Just Finished Reading James Patterson's Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment

After looking through prolific fiction writer James Patterson's bibliography, I happened upon a series of books that are targeted at the young adult/teen market, called Maximum Ride.  And since I like to dabble in this genre of literature from time to time (I've read the Divergent, Twilight, and Hunger Games series), I thought would investigate to see how well Patterson does in this area. Although I later discovered that there was a 1998 Patterson precursor novel to Maximum Ride, titled When the Wind Blows, I began with the 2005 first "official" book: The Angel Experiment...

Without wanting to give away too much, the basic premise of The Angel Experiment is that six children, ranging in age from six to fourteen, have escaped from a sinister place called The School and are trying to maintain their freedom while looking for answers about their origins.  Oh, I forgot to mention that all have been genetically modified with bird DNA and can fly, wings and all...while each child possesses his or her own special skills.  Angel is the youngest, while Max (or Maximum Ride) is the oldest and the group's leader.  Max, who tells the book's story from her own perspective, has a special bond with Angel; when the latter is recaptured by the brutal, wolf-like Erasers, the hunt is on to rescue her.  Mysteries abound in this story...what is the true role and intentions of Jeb, an adult employed by the School but who has helped the children's escape and seems to have an benevolent view of them?  And what about the mission placed upon Max...one that is vague but at the same time of cosmic importance...

Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment brings back to me memories of the 1996-2000 TV series The Pretender.  In that show children with special abilities were brought up, isolated and controlled in a place called "The Centre".  One of them, Jarod, in adulthood finally managed to escape and he, too, found himself relentlessly pursued while he struggled to find the important answers to it all.  Personally, I would rate Divergent or Hunger Games higher if you're interested in this genre, but I also think that James Patterson did a good job with this series...at least as far as the first book is concerned, that is.  I'm going to continue reading it through each successive book, but first I think I'll go back and read When the Wind Blows...

The Three Classes of the United States Senate

The United States Senate isn't a school per se, nor is it a rigid society with different levels of prestige.  Nevertheless, it does have classes...although they pertain neither to education nor social stratification.  There are three of them to be exact, and in a radical departure from typical government gobbledygook, they are simply designated as "1", "2", and "3".  But I haven't yet explained what these classes are, have I?  Well, continue on then, intrepid reader...

Every two years for our national Congress, we have elections for both the House of Representatives and the Senate.  Because all of the seats in the House are for only two years, then every one of them is up for election every two years (although a lot of them aren't contested, sad to say).  U.S. Senate terms, on the other hand, are for six years, and since there are a total of 100 senators...with 2 per state, their elections have been divided up into threes, with approximately a third of the seats up for election every two years.  So, depending on which of the three "classes" a senator belongs to, he or she will either bypass the congressional elections in a particular year or have to contend with a reelection campaign (if they still want to remain in the Senate, that is).  So, how do the classes specifically work?

In recent history, Class 1 senators (33 in all) have been elected in 2000, 2006, and 2012...and will be due for the next election in 2018.  Class 2 senators (33 in all) were elected in 2002, 2008, and 2014...and will be due for their next election in 2020.  And Class 3 senators (34 in all) were elected in 2004 and 2010...and will be up for election this year, 2016.  My home state of Florida has Classes 1 and 3...Marco Rubio's seat (he isn't running for reelection) is the Class 3 one that Floridians will decide on this November  (Democrat Bill Nelson is in Class 1).  Now class is important in Senate turnover and party control, because each class contains a certain number of Republican vs. Democratic senators.  According to Wikipedia, Class 1 contains 25 senators aligning with the Democrats and only 8 going for the Republican Party.  Class 2 is reversed, with 22 Republicans and 11 Democrats in it.  And the upcoming election in a few months is all about Class 3, with 24 Republican seats and only 10 Democratic that are up for a vote.  That means that, if you only look at the numbers, the Republicans have quite a task ahead of them this year if they want to retain the 54-46 majority they currently enjoy in the Senate.  And looking closer, some of the contested seats currently held by Republicans appear to be rather tenuous, especially in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, and New Hampshire...

Stories 5-8 in Kuttner/Moore's Book Two-Handed Engine

As I've mentioned before in other posts, I am currently in the process of reading the book Two-Handed Engine, a collection of some of the better short fiction by the late husband-wife writing team of Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore.  Much of their material is of a speculative nature in the realm of science fiction, fantasy, or horror (or a mixture of the three)...reminiscent of the original Twilight Zone television series in some ways.  The tales in this book span the years 1933-55, and the four I have just read were published in 1942-43...

In Compliments of the Author, attributed to the pseudonym Lewis Padgett (a collaboration of Kuttner and Moore), a shady blackmail artist picks the wrong target: a wealthy California man who happens to be a legitimate magician with a vengeful "familiar" in the form of a cat.  A strange book finds its way into the hands of the blackmailer...and its solutions for each crisis he faces work uncannily...all the way to the surprise ending.  Shock, also by Lewis Padgett, and a Twilight Zone-like speculative sci-fi story, involves a strange visitor from the distant future who makes a hole from his time into a physicist's (1953) apartment.  His speech almost impossible to understand, the time-traveling visitor goes out into the world of the "present" to find his other "self", while the hole into that future time remains.  Our physicist hero can't restrain his curiosity and goes through the wall...and I'll just leave the ending for you to discover for yourself (if you can ever find this story to read, that it). Reader, I Hate You, which was a solo work by Kuttner, is a story with a comic, absurd twist to it. Kuttner writes himself into the story, telling it in the first person as a writer compelled by a strange "superman" to chase down a reader of Kuttner's in order to retrieve his wife, who is in the form of a crystal (remember, I said this story is absurd).  Kuttner must have had a lot of fun writing this one...

And now we're down to the last of the four I've just read: the unforgettable Mimsy Were the Borogoves (also credited to Padgett), widely considered as one of the greatest science fiction short stories ever written...and my all-time favorite of the genre. It is an excellent exercise in speculation on how different in nature children are from adults...especially very young children...and how early education can steer their thinking...and even their humanity...in directions the ramifications of which can be disastrous. Two boxes full of toys from another dimension in the distant future have carelessly been sent back in time by an amateur tinkerer experimenting with his time machine...one ends up in the late nineteenth century, inspiring Lewis Carroll through his conversations with the little girl who finds the box and its contents (hence the tale's quizzical title). The other box, which is the focus of the story, lands in 1942 and is found by a seven-year old boy playing hooky from school by a riverbank.  He and his two-year old sister play with the toys he found...but to the parents they make no sense at all, appearing to be arbitrary and random in their operation.  The toys themselves are designed to teach and train children for something that no one anticipates.  Oops, did I say too much?  I don't think so...but I had better leave the rest of it for you to read.  And this one should be easy to find, as it is often in "best of science fiction" anthologies.  Warning: the 2007 movie The Last Mimzy, which claims to be based on Mimsy Were the Borogoves, bears little resemblance to the original story except to incorporate some of the themes (children, box of strange toys going through time, etc.) while missing the entire point of it all.  Kuttner and Moore had been long-deceased by the time this film came out, and I can only imagine that they are spinning in their graves over this distortion of their signature masterpiece...

You usually don't hear about Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore whenever the greatest science fiction writers of the twentieth century are discussed...usually it's folks like Ray Bradbury, Philip K. Dick, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, and Robert Heinlein who get the most attention.  But there were many other great science fiction writers in this period as well, and I intend to cover some of their works in future articles...

Taken Aback at Vicious Presidential Campaign

My focus in this article is the campaign within the Republican Party for the presidential nomination in 2016.  I am a Democrat and, frankly, can't see myself voting for any of the GOP candidates.  That's not to say that I am happy with the Democratic choices given me, either.  I can think of several experienced and capable people who would be better than dynastic Hillary or socialist Bernie...but I have to play with the cards I've been dealt...the best simply chose not to run this year.  And seeing what's been going on in the "other" party, I don't blame any of them for staying out...

Donald Trump, with his almost constant insults and childish behavior, has set the vicious tone for the Republican presidential campaign when poll after poll showed that a plurality of this party's voting base identified with Trump's nastiness.  The meaner he spoke, the more popular he got.  Finally, other candidates, realizing what it took to appeal to this rabble, began to return the Donald's insults as well as starting off against each other.  But Trump continued to lead the field of candidates into the primary season and clearly has a large plurality of the delegates so far.  Yesterday Mitt Romney, someone for whom I feel absolutely no warmth or sympathy, decided to give a speech denouncing Trump, point by point.  Romney wants the voters in the different remaining states with primaries or caucuses to pick whichever candidate has the strongest chance to beat Trump in each state, the ultimate goal being to go to the national convention with no one having a majority of delegates that would seal their nomination.  Then, the "insiders" (including presumably Romney himself) could broker the convention to select a more controllable establishment nominee (including presumably Romney himself). What a joke this all is: if Trump does end up getting the Republican nomination, all the Democrats will need to do is just keeping replaying Romney's speech in their ads...

Donald Trump is who he is, a known quantity for many years, and I can't blame him for his tactics...especially when he seems to get a boost in the polls whenever he speaks in insulting and/or vulgar terms against other candidates, the media, demographic groups, or anyone who criticizes him (which in Trump's narcissistic worldview equates to treating him unfairly).  I agree with Romney, though, that Trump is too emotionally unstable to be trusted with our nuclear arsenal and at least for that reason alone should be rejected for president.  The fact that he also wants to squelch opposition by making it easier to sue anyone who criticizes him, though, is insane...especially considering that Trump should be the defendant in any such lawsuits, not the reverse...

