The Poverty Mindset: Two Opposing Views

Not being someone who is recklessly extravagant with my own personal spending, I have heard the charge directed at me in the past that I had a "poverty mindset".  The rationale supporting this notion is that people who think of themselves with low self-esteem tend to also see themselves as being poor and unworthy of the "good" things in life.  The remedy for this, according to those who think they know better, is to avoid selling yourself short in life and instead live it to its fullest, with gusto...because after all, you only go around once in life!  Sounds a bit like a beer commercial, doesn't it?

Well, it's true that for many years when I was single, I lived by myself on a modest income and was rather frugal about how I managed my money.  I chose to live well enough not to suffer...I had my home, transportation adequate for my purposes, and no want of food, clothing, or entertainment.  However, within each of these areas I made economic choices with my money, realizing that it all came out of the pool of funds that I had amassed from my paychecks.  During this time I never went into debt and actually managed to save a tidy sum of money.  Now I have a much better-paying job and, by most people's standards have a reasonable standard of living in this world of today.  Yet I still believe in making wise spending choices, and I respectfully disagree with anyone saying that this is symptomatic of a poverty mindset.  But I'll gladly let anyone know exactly what I consider to be a poverty mindset...

People who, in my opinion, have a true poverty mindset are those whose attitudes and behaviors ensure a chronic condition of debt while any windfall of money that does come their way is quickly spent away on "good living"...which they inevitably see as an important necessity of life.  You know the stories of the lottery winners or young superstar professional athletes and entertainers who spend away their riches and wind up impoverished, if not deeply in debt.  But you don't have to be one of them...if you are constantly dreaming of many things you'd like to experience in life...things that ultimately cost a lot of money...you may find those extra funds you might come across disappearing quickly.  Also, folks living on the financial edge who are susceptible to substance abuse may find, upon getting better-paying employment or a favorable break in their housing situation, that those old addictions have returned, sucking away the extra money that they could have been saving for a better life...

I'm not criticizing anyone for dreaming...I do, too.  But you can't have everything, and simple economics dictates that.  It is normal to have to make choices about money based on what you have and how much things cost.  That is reality, not a "poverty mindset"...

I believe that those with true poverty mindsets are essentially unhappy people who lack a capacity for contentment and appreciation for what they already have in life.  They tend to compare themselves with others...especially with those who seem to have more education, a more prestigious job, a bigger house, a snazzier car, lots of world-hopping travel experiences, and so on...with the conclusion that their own lives are comparatively lacking in meaning.  You cannot satisfy people like this and I doubt that they would ever be content even were they to achieve all of their material and worldly dreams...

Enjoying Watching the Tour de France

Now that there isn't a standout American like disgraced Lance Armstrong competing in the annual Tour de France, the premier bicycle racing event in the world, interest in this championship has diminished in the United States.  Ironically, I have found that not having any particular bicyclist or country to root for has made it more interesting for me, as I have discovered that participating in the Tour involves a lot more than just being in good physical condition, jumping on a good bike, and pedaling your ass off...

For one thing, entrants in the Tour de France must be on one of the allotted 22 nine-bicyclist teams, making a total of 198.  Each team carries the banner of a country, but they are privately owned and sponsored...and countries can be represented by multiple teams.  Within a team, the roles of the various members are manifold: one, to support the "star" bicyclist in his quest for individual glory, two, work to maximize the team's score, and three, to aid individuals in the team to garner points or times for certain categories that the Tour awards...

As for the championships within the Tour de France, the most prestigious is the General, which is the title you usually hear going to the Tour's annual winner.  This is based on cumulative times spread out over the 21-stage, 2,200-mile course that winds its away across France.  There is also a Points championship competition that involves the top placers in each stage...as well as how well they do at each stage's halfway point.  A Mountains award goes to the bicyclist with the best overall time based on how they handle the climbing sections of the races.  A Young Rider prize goes to the entrant who is 25 or younger with the best cumulative time.  And the Team award...well, I suppose that one is self-evident...

I love how the Tour de France is covered on television, here on NBCSports (Gainesville's Cox Cable Channel 33).  I can either watch it live late in the morning (as I did today) or watch the day's racing replayed later at night.  The multiple camera angles of the race are amazing and give the viewer the sense of being there in the middle of it all.  And the almost virtual tour through France is stunningly beautiful as the contestants race through towns, country roads, and across mountains.  The most interesting thing I've been picking up about the Tour de France, though, is the "peloton"...the main group of bicyclists in the race, who ride excruciatingly close to each other and always seem to be on the verge of a domino-like multiple crash...like in one of the early scenes in the James Bond flick Goldeneye.  It gets even more scary when the road leads uphill or becomes much narrower.  The riders find refuge in the peloton in order to cut down on wind drag...by as much as 40%.  In each stage, there is always a small number of racers who go out in front, far ahead of the peloton.  As the race goes on and the end approaches, the leaders usually begin to fall back and the peloton gains on them.  Sometimes it catches up, but sometimes an early leader will gut it out to the end and win the stage.  And in order to avoid catastrophic collisions at the ends of races, all racers within the peloton group are given the same finishing time...as long as there is no intervening gap of a second or more between finishers...

At the start of each successive stage in the Tour de France, the competitor currently leading with the best cumulative time (General competition) wears a yellow jersey.  The one leading the Points competition wears a green jersey.  The leader in the Mountains competition gets a polka-dot jersey.  The Young Rider leader dons a white jersey, while the ongoing leaders in the Team competition get yellow helmets.  They seem to make a great deal about getting to wear these special jerseys and helmets: personally, I don't see the point in it other to cultivate fan interest and lend some temporary prestige to participants who may not stay at the top as the Tour progresses...

The Tour de France has just finished the 5th stage, which involved a more mountainous course than the previous ones.  This time around the peloton didn't catch up with the leaders, making me wonder whether the more challenging terrain had something to do with it.  Well, tomorrow is another day, and I'm confident the course will once again be interesting and distinctly different...

American Spacecraft Juno Successfully Establishes Jupiter Orbit

Nine days ago, in an article on this blog, I wrote about the impending arrival of the American unmanned spacecraft Juno at Jupiter, to take place on July 4...yesterday.  I also suggested that people wanting to see some reporting about that arrival tune in to one of the cable news channels to get the news.  Well, Juno was scheduled, around 11 pm Eastern Time, to execute a complex maneuver that would establish a stable polar orbit around our largest planet.  It would take only about 30 minutes, and then the mission specialists would know about its success.  Unfortunately, CNN, FoxNews, HLN, and MSNBC all had decided to air non-news programming at the time, so there was no live televised reporting of this significant event in our national space program...unless, of course, you were watching the NASA Channel.  Once the live general news coverage finally resumed, it was reported that the orbit was successfully performed, and quite accurately at that...cause for much celebration for the project's organizers and anyone interested in our space endeavors, as well as for the furtherance of science...especially in the realm of astronomy...

Juno will continue to orbit Jupiter until 2018, when it will be sent to its destruction into the planet...in order, they say, to avoid the potential contamination of any Jovian moons that might be harboring life.  From time to time in the weeks to come, we should be hearing about Juno's various experiments, as well as getting to see some pretty dazzling close-up pictures of Jupiter...

By the way, here is a link to that earlier article [link]...

Ran in Gainesville's Three-Mile Melon Run This Morning

Five years ago, during one of my trips to Hollywood in south Florida to visit my father, I decided to go for a run around my old subdivision of Boulevard Heights.  I had it all mapped out with the mileage I was going to run, using a computer application to accomplish this.  I checked out the local temperature and humidity just before I set out on my run: 80 degrees, 82%.  I ran the unpleasant four miles and, after a few minutes back in the house, regurgitated all of the Gatorade I had drunk.  I felt bad the rest of the day and promised myself never to run when both temperature and humidity were 80 or above...and I never had a similar incident since then.  For when it is both hot and very humid, the body is prevented from cooling itself through perspiration by the intensity of moisture in the air...and can overheat to dangerous levels... 

Fast forward to this morning and Gainesville's annual Fourth of July race, the three-mile Melon Run...organized by the Florida Track Club and held at Westside Park.  I could feel that it was warm and muggy, but not how much so.  Anyway, I was going to take the race easy, running at a comfortable pace for me.  I also knew that the course had a long, challenging upwardly sloping section...well, challenging at least for a lifelong Floridian as myself, used to running on flat surfaces.  What I didn't know, until I was halfway through the race, was that they had drastically changed the racecourse from the times I had run it in 2010 and 2012.  Instead of having sections of it going east down NW 8th Avenue, cutting northward through Loblolly Woods Park, and then returning to the park via NW 16th Avenue, the organizers simply repeated the first half of the course...which meant having to trudge back up that torturous stretch of gradually ascending pavement northward along NW 31st Drive a second time. Ugh...

I won't mince words: it was an ordeal for me to finish what should have been a simple jog...especially with my final time (by my own watch) of 28:22, just a 9:27 per mile pace.  Of course, the relative hilliness of the terrain was a factor in my difficulty, but it wasn't until I got hold of my cellphone and checked the current weather readings that I fully understood what had happened: 80 degrees, 89% humidity! The conditions ended up being substantially more hazardous than what I had experienced before in south Florida...

After all of this, I have to come away from my experience this morning feeling that I'm in better shape than I initially had thought, having successfully withstood some very challenging circumstances with no adverse effects to show for it all.  Now to begin working to return to a higher level of running endurance...

