Yesterday I wrote about my sample ballot for the upcoming primary election on August 30...mine is for Democratic-registered voters. I mentioned a tough primary contest going on in the Florida House of Representatives District 21, which is very close to the subdivision I live in...but I actually live in District 20, less than a quarter mile from the boundary line between the two. My district is represented by Clovis Watson, a Democrat...and I just discovered that he is running unopposed by any Republicans in the general election. But almost literally just across the street, Republicans are furiously slinging mud at each other for the seat being vacated by Keith Perry, who is running for the State Senate District 8 seat this election against Democrat Rod Smith. The main GOP contenders in District 21 are Chuck Clemons, a familiar name in Gainesville politics, and Wenda Lewis, a political neophyte whose family business is oil. The two have been accusing each other of bad things...like that Clemons used to be one of those nasty Democrats and that Lewis's company was cited in the past for some transgression. Both are claiming to be the conservative's conservative, each brandishing "A" grades from the NRA...and Clemons is boasting tea party congressman Ted Yoho's support. Besides these two, there is a third candidate in this district for the Republicans, Tim Rogers, who doesn't appear to be interested in jumping into the mud pit with them. Whoever wins the primary will face Democrat Maryhelen Wheeler in the general election...
Watching the ads of Clemons and Lewis on TV constantly probably gives a lot of folks living in Gainesville the idea that they should be deciding which one to vote for. Of course, if you're not a Republican, then you don't get to play. And if you can, then you just might want to consider that third candidate, Rogers, before you make up your mind. But this election is only for the western half of Gainesville...and points beyond...and not for the eastern side. But I think folks are still confused about that: I saw a Tim Rogers sign in my own neighborhood...maybe that homeowner supports him, but he or she cannot vote in Tim's primary election, which is in the adjacent district. For my part, I erroneously wrote in my blog a few days ago that Keith Perry was currently my state representative, but I'm in District 20 and it's Clovis, not Keith...
Maybe what I'm trying to get at here is that it isn't very easy for citizen voters to be able to tell which districts they live in, and watching all these television ads can be confusing. Has it ever happened to you that you thought long and seriously about a race and then went to the polling station only to discover that it was in another district from where you live? Well, it's happened to me and I think, in our information age, more serious efforts need to be taken to inform voters which city, state House, state Senate, and U.S. House districts they live in. All one should need is a search engine on the Internet whereby they enter their address and the information about their particular national, state, and local districts is made instantly available. Sounds like something that the Supervisor of Elections should be responsible for implementing...
Monday, August 22, 2016
Sunday, August 21, 2016
Looking at My August 30 Primary Election Sample Ballot
With early voting already underway here in Florida, I'm looking at my own Alachua County sample ballot for the upcoming primary election scheduled for August 30. Not all of the races that will be decided in November are on this ballot, since some of the races for my registered party (Democratic) are unopposed. Therefore, for my Florida State Senate (District 8) and State House of Representatives (District 20), I'll have to wait until the general election on November 8 to cast my ballot. However, in the adjacent State House District 21 race on the Republican side, the media campaign has turned into a mudslinging festival among the two leading contenders. And in the Senate race (remember, this is the Florida State Senate) Republican Keith Perry and Democrat Rod Smith have been going at each other hot and heavy a long time already. Nor will I have a vote on my U.S. House District 3 seat, currently occupied by Republican Ted Yoho, who is apparently running unopposed within his own party...until November. But I will be able to vote on the Democratic side of the U.S. Senate contest this year for the position now taken by Marco Rubio, who has decided to run for reelection after all...although not without some competition within his own party. Also on the ballot for me are primary races for county sheriff, supervisor of elections and two county commissioner seats. Additionally, there are votes for one school board seat and a state constitutional amendment proposal that would exempt, for a twenty-year period, enhanced personal property values derived from solar or renewal energy improvements from being considered when assessing property taxes. I am interested in the county commission seats because the two incumbents rule the commission like they own it, and one of them has been in office already for 16 years...time to turn over the reins to someone else, I say...
Saturday, August 20, 2016
Just Finished Reading Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
Somewhere buried in the deep recesses of my garage is my copy of a collection of short stories by contemporary science fiction writer Orson Scott Card. It includes a short story, titled Ender's Game. I never got around to reading it, and now I'm glad: Card later expanded it into a full-length novel, which I've just finished reading...
In Ender's Game, it is in the future as humanity, by this time very adept in space travel, has had to fight off two invasions of a bug-like alien civilization (hence their name "buggers") into our solar system. And as a third invasion is envisioned, the military and civilian leaders of planet Earth have to come up with a plan to finally win decisively and permanently over the enemy. They test and train young children in order to make them military commanders in this final conflict. One of these children is Andrew "Ender" Wiggin, and this book is basically his story. The narrative goes from the final hours with his family through his ordeals in the space military schools...and beyond. Along the way, he is heavily subjected to bullying by his peers which his teachers not only allow but actually encourage. Part of the training is in computer games and part is in elaborate simulations of battle scenarios where the students are divided into different armies and pitted against each other. The authorities have high expectations of Ender and have to walk a tight-rope between pushing him too hard and not giving him adequate training and preparation for the impending war...
When I read about Ender undergoing bullying, it reminded me a bit of my own childhood. No, I wasn't a constant target for bullies, but I did have a very slight build and a gentle nature, which gave some others the notion that I was weak and an easy target. I suppose that happens today as well, but back then adults seemed to be of the philosophy that it was the victim's responsibility to handle bullying, instead of today's general attitude that focuses on the bully as the one with the problem. Ender's Game was like my youth when grown-ups turned a blind eye to the abuse clearly going on around them...
Ender's Game is a very well-written novel that develops some vivid and hard-to-forget characters. It has an unexpected climax, and the story's ending not only ties up its loose ends very well, but also leaves room for sequels...which Card has obliged us by writing. I haven't seen the movie adaptation that came out about five years ago and starred Asa Butterfield...known for his title role in Martin Scorsese's wonderful movie Hugo...as Ender Wiggin, with Harrison Ford and Ben Kingsley in supporting roles. Guess I'll now have to go check it out...
In Ender's Game, it is in the future as humanity, by this time very adept in space travel, has had to fight off two invasions of a bug-like alien civilization (hence their name "buggers") into our solar system. And as a third invasion is envisioned, the military and civilian leaders of planet Earth have to come up with a plan to finally win decisively and permanently over the enemy. They test and train young children in order to make them military commanders in this final conflict. One of these children is Andrew "Ender" Wiggin, and this book is basically his story. The narrative goes from the final hours with his family through his ordeals in the space military schools...and beyond. Along the way, he is heavily subjected to bullying by his peers which his teachers not only allow but actually encourage. Part of the training is in computer games and part is in elaborate simulations of battle scenarios where the students are divided into different armies and pitted against each other. The authorities have high expectations of Ender and have to walk a tight-rope between pushing him too hard and not giving him adequate training and preparation for the impending war...
When I read about Ender undergoing bullying, it reminded me a bit of my own childhood. No, I wasn't a constant target for bullies, but I did have a very slight build and a gentle nature, which gave some others the notion that I was weak and an easy target. I suppose that happens today as well, but back then adults seemed to be of the philosophy that it was the victim's responsibility to handle bullying, instead of today's general attitude that focuses on the bully as the one with the problem. Ender's Game was like my youth when grown-ups turned a blind eye to the abuse clearly going on around them...
Ender's Game is a very well-written novel that develops some vivid and hard-to-forget characters. It has an unexpected climax, and the story's ending not only ties up its loose ends very well, but also leaves room for sequels...which Card has obliged us by writing. I haven't seen the movie adaptation that came out about five years ago and starred Asa Butterfield...known for his title role in Martin Scorsese's wonderful movie Hugo...as Ender Wiggin, with Harrison Ford and Ben Kingsley in supporting roles. Guess I'll now have to go check it out...
Friday, August 19, 2016
Ready to Investigate Another Musical Artist's Collected Recordings
I had a great time over the last few weeks investigating the career musical recording production of the late David Bowie, discovering many, many songs that I would never have heard had this extraordinary artist not died this past January. Don't get me wrong: I'm sad that he passed on, but it was that passing, in conjunction with the release of his final album Blackstar, that prompted my interest. He recorded 27 studio albums, so listening to all of them was time-consuming, to say the least. But now I'm done with this project, albeit with a long list now of my favorite Bowie tracks. And now I want to do the same with another recording artist. Should I attempt to examine the collected works of Prince, who also died not too long ago? Or should I choose a different musician or group?
I'm already pretty familiar with the collected recordings of acts like the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, the Doors, Nirvana, the Moody Blues, the Who, Regina Spektor, Beck, Radiohead, Kasabian, Spoon, Gorillaz, Arcade Fire, and Sufjan Stevens...some of these are renown in the world of classic rock, some are famous in the alternative genre...and some aren't all that generally well-known. I think it might be interesting to take an act famous for their singles hits and then listen to some of their complete albums in order to see what I can find of value. Besides Prince, the great Canadian band Guess Who, Madonna, Marvin Gaye, Elton John, Stevie Wonder, and the Rolling Stones may be the leading contenders. I'm going to listen to three of Madonna's albums in a few days...Ray of Light, Music, and Madonna (her debut release)...and see whether listening to further recordings will be a worthwhile venture. I picked those three albums out of her thirteen studio works because I already know that they feature some of my favorite songs of hers. I've always felt that Madonna had great musical talent and could have had her fame and success without going overboard with the videos, role-playing, and celebrity hoopla. On the other hand, David Bowie also did those things in his own way...maybe that's why I had erroneously disregarded his music for so long...
I'm already pretty familiar with the collected recordings of acts like the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, the Doors, Nirvana, the Moody Blues, the Who, Regina Spektor, Beck, Radiohead, Kasabian, Spoon, Gorillaz, Arcade Fire, and Sufjan Stevens...some of these are renown in the world of classic rock, some are famous in the alternative genre...and some aren't all that generally well-known. I think it might be interesting to take an act famous for their singles hits and then listen to some of their complete albums in order to see what I can find of value. Besides Prince, the great Canadian band Guess Who, Madonna, Marvin Gaye, Elton John, Stevie Wonder, and the Rolling Stones may be the leading contenders. I'm going to listen to three of Madonna's albums in a few days...Ray of Light, Music, and Madonna (her debut release)...and see whether listening to further recordings will be a worthwhile venture. I picked those three albums out of her thirteen studio works because I already know that they feature some of my favorite songs of hers. I've always felt that Madonna had great musical talent and could have had her fame and success without going overboard with the videos, role-playing, and celebrity hoopla. On the other hand, David Bowie also did those things in his own way...maybe that's why I had erroneously disregarded his music for so long...
Thursday, August 18, 2016
Need to Improve My Own Proofreading
When I write my blog articles, trying to come up with something on a daily basis, I do all of the editorial and proofreading review myself before publishing them on the Internet. I read over what I have written at least twice...and sometimes more, usually catching several spelling, punctuation, grammar, and poor wording mistakes in the process. After I publish an entry, I then read it again, before going on Facebook and placing a link to it. And then I again read the article. After all this, I'll go back again a day or two later...and still find stupid mistakes I made, long after other people have been reading it! Now that's a bit embarrassing...
