the winner.  In the end, you have a sheet of paper predicting exactly how the 67-game tournament will go.  So "bracketology" was such a big deal with many people in my good ol' home town of Gainesville last year.  Why doesn't it seem very popular this year?

In 2014 at the start of the NCAA Tournament, the University of Florida was ranked #1 in the nation and was on a long winning streak, so enthusiasm and interest for college basketball was at a peak in its surrounding community of Gainesville.  This year, though, the Gators not only weren't ranked highly: they didn't even make the tournament!  Moreover, they didn't even get invited to the "runner-up" National Invitational Tournament with its field of 32 teams.  Probably ending up with a 16-17 win-loss record had something to do with that.  So Florida wasn't in the running this time around...and the area's interest in the tourney dried up, with only the regular basketball fans carrying on with the brackets.  As for me, I began following the NCAA tournament in earnest back in the early 1980's when Florida didn't have a very good basketball program, so my enthusiasm wasn't based on what kind of season they were having.  I enjoyed the Atlantic Coast Conference back then, with my favorite teams being North Carolina and North Carolina State, and over the years I've tended to root for them tourney-time...as well as a few others I've picked up along the way.  This year, Kentucky, Florida's arch-rival in the SEC East Division, is undefeated...and that is unacceptable to me.  Somebody, anybody, must knock them off in the tournament!  They'll have six chances, for that is the number of games the Wildcats will have ahead of them to win in order to finish the season at an unprecedented 40-0...

The tournament begins today and Wednesday with the field being whittled down to 64, and then on Thursday and Friday 32 games will reduce it further to 32.  By Monday they will be down to the last 16 teams left, hence the "Sweet Sixteen".  In the meantime, basketball will dominate television.  Incidentally, UF may not have made the tournament this year, but my son's alma mater, the University of North Florida, did!  Go Ospreys!

Gainesville City Commission Election Tomorrow: Go Vote!

Tomorrow in Gainesville we'll be experiencing one of those oddball out-of-season March elections in an odd-numbered year, this one for two city commission seats.  One is specifically for District 1, which comprises the eastern part of town (I'm in District 2, so I won't be voting in it).  The other is a city-wide at-large seat...so anyone who lives in Gainesville and is registered to vote has something to choose...and an opportunity to exercise their civic duty to actively participate in this representative democracy of ours by going to the polls and casting their ballot.  Not that I expect more than a trickle of the electorate to do this, though, although I'm sure that many of the overwhelming majority who choose to stay away from their precincts tomorrow won't have any problem complaining about their high utility bills or the often neglected, crumbling streets we have to drive our cars and trucks on...two issues that are at the top of the discussion list for the candidates.  I know...democracy isn't perfect and it's often a guessing game as to which candidate will do the best job once he or she is in there.  But it is a lot better than authoritarian government by decrees, with those issuing them having no sense of accountability to the people.  Why not instead put your apathy and cynicism on hold for just a few minutes sometime tomorrow and vote...once you're finished and safely back outside your precinct's doors you can go back to not caring again...

Ran Yesterday's Tioga 10K Run for Haven Race

Tioga is a small community a few miles west of Gainesville.  They staged a 5K/10K race yesterday (March 14th) that drew a moderately small number of participants.  Seeing how nuts my home town of Gainesville is about running, I was a little surprised that there weren't more, but then I realized that Jacksonville was also holding its Gate River Run 10K the same day...the real hard-core fanatics probably went there instead.  My race started and ended at the Tioga Town Center, a sizable shopping center large in proportion to the surrounding population...I have gone to its Starbucks a number of times over the years.  At the start/finish  area is also a stage where Natalie Nicole Green, an emerging local country artist, performed before and after the race.  She sang very well and didn't confine her act to country and western, diplomatically choosing to include some rock songs (like Fleetwood Mac's Dreams) in her act.  There was also free food and drink (including beer) for the runners (not exactly "free"...you had to pay to run the race).  There were a lot of runners dressed in green (for St. Patricks Day)...I inadvertently wore my green Tom Walker Memorial Half-Marathon running shirt without thinking. The race started at 4:30 in the afternoon, which normally in the middle of March isn't so bad temperature-wise...except that we're currently in a mini-heatwave (for this time of year) and it had gotten up into the mid 80's.  And the humidity, officially at 57%, felt more like it was in the 70's to me...very, very muggy.  So I knew from the start that the race would present a  challenge...

When the race began, both the 5K and 10K runners set off together for about a mile through the residential subdivision behind the Town Center.  Then, at an intersection, the 5K-ers veered down a street to the right and stayed in that subdivision the duration of their 3.1-mile race, while we 10K runners headed on straight ahead down a dirt path...into the woods.  For more than three miles, we kept going down a maze of crisscrossing, curving, and sloping dirt pathways.  I completely lost my bearings out there and had only my watch to give me any semblance of distance covered. The dirt surface was bad, too, giving my shoes poor traction...in places it was like running on soft beach sand.  But the worst part was the heat and mugginess...and the refreshment stations set up along the way every mile or two only provided water, not Gatorade.  In this weather, not providing electrolyte replenishment was a big mistake on the organizers' part.  Although I struggled through the entirety of the run, and wondered when the trek through the woods would ever end, I did manage to keep up with the runners I was around...until one would stop running and just walk...and then the next...and the next.  As a matter of fact, I can't recall ever running any race, including half-marathons, in which such a high percentage of runners just flat-out had to stop running.  It became a mental struggle for me to keep going, in spite of all the mileage I've built up in practice.  But I kept pressing on, and as I drew near the finish line, I was running strong.  I finished with a time of 56:24, not my best in a 10K race by a long shot, but still better than my Turkey Trot time last Thanksgiving by 32 seconds.  As for my age group (55-59), I won it...of course, I was the only one in it!

I didn't know whether the race organizers were giving out awards for age group winners or not, and immediately after the race I didn't know how I did compared to others in my group, so I didn't linger around...getting back in my car and driving home after getting a couple of slices of "free" Dominos pizza. Besides, it had begun to rain...

Although this race was something of an ordeal due to the heat and humidity, it was refreshing to finally not be hopelessly boxed in by other runners for a good stretch of the race as I have had to endure in the previous few.  I imagine, though, that had I chosen to run the one in Jacksonville instead, I would have been boxed in that entire hopelessly overcrowded race!  Now my string of one race per month has been increased to five straight months.  I don't know exactly when or where my next race will be, but I think I'll make an effort to pick an EARLY MORNING one!

Just Finished Reading Robert Jordan's Book Winter's Heart

As I continue to plod my way through Robert Jordan's fourteen-part fantasy Wheel of Time fantasy series, I just finished reading the ninth book, titled Winter's Heart.  Once again, we have here our main characters of Rand al'Thor (the "Dragon Reborn"), his boyhood friends Mat Cauthon and Perrin Aybara, and their allies fighting against his foes, who are numerous and seem to spend about as much time and effort fighting each other as they do against the "good guys".   In this volume, Rand is trying to free the male source of magic of the taint placed upon it by the supremely evil Dark One by gathering his allies and performing a special, elaborate ritual...this is how the book ends.  In the meantime, subplots and minor characters reign supreme...this flood of characters and story lines is by far the main gripe I have with this series.   I did enjoy the greater emphasis given to my favorite character Mat, one of the main protagonists (he was completely omitted from the previous book), and how he encounters the Daughter of the Nine Moons, whom he knows he has been prophesied to marry...