Remembering Old UF Economics Profs Denslow & Rush

I was browsing through my Sunday morning Gainesville Sun newspaper, looking for any interesting articles, when I came upon David Denslow's column.  Denslow is a retired University of Florida economics professor who has recently taken up speaking out on the issues of the day.  Today's article was about Brexit, a.k.a. Britain's vote to exit the European Community...which Denslow says is going to be bad for them.  Well, I don't have to be an economics professor to discern that, but it also helps to have some strong statistics to back up your argument.  And the good professor has always been on top of his facts...although his presentation of them can seem a bit dry and hurried...

Back in the year 2000, when I was in the middle of finishing up my Bachelor's program at the University of Florida after a hiatus of about twenty years, I was taking two summer introductory economics courses to fulfill my basic course distribution requirements for the degree.  They were Macroeconomics and Microeconomics and were "TV" courses that were broadcast over a local public service channel.  The lectures were also available over the Internet, about which I was then rather challenged (and still am to a degree), so I kept to the televised lessons.  Our aforementioned Dr. David Denslow taught the macroeconomics class and Dr. Mark Rush taught microeconomics.  Both topics were interesting to me, but in the end it seemed that I got lost and confused on the "macro" level while attaining a reasonable degree of understanding on the "micro".  That might have been due to the nature of the material itself...or it might have been the result of the professors and how they taught their courses...

For the most part, I liked both professors' classes...hey, I got "A" in both of them!  But whereas Denslow went a mile a minute with his teaching, Rush paced his lectures with humorous breaks that helped us poor unenlightened students to catch up with him.  One of his devices was to use the show's "Director" as a fall guy, and they were forever trading barbs with one another.  Another was Rush's use of his frequent trips to Leonardo's Pizza on University Avenue to illustrate microeconomic principles.  Maybe poor Denslow just couldn't compete with that approach and unfairly suffered by comparison.  Besides, had I been teaching introductory college economics classes, I probably would have resembled Dave more than Mark...although certainly I would have fared badly in comparison to either of them...they both were very competent, good teachers who sparked interest in their respective subjects...

One sidelight to all this: I used to go out to a coffee shop and study there before my tests in these classes, which basically consisted of mid-terms and finals.  And just which coffee shop was this? Why, the old Magnolia Parke Starbucks, where I am sitting right now writing this article.  Except that, back then in mid-2000, it had just opened its doors for the first time.  Since then, over the years, I've seen Dr. Rush as a customer here.  Were I to make a list of my favorite school teachers, from elementary school all the way to the end of college, he would be right up there on it. As far as I know, he is still teaching microeconomics at UF.  And, of course, we now know where to find Dr. Denslow on a Sunday morning...

Looking at Prospective Half-Marathons Late in 2016

Each and every year since 2010, I have run a half-marathon.  Until now in 2016, that is.  During the first few months of this year, I was either sick, injured, had schedule conflicts...or the weather was unusually stormy whenever an opportunity arose to participate in a 13.1 mile race.  Now we're in the "dog days" of summer and there simply aren't any such available races in my region...it won't be until October when I'll have any chances.  But for the last three months of the year, there should be several races from which I could choose to run: after all, just one entered-and-completed half-marathon is all it takes to keep my streak of consecutive years intact...

In October, Saturday the 8th is the Marine Corps Half-Marathon in Jacksonville.  Since I'll be coming off a work day ending at midnight a few hours earlier, I would prefer a Sunday race.  And there are those as well: two on the 23rd, in Cocoa Beach and Apalachicola.  I've been thinking about that annual Apalachicola race since 2010!  And the 30th of October features a half-marathon in Port Orange.  In November, the opportunities continue.  My Gainesville has its Tom Walker Memorial Half-Marathon on Saturday, the 5th, a race I've already run a couple of times before.  I may or may not be in town at that time, though, since I'll then be on vacation.  On Sunday November 13th, St. Augustine will be hosting a race...that sounds like my favorite of all of them so far.  And in December, on Sunday the 18th, a half-marathon will take place in Mount Dora...

So I should have a few chances to run a half-marathon this calendar year of 2016.  The question I need to ask myself...and appropriately answer...is will I be ready for it when the day comes...

My June 2016 Running Report

For the month of June I ran a total of 153 miles with me running on every day, usually multiple times per day.  My longest single run was for 4.5 miles.  I would say that June was a "maintenance" month for me: I'm not getting any better, but if I am slipping any with my running, it isn't by very much.  Being more careful with my eating and losing a few pounds would doubtless work wonders with my running progress...other than continuing with my running maintenance, it's my top priority during this uncomfortably hot and humid summer here in northern Florida...

I didn't participate in any races in June...there weren't many offered and for the ones that were, they were too far away and/or in conflict with my schedule.  But next month, in the morning on the Fourth (this coming Monday), the Florida Track Club will be holding its annual three-mile Melon Run at Westside Park.  I've run it a couple of times before and it may be my only opportunity to enter a public running event for some time.  My plan is to run the race as a training run without concerning myself about my speed...but all bets are off when I make that last turn in the road and the finish line draws near, especially since the end of this racecourse is basically downhill...

The Scripts of the Former Central Asian Soviet Republics

Although the hegemony of the Russian Empire had long extended over central Asian territory with Turkic and Persian Islamic populations and languages, it wasn't until the Soviet Union took over in the early twentieth century that an interest grew in that region's languages and scripts.  Azerbaijani, Turkmen, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Uzbek, and Tajik, the languages of the respective republics with similar names, had all been based on the Arabic script since their populations were Muslim.  In order to separate these peoples from their Islamic roots...as well as encourage literacy by having the script more accurately reflect the spoken word, the authorities in the U.S.S.R. around 1928 decreed a change to the Latin script for these languages.  About ten years later, though, another change was enacted when they were all forced to change once more...this time to the Russian Cyrillic script.  The rationale behind this draconian move was to bring the various diverse republics together closer to Russia.  I remember checking out a book from my public library during the seventies...it was The Languages of the World by Kenneth Katzner...and seeing  the samples Katzner provided of these languages presented in their then-official Cyrillic script.  Since I was then just beginning to learn Russian and its Cyrillic writing system, I found these languages, whose vocabulary and grammars were alien to Russian, very intriguing...

After the Soviet breakup in 1991, the various former republics each went their own way regarding how to write in their own language.  Tajikistan, the one Persian, non-Turkic former republic from central Asia, briefly considered re-adopting Iran's Arabic script but instead decided to remain with the Cyrillic.  Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan likewise stayed with their Soviet-era writing system. But after independence, motivated partially to separate themselves from their dominated past and partially to make their languages easier to learn and read by the rest of the world, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan went back to using the Latin script.  I can understand them changing back over to Latin, but I can also see the advantage in sticking with Cyrillic writing in order to keep continuity with the past.  After all, these countries, which have undergone script changes every few years, must have large collections of books and material written in scripts few can now read, with sections of their histories linguistically cut off...that must seriously interfere with a nation's development.  However, maybe in our digital age that won't be as much of a problem as it might have been before.  The question, though, is which books and material written in obsolete scripts get to be published in the current one, and which are left in obscurity...and who gets to decide?

Just Finished Reading Henry Kuttner's Clash by Night

The novella Clash by Night is widely considered a classic story in mid-twentieth century science fiction.  Published in March of 1943 (a significant year, considering its content) and written by established sci-fi/horror/fantasy writer Henry Kuttner, it takes an imaginative look deep into the future at human life on the planet Venus.  No, back in the '40s we didn't yet know that Venus was an unihabitable planet of sulphuric acid, extreme heat, supervolcano eruptions, and a runaway greenhouse effect.  Instead, Kuttner envisioned it as did many in his time: covered largely like Earth with oceans, with the land being impenetrable masses of dense jungle with extraordinarily hostile native life forms.  In Clash by Night, humanity lives in communities called "keeps", under large domes on the sea floor.  Each keep represents something like a city-state, and they are constantly at war with the other keeps on the planet for resources and power.  To this end they employ mercenary navies to fight their battles while the civilians under the domes maintain their own safety and continuity of civilization.  Brian Scott, the story's protagonist, is an officer in one of these mercenary groups and is currently employed by the Montana Keep.  There is an impending attack from another navy representing a different keep, and Scott must prepare for it.  One big rule that everyone follows: no atomic weaponry is allowed, something that is universally understood.  For, you see, in Earth's past its leaders destroyed the home planet through atomic warfare.  Uh-h-h, wait a minute, now...

Remember how I said that Clash by Night was published in 1943?  Well, during that time we were in the middle of World War II (which might explain this big war story of Kuttner's).  America's Manhattan Project to develop an atomic bomb was top-secret, but our author not only foresaw its successful development, but he also went down the logical path of inferring nuclear holocaust as a result...despite the fact that the first A-bomb would not even be successfully built and exploded for more than two years in the future.  Amazing...

As you might guess from the story's title and what I've written so far about it, Clash by Night ultimately concerns itself with a climactic military battle.  But the story is more than who wins and who loses.  It explores the vast gulf between being a soldier...especially during a war...and being a civilian: two very disparate kinds of life and worldview.  Scott is continually in a state of inner conflict about how he defines himself and how he should spend his future.  Wow, that sounds like what a lot of folks are going through nowadays...