One of the reasons I miss some of my errors is that, having conceived the article myself, I tend to read it in my own mind as I have thought it out, instead of objectively looking at the text. Sometimes, because of this, some writers will have someone else proofread their material before publishing...this isn't very feasible to me. Besides, I want to be a more careful writer and self-proofreading is something I want to improve in order to help me in that regard. One trick to the trade: I found that by slowly reading my article aloud to myself, I have been able to turn up more mistakes. Now, I guess it's time for me to proofread this article a few times and then publish it...and then in a couple of days discover the mistakes that I still missed...
Wednesday, August 17, 2016
Talk Radio's Mark Levin
Mark Levin is a conservative talk show host with a weekday evening radio program from 6 to 9 eastern time. A fervent supporter of Ronald Reagan since 1976, he served in the entire Reagan presidential administration in the 1980s, chiefly as an assistant to Attorney General Edwin Meese. He calls himself a constitutional conservative and not only calls to task those in the opposition Democratic Party, but also those in the Republican Party who he believes have strayed from the Reagan philosophy. He can be quite thoughtful with his opinions, but then again can go off into tantrum fits when he personally runs down those with whom he disagrees, calling them idiots, morons, and worse. He supported Ted Cruz this year in the Republican primary process and is critical of eventual nominee Donald Trump on several fronts. One of his objections is Trump's tendency to go off-message and engage in personal vendettas with various people instead of focusing on what Levin believes would eventually win him the election...i.e. continually emphasizing his opponent Hillary Clinton's liabilities. However, it is clear to me that Donald Trump, a media figure who has depended heavily on other media figures...like Michael Savage, another radio talk show host...for his political outlook and how he expresses it, is only doing what Mark Levin himself does for three hours on his show. Trump lays out his position on the issues...like Levin...and also engages in personal polemics with his enemies, real or imagined...again like Levin. So although it's not precisely hypocritical for Mark Levin to criticize Donald Trump for his continual gaffes, it does raise the point that what one does to be successful in one area (like talk radio) doesn't necessarily translate into success in presidential politics. I would add to this that what one does to amass fortunes in real estate and business...or to be successful on reality TV... also doesn't necessarily translate into success as a sitting president...
I don't know where Mark Levin got the moniker "The Great One", but he has no problem about boasting of it on his show. I used to despise him for his insulting nature toward people with different viewpoints, and I still object to that methodology. But I also recognize that he does stand by his own enunciated principles and isn't just some party or organizational hack (unlike Bill O'Reilly or Sean Hannity), nor will he hesitate to strongly criticize Republicans when they stray from his view of Reagan's legacy (unlike Rush Limbaugh). I do have a problem whenever I've watched an Obama speech and then hear Levin read all sorts of nefarious inferences from it when I thought that the speech was positive and constructive. There is definitely a gulf between what Levin and I regard as reasonable political debate...sometimes I wonder whether folks like Mark Levin and Michael Savage haven't placed themselves within an insulated bubble that only invites feedback from those who share their own peculiar outlooks...
In support of that notion, Mark Levin has begun his own TV channel, called LevinTV, that is available on a paid-subscription basis in different formats. For this new venture of his, he has constructed his own special studio where he spends hours discussing his vision for America while inviting guests who buttress his own arguments and expand on them...but no moderates, liberals, or populists need bother to apply to appear on it. To Levin, it's great to be in this big ideological bubble, shut off from those "idiots" and "morons" with differing perspectives. But although he can be pretty obnoxious, he also has, in a way, a compelling personality...I can see why he's so popular. Hey, even I listen to the dude...
I don't know where Mark Levin got the moniker "The Great One", but he has no problem about boasting of it on his show. I used to despise him for his insulting nature toward people with different viewpoints, and I still object to that methodology. But I also recognize that he does stand by his own enunciated principles and isn't just some party or organizational hack (unlike Bill O'Reilly or Sean Hannity), nor will he hesitate to strongly criticize Republicans when they stray from his view of Reagan's legacy (unlike Rush Limbaugh). I do have a problem whenever I've watched an Obama speech and then hear Levin read all sorts of nefarious inferences from it when I thought that the speech was positive and constructive. There is definitely a gulf between what Levin and I regard as reasonable political debate...sometimes I wonder whether folks like Mark Levin and Michael Savage haven't placed themselves within an insulated bubble that only invites feedback from those who share their own peculiar outlooks...
In support of that notion, Mark Levin has begun his own TV channel, called LevinTV, that is available on a paid-subscription basis in different formats. For this new venture of his, he has constructed his own special studio where he spends hours discussing his vision for America while inviting guests who buttress his own arguments and expand on them...but no moderates, liberals, or populists need bother to apply to appear on it. To Levin, it's great to be in this big ideological bubble, shut off from those "idiots" and "morons" with differing perspectives. But although he can be pretty obnoxious, he also has, in a way, a compelling personality...I can see why he's so popular. Hey, even I listen to the dude...
Monday, August 15, 2016
Despite Gaffes, Trump Stays Competitive in Race
It's actually been going on for several months: Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump says something outrageous...people are outraged...and the verdict comes in over the media that it's all over and that the loose-tongued billionaire might as well just drop out of the race. And it's true that, from time to time, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton will build up her lead over her chief opponent, even to double digits, following some of the worst of these outbursts. And then a few days later, that lead will appear to diminish back to around five percentage points, give or take a couple. That is exactly what's going on right now: after Trump's ranting and raving about the Muslim Gold Star parents and calling Clinton alternately a monster, the Devil, and co-founder of ISIS (with President Obama, of course) while constantly referring to her as "Crooked Hillary", it looked as if he had gone over the final line of so many that he has already tromped over. And yet, the latest polls, as you can see by going to the RealClearPolitics website, have him in a much closer contest than the news media talking heads would have you believe...
The depressing thing about all this is not only that we still have 85 days left in this grueling election campaign to put up with, but also the intensity of the attacks on television and radio will grow, along with their viciousness. And don't get me started with all of the robo-calls and political mailings we'll be flooded with. I knew more than a year ago for whom I would be voting for president...it represents the depths of ignorance and foolishness that so many people in our country still haven't been able to make up their own minds on this subject when the choice is so clear-cut, hence the swinging back and forth of the candidates in the polls...
The depressing thing about all this is not only that we still have 85 days left in this grueling election campaign to put up with, but also the intensity of the attacks on television and radio will grow, along with their viciousness. And don't get me started with all of the robo-calls and political mailings we'll be flooded with. I knew more than a year ago for whom I would be voting for president...it represents the depths of ignorance and foolishness that so many people in our country still haven't been able to make up their own minds on this subject when the choice is so clear-cut, hence the swinging back and forth of the candidates in the polls...
Sunday, August 14, 2016
Backyard Sky-Gazing Leads to Meteor Sighting
I was sitting out in my backyard around midnight last night on one of my days off from work (tonight is the other one), enjoying the unusually clear skies, a relief from the rain and clouds we've been enduring night after night here in the Gainesville area for the last couple of weeks, and thinking to myself about assorted things...I call it "free-association brainstorming"...when in the low eastern sky I saw a meteor streak toward the south. It started out in the constellation Aquarius (just south of Pegasus) and petered out near the first-magnitude star Fomalhaut in Piscis Austrinus...and was very bright. I had thought to myself that I once again missed the annual Perseids meteor shower, which had peaked a couple of nights ago while the skies here in Gainesville were overcast. But this definitely was a Perseid "fireball": it radiated away from Perseus, the epicenter of this shower. I didn't observe any more meteors after that, but I was happy to have at least experienced this one, and it was impressive...
The effect of finally having a clear night sky to gaze at was only slightly marred by the bright gibbous moon that tended to make the fainter of the stars less visible. The standouts were still there for this time of year: overhead was the summer triangle of first-magnitude stars Vega, Altair, and Deneb and their associated constellations Lyra (the lyre), Aquila (the eagle), and Cygnus (the swan), respectively. Facing north I made out the circumpolar constellations of Cepheus (the king) and Cassiopeia (the queen), while I already mentioned the presence in the east of relatively faint Aquarius (the water carrier) and the more prominent Pegasus (the flying horse), with its signature asterism, the "square". And then there was Fomalhaut of Piscis Austrinus (the southern fish), the brightest star in the autumn evening sky. Good to see some of my celestial "friends" again...
As I write this while sitting at Panera on Newberry Road around 6 pm (the Starbucks I usually go to was packed), it is storming outside, with no end in sight. But we'll see what it's like later on at night, when I like to drag my chair out to the middle of the yard, sit back, train my eyes on the heavens, and muse...it would be nice, though, if that dog at the home on the other side would stop barking at me...
The effect of finally having a clear night sky to gaze at was only slightly marred by the bright gibbous moon that tended to make the fainter of the stars less visible. The standouts were still there for this time of year: overhead was the summer triangle of first-magnitude stars Vega, Altair, and Deneb and their associated constellations Lyra (the lyre), Aquila (the eagle), and Cygnus (the swan), respectively. Facing north I made out the circumpolar constellations of Cepheus (the king) and Cassiopeia (the queen), while I already mentioned the presence in the east of relatively faint Aquarius (the water carrier) and the more prominent Pegasus (the flying horse), with its signature asterism, the "square". And then there was Fomalhaut of Piscis Austrinus (the southern fish), the brightest star in the autumn evening sky. Good to see some of my celestial "friends" again...
As I write this while sitting at Panera on Newberry Road around 6 pm (the Starbucks I usually go to was packed), it is storming outside, with no end in sight. But we'll see what it's like later on at night, when I like to drag my chair out to the middle of the yard, sit back, train my eyes on the heavens, and muse...it would be nice, though, if that dog at the home on the other side would stop barking at me...
Saturday, August 13, 2016
Just Finished Reading The Gene: An Intimate History by Siddhartha Mukherjee
Siddhartha Mukherjee is a distinguished cancer biologist who has a great talent that few scientists possess: the ability and passion for sharing his often very specialized and complex field with the general public. A few years ago he wrote the highly-acclaimed book The Emperor of All Maladies, which was about that dreaded disease of cancer. To do research into cancer these days necessarily involves one in the closely related and heavily overlapping field in biology known as genetics. Mukherjee has in turn written another great popular science book: The Gene: An Intimate History, which covers this very interesting topic from its scientific history, controversies throughout the years, important breakthroughs along the way, and the future in genetics...
Mukherjee interspersed his narrative about genetics with personal accounts from his own eastern Indian family's history of mental disorders...that his family line on his father's side seemed predisposed toward developing schizophrenia and bipolar disorders pointed to heredity and the engine driving it: the gene. He then recounted the history of modern genetics, concentrating heavily on the pea experiments of Gregor Mendel in the 19th century. He covered the various competitions among scientists during that time and in the decades following to understand the principles of heredity as its study ultimately came down to the structure of the DNA molecule and how it interacts with its mirror RNA version and with proteins and other substances to transmit genetic information. Along the way, bumps in the road to the truth have occurred, and the author focuses on these as well. One such bump was the eugenics movement of the late 19th and early 20th century, which attempted to extend heredity to intelligence and apply it to racial types...with disastrous political and social consequences culminating in the travesties perpetrated not only in Hitler's Nazi Germany, but within America as well as women were forced into sterilization based on eugenics-based assessments. Another bump was the Lysenko movement in the Soviet Union, which claimed that the gene could be directly altered by change in environment, with the result being the setback of that country's agriculture through policies enacted in line with this fallacy. Ironically, in more recent years it was discovered that environmentally-induced changes could be inherited, but not by changing the actual genetic information but rather by the presence of proteins and other substances that could "turn on" and "turn off" specific genes. This phenomenon is essential to the new subfield known as "epigenetics"...