I have five more books in this series to get through, but only two that were written by Jordan himself.  He died after writing the eleventh book, and the series was completed by another fantasy fiction writer, Brandon Sanderson...an author I respect from his Mistborn series that I read a few months ago.  It should be interesting to see how he manages to to tie up the myriad loose ends Robert Jordan left...

Orlando City Team Doesn't Provide Radio Play-By-Play

With the 2015 Major League Soccer regular season opening last weekend, I was grateful to be able to watch Orlando's expansion team play its first game ever on TV...ESPN-2 showed it.  Besides that network, FoxSports and the Spanish-language Univision Deportes are showing live games of the MLS this year.  That's wonderful...but where is the radio play-by-play coverage?  I searched high and low on the Internet, and for the Orlando City MLS team, I found only "Real Radio"/104.1 in Orlando claiming to be the Orlando team's station...and they're only featuring a commentary show, not live play-by-play.  Now you might be asking why would I want radio when I have TV?  For one, even with the three channels broadcasting MLS games weekly, my team isn't always going to be featured.  For another, I may be in the car or elsewhere without access to a television...and I'm not one of those folks with their eyeballs constantly glued to their cellphones with all the sports apps.  And yet further...although it may seem counter-intuitive, you can sometimes pick up more from the radio than you can from TV...

When I was a kid, in the fall of 1968, I discovered that the relatively new American Basketball Association was starting a franchise in Miami (dubiously nicknamed the Floridians).  Since I was in the habit at the time of fiddling around on the radio to find interesting stations to listen to, one evening I came across a weak 250-watt AM station, WOCN, transmitting out of Miami on 1450 kHz.   Normally a station that played only elevator music, WOCN surprisingly was broadcasting a Floridians game play-by-play.  I remember the team they were playing that first time I heard them: the Minnesota Pipers.  From then on, I would listen to the broadcasts and soon got to know all of the players on the team, even the subs.  Why?  Because the announcers, given the fact that listeners couldn't see the game, had to describe everything in detail.  So although I didn't get a complete picture of what was going on, in some ways I ended up with much more information!  I don't think I ever did watch a Miami Floridians game on TV (the lack of the ABA on television probably did more to sink it than anything else), but I did follow them on the radio.  Nowadays, it seems things have reversed themselves, with TV access easy and radio often difficult to find.  I think that's a shame and counterproductive for the franchise as well:  radio is a relatively cheap way to promote your team and build up a fan base.

Maybe Orlando will come up with a radio play-by-play option eventually.  But I think they have already made a big mistake by not have one from the beginning.  Of course, with satellite radio being what it is now, for all I know they may do play-by-play there.  But that would miss the entire point of exposing the product to the general public to generate interest...

Recognizing Cognates an Early Help in Learning Some Languages

In studying various languages, knowing a few things in advance can help.  For example, many languages have many cognates, i.e. words that are similar in pronunciation, writing, and meaning that an English speaker can quickly use to expand their vocabulary.  Sometimes, though, these "copied" words, when processed through the particular foreign language's phonetic and writing systems, can still seem strange.  Japanese cognates of English are a case in point. Their assimilation of English terminology is quite large, but other languages, particularly in the Germanic and Romantic (or Latin) branches of the Indo-European language family, contain treasure troves of similar vocabulary, easily learned...although endemic to those languages and not "borrowed" from English.  If you've ever studied Spanish, French, Portuguese, or Italian, for example, you've probably hit upon the fact that most nouns in English ending in -tion have counterparts with at least a similar (if not identical) meaning in the Romance language.  With Dutch and German, many words are cognates of English due to their common origin.  I've also noticed with German that they have also made use of many Romance cognates that are recognizable to English speakers. So, with some languages at least, using cognates can help the beginner to attain a good degree of experience and confidence...which is doubtless why many textbooks in some foreign languages will have an early section on them...

Other languages like Russian, Chinese, Hindi, and Arabic still have some cognates, but not anywhere to the degree that the aforementioned languages do. But regardless which foreign language one is studying, the core of the vocabulary is going to come down to words that are truly unfamiliar to the native speaker of English...

Sports and Studying Foreign Languages

It doesn't seem entirely appropriate somehow, lumping these two topics together in an article.  For me, I happen to like both.  With sports, I like to run, sometimes competitively, but with anything else I'm content with being a spectator (mainly of the couch-potato-in-front-of-the-TV type), with my preferred sports being soccer, baseball, basketball, and football.  As for studying foreign languages, I am no gifted polyglot but instead am very interested in them, having studied several to varying degrees over the course of my adult lifetime, up to the present.  As for how society regards these pursuits of mine, I find it interesting how differently they are treated...

With sports, one can be interested in many of them without actually participating in any of them.  I can go anywhere and strike up conversations about what's going on in the current sport of interest, and being able to remember statistics and other facts only contributes to the discussions in a positive way.  In fact, sports analysis can get to be quite abstract, if you check out the "standings" tables in your local newspaper and see the arrays of columns of numbers next to each team or athlete.  That's quite a departure from actually being out on the field, court, rink, or track and actually participating in the sport yourself.  With the study of foreign languages, on the other hand, my experience has revealed a different attitude on the part of others...

I don't have to be considered as an athlete myself in order to enjoy some kind of social acceptance in the context of being knowledgeable or interesting about sports.  Yet with foreign languages, if the topic comes up with others, no matter what aspects of a particular language I'm talking about, the person I'm trying to communicate with almost inevitably personalizes the conversation by trying to elicit my fluency level and what am I going to do with my study of said language.  Once, when discussing an aspect of Polish grammar with a fellow student in a Polish class, he refused to listen to me because that wasn't how HE learned languages (so why was he in that class, I should have asked).  That was a negative interaction, but almost the entire rest of the time, people express disinterest in the more passive, impersonal analysis, acceptable with sports, whenever foreign languages come up for discussion.  Instead, it gets real, real personal...and I don't like it.  When I'm sitting there studying Vietnamese like I was once in a nearby Starbucks (where I also happen to be writing this article right now) and an acquaintance entering the store notices what I'm doing, I don't want the cop-out question "What are you going to do with it?", which is what I got at that time.  Instead, why not ask, "Gee, what's Vietnamese like?".  Now that would be a "sports"-like question inviting me to share my not-inconsiderable (but still very incomplete) knowledge about that language. And along the way in that "better" conversation, I would most likely slip in some personal information, such as that I used to work in a local Chinese restaurant that had several freshly-arrived Vietnamese immigrants whom I befriended and with whom we practiced speaking each other's native language...and I didn't want what I learned back then to slip away. I admit that most folks don't want to discuss languages on a more analytic level for the same reason they wouldn't want to talk about mathematical topics: they don't want to be shown to be ignorant in the area (and people, especially in this university town, are so, so excessively prideful about their levels of educational attainment).  With sports talk, that doesn't seem to be a problem, though...