I don't like Trump for his instability and demeanor.  But I also don't like teabaggers like Ted Cruz for their rigid ideology and refusal to work with others for the greater good.  And I really, really dislike the Republican establishment that has done everything it could to stonewall everything President Obama has tried to do... for example, more than 500 Senate filibusters in the past seven years, many against legislation and nominations of which the Republicans approved but decided to oppose, for no other reason than to go against my duly-elected President.  I have my own concerns with the Democrats as well (especially on the far left), but I feel that they are currently the party of reason and pragmatism, while the Republicans can do nothing but obstruct and insult...

This all having been said, I recognize that each of us has to reason out this political process for ourselves and that it is O.K. to arrive at differing conclusions.  Which candidate will make the best president? I say vote for whichever party or candidate that you think will do the best job...I don't claim to have a lock on the "correct" answer to that question, I just have my own opinions on the subject...

Books I'm Currently Reading

Right now I'm in the midst of reading a number of books.  One of them, which I have already mentioned, is Two-Handed Engine, a collection of primarily science-fiction short stories written by the late husband-wife team of Henry Kuttner and C.L.Moore.  I've already discussed the first four stories and intend to write about the next four, which I've just read.  I've also been continuing reading some of James Patterson's works...right now I'm about two thirds of the way done with his book The Angel Experiment, the first installment in his young adult science-fiction Maximum Ride series.  So far, I like his writing here, which is a marked departure from the style he employed in the other books...more crime/mystery oriented...that I've recently read.  I also just checked out the first book in his Women's Murder Club series, appropriately titled 1st to Die.  I believe I read that book several years ago: it will interesting to see how much of it, if any, I remember.  Finally, in anticipation of the March 8th release of fantasy writer Daniel Abraham's fifth and reportedly final volume in his The  Dagger and the Coin series, I am quickly perusing the first four books I've already read in this most interesting and underrated saga.  Now that's something I'd like to see adapted to an HBO television series...you can have your Game of Thrones, which incidentally has so strayed from creator and author George R.R. Martin's books that it hardly bears watching, in my opinion.  Besides, Martin seems to be taking forever with writing his next volume of the supposedly seven-book series (officially titled A Song of Ice and Fire), while Abraham will have cranked out his entire series in a five-year span...

Just Finished Reading Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes

I just finished reading Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes...at least the English translation of this famous Spanish novel that was originally published in two volumes in 1605 and 1615.  Altogether it is a rather lengthy book to plow through and, despite the fact that it contains many smaller stories imbedded within the larger work, I have to admit that I had some difficulty sustaining my interest in reading through to the end.  After all, the basic premise of Don Quixote is laid out at its beginning, with its characters experiencing little change or growth throughout.  The two central characters are Alonso Quixado, an elderly minor Spanish noble, and a simple farmer named Sancho Panza.  Quixado, who has taken up with books about chivalry to the point where he believes that he is himself a knight errant, hires Sancho as his squire as he sets off on his adventures under the name Don Quixote de la Mancha.  He imagines Dulcinea, who is a working class woman in his home town with whom he has had no contact, as a princess who claims his loyalty and affections and for whom he performs all of his gallant deeds of knighthood. Quixote and Panza set off on their adventures in this book...not once or twice, but three different times, and this is probably the best way to divide up the story.  In his adventures, Quixote continually interprets normal, everyday experiences such as seeing windmills or a flock of sheep as being encounters with giants or enemy armies, made by enchanters to look like what Sancho plainly sees for what they really are.  And the "squire" regularly makes his opinions known to his master, often very much to the latter's consternation...it is Sancho's contribution to the tale that rescues it, in my opinion, with his inexhaustible supply of proverbs (some very silly) that he sprinkles liberally throughout all of his conversations.  As for Don Quixote, most of the people who encounter him don't take very long before they conclude that he is suffering from some kind of madness, but yet...

Outside of Don Quixote's own delusions pertaining to chivalry and his own role in it, he comes across as agreeable, knowledgeable, and wise...if a bit loquacious.  Those he encounters, once they become aware of his affliction, tend to show sympathy toward him and Sancho...although some, like the Duke and Duchess of the "second" book, concoct elaborate jokes to play on the two. Still, I was left reading about the ostensibly singular character Don Quixote with the feeling that his insanity/rationality duality is more common than one might suspect...

After reflecting on it a little, I can conjure up a list of people I know, both from my personal life (which I'll discreetly keep to myself) as well as some I only know from the media, who display genius and expertise in one or more fields but act totally clueless in others.  What makes them ultimately Quixotic, though, is that they themselves don't recognize their own foolishness when assessing their own shortcomings in some areas and insist that those around them "play along" with their self-delusions. I won't give out names, but I can think of politicians (including two current presidential candidates...I wonder if you know who I'm talking about), athletes, musicians, actors, and news media folks who fit these criteria.  But what's really disturbing is when people in large numbers appear to actually buy into their madness...         

My February 2016 Running Report

Although I was experiencing some physical maladies this past month of February, 2016, I managed to run at least a token amount each day and accumulated 171 total miles...usually accomplished with multiple, smaller runs spread throughout the day.  My longest single run was for 4.8 miles.  I had planned to participate in my hometown of Gainesville's Five Points Half-Marathon on the 21st, but felt too bad that weekend and decided that it would be prudent to pass this time around...

Next month I'd like to step up the mileage a bit, especially with regard to the distances I cover in single runs.  I also would like to run in two different 10K races: the Run for Haven event on the 12th in Tioga (which I ran last year) and the Trail of Payne 10K at Paynes Prairie Preserve State Park, just south of Gainesville, on the 26th.  The latter is a trail run, so the course may be a challenge...especially if it is run under rainy conditions (or if it had rained a lot in the days before the race).  As for the Tioga race, I loved the big outdoor party they held, with live music and "free" food for the paying runners...but the 4:30 pm race time did make it a little difficult to withstand with the hot temperatures that fell on us that March afternoon in 2015.  Maybe this year we'll catch a break and it'll be cooler...

Upcoming Election, Gainesville City Commission and Alachua County Commission

I received my sample ballot in the mail today for the March 15 Florida presidential preference primary and Gainesville local elections from my supervisor of elections.  There's not very much on the ballot: besides the Republican or Democratic presidential primaries, Gainesville only offers its mayoral race and District 4 in its city commission...and since I'm not in District 4, I can't vote in that race (although one of the contestants, Jim Konish, is a former classmate of mine from Nova High School).  It's O.K. that I can't vote for someone else's district...that's the way it should be in representative government.  I think Gainesville has worked out its city commission structure quite well: there is the mayor (who also gets to participate as a voting commissioner), two at-large seats (the whole city gets to vote on them), and four districted seats.  I reside in District 2, currently represented by Todd Chase.  Since the various districts have their own particular demographics, issues, and political leanings, it seems more likely as a result to have a city commission that better represents the diverse interests of its population.  One big problem: unless there is a bigger race on the ballot, such as the presidential campaign or statewide offices like U.S. Senate or governor, the voter participation in my local elections is abysmally low.  Take the last two elections here, for a commission seat and the runoff election: 12% turnout in both! 

There is also an Alachua County Commission, which is comprised of five seats each officially representing a drawn-out district for the entire county, of which Gainesville dominates with its much larger population than the outlying communities.  Unlike the case with the Gainesville City Commission, though, each county commissioner is elected at-large from the entire county, not just from the district he or she is supposed to represent.  Which doesn't make very much sense to me.  I live in Alachua County District 5, which is supposedly the district of Charles Chesnut IV.  But this commissioner was elected county-wide...doesn't that defeat the concept of representation by districts?  It would be as if the entire United States got to vote on who would be Florida's governor...wait a minute, that might not such a bad idea, considering the individual we've been stuck with for the past few years...

Starting to be Able to Follow Ice Hockey Games

The other night I was watching the National Hockey League game between the New York Rangers and the Detroit Red Wings, taking place at Madison Square Garden and broadcast on NBC Sports (local Cox Channel 33).  I've written before about how difficult a time I've had trying to to follow the flow of the game, seeing how the small puck is so elusive and often hidden.  In spite of that, though, I was surprised to be able to better keep track of its movement...and actually enjoyed the game.  I wasn't pulling for one team over the other, although since I've been to New York once, and the hotel I stayed at is a short walking distance from the Garden, I tend to think of the Big Apple as almost a secondary home town.  The Rangers did pull out an overtime victory, 1-0, and I thought that the reduced three-on-three setup in overtime served to make the action more exciting...and should be extended to the entire game...

One other reason that I have had for not getting into watching ice hockey is that I've never played the sport...not even in its alternative form of field hockey.  Also, I've never ice-skated before, and therefore cannot easily imagine myself in the skates of those athletes in these games...unlike, for example, soccer, where I can sense the limitations of the players based partially on my own personal experience in this sport.  Also, I'm still a little lost at some of the rules of hockey...especially concerning off-side calls.  Still, I'm looking forward to watching more...I'm sure I'll pick up on what's going on eventually...

My home state of Florida has two NHL teams: the Tampa Bay Lightning and the Florida Panthers.  Both are having good seasons this year, and the Lightning made it to the Stanley Cup finals last year.  However, although I'll probably end up rooting for them when I'm watching their games, I just don't have that level of fan loyalty built up yet...

Watched the Movie Bridge of Spies

Last year I saw preview after preview on TV of the new Tom Hanks film, Bridge of Spies.  Already acquainted with the infamous U-2 incident of 1960, I felt inclined to watch it eventually...but never got around to the theater.  Well, I did make it out there once, but there was that new Star Wars movie...

