Ongoing Narratives Need to be Viewed Critically

Many years ago I came across a paperback book titled: The Bermuda Triangle Mystery--Solved, by Larry Kusche...published in 1972.  Being a young adolescent geek of a kid back then...long before the word "geek" came into general use...I had been interested in all sorts of weird topics at the time, chief among them ancient astronauts, maps of ancient seafarers...and this topic of the Bermuda Triangle, a general region in the western North Atlantic Ocean in which many mysterious unexplained disappearances of boats and planes are alleged to have occurred over the years.  I heard the narrative of the believers in this phenomenon which took each incident and explained it in a way that pointed to a nefarious force inhabiting the region.  When I got hold of Kusche's book, I was anxious to arm myself with the facts about this intriguing subject...

The Bermuda Triangle Mystery--Solved is basically an item-by-item presentation of the chief disappearances that have been assembled over time to create this narrative of a sinister area where the laws of nature seem to drastically change.  And Kusche was in a good position to accomplish this, since he was by profession a research librarian who knew how to comb through old newspapers and government archives to obtain his information on the events in question.  But first, the author wrote out the Bermuda Triangle narrative as it has been usually presented, from the viewpoint of the true believer.  After the narrative presented several seemingly impossible-to-refute examples of strange disappearances, it went on to postulate why they may have occurred.  Is there an undersea civilization out there doing all this, or maybe there is some special physical weather phenomenon responsible.  The important thing about the narrative's conclusions, though, is that the reader (or listener)  is expected to have already accepted the initial facts given within the narrative about the disappearances...

As Kusche went on in his book, he took each Triangle incident and clearly demonstrated what was really known to have happened... and in every instance the truth varied greatly from the "narrative".  After finishing this book, I no longer believed in any such thing as the Bermuda Triangle...not that this story hasn't continued to stay alive and strong in some quarters to this very day...

The point I want to make about the Bermuda Triangle and the resulting popular narrative is that such narratives are pervasive in human society.  As a matter of fact, if you ever follow the news, then the opinions expressed about various issues and events, as well as how they are presented, are almost always designed to fit a particular narrative or another that a group of people hold dear to themselves.  Take the issue of police killings of blacks, for example.  When such a tragic event occurs anywhere in the country, almost instantaneously now it is examined as to whether or not it fits the narrative that the police are discriminately persecuting blacks.  The entirety of the facts about an incident, even though still under official investigation, may go unrevealed while various politicians and media figures, as well as community activists and, ultimately, masses of protesters are already staging demonstrations and condemning law enforcement.  If there are conflicting accounts of the event, then the one that fits the narrative being followed will be accepted and the others rejected.  To show I'm not just picking on one side of this divisive issue, I also recognize that there is a "the police are always right" narrative that filters events and their accounts to fit that point of view...

As a matter of fact, as long as people coalesce into groups, there will be a collective narrative about the things that bind them together.  They will filter out things that contradict a cherished narrative while often uncritically accepting that which reinforces it. It's often much easier to allow oneself to be sucked into a narrative than to take each new piece of news and look at it dispassionately and on its own terms...which might go a long way toward explaining some of the nonsense I've been seeing on TV lately...

Melania Trump and Her Convention Speech

In her address in front of yesterday's Republican Convention in Cleveland, Donald Trump's wife Melania, a Slovenian immigrant who still expresses herself tentatively in her adopted English language, delivered a speech after being introduced onstage by her husband.  By all accounts, Melania is very likeable and presents the kind of charm that Jackie Kennedy added to JFK's presidential candidacy in 1960.  Mrs. Trump, however, possesses very little of the verbal eloquence that Jackie had...but no one really expected her to, did they?  Melania obviously did not write the speech she delivered, although she most probably did sit down with the actual writer and laid out some of the points she wanted to make.  It's also obvious to me that she was very uncomfortable being onstage giving that speech...essentially before the world...and that she nonetheless performed her role admirably.  Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for Melania's speechwriter, who lifted almost verbatim entire passages of a speech that Michelle Obama (you know, Trump's "enemy" Barack's wife) gave eight years earlier at the Democratic Convention.  Of course, the next morning  Donald Trump's campaign chairman Paul Manafort called the plagiarism allegations "absurd"...what's absurd is that anyone should ever believe what this spin artist says about anything hereafter...