This book delves fearlessly at times into pretty technical information, especially with regard to the chemicals involved with genes, their composition, and the processes resulting. There's no doubt in my mind that I would have gotten more from the book with a better background in biology...unfortunately that's one area in my own education (of many, I'm sure) in which I am sorely lacking. Oh well, our good author was wise enough not to dwell too long in technical narrative...which I recognize was necessary to effectively present this work...and would eventually go into an area that I could more readily grasp...
Mukherjee is very concerned about diseases and how much they can be traced back to the genetic code...the composite of all genes within humans, along with their arrangement, being known as the human genome. It turns out that some diseases point to a single, specific gene (like Huntington's and sickle-cell anemia)...but most of them seem to be the product of more than one gene, acting together and often in conjunction with environmental factors. As genes responsible for birth defects like Down's syndrome were discovered, it became expedient to perform prenatal tests for pregnant women regarding the likelihood that the baby would be born with the defect. And if the tests came back positive, then the question of abortion came into play. As a matter of fact, the more we learn about how human traits specifically correspond to elements along the genome, it becomes more and more an ethical/moral question: how far should we go in determining our genetic future, both as individuals, families, and as humans collectively? The rise in stem cell research and its applications to the alteration of the genome in order to "improve" it also raises the important question and its partner: what constitutes improvement...and how, with our still fledgling knowledge in this growing field, do we know that we aren't unintentionally creating genetic structures that are more harmful than helpful?
My very first introduction to the field of genetics was a Bell Science movie titled The Thread of Life, starring that "bald guy with glasses", Dr. Frank Baxter, back in 1967 when I was in the sixth grade. Siddhartha Mukherjee's The Gene: An Intimate History is definitely a huge step up from that...but it still keeps me firmly planted as a non-scientist. But I do feel that I am, if only a little, closer to understanding some of the issues that seem to continually arise about genetic research in the news every few months or so. I recommend this book, and I may well come back to it from time to time...
Mukherjee interspersed his narrative about genetics with personal accounts from his own eastern Indian family's history of mental disorders...that his family line on his father's side seemed predisposed toward developing schizophrenia and bipolar disorders pointed to heredity and the engine driving it: the gene. He then recounted the history of modern genetics, concentrating heavily on the pea experiments of Gregor Mendel in the 19th century. He covered the various competitions among scientists during that time and in the decades following to understand the principles of heredity as its study ultimately came down to the structure of the DNA molecule and how it interacts with its mirror RNA version and with proteins and other substances to transmit genetic information. Along the way, bumps in the road to the truth have occurred, and the author focuses on these as well. One such bump was the eugenics movement of the late 19th and early 20th century, which attempted to extend heredity to intelligence and apply it to racial types...with disastrous political and social consequences culminating in the travesties perpetrated not only in Hitler's Nazi Germany, but within America as well as women were forced into sterilization based on eugenics-based assessments. Another bump was the Lysenko movement in the Soviet Union, which claimed that the gene could be directly altered by change in environment, with the result being the setback of that country's agriculture through policies enacted in line with this fallacy. Ironically, in more recent years it was discovered that environmentally-induced changes could be inherited, but not by changing the actual genetic information but rather by the presence of proteins and other substances that could "turn on" and "turn off" specific genes. This phenomenon is essential to the new subfield known as "epigenetics"...
This book delves fearlessly at times into pretty technical information, especially with regard to the chemicals involved with genes, their composition, and the processes resulting. There's no doubt in my mind that I would have gotten more from the book with a better background in biology...unfortunately that's one area in my own education (of many, I'm sure) in which I am sorely lacking. Oh well, our good author was wise enough not to dwell too long in technical narrative...which I recognize was necessary to effectively present this work...and would eventually go into an area that I could more readily grasp...
Mukherjee is very concerned about diseases and how much they can be traced back to the genetic code...the composite of all genes within humans, along with their arrangement, being known as the human genome. It turns out that some diseases point to a single, specific gene (like Huntington's and sickle-cell anemia)...but most of them seem to be the product of more than one gene, acting together and often in conjunction with environmental factors. As genes responsible for birth defects like Down's syndrome were discovered, it became expedient to perform prenatal tests for pregnant women regarding the likelihood that the baby would be born with the defect. And if the tests came back positive, then the question of abortion came into play. As a matter of fact, the more we learn about how human traits specifically correspond to elements along the genome, it becomes more and more an ethical/moral question: how far should we go in determining our genetic future, both as individuals, families, and as humans collectively? The rise in stem cell research and its applications to the alteration of the genome in order to "improve" it also raises the important question and its partner: what constitutes improvement...and how, with our still fledgling knowledge in this growing field, do we know that we aren't unintentionally creating genetic structures that are more harmful than helpful?
My very first introduction to the field of genetics was a Bell Science movie titled The Thread of Life, starring that "bald guy with glasses", Dr. Frank Baxter, back in 1967 when I was in the sixth grade. Siddhartha Mukherjee's The Gene: An Intimate History is definitely a huge step up from that...but it still keeps me firmly planted as a non-scientist. But I do feel that I am, if only a little, closer to understanding some of the issues that seem to continually arise about genetic research in the news every few months or so. I recommend this book, and I may well come back to it from time to time...
Friday, August 12, 2016
Looking at Upcoming 2016 Football Season
I'm looking forward to the new football season, both professional and college. In the National Football League, the three Florida teams I traditionally root for...plus the New York Giants...have all had traditionally lousy seasons last year. Only New York, of which I've been a fan ever since they ruined my nemesis New England's quest for a perfect season in the Super Bowl following the 2007 season, has had anything resembling success during the past ten years. And the Giants haven't done anything, either, since 2011. I've followed the Miami Dolphins, having grown up in the vicinity, since 1968, their third season in the league. After Don Shula signed on as their head coach in 1970, they rose quickly to the top and won two out of three Super Bowls in the early 1970s...including their perfect 17-0 season in 1972. Since then, they went to two Super Bowls in the 80s, losing both...and then nothing after that. Tampa Bay has the most recent success of the Florida teams, having won the NFL championship for 2002...but have languished in mediocrity during the last several years. And don't even get me talking about Jacksonville, which has probably the worst overall record in the NFL for the past decade. But back to the Dolphins...
Miami has some well-founded hope heading into this 2016 season, having sacked indifferent Joe Philbin last season and hiring Adam Gase, whose exuberance may be just what the doctor ordered for this talented-but-well, "sick" team. Maybe, just maybe, they'll be good enough to sneak into the playoffs for the first time in eight years. Notice that I'm not making any predictions...
In college football, I am a University of Florida fan. That should be no surprise...after all, I'm a UF alumnus and have been living here in Gainesville going on close to 40 years. This will be Gator head coach Jim McElwain's second season with the team. Last year Florida managed to win their SEC East Division, but sputtered horrendously on offense during the last half of the schedule...which team will show itself this year, the strong first half of last year, or that debacle ending it? McElwain seems to have done his homework during the off-season and is presenting a different offense with some potentially explosive new stars. Should be exciting to follow them this year...
Regardless how my teams do, I have to admit to not following football as much as I have in years gone by. Maybe it's because soccer has attracted my interest more, and maybe it's because the sport just doesn't have the same appeal anymore. It is very dangerous to play, and I don't care for all the debilitating injuries that seem to be regular, expected occurrences. Ball sports are games, not war...but football in some ways resembles the latter more than the former...
Miami has some well-founded hope heading into this 2016 season, having sacked indifferent Joe Philbin last season and hiring Adam Gase, whose exuberance may be just what the doctor ordered for this talented-but-well, "sick" team. Maybe, just maybe, they'll be good enough to sneak into the playoffs for the first time in eight years. Notice that I'm not making any predictions...
In college football, I am a University of Florida fan. That should be no surprise...after all, I'm a UF alumnus and have been living here in Gainesville going on close to 40 years. This will be Gator head coach Jim McElwain's second season with the team. Last year Florida managed to win their SEC East Division, but sputtered horrendously on offense during the last half of the schedule...which team will show itself this year, the strong first half of last year, or that debacle ending it? McElwain seems to have done his homework during the off-season and is presenting a different offense with some potentially explosive new stars. Should be exciting to follow them this year...
Regardless how my teams do, I have to admit to not following football as much as I have in years gone by. Maybe it's because soccer has attracted my interest more, and maybe it's because the sport just doesn't have the same appeal anymore. It is very dangerous to play, and I don't care for all the debilitating injuries that seem to be regular, expected occurrences. Ball sports are games, not war...but football in some ways resembles the latter more than the former...
Thursday, August 11, 2016
Perseid Meteor Shower Strongest Tonight
The annual Perseid meteor shower, which is composed of debris from the Swift-Tuttle comet that crosses the Earth's orbit, is supposed to be at its highest intensity tonight, with predictions of up to 200 sightings of meteors per hour. If the sky is clear, go outside in the early morning hours, from midnight to about 3, and look in the northeastern part of the sky (I'm writing this from northern Florida, at about 30 degrees latitude). If you know the constellations, then it should be simple to find the shower's epicenter...that is the point from which the individual meteors mostly appear to be radiating. The shower, after all, is named for the constellation Perseus, representing the mythological Greek hero who rescued Andromeda (also a nearby constellation) from a dreaded sea monster...
As for me, I have been trying off and on...more off, sad to say...over more than the past fifty years to get a good look at the Perseids...but to little avail. The fact that the night skies here in Gainesville have been consistently overcast for several days doesn't furnish me much hope that this situation will change for the better. But maybe you'll be in a better position than me to enjoy this celestial spectacle. Of course, it will help to be away from city lights as well. And if you're going to see the Perseids, tonight's the tonight: it won't get any better than this...
As for me, I have been trying off and on...more off, sad to say...over more than the past fifty years to get a good look at the Perseids...but to little avail. The fact that the night skies here in Gainesville have been consistently overcast for several days doesn't furnish me much hope that this situation will change for the better. But maybe you'll be in a better position than me to enjoy this celestial spectacle. Of course, it will help to be away from city lights as well. And if you're going to see the Perseids, tonight's the tonight: it won't get any better than this...