No problem...last week Melissa, Rebecca, Will and I sat down one evening and watched Bridge of Spies, which we had rented from Redbox.  Not exactly the theater, but then again it was convenient to be able to pause it from time to time.  Already knowing where the story was heading, I had expected to see a re-creation of an early-sixties East Europe, but I was stunned at the visual effects nonetheless.  After all, under Soviet domination, East Germany was treated in a much more punitive manner following World War II and many of its buildings, fifteen years after war's end, still looked bombed-out.  Amazing...

Bridge of Spies is a true story, spanning the years 1957-62, focusing on the efforts of American lawyer James Donovan, played by Hanks, as he first defended accused Soviet spy Rudolf Abel on espionage charges and then was asked by the CIA to handle negotiations with the Soviet Union for the release of downed and captured American U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers.  The U-2 flights over the U.S.S.R. were done at high-altitude to photograph our Cold War adversary's military activities...Powers's plane was shot down by a missile.  Donovan's task was to get the Soviets to agree to an exchange between convicted Soviet spy Abel and Powers.  The "bridge" in the movie's title refers to a famous bridge connecting East and West Berlin, where the transfer was to take place.  All of this is already known history, but just in case you don't know what happened at the end, I'll leave it for you to discover for yourself.  Just keep in mind that I was impressed by this movie, its direction, acting (especially that of Tom Hanks), and its faithfully true portrayal of the events and settings.  By the way, since much of the movie is set in East Berlin, it was fascinating to watch the building of the Berlin Wall as an event concurrent with the story's plot...

So go watch Bridge of Spies...especially if you have any kind of positive feelings about the old Soviet Union and how its policies affected the people under its control, whether as citizens of that country or of one of the satellite nations it dominated.  Those folks had it really tough back then and I wouldn't wish their ordeals on anyone...

Skipped Today's Gainesville Half-Marathon, More Opportunities Ahead

I decided to skip this year's Gainesville Five Points of Life Half-Marathon, which I ran in 2010, 2014, and 2015.  During the last three weeks I have gone from experiencing lower left back pain to a more general sense of physical malaise...both of which I've gone through before.  Under the circumstances, my running during this period dropped significantly and I felt that I wasn't in tip-top condition to tackle the 13.1-mile course.  Maybe next year...

I do feel better now, although lately it seems that the local pollen season has kicked into high gear and I'm having issues with that...I know, it sounds like I'm a bit of a hypochondriac, doesn't it?  Nevertheless, I haven't given up on my running, which has begun to pick up again.  And there are still a couple of months more of races ahead before the extended hot summer season we experience here in north-central Florida curtails the number of racing opportunities.  On March 12th & 26th there will be 10K races here in Gainesville while, in April, half-marathons are being offered in Ocala and Gainesville on the 16th and 24th, respectively and a 10K will take place in town on the 9th.  Interspersed between these are numerous 5K events, so there will be plenty of chances for me to get involved with some races if I want...

What I'd like to do the most with my running is get back to the routine I've had in the past of running around my neighborhood in the late morning/early afternoon hours before I go off to work.  I've found this time frame to work the best for me as the daytime temperatures haven't reached their maximum while the humidity from the previous night and early morning has usually dissipated to an acceptable level...

Listening to Conservative Talk Radio Lately

I've been listening to my local talk radio station, 97.3/WSKY "The Sky", for the past week while at work...and on the way in my car.  In particular, I've been following four different programs, all conservative right-wing shows: Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, and Michael Savage.  Although all of them are very much against President Obama, Democrats, and anything politically liberal or even moderate, I have discovered some significant differences among them.  But they all share an enormous talent at elucidating their opinions while managing to daily fill a three-hour block of time: pretty impressive, whether or not you happen to agree with what they are saying...

While in non-campaign times, these four are all usually railing at their political enemies on the left or center, we happen to be in an election year and they find themselves divided concerning the Republican race for president.  Limbaugh and Hannity have each deliberately taken a neutral stance towards the candidates and have cultivated on-the-air interviews with them, while Levin and Savage have made their own personal choices known without equivocation.  Let's take a look at these latter two, whose shows I listen to from 6-9 pm and from 9 to midnight, respectively...

Mark Levin and Michael Savage take themselves very seriously with their own "movements": Levin with his insistence on the U.S. Constitution being only interpreted one way...HIS way...and Savage with his slogan of "Borders, Language, Culture" defining his take on the news.  Both remind me at times of the insane Peter Finch character of the newscaster in the 1976 movie Network, who one evening goes off the deep end and beings to rant incoherently...remember "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore"?  But then again, at times, both of these guys can sound quite lucid and make their arguments compelling.  That makes me want to compare them to Don Quixote, the delusional fictional knight of Miguel Cervantes's imagination, who, when not dealing with the realm of chivalry, seems quite sane and reasonable...even wise and personable.  Only with Levin and Savage, it's not chivalry that turns them into mad ravers...it's the Democrats and Obama...

Mark Levin has decided that Ted Cruz is the only true conservative candidate in the GOP field, something I find laughable.  And since Donald Trump and Marco Rubio have been criticizing Cruz a lot lately, Levin has been treating them with barely-concealed contempt on his show.  Of course, Cruz is a frequent call-in guest.  What a surprise.  It's also not very surprising that Donald Trump has appeared on Michael Savage's show, since Savage is strongly supporting him...and consequently is, in turn, running down his Republican opponents.  Each host has his ongoing conspiracy theory: Levin thinks that the Republican Party establishment has a plan to prevent either Trump or Cruz  from obtaining a majority of delegates going into the convention and to force a deadlock, resolvable with an establishment candidate getting the nomination at the end.  Savage, for his part, keeps insinuating that Obama somehow was responsible for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia's recent death at a west Texas resort without showing any evidence...instead, he keeps replaying a Godfather Part II scene where a Nevada senator is framed in a "family"-owned brothel...

Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, by contrast with Levin and Savage, seem to be downright gentlemen...that is until they begin to talk about Democrats, especially our president.  And then they, too, jump into the mud and wallow around.  Still, they can be pretty funny at times... 

As for me, I want the politicians I vote for to have well-thought out positions on the issues, although it is well-nigh impossible that I'll agree with them on everything.  Conservatives have some really good points to consider, but I am sick and tired of the tendency of some of them to tar and feather anyone left of far right with epithets, conspiracy accusations, and predictions of apocalypse.  Likewise, I don't appreciate progressives on the left smugly acting as if theirs is the only intelligent, caring political philosophy and that those on the right are bigots, ignorant dupes, and sell-outs to the rich and powerful.  I want politicians to take clear stands on the important issues, but also to understand and compassionately accept that, if elected, they become the leader of all...even those who opposed them in the election...and that their responsibilities extend beyond those within their own political camp...

The U.S. Supreme Court, Scalia's Death, and His Replacement

Throughout the history of this country, the Supreme Court has had its factions and divisions, with the differences usually falling along the lines of the political parties with their views on society and governance.  Often the Court has been slanted heavily to one side or the other...but in recent years it has been divided pretty much evenly...well, as evenly as an odd number of justices could make it.  Five-to-four rulings have predominated, with Justices Roberts and Kennedy usually making up the swing votes.  But now, with Justice Scalia's recent death, the division between "conservatives" and "liberals" is a deadlocked four-to-four.  And President Obama is in position to change the ideological balance, even if he gets a moderate nominee confirmed...Scalia was the strong voice of the conservation faction. 

Those in the political world, almost all being Republicans or conservative independents, treat Scalia's passing as if it will permanently affect the composition of the SCOTUS.  But several of the justices are in their advanced years, including some liberals appointed by Democratic presidents.  Ruth Bader Ginsburg has certainly had her share of health issues, and is viewed by some as the next justice to leave the Court.  We don't know who will win this November's presidential election, but it is almost a sure bet that the winner, possibly a Republican, will be picking her successor.  And if it IS a Republican, then we'll be hearing the same worries about the ideological balance being upset...except that it will be coming from the Democrats.

There is plenty of time this year for the President to present a nominee to the Senate and let the process go through.  The Republicans have a solid majority there and can choose to accept or reject the nominee, who I hope will be someone acceptable as a reasonable choice.  There are a couple of lower court judges already confirmed by this Senate...and I don't discount the idea of the President picking a moderate senator...even a Republican...for the vacant Supreme Court seat.  Whatever his pick, though, this president needs to be more engaged in the process and be willing to meet and discuss this important nomination in a spirit of cooperation with the key senators involved, especially those in the Judiciary Committee...

If the Republicans in the Senate choose to stonewall Obama's nomination until after the election, they risk having to deal with another Democratic president...and that president's nominee may be much further to the left that what President Obama may have offered.  And also, should they refuse to deal in good faith with Obama, this issue could prove to be a major rallying point to get Democratic voters to the polls this November.  I'd like to see a qualified, centrist nominee get confirmed quickly in order to defuse this standoff and allow the Supreme Court to continue its deliberations with a complete roster of nine justices...

Currently Reading Two-Handed Engine by Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore

As I mentioned a few days ago on this blog, I am reading a large short story collection of the works, albeit incomplete, of the late husband-wife writing team of Henry Kuttner and C.L. (Catherine Lucille) Moore.  The genres of this book, titled Two-Handed Engine, range from science fiction to fantasy to horror.  The thirty-seven stories, most of which are collaborations of the couple, are arranged in their order of first publication starting in 1933 and ending in 1955.  I am also reading the book in that order, and have just finished the first four stories...

The first story in the book is Shambleau, accredited as a solo work of C.L. Moore.  It is a science fiction tale, set on Mars of the future, that spreads the contemporary belief of the author's time that Venus was a wet, marshy planet with its own life forms and that there was life on Mars as well.  But the main character, an adventurer named Northwest Smith (resembling Hans Solo of Star Wars fame), is human through and through.  While on Mars on nefarious smuggling business (like Solo), he encounters a mob of angry Martians chasing down a small, frightened woman.  Smith, being of a gallant nature, holds off the attackers and takes her in.  As the story wears on, this "woman" turns out to be a completely different life form, which she calls "Shambleau" but bears an unmistakable similarity to a monster from old Greek mythology...and Smith finds himself in a life and death crisis...