2016 Wimbledon Tennis Championships Have Begun

The 2016 Wimbledon tennis championships have begun today and will go on until July 10.  Played on a grass surface, it is the oldest of the four Grand Slam tournaments (the others are the Australian, French, and U.S. Opens) and the third to be played this year.  Although it is composed of several competitions...including one on wheelchairs...the chief focus is always the men's and women's singles.  Except, I should say, that they refer to them as the "gentlemen's" and "ladies'"...

The defending men and women champions are Novak Djokovic and Serena Williams...also respectively seeded and ranked #1.  Their losing opponents in last year's finals, Roger Federer and Garbiñe Muguruza, are seeded and ranked #2.  So if all goes according to "plan", we'll see a couple of rematches this year...but don't count on it.  There are always some surprises over the course of the tournament.  And Andy Murray on the men's side and Angelique Kerber or Agnieska Radwanska on the women's could potentially walk away with the title.  Missing in Wimbledon this year are Rafael Nadal, Victoria Azarenka, and Maria Sharapova.  Nadal and Azarenka have injuries while Sharapova is suspended because of performance-enhancing drug use...

Djokovic has already won this year's Australian and French Opens.  He is trying to win all four majors in one year, a feat that has been remarkably elusive over the years...especially considering the relative lack of parity at this sport's highest levels.  Williams, on the other hand, is trying to recover her winning ways, having lost in the Australian finale to Kerber and in the French to Muguruza...

I won't be sitting there glued to the TV watching Wimbledon.  However, since due to the time zone difference between England and the eastern U.S. many of the matches will be shown live on TV in the morning hours, it will be very convenient for me to watch some of them at that time of day.  But as is the case with baseball, it can get to be a bit tedious just sitting there watching tennis matches without interruption.  No problem...I have other things to do while Wimbledon is on...

American Spacecraft Juno Soon to Arrive at Jupiter

The American unmanned spacecraft Juno, launched in August 2011, is scheduled to arrive at the planet Jupiter, its destination, on July 4th...eight days from now.  Loaded with scientific instruments and experiments designed to gather information about our largest planet, it will then go into an elliptical polar orbit (designed to escape most of the effects of Jupiter's radiation) for several months.  Some of the project's main objectives are to determine the planet's water composition and the nature of its core.  Also, Jupiter's gravitational and magnetic fields will be studied...the former should reveal the distribution of mass in the planet while the latter may enlighten researchers about the general nature of magnetic fields in some planets and how they originate...

Juno is the first deep space probe that is solar-powered.  It initially travelled beyond the orbit of Mars in 2012 and whipped back past Earth the following year to gain the necessary velocity to get to Jupiter.  I'm not sure about any spectacular pictures coming out of this expedition...only common sense would tell the project organizers that this would be a no-brainer, as our space program needs all the promotion it can get...remember the unbelievable shots of Pluto from last year's New Horizons probe?

I was wondering which news media outlet would first let on about Juno's impending arrival at Jupiter.  Others may have covered it first, but it was FoxNews that first broke the news to me yesterday.  Kudos to them, my other reservations about this channel notwithstanding...

So this coming Independence Day, turn on the news and see what's going on deep in space, high above our Jupiter.  By the way, you can see Jupiter in the evening if you look up at the western sky...you'll recognize it because it will easily be the brightest "star" out there... 

Just Finished Reading Jane Austen's Emma

Jane Austen is one of England's most famous and beloved novelists, having written her works in the early nineteenth century.  I had read only one of her books, Pride and Prejudice, which also happens to be her most well-known.  Here is my December 2014 review of it [link].  Although I liked that 1813 story of hers, I didn't get around to reading anything else by her until I just read her 1815 novel Emma...also widely acclaimed.  And once again, Austen's protagonist is a strong-willed young woman in the midst of that highly stratified English society way back then...

Emma Woodhouse, although young, attractive, rich, and well-placed in her society according to class, has no intention of falling in love, much less ever getting married.  That doesn't prevent her, though, from playing the matchmaker with other couples.  She has taken under her wings Harriet, a young woman who Emma believes is in danger of allowing herself to become engaged to a man beneath her station in life.  So our meddling protagonist encourages her friend to break off their relationship while promoting one with a "higher-class" Mr. Elton.  All signs seem to indicate that they will become a couple until it comes out that this man's attentions are directed at Emma, not Harriet.  And no, I'm not going to tell you everything that happens in this story.  Suffice to say that it all becomes a web of intrigues between a small number of characters who are continually letting themselves be deceived by misdirected romantic signals, be they directed by them or to them.  The question of who loves whom becomes paramount, and the assumptions that the characters make in this regard are usually comically wrong...

Emma, although on the surface a serious story, to me ends up being more of a comedy.  The plot is driven overwhelmingly by dialogue, and Jane Austen is a master at it, revealing all of the nuances of each character's personality by what they choose to talk about and how they say it.  My favorite character is Miss Bates, a friend of Emma's family who is a non-stop talker going on and on about all sorts of topics, most of them inane and irrelevant.  Just imagine Edith Bunker...on steroids.  Very funny she is, along with the cascading misunderstandings of the characters about each other...

There's not a lot of action in Emma: it is a tale about relationships set in a culture that would be hard to recognize or understand in our twenty-first century America.  I don't buy into all that old nonsense about social class, and I bet you probably don't, either.  Still, the story demands, as most all do, that the reader temporarily suspend his or her notions about some things in order to more deeply follow it.  Well, I'm done reading it and can now go back to my more egalitarian views on society.  I recommend Emma, although I feel that Pride and Prejudice was better...

United Kingdom Votes to Leave European Union

I read somewhere that British Prime Minister David Cameron didn't need to schedule yesterday's vote for his country to decide whether or not to remain a member of the European Union but did so thinking that he would safely win the referendum.  Was he ever wrong: the vote, at a 72% turnout rate, went 52-48% for leaving the E.U.  Other than London, urbanized areas along the Thames, and the western area around Liverpool, the electorate in England and Wales opted for exit.  But Scotland, which not too long ago voted to reject independence and instead remain in the United Kingdom, overwhelmingly voted to remain in the European Union...as did Northern Ireland and Gibraltar...

Cameron today announced his resignation and will leave office sometime this fall.  President Obama had gone over there and urged Britons to vote to stay in the European Union...I wonder whether that had a backlash effect.  I do know that there is much concern there about terrorism and open borders with Europe...and a feeling that they had lost control over much of their own country.  That may or may not be more a matter of perception than reality, but it seemed that many of the votes for exiting the E.U. were anti-Cameron, anti-Conservative Party protest votes.  Also, the right wing is rising throughout Europe, and there is much rhetoric going around promoting nationalism and security.  So it shouldn't have come as any surprise that Donald Trump, while promoting the opening of a new golf course of his in Scotland, would quickly come out in favor of Britain's exit...claiming that they were taking their country back.  The irony of this vote, however, is that Scotland, and possibly even Northern Ireland, may well hold another independence referendum...and the results this time around are almost certain to be different.  And Spain will probably renew their pressure to regain control over Gibraltar.  So "independence" may end up leading to "disintegration" as far as the United Kingdom is concerned...

I don't live over there like the good folks who voted their convictions and hopes about their country's future, so I therefore have not been sharing their experiences as to what has been going on for the last few years.  If there is a big problem concerning how the European Union governs and its relationships among member nations, then maybe this action on the part of the U.K. will give it more of a sense of accountability.  I don't see this happening, though: instead, the media seems to be putting out the idea that it's all because right-wing extremist parties are dramatically rising in Europe.  I suspect there's a bit more to the problem than that, although larger segments of the population there are suffering fears about terrorism and unrestrained immigration from the Middle East, doubtless leading them straight into the arms of these nationalist parties and their political agenda...

Dealing With Assorted Changes Around Me

Normally, I don't get all that personal on this blog...and even now with this more personal entry, I intend to temper my remarks with discretion.  It just seems that, through a combination of several little changes going on around me, my daily life feels more oppressed.  But if I look closely at those changes that have cumulatively caused this effect, I can see that almost all of them are benevolent in nature.  So maybe my problem is primarily within myself and my tendency to get bogged down into routines.  Having an extraordinarily reclusive nature doesn't help matters, either, for a great deal of the unwelcome change involves a marked increase in the necessity to interact with others.  I suppose I could allow my overall disposition to sour and to assume a gloomy and pessimistic attitude (which a few of my acquaintances probably think I already have).  Or I could take each "change situation" and see how I can alter my position in relation to it to my advantage, while maintaining a constructive and friendly attitude in reestablishing reasonable personal boundaries.  Yeah, maybe that last option is the best route to take... 

Four Crucial End-of-Game Plays Give Cleveland NBA Championship

I wasn't terribly happy to see the expected teams, Cleveland and Golden State, make it to this year's National Basketball Association championship series.  But there they were, and I could either ignore it (which I did for most of the time) or give it some of my attention.  Since the series made it all the way to the seventh and deciding game and I happened to be off from work when it was played this past Sunday evening, I found myself watching it...but only at the very end.  For some reason, four key plays that determined the game's outcome stick in my mind...