No reasonable person should believe that Melania Trump would herself write such a speech, copying text from a so-prominent address from the recent past.  My opinion of her as a supportive spouse to a very ambitious...even ruthless...individual hasn't changed: I wish she were a little more strong-willed about asserting her own opinions...but then again, maybe if that were that the case, the Republican Party's role model for what they consider to be presidential material probably would never have married her in the first place.  That doesn't mean that I think poorly of Melania...if anything, her gracious nature is in stark contrast to her rude and mean-spirited husband...

Three Books I'm Currently Reading

There are three books I'm in the middle of reading right now...and there seems to be no end in sight for any of them.  I have been slowly muddling through William Makepeace Thackeray's classic novel of English high society of the early nineteenth century, titled Vanity Fair...I'm a little past halfway through it.  I've also begun a non-fiction book, The Gene: An Intimate History, by Siddhartha Mukherjee.   The language in this history of modern genetics is quite well-written and simplified for the non-scientist layman, but there are places where it still gets a bit too technical for me...I suppose there was no way of avoiding that, though.  The third book is Two-Handed Engine, that old science fiction short story collection of Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore's works from the mid-twentieth century that I've been working on for an extended time.  I'm nowhere close to finishing that one, either...

I have nothing in particular against Vanity Fair other than I don't like any of its characters and am tired of reading about highly stratified European society from the nineteenth century.  Enough, already: I've resolved to take a break from this type of fiction once I'm done with this book.  I have a more favorable opinion so far of Mukherjee's exposition...I like how he tells his story and makes it personal and much more gripping than just dry science.  As for Kuttner and Moore, I'd probably have already finished their story collection had I not kept adding books to my reading regimen (like Vanity Fair and The Gene)...

Mexican Premier League Soccer Back in Full Swing

I was pleasantly surprised yesterday to discover, while channel surfing my television, that Mexican premier league soccer has resumed, with its 2016 Apertura summer/fall season opening this weekend.  So far, I've been able to see matches between Monterrey and Puebla, Jaguares de Chiapas and Club America, and Pumas de UNAM and Guadalajara.  The curious thing about all of these games is that I haven't taken sides in them, instead taking in the flow of the games and the teams' strategies and skill levels in them...along with the officials and their propensity to blow the whistle and call fouls (and some players' propensities to fake them).  I also enjoy the exuberant Spanish-language commentary in the background on Univision (Gainesville Cox Cable's Channel 40), much more so then the tepid announcers on English-language soccer television...especially those showing our own Major League Soccer here in the USA and Canada.  I love it when a goal is scored and an announcer yells "G-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-L!!!" or when the first half or game is over: "LA PELOTA NO RUEDA MAS!!!" (the ball no longer rolls)...or when a penalty kick is called: "PENAL! PENAL! PENAL!".  I wish we had that kind of excitement with American sports...the old Monday Night Football of the 1970s with Howard Cosell and Don Meredith is the only example I can recall even remotely approaching this level of enthusiasm in live play-by-play TV sports broadcasting ...

Now that I have my Mexican Liga MX soccer back again, it's only about a month more to wait until the 2016-17 English (Barclay's) Premier League season begins.  Defending champion Leicester City is once again considered to be a longshot to win the title...although I doubt that the odds-makers are putting up 5000-1 odds against them this time around as they did a year ago.  Right now, the so-called "experts" seem to feel that Manchester United and Manchester City will vie for this coming season's title...we'll see.  I'm also curious to see whether Fox Sports will continue to show Germany's premier Bundesliga this coming season, as they did last year.  I very much appreciate the high level of play in both the English and German leagues...I only wish I could also get the Spanish premier league, called "La Liga", as well...and see Ronaldo and Messi play more often.  On the other hand, there's only just so much soccer I can watch anyway...