Henry Kuttner alone wrote The Graveyard Rats, the 1936 second story of the book...you just might guess that this is a horror tale.  And it is, in the tradition of Kuttner's renown predecessors Edgar Allen Poe and H.P. Lovecraft.  The title pretty much states what's going on here, and the rats are particularly ferocious and ravenous...

The third story in Two-Handed Engine is A Gnome There Was, a fantasy also by Kuttner, published in 1941.  In it Tim Crockett, a young Californian labor organizer, travels east to a coal mine, where he disguises his intentions while being completely oblivious to that dynamite explosion about to happen...too late...but wait, he's not dead!  Somehow, he has been transformed into a different kind of creature...I suppose you can infer the rest.   Kuttner explores here a hidden society of fanciful creatures with their peculiar and often very funny norms...

Story number four is The Twonky, the first collaboration of Kuttner and Moore in the book and published in 1942 under the pseudonym Lewis Padgett.  I read it many years ago in a "year's best" science fiction anthology.  It struck me then as a forerunner of a much better story of theirs, titled Mimsy Were the Borogoves, published the following year.  Still, it stands well on its own.  A time-traveler from a much more technologically advanced era finds himself accidentally transported to a radio assembly factory in, I suppose, the authors' contemporary time of the early 1940s.  Having temporarily lost his memory through the turbulent time travel, he is ordered by the plant's foreman to go to work, i.e. build radios.  Drawing from his own knowledge, he builds a radio...but one with much more advanced features...and then recovers his memory and vanishes to return to his own time.  Meanwhile, this radio, called a Twonky, is bought by a couple, who subsequently get treated to its more insidious and sinister nature...

Well, that's four stories down and thirty-three to go!

Happy Birthday, Melissa...and Happy St. Valentine's Day!

My wife Melissa has one of those interesting birthdays: it falls right on a holiday of sorts...and what a holiday: St. Valentine's Day!  So, to my dear, beautiful Valentine, Happy Birthday, Sweetheart!

Eighth Harry Potter Book Coming Out July 31

I was watching MSNBC just now and was surprised to see, scrolling at the bottom of the screen, the news that J.K. Rowling would be releasing a new Harry Potter book, the eighth in the series, on July 31 this year.  After investigating this online, I discovered that the new installment, titled Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, will be in two parts and is to pick up where the last book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, ended...nineteen years later with his youngest child, Albus Severus, entering Hogwarts Academy for the first time.  The original story for this new book was written for a play that will open in London on July 30, the day before the book's release.  And why July 31? Why, it's Harry's birthday, of course! 

Now I'm going to have to go to my local Books-a-Million to see if they're planning to have another big Harry Potter party on the eve of its publication.  But since Kindles and their like will probably take up much of the sales of this new Potter book, I don't know if its hardbound release will have as much public celebratory fanfare.  We'll see...

Some Observations About the Presidential Campaign

Here are some things I noticed about the presidential campaign so far, the day after the New Hampshire primary...

Any time a Republican candidate starts looking good in the polls, the others gang up on him.  When Ted Cruz rose to the top in Iowa, both Donald Trump and Marco Rubio went after him.  Then after Rubio made his unexpected good showing in that state's caucuses, he was attacked without mercy.  Now we have Trump back on top with John Kasich on the upsurge...expect both the Donald and the rest of the "gang" to pile on Kasich...

On one of the cable news channels...I believe it was MSNBC...they did a poll of New Hampshire voters after they voted in the primary.  According to the results, almost half of them didn't make their decision about whom they were going to vote for until the final days...this in spite of the fact that the campaign had been going on strong in the media since last spring and their own state had been inundated with information on the candidates and their records and positions...along with many opportunities over the past several months for the voters to evaluate their character and qualifications for the job.  What's wrong with these people, I ask myself...

Another pattern about the electorate that makes me scratch my head in puzzlement is the voter turnout issue.  Bernie Sanders was on the podium last night in exultant victory, lauding the very high voter turnout in the primary.  And it was, by all accounts, high.  Fine, I'm O.K. with that.  And in the presidential general election, it usually is pretty high as well.  Good, good, good.  But then wait two years for the so-called "off-year" elections that determine all of the House of Representatives, a third of the Senate seats, and a substantial portion of the Governors, and voter turnout goes way down, especially as I have recently observed, among those same Democratic voters who were so proud of themselves two years earlier for their active involvement in the political process.  I've said it before and I'll say it again: something is wrong with the system when a state like my Florida can go for liberal Democrat Barack Obama in 2008, elect tea party Republican Rick Scott in 2010, go once again for Obama in 2012...and, of course, turn right back around and reelect Scott in 2014.  It's not the politicians who are in the wrong: it's the electorate with their inconsistent, herky-jerky voter turnout record...

Two Books I'm Reading Now

The two books that I am currently reading are both pretty lengthy: Don Quixote by Don Miguel de Cervantes and Two-Handed Engine by Henry Kuttner and C.L. (Catherine Lucille) Moore.  You've most likely heard of the former, with the delusional self-proclaimed knight engaging in combat against windmills while his simple "squire" Sancho Panza suffers along, with his own delusions to deal with.  But there is much, much more to this book, which reads more like a modern novel than the early 17th century composition that it was.  I'm approaching the halfway point...when I'm finished I will no doubt write a review...

The other book, Two-Handed Engine, spans the science fiction and fantasy short story writing career of the husband-wife writing team Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore, with their collaborations usually accredited to pseudonyms like Lewis Padgett and Lawrence O'Donnell.  I've already read some of their stories, which I picked up from other sci-fi anthologies.  Since this book I have now is more than 900 pages in length, with 37 stories, I'm bound to be at it for a while.  Maybe instead of waiting until I've finished the entire book before reviewing it, I'll instead write my reactions for each group of three or four stories I've just read as I go along.  I'm deeply looking forward to this reading experience, for Kuttner/Moore already are the authors of my all-time favorite science fiction story: Mimsy Were the Borogoves, which is also in this book...

Changing Time and Setting of My Blog Writing

I'm trying out a new schedule and strategy for studying and writing, beginning today.  I remember that back in 2007-08, when I began this blog, I would routinely write out articles in the early afternoon, just before I went off to work.  I usually did this while sitting in a coffee shop like Starbucks.  Well, now I am out again, before work and sitting here with my coffee (not Starbucks...but a nice place nearby).  The only difference between now and then is that then I would write out my articles on my portable AlphaSmart word processor and then post them the next day from my home computer, while now I'll be posting on the same day, right after I've finished writing...

I'd like to expand the range of my topics, which recently have been relatively limited in comparison to earlier years.  In any event, I appreciate your readership and hope that you'll find my articles interesting, regardless of your own personal interests or whether you necessarily agree with my opinions...

Denver Defense Dominates Super Bowl

I was rooting for Denver, out of gratitude, to win this year's Super Bowl after they ruined the season of my Miami Dolphins' nemesis, the New England Patriots.  No, I've never cared for Peyton Manning...although his only fault in my eyes was that he was the quarterback of the also equally-hated Colts (for older Dolphins fans like me) for many years.  Still, I'm happy for him as it looks as if he will retire as a Super Bowl champion after his Broncos' defense destroyed the Carolina Panthers en route to a 24-10 championship tonight.  I just finished watching the game, but I concur with the TV announcers who believe that Denver's Von Miller, who caused two fumbles from Carolina's quarterback Cam Newton that led to the Broncos' two touchdowns, should be the game's MVP.  I was a little dismayed at the end, though, after Denver upped their advantage to 24-10...it seemed as if the Panthers had just given up, even though there was still a little time left to try to get back into the game.  But they punted on fourth down deep in their own territory, and by the time they got the ball back, it was too late to do anything...

This might be called by some an "ugly" game, but that's how it usually is when the defense dominates the opposing offense on the field.  Carolina's defense also contained Denver's offense, but the Broncos were able to cause more crucial, big turnovers to secure the win.  After the initial disappointment, I anticipate that Carolina and Cam will recover and make another good run at the title next year.  But I'll be pulling for Tampa Bay to improve enough to challenge them in their division in 2016...

String of Good Soccer Matches on TV Today

Last Sunday I strained my back somehow while getting up from a chair.  So, for the past week, I've been struggling through life, functioning as best as I can at home and work, and gradually recovering from day to day.  Finally, I made to this weekend...whew!  Today, the first of my two days off, saw me sleeping late into the morning...in the process missing the important soccer match that NBC Sports (Gainesville's Cox Channel 33) was showing between English Premier League leader Leicester City and one of their main challengers, Manchester City.  Although few are giving upstart Leicester a chance to win the title, they keep holding their advantage in the league and are now, after 25 games and drubbing Manchester City 3-1 today (and on the road at that), 5 points ahead of second-place Tottenham (also a surprise contender).  And there are only 13 games left in the season.  What a turnaround from last year...

As late as the end of March in the 2014-15 season, Leicester City, just promoted from the second tier league Football League Championship, was deeply mired in last place with only 4 wins, 18 losses, 7 draws...and only 9 games left in the season.  Then, inexplicably, the Foxes caught fire and won 7 of those final games with only 1 loss and a draw, shooting out of last place and away from relegation (i.e. demotion to the next lower league).  They have kept up that torrid pace this year with their high powered offense, led by their star forward Jamie Vardy, who plays hard at both offense and defense...