Golden State looked as if it might just pull off its second straight championship after it had come from behind to build up an 87-83 lead in the second half of the fourth quarter.  But someone foolishly fouled Cavalier (and Miami Heat) legend Lebron James as he was attempting a three-point shot...he made all three foul shots to cut his team's deficit to a single point. Later, the Warriors were on a break and one of their players caught a pass under the Cleveland basket for an easy layup...but James then came from out of nowhere to block his shot against the glass.  And then there was Golden State passing the ball around for an open shot with the score tied 89-89.  After several passes while the shot clock was dwindling, Draymond Green, who was having an exceptional scoring game (and hitting six of seven three-point attempts), got the ball wide open behind the three-point line.  He shot...and missed, Cleveland rebounding the ball.  Finally, still with a chance to take the lead late in the game, the Warriors were driving down court.  Two-time MVP Stephen Curry had the ball and Klay Thompson was set to receive his pass...but Curry got cute and attempted a completely unnecessary behind-the-back pass, which went astray and out of bounds...the ball went back to Cleveland, which scored and never looked back, ultimately winning 93-89...

But for these four plays, we might be seeing celebration in the streets of Oakland instead of Cleveland.  But the Cavaliers deserve the 2015-16 championship and I congratulate them...

Archival Information Lagging Behind in Internet Age

In Tolkien's fantasy trilogy Lord of the Rings, the good wizard Gandalf's suspicions about the special ring that Bilbo Baggins has just passed on to his nephew Frodo have risen to the point where he feels compelled to investigate it.  He gets on his horse and rides the great distance to the Gondor capital city of Minas Tirith, where there are stored archives going back millennia.  By painstakingly going through document after document, he finally discovers the truth...and so marks the beginning of Frodo's great adventures...

I'm not planning to embark on any fantastic quest in the near future, but from time to time I would like to investigate archives from the past...my own past, not millennia gone by.  For example, I would like to know the names of some people who were on staff at the elementary school I attended from 1965 to 1968...particularly my old physical education teacher, one of my fifth grade teachers, and the school librarian during that span.  The problem with trying to research such information on the Internet is not a matter of prying into anyone's privacy...these records should be public anyway.  The problem is that relatively few have seen fit to put archival information from paper files onto the Web...after all, they probably (and reasonably) assume that the probability that someone would want to look at any particular paper from the archives is very small.  That having been noted, I would counter that argument by saying that the people in possession of these old paper records have no way of knowing which public information they possess will be relevant to anyone in the future and which will be irrelevant.  But by having archival documents and data available, there will be a great amount of interest in it by Internet users.  It was only a fictional tale, but the keepers of Gondor's Minas Tirith library preserved their old papers by a sense of reverance for history and continuity with the past.  Had they done as modern libraries do nowadays and disposed of books that not "enough" patrons used, our Gandalf might have come up empty with his investigation...and then where would Tolkien be?  And with this I wonder how many old paper archival records that might be transferred to the World Wide Web even exist now, or have they been destroyed and lost forever for the sake of a misplaced sense of expediency and tidiness...

There is a great need for archives on the Internet that can be publicly accessed.  And by "publicly accessed", I mean by anyone.  I'm sure there is a cost involved with making archives available on the Internet, so charging a small user fee per visit may be an acceptable way of meeting it.  After all, I don't expect people to just sit there for hour after hour transferring paper to computer without compensation.  But a single use of such archives should be affordable and reasonable as well and the user should neither be automatically forced to commit to an exorbitant subscription fee nor have to obtain special permission for access...

Danielle is Earliest Ever 4th-Named Tropical Storm in Atlantic Season

While not of direct interest to those in the United States...other than the resulting rip currents off the southeastern coast of Texas...Tropical Storm Danielle, with its relatively light maximum sustained winds of 45 mph, still poses a big threat to eastern Mexico when it hits there in the next several hours.  Flash flooding and mudslides could threaten lives and property, making Danielle potentially the worst tropical storm so far this year regarding its effects.  And it is a record-setting year in the Atlantic Hurricane Season, with 2016 being the first time that four named tropical storms have occurred this early in June.  However, other than Alex in January, which grew into a flow-blown hurricane but steered clear of land in the Atlantic, the other three have been tropical storms.  Still, to already be through the letter "D" is amazing considering that the El Niño effect of warm Pacific waters, an inhibitor of Atlantic tropical storm formation, is still there and won't dissipate until later in the hurricane season...

This phenomenon of many named tropical systems so early in the season reminds me of 2005, when the number of named storms was so great that it exhausted the alphabet and Greek letters had to used to name the final ones.  Let us hope that 2016 won't be like that year, which also produced three very nasty hurricanes: Katrina, Rita, and Wilma...

Best Current TV Series: Anthony Bourdain's Parts Unknown

I've gotten myself into the habit in recent months on weekend evenings of watching CNN...it has a very special series of which it usually shows three episodes back-to-back during that time period: Parts Unknown with Anthony Bourdain.  Bourdain is a renown American chef with a compelling personality, a good screen presence, and a strong sense for adventure and interesting topics who is willing to go just about anywhere in the world to reveal its geography, history, culture...and of course, native cuisine.  Although he spends a reasonable amount in time in the good ol' U.S.A., he also has crisscrossed the planet...sometimes to famous cities...sometimes to places remote, wild, and even a bit dangerous at times.  This program has been on the air since 2013 and has won numerous awards, well-deserved in my opinion.  However, the great majority of its episodes I haven't yet seen...no problem: they're all on Netflix, to which I subscribe.  Well, seeing that this "service" almost never has the movies I want to watch, it's about time they were useful for something...

So far I've seen the episodes about Congo, Thailand, Tokyo, Tbilisi (in the Georgian Republic), Bahia (in Brazil), New Jersey, Montana, Miami, Senegal, Cologne, South Africa, Hawaii, and Iran.  But there have been some 62 episodes made so far (although 6 of these are season highlight shows) and I have a lot of "work" ahead for me on Netflix to catch up with them all.  Besides, every show demands a repeat viewing...

Season 7 of Parts Unknown will begin on Friday, July 1 at 7 pm as Bourdain visits Manila in the Philippines. I'll be working at that time, but I'm sure I'll have several opportunities to watch one of the rebroadcasts that CNN offers for each episode.  In the meantime, I think I'll watch some of the older episodes I haven't yet seen via Netflix.  If you're new to this quality series, check it out: I don't think you'll be disappointed...

Soccer: Copa América Centenario and UEFA Euro Cup

I like to watch soccer as it is played on its highest levels.  I like to follow the leagues and don't particularly like the atmosphere of international competition between national teams.  That's because people tend to go overboard with the symbolism of their own country as represented on the field...and an important sense of sportsmanship that I've noticed present in league play is diminished in favor of often excessive nationalism and disrespect for opponents..not by players as much as by the spectators and the media.  However, since in recent days the only soccer available for me to watch are international tournaments, I've begrudgingly been following them...

In the Western Hemisphere we have the Copa América Centenario, which has already passed the group stage of the tournament and is currently in the middle of the quarterfinal knockout round.  The Copa América is usually held every four years in the same year as the World Cup and features only South American nations, but this year marks its hundredth anniversary and they are staging a special tournament that includes teams from North America.  The United States, by dint of hosting this tournament, is automatically included and has done well so far, winning its group and then, a couple of days ago, defeating Ecuador 2-1 in the quarterfinal round.  Yesterday Colombia also advanced to the semifinal round when it won a penalty shootout over Peru, after the two had played through regulation and overtime to a scoreless draw.  The other two quarterfinal matches are today: Argentina vs. Venezuela and Mexico vs. Chile...

The other major ongoing international soccer tournament available for me to watch on TV is UEFA Euro 2016, which involves European national teams and is now in the closing part of the group stage.  There are six groups of four teams each: the top two finishers in the three-match round robin schedule advance, as well as the four third-place finishers with the best win-loss records and goal differentials...

I've enjoyed watching these matches for the past few days because the players are so skillful.  And, sure, I'd like to see my American team advance in their tourney, but I also like Mexico and Argentina.  I don't have any particular preference in the European competition, but it's fun in both tournaments to see players I follow who play for teams in England's Premier League, Germany's Bundesliga, U.S./Canada's Major League Soccer, and Mexico's Liga MX playing instead on their respective national squads...

Rubio May Run for Senate Reelection After All

Marco Rubio, Florida's ultraconservative junior senator, had decided to abandon running for a second term in the 2016 election when he threw his hat into the ring for the Republican presidential nomination.  Although he consistently outpolled his state rival, Jeb Bush, Rubio couldn't get past the insulting, off-the-cuff demagoguery of Donald Trump and his disturbing mass of followers.  So he's long been out of that race, and fellow Republicans have been urging him to reconsider his decision not to run again for the Senate.  He had held fast to his original plans until just a few days ago, when he expressed the possibility that he might run after all.  We'll find out sooner than later, since the deadline for filing to run is June 24, one week from now...

Back in 2010, Rubio coasted into office as a Tea Party-supported candidate while sitting governor Charlie Crist, who thought that being in the U.S. Senate was preferable and that he himself would coast into the seat being vacated by Mel Martinez, found himself greatly outpolled by Rubio.  So Crist instead ran in the general election as an independent...all that served was to take away votes from Democratic nominee Kendrick Meek and give honorary-teabagger Rubio the election with 48% of the vote...