Spectators Out of Control at the Tour de France

One of the charming aspects of the Tour de France, the ongoing 21-stage championship bicycle tour that covers this beautiful country, is the presence of the fans along the roadway, urging on the contestants.  At each stage's final mile or so, the concentration of roadside spectators is naturally the thickest...and here is where we're seeing some serious problems.  In just about every race I've watched...the Tour is broadcast on NBCSports (Gainesville Cox Channel 33)...there are segments in which the crowd impinges on the roadway where the cyclists are racing, sometimes reaching out to touch them or running extremely close beside them.  This type of interference makes me cringe when I see it, and I wonder why those organizing these races have allowed it to go on.  Once I even saw one such spectator, ludicrously dressed up like a chicken, reach over at a cyclist...and then receive a harsh punch in the face from said cyclist, making him stagger backwards in a daze.  I did a fist-pump in the air when I saw that, feeling only slightly ashamed at taking such vicarious pleasure in an act of violence against another...albeit one justified by the circumstances.  But as bad as that incidence was, the fan interference level reached an intolerable stage a few days ago when three cyclists, including current tour leader Chris Froome...only one kilometer away from their stage's finish line...suffered a collision with a camera-equipped motorcycle when the crowds closed in on them, allowing only single-line riding and no passing on an already narrow, uphill road.  Froome got up from his fall and, seeing his bicycle damaged and unrideable, then began to run uphill toward the finish.  Eventually, a workable bicycle was provided and he finished the race...only after a later review did the Tour authorities restore his lead, which he had lost due to this inexcusable interference...

I don't know why people feel the need to get in the middle of the road and obstruct the bicycle race.  It is difficult enough for the competitors to try to figure out how to outmaneuver each other for an advantage without foolish spectators jumping into their path.  But will those running the Tour de France do anything to restrain them in the future?  Probably not.  Sigh...

Out Running at Noon in the Summer Heat

In spite of warnings I've been hearing during service talks at work about heat stress outside during these very hot summer months and the necessary steps one needs to take in order to avoid it, I have decided to step up my outdoor running...and deliberately around noon-time.  Let me explain...

In the early-to-mid-mornings here in northern Florida this time of year, the temperature can be in the 80s...and the humidity is at an even higher percentage...a formula for the heat stress that we're being advised against.  The trick is to wait until around noon when the temperature, to be sure, has risen...but more importantly, the humidity has fallen to a manageable level.  That's important because a combination of both hot temperature and high humidity can overheat the body...and then the body cannot cool itself through perspiration, which is blocked by the moisture in the air working against its release.  Also, I'm not running during mid-to-late afternoon when it gets the hottest.  This is about the best I'm going to be able to do running outside in the summer.  Oh, by the way, I'm always pre-hydrating myself before runs with water and/or Gatorade (or Powerade)...and carry a little bottle with me while running for ongoing hydration.  And having short walking breaks regularly interspersed throughout the run is a wise measure as well (look up Jeff Galloway for the benefits of doing this)...

I've done this sort of thing in the past, anyway, and to a much great extent...commonly running 7 or more miles when the temperature was 90+ degrees.  My goal this summer is much more modest: daily run my preset 3.3-mile looping course through my subdivision and the adjacent one...a course I've run so many times before it's become second nature to me.  I think by doing this I'll be in a much better position to train for longer distances this fall as the temperature gradually begins to cool down...

Yesterday's Internet Shutdown in Gainesville

Late yesterday morning at home, I had the television on, tuned in to C-Span2, the station broadcasting the floor session of the United States Senate.  Republican senator Mike Enzi, from Wyoming, was on the floor rambling on about something or another in his typically boring fashion when he stopped in mid-sentence, his mouth wide open.  And the dude wouldn't move...he was positively frozen!  Of course, I quickly determined that this station had a broadcasting glitch and tried other channels.  I could still get anything on channel 27 or lower, but nothing beyond that.  I then tried to get on the Internet...no dice.  I concluded from this that the problem was due to a modem that my son had procured and installed the previous day, and decided to go out to Starbucks a little later to do my Internet stuff from my laptop there.  But when I sat down in my favorite coffee shop, all comfortable in the air-conditioning with my coffee and open laptop, I discovered that I couldn't get online there, either.  I then heard someone working behind the counter remark to a customer about the loss of the Internet...and I promptly closed up my computer and left...an offline refugee in search of an online homeland...

By that time I had inferred that Cox Communications, which provides my home with both TV cable and Internet service, was experiencing a break in their services...the question was how extensive this problem was.  I decided to go to the far south end of Gainesville, to a McDonald's I frequent near my workplace.  Voilà, everything worked there and I was able to write and publish my blog article about the late David Bowie's musical legacy...

Later, in the news, it came out the service interruption was due to a tree-trimming accident in Ocala that severed a crucial line in their system.  Reportedly the outages were widespread...going out as far as Pensacola in the western Florida panhandle.  The services were supposedly restored in late afternoon.  Of course, if you had a different Internet provider...as that McDonald's apparently did...then you were unaffected by yesterday's hassles.  For the thousands of Cox Communications customers who were affected, though, there was a lot a scrambling around if not weeping and gnashing of teeth...