So if you see me studying a foreign language somewhere, you're welcome to interrupt my train of thought and ask the boneheaded, implicitly accusatory question, "So what are you going to do with it?", if that soothes your pride somehow.  But instead, why not put me "off" the spot and ask me to describe the language I'm studying?  Who knows, you'll probably end up finding out what I'm going to "do with it" anyhow, plus you might then actually learn something...as well as maybe, just maybe, find a new area in your life that piques your interest...    

Warm Winter in Gainesville Has Its Ups and Downs

In spite of all of the winter storms afflicting the eastern part of the United States north of Florida, in this state, at least, it has been yet another remarkably warm winter.  There have been very few nights here in Gainesville (in the northern part of the state) when temperatures got down to freezing...although in many years past we would go through spells when it would plunge into the 20's, sometimes for several nights at a time.  And now, still technically in the winter, we have a forecast today for a high of 87 degrees...with little change in the next few days!  I suppose that I should be grateful that we haven't experienced the almost continuous sequence of severe snow and ice storms, with their accompanying drifts and treacherous roads, that has caused so much hardship in the states north of us, and also that during this very mild winter here it has rained to a good degree...that will help forestall springtime forest fires that have plagued us in the past.  But with the warmth here also comes an increase in pollen, something that affects people like me who suffer from respiratory allergies.  Also, I am not a gardener by nature and would just as soon spend my time doing things other than working in the yard, so I'm not looking forward to the outdoor trimming and maintenance facing me earlier than usual due to the warm weather's vegetation growth spurt...

Senators Talking Past Each Other in Labor Rules Changes Debate

The National Labor Relations Board, a Federal government agency, recently updated its rules concerning holding elections in businesses to determine whether or not their employees want to form a union and engage in collective bargaining with their employers.  It had been several years since any changes in the rules were made, and the stated aim of the revisions was to bring the Board's policies more in line with the computer technology so prevalent today in communications.  The Republican Party has taken issue with these changes, as I saw the other day in a US Senate debate on the subject (shown on TV's C-Span2).  Speaker after speaker, including Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, would get up and refer to the actions as authorizing "ambush" elections with their new 11-day deadline for elections to be held once the employer is notified...and that something more reasonable like 30 days would be fair for both sides.  That sounds reasonable to me, but then the Democratic senators got up in opposition to the Republicans' proposed rescinding of these new rules and, instead of focusing on the new 11-day limit, kept going on and on about how important in this day and age unionizing elections need to be electronicized to keep up with how business is now almost universally done...and why do the Republicans oppose the newly-authorized use of e-mail and the Internet for this application?  They also repeatedly recited the history of the labor movement and emphasized how important collective bargaining had been for the growth of the American middle class in the last century...and how the National Labor Relations Board, begun under Franklin Roosevelt in 1935, was instrumental in ensuring a fair process.  Then Republican Senator Lamar Alexander got up and said no, that the new rules were against the middle class because it put the several hundred thousand franchise owners at a big disadvantage...with a different part of the rule changes that seemed to force the umbrella company to unionize if a smaller franchise site did.  H-m-m...

I'm no expert on government regulations and labor law...and I didn't read the proposed Republican Senate bill.  So I'm not in a position to judge the merits of these arguments, although I will say that in recent years, the Republican Party has become virulently anti-union and would like nothing better than to see all unions abolished and the organized labor movement destroyed.  But I do recognize when two sides in a debate are doing little other than talking past each other at the special interests to whom they are beholden.  It seems to me that with this proposed legislation, whose outcome I don't know about, it would have been better served going first to a Senate committee where the two sides could express their biggest objections and a compromise could have been reached that would have received enough votes to pass and get the President's signature...

Major League Soccer's Orlando City Plays First Ever Regular Season Game

I just finished watching, on TV (ESPN2) the very first regular-season game for both of Major League Soccer's expansion teams this year, Orlando City and New York City, as they faced off in Orlando's Citrus Bowl to more than 62,000 spectators.  It was an exciting contest with the level of play better than I had expected.  Of course, I was rooting for the Iron Lions, the nickname that Orlando goes by. Their star player is a Brazilian with one of those funny stylized singular names, Kaká, who plays midfield and is whom they consider as their "striker".  Orlando looked dominant in the first half, but couldn't manage a score due to the New York City goalkeeper's several excellent saves.  In the second half, NYC managed a goal to take the lead, and when Aurélian Collin, one of Orlando's defenders,was ejected with a red card and the team was reduced on the field to ten players, it looked dismal for them.  But just past the 90-minute mark, they were awarded a free kick near the goal and Kaká was able to punch it through for the score, with the ball deflecting in transit off a New York defender.  So the game ended as a 1-1 tie.  I was impressed with both the fan support and the team's play, and hope they both continue strong through what promises to be a challenging first season.  I definitely want to get down there and watch a game or two...

Just Finished Reading Daniel Abraham's The Tyrant's Law

Reading Daniel Abraham's The Dagger and the Coin fantasy series is, in some ways, the antithesis of that of Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time.  The former keeps the characters and story lines limited in number and easy to follow, while the latter is overly encumbered with minor characters often dominating the text for long passages.  I definitely prefer Abraham's work, and just finished the third volume, titled The Tyrant's Law...and have already gone a few chapters into the next one, The Widow's House...

I read up a little on Daniel Abraham on the Internet, and if what I uncovered is to be believed (and I don't have any persuasive reason to think otherwise), he is primarily a science-fiction writer who decided to try out writing a fantasy series like his friend, writer George R.R. Martin.  He reportedly got together with Martin and some other writers to get down the essence of this genre...and subsequently laid down an outline for this five-part series.  Now that's something I doubt that Robert Jordan ever did.  There are a lot of derived themes in The Dagger and the Coin, such as a distant past with dragons once dominating the picture, but also there are two innovations as I see them.  One is the diversity of humanity in the form of thirteen distinct races...and they are much more different from each other than the so-called human "races" we think of in our real world and over which have created such a fuss throughout history (and even now, sadly).  The other is the corruption of a segment of humanity with little spiders running through their veins, the effect on them being that they can distinguish truth from lie as well as giving them Jedi-like powers of persuasion.  Well, maybe that last feature WAS derived, wasn't it?  This conspiratorial group drives the story line in the series as they try to take over Abraham's imaginary world...

As in other fantasy series, the main characters of Cithrin (a young female banker), Geder (the "tyrant", besotted with Cithrin), Clara (widow to a nobleman who unsuccessfully tried to assassinate Geder), Marcus (war hero from bygone years who goes on various adventures), and Kit (an apostate from the spider-people group who is on his own quest to destroy them) spend the book crisscrossing the lands and seas in their various narratives.  Even with the welcome limitation of characters, it can get to be a little bit tedious trying to keep up with all these wanderings, but I am holding out the hope that the author will stick with his plan to conclusively tie it all up in that yet-to-be-published fifth book...