This year, the main Republican candidates...a real-estate developer, two congressmen, and the lieutenant governor...are currently polling weakly against about half of those asked who say they are undecided.  I'm sure that if Marco Rubio decides to run to retain his seat, then he will receive more than enough support to win his party's nomination against this weak field.  On the Democratic side, the two main candidates are also congressmen: acerbic, controversial, and highly-partisan Alan Grayson and centrist, ex-Republican Patrick Murphy.  The latest Mason-Dixon poll conducted earlier this month has Murphy ahead of Grayson, 31% to 23%...with a telling 43% of respondents still undecided...

I never did support Marco Rubio politically and I don't want him continuing on as my senator.  I think, though, that if he does change his mind and decides to run, then he has a very good chance to be reelected.  On the Democratic side, Grayson bothers me with his rhetoric and combativeness...Murphy would be a better senator for this state and represent its electorate more truly than either his main Democratic rival or Rubio.  But it's still just June...who knows what will happen next week and in the months to come as we approach first the primary election on August 30 and then the general election on November 8.  And, of course, I'm not telling you or anyone else who to vote for...just try to make a rational choice, please...

Just Finished Reading Neil Gaiman's Coraline

Over the course of his writing career, fantasy writer Neil Gaiman has occasionally come out with children's stories...the 2003 novella Coraline is one of them.  Of course, that's not to say that grown-ups can't read them...I'm an example.  I was a little taken aback by the scariness of this tale that, as I have mentioned, is intended for children.  Let me explain...

Back when I was a kid, back in the mid-1960s, my parents would often take me and my sister Anita (who was and will always be four years older than me) to movies...and that meant going to the drive-in theater, of which there were many in the south Florida area.  If memory serves me correctly, it was around 1964 and I was seven or eight when we all went to see the Alfred Hitchcock movie Psycho.  Apparently, my parents had already seen it because my mother had mentioned something about not ever wanting to stay at a motel after having watched it.  But here we children were, sitting in the back seat and completely unprepared for what would happen in this grisly horror flick.  What were my mother and father thinking, anyway?  I get the same kind of feeling about Neil Gaiman with this Coraline story: it is apparently designed to scare the reader...I can easily see little children experiencing some nasty nightmares as a result...

Coraline is a little girl in England who has just moved with her parents to a new flat in a big house.  There are other tenants living in the floors both above and below.  In her own living room, hidden to an extent, is a mysterious door.  Being naturally curious, Coraline wonders where it leads to, but it is locked.  Her mother opens it, revealing a brick wall, and explains that there is another empty flat on the other side.  Later, Coraline visits the other tenants who give her cryptic warnings about the future and against going through that door.  Her excited curiosity now in control of her behavior, Coraline gets the key and opens the door again. This time, though, there is a long hallway, at the end of which is a duplicate version of her home flat, even with an "Other Mother" and "Other Father".  Only these "other parents", along with every other person she encounters there, have black buttons where their eyes would be.  The Other Mother, who turns out to be the dominant entity there, insists that Coraline stay and become one of them.  She flees back home across the door and later finds that her own real parents have disappeared.  She goes back through the door to find and rescue them.  And that's where I'll leave you, the potential reader, to discover the "rest of the story"...

I'm 59 years old, and I thought that Coraline was a scary story...I can't imagine what a little child would think about it!  This book, which won awards for Neil Gaiman, has been adapted into a stop-motion animated film...I saw the trailer, which impressed me.  It's a good story and well-told...I'm just not quite sure about its suitability for youngsters, especially those who harbor fears about strange, scurrying sounds in the darkness of night while they're trying to sleep...

Starbucks Email Promotions Annoy Me

If you've read this blog over the years, you would know that I like to drink coffee...this habit goes back to when I was two years old!  So it shouldn't have been any surprise that, when Starbucks decided sixteen years ago to expand into northwestern Gainesville, where I live, I would consequently become a regular customer there.  Eventually I succumbed to their promotional campaign and got a gold card that I could reload.  After a certain number of purchases on it, I would be informed that I had a free drink coming.  I wasn't going there to get anything free, and I am sure that the Starbucks Corporation still made a hefty profit on my purchases, an occasional  "free" drink notwithstanding...still I appreciated the gesture when one came along.  I gave them my email address, and they would notify me whenever one of those freebees was being offered me.  But a few months ago, Starbucks decided to change its "free" drink policy and base it on a set amount purchased and not on the number of visits.  I said "fine" to that, realizing that they had a right to do that and that I wasn't going there for the bonus beverage, anyway.  But now they are plaguing my email with promotion after promotion.  If you buy certain breakfast items or this drink or that, you'll get extra points on your account.  Well, I'm not going to buy any of their promotions just to get points, and these ads are starting to get pretty annoying.  Often I'll just pay cash anyway for a Starbucks drink without using my card, which sometimes (like now) gets low in funds.  But even just having that account has become a drag if I have to put up with all that email, which to me is just another form of spam.  By the way, since that stated change in policy a while back, I've still spent a reasonable amount of money at Starbucks with my card, and they have yet to notify me about any upcoming free drink...

Just Finished Reading Neil Gaiman's Stardust

The 1999 fantasy novel Stardust by Neil Gaiman was published earlier in comic book form and was later adapted to a movie. As is usually the case and to my consternation, I've heard that the film version significantly diverged from the book.  I just finished reading the book and have no intention of allowing myself to be affronted by the movie...the story was that good...

In Stardust, Gaiman looks back on an fictional rural English town in the mid-nineteenth century called Wall.  Its name owes itself to the very old wall that rises north and east from it.  In the middle is a small opening, which is continually guarded by the townsfolk to keep anyone from entering the meadow beyond.  You see, the opening is a passageway to the magical land of Faerie and contact between the two is kept to a brief period, once every nine years, in which the townsfolk are allowed to cross over to the "other side" and trade with the magical people during a fair.  Dunstan Thorn makes this passage and encounters a young woman, Una, who is a slave to a mean witch.  Their interactions ultimately lead, nine months later, to a baby lying in a wicker basket being pushed across the opening into Wall from Faerie.  That infant is Dunstan and Una's son, Tristan, who is raised in his father's family and finds himself going back to Faerie eighteen years later to find a fallen star in order to win the heart of his love, Victoria.  The nature of this star and Tristan's subsequent adventures in Faerie comprise the bulk of Stardust...

There is a great tenderness in Neil Gaiman's writing here: even the villains are given a break, so to speak...after all, they are only acting in accordance with their natures.  This is a true fairy tale and has the same feeling for me that I would get when being read fairy tales in my early childhood.  Yet it is not necessarily intended for little children: there are some very adult issues brought up here...

I was impressed by how the author ended Stardust...and a bit distressed to discover that those who made the film adaptation decided to completely change it.  Maybe you've seen the movie, which came out in 2007.  It might be worth your while to try out this well-written book, which is now right up there with Neverwhere at the top of my Neil Gaiman "favorites" list...

Orlando Nightclub Murders

It is not a crime to simply hate...but it can be if that hate is put into violent action against others.  So, in looking at this terrible massacre in Orlando that happened early Sunday, when a lone gunman shot and killed 50 customers and workers at a nightclub catering to the LGBT community while wounding 53,  it isn't enough to say we need more love and less hate.  I've heard that sort of thing yesterday on TV in various forms, and I suppose that those speaking these kinds of words feel safer in doing so...after all, they don't want to offend anyone or their religion...

I remember here in Gainesville a few years ago when the pastor of a small local Christian church drew international celebrity and scorn when he staged Koran-burning events and posted anti-Islam and anti-gay signs in front of his church.  But whenever this individual was interviewed and asked about his agenda, which to most would seem to be at least in part hate-motivated, he would deny that and frame his actions in terms of his own religious beliefs.  In spite of his controversial views and expressions thereof, however, he never resorted to violence...he just publicly expressed his views, something that I think we should protect in this wonderful country of ours whose constitutional Bill of Rights contains something as valuable as the First Amendment. So hate in itself is not a crime...sometimes in fact automatically calling those who disagree with you a "hater" can possibly be interpreted as "hate" on your part...

But if you cultivate hateful views about others, be they personal vendettas against individuals who you feel have wronged you in the past or present...or against people whose beliefs and/or lifestyles offend you, and then ACT on that hate against the targets of your wrath, you don't have any business running back to your favorite religion and wrapping it around yourself, as if what you have done carries some form of legitimacy.  The perpetrator of the Orlando mass-murder, who died while committing his atrocities, was an avowed Muslim, born and raised in the United States.  He apparently was offended at open public displays of homosexuality, easily procured an automatic weapon due to the politically weakened gun laws here in this country, conveniently declared his allegiance to ISIS that would make him a hero and martyr in some quarters, and went on his killing spree...

This tragedy can also, of course, be looked at from a different perspective: the need to defeat and destroy ISIS, which uses social media to recruit terrorists living in America to kill and destroy here.  But ISIS is only the current manifestation of hateful violence that has been coming out of the Islamic world.  There is something terribly wrong here, and the leaders of that religion need to figure it out and correct it...because hate escalating into violence is an issue affecting all people and not just confined to one religion: if this keeps up others will eventually retaliate in kind...if you don't believe me then you haven't been following this year's presidential campaign very well.  That will be a sad, tragic day...but I see it coming...