Wednesday, August 10, 2016
Dark Tower Movie to Come Out Next Year
I recently came across a copy of Entertainment Weekly magazine that had a cover feature about a movie in the making: the long-awaited adaption to Stephen King's The Dark Tower series, which he strung out over a twenty-two-year span through seven books (later adding a another one). The movie, being filmed in South Africa, stars Idris Elba as series protagonist Roland Deschain, the Gunslinger, and Matthew McConaughey as the elusive and evil Walter Padick, a.k.a. the Man in Black. Nickolaj Arcel, whose name rings absolutely no bells in my memory, is directing and writing it. I'd like to see it when it comes out, but I think I first had better brush up on my Dark Tower recollections...it's been several years since I read the series. Yes, here is another reading project for me to do...but rereading The Dark Tower is going to be quite, quite enjoyable. And, besides, I already have all of the books...as well as related Stephen King books and short stories that either directly involve Roland and his adventures or are, throughout the series, incorporated into it retroactively (like Hearts in Atlantis, It, Jerusalem's Lot, Pet Sematary, and Insomnia). If that last part confuses you, you'll know what I'm talking about once you've read this intriguing series for yourself. As for the upcoming movie, I'll probably end up waiting until it's out on DVD or pay-for-view on TV...
Tuesday, August 9, 2016
The "Career Politician" Mantra in 2016 Election Campaigns
I first noticed it in a local election campaign for Florida's State Senate between Republican Keith Perry and Democrat Rod Smith. Televised and mailed political ads began to come out from Republican Party headquarters in Tallahassee accusing Smith of being a career politician, as if having run for political office a number of times in itself were something that should weigh in against someone's vote. His elections were listed, both wins and losses...and the supposedly dastardly process began when he ran in 1992 for State Attorney (and won). The only problem with this "career politician" tactic here is that Smith's opponent, Perry, also ran for office in the very same election of 1992, his contest being for a seat in the local commission (he lost). Over the years, BOTH politicians repeatedly ran for public office...so what's wrong with that? Rod Smith was more successful in the early years, while Keith Perry has only in the last few years been victorious in his political endeavors. He currently is my state representative...running for state senator seems totally reasonable, as far as I'm concerned. But it's just as reasonable that a known name like Rod Smith would be running against him. Both are decent, hard-working men, one of whom is conservative and the other moderately liberal. I like them both, but I think this "career politician" accusation is completely bogus. By the way, Smith's campaign has started its predictable retaliation by calling Perry, in turn, a career politician...
At first, I thought that the "career politician" tactic was just a local phenomenon, but recently I've been listening to the Mark Levin radio talk show...Levin, if you don't know, is a feisty and rather intellectual conservative who strongly supports the Tea Party and its advocates in Congress. He has been dismayed at the Republican establishment and their attempts to replace those in the Tea Party with more compliant politicians during this election campaign's primary season. In Kansas one such teabagger "troublemaker", representative Tim Huelskamp, was targeted in this way and Levin spotlighted his situation on his radio show. Although Huelskamp has only served in the U.S. House since he was swept in with the Tea Party movement in 2010, his opponent's ads consistently referred to him as a (you guessed it) "career politician". I'm not saying that this strategy by itself defeated him, but Huelskamp nonetheless lost his primary election last week. And in my Florida, another anti-establishment Tea Party Republican, representative Daniel Webster, is also facing charges by his more establishment-friendly primary opponent that he, too, is one of those awful career politicians...
Maybe I'm just drawing upon too small of a sample size, but I see a pattern here. The so-called Republican Party establishment, as personified by former House Speaker John Boehner, current Speaker Paul Ryan, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, has apparently devised the strategy of accusing any of their pet candidates' opponents of being "career politicians". And why not? It doesn't distinguish the "enemy" between Tea Party and Democrat, so it's kind of like a "one size fits all" slogan that can be easily inserted into ads in order to place a sense of doubt into gullible voters' minds. And a gullible voter is what you have to be to buy into this nonsense...
At first, I thought that the "career politician" tactic was just a local phenomenon, but recently I've been listening to the Mark Levin radio talk show...Levin, if you don't know, is a feisty and rather intellectual conservative who strongly supports the Tea Party and its advocates in Congress. He has been dismayed at the Republican establishment and their attempts to replace those in the Tea Party with more compliant politicians during this election campaign's primary season. In Kansas one such teabagger "troublemaker", representative Tim Huelskamp, was targeted in this way and Levin spotlighted his situation on his radio show. Although Huelskamp has only served in the U.S. House since he was swept in with the Tea Party movement in 2010, his opponent's ads consistently referred to him as a (you guessed it) "career politician". I'm not saying that this strategy by itself defeated him, but Huelskamp nonetheless lost his primary election last week. And in my Florida, another anti-establishment Tea Party Republican, representative Daniel Webster, is also facing charges by his more establishment-friendly primary opponent that he, too, is one of those awful career politicians...
Maybe I'm just drawing upon too small of a sample size, but I see a pattern here. The so-called Republican Party establishment, as personified by former House Speaker John Boehner, current Speaker Paul Ryan, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, has apparently devised the strategy of accusing any of their pet candidates' opponents of being "career politicians". And why not? It doesn't distinguish the "enemy" between Tea Party and Democrat, so it's kind of like a "one size fits all" slogan that can be easily inserted into ads in order to place a sense of doubt into gullible voters' minds. And a gullible voter is what you have to be to buy into this nonsense...
Monday, August 8, 2016
Compartmentalization
Earlier today I was watching one of the C-Span channels, and an author was discussing one of his books...something I often find quite enjoyable. He was David Pietrusza, a historian who has written a number of books on different topics in American history, and he was addressing a small audience at a New York library about his 2011 work, titled 1948: Harry Truman's Improbable Victory and the Year that Transformed America. Pietrusza spoke in a down-to-earth, unpedantic way that made me want to pick up a copy of his book...the fact that I love history (I majored in it) was another plus. After he had delivered his talk, there was still time left over for questions. One of them concerned passages from 1948 that quoted Truman as having said and written some things that could only be interpreted as being anti-Semitic and racist. These remarks stood in stark contrast to Truman's actions while president, which included quickly and stalwartly supporting the establishment of the state of Israel while at the same time advancing civil rights for blacks, including mandating the integration of the armed forces. How could these apparently conflicting expressions from Truman be reconciled? Pietrusza gave what I believe to be a profound answer: Truman was a complex individual, as are all of us to an extent, and as such tended to compartmentalize his notions about issues and people. His sense of justice and equal rights for all conflicted with the more prejudicial notions he acquired from his youth and social relationships. Instead of completely eliminating the bigotry, he compartmentalized it, separating it from the causes he championed as president. It sounds irrational...and it is...but this compartmentalization is an important and very misunderstood part of human nature. And we all practice it in one form or another...
I wouldn't want to finish this article on compartmentalization without discussing a quite different application of the term...but which also carries great historical significance. When the Manhattan Project was undertaken during World War II, there was a great need to employ thousands of people to manufacture the elements necessary for the development of its ultimate aim: the atomic bomb. But with the exception of those with the highest security clearance, none of those engaged in this endeavor were given any more information that that necessary for them to accomplish their special work within the project. This compartmentalization of information helped greatly to protect the project's security against spying, and also created a way by which any leaks that did occur could be more easily traced back to their source. Compartmentalization in this context is a dominant element as well in subversive activities, with organized crime and terrorist cells being prime examples...
So compartmentalization can be an effective tool in a social setting to protect the group from infiltration...but it is also an aspect of an individual's personality, whereby discredited notions are not excised from the psyche but rather separated into different areas from the more "enlightened" ones. I wonder what, if any, connections there are between these two applications of the word...
I wouldn't want to finish this article on compartmentalization without discussing a quite different application of the term...but which also carries great historical significance. When the Manhattan Project was undertaken during World War II, there was a great need to employ thousands of people to manufacture the elements necessary for the development of its ultimate aim: the atomic bomb. But with the exception of those with the highest security clearance, none of those engaged in this endeavor were given any more information that that necessary for them to accomplish their special work within the project. This compartmentalization of information helped greatly to protect the project's security against spying, and also created a way by which any leaks that did occur could be more easily traced back to their source. Compartmentalization in this context is a dominant element as well in subversive activities, with organized crime and terrorist cells being prime examples...
So compartmentalization can be an effective tool in a social setting to protect the group from infiltration...but it is also an aspect of an individual's personality, whereby discredited notions are not excised from the psyche but rather separated into different areas from the more "enlightened" ones. I wonder what, if any, connections there are between these two applications of the word...
Sunday, August 7, 2016
Rested While Watching Olympics Yesterday
Yesterday I had one of those days, more present in my life as I approach becoming 60, when my energy level has plummeted and just about every place in my body slightly aches. I do feel doubly blessed, though: they still come but rarely and this episode happened when I was off from work. And what's more, there was a lot of good stuff to watch on TV while I was in my semi-incapacitated state...especially with regard to the first full day of the 2016 Rio Summer Olympics...
While I rested throughout the day, mostly in my comfy recliner facing a wide-screen television, I surfed back and forth along the dial, mainly from one Olympics sport to another. I watched swimming, field hockey, soccer, rowing, table tennis, basketball, weightlifting, judo, bicycle road racing, tennis, volleyball, and archery, to name the main sports I enjoyed the most. Of these, I was the most intrigued by the table tennis, judo, and archery, while the volleyball was overall the most fun to watch. It was interesting to learn how each sport is scored...well, I'm not sure I learned all that much about judo! Most of the athletes in these areas, while at the top of the world in their skill levels and accomplishments, don't generate enough general fan interest in their sports to be able to earn a reasonable living from them. But then again, maybe here we can still see some vestige of the old creed of amateurism whereby folks would work their main jobs and train for their sports in the after-hours. Having said that, however, I wonder how many athletes competing for their respective countries in Rio de Janeiro in this early 21st Century really conform to that pattern anymore. It instead seems more likely that the participants have their own sponsors, either as a special Olympic organization within their own countries or as wealthy individuals and businesses...and train for their sports full-time without any unnecessary distractions imposed by the "real" world...y'know, having to actually get up in the morning and earn a living working at something we commonly refer to as a "job"...
In the evening I was able to switch away from the Olympics and watch soccer matches in the Mexican Liga MX...week four in their current 2016 Apertura season. I got to watch "my" UANL Tigres play, as well as Necaxa, the league's new entry for this year, promoted to the premier league after winning the title for the second-level Ascenso league last year...
There were also bits and snatches from other TV shows and movies that I would watch every now and then...and several episodes of Anthony Bourdain's Parts Unknown series were being aired on CNN. One thing I steadfastly avoided were shows about the ongoing presidential campaign...ugh!
Today it's 6 pm, I feel much better, and haven't yet flicked on the television set...but I may do so when I get back home...I'm sitting right now in my favorite Starbucks on NW 39th Avenue here in "Hogtown" Gainesville. I've also taken a break from my running the last two days...I'll probably resume that, too, on a limited scale this evening...
While I rested throughout the day, mostly in my comfy recliner facing a wide-screen television, I surfed back and forth along the dial, mainly from one Olympics sport to another. I watched swimming, field hockey, soccer, rowing, table tennis, basketball, weightlifting, judo, bicycle road racing, tennis, volleyball, and archery, to name the main sports I enjoyed the most. Of these, I was the most intrigued by the table tennis, judo, and archery, while the volleyball was overall the most fun to watch. It was interesting to learn how each sport is scored...well, I'm not sure I learned all that much about judo! Most of the athletes in these areas, while at the top of the world in their skill levels and accomplishments, don't generate enough general fan interest in their sports to be able to earn a reasonable living from them. But then again, maybe here we can still see some vestige of the old creed of amateurism whereby folks would work their main jobs and train for their sports in the after-hours. Having said that, however, I wonder how many athletes competing for their respective countries in Rio de Janeiro in this early 21st Century really conform to that pattern anymore. It instead seems more likely that the participants have their own sponsors, either as a special Olympic organization within their own countries or as wealthy individuals and businesses...and train for their sports full-time without any unnecessary distractions imposed by the "real" world...y'know, having to actually get up in the morning and earn a living working at something we commonly refer to as a "job"...