Changed Shift Times at My Workplace

This morning, when I finished my work shift at six and walked out of the building, it ended a two-year long stint working the late-night/early morning "graveyard shift".  Since the post office needs to process the mail passing through it in a prompt and efficient way in order to assure timely delivery, many of its workers in the mail processing section have these shifts.  It's what I started out doing in 1987 when I began my employment there and I worked these difficult hours for fifteen of my first sixteen years.  However, I never did get used to it and had much difficulty getting enough sleep.  Also, I believe it made me more susceptible to illness.  From 2003 to 2013, I was able to switch to an afternoon/evening shift and my sleeping patterns normalized, with my general health improving.  But due to my organization's sweeping consolidation decisions in the past few years,  my position with this preferred schedule was abolished...and I chose the best available post for me back on the late night shift.  Only this time, I was determined to stabilize my sleep by going straight to bed soon after I got home from work in the morning.  Still, on my days off I would revert back to sleeping like most of the world during those late night hours.  Although I handled this better than in the early years, I still felt that I was getting sick way too often.  So when the opportunity recently presented itself for me to switch back to an afternoon/evening shift, I jumped at it and got the position.  After a couple of days off, I will begin it this coming Monday afternoon...

Just Finished Reading Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness

Joseph Conrad is one of those classic writers whose works inevitably find their way into high school and college English class reading assignments.  It happened to me in the tenth grade when I was instructed to buy a paperback copy of his novel Lord Jim at the school bookstore, read it, and then summarize it.  I neither bought nor read it...although my summary paper garnered me a "B" grade (talk about winging it).  Since then, 43 years have passed and I finally got around to reading some Conrad, this one his short novel Heart of Darkness.

The 1902 story Heart of Darkness, on which Francis Ford Coppola based his epic 1979 movie Apocalypse Now, differs from the latter in that Conrad's setting is the deep recesses of the Belgian Congo as his hero Marlowe travels up river to encounter the enigmatic ivory trading agent Kurtz (whom I constantly envisioned as looking like Marlon Brando as I read it).  Yes, the quest is similar to the film adaptation's Cambodia-based quest for Colonel Kurtz, there an American renegade soldier...although Coppola was obviously going for a heavy political statement about the American war effort in Vietnam.  In Heart of Darkness, Marlowe is a seaman who wants adventure in his life...and plunging into the depths of Africa's "heart of darkness" to find the ailing Kurtz is irresistible to him.  Along the way he discovers the reprehensible way that the native blacks are treated by the colonialists, with disease, near-starvation, and gross overworking just the most glaring symptoms of their exploitation.  In this sense, this novel was an important eye-opener into how native populations were being abused by occupying colonial powers...in this case the late nineteenth-century Belgium Congo, as run by their King Leopold, being one of the most extreme abusers...

Eventually, as in the movie, Marlowe (or the cinematic character played by Martin Sheen with a different name) meets up with Kurtz and discovers him to be a fascinating combination of idealism, charisma, and utter disregard for others' lives.  The local people living under his rule, also as in the movie, adore him and fear losing him as the traveling party (through Marlowe) convinces him, as he is dying, to go back down river with them.  There is a curious character in the book, a Russian, who, like a similar hippie-like character in the movie, who has lived with Kurtz in his strange, reclusive new society and regards him as a great genius with a flare for poetry, teaching...and instilling terror. Despite knowing what a murderer Kurtz is, Marlowe can't help admiring him and comparing him favorably to the other, more petty-minded traders around him. It is this strange approval of such a sinister character that gave me pause, considering the villains of similar ilk that have victimized the world during the century following the publication of this story... figures like Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Che Guevara, Charles Manson, Jim Jones, and others...who entranced those around them with their presence but who ultimately were agents of destruction and darkness.  Hence, the double meaning of the title "Heart of Darkness".  In one sense, it refers to going to an extremely remote, isolated place, in the middle of an area unfamiliar to most of civilized society.  In another sense, it can mean how one's own heart can be made full of darkness. Perhaps one lesson, intended or not, that can be taken from it all is that trying to effect great changes, no matter the idealism or good intentions behind them, by isolating oneself from the "corrupt" world, also removes the good from that very same world and gives evil and darkness an opening to work its own aims within one's soul...

My Running During the Past Few Months

The past few months have seen me both increase my overall running mileage and participate more in middle-to-long distance races.  Here are the races I've run during the last four months (three of the four in Gainesville):

11/27.....10K Turkey Trot...Time 56:56

12/21.....Starlight Half-Marathon (in Palm Coast)...Time 2:03:30

1/31.....Newnan's Lake 15K...Time 1:18:21

2/15.....Five Points Half-Marathon...Time 1:58:48

Now that I have unwittingly set a pattern of one race per month, I now feel compelled to continue it.  The obvious choice for March is a 10K Saturday afternoon race to be held on the 14th in Tioga, a small community a few miles west of Gainesville.  As for any more half-marathons, I'll have to think about a possible late March or April race that would be held within a reasonable driving perimeter. Let's see...there's a combination marathon, half-marathon, and 5K race March 29 in Ormond Beach and also a combo half-marathon, 12K, and 5K race in Clermont on April 25.  Well, I'll have to see how things stand as these dates approach, I suppose...

Looking back on the four races I've done recently, I have to state that they all tended to be rather frustrating efforts, at least at the start of each event.  This is because of the problem of "runner congestion", when I repeatedly found myself boxed in due to slow runners around me who also would make no effort to offer any opening for me to get around them.  In the last half-marathon, I was nearly halfway through it before the path finally opened up for me! As for how I physically felt during these races, I seemed to hold up well, although I experienced some aches and cramps at various moments...the most serious being the leg cramps near the end of the Five Points race.  Perhaps better electrolytes/hydration (i.e. more Gatorade) will alleviate this problem in the future.

After April, the prospects for long-distance races in the northern Florida area disappear with only the 3.1-mile 5K event available from time to time. If I continue running monthly races from May through September, I'll have to stick with this shorter distance...unless I begin to travel to places further north and/or west where the longer races are held that time of year...

Reading Sue Grafton's Series from "A" to "Z"

As I had mentioned in a blog entry a few weeks ago, I have begun reading mystery writer Sue Grafton's "Alphabet Mystery" novels...this time in alphabetical order.  I've been hopping around the "letters" indiscriminately, beginning several years ago with the book "L" is for Lawless.  Since each book's story is complete in itself, jumping around the series out of order isn't in itself such a bad thing, although its main protagonist, Santa Teresa, California private detective Kinsey Millhone, does undergo changes in her personal life and relationships progressively with each successive book.  The main drawback with what I've been doing is that I have lost track as to which books I've already read and which ones I haven't.  And since I truly love Grafton's writing in this series and like the Kinsey Millhone character a lot, I decided to just go back to the beginning, to "A" is for Alibi, and read on through "W" is for Whatever (I don't know the title offhand), her latest book.  Grafton plans to end the series with "Z" is for Zero.