Gainesville Area Settling Into Summer-Pattern Weather

Although we're still technically in the springtime, summer-pattern weather has settled into our region of northern Florida.  Marked by usually sunny mornings and early afternoons, the thunderstorms begin forming later on and strike in a hit-or-miss manner, after with severe localized lightning and high winds.  That happened early yesterday evening at my workplace in south Gainesville.  We could see, through our warehouse-sized processing plant's large glass windows ringing the building and high-up near the ceiling, the skies turning abnormally dark and the high branches of the trees outside twisting wildly in the strong wind.  Having noted the impending storm, we went back to work...until lightning crashed down and essentially shut down the computerized machinery driving our work.  It was a major hassle, to say the least...the fury of nature's electricity is a "striking" contrast to humankind's use of it in such a precise, controlled manner to power our technology: when the two meet, nature wins!

As I am writing this, it's a little past one in the afternoon...and I'm already seeing the puffy cumulus clouds beginning to combine.  One benefit coming out of storms like yesterday's is the sudden cooling from the high, nearly unbearable afternoon heat...it sometimes drops 20-25 degrees!  Still, I can do without the power blackouts, either in the homes, businesses, schools...or especially with the traffic lights.  And that storm wind can do an awful lot of damage, either directly or by blowing around objects.  Oh, and did I fail to mention that finding oneself outside when lightning is crashing all around can be a pretty terrifying experience?  Well, that's our typical summer day here in northern Florida: excessive heat for most of the time and occasional thunderstorm attacks, with all of the accompanying effects, both good and bad...

Indiana in My Mind

When I think of Indiana, I have three mental pictures.  One is of a mystical, far-off place: one evening back in 1960, when I was four years old and still lived in Opa-Locka, Florida, I was told by a good  friend, also four, that he was moving away with his family to Indiana.  Way out there...it became framed as a place of great distance for me.  The second is the famous cornfield scene in Alfred Hitchcock's 1959 movie North by Northwest.  You know, this is where Cary Grant is attacked by a crop dusting plane and hides in a thick field of high-growing corn.  And the third is the city of Hammond, Indiana as described by Jean Shepherd on his radio show...only his vision of this "suburb" just east of Chicago was based on his childhood memories: he's the dude who wrote and narrated the movie A Christmas Story that features the exploits of little Ralphie, Schwartz, and Flick.  Well, I'm about to be entertained by yet a fourth mental picture of the Hoosier State as my wife Melissa will be traveling there this Sunday for a week of classes at Indiana Wesleyan University in Marion.  This town of around 30,000 people lies between the centrally-located capital city of Indianapolis and Fort Wayne in the northeastern section of the state...closer to the latter.  It will be her first trip to Indiana and she's excited about it all, as am I.  As for my previously held "visions" of this state, the only one that might apply to Marion is that, although it is a town with a manufacturing (and now educational) base, I understand that once you're a few miles outside the city limits, there are those pesky cornfields again! 

Let's see...last year Melissa went to India.  This year she's going to Indiana.  What will be next year...the Indies?  I'm very proud of her and pray and hope for her safety there and for positive experiences...and of course for her safe return...

As for this article's title, my apologies to James Taylor...

Just Finished Reading James Patterson's 3rd Degree

3rd Degree is the third book in James Patterson's crime/mystery series called Women's Murder Club, featuring, as you can plainly see, a number in the title of each successive novel.  Patterson wrote the first book solo, and the credit "with Andrew Gross" is listed for the second.  3rd Degree, which I just finished reading, has the writing credits going to "James Patterson and Andrew Gross".  Looking ahead at some of his later books in the series, it seems that Patterson has opted for collaboration with other writers for this project...how much of these books are his and how much are somebody else's is debatable.  I do know that this book I just read wasn't up to the level of enjoyment that I experienced reading the first two...I wonder whether Gross had anything to do with that...

In 3rd Degree, series protagonist Lindsay Boxer, a San Francisco police lieutenant in the homicide department, is up against a series of home-grown terrorist attacks that seem to signal a resurgence of leftist radical bombings and killings from those back in the 1960s and 70s.  As usual, she enlists the help of her three close friends in the informal "Women's Murder Club"...newspaper reporter Cindy Thomas, the city's medical examiner Claire Washburn, and assistant D.A. Jill Bernhardt.  Jill plays an important part in this story as she deals with spousal abuse from her husband Steve...and ultimately figures into the main story line of the terrorist attacks...

The idea of terrorism in these kinds of novels is nothing new.  However, I think that, being published in 2004 and apparently written in the year or two preceding, the book may have been meant to convey the fact that, in spite of the 9/11 attacks in 2001 and the ongoing Al-Qaeda threat, this country has its own legacy of terrorism and that these heinous acts were sadly relatively commonplace four or five decades ago as some violent radical organizations in America resorted to assassinations and bombings to publicize their agenda.  If that was what Patterson was trying to express here, I agree with him.  I just didn't like the way it was written all that much...and I'm not quite sure why.  I'm still sticking with the series, though, Patterson and whomever he chooses as a co-writer...

A List of My Running Races, 2008-16

Back in 1972-75 I considered myself a runner and made a decision to focus on running long-distance.  Compared to others, I wasn't as fast and quickly made peace with myself about that reality.  Instead, I took the sport on its own terms and made it personal, with me training to tackle the distances required with the perseverance and effort to reach them.  I was in my late teens at the time...by the time I had turned 20 I had lost interest in running.  Other than running up the nine flights of stairs to my dorm room at the University of Florida in 1977-78 and a three-month attempt at running in early 1998, I had essentially abandoned it for a span of more than 30 years...until I resumed it in 2007 after I had turned 50.  By the fall of 2008 I had rebuilt my endurance to the point where I felt I could run in a local 5K race.  Since that first event, all the way to my last a few days ago, I have treated the races I've run, 29 in all, mainly as training runs...albeit in a public, social context.  As for my running as a whole, it has always been primarily a solitary activity...and I plan to keep it that way.  Anyway, as much for my own purposes as for you, the reader, I decided to go back and list these 29 races, in chronological order.  For each race I ran, I have listed the date, distance, finishing time, event name, and location (site is listed if held in Gainesville). I have included the abbreviations HM for half-marathon, M for marathon, and m for miles...and of course K stands for kilometers...

Well, here goes...

10-04-08    5K       25:10      Red Cross 5K              University of Florida
10-18-08    5K       24:07      Hope Heels 5K            Westside Park
11-01-08    5K       24:28      Dog Days 5K               Westside Park
2-14-10     HM    2:17:10     Five Points of Life       Gainesville
3-27-10     15K    1:23:55    Climb for Cancer         Haile Plantation
4-24-10      5K        23:05     Run Amuck                  NFR Office Park
5-22-10      5K        25:00     Somer's Sunshine Run  Orange Park
6-05-10      5K        23:23     Cpt. Chad Reed Mem.   Cross City
7-04-10      3m        23:04     Melon Run                    Westside Park
11-16-10    HM    2:01:41    Tom Walker Memorial  Hawthorne Trail
1-23-11      M       6:04:35    Ocala Marathon             South of Paddock Mall
11-12-11    HM    1:59:38    Tom Walker Memorial  Hawthorne Trail
1-01-12      HM    1:56:07    De Leon Springs HM     De Leon Springs
7-04-12      3m        25:45     Melon Run                     Westside Park
11-22-12   10K       53:10     Turkey Trot                    Tacachale
1-20-13      HM    1:55:20    Ocala Half-Marathon     South of Paddock Mall
3-03-13      HM    1:50:53    Orange Blossom             Tavares
11-09-13    2m     untimed    Gator Gallop                   University Ave, SW 2nd Ave
2-01-14      5K        25:53     Education for Life          Westside Park
2-16-14      HM    2:07:36    Five Points of Life          Gainesville
11-27-14   10K        56:56    Turkey Trot                    Tacachale
12-12-14    HM    2:03:30    Starlight Half-Marathon  Palm Coast
1-31-15     15K    1:18:21    Newnan's Lake 15K        West of Newnan's Lake
2-15-15     HM     1:58:48    Five Points of Life          Gainesville
3-14-15     10K        56:24    Run for Haven                Tioga
12-05-15   6.5m   1:03:52    Lumber Around the Levee   Micanopy
1-30-16     15K    1:31:20    Newnan's Lake 15K        West of Newnan's Lake
3-12-16     10K       59:00    Run for Haven 10K         Tioga
5-14-16       5K       28:36    May Day Glow Run        Tioga

Just Finished Reading Neil Gaiman's American Gods

The novel American Gods, as Neil Gaiman puts it, was inspired by this British writer's trips to the United States and his attempts to understand its culture...especially that which differed from his homeland.  He decided to tell a story in which two often opposite viewpoints of religion and gods are combined.  Those who worship deities tend to believe that their gods exist in the real world and are independent of their believers...albeit usually jealous of other deities.  Skeptics, on the other hand, claim that gods are a creation of the believers: their existence only extends to their followers' worship, in their own minds.  But suppose that both views were true to an extent...suppose that gods truly existed in the real world but were there only because people had created them and then followed and worshiped them.  And that, like other entities, they can weaken and die, too.  Only with them, their decline owes itself to progressively fewer and fewer people following them as they are replaced by new, modern idols...

In American Gods the country, the population of which now largely "worships" the new gods of media, hedonism, computer technology, etc. to the detriment of the traditional gods brought over from the Old World by their immigrant ancestors, finds itself the site of a cosmic struggle...and ultimately a war...between the old and new deities, with them appearing as people living among the human population.  In the middle of it all is the main protagonist, a young man named Shadow who, after serving a short prison term, finds his wife has died in a car crash along with his would-be employer...and he finds himself completely disconnected from his expected future.  Enter an enigmatic man named "Wednesday" who hires him on, and the gods start piling into the story...