In the evening I was able to switch away from the Olympics and watch soccer matches in the Mexican Liga MX...week four in their current 2016 Apertura season. I got to watch "my" UANL Tigres play, as well as Necaxa, the league's new entry for this year, promoted to the premier league after winning the title for the second-level Ascenso league last year...
There were also bits and snatches from other TV shows and movies that I would watch every now and then...and several episodes of Anthony Bourdain's Parts Unknown series were being aired on CNN. One thing I steadfastly avoided were shows about the ongoing presidential campaign...ugh!
Today it's 6 pm, I feel much better, and haven't yet flicked on the television set...but I may do so when I get back home...I'm sitting right now in my favorite Starbucks on NW 39th Avenue here in "Hogtown" Gainesville. I've also taken a break from my running the last two days...I'll probably resume that, too, on a limited scale this evening...
Friday, August 5, 2016
Activity Increasing in Gainesville with Impending Fall Classes
My hometown of Gainesville, Florida has a seasonal nature to its population, which tends to swell and dwindle with the University of Florida...situated smack-dab in its center...as that institution's calendar progresses from breaks to classes...and back again. Right now, I'm seeing an increase in the traffic around me...both on the roads and in places like this Starbucks that I'm writing from. Some of it has to do with the out-of-town UF students arriving for their Fall 2016 term, but also I'm seeing a lot of families with little kids out and about...no doubt taking advantage of the ongoing tax-free school supply shopping period that our state of Florida provides them before they begin the new school year. We also have a community college, Santa Fe College, that is preparing for its Fall classes...that is one great school! With the two colleges starting their Fall classes on August 22nd and the public schools beginning on the 15th, I expect to see more and more activity and congestion in my fair city. Along with, of course, a lot of talk about how prepared the Gator football team is for this upcoming season, head coach Jim McElwain's second with the team...
As for me, I'm just a spectator of all this hubbub going on around me. I would like to figure out a convenient way to visit the University of Florida main campus from time to time...the biggest problem is their parking situation. I have some special memories of that place and think that, in its own way, being around there inspires me to make a greater effort in my own personal projects. Maybe the best time for any visits will be the weekend, when classes are out and the parking is probably more manageable. I'd also like to procure a library card to check out books from their library system...there's nothing like browsing the shelves for an interesting book, and the University of Florida's collection of non-fiction is the best in the state, as far as I'm concerned. I think they'll provide me access, seeing that I am a UF alumnus, but I'll need to pay an extra fee for it...something that strikes me as being completely reasonable. I'd also like access to peruse their old newspaper archives, which I've enjoyed doing in years past...
As for me, I'm just a spectator of all this hubbub going on around me. I would like to figure out a convenient way to visit the University of Florida main campus from time to time...the biggest problem is their parking situation. I have some special memories of that place and think that, in its own way, being around there inspires me to make a greater effort in my own personal projects. Maybe the best time for any visits will be the weekend, when classes are out and the parking is probably more manageable. I'd also like to procure a library card to check out books from their library system...there's nothing like browsing the shelves for an interesting book, and the University of Florida's collection of non-fiction is the best in the state, as far as I'm concerned. I think they'll provide me access, seeing that I am a UF alumnus, but I'll need to pay an extra fee for it...something that strikes me as being completely reasonable. I'd also like access to peruse their old newspaper archives, which I've enjoyed doing in years past...
Thursday, August 4, 2016
On Brink of 2016 Rio Summer Olympics
Normally I tend to shy away from the Olympic Games as I am sick and tired of the overhyped nationalism typifying them. But this year I may be watching more of this major international sports event, especially since it offers a much welcome distraction from this horrendous, disgusting presidential election campaign we're all having to go through...
This year the Summer Olympics are being held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and they are set to officially begin tomorrow...although they're already showing some early soccer matches. There is plenty of controversy in and around the Games. For one, Russia has been embroiled in a massive doping scandal, with much of its national team banned from participating. For another, Brazil, the host nation, has many difficult ongoing problems while at the same time trying to handle this enormous undertaking at such great expense. Its economy is in shambles, and in bankrupt Rio, government workers...including police, firefighters, and teachers...are not being paid and are instead out in the streets staging demonstrations. The country's elected president has been suspended from office for corruption. And the Zika virus is especially widespread here, with several athletes bypassing the Olympics from fear of contracting it. Not a pretty picture at all...
As for the sports I'm most interested in watching, I like several of them: the bicycle races on those cool banked tracks, soccer, field hockey, and "regular" volleyball...not the beach variety. And I like to watch the track and field events as well, especially the longer runs. The sports I tend to avoid are the ones, like diving and gymnastics, which involve panels of judges deciding the scores for the contestants. That sounds too much like reality TV shows like Dancing With the Stars, The Voice, and The Apprentice and...well, I already said I'm trying to get distracted from this disgusting election campaign...
The NBC network is carrying the Summer Olympics in 2016 and will be spreading its coverage of them on several different channels: NBC, MSNBC, CNBC, NBCSports, USA, and Bravo immediately come to mind. Surely I'll be able to find something interesting to watch if I surf around enough...
This year the Summer Olympics are being held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and they are set to officially begin tomorrow...although they're already showing some early soccer matches. There is plenty of controversy in and around the Games. For one, Russia has been embroiled in a massive doping scandal, with much of its national team banned from participating. For another, Brazil, the host nation, has many difficult ongoing problems while at the same time trying to handle this enormous undertaking at such great expense. Its economy is in shambles, and in bankrupt Rio, government workers...including police, firefighters, and teachers...are not being paid and are instead out in the streets staging demonstrations. The country's elected president has been suspended from office for corruption. And the Zika virus is especially widespread here, with several athletes bypassing the Olympics from fear of contracting it. Not a pretty picture at all...
As for the sports I'm most interested in watching, I like several of them: the bicycle races on those cool banked tracks, soccer, field hockey, and "regular" volleyball...not the beach variety. And I like to watch the track and field events as well, especially the longer runs. The sports I tend to avoid are the ones, like diving and gymnastics, which involve panels of judges deciding the scores for the contestants. That sounds too much like reality TV shows like Dancing With the Stars, The Voice, and The Apprentice and...well, I already said I'm trying to get distracted from this disgusting election campaign...
The NBC network is carrying the Summer Olympics in 2016 and will be spreading its coverage of them on several different channels: NBC, MSNBC, CNBC, NBCSports, USA, and Bravo immediately come to mind. Surely I'll be able to find something interesting to watch if I surf around enough...
Wednesday, August 3, 2016
Space X and Its Ambitions Toward Mars
In 2002, Pay Pal founder Elon Musk established Space X, the commonly known name for Space Exploration Technologies Corporation. He decided to start his company on a small scale, with the notion of building a reusable rocket/capsule system that would eventually become capable of deep-space human travel. The first successful rocket launch was in 2008, and after President Obama essentially privatized the future of manned space travel, the company grew in importance, working closely with NASA on various projects. It suffered a setback in 2015 when one of its home-manufactured rockets exploded soon after launch on an unmanned supply mission to the International Space Station. The problem was discovered and fixed, though, and last month another Space X resupply mission to the station was successful. Next year it plans to launch a manned crew on its Falcon-9 rocket to the space station, but that's where the low-Earth-orbiting ends and the true adventure begins...
The ultimate goal for Space X, as Elon Musk has expressed in interviews and to others, is to establish human colonies on Mars...and in an astonishingly short period of time. An unmanned landing of the Dragon spacecraft is planned for 2018, and subsequent unmanned trips are scheduled during the following years in order to transport supplies for colony-building. The first humans to Mars, on their timetable, will land there around 2025. And if all continues to go according to plan, in the subsequent ten years or so, there will be thousands of flights to the Red Planet, feeding and growing a new human Martian population eventually to number in the millions. To all of which I say, "It's about damned time!" I've been living my whole life waiting for the science fiction stories of my youth about extraterrestrial colonization to be realized, and I was consigning my hopes on the subject to the growing trash heap of my other dashed dreams. But now, here comes this upstart company with its outrageous vision. Will they succeed? I'm in no position to answer that, but I strongly want them to...
The ultimate goal for Space X, as Elon Musk has expressed in interviews and to others, is to establish human colonies on Mars...and in an astonishingly short period of time. An unmanned landing of the Dragon spacecraft is planned for 2018, and subsequent unmanned trips are scheduled during the following years in order to transport supplies for colony-building. The first humans to Mars, on their timetable, will land there around 2025. And if all continues to go according to plan, in the subsequent ten years or so, there will be thousands of flights to the Red Planet, feeding and growing a new human Martian population eventually to number in the millions. To all of which I say, "It's about damned time!" I've been living my whole life waiting for the science fiction stories of my youth about extraterrestrial colonization to be realized, and I was consigning my hopes on the subject to the growing trash heap of my other dashed dreams. But now, here comes this upstart company with its outrageous vision. Will they succeed? I'm in no position to answer that, but I strongly want them to...
Tuesday, August 2, 2016
Tropical Storm Earl Forms in Northern Caribbean
Just a couple of hours ago, it became official: the weather pattern heretofore known as Invest 97-L, which had been traveling westward across the Atlantic from Africa before entering the northern Caribbean Sea, has intensified enough and developed the required circulation to become the next tropical storm of this still-early hurricane season: Earl. Earl has, at this writing, maximum sustained winds of 45 mph and is continuing its westward direction, with Jamaica and the Cayman Islands in its crosshairs before it heads off to Central America, with a landfall somewhere between the Honduran coast and eastern Yucatan in Mexico most likely. Right now, folks in the country of Belize, with its very low-lying terrain at just above sea level, are feeling especially vulnerable. Let's all hope and pray for their safety...this storm is already being held responsible for six deaths in the Dominican Republic. And it is expected to further intensify, possibly to hurricane strength, before finally hitting the mainland...
Meanwhile, a couple of other storm patterns are making their way across the Atlantic, more or less following what is now Earl's path...it looks as if the Atlantic hurricane season has now begun to kick into high gear! Just making a suggestion, but it looks like it might be a prudent idea to begin to stock up on nonperishables and make other preliminary hurricane preparations, my fellow Floridians...and anyone else living near the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic coasts, for that matter...
Meanwhile, a couple of other storm patterns are making their way across the Atlantic, more or less following what is now Earl's path...it looks as if the Atlantic hurricane season has now begun to kick into high gear! Just making a suggestion, but it looks like it might be a prudent idea to begin to stock up on nonperishables and make other preliminary hurricane preparations, my fellow Floridians...and anyone else living near the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic coasts, for that matter...