As it turns out, I had already read "A" is for Alibi a while back and knew who the main culprit is (there is more than one guilty party in this story).  So although I knew roughly how it would turn out as I reread it, it was interesting to see how the author introduced the villain early into the story and how she laid down hints of his culpability at various points while at the same point inserting other suspicious characters into the narrative.  All in all, I enjoyed the second time around as much as the first!  Oh, and I counted in it four different times that Kinsey went out jogging, something I particularly identify with...

Now it's one to the next book, titled "B" is for Burglar...

MercyMe Concert at Yesterday's Florida Strawberry Festival in Plant City

Yesterday, Melissa and I drove down a few miles west of Tampa to Plant City, where they have been holding their Florida Strawberry Festival.  Naturally, strawberries are a big focus of the event, but as is the case with county fairs elsewhere, there's a lot going on.  Rides, stands selling food of any kind you can imagine, and crafts exhibits dominate the landscape.  Also, there's a stadium there where they hold concerts.  That's convenient, because at 3:30 yesterday afternoon the Christian contemporary band MercyMe held a concert there that we attended.  I've heard them before, especially that big hit of theirs If I Could Only Imagine from a few years back, but I didn't realize what good musicians they truly are.  The selection of songs they performed during the slightly more than one hour they were up there went across the spectrum of musical styles...I was impressed!  I'm going to have to get hold of some of their material to listen to on my MP3 player...

Yesterday morning before we set off, I checked out the Weather Channel website on my computer and it had for the Plant City forecast a 25% chance of "showers" and a high of 72.  I looked at the radar map for central and northern Florida and saw a small band of clouds around the Tampa area, a very big clump of clouds heading for Gainesville...and a wide swath of clear skies in between.  Instead, though...in the real world...it rained all the way from Gainesville to Plant City...and throughout almost the entire MercyMe concert.  But speaking of "mercy", it did let up afterwards and Melissa and I spent the next hour or two walking around the fairgrounds...and of course we had to try out some strawberry shortcake!  Also, there was a stand selling fresh-popped kettle popcorn...you can see above a picture of me holding my "prize catch".

Almost from the moment we got back into the car to drive back home, it had resumed raining...all the way back to Gainesville with only minor periods of respite.  Well, the rain was tough, but the fair, and especially the company, was great!

My February 2015 Personal Running Report

In February 2015 I managed to run through a series of upper respiratory colds, somehow getting my total mileage for the month to 314 miles, despite physically feeling crappy much of the time.  I ran on every day of the month, and my longest single run at one time was during the Five Points Half-Marathon (here in Gainesville) on the 15th, when I covered 13.1 miles with a time of 1:58:48.  That was good enough in my Men's 55-59 age group for 5th place out of 23.  I felt pretty good about that, especially when, close to the end of the race, I was wondering whether I'd even be able to finish it due to leg cramps.  For an entire day, though (on the 21st), I managed once to cover 32 miles by spacing apart several smaller runs.

Starting the second week in March, my work schedule will change from the "graveyard" late night/early morning shift to a late afternoon/evening shift.  This should greatly aid with my sleeping patterns, and might help me to better withstand these viral cold attacks I've been suffering lately.  As a matter of fact, if my unscientific memory serves me correctly, I've generally been more healthy and less often sick when I used to work the hours that I'll soon be returning to.  Time will tell if that works for me again...

Just Finished Reading Tad Williams' Shadowheart

I just finished reading the book Shadowheart by Tad Williams, which is the concluding volume to the four-part Shadowmarch fantasy series.  This was a rather difficult series for me to get through because, although I normally expect fantasy series to contain a reasonable portion of magic and the supernatural (hence the name "fantasy"), Shadowmarch is overwhelmingly loaded with it.  As such, it was difficult to read it while keeping at least one foot set in reality.  Other writers like George R.R. Martin, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Daniel Abraham seem to realize this need to primarily base the story line in some semblance of reality in order to make the occasional "magic" seem more special.  But when it's all out of the ordinary, at least for me, the reader's mind gets numbed to it after a while.  Nevertheless, in Shadowheart, Mr. Williams does manage to tie up all of the threads he had loosened earlier in the series, and the ending is quite satisfactory with the bad guys getting their comeuppances and the heroes and heroines largely receiving happy endings...if they weren't killed off earlier, that is.  Naturally, I'm not telling what happened since I want you to try this series out for yourself...and for you to give your own feedback to it...

I will give Tad Williams the credit for having the self-discipline, apparently lacking in Robert Jordan in his The Wheel of Time series and George R.R. Martin in his A Song of Ice and Fire series, to limit the scope of his characters and story.  I think there must be a temptation in fantasy fiction writing to want to keeping on creating and creating within your own devised "world"...but for readers this can get to get very cumbersome to keep up with.  With the Shadowmarch series, the core characters remain the same throughout...with the greatest focus given to the two preeminent ones: Princess Brienny and her twin brother Prince Barrick.  I'd also like to give Williams kudos for his well-done character development.  It's obvious to me that he put a lot of himself into writing this series, which can put the reader into a kind of funk in some of the tediously depressing sections but still represents a very interesting story with compelling protagonists (and very nasty villains)...

Unnecessary Homeland Security Bill Senate Filibuster

The Republican-controlled US House of Representatives has passed a  Department of Homeland Security authorization and funding bill to keep the crucial department fully funded through the end of the year.  However, included in the bill is a repudiation of President Obama's executive action giving partial amnesty to illegal aliens (or "undocumented immigrants", if you want to tip-toe through political correctness land).  This bill has now been brought up before the Senate, where Democrats are filibustering it to keep it from being submitted to the floor for debate, amendments, cloture, and a final vote.  As was the case tith the recently passed Keystone XL Pipeline bill, it has no chance of being signed into law by the President, and there is no hope of overriding a presidential veto.  So I ask myself, regardless of anyone's opinion about the propriety of the Republicans' actions attaching the anti-exucutive action part to the bill, why can't it be brought up to the Senate floor for debate as the Keystone Pipeine bill was?  I'm not a Senate insider here, with my own connections and news sources.  But I have a sneaking suspicion...

Back in January when the Keystone bill was openly debated, amended, and voted on, Democratic Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid was absent due to an accident that he was being treated for.  I his place, Minority Whip Dick Durbin stood in and ran his party...and allowed the bill to pass through the normal legislative process.  But the minute that Reid came back, though, presto!...here comes the filibustering...

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell  has proposed splitting up the Homeland Security reauthorization bill into two parts, one being a "clean" bill that funds the department without reference to Obama's recent immigration executive action, and the other a section on whether that action should be accepted or rejected.  That sounds quite reasonable to me, but I have my doubts about even that great concession on the part of the majority Senate leadership being accepted by morose and spiteful Senator Reid, sad to say.  Still, there is hope now for this important bill to be passed and the needed funding to continue.  The next day or two will tell what happens...

Oh, by the way, after I had posted this article and looked back up on its title "Unnecessary Homeland Security Bill Senate Filibuster", I realized that it could be taken two different ways.  No, the Homeland Security bill is necessary, but the filibuster against it isn't...