While reading American Gods, I found myself going down two different mental trails.  One was trying to keep up with all of the gods and religious traditions Gaiman introduced to the story, spanning thousands of years and crossing over all kinds of cultures like native American, African, Norse, Irish...and especially Russian.  I could see quite plainly that the author put a lot of research into this book, and if you're someone who might be interested in exploring various cultures and their old religions and myths, American Gods would be a good read if only for that purpose.  However, my other mental "trail" made it a much more compelling story: that concerned was what was going to happen to Shadow...and who exactly was this man, with his resigned gloominess combined with a natural compassion for others.  At times I felt that Shadow is a role model for dealing with adversity and conflict (which he is continually experiencing)...and at others, he just seems far too apathetic about the bizarre events transpiring around him.  A most peculiar and compelling character, he is...

American Gods is one of those stories, once you realize what the author is trying to do, that expects you to temporarily put your own views about religion on hold while reading it.  That doesn't mean you've forsaken your own beliefs in that area...it just means that you're entertaining someone else's ideas for a little while.  Besides, Neil Gaiman himself didn't believe in the fantastic figures he inserted into this novel: he was simply doing his best to explain his own take on America, from the viewpoint of someone having grown up across the ocean.  I recommend American Gods, but I feel that some folks may have some difficulty with the religious themes...

New Emerging Tropical Storm to Threaten Nature Coast

I was driving down the road just a few minutes ago, listening to my local public radio station here in Gainesville, when they broke into the regular programming to give news of a new tropical depression, currently centered just north of Mexico's Yucatan peninsula in the southern Gulf of Mexico.  Maximum sustained winds are at 35 mph...at 39, which is expected to happen in the next few hours, it will become Colin, the third named tropical storm of this 2016 Atlantic hurricane system.  According to the Weather Channel just now, Colin is expected to continue strengthening in the Gulf while its trajectory takes it first to the north and then to the northeast.  Landfall, at least as they see it now, should be sometime Monday along what is commonly called Florida's "Nature Coast", which is the stretch of Gulf coastline stretching eastward from the Apalachicola peninsula in the state's panhandle and then southward along the peninsula to just north of Tarpon Springs.  Colin is not forecast to reach hurricane status before landfall...so far they're predicting sustained winds of only around 50 mph when that occurs.  But we in Gainesville may well get some strong rain and storms within the next day or two...and Cedar Key could be dramatically impacted should Colin hit it directly.  Right now the meteorologists are relatively unsure about its precise future course.  That having been said, if you live in Gainesville, its vicinity...or especially points west (like Gilchrist, Levy, or Dixie County)...it would probably be a good idea to keep tuned to weather updates while making yourself prepared for heavy rain and wind in the near future...

Muhammad Ali Passes Away

Muhammad Ali has finally passed away, a shell of his former self, at age 74.  All over the television channel spectrum I'm seeing tributes highlighting his boxing career, focusing on his pivotal fights.  Yet it was those fights of his...61 in all...that ultimately severely damaged his brain and reduced him to the deteriorating state that he had suffered for more than the last thirty years.  "Pugilistic brain damage", I believe, is the term given to describe what happens to a boxer's brain when tears and the resulting scar tissue build up over the course of countless blows to the head...and the resulting cutting off of blood circulation in different areas.  The symptoms are Parkinson's-like and progressive...but Ali's was caused by his sport, unlike the Parkinson's disease afflicting people like Michael J. Fox and Janet Reno.  I read in an Associate Press article printed in the Los Angeles Times in 1987 that there is a fifty percent chance of brain damage occurring to boxers with twenty or more bouts...and Ali had three times that total.  Yet in boxing matches, referees in the ring make what should be medical decisions, based on observing the fighters, as to whether or not they have suffered concussions during the match.  The entire premise of boxing, after all, is to batter the other guy's head and knock him out before he (or, sadly nowadays, she) can do the same to you.  Nevertheless, this barbaric sport is strongly rooted in tradition and is unlikely to be banned.  The variant known as UFC is better, but only because it incorporates wrestling into the competition...which slightly reduces the role of the head blows.  But all of these kinds of "blood" sports serve a lucrative market: bloodthirsty vicarious spectators...

Muhammad Ali would probably never have been famous in his younger years had he not excelled in boxing to such an extent.  Had he not been a boxer, his personality, wit and always interesting opinions might never have been known or heard by much of the world...the temptation here is to claim that he never would have suffered a debilitating brain disease and would still be among us, in full command of his thinking and body.  But I don't think you can treat "time" like that: cutting out one aspect of a person's life in hindsight and thinking that all else would have been the same just doesn't work.  Muhammad Ali was a boxer, and that was an essential part of his life's tapestry, for better or for worse.  May this great man finally rest in peace...

Nationalism in Sports Leaves Me Cold

Who can forget the unprecedented seven-year run a few years ago of Lance Armstrong as he led his American team by winning those Tour de France bicycle races?  I knew that the folks broadcasting the event on TV thought it was great, since they focused their attention on him and his team, largely to the exclusion of the many talented participants from other nations.  And when he went down in disgrace due to PED abuse, our country suddenly lost interest in the Tour de France.  After all, our national "label" was no longer in play...

Except for summer-centered Major League Soccer here in North America, the professional soccer leagues have ended their 2015-16 seasons and are in a lull until it all starts up again in August.  In the meantime, the national team soccer season has gone into full swing, with tournaments and "Friendly" (exhibition match) competitions involving various national teams.  As for soccer per se, I'm a little divided how I feel about all this, since there is very little popular support here in the United States for the women's professional soccer league and their only chance at sports "glory" is in the form of the American team.  Also, I did become interested in the sport back in 2014 during the men's World Cup while watching various national teams play each other.  But I also know that it can get very, very ugly with fans and players when rival national teams are on the same field: in 1969 El Salvador and Honduras even went to war because of a soccer match gone awry.  The fact that one can watch soccer without this spectacle of nationalism by instead following their favorite leagues works for most of the year.  The irony of it all right now for soccer fans is that, to avoid watching national teams play, the only league remaining is our own national league, Major League Soccer....the teams of which all are very international in composition...

Nationalism is the most prominent in the Olympics, where the host nation usually goes overboard, often at the expense of its own people's welfare, at trying to present a favorable impression on the world...and that often includes forcefully removing the "undesirables" (such as the homeless and very poor) who live in the area.  Just knowing what the local population has had to go through makes me want to boycott watching the Games.  Still, I have to admit that the Olympics do give athletes in not-so popular sports the opportunity to be in the public spotlight and interest...if only temporarily and against the backdrop of nationalist banner waving and anthem playing...

Do I tend to root for the Americans in international sports competitions?  Mostly, yes...but I'm no longer so emotionally tied to the U.S. winning as are many of my compatriots.  That's because I remember the past, watching the Olympics, beginning in 1972.  Back then as in years before and years to come, the Games were marked by ultra-nationalism and countries with their own ideologies and histories struggling for bragging rights.  If East Germany won a lot of medals, then of course that was supposed to be a symbol of what a better country they were, right?  Never mind that their athletes were all professional full-timers while ours back then had to strictly abide by the rules of amateurism.  Of course, nowadays those rules about amateurism have all flown out the window...

I much more strongly prefer the league format in sports.  Take the premier leagues in the major sports...the U.S. has four of them: American football's National Football League, baseball's American and National Leagues, basketball's National Basketball Association, and ice hockey's National Hockey League.  In soccer the top pro leagues are spread out in five countries: England, Spain, Germany, Italy, and France.  Except for American football, which is almost exclusively played in the U.S., these leagues are distinguished by their mixture of top players from the entire world.  Take any team in these leagues (again, with the exception of the NFL) and you will see players getting along and working together, crossing national frontiers and cultural and linguistic divisions for the sake of their teams.  That makes me feel good, and is the diametric opposite of the feeling I get when watching national teams square off against each other...

Who Gets My Support for President in 2020

Why not bring up the 2020 election campaign now? After all, you and I both know it's going to begin in only five months...the day after the results come in from the 2016 general election.  For nearly a year now, I have known which candidate I would vote for president and which candidates give me some severe reservations.  My opinions have not changed at all since then...and I don't think they will until I cast my ballot on Election Day.  So discussing the candidates in the 2016 election seems pointless to me...do you think I'm going to change your mind about who to vote for?  After all, if we're responsible voters, we tend to evaluate the candidates and the parties they belong to by two criteria: how good (or bad) they will be for the country as a whole and how good (or bad) they will be for one's own personal life and family.  It was long clear to me that one of the candidates this time around favorably fulfilled both conditions...but other voters have their own lives and perspectives to filter everything through.  Who am I to say that I am right and you are wrong if you support someone else?  Besides, twice in the past I voted for candidates who won that first term, but then voted against them for reelection...so I'm willing to change my mind about people...