So I missed that first game this morning, but I was able to toggle back and forth between the Tottenham-Watford and Liverpool-Sunderland matches.  Fox Sports was showing Germany's Bundesliga as well today: I got to see a couple of good matches earlier...Borussia Dortmund-Hertha Berlin and Bayern Munich-Bayer Leverkusen.  As I write this I'm watching the Borussia Mönchengladbach-Werder Bremen match (which is a replay from yesterday).  And I found out, that on two of my Spanish-language channels, three different Mexican Liga MX games will be shown this evening...

With the cold, dreary weather outside and the need for me to recuperate from that freak back strain, what could be better than to have a day off and an opportunity to watch my favorite sport?  Forget Super Bowl Sunday:  Soccer Saturday rules !!!

Just Finished Reading James Patterson's Season of the Machete

Since this is my third consecutive review of a James Patterson novel, you just might come to the conclusion that I have totally immersed myself in this popular mystery/crime writer's works...but you'd be wrong.  Especially after I just finished his second published novel, titled Season of the Machete...

Season of the Machete is a thrown-together conglomeration of all sorts of cynical literary and cinematic themes that have worn themselves thin.  The story takes place in a foreign country (a small Caribbean nation with a Jamaican culture but not Jamaica per se) and the CIA and American organized crime bosses are in cahoots as they try to manipulate the politics of that country to their mutual advantage.  To this end, they agree to hire assassins (in the form of a married couple dedicated to the profession) to create a scenario of fear and unrest through a series of brutal murders that appear to have been committed by revolutionaries on the island.  But one man...our protagonist...has seen the hit man at a murder site and the hunt is on...who'll catch him first...or will he catch one of the culprits?  If this sounds like a scenario from the Robert Redford movie Three Days of the Condor (released in 1975, two years before this book's publication), don't be surprised: Patterson even made a thinly-disguised reference to the movie...

If you like repeated gory scenes of brutality and killing interspersed with double crosses gone out of control, along with no one ever being quite sure who is the hunter and who is the hunted...then this is the story for you.  I found it to be altogether tedious...I began to wish for a giant asteroid collision to happen at the end, just to put all of these pathetic and unlikable people out of their misery...

In other words, I don't recommend Season of the Machete.  But it is short enough to where you wouldn't be making much of a reading commitment should you decide to ignore my advice and tackle it anyway...

I think I'll take a little break from James Patterson, but I'm certain to return and see what some other works of his are like.  I did, after all, like The Thomas Berryman Number and Along Came a Spider...

UF #9 on Nat'l Signing Day

No, I don't remember the name of the organization ranking the schools signing star high school recruits today in college football...but I saw it on one of the mainstream sports cable channels and it looks as if Jim McElwain, Florida's head coach, has done a pretty good job in competition against his rivals for the top talent: Florida was given #9 ranking in terms of their signings.  In contrast, their former coach, Will Muschamp, recently hired at South Carolina, seemed quite content with his school's #29 ranking on Signing Day...making me wonder whether that might not also have been the result for Florida had he remained with them.  Of course, although it's important to have talent at the outset on your team, it's also crucial to have the knowledge and means to develop the skills these entering college players as they take their level of play to a higher level.   One thing I noticed about the rankings, though, is that they don't reveal how successful a particular program was in filling positions that they are deficient in.  For the Gators, they desperately need talent on the offensive line.  And a decent placekicker wouldn't hurt, either.  Maybe that Crawfordville, Florida signee Feleipe Franks...also the nation's #5 ranked high school quarterback as well as a very competent kicker...can fill the bill here.  I know one thing: Florida fans won't have very much patience this upcoming season if they see the same kind of stagnant offense they saw for the last half of 2015.  Coach McElwain be warned...

Iowa Results Change Campaign

The 2016 presidential campaign season has finally entered its "real" stage after months upon months of public opinion polls, contentious debates, and mind-numbing exchanges of insults via Twitter, stump speeches, and media interviews.  The "inevitable" Republican, Donald Trump, didn't win yesterday's Iowa Caucuses as expected: Texas senator Ted Cruz pulled out the victory with 28% of the vote while Trump only mustered 24%.  But the real story on the GOP side in Iowa, in my opinion, was the surge for Florida senator Marco Rubio, who nearly beat out Trump with 23%.  Watch out for this guy...if Trump doesn't recover quickly, Rubio may well storm through to the nomination...

On the Democratic side, it was nearly a dead heat between Hillary Clinton and Vermont senator Bernie Sanders: both sides are currently spinning the results in their candidate's favor, of course.  Sanders has a large edge in young voters and independents, while Clinton...unlike in 2008 against Barack Obama...has a large margin over her opponent among African-Americans...

Next week is the New Hampshire Primary.  Sanders, whose state of Vermont is right next door, is a shoo-in according to the polls...Clinton just needs to close the gap in order to keep her momentum heading into South Carolina and the other Southern states, where she is much stronger among Democrats.  With the Republicans, Trump needs to win New Hampshire (which he should, with a large margin over his opponents in the opinion polls).  Cruz, like Clinton, sees his main strength down the line in the South.  But if Rubio can gain votes on Trump in New Hampshire like he unexpectedly did in Iowa...watch out!

My January 2016 Running Report

In January I ran a total of 280 miles, usually spreading out the mileage over more than one run each day.  And I did run on every day of the month.  My longest single run was the 9.3 miles I ran in the Newnan's Lake 15K race here in Gainesville, which took place yesterday (see my previous article about it).  I skipped the Ocala Half-Marathon I had planned to run in on the 17th because of severe weather over the area...

Next month, on the 21st, will be the Gainesville Five Points Half-Marathon.  I should be fine running in it as long as the weather holds up.  My emphasis of late with my running is not to go for personal records, but rather to regain confidence in covering long distances without regard to how fast I run...this seems like a good direction for me to go for the future.  Not that I won't still enter races from time to time, but I'll be going more for the experiences than the results...

Ran the 2016 Newnan's Lake 15K Today

When I decided to run in this morning's 9.3-mile Newnan's Lake 15K race, east of Gainesville off Hawthorne Road, I had also decided to deliberately tone down the competitive aspect of the event and just concentrate on going at it with the intent of finding my running "groove".  If you're familiar through personal experience with distance running, you know what I'm talking about: there is a certain pace, unique to each individual, at which runners can push themselves while still able to run indefinitely without the dreaded lactic acid buildup that can ruin a run.  In the previous two races I've participated in, I foolishly went out from the starting line with the notion of speeding up my pace: each attempt left me struggling at the end.  For this run, though, I made a point of deliberately going slower than my normal pace for about half the race...and then increasing my speed to the point where I was comfortable while yet pushing myself.  I stuck to this plan, which resulted in a much slower overall run (1:31:20) and a next-to-last placing in my male/55-59 group. The irony of this is that, long after I had finished the race with my slow run, many participants in other gender/age groups were still on the course.  Apparently, the male/55-59 group is one of the more competitive categories here in Gainesville, where running is very popular...

The temperature at race time (8:30 AM) was about 40 degrees...as the sun rose on this clear day, with no breeze to speak of, the temperature rose into the 50s by race's end...and the air became drier and more pleasant.  The course for this race was more or less flat, with a little sloping in sections that only a flatland-Floridian like me would even notice. Near the start and close of the race, I could look over to the side while running and see pretty Newnan's Lake. Almost all of the race was done on asphalt roads, with a little part about a third of the way through going down a dirt path...

Although my finishing time was about 13 minutes slower than my effort here a year ago, I am more satisfied that I resisted the temptation to get hypercompetitive, especially early on.  When I did pass other runners, it was simply because the pace I had set for myself dictated it.  I think this is the way to go with future races, especially those that are 10K, 15K, and half-marathons.  Next month on February 21 will be Gainesville's Five Points of Life Half-Marathon, which I've run in 2010, 2014, and 2015.  With my renewed confidence in my ability to discipline my pacing in competitive situations, I'm looking forward to another go at it.  My main goal with distance running is to be able to sustain a reasonable degree of activity for as many years possible as I age...

Here is a link to the results from the 2016 Newnan's Lake 15K...

Just Finished Reading James Patterson's Along Came a Spider

Perhaps you have seen the movie Along Came a Spider, starring Morgan Freeman as police detective/psychologist Alex Cross.  I haven't, which made reading the book an easy choice for me.  The author of Along Came a Spider, published in 1993, is James Patterson.  It is the first book of his long ongoing series featuring Alex Cross, with some movie adaptations along the way.  Cross and his police partner John Sampson are based in Washington, D.C. and have to deal with the discrepancy between how crime on poor minorities and that which victimizes those in wealthier and more powerful circles is viewed and treated.  Case in point: two prostitutes and a little boy, all black, are found brutally murdered in a southeast D.C. apartment.  Cross angrily fumes at the injustice as he is taken off this case and put on the investigation of a kidnapping of two white children with famous parents from their private school.  But as he comes to discover that a sadistic serial killer may be involved in both cases while increasingly becoming more emotionally involved over the plight of the children, Cross commits himself to finding them as well as capturing their abductor.  In the process, he befriends a Secret Service agent named Jezzie Flannagan, the two forming an intimate relationship.  And no, I am not going to tell you everything that happens in the story, which I guess you'll just have to read for yourself (or maybe just watch the movie)...

One thing I will mention, though, is that Patterson, through Alex Cross, makes use of some interesting ideas in psychology that have come to be controversial.  One is the notion of multiple personality and the other is regressive hypnosis.  By the early 1990s, multiple personality had been used more than once in criminal trials where the claim was made that the defendant was innocent of the crime charged because he or she was a different "person" when it happened.  At about the same time, regressive hypnosis got a bad reputation when it was abused to implant false childhood memories in several people of past Satanic cult abuse, helping to foment a mass hysteria about the subject.  As for me, I'm a bit dubious about the validity of either multiple personality or regressive hypnosis...but they've clearly been convenient devices for fictional works such as Along Came a Spider and the movie Spellbound...