MLS Brings Premier-Level Pro Soccer to Orlando

One of the interesting things about how international professional soccer is set up is that it is now a year-round sport.  Most of the leagues around the world play from August through May, while in North America the established premier league, Major League Soccer, has their season starting in March and going on to year's end.  So as the English Premier League and Mexican Liga MX wind down their respective seasons, pro soccer in the United States and Canada is just getting underway.  This year, MLS will be eliminating one team and expanding with two.  The bygone franchise is L.A. Chivas while the two new ones are another New York City team (there's already the New York Red Bulls) and Orlando (as the Lions).  The fact that, right when I'm getting interested in following soccer, a big time team gets established within reasonable driving distance is pretty cool.  If the ticket prices are reasonable, I'd like to go down there and see them play in person. Major League Soccer's season will kick off on March 6, so I'll be alternating then (at least for two or three months) between three leagues...

Soccer on TV Highlights Day of Recovery

While recovering from sickness on my day off, I spent much of yesterday resting, reading...and watching television.  I've discovered that, on Saturdays this time of the year, if you don't have much else to do at the time, you can spend much of the day watching soccer on TV if that's the sport you like to follow.  And since that was the case with me yesterday, I ended up watching five different matches...

The first two were from the English Premier League.  League-leading Chelsea was expected to run up the score on floundering Burnley, which is fighting to avoid relegation (demotion) to the next lower league next year.  Chelsea, after getting an early 1-0 lead, couldn't build on it and Burnley managed to score a late goal to tie it, to the surprise of everyone.  The second game featured defending champion Manchester City plastering their opponent Newcastle 5-0 with excellent passing and shooting.

The final three games were from the Mexican Liga MX, their premier soccer league.  The first of these was a classic confrontation between Cruz Azul, based in Mexico City, and Guadalajara Chivas.  The former was undefeated so far in this second half "Clausura" of the split 2014-15 season and expected to continue against Chivas, which was also fighting to avoid relegation to the next lower league.  Cruz Azul took a 1-0 lead and held it almost to the end, but Guadalajara jolted them with two lightning-quick goals in rapid succession around the 80-minute mark and upset them.  What a great game that was!  Then, disappointing Monterrey still managed to pull out a 2-1 win over Queretero, followed by the Monterrey-based Tigres "Tigers" bowing to the Chiapas Jaguares "Jaguars" 1-0.  That finale was a little disappointing to me since I was expecting Tigres, which nearly won the first split season "Apertura" championship this year, to be stronger than they have been of late...

Well, today I don't expect to be camped out in front of the TV set, and I have other things to do anyway.  Still, I need to rest a little more before I go back to work this evening, and if a soccer match happens to be on...

Repeated Colds a Burden This Winter

For some reason, this winter I have been repeatedly afflicted with colds...one of which I am suffering right now.  Ugh. Usually, I manage to avoid them since I practice a good deal of care with hand washing and avoiding contact with other sick people.  But this time around, I don't know if it is because my body is somehow weaker or because there are just more germs floating around than usual...they keep coming back at me.  I think this has also diminished my ability to run effectively in my races, although almost miraculously all three of them have come between episodes.  Nonetheless, now here I am again with headaches and congestion..fortunately, I have the weekend off from work to stay at home and recover some.  That's not so bad, but out of respect for others, when I am sick like this I try to minimize being out in public and as a result miss out on healthy social interaction.  But since I tend to have a reclusive nature anyway, it probably doesn't affect me as much as it would others...

Just Finished Reading Robert Jordan's The Path of Daggers

The Path of Daggers is the late Robert Jordan's eighth book in his extensive, fourteen-volume The Wheel of Time fantasy series (Brandon Sanderson wrote the final three books after Jordan's death).  I just finished reading it, and, sad to say, my two most positive reactions from it are (1) it is the shortest book in the series and (2) I am now past the halfway-point, one book closer to the end.  Besides this, it's pretty much the same fare as before, with the protagonists crisscrossing Jordan's fantasy continent from one kingdom to another in various states of peril and freedom/captivity.  The main hero, Rand al'Thor, is just as unlikeable to me as ever.  His hometown friend, Mat Cauthon, who along with Perrin Aybara are the only two characters I care for in the series, wasn't even in this book...despite the fact the previous one,  A Crown of Swords, ended with him left behind in a newly conquered city (by enemy forces) with his future in doubt and suspense.  So I suppose I'll just have to wait until the ninth book in this interminable series to find out what happens to him...which I suppose is that he'll experience some kind of tribulation in that occupied city, get out somehow, and then go on some trek to who-knows-where else, like all of the other characters. What really gets me is Jordan's device of having a group of villains, called "The Forsaken", who have the ability to pop in and out of thin air anywhere and anytime they want to stir up trouble.  This lack of order in the ongoing narrative, to me, serves to destroy its integrity when certain characters can behave without limitations.  But maybe, just maybe, the author is going somewhere with all this...who knows.  Another major problem I have with this series is that Jordan keeps introducing scores of new characters and spends a large section of the text discussing them.  There is way too much to have to keep up with here...

I'm still going to trudge along with this frustrating series to the bitter end.  At least I have THAT going in my favor: it definitely will end!

Running: Race Recovery and Near-Future Prospects

My recovery from last Sunday morning's half-marathon race has left me with sore, tight calf muscles...but otherwise I'm doing fine.  On March 1st, Tavares, Florida (a few miles north of Orlando) will once again be holding its Orange Blossom Half-Marathon, which unlike the recent Gainesville Five Points race, is essentially flat and lacking in hills.  I ran it in 2013 and recorded my fastest personal half-marathon time.  I'm wondering whether I might just try it one more time,  although the travel from Gainesville to the race site tends to be bothersome...unless I stay overnight at a hotel (which is what we did last time).  Melissa and I enjoyed the 2013 event, as she walked the concurrent 5K race while I ran the 13.1 miles.  Only then, the weather was freakishly cold and windy, something neither of us anticipated with a central Florida March race, although we knew conditions would be colder than usual...

Then again, these races do cost money to enter and I can opt instead to continue my running at home.  I've run in three races this winter: the Starlight Half-Marathon in Palm Coast in the evening of December 21st, the Newnans' Lake 15K east of Gainesville on January 31st, and the Five Points Half-Marathon on February 15th.  So each calendar month I have run in a a race, making the upcoming Tavares run a possibility in my mind.  But there is an alternative choice for me: on March 14th there will be a more reasonably-priced 10K run in Tioga, just a few miles west of Gainesville.  It will be held on a Saturday late afternoon and there will be a post-race outdoor party with live music and refreshments.  Plus, there's a 5K run/walk for Melissa...

Two Interesting European Soccer Matches on TV Right Now

I enjoy following league soccer play, as opposed to the national teams that people are accustomed to seeing during the World Cup.  The only problem with this is that, outside of America's MLS league, the English Premier League, and Mexico's Liga MX, I don't have access to league games and as a result miss out on some of the greatest teams in the world.  Teams like Spain's Barcelona and Real Madrid, Germany's Bayern-Munich, and France's Paris Saint-Germain, for example.  However, interspersed throughout the regular season of the individual European soccer leagues is an ongoing interleague tournament, titled the UEFA Champions League.  Today they're showing on TV two live games: Fox Sports 1 (Gainesville Cox Cable channel 62) is showing the contest between England's Chelsea and Paris Saint-Germain while Fox Sports 2 (channel 267) is showing Ukraine's Shakhtar Donetsk against Bayern-Munich.  The Donetsk team, by the way, is playing its home games this year away from its home town, which is the midst of the rebel strife going on in that country.