Compiling List of My Favorite David Bowie Songs

After hearing of David Bowie's death back in January and being startled at the high quality of this incredibly talented musical artist's final album Blackstar, I decided to investigate all of his studio albums, numbering 27 in all...from his eponymous debut release back in 1967 to Blackstar this year.  While listening to them, I naturally came across many familiar old songs of his, such as Space Oddity, Changes, Suffragette City, Rebel Rebel, Young Americans, Golden Years, Ashes to Ashes, Let's Dance, Modern Love, China Girl, and Blue Jean.  I also remembered his singles collaboration with Queen titled Under Pressure, one of my favorites.  While I still like many of these old hits of Bowie's, I discovered some fantastic lesser-known tracks as well...and many of them appeared on albums he made in the late 1990s and during this century, long after he had faded from mainstream rock radio popularity...

I've been noting which tracks on each album are to my liking, and have been compiling a list of them, comparing them to each other.  It's hard to assess the relative value of Bowie's songs this way since they vary greatly by style, mood, instrumentation, and even genre.  Still, I feel at this time that I am in a good position to rank my top 50 favorite songs of his...and rank his albums as well.  That doesn't mean that, upon further listenings, I might not just change my opinion with regard to these rankings.  But now is now, and I know what I like now...I'll just let the future take care of itself...

So, in a few days I'll come out with my list of David Bowie favorites...but first, I think I'll take a break now and listen again to a few of them...

Gainesville's West 34th Street

West 34th Street is an interesting road in Gainesville.  It is my most traveled street, since my workplace is on it at the most southern point of the city...while my subdivision lies at Gainesville's far north.  The distance from my house to my office is eight miles, and in years gone by (from 1989 to 1995) I've ridden my bicycle to and from work on it numerous times.  Although I feel I'm still in good enough shape to resume this activity, I no longer trust other drivers to stay focused on the road and not on their "devices".  Yes, I've recently seen too many instances of cars in front of me veering off the road into the adjacent bike lane and I picture myself getting run over on my bicycle were I there.  Of course, there have always been distracted drivers, and besides, especially when on the road at night, there is always the risk of encountering alcohol-impaired drivers.  But even many drivers who have been drinking, in my opinion, usually don't pose as much of a risk as those who can't stop texting or checking their Facebook page while driving.  Still, it might be fun to get my wheels out again and try the old route every now and then...

Gainesville's West 34th Street is a section of State Route 121, a most curious state route.  Out of Gainesville and going south-southwest, it runs through Williston and eventually out to the Gulf of Mexico.  Northward from our fair city, it passes on into Georgia a few miles west of Jacksonville and then continues on as Georgia State Route 121.  But that's not all: after winding its way through the southeastern part of that state, this road crosses over into South Carolina...and, you guessed it, becomes South Carolina State Route 121!.  I'd like to say that it goes on and on like that, but just south of the border with North Carolina, approaching Charlotte, this very, very long road finally comes to an end...

If you are from out of town, you may have heard of the "Wall" on the east side of SW 34th Street just south of SW 2nd Avenue that various people over the years, mainly students, continually paint messages over...with one exception: the names of the five victims of the student murders in 1990 continue to be permanently displayed and honored on it...and in the street median facing that wall are five trees, each with a sign featuring the name of a victim.  This stretch of road, which is on the slope of a small hill, is also part of the Five Points Marathon/Half-Marathon and I've run down it three times...in 2010, 2014, and 2015...and plan to add to that list next February.  Also, further north lies Westside Park, the site of several races I've run...including the last one, July Fourth's Melon Run.  Going back south of the "Wall", about a half-mile down the road, is the Florida Museum of Natural History and the UF Harn Center for the Performing Arts...which incidentally is the starting and finishing point for those aforementioned Five Points races...

Although West 34th Street is a major city thoroughfare for Gainesville, my city's public transit service, which is continually boasting of all its routes and accessibility, has steadfastly refused over the years to add a route going down this important, well-traveled road.  If they ever did, I would definitely ride it...especially if I could ride home on it late at night after getting off from work...