Monday, August 1, 2016
Just Finished Reading James Patterson's The 5th Horseman
The 5th Horseman, the obviously fifth book in James Patterson's Women's Murder Club crime series, is really a collaboration between Maxine Paetro and him. I have nothing in particular against collaborative literary efforts other than that an inferior product might be masked with a more famous writer's name attached to it...although another may have done the lion's share of work. With The 5th Horseman, I cannot tell how much of it is Patterson's and how much Paetro's, but I can tell you this much: I was disappointed in it, especially in comparison to the previous book in the series I read. There are a couple of reasons for this...
The driving theme in The 5th Horseman is that a series of suspicious deaths have been occurring in a recently-privatized San Francisco hospital, and the victims...none of whom were thought to be in any serious danger...are found with the same peculiar type of buttons resting on their eyes. San Francisco police lieutenant Lindsay Boxer, the series protagonist, meanwhile finds herself investigating a different series of murders in which young women are found dead, prominently displayed in public all dressed up and sitting in fancy cars. All of this takes place in the midst of a big lawsuit trial, pitting relatives of people who died under mysterious circumstances in that aforementioned hospital against its administrators. I kept thinking that, at some point in the story, the various threads would start coming together into a cohesive picture. Instead, the author(s) kept them separate and didn't even resolve the main story line until late in the book's epilogue...and without the participation of main character Boxer. And I also felt that the killings always present in this genre of fiction, as bad as they can sometimes get, went way over the line in this tale...especially with regard to little children...
So, no, I didn't care for The 5th Horseman. It seemed to be a rushed effort, a publisher's assembly line piece designed to capitalize on the all-to-real fear that many people experience when having to undergo a hospital stay. It sure didn't help with my own phobias in this area...
The driving theme in The 5th Horseman is that a series of suspicious deaths have been occurring in a recently-privatized San Francisco hospital, and the victims...none of whom were thought to be in any serious danger...are found with the same peculiar type of buttons resting on their eyes. San Francisco police lieutenant Lindsay Boxer, the series protagonist, meanwhile finds herself investigating a different series of murders in which young women are found dead, prominently displayed in public all dressed up and sitting in fancy cars. All of this takes place in the midst of a big lawsuit trial, pitting relatives of people who died under mysterious circumstances in that aforementioned hospital against its administrators. I kept thinking that, at some point in the story, the various threads would start coming together into a cohesive picture. Instead, the author(s) kept them separate and didn't even resolve the main story line until late in the book's epilogue...and without the participation of main character Boxer. And I also felt that the killings always present in this genre of fiction, as bad as they can sometimes get, went way over the line in this tale...especially with regard to little children...
So, no, I didn't care for The 5th Horseman. It seemed to be a rushed effort, a publisher's assembly line piece designed to capitalize on the all-to-real fear that many people experience when having to undergo a hospital stay. It sure didn't help with my own phobias in this area...
Sunday, July 31, 2016
My July 2016 Running Report
This past month saw me focusing my running more heavily on the outdoors...even in the noontime heat of mid-summer. Although my total running mileage went down to 114 miles in July, I felt that it was of a higher quality and will serve me greater in my training for races in months to come. My longest single run was 3.4 miles...actually, I performed several runs of 3.3-3.4 miles. And I ran on all but two days of the month...
On the morning of July 4th, I braved the combined 80 degrees and 89% humidity...a formula for heat stress if I ever knew it...and "raced" in the three-mile Melon Run, held here in Gainesville at Westside Park. It was my difficulty with this race, which I managed to complete with a slower-than-normal pace, that convinced me to start braving the outdoor elements more than I had been doing. As far as August is concerned, I plan to continue with my running as I did in July, perhaps slightly increasing my distances as my endurance gets better. No races are planned for August, though. That doesn't mean that on some day I might not pick up my Independent Florida Alligator (the University of Florida's "free" newspaper) and read about some fundraiser 5K being staged on a coming weekend. Should that happen, I'm game to jump right on in and run it. Otherwise, I'll just keep training on my own and wait for the autumn races...
On the morning of July 4th, I braved the combined 80 degrees and 89% humidity...a formula for heat stress if I ever knew it...and "raced" in the three-mile Melon Run, held here in Gainesville at Westside Park. It was my difficulty with this race, which I managed to complete with a slower-than-normal pace, that convinced me to start braving the outdoor elements more than I had been doing. As far as August is concerned, I plan to continue with my running as I did in July, perhaps slightly increasing my distances as my endurance gets better. No races are planned for August, though. That doesn't mean that on some day I might not pick up my Independent Florida Alligator (the University of Florida's "free" newspaper) and read about some fundraiser 5K being staged on a coming weekend. Should that happen, I'm game to jump right on in and run it. Otherwise, I'll just keep training on my own and wait for the autumn races...
Saturday, July 30, 2016
Just Finished Reading Vanity Fair by William Thackeray
It took me a while, but I finally finished reading English novelist William Makepeace Thackeray's 1848 book Vanity Fair. The setting is England and assorted locales in western Europe, around the time of Napoleon's campaigns and the subsequent years. The main players are two young women...the virtuous Amelia "Emmy" Sedley and the manipulative Rebecca "Becky" Sharp...who come out of the same private boarding school and who are continually crossing paths with each other. Emmy, whose Sedley family is initially wealthy and enjoys high social standing, has to deal with her father's business failures and their fall from grace. Becky, on the other hand, has never had money or standing and is always scheming to obtain them from others. Their relationships leading to marriage and maternity, as well as the interconnection between the associated Sedley, Crawley, and Osborne families, drive the story's plot...with the addition of a singular character, the most honorable William Dobbin...an awkward but courageous and compassionate young man who quickly and deeply falls in unrequited love with Emmy...
Vanity Fair comes across on different levels to me. One is an examination of social class in England in the early nineteenth century, with the conclusion that the distinctions are largely artificial and often cruel. Another is how men and women courted each other, with fathers often arranging marriages in order to gain or maintain the family's level of social class and wealth. I already pretty much knew all that before I picked up Vanity Fair...I got mostly a good insight into the personal relationships between the characters, with Thackeray's flair for dialogue revealing their personalities, desires, grudges, fixations, and...yes, vanities...
I wrote a few days ago that I wasn't all that happy with this novel, and I stick to that assessment. I was pleased, however, that while some of the characters seemed be rather stagnant over the years, others underwent substantial change in terms of their abilities to forgive and more deeply understand and appreciate the motives of others. I guess that also runs parallel to the real world...some of us grow through living and experiencing trials and triumphs, while others never seem to "get it"...
Vanity Fair comes across on different levels to me. One is an examination of social class in England in the early nineteenth century, with the conclusion that the distinctions are largely artificial and often cruel. Another is how men and women courted each other, with fathers often arranging marriages in order to gain or maintain the family's level of social class and wealth. I already pretty much knew all that before I picked up Vanity Fair...I got mostly a good insight into the personal relationships between the characters, with Thackeray's flair for dialogue revealing their personalities, desires, grudges, fixations, and...yes, vanities...
I wrote a few days ago that I wasn't all that happy with this novel, and I stick to that assessment. I was pleased, however, that while some of the characters seemed be rather stagnant over the years, others underwent substantial change in terms of their abilities to forgive and more deeply understand and appreciate the motives of others. I guess that also runs parallel to the real world...some of us grow through living and experiencing trials and triumphs, while others never seem to "get it"...
Friday, July 29, 2016
Atlantic Hurricane Season Slows to a Crawl
Earlier this year, with so many unusually early tropical storms, it looked as if we might be experiencing another of those Atlantic hurricane seasons with a multitude of named storms extending toward the end of the alphabet. However, during this past month we've had nary a one...but that situation may be changing in the course of the next week or so. Out in the eastern Atlantic are two tropical circulation zones, which the folks in the meteorological realm, who have a penchant for giving curious designations to weather patterns, have called "Invest 97-L" and "Invest 96-L". They are being given around a 30-50 % chance for development and are heading down a westward trajectory that would leave the most advanced one getting to Puerto Rico in as early as five days. Not that I want a tropical storm, much less a hurricane, to hit us or anyone else, but at least it's a newsworthy item that can serve as a welcome distraction to the extremely annoying election campaign season we're having to undergo...
Thursday, July 28, 2016
Music From Youth Evokes Memories
When I surf through my music radio stations here in Gainesville, almost always in my car, it is the norm to encounter music from twenty-five years and older on them. Whether I'm on 92.5, 98.5, 99.5. or 100.9, I'm more likely to hear a song like Gerry Rafferty's 1978 Baker Street or the Doobie Brothers' 1975 Black Water than I am to hear something more recent...like from this century. That's not how I would have predicted it back then. It's really quite astounding, when you think about it. I thought that many of the hits, when I was listening to them back then, had only transitory "fame value"...yet they're being played nowadays as if the intervening decades had never happened. Not that I'm complaining, for it's been quite some time since I've been particularly interested in what constitutes contemporary popular music on the radio...
I have a theory about why these old hits are still so popular. It is in how people will associate different songs from their past with memories of times and events they were experiencing when those songs were popular. For example, I believe it was in 1970 that my sister Anita went to a concert of the pop group The Association. I was in the car when we picked her up from the concert site to take her home...now, whenever I hear a song of theirs, I'm taken back to that evening drive at that particular place. Sometimes the connections can get to be a bit strange: for example, the 1977 Manfred Mann hit Blinded By the Light (originally written and recorded by Bruce Springsteen) brings back memories of Nova Elementary School back in 1968. I asked myself why this was so...and then it hit me. Toward the end of this song...which I incidentally liked a lot...the piano breaks down into a freaky rendition of Chopsticks...and Chopsticks was played on one of the Bell Science movies we watched endlessly back in the sixth grade in '68. Or how about Gail Garnett's We'll Sing in the Sunshine or Chad and Jeremy's Summer Song, both from 1964? With these I'm transported back to sitting on my back porch with my mom and sister...as if I were still seven years old...
Nowadays, even if I do take a liking to a current song on the radio, I am less likely to associate it with life events. However, since I do carry an MP3 player around and often listen to it while running, I've associated this activity with the music I'm listening to. So musical acts like Regina Spektor, Radiohead, Gorillaz, Kasabian, Spoon, Beck, and Sufjan Stevens now evoke memories of different times and locations I have been out running during the last six years or so. But the strongest associations still come with those songs I listened to in my youth and early adulthood. They are like keys to old, buried memories...
I have a theory about why these old hits are still so popular. It is in how people will associate different songs from their past with memories of times and events they were experiencing when those songs were popular. For example, I believe it was in 1970 that my sister Anita went to a concert of the pop group The Association. I was in the car when we picked her up from the concert site to take her home...now, whenever I hear a song of theirs, I'm taken back to that evening drive at that particular place. Sometimes the connections can get to be a bit strange: for example, the 1977 Manfred Mann hit Blinded By the Light (originally written and recorded by Bruce Springsteen) brings back memories of Nova Elementary School back in 1968. I asked myself why this was so...and then it hit me. Toward the end of this song...which I incidentally liked a lot...the piano breaks down into a freaky rendition of Chopsticks...and Chopsticks was played on one of the Bell Science movies we watched endlessly back in the sixth grade in '68. Or how about Gail Garnett's We'll Sing in the Sunshine or Chad and Jeremy's Summer Song, both from 1964? With these I'm transported back to sitting on my back porch with my mom and sister...as if I were still seven years old...