Not that I plan to stay glued to the TV the whole time, but it's going to be fun seeing how they play...

Just Finished Reading Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities

In a departure from the fantasy fiction I've been reading, I decided to try a contemporary American general fiction writer.  Why not Tom Wolfe?  So I read his 1987 novel The Bonfire of the Vanities, an excruciatingly satirical look at the entanglement of politics, avarice, ethnic and social class divisions...and vanity, as they remove any vestige of "justice" in a big city's criminal justice system... in this case, that of New York City in the 1980s.  In a nutshell, without giving away the story to prospective future readers, a wealthy bonds trader named Sherman McCoy, while picking up a woman (with whom he is having an affair) from the airport, gets himself lost in traffic and the two find themselves in a run-down South Bronx neighborhood and encounter two young black men in an obstructed highway entrance ramp.  What ensues there drives the story for the rest of the book, from the investigations of the incident by the press (by English journalist Peter Fallow) and district attorney's office (by assistant D.A. Larry Kramer) to the Al-Sharpton-like agitation and protests by Reverend Reginald Bacon.  Each player in the story has their own personal agenda they are pursuing, and none of these really has anything to do with justice.  Ultimately, McCoy becomes the politically-convenient WASP symbol of wealth that (1) the D.A., trying for reelection in his heavily minority-populated Bronx, (2) Fallow, looking to advance his journalism career, and (3) Bacon, trying to advance his own persona as a civil rights  leader, can all use for themselves.  Never mind the facts, it all becomes a farce of justice.  As a matter of fact, the developing farcical nature of The Bonfire of the Vanities, to me at least, resembles the absurdity of the wartime military that Joseph Heller so aptly conveyed in his book Catch-22, published a quarter of a century earlier.

Each character in Bonfire is very consciously aware, to the point of obsession, of his or her own status regarding ethnicity, wealth, and social status and seems to be in a constant struggle to enhance that status.  I wonder whether that's really what it's like in New York City with people in general, or even in other places (such as my own Gainesville).  Or is Wolfe just exaggerating his characters' "vanities" to makes his own points?  I tend to see his characterizations in much the same way that Heller made his, which was to point out the foibles (and humor) of people's perceptions about themselves and their often ridiculous efforts to improve their perceived "positions".

I recommend Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities.  It also has an interesting kind of ending, expressed in its epilogue (I tend to be a "collector" of interesting story endings...like that in Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls, for example).  I also discovered that a not-very-successful movie had been made for the book starring Tom Hanks, Melanie Griffith, and Bruce Willis.  I think I'll just steer clear of that one, thank you...

Ran Gainesville's Five Points Half-Marathon This Morning

This morning I ran the Five Points Half-Marathon here in Gainesville.  This is a great race, not only because it's held in my home town.  The course runs right through the city itself, including the University of Florida (passing through the football stadium along the way).  The terrain is moderately challenging with several Florida-level hills to climb.  But most of all, I like the way it was planned, from not having to worry at all about sharing the road with motorized traffic to the excellent facilities and water/Gatorade stations...and the very convenient parking.  I also like that they had pacers: I found the pair of runners going at a 2-hour pace and stuck with them for about 9 miles, after which I took off ahead of them.  The next 2 miles of the race (going down SW 2nd Avenue and running through the UF campus) saw me generally gaining on and passing other runners.  But after I had run about 11.5 miles, while passing through the University's Fraternity Row, my lower legs began cramping up on me...especially my left calf.  For the remainder of the race it was down to a struggle to finish in spite of the cramping: thankfully it never got to the point that Lebron James reached during the NBA playoffs a few years ago when he was rolling around on the floor in apparently mortal agony.  Curiously, once I passed the finished line, my cramps subsided: I was then just plain tired.  My final finishing time was 1 hour, 58 minutes, 48 seconds...good for 211th overall.  I'm not sure exactly how well I did in my 55-59 age group, which in Gainesville is extremely competitive, but I was able to see from preliminary results that I finished out of the "running" for an award.   My recovery from the race seems to be going quite well.  This is the third time I've run this event, the others being in 2010 and 2014.  My final time, although not my best by a long shot in the half-marathon (personal record: 1:50:53), still was my fastest for the Five Points races I've run...

The weather, for a change, was more to my liking with this race.  The temperature at the 7:00 AM start was about 47 degrees, so there was no need to wear anything more wintery than the usual tee-shirt and shorts.  Still, I was amazed to see people crowding around the starting line looking like they were going out in a blizzard with jackets, long pants, insulating caps, and gloves.  Needless to say, there was a whole lot of partial disrobing going on soon after the race began for these folks...

Football Talent and the Florida Gators

I don't claim to be an expert at football, and what all constitutes "talent" in the sport.  To me, since it is played at different levels depending on whether it's high school, college, or professional, that "talent" designation seems to be relative to how well a player can fit and thrive in the environment he finds himself in.  It's hard to isolate a player from his team and judge his skill level without taking into account how well he plays with others...and how well others play with him. We've just had the recruiting process for college football, and schools have been ranked on how well they signed up the top "talent" in high school players.  The University of Florida usually does well with this recruiting, typically ranking among the top in the country.  After their recent head coaching change had left them behind with the recruiting this go around, they quickly recovered through the efforts of their new coaching staff and reportedly now have a lot of  new incoming "talent" to work with.  As for the players leaving the team after playing for them a number of years, Florida also has many, in comparison to other colleges, whom the National Football League has considered to be talented enough to invite to try out for that league.  H-m-m, so the players are "top talent" coming in to UF and they're "top talent" going out...so why is it that, during the actual Gator football seasons in the last few years, all I've heard was that this team was having to make do with less talent than those around them?  It seems to imply to me that the coaching staff wasn't doing a very good job of developing that top talent that they recruited and that, only after the very best manage to leave Florida, do they finally see the opportunity to achieve their full potential under more competent direction.

I have a feeling that this discrepancy with the Florida football talent has a lot to do with the recently departed staff.  I have to grimace a little whenever I hear in the media that a particular team's head coach is so beloved by his players that he is commonly referred to as a "players coach".  That usually means that the team is lacking in consistency and discipline, and that the players aren't challenged enough in practice to better themselves...in other words, to develop the talents that they already demonstrated in high school and which had made them such promising recruits in the first place.  The new coach, Jim McElwain, seems more interested in molding together a winning team and developing his players' talents to the next higher level than the previous one, who seemed more interested in making them like him than anything else...  