NBA Great Tim Duncan Announces Retirement

Tim Duncan, one of the greatest National Basketball Association players of our era, has announced his retirement after 19 years with one club, the San Antonio Spurs...amassing five league titles, fifteen all-star team selections, and a Most Valuable Player award.  His unassuming nature continued with this announcement in the off-season: contrast that to media addict Kobe Bryant's highly publicized "farewell tour" last year with the Lakers, probably their worst season ever.  But that's the kind of person Duncan was.  He was a very talented and accomplished power forward...some think that he was the greatest ever in that position...but he treated all of his teammates with the utmost respect and fostered many long-lasting friendships.  Chief among his friends is Gregg Popovich, the only head coach he ever had throughout his NBA career.  Duncan had an outstanding regular season this past year, but he faltered in the playoffs...but I could have said the same about the league's ongoing MVP for the second straight season: Golden State's Stephen Curry.  Along with future Hall of Fame guard Tony Parker and the "Sixth Man" Manu Ginobili, the Spurs relied on Tim's consistency over the years to be perennial contenders.  Sure, Michael Jordan got six championships with the Bulls...but Duncan's five were spread out over an amazingly long span of years, and in every intervening one his team was always deeply in the hunt for another title...

Will we ever again see anyone of the combined talent, character, and consistency of Tim Duncan in the NBA?  My gut instincts tell me no, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed.  He was one of my most admired athletes over the past two decades...

Police Encounters with Suspects: Protocol and Response

In light of what has been going on with the relationship across our country between the police and the black community...especially concerning shooting deaths of blacks by cops when there didn't seem to be a compelling threat present...I have recently come across two interesting social media posts about the topic.  One of these, about which I'll discuss today, was a Facebook repost from a while back and which concerned a young black man pulled over in Tucson, Arizona for a busted taillight.  Upon being asked if he had a weapon, the driver informed the (white) policeman that he was legally carrying a concealed gun, described where he was wearing it...and also mentioned that he was in the National Guard.  The police asked him, in the interests of safety, to follow their stated procedure to carefully disarm him in order to safely attend to the main goal...which was to see his driver's license. This he did without complaint, all went smoothly, and the officer handed him back his gun in a plastic bag without ticketing him, complimenting him on his cooperation.  The message behind this post is clear: if you are aware in advance of police protocol, concerns, and procedure during encounters with civilians suspected of anything, then you shouldn't have anything to worry about the police harming you...regardless of your race or that of the law enforcement officer.  On the other hand, if you aren't...and most of us aren't...privy to all of the ins and outs of the police code...then it's your own fault if you happen to make a move in their presence that they feel justified in answering with a bullet to your body.  I'm not black, I'm white...and the policeman who stopped me for a traffic violation a few years ago wasn't white...he was black...but the situation was similar.  At the end of explaining to me what he saw as my violation of a recently passed, obscurely-stated state law, he thrust a board at me through the window that had my ticket set on top of it, all written out for me to sign.  I naturally...and I thought compliantly...reached to take hold of it to sign and he suddenly went into a near rage, yelling at me not to take it!  I honestly thought at that moment that he would pull a gun on me. Without saying anything, I meekly took the pen he had handed me and, careful not to commit the unpardonable sin of touching anything directly, scribbled my name on the ticket, hoping to God that this madman would then just creep back into his car and leave me alone...

Note that I was subject to a "crisis" moment with a cop that wasn't my fault.  That's the fault of the police, in my opinion, for expecting me to know in advance some arcane aspect of their procedures.  On the other hand, I had the presence of mind and enough respect for the police that I was the entire time consciously trying to cooperate with them...and immediately got myself as meek as possible when I saw that cop go into "combat" mode.  I'm looking at a lot of these tragic cases in the news and I'm seeing suspects engaged with police in heated arguments, wrestling matches, and running away.  None of which should justify being shot and killed...that's on the cops...but those who ultimately were victims of police violence should all have been educated as to how to behave when that crisis moment came in their own encounter with the "long arm of the law".  So what I'm saying, I suppose, regarding that Facebook post is that yes, there is a proper, effective way for citizens to respond to the police when stopped and questioned and that we should all be drilled in it.  But the reality of it all is that very few of us are and the police should know better than to expect everyone to respond perfectly as did that Arizona Guardsman...