My verdict on Along Came a Spider is "thumbs up", although I have to admit to liking Sue Grafton's Kinsey Millhone character more in her detective mystery series.  Alex Cross, although likable, nevertheless tends to be a bit too self-righteous at times to me.  But he is interesting, and he has his own mystery about his recently murdered wife to solve...something I expect to come up in the future with this series as I read through each successive book...

Plan to Run Newnan's Lake 15K Race This Saturday

Last year I ran eastern Gainesville's Newnan's Lake 15K (9.3 miles) race on a chilly morning.  It looks as if it will be chilly again this year at race time, with temperatures predicted to dip into the thirties.  And, again, I'm looking forward to running in it.  I had been planning to run in the Ocala Half-Marathon a couple of weeks ago, but the winter storm swept through the area that morning with its rain and especially high winds...I'll leave that one to run next year.  So now my last chance to run a race in January comes this weekend...and this local event seems to be the logical choice.  For one, it's very cheap to enter ($20 without a tee-shirt) and for another, I'm already familiar with the course, more or less.  I plan to take it slowly this time around and am aiming to simply complete it as a "social" training run.  Although the start of the race (and before) will be bothersome with the cold conditions, once I've run a little distance the chill in the air should begin to work heavily in my favor.  Not that I won't be left behind again in a cloud of dust at the starting line by all of the fanatical Gainesville runners!  Should be fun...

Denver Broncos Earn My Support By Beating Patriots Twice

I have to admit to some disillusionment about the National Football League Denver Broncos when they were so quick to dump their starting quarterback Tim Tebow after he led the team in 2011 to their first playoff appearance in several years...and then won the first playoff game for them (well, the rest of the team had something to do with that, too).  But Tebow has had his opportunities with other teams since then and, in my opinion, has limited his professional football options by refusing to play in a lower league or letting himself, as Ohio State star Braxton Miller did, be used in other positions.  Besides, Tim seems to be doing quite well in broadcasting.  But back to Denver...

The Broncos already earned a degree of support from me this 2015 season when they ended New England's run for an undefeated season.  The Patriots were already 10-0 when they played Denver...the last thing that I, a Miami Dolphins fan, wanted was for my hated divisional rivals, defending Super Bowl champions that they already were, to run the table and win all of their games.   But Denver stood up and defeated New England in a close game.  And yesterday they knocked the Patriots out of the playoffs by winning 20-18, in the process earning them both the American Conference championship and my gratitude and support...

Not that anyone in Denver would recognize this, but I would also like to point out that my Miami Dolphins, as bad of a season that they had this past year, still beat New England in their final regular season game.  That result insured that the Broncos won the home field advantage over the Patriots for the playoffs, a very crucial factor helping them in their close victory Sunday...
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So in the upcoming Super Bowl between Denver and the Carolina Panthers, I'm rooting for the Broncos.  However, this is a matchup between two teams that I am neither passionately for nor against.  H-m-m, maybe there will be an interesting soccer match on another channel during the game...

Just Finished Reading James Patterson's The Thomas Berryman Number

Since I like to delve into mystery stories from time to time, and have reached the current limit of my favorite author of that genre...Sue Grafton...I decided to try another writer.  I picked James Patterson because of his popularity...I've read that he is the best-selling author today.  That in itself is no guarantee of quality, though, but at least his novels are at least worth looking into.  Several years ago, I do remember reading one of his Women's Murder Club mysteries (you know, the ones with numbers in their titles) but my memory of it is vague.  Patterson has well over 100 titles to his name, although many if not most of them are collaborations with other authors.  He is probably best known for his Alex Cross and that Women's Murder Club series, but I decided to start my Patterson readings with his very first published novel, The Thomas Berryman Number, from 1976...

The "number" in The Thomas Berryman Number is jargon for a hit job on the mentioned person, and Thomas Berryman is a hit man.  Which doesn't quite make sense, since it implies that the hit man is the target of a hit...which is an important twist in the story.  The main character, a middle-aged Tennessee journalist named Ochs Jones, is investigating the recent assassination of Jimmie Lee Horn, the first elected black mayor of Nashville.  Circumstances seem to indicate that one man was the shooter, but with tips he has received, Ochs starts to suspect someone else: a young man named Thomas Berryman.  It is his search for Berryman and the people he meets and experiences he collects along the way that make up the bulk of the story, along with flashbacks told from other characters' points of view, particularly Berryman's...

I liked The Thomas Berryman Number.  The plot was a little convoluted and the characters seemed a little stereotypical, but all in all it was a well told story with a sympathetic protagonist that held my attention and kept me in suspense until the end.  So now I'm on to the Alex Cross series, which Patterson began writing in the early 1990s with the first book, titled Along Came a Spider.  That one was made into a movie, so I might watch it after I finish reading the book, which I'm about 60% of the way through so far...

Snow Flurries Here in Gainesville This Morning

This morning I slept in, as usually is the case on Saturday mornings.  Melissa had some interesting news for me when I finally did drag myself out of bed: there were snow flurries outside!  I knew from yesterday's forecast that today it would be very cold (for northern Florida, that is) all day long, and that flurries were possible as far south as I-10...about 50 miles north of my Gainesville.  When I stood outside on the back porch to see the snowfall, I had to train my eyes a little...but there it was: little white specks fluttering down in different directions, blown about by the strong winds.  I've been told that we also had snow flurries about five years ago...but I don't remember seeing any then.  As a matter of fact, speaking just of Florida, the last time I experienced snow was here in Gainesville one morning just before Christmas in 1989. The quite substantial amount of snowfall, not just flurries, came on the heels of a long, stormy night with sleet freezing the roads and coating windshields thickly with ice.  When I got off from work on my graveyard shift that morning, it took a while to clear my windshield...and then I had to very carefully drive home on the icy roads.  After finally reaching my house, the snowfall began.  We also had icicles hanging from our bushes everywhere.  Even now, 26 years later, nothing this "wintery" has again occurred in north-central Florida...

It's interesting to see snow in Gainesville, even it it's just flurries.  Still, I am grateful to live in a place that is usually dry when the temperatures get below freezing.  My heart goes out to all those in the eastern U.S. who are struggling with the blizzards, frozen roads, and cancelled flights during the historic winter storm currently going on...

Just Finished Reading Harper Lee's Go Set a Watchman

Last year there was a great amount of controversy in the book publishing world when it was announced that Harper Lee, the author of the classic novel To Kill a Mockingbird, had, 55 years later, come out with a sequel to it, titled Go Set a Watchman.  This was quite a surprise to many, considering that Lee had not published anything since that first book and was now in her late eighties with several disabilities, including poor eyesight.  It turned out, though, that her new attorney had seized upon the manuscripts of Go Set a Watchman from a safe and got the author's permission for publishing...HarperCollins jumped on it, heavily promoting it as a Mockingbird sequel, and watched the sales soar.  But the popular reaction of many readers was very negative: To Kill a Mockingbird's hero lawyer/father Atticus Finch is portrayed, two decades after the original story takes place, as racially prejudiced.  Well, I just had to see things for myself...and just finished reading Go Set a Watchman...

First of all, when discussing all of this, we need to realize that we are dealing with two different time frames: one is the real world's and the other is that of Harper Lee's stories.  In the real world, she had written Go Set a Watchman as the first draft for her (first) novel and submitted it to her editor...who had several reservations with it, making numerous suggestions.  Over the next three years, she rewrote her story while continually consulting with her editor.  The final product, To Kill a Mockingbird was published in 1960.  Also note that, in the "real world", the famous U.S. Supreme Court's Brown vs. Board of Education ruling on desegregation was issued in 1954, sparking a great deal of white backlash in the South.  Now to the time within Lee's stories...

To Kill a Mockingbird is set in 1935 in the town of Maycomb, Alabama.  Jean Louise "Scout" Finch, the fictional narrator and main character of that story when she was a little girl, in Go Set a Watchman returns to her childhood community twenty years later after pursuing a career in New York.  Her father, Atticus Finch, is a lawyer in Maycomb known for his sense of fairness and compassion for the blacks there.  In 1935, he takes on a case defending a black man accused of raping a white woman: this becomes the central story woven into To Kill a Mockingbird.  Yet in Go Set a Watchman, when this important case and trial comes up for discussion, its outcome and specifics contradict those of the "earlier" story.  Go Set a Watchman, set closely following that aforementioned Supreme Court ruling, has Atticus expressing views on race that he never even remotely gave a hint of believing throughout Mockingbird.  Jean Louise, who had idolized her father for his open-mindedness and being "color-blind" regarding others, is shocked upon discovering his bigotry...their struggles over this issue constitute the core of Go Set a Watchman...

I read Go Set a Watchman in the author's fictional time frame...hence, I read it as a sequel.  But it was written BEFORE To Kill a Mockingbird and is, in essence, a very different story.  Not only is Atticus Finch distinctly different between the two stories, but so is Jean Louise.  To Kill a Mockingbird mixes several interesting story lines together and creates an atmosphere of suspense for the reader...Go Set a Watchman is a rather boring treatise on how someone can idolize and hero-worship their parent in childhood but eventually must reconcile that internalized "fantasy" picture with the reality of that parent, flaws and all.  But I didn't need to read through the whole tedious book to get that lesson...I imagine that Harper Lee's original editor back in 1957 saw the same thing when he asked her to rewrite her story.  There's a good reason why Go Set a Watchman, written in 1957, wasn't published during all these intervening years...and I suppose that, with the ensuing financial windfall for the interested parties, there's also a good reason why it was eventually published last year.  Go ahead and read it if you want, but realize that it was never written to be a sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird...