Nowadays, even if I do take a liking to a current song on the radio, I am less likely to associate it with life events. However, since I do carry an MP3 player around and often listen to it while running, I've associated this activity with the music I'm listening to. So musical acts like Regina Spektor, Radiohead, Gorillaz, Kasabian, Spoon, Beck, and Sufjan Stevens now evoke memories of different times and locations I have been out running during the last six years or so. But the strongest associations still come with those songs I listened to in my youth and early adulthood. They are like keys to old, buried memories...
Wednesday, July 27, 2016
Unhappy With Both Republican and Democratic Conventions
The Democratic National Convention is down to its final two days, and then we'll be finished with the convention season. And, I say to that, "Good riddance!" Each party's convention has been largely forgettable, with the numerous speakers and performers there appealing to the audience's emotions, not their sense of reason or judgment. The Republicans split up their act last week into three basic themes: one, Hillary Clinton is on trial...two, Donald Trump is a great family man, as expressed by his family onstage...three, the world is a bad place, full of things and people to fear and be angry at: just leave it all to the Donald...he'll make them all an offer they can't refuse. As for the witch hunt against the Democratic presidential nominee, it was the worst form of hypocrisy that New Jersey governor Chris Christie, implicated in a serious bridge-closing scandal during his own administration a couple of years ago, would preside over it all as the "prosecutor". As for Trump's family, I hardly think that parading your own family members across the stage to give accolades to yourself makes you any more special then anyone else running for the high office. And as for the stoking of fear and anger, the solution offered, which is to give this candidate almost dictatorial powers to unilaterally change our alliances, violate others' human rights, discriminate against still others for their religious beliefs, and to start a global economic protectionism war, is totally beyond the pale...
I'd like to be reporting that the Democrats are doing much better, but here, too, we see a different form of emotionalism...and excessive political correctness. Of course, they have to pay homage to the various "correct" interest groups to show what a "good", inclusive, diverse party they are...as opposed to all those white male Republicans last week...and to continually pile on the emotional assurance that Hillary really does care about others and isn't as corrupt and selfish as her political enemies keep asserting. And couldn't we have easily done without the ridiculous crowd-baiting of Sarah Silverman as she, standing onstage with Senator Al Franken on the first evening, began berating the numerous Bernie Sanders delegates there for not automatically and obediently flipping their allegiances wholeheartedly to Hillary? That brilliant move only resulted in a floor-wide shouting match between the two candidates' supporters...so much for unity. And Paul Simon? Please, will someone please tell this talented musician that Bridge Over Troubled Waters is a song that demands someone with the vocal range of Art Garfunkel to sing...he should have known better than to attempt it solo since he wrote the damned song in the first place...
I thought the only two speeches that mattered in the Republican convention were delivered by Ted Cruz and Donald Trump and, on the Democratic side, it will also be the main contenders Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton whose oratory will count. As far as I'm concerned, they could have dispensed with all of the other nonsense and distilled their respective parties' messages into these speeches...and spared the American people a lot of grief, not to mention all of the cancelled regularly televised programming...
I'd like to be reporting that the Democrats are doing much better, but here, too, we see a different form of emotionalism...and excessive political correctness. Of course, they have to pay homage to the various "correct" interest groups to show what a "good", inclusive, diverse party they are...as opposed to all those white male Republicans last week...and to continually pile on the emotional assurance that Hillary really does care about others and isn't as corrupt and selfish as her political enemies keep asserting. And couldn't we have easily done without the ridiculous crowd-baiting of Sarah Silverman as she, standing onstage with Senator Al Franken on the first evening, began berating the numerous Bernie Sanders delegates there for not automatically and obediently flipping their allegiances wholeheartedly to Hillary? That brilliant move only resulted in a floor-wide shouting match between the two candidates' supporters...so much for unity. And Paul Simon? Please, will someone please tell this talented musician that Bridge Over Troubled Waters is a song that demands someone with the vocal range of Art Garfunkel to sing...he should have known better than to attempt it solo since he wrote the damned song in the first place...
I thought the only two speeches that mattered in the Republican convention were delivered by Ted Cruz and Donald Trump and, on the Democratic side, it will also be the main contenders Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton whose oratory will count. As far as I'm concerned, they could have dispensed with all of the other nonsense and distilled their respective parties' messages into these speeches...and spared the American people a lot of grief, not to mention all of the cancelled regularly televised programming...
Monday, July 25, 2016
Regina Spektor's New Album Out on Sept 30
Russian-American pianist/singer/songwriter Regina Spektor, one of my all-time favorite recording artists, will be issuing her seventh studio album on September 30. It is titled Remember Us to Life. Her last album, What We Saw From the Cheap Seats, came out in 2012 and is responsible for my favorite song from that year, the unforgettable Firewood. I can hardly wait for this new album, as anything new this extraordinary talent comes out with is almost certain to contain some real jewels...
When I first became aware of Regina Spektor in 2010, it was on one of those free music websites that played songs according to the listener's preferred genre...I believe she was in the "Indie" category on it. I then determined to collect her first five albums, all issued by that time. The song Us, from her third album Soviet Kitsch, became my favorite song of 2010. All that summer, whenever I went running long-distance through my neighborhood and points beyond, I would listen to a shuffled mix of her songs from those albums on my MP3 player during my training. So in time, whenever I subsequently would hear one of those earlier songs, I would associate it with running...funny how that memory association thing works with music...
I think that Regina Spektor's music is much better than all these popular artists like Beyonce and Taylor Swift who keep winning the Grammys year after year. But for some reason radio stations won't promote and play her music which, in my opinion, is far superior to what they provide in its place...
When I first became aware of Regina Spektor in 2010, it was on one of those free music websites that played songs according to the listener's preferred genre...I believe she was in the "Indie" category on it. I then determined to collect her first five albums, all issued by that time. The song Us, from her third album Soviet Kitsch, became my favorite song of 2010. All that summer, whenever I went running long-distance through my neighborhood and points beyond, I would listen to a shuffled mix of her songs from those albums on my MP3 player during my training. So in time, whenever I subsequently would hear one of those earlier songs, I would associate it with running...funny how that memory association thing works with music...
I think that Regina Spektor's music is much better than all these popular artists like Beyonce and Taylor Swift who keep winning the Grammys year after year. But for some reason radio stations won't promote and play her music which, in my opinion, is far superior to what they provide in its place...
Sunday, July 24, 2016
Late July Evening Sky: Three Small Constellations and the Milky Way
Deborah Byrd, on the EarthSky/Tonight website, wrote about the Summer Triangle of first-magnitude stars Vega in the constellation Lyra, Deneb in Cygnus, and Altair in Aquila. Her article's focus, though, was the three small and relatively faint constellations found in this region of the sky: Vulpecula (the Fox), Delphinus (the Dolphin), and Sagitta (the Arrow). Only Sagitta actually resembles what it represents, although there is a pattern of sorts for Delphinus. I've often been able to find and identify these two tiny constellations...they're situated just to the north (Sagitta) and west (Delphinus) from Altair. Vulpecula, on the other hand, is an entirely different matter...
I've never identified Vulpecula in the sky, and I wonder how many star-gazers have actually pulled off this challenging feat. It has no bright stars and is more or less simply a sector cut out of the sky, generally south of Cygnus. Two of its brightest stars, however, do form a small right triangle with the "head" star of Cygnus (on the other, southern end of the constellation from Deneb). I'm thinking...if the sky remains clear tonight as it now is...of going out to see if I can make it out, now that I have what I believe to be a good point of reference...
If you want to observe the Milky Way in the night sky, this time of the year is optimal if you happen to live in the northern hemisphere. It is strong in the constellation Sagittarius and goes northward into the midst of that Summer Triangle, concentrating most densely in the constellation Cygnus. Because I live in the city, I can't make it out very well, but tonight I also plan to look at it, along with Vulpecula, Sagitta, and Delphinus...
The Summer Triangle, during the evening hours in late July, is rising high in the east. Directly south of it lies Sagittarius, and it is along this line that you should be able to make out the Milky Way, should weather and your local lighting conditions permit. The moon, now in a gibbous waning phase, might also be an inhibiting factor in trying to observe the fainter stars...
I've never identified Vulpecula in the sky, and I wonder how many star-gazers have actually pulled off this challenging feat. It has no bright stars and is more or less simply a sector cut out of the sky, generally south of Cygnus. Two of its brightest stars, however, do form a small right triangle with the "head" star of Cygnus (on the other, southern end of the constellation from Deneb). I'm thinking...if the sky remains clear tonight as it now is...of going out to see if I can make it out, now that I have what I believe to be a good point of reference...
If you want to observe the Milky Way in the night sky, this time of the year is optimal if you happen to live in the northern hemisphere. It is strong in the constellation Sagittarius and goes northward into the midst of that Summer Triangle, concentrating most densely in the constellation Cygnus. Because I live in the city, I can't make it out very well, but tonight I also plan to look at it, along with Vulpecula, Sagitta, and Delphinus...
The Summer Triangle, during the evening hours in late July, is rising high in the east. Directly south of it lies Sagittarius, and it is along this line that you should be able to make out the Milky Way, should weather and your local lighting conditions permit. The moon, now in a gibbous waning phase, might also be an inhibiting factor in trying to observe the fainter stars...
Saturday, July 23, 2016
David Bowie's Songs: My Top 50 List
As I wrote a few days ago, I was assembling a list of my favorite music of David Bowie, who sadly passed away this January. I listened to each and every one of his 27 studio albums, some fantastic, some good...and a very few not-so-good. From these I picked the best of the best...I think he recorded around 300 songs. So, any song on this Top 50 list, even if it is near the bottom, is one that I like an awful lot. I want you, the reader, to have access to the songs on this list, so I also indicated the album each song on it belongs to, following in brackets...just in case you might want to check some of them out for yourself. And the first time an album appears in the list, I indicated its year of release.
Well, here is my all-time list of David Bowie favorites...