And that brings me to 2020.  In all likelihood, leading up to that presidential election we're going to have as the incumbent either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump...and I can clearly see either one running for reelection.  Regardless who I voted for in 2016, if the president in 2020 meets my criteria for being good for the country as well as standing up for my own personal interests, they will get my support in that election...regardless of the political party.  I'm making my decision in 2016 as to who will most likely fit that condition for my support...hopefully "she" will do a good job.  But if "he" wins and surprises me with a good performance in his first term as president then he'll get my vote in '20...in spite of the many problems I currently have about him...

My May 2016 Running Report

For May 2016 I ran a total of 106 miles, more than I had expected when I had inauspiciously begun the month recovering from a nagging upper respiratory viral infection that had me going through sporadic coughing fits for days on end.  But, although I missed out on running at the beginning of May, I did end up running on 26 of the days.  My longest single run was still relatively short, at 4.2 miles...but I did manage to participate in a public running race, albeit a short 5K event.  That happened on Saturday evening, the 14th, in Tioga: the May Day Glow Run, which I promptly wrote about after running it.  Here's my link to that article...

Although I'd eventually like to step up my distance per run, the hot summer weather here in north Florida is working against that goal.  Sure, six years ago I defied common sense and ran long distances in the heat of the day, more than once running past the ten-mile mark when the temperature was in the nineties.  I don't think I want to do that anymore, though...

If I can continue consistently running for about three to five miles per day for the next few months without incurring any injuries, that may just be about the best I can reasonably do.  I could also enter some more 5K races whenever they come up in the Gainesville area.  Maybe this fall I'll be able to resume running half-marathons, my preferred racing distance (13.1 miles).  This past season I was only able to run a couple of 10Ks and one 15K (9.3 miles) event (besides that 5K race I mentioned).  We'll see...

On This Memorial Day

On this Memorial Day of 2016, I remember and honor the fallen soldiers in our nation's wars, past and present.  I am one of those folks who respect their sacrifice for the sake of the mission and their fellow combatants...whether or not I personally think that the military action in itself was called for.  After all, it is the democratically-elected, civilian President who serves as Commander-in-Chief...and who is ultimately responsible for whatever combat results from his orders.  The soldiers are highly trained to actively support the mission to the best of their abilities, and to be willing to lay their lives down for it and for the safety of their fellow soldiers.  Sometimes I feel that this important distinction has been muddled in the past...the Vietnam War and the Iraq invasion and occupation come to mind.  Some of the mostly well-intentioned people who slapped "Support Our Troops" decals on their vehicles a few years ago may not have been doing so with the sole intent of honoring our brave men and women in the line of duty.  I think, sadly so, that this motto had an additional meaning for them: whatever the President decides (at least one with their political outlook) has to be supported because the troops who carry out those policies are in the line of fire.  The problem with this is when a president...such as Democrat Lyndon Johnson with Vietnam or Republican George W. Bush with Iraq...sends his forces into an untenable situation abroad and exposes them to death and injury without a viable strategy for ultimate victory and eventual withdrawal.  It, in my opinion, is an act of support for those troops sent into harm's way for Americans to openly express opposition to decisions that put them there without the "end-game" having been properly thought out.  Instead, I respect a president who is careful about committing our precious and courageous young men and women to dangerous situations to the point where he or she works ceaselessly to achieve positive results without having to do so...

Let's honor those brave American heroes who died for our country...and work to keep that list from growing needlessly... 

Soccer: Mexico's Liga MX Championship Finale Tonight

I've been following Mexico's premier professional soccer league, commonly known as Liga MX, for two years now.  That means four actual "seasons", for each year is divided into two parts: fall's Apertura mini-season and winter/spring's Clausura...each one has its own league championship series.  Out of Liga MX's 18 teams, 8 make the championship tournament, known as "Liguilla".  The paired-up teams play each round with two matches, one at home and one on their opponent's field, with the team accumulating the most aggregate two-game goals advancing (there is a tie-breaker system, too).  Tonight the 2016 Clausura season will come to an end with the closing game of the championship round between the Liguilla's two surviving teams: Pachuca and Monterrey...

In last week's first game between the two, Pachuca won at home 1-0 against Monterrey.  Tonight the Rayados, who had the best league record during the regular season, will be the hosts.  I watched the Apertura finale back in December between UNAM Pumas and UANL Tigres...it was a heart-stopping match!  I can't wait to see what happens tonight.  Regardless who wins, it will mark the fourth different team to win the title in each of the seasons from the last couple of years (I've previously witnessed Club America, Santos Laguno, and Tigres walk away with the Liguilla championship).  In other words, I've never seen a league in any sport that is so distinguished by the parity between the teams that comprise it as Liga MX.  The game starts around 9:30 pm Eastern Time and is being shown on the Univision and UnivisionDeportes channels in Spanish.  Unilike the previous finale, which had me pulling for Tigres, I'm not taking sides this time around...I just want to enjoy the high caliber of play.  I hope it's a close match!

Just Finished Reading Five More Kuttner and Moore Short Stories

Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore were a husband and wife writing team who specialized in science fiction, occasionally dabbling in fantasy or horror.  Sometimes they wrote solo, but many of their works were collaborations using pseudonyms, the best known of which was Lewis Padgett.  Their mainstay was the short story, with which over the course of the mid-twentieth century they were very successful at selling to science fiction magazines.   The book Two-Handed Engine, named after one of the stories contained within, is a collection of their best short literature.  I have been reading it off and on for the past few months...more "off" than "on", I'm sad to say...but I've just finished reading five more of its stories...bringing the total read so far to thirteen.  Their titles are: The World is Mine, When the Bough Breaks, The Cure, The Code, and Line to Tomorrow.  Although distinctly different tales, all five are distinguished by the subject of time travel and an examination into the nature of personal identity and consciousness...

The World is Mine, the most humorous of the lot, plays around with time travel's paradoxes and how people (and some rabbit-like Martians) get carried away with coveting power over others.  In When the Bough Breaks, a superman/mutant sends agents back in time to his infancy in order to better train him for his future of destiny...probably not the best of ideas. The Cure involves a businessman who experiences moments when he feels he is in another place and time...and maybe is even a different person.  The Code has two scientists experimenting with a rejuvenation drug on one of their fathers...the results bring on a comparison to the legend of Faust and Mephistopheles...meaning that if you're not already acquainted with that tale, then this story is probably going to be lost on you!  The last of the bunch is Line to Tomorrow, where someone keeps getting a misdirected phone call...from the distant future...

I'm just guessing here, but it seems that stories about time travel and personal identity must have been very popular back in the 1940s, when these stories were first published.  And if you were a writer back then, pounding away at the typewriter and struggling to come out with material that would sell...and provide you a reasonable living in the process...then you would most likely pay attention to magazine editors and publishers when they told you what worked (and what didn't).   And the result, at least with Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore, was a steady stream of popular short stories with some very similar themes...

NASA, Its Missions, and the Candidates

Having discovered that neither Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, nor Bernie Sanders seem to care at all about our space program, I am wondering whether or not the eventual winner of this November's presidential election will continue our current president's vision for its future...especially with regard to manned space travel to Mars.  After all, not long after he himself took office, Barack Obama went back on his campaign promise to Floridians that he would continue his predecessor's ambitious program to establish a moon base.  It seems that NASA is a political football, kicked around from one administration to the next with each president either ignoring it or drastically changing its goals.  That is because NASA is a federal agency under the direct authority of the president.  Congress only has the power to fund or defund it and cannot directly set its agenda...

Maybe one of these candidates will surprise us and show some proactive interest in our space program...although Sanders seems downright hostile to space exploration.  Regardless, I plan to research NASA's website and watch the NASA channel on TV in order to keep up with its ongoing missions and future plans.  With this in mind, I also plan to write about these missions.  One of the more immediate with be the Juno probe to Jupiter, while should arrive at that planet in July.  More on Juno in an upcoming article.  I will also be looking the history of our space program as well as what is going on with those in Europe, Russia, China, and Japan.  Should be enlightening...

The Major League Baseball Regular Season So Far

The Major League Baseball regular season has played enough games, around the mid-forties in number, for me to look at the standings and notice trends.  The division leaders right now, listed in order from the American League East-Central-West to the corresponding National League divisions, are the Boston Red Sox, Chicago White Sox, Seattle Mariners, Washington Nationals, Chicago Cubs, and San Francisco Giants.  The cellar-dwellers, in the same order, are the Tampa Bay Rays, Minnesota Twins, Houston Astros, Atlanta Braves, Cincinnati Reds, and San Diego Padres.  Minnesota, Atlanta, and Cincinnati are having truly horrendous seasons while the Cubs and Giants have put distance between themselves and their divisional challengers.  All of the other divisions are close, with Baltimore, Cleveland, defending World Series champion Kansas City, Texas, defending NL champs New York Mets, Philadelphia, and Miami having winning, competitive seasons.  The Marlins at this writing are 24-21, a marked turnaround so far from their dismal 72-90 season last year...they're in fourth place right now, but only 3.5 games from the lead.  The Rays, "my" other Florida team, are struggling at 21-23, just percentage points in last place but still solidly in the running...

It's hard to predict how things will wind up this year. An injury to a key player can devastate a team, and sometimes a team will go into prolonged hitting or pitching slumps...or the opposite can occur and one or more of them can suddenly surge in the standings.  I can't see a lot to interest me in baseball right now...maybe it's because I've seen in recent years my favorite teams cave in and go into those aforementioned slumps.  Will that happen again, or will either Miami or Tampa Bay (or both) break the pattern and finish as winners?