2016 Florida Primary Date and Voter Registration Deadline

Being someone who has repeatedly criticized the voting populace for its apathy and lack of consistency in showing up to the polls on election day and voting (the last two local elections had 12% turnout), I thought I might make a point of reminding folks that the Florida Presidential Preference Primary for 2016 will be held on March 15, with early voting allowed on March 5-12.  If you haven't yet registered to vote in Florida or want to change your party affiliation, the deadline to do that is February 16...

I know it's tempting to rationalize to yourself that your one vote won't tip the scales and decide anything.  But remember, when your elected leaders do something that you don't like, that they got to where they can make those bad decisions because of the people who took the few minutes necessary to vote.  And also, that perhaps they got there in part because of people who would have voted for someone else but didn't think it was worth the bother... 

If you need to register or update your information, here is the link to the Florida Division of Elections.

The Republican Presidential Candidates, Part 4: Cruz, Carson, Rubio, and Kasich

I had planned to write about the rest of the major 2016 Republican presidential candidates on an individual basis, but quite frankly, they aren't as interesting to me as the aforementioned Donald Trump, Jeb Bush, or Rand Paul.  Right now, it looks as if only Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and Ben Carson (and maybe, just maybe John Kasich) are the only ones left to challenge opinion polls leader Donald Trump for the nomination. Of course, no one's actually VOTED yet, but Trump is so far ahead nationally that he will have to seriously stumble for anyone else to catch up with him.  Although maverick Texas senator Ted Cruz is solidly in second place, he has a tendency to antagonize the very party establishment he needs to court for their support...this tendency to make bellicose speeches on the Senate floor against his own leaders, ironically, has given me a much higher opinion of him than before.  Dr. Ben Carson, a renown pediatric neurosurgeon (retired now), seems at a loss in the political world...a phenomenon I've seen all too much in my lifetime where an individual shows great genius and accomplishment in one particular area but seems completely clueless in others.  Yet Carson...sadly like so many I know...seems to think that every word he says is profound wisdom.  It's really the same paradigm with Trump: Carson's a successful neurosurgeon, so believe him about everything because of that...Trump's a rich and successful businessman, so believe him about everything because of that.  Well, I don't on either account...

Which brings me to Floridian Marco Rubio, who rode to election in 2010 to the US Senate by allying himself to the Tea Party movement but now wants to be seen as a mainstream Republican leader.  The problem I see with Rubio, who is a very impressive speaker and has a youthful appearance and appeal, is his flip-flopping on issues...something that ended up hurting 2004 Democratic nominee John Kerry in that year's general election.  Rubio actually co-wrote a Senate bill on immigration reform and then voted against his own bill when he drew flack from the right wing media's talking heads.  Still, Rubio would be a formidable opponent should he eventually get the nomination.  His being potentially the "first" Latino president would help to counter Hillary Clinton's appeal as the "first" woman president and possibly cut into the Democrats' large lead among that Hispanic demographic.  And the state of Florida, always a swing state in recent decades, would be more winnable with Rubio as the nominee...this is the same advantage that Ohio governor John Kasich would bring into the general election, as his state also is usually crucial to victory in November. Kasich, who comes across to me as constantly angry and disgusted at the stupid people around him, however, is low in the national polls despite doing well in New Hampshire...

At this point, it looks as if the Republican nomination is Donald Trump's to lose and he strikes me as being electable in the general election against (most likely) Hillary Clinton.  The only other candidate I see winning the presidency this time around is Rubio...Cruz is too ideological and Carson seems too...well, too confused...

Just Finished Reading Herman Melville's Moby Dick

Moby Dick, by Herman Melville, is widely considered as one of the classics of American literature, but I never had gotten around to reading it.  Until just recently, that is.  The main reason I think I waited for so long is that I felt that, due to the many references to this story that I've heard over the course of my life, I already had it figured out.  After all, isn't it pretty much common knowledge to most of us that Moby Dick is the name of the whale that mad, vengeful Captain Ahab seeks to confront and destroy, consequences be damned?  Well, I figured that there were a few details to fill in for this tale, and I set out to read it...

Herman Melville was obviously well acquainted with sailing on the high seas, especially with regard to the thriving whaling industry of the early-to-mid 19th century (Moby Dick was first published in 1851).  He devotes large sections of his narrative, told in the first person by a sailor named Ishmael, to describing whales in their biology and variety, whaleboats, and all of the tools and strategies of those involved in the killing of whales and the processing of their products (especially oil).  These passages were sometimes interesting and enlightening, but much of them left me lost as I knew little about sailing ships of the past and their parts and functions.  These "educational" sections were interspersed with the actual story of the Pequot, a whaling ship that Ishmael signs up with at Nantucket harbor on its doomed encounter with the giant whale.  The plot is largely driven from the viewpoint of various characters, most notably Ahab, his first mate Starbuck, the second mate Stubb, the Polynesian harpooneer Queequeg, and others...Ishmael himself is only involved in the pre-launch beginning of the story...and at its very end.  It was the dialogues and monologues of the characters, with their own peculiar regionalisms and slang, that I liked the most about Moby Dick. There is also a lot of introspection about people's motivations as well as an exploration into how people from completely different backgrounds relate to one another. 

As the whaling ship Pequot goes on its quest for Moby Dick...first through the North and then South Atlantic, around the Cape of Good Hope to the Indian Ocean, through Dutch Indonesia to the Pacific, and eventually to the final encounter...there is a series of encounters with other whaling vessels, with Ahab and his crew touching base and exchanging information (called a "Gam") with the other boat's captain and crew.  These "Gams" take up another large part of the book.

The final dramatic battle between Captain Ahab and Moby Dick takes up a rather small section at the very end of the story...a surprise to me, since I had always pictured to myself that last struggle as THE BOOK. You may already know what ultimately happens, even if you never read it.  Still, I was a bit taken aback at what "went down" at the end...

Moby Dick is generally thought to be based on a true battle between a giant sperm whale and a whaler in the South Pacific around 1820.  Ron Howard, with undoubtedly his own creative embellishments, produced and directed a movie about this called In the Heart of the Sea, which is in theaters now.  I'm thinking about going to see it, if only to give me a better visual picture to all of the often very arcane technical information that Melville gave in Moby Dick...   

Rain Clouds Darken My Plans to Run Sunday's Ocala Half-Marathon

I was looking forward to participating in this Sunday's Ocala Half-Marathon race, but for the past several days weather forecasts have had the entire area under rain for that morning.  Seeing that I don't even go out and run on my own neighborhood streets where it's wet outside, I sure don't see myself running 13.1 miles on unfamiliar, slick, and sloping roads while constantly feeling like I just climbed out of a swimming pool.  I guess, in that sense, that might seem in some people's minds like I'm not as committed to the sport as I should be...well let them think what they want.  I have to make my own decisions for myself, and part of that is setting up boundaries that I deem are in my own best interests...

Today was supposed to be another day full of rain, according to the meteorological prognosticators, but after some early morning showers the sun came out and it is now expected to be rain-free the rest of the way.  So I ask myself, why should I automatically presume that Sunday morning will be rainy when they couldn't even get today...which is considerably closer in time...right? 

I plan to get up early Sunday morning and check to see what the weather is like then.  If it appears promising, then I'm going to Ocala.  If not, I'll stay home and plan to run two weeks from now in a Gainesville 15K (9.3 mile) race.  Fortunately, I didn't preregister for the Ocala race and therefore won't be out any amount of money if I do decide to skip it...

Just Finished Reading Stephen King's The Bazaar of Bad Dreams

Every few years, my favorite author Stephen King will come out with a collection of his short stories.  Most of them were previously published in magazines or in e-books/Internet releases.  His November, 2015 release, The Bazaar of Bad Dreams with its eighteen short stories and two poems, is no exception.  Still, the only one of these I had previously read was Blockade Billy, a baseball story that had been published a few years ago in its own very small book (I once read it off the shelf at my local Books-a-Million store).  If there is one theme that tends to permeate these tales, it is mortality and how we deal with it under different circumstances.  The psychology of stress and how people handle it is another common theme as well.  As a matter of fact, the most compelling thing about this book is how well King gets into the minds of his very believable characters, who are thrust into often unbelievable situations, and reveals their motivations and rationalizations for their actions...

I didn't like all of the stories in The Bazaar of Bad Dreams, but most were interesting.  My favorites were the opening piece Mile 81 (yet another King yarn about a monster car), Batman and Robin Have an Altercation, Ur, The Little Green God of Agony, That Bus Is Another World, Obits, and Drunken Fireworks.  And I suppose that of these, the very disturbing (and rather short) That Bus Is Another World is the best...with the hilarious Drunken Fireworks following it closely and Obits a distant third...

Not only did I generally enjoy Stephen King's The Bazaar of Bad Dreams, but I keenly appreciated his comments prefacing each entry.  It's true that good writers will put some of their own lives into their stories, and King acknowledges doing this as well.  But he is wise enough to let his characters take on their own "lives", fictional as they may ultimately be.  Now, when is this dude going to come out with another blockbuster novel like 11/22/63?