1 BLACKSTAR [Blackstar] 2016
2 Changes [Hunky Dory] 1971
3 Space Oddity [Space Oddity] 1969
4 Queen Bitch [Hunky Dory]
5 Days [Reality] 2003
6 Aladdin Sane [Aladdin Sane] 1973
7 Memory of a Free Festival [Space Oddity]
8 The Last Thing You Should Do [Earthling] 1997
9 5:15 the Angels Have Gone [Heathen] 2002
10 Station to Station [Station to Station] 1976
11 Under Pressure (with Queen) [singles release] 1981
12 Tis a Pity She Was a Whore [Blackstar]
13 Looking for Satellites [Earthling]
14 Hang on to Yourself [Ziggy Stardust] 1972
15 Oh! You Pretty Things [Hunky Dory]
16 Ashes to Ashes [Scary Monsters] 1980
17 Suffragette City [Ziggy Stardust]
18 Warszawa [Low] 1977
19 Star [Ziggy Stardust]
20 Golden Years [Station to Station]
21 Life on Mars? [Hunky Dory]
22 Little Wonder [Earthling]
23 Big Brother/Chant of the Ever-Circling Skeletal Family [Diamond Dogs] 1974
24 I Took a Trip on a Gemini Spacecraft [Heathen]
25 A Better Future [Heathen]
26 Starman [Ziggy Stardust]
27 Blue Jean [Tonight] 1984
28 It Ain't Easy [Ziggy Stardust]
29 Fashion [Scary Monsters]
30 Fall Dog Bombs the Moon [Reality]
31 An Occasional Dream [Space Oddity]
32 Heat [The Next Day] 2013
33 I Can't Give Everything Away [Blackstar]
34 Outside [1.Outside] 1995
35 I'd Rather Be High [The Next Day]
36 Heathen (the Rays) [Heathen]
37 The Supermen [The Man Who Sold the World] 1970
38 How Does the Grass Grow [The Next Day]
39 Boys Keep Swinging [Lodger] 1979
40 China Girl [Let's Dance] 1983
41 Gun Running Blues [The Man Who Sold the World]
42 Young Americans [Young Americans] 1975
43 All the Madmen [The Man Who Sold the World]
44 Kooks [Hunky Dory]
45 The Man Who Sold the World [The Man Who Sold the World]
46 Valentine's Day [The Next Day]
47 Let's Dance [Let's Dance]
48 Red Sails [Lodger]
49 Rebel Rebel [Diamond Dogs]
50 Pablo Picasso [Reality]
Well, here is my all-time list of David Bowie favorites...
1 BLACKSTAR [Blackstar] 2016
2 Changes [Hunky Dory] 1971
3 Space Oddity [Space Oddity] 1969
4 Queen Bitch [Hunky Dory]
5 Days [Reality] 2003
6 Aladdin Sane [Aladdin Sane] 1973
7 Memory of a Free Festival [Space Oddity]
8 The Last Thing You Should Do [Earthling] 1997
9 5:15 the Angels Have Gone [Heathen] 2002
10 Station to Station [Station to Station] 1976
11 Under Pressure (with Queen) [singles release] 1981
12 Tis a Pity She Was a Whore [Blackstar]
13 Looking for Satellites [Earthling]
14 Hang on to Yourself [Ziggy Stardust] 1972
15 Oh! You Pretty Things [Hunky Dory]
16 Ashes to Ashes [Scary Monsters] 1980
17 Suffragette City [Ziggy Stardust]
18 Warszawa [Low] 1977
19 Star [Ziggy Stardust]
20 Golden Years [Station to Station]
21 Life on Mars? [Hunky Dory]
22 Little Wonder [Earthling]
23 Big Brother/Chant of the Ever-Circling Skeletal Family [Diamond Dogs] 1974
24 I Took a Trip on a Gemini Spacecraft [Heathen]
25 A Better Future [Heathen]
26 Starman [Ziggy Stardust]
27 Blue Jean [Tonight] 1984
28 It Ain't Easy [Ziggy Stardust]
29 Fashion [Scary Monsters]
30 Fall Dog Bombs the Moon [Reality]
31 An Occasional Dream [Space Oddity]
32 Heat [The Next Day] 2013
33 I Can't Give Everything Away [Blackstar]
34 Outside [1.Outside] 1995
35 I'd Rather Be High [The Next Day]
36 Heathen (the Rays) [Heathen]
37 The Supermen [The Man Who Sold the World] 1970
38 How Does the Grass Grow [The Next Day]
39 Boys Keep Swinging [Lodger] 1979
40 China Girl [Let's Dance] 1983
41 Gun Running Blues [The Man Who Sold the World]
42 Young Americans [Young Americans] 1975
43 All the Madmen [The Man Who Sold the World]
44 Kooks [Hunky Dory]
45 The Man Who Sold the World [The Man Who Sold the World]
46 Valentine's Day [The Next Day]
47 Let's Dance [Let's Dance]
48 Red Sails [Lodger]
49 Rebel Rebel [Diamond Dogs]
50 Pablo Picasso [Reality]
Friday, July 22, 2016
Ups and Downs of TV This Morning
When I turned on my TV this morning, while running a few minutes in place in my living room and waiting for my coffee to finish brewing, I first caught sight of Donald Trump...on the morning following his supposedly watershed nomination speech...going back to what he does best: flinging mud at others. His target today was one of his favorites: Ted Cruz. I switched the channel, but all of the news stations seem to think that any time this guy wants to rant about anything or anyone, they are somehow obligated to give him all the free publicity he wants. Then I remembered that the Tour de France was still going on, and I changed the channel to watch it. Today it was in the 19th of its 21 stages, and the course was severe, going up and down mountains with steep slopes and tight curves. On top of that, it was raining heavily, and cyclists were skidding and falling everywhere...including Tour leader Chris Froome. Fortunately for him, immediately after his fall and loss of his own bike, a teammate who was right there gave him his own...Froome did not suffer much in the end in terms of his lead. But his yellow jersey had gaping holes where he had hit the pavement, and you could see a lot of bruising over his body. What a game, courageous performance this competitor gave today!
Later on, after the Donald was safely off the air, President Obama and Mexican President Nieto gave a joint press conference after their meeting with each other. The calm, assured demeanor of Obama contrasted sharply with the often maniacal rantings of Trump. Later on, I've heard, Hillary Clinton is supposed to announce her VP running mate, with the news pundits leaning toward Virginia senator Tim Kaine as the pick. We'll see if they were right...
No, television wasn't all that great this morning unless you happen to be into bicycle racing or political mudslinging, but then again I didn't spend a lot of time going up and down the dial. I did try out the Andy Griffith Show on TVLand, but alas, they were showing one of those inferior later color episodes without Don Knotts playing his famous role of Barney Fife. And without ol' Barney to muddle things up, it just wasn't the same series anymore...
Later on, after the Donald was safely off the air, President Obama and Mexican President Nieto gave a joint press conference after their meeting with each other. The calm, assured demeanor of Obama contrasted sharply with the often maniacal rantings of Trump. Later on, I've heard, Hillary Clinton is supposed to announce her VP running mate, with the news pundits leaning toward Virginia senator Tim Kaine as the pick. We'll see if they were right...
No, television wasn't all that great this morning unless you happen to be into bicycle racing or political mudslinging, but then again I didn't spend a lot of time going up and down the dial. I did try out the Andy Griffith Show on TVLand, but alas, they were showing one of those inferior later color episodes without Don Knotts playing his famous role of Barney Fife. And without ol' Barney to muddle things up, it just wasn't the same series anymore...
Thursday, July 21, 2016
Ted Cruz Continues to Impress Me
I am not a conservative Republican, although there are some important issues about which we stand together in agreement. One is that we need a strong national defense and a strong system of international alliances in order to keep the peace. Another is that trade, without the burden of overbearing tariffs, should be free-flowing between countries. These are two vastly important areas...national defense and the economy...incidentally, they are also two areas in which nominee Donald Trump has departed from the conservative mold, if, that is, he was ever there in the first place. On the other hand, his chief challenger for the Republican presidential nomination, Texas senator Ted Cruz, clearly is on the "right" side in those crucial areas...
Trump has recently said that, if he were president and one or more NATO countries were attacked...presumably by Putin's Russia...then he might not assist them as the alliance demands. Wow, that's a very dangerous road to go down, and it should make all of us feel much less secure. And his idea of bringing jobs back to America is to impose exorbitantly high tariffs on countries like China and penalizing American companies that outsource abroad with high penalty taxes. Wow, that's a surefire way to bring us and the world spiraling downward into a depression. Ted Cruz is against Trump on both accounts...ironically, it is the presumptive Democratic Party nominee, Hillary Clinton, with whom the conservative Cruz is closer on at least these two important issues than the Republican nominee...
Ted Cruz and I differ a bit on several other issues, but I have been pleasantly surprised and impressed by how dignified and focused of a campaign he conducted. In spite of that, Donald Trump repeatedly questioned his citizenship and qualifications to be president, continually referred to him in his campaign as "Lyin' Ted", openly insulted his wife's looks, and accused his father of being part of the "conspiracy" to assassinate John F. Kennedy. Cruz, along with the other sixteen G.O.P. candidates, earlier pledged to support the eventual party nominee...but both he and I agree that Trump's disgusting and offensive personal attacks on him and his family annul any such commitment. After all, it was Trump, following that pledge that he himself also made, who said that his own fulfillment of it depended on whether or not he was treated fairly...
After Ted Cruz was elected senator in 2012 and began serving there the following year, I quickly came to despise him...as apparently did many of his Senate colleagues, even within his own party. He had an uncompromising way of doing things and his speeches just grated on me. But the biggest surprise for me in this 2016 presidential campaign has been how tough, humorous, and eloquent he can be...especially under pressure and even adversity. Last night he delivered the greatest speech of his career at the Republican Convention...and was roundly booed at its end by the Trump fanatics there for not endorsing the admirer of Putin and Mussolini. I say to Ted, "Way to go, bro'!"
Trump has recently said that, if he were president and one or more NATO countries were attacked...presumably by Putin's Russia...then he might not assist them as the alliance demands. Wow, that's a very dangerous road to go down, and it should make all of us feel much less secure. And his idea of bringing jobs back to America is to impose exorbitantly high tariffs on countries like China and penalizing American companies that outsource abroad with high penalty taxes. Wow, that's a surefire way to bring us and the world spiraling downward into a depression. Ted Cruz is against Trump on both accounts...ironically, it is the presumptive Democratic Party nominee, Hillary Clinton, with whom the conservative Cruz is closer on at least these two important issues than the Republican nominee...
Ted Cruz and I differ a bit on several other issues, but I have been pleasantly surprised and impressed by how dignified and focused of a campaign he conducted. In spite of that, Donald Trump repeatedly questioned his citizenship and qualifications to be president, continually referred to him in his campaign as "Lyin' Ted", openly insulted his wife's looks, and accused his father of being part of the "conspiracy" to assassinate John F. Kennedy. Cruz, along with the other sixteen G.O.P. candidates, earlier pledged to support the eventual party nominee...but both he and I agree that Trump's disgusting and offensive personal attacks on him and his family annul any such commitment. After all, it was Trump, following that pledge that he himself also made, who said that his own fulfillment of it depended on whether or not he was treated fairly...
After Ted Cruz was elected senator in 2012 and began serving there the following year, I quickly came to despise him...as apparently did many of his Senate colleagues, even within his own party. He had an uncompromising way of doing things and his speeches just grated on me. But the biggest surprise for me in this 2016 presidential campaign has been how tough, humorous, and eloquent he can be...especially under pressure and even adversity. Last night he delivered the greatest speech of his career at the Republican Convention...and was roundly booed at its end by the Trump fanatics there for not endorsing the admirer of Putin and Mussolini. I say to Ted, "Way to go, bro'!"
Wednesday, July 20, 2016
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...
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...
Tuesday, July 19, 2016
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...
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...
Monday, July 18, 2016
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)...
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)...
Sunday, July 17, 2016
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...
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...
Saturday, July 16, 2016
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...
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...
Friday, July 15, 2016
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...
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...
Thursday, July 14, 2016
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...
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...
Wednesday, July 13, 2016
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...
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...
Tuesday, July 12, 2016
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...
Monday, July 11, 2016
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...
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...
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