Major Party Presidential Conventions Coming Up Soon

When I was eleven years old, in the summer of 1968, I watched my first presidential nomination conventions for both the Republican and Democratic Parties.  They dragged on for days and usually went deep into the night...and were carried on all three major networks CBS, NBC, and ABC.  In the first one, for the GOP, Richard Nixon won a majority against second-place contender Nelson Rockefeller from the left and third-place Ronald Reagan from the right.  Despite his opposition, Nixon had a pretty easy go of it, once his main threat to the nomination, George Romney, had dropped out of the race months earlier after he claimed he had been "brainwashed" about Vietnam by U.S. officials on a visit there.  It was the Democratic Convention, held in Chicago and the site of the infamous police riot against protesters and innocent bystanders, that gripped my attention.  In the aftermath of the Robert Kennedy assassination, the only sizeable opposition left to establishment candidate and sitting vice-president Hubert Humphrey was Gene McCarthy, whose performance against incumbent president Lyndon Johnson in the New Hampshire Primary had ushered in the latter's withdrawal from the race for his own reelection.  That convention was insanely disorganized, divided, and rancorous...it put Humphrey at a big disadvantage against Nixon in the general election campaign...but it was very interesting to watch...

I also saw the Democratic and Republican Conventions in 1972, both held in Miami Beach.  McGovern withstood a rules challenge from Humphrey to win the Democratic nomination while Nixon won his party's nomination nearly unanimously.  I felt that the Democratic convention was interesting because there was a legitimate contest going on there as well as a wide gulf between various factions...right-winger George Wallace had many delegates there...but on the Republican side it was just a procession of speakers.  Sadly, that's what these presidential conventions have evolved into nowadays: a preplanned, orchestrated public relations program promoting each party's candidate and its platform.  They're very careful now to ensure that the maximum number of TV viewers have access to their respective shows, now carefully contained within prime time hours.  How utterly boring...

I have no desire to watch either convention this year...that's probably just as well since I'll be working every evening they're on the air.  The Republican Convention, held in Cleveland, will be starting a little more than a week from now, on Monday July 18 and last through Thursday the 21st.  The Democrats will follow the Republicans exactly a week later from Philadelphia, also going from  Monday through Thursday.  As for outside demonstrations, there are plans for protests from leftist groups at both convention sites...

Distance Running For Kids: Different Than When I Was Little

When I was in elementary and high school, we had our own annual physical fitness test.  Let's see, there was the 50-yard dash, shuttle run, pull-ups, standing long jump, sit-ups, and softball throw in the elementary years.  When I got to the eighth-grade, they seem to have added a new component to the mix: the 600-yard run.  You see, the idea of actually running a full mile nonstop wasn't something that the "experts" in physical fitness back when I was a kid in the late 1960s and early 1970s thought was worth promoting...later on it became a feature of such tests.  As for me when I was a kid, whenever I ran, it was always full-speed from the start, without any notion of pacing myself.  And it's true that, in elementary and junior high, I was a pretty good sprinter.  But the 600-yard run might have been the 600-mile run for the agony I put myself through running it...basically the "sprint from hell".  Yet I usually did pretty well in whatever race I ran with my fellow students for this distance, most of the time either winning or finishing second. And, yes, in ninth grade phys-ed class we would sometimes run a mile around the track.  The idea of actually training for distance running, though, was something I had never considered nor had it ever been suggested to me...until in my later high school years.  The main point was that running long distances, which now so obviously dominates the sport of running among the general population, was then not at all encouraged for children, me among them.  It wouldn't be until later in high school that I would begin to run long-distance.  In high-school cross country competition, the course was only 2.5 miles long...while in track the longest competition was 2 miles.  Of course, that did not stop us (I participated in track in the 11th grade, in early 1973) from running as many as 10 miles a day in practice...

All these memories come to mind after I just finished yet another "subdued" run in a race, the 3-mile Melon Run this past July Fourth.  I did finish that race...hooray...but a couple of little boys, one seven and the other nine, finished about a half-minute ahead of me.  They had been conditioned by the favorable climate for distance running that permeates these times of ours, something completely lacking when I was their age.  To me back then in the mid-to-late 1960s, running just meant sprinting...I don't even think I knew of the word "sprint"...when you ran, you just ran as fast as you possibly could.  The idea of running even just a mile would have seemed a superhuman performance to me when I was seven.  But nowadays, that paradigm has massively shifted, with youngsters now encouraged to tackle the longer distances...

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...