Nick Saban Reconsidered

Nick Saban is the head football coach at the University of Alabama and has been since 2007.  I am keenly aware of this fact since, in December of 2006 at the close of the Miami Dolphins regular season, a team he said he was committed to coaching to success, he was coaxed into walking away from them and taking the offered Alabama job.  Along with masses of other Dolphins fans, I felt betrayed by Saban.  As it turned out, he had insisted on so much control over Miami that, when he left there was a great void that needed to be filled.  The next year, they went a dismal 1-15, almost going winless until a late season victory over Baltimore.  This hurt was compounded by Saban taking a job with a school that was a conference rival to my hometown Florida Gators.  And then, at the close of the 2009 season, his Crimson Tide beat my Gators in the SEC championship game on the way to the first of his four national championships with Alabama.  Ouch!

Forgiveness is divine, but I'm only human and I've held this grudge against Nick Saban for too long.  Look, any ambitious football coach will have certain dream jobs in his sights, and the opportunities have to be taken when they arise...which are usually rare.  Coaching at Alabama, a venerable football school with Bear Bryant's tradition of winning championships, was clearly an offer that Saban felt he couldn't refuse.  And he didn't actually renege on his contract with Miami to join them: the Dolphins owner acquiesced with Saban's departure and wished him the best.  Now he has been with Alabama for nine years and has settled well into the position that he had been striving for during his professional life.  As for the Dolphins, in 2008 they actually did make the playoffs, making one of the greatest one-season turnarounds in NFL history.  But for the past seven years they've neither made the playoffs nor had a winning season...I can hardly hang that dismal performance over time on Nick Saban.

Nick Saban is quite a control freak, and coaching college recruits in Tuscaloosa gives him more power over individual lives than he had coaching grown-up professionals in Miami.  He coached two years for the Dolphins in 2005 and 2006 and suffered through both seasons with untimely key injuries and poor decisions about who he wanted playing for his team.  College football suits Saban's temperament, and he was wise to recognize this and act on it.  Since leaving Miami he has won four NCAA national championships.  Does anyone seriously propose that he could have accomplished anything similar in the same time span with the Dolphins?  And had he stayed with the pros...well, I only need to look at happened to former New York Giants coach Tom Coughlin...

Tom Coughlin, a certainty to be ushered into the NFL Hall of Fame, during the same 2007-15 period that Nick Saban has been coaching Alabama, coached his Giants to two Super Bowl victories, a feat that almost any other league team would envy...I know my Dolphins would, not having won a league title going on 42 years running.  But because, lately, his team has had two or three off-seasons, the Giants owner decided to ditch him...only he had him "resign" to make himself look better.  But that's the way it is in the NFL with coaches: they come and go more quickly and the job security is often hard to come by...it often has more to do with whether the owner personally likes you or not than how well your team performs.  So I'm finally reconciling myself to Saban leaving Miami to coach Alabama.  I just wish they hadn't put up that very creepy statue of him outside their stadium...

British Rock Legend David Bowie Dies

British rock musician David Bowie has passed away of cancer at age 69.  He was known in his early fame for his flamboyant onstage performance of Ziggy Stardust, his alter ego...at least until his 1980 song and video Ashes to Ashes finally laid that character to rest.  In the late 1960s he changed his last name to Bowie when he realized that David "Davy" Jones of the Monkees and he shared the same name.  The first time I heard anything of his was on South Miami's 790/WFUN radio station around 1970 or 1971, when they played Space Oddity...it blew me away.  That song, which initially was generally ignored by stations at its first release in 1969, was reissued in 1973 and finally enjoyed its deserved popularity...it is one of the two great songs of Bowie that I love.  The other great David Bowie song...here I'm just speaking of my own opinion...is Changes, released in 1971 and then again in 1975.  This song is one of the all-time greats, with very compelling lyrics speaking of youth, introspection...and inevitable aging.  Brilliant...I remember singing it to myself when I would go running long distances back in early '75 around the old three-mile perimeter block that my old high school and the adjacent community college was situated on.  Bowie would later produce a string of popular singles and best-selling albums, but although I generally liked them (with the notable exception of his inexplicably popular song Fame), they didn't resonate with me very much just the same.  Oh, there's one other song I liked a lot with which he was involved: the late 70s collaboration he did with the group Queen, titled Under Pressure...

I understand that David Bowie, even in his death, has a new album out...I'm sure that the songs on it are good as I have heard some positive reactions to it already in the media.  But I have to admit that he had already summed up everything quite well with that early song Changes.  So long, David...

Cincinnati Bengals Self-Destruct in Another First-Round Playoff Loss

In the National Football League, teams are expected to win...else, the management, especially the head coach, gets fired and replaced.  At least that's how it usually works.  Take "my" Miami Dolphins over the past seven years.  In that span, they haven't enjoyed even one winning season, much less reached the playoffs.  And coaches have come and gone, as they should have.  It's been disappointing to me, especially considering their long history of success in the previous century.  Yet in spite of my problems with the Fins, the letdown I feel about them must pale compared to what Cincinnati Bengals fans must be going through right now...

Cincinnati has made the playoffs in the last seven years...certainly they've done a lot better than Miami in that regard.  And so they've retained their head coach Marvin Lewis throughout the period.  But the Bengals haven't won a single playoff game, going out in the first round for seven straight years.  But just a couple of hours ago, it looked as if they were going to end their playoff woes, having coming from 15 points down to Pittsburgh in the fourth quarter and taking a 16-15 lead with less than two minutes to go.  And then victory seemed sealed when the Bengals intercepted the ball, now with the chance to run out the clock deep in Steeler territory.  But on their first offensive play, they fumbled the ball right back to Pittsburgh.  The Steelers drove downfield but were still about 15 yards from field goal range.  Then, on an incomplete pass, a Bengal defender ran his helmet into that of the Pittsburgh receiver, putting the Steelers into marginal field goal range.  And then, during the ensuing arguments, another defender earned another personal foul penalty, giving Pittsburgh, who had run out of time-outs with only 18 seconds left, an easy field goal...and they won 18-16.  Throughout the last few seconds, Coach Lewis might as well not have been there, just standing there watching his players self-destruct in front of him.  I know that Cincinnati has enjoyed more success than Miami has, but some of Cincinnati's players seem completely out of control...and the head coach has to bear a great degree of responsibility for their behavior.  I'm just glad that I'm not a big Cincinnati fan...I tend to root for Baltimore when it comes down to their AFC North Division.  I doubt Lewis will remain their head coach after this debacle...

Just Finished Reading Sue Grafton's "X" Mystery Novel

As I've repeatedly mentioned on this blog, I am in the process of reading through mystery writer Sue Grafton's Kinsey Millhone series, with the titles progressively featuring a letter of the alphabet...starting with "A" is for Alibi, "B" is for Burglar, and so on.  I just finished reading her latest, simply titled "X".  It may have been hard for Grafton to come up with a word to accompany this letter, but she managed to make it relevant anyway...a couple of new characters in the novel have the Greek surname Xanakis...

"X" weaves three subplots together...one concerning Kinsey's troublesome new neighbors, one involving a violent, malevolent psychopathic stalker, and one about that aforementioned couple...formerly married but now estranged...with a valuable painting in the ex-husband's possession, surreptitiously sought after by the ex-wife.  Kinsey gets dragged into all the stories, although as a professional private investigator she stands to gain little or nothing with these three "cases"...and may well lose everything.  Although I won't give away the ending, I will hint that one of these stories, not having as yet been satisfactorily resolved by book's end, may well continue into one of the final two volumes in the series...

And I am looking forward to the last two books in this wonderful "alphabet" series by Sue Grafton...only now I'll have to just sit and wait until they come out.  Let me guess: the next one will feature the letter "Y"...

Griffey, Jr. and Piazza Elected to Baseball Hall of Fame

Two players on different sides of the performance-enhancing drugs saga of the turn-of-the-century in  Major League Baseball, Ken Griffey, Jr. and Mike Piazza, have been elected to this year's Baseball Hall of Fame by the designated sports writers.  Griffey, who had hit 630 home runs over the course of his illustrious career, avoided the steroids, human growth hormone, and other supplements that others used to enhance their statistics and prolong their careers.  Piazza, while not engaging in anything illegal or prohibited, did nevertheless reveal later in his autobiography that he used a then-legal muscle-building substance during his playing days.  But to me and many others, he was not cheating but rather using the resources that were then available to him.  He was one of the best hitting catchers of all time, hitting 427 career home runs...

Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds, two players with amazing careers but both with serious allegations of having used performance-enhancing drugs levelled against them (neither officially convicted of the infractions), were also on the ballot but neither could muster enough votes for election.  They both will have the opportunity to try again...for another six years...before their names get removed from consideration.

I wish the whole steroid/HGH scandal never happened in Major League Baseball...it certainly cast a shadow over the vaunted season and career home run records, now dominated by suspected abusers.  I will say one thing at least about career records, though: baseball is a peculiar business...in the early 1920s they introduced a livelier ball to enhance run production...which happened to coincide with the start of Babe Ruth's amassing of his 714 home runs.  Then, following the 1968 season, heavily dominated by pitching, the pitching mound was lowered in order to give batters more opportunities for hits.  In both of these times, career statistics were naturally affected.  In the early 1960s the regular season was expanded from 154 to 162 games.  And with expansion over the years, the number of teams grew from 16 to 30...giving a lot more opportunities for statistics to be padded while playing against mediocre competition. But the greatest factor I see that makes me want to place a caveat on career statistics in baseball is the racial segregation that ruled the sport until Jackie Robinson's entry in 1947.  Babe Ruth may not have used steroids, but he also didn't play against the best competition in accomplishing his feat, either.  And those blacks who were excluded from the majors all those decades will never achieve the deserved recognition of their skill and accomplishments due to this injustice.  If we're going to talk about Barry Bonds hitting 73 home runs in a season or having 762 career round-trippers and whether those records are legitimate, I say let's first have a discussion about all of the records made during the vast segregation era...