John Batchelor Radio Show a Winner

On Sunday nights, on my local radio station WSKY "The Sky"/97.3, is the nationally broadcast John Bachelor Show.  This is not your typical right-wing rant-and-rave talk radio show, so if you are someone who likes to be spoon-fed your conservative Republican talking points, ready-made to spit back out at others, you're probably better off sticking to Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, or Mark Levin.  Instead, Batchelor, himself a conservative, hearkens back to the better days of this genre, having on a great diversity of guests who share their research and expertise in various areas of history and the physical and social sciences...with the emphasis on history.  For example, the other night he had on as a guest someone who had written a book on the Malmedy massacre late during World World II (during the Battle of the Bulge).  Another topic was New York City's "Year of Anarchy"...1914...when the newly-elected reformist mayor, the Rockefellers, anarchists and the backdrop of World War I combined to cook up a recipe for disaster.  Later on, another guest on the show delved into the Russian crime organization that is behind much of the explosive growth in Internet identity theft hacking scams that have increasingly plagued society during the last ten years.  In each interview, the host demonstrates that he himself is not only interested in the guest's topic, but has also researched the subject material to the point where he asks pertinent and meaningful questions.  What a refreshing change from the usual drivel I hear on talk radio...

The John Batchelor Show broadcasts every Sunday night from 9 to 1.  The last part of his show coincides with my work schedule, and that's when I usually can pick up on what's going on.  If you find yourself tiring of the same old television fare on Sunday nights, why not just flick off that boob tube and tune in to this quality show on the radio.  Who knows, you just might learn something...

Watching International Internet TV for Foreign Language Practice

Today I resolved to give myself a little needed exposure to some of the languages I had been studying by watching Internet TV on my laptop using the site wwiTV.  On it, you can select whichever country you want to watch TV from, and then choose from one of the stations available.  It's all free, and it gives you the opportunity not only to practice your language listening skills (mine are sorely lacking) but also get a glimpse into life in other parts of the world.  For myself, I watched French, Russian, and Chinese TV in their languages...although with the latter two I presumed an inherent bias in their programming.  Of course, when you're watching a culinary show demonstrating the various ways to make dishes with duck, the opportunity for propaganda isn't very high...although seeing some of those scrumptious-looking meals made me want to reach into the computer screen and pluck them out...

I had been searching for some sites in other countries that broadcast their own soccer league games with the play-by-play in the native tongue, but I didn't find any.  I'm sure those stations are out there, but they probably come with an extra subscription fee, and that's a no-go for me. So, for soccer, I guess I'll just stick with my own cable TV service here in Gainesville and follow the English Premier League and the Mexican Liga MX, whose games ARE shown...

Just Finished Reading Daniel Abraham's The King's Blood

This weekend I found myself a bit under the weather with a bad, contagious cold, so as happens in situations like this, I stayed at home and watched TV (soccer and the History Channel series I mentioned yesterday)...and read a lot.  I managed to read the rest of Daniel Abraham's book The King's Blood, the second in his ongoing fantasy series The Dagger and the Coin.  Connected with famous author George R.R. Martin through collaboration and the latter's ringing endorsement on his books, Abraham also has written this series in much the same way that Martin has been doing with his A Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones) series.  The ongoing story, spread out over this series' fantasy continent, features alternating passages presented from the views and experiences of various characters, mainly Cithrin, a young precocious teenage girl banker, Marcus, a soldier with a heroic and tragic past, Geder, a minor nobleman, very sensitive to slights, suddenly catapulted into power without any training or preparation, Dawson, a hard-edged nobleman,  and his wife Clara.  The main developing story line in this book seems to be the infiltration through various countries by a mysterious religious sect with its priests containing living spiders in their blood, and who can distinguish truth from lies as well as persuade people to believe what they say.  One of them, Kit, has left this group and recognizes its sinister nature, wanting to bring it down.  Meanwhile, Geder has visited this order and ridden into power over the kingdom of Antea on the backs of the priests' ability to distinguish loyalist from traitor by their speech.  Unfortunately, he has not yet recognized the fact that these priests, while able to tell whether someone is telling the truth or not, themselves have no qualms about lying if it suits their own agenda.  Not wanting to give away the story, I'll just say that Abraham successfully keeps the number of subplots at a manageable level and has done a magnificent job of bringing out each character's personality.  I feel that I somehow know these people...a great accomplishment on the part of the author.  In spite of the fact that I am tiring somewhat of the fantasy genre of fiction and don't plan to start reading any new series anytime soon, I definitely intend to keep up with this ongoing work.  I've already begun reading the next book in this series, titled The Tyrant's Law...

The History Channel Showing Excellent Series Right Now

I was channel surfing early this afternoon and, lo and behold, when I hit upon The History Channel, they were actually showing something about history, for a change.  As a matter of fact, the series they are presenting (and will be until 7 tonight) is a twelve-part blockbuster titled Mankind: The Story of All of Us.  I happened to tune in during episode #8, which covers the period from the 15th through 17th centuries.  It's quite an amazing series, and it ties the world together through the various trends, events, and personalities of each era.  I probably won't watch it continually until 7 (after which the usual non-historical, dull programming resumes on The History Channel), but then again, it's such an intriguing, well-written and produced series that I won't be surprised if I do...

Give Runners Choice During Race Between Half-Marathon and Marathon

My running training is rarely a matter of me establishing a set amount of miles beforehand and then running them.  Instead, I will run as circumstances dictate, both those external and internal.  For example, I may be operating one day under time constraints that limit the amount of running time I can spend.  Or I might be feeling under the weather or have a slight injury to nurse.  But when I have the flexibility of time and I'm physically feeling good enough, then my mileage on any particular run becomes open-ended...and it's always seemed to be that way, ever since I resumed the activity in 2007 after essentially ignoring it for thirty years (exception: a short three months running period in early 1998).  Sometimes this way I will go on and on with a run, racking up huge mileages...and sometimes I'll stop at a lower level.  Which brings me to a proposal about some of the long-distance races I've entered before...

As I see it, there are two types of half-marathon races out there: the races that only feature that one length of the course and those which combine the 13.1-mile half-marathon course with a 26.2-mile full marathon course.  One of the latter is coming up on February 15: Gainesville's FivePoints Marathon/Half Marathon, the two races being run concurrently.  That's important with regard to my proposal...

In the FivePoints races, both events run the same course for the first 13 miles.  Then, just as the half-marathon event is almost finished, all of the runners encounter an intersection with directing signs.  The arrow pointing to the right is for the half-marathoners to follow and finish up their almost-completed race, while the left-pointing arrow directs the marathon entrants to continue their race another 13-plus miles.  Of course, the way things stand now, there's no choice involved here: the runners have either signed up for the half-marathon or the marathon and they can only finish in that event for which they are already registered.  But suppose, just suppose...

Suppose that there is a third option for runners that gives them the opportunity to choose to go either left or right at that intersection!  That would be awfully intriguing for someone like me who usually keeps on running in my training when I'm feeling strong.  It would be a tantalizing decision to make, indeed.  It reminds me a little of the Matrix movie scene when Morpheus presents Neo with the choice of choosing the blue pill (end the adventure now and go back to life as you want to believe it) or the red pill (and see how far down the "rabbit hole" goes)...