Alliance of American Football Begins Inaugural Season

Every decade of two in American professional football, a new league will form to challenge the monopolistic domination of the National Football League.  The NFL dealt with the All-American Football Conference of the late 1940s by incorporating its most successful franchises and the American Football League of the 1960s by merging with it...and with the later World Football League and United States Football League by competitively crushing them.  Recently we've had Arena Football and the United Football League, both now defunct.  It's interesting that with all of the talent coming from college that there hasn't developed with American football the multi-tiered league system prevalent in countries where soccer is the dominant form of "football".  Now we have a new league, the Alliance of American Football, and we'll just have to see how long it can last.  Last night's CBS-televised game between the Orlando Apollos, coached by Steve Spurrier, and the Atlanta Legends...two of the league's eight teams divided into two divisions...was pretty well-played, all things considered.  In the AAF there are no extra point kicks after touchdowns: only two-point conversions.  And no kickoffs as well...the receiving offense starts from the 25-yard line.  Other rules are designed to further streamline and shorten the game and keep fan interest.  The fact that they waited until the weekend following the NFL's Super Bowl to start the season is probably the best idea: the AAF isn't directly competing with the NFL for TV time and attention, but instead slyly capitalizing on the end of the previous college and pro seasons to extend football for a couple more months.  The AAF regular season consists of ten games with the two top finishers in each division making the playoffs, the championship game to be played later in April.  And you won't be seeing oligarchic and often obnoxious owners like Robert Kraft or Jerry Jones in the stands...all teams are league-owned.  How this arrangement plays itself out should be one of the more interesting things about this new league.  I hope it succeeds...American football is clearly the most popular spectator sport in the United States and there is plenty of talent available to field quality teams, even if it isn't on the "premier league" level of the NFL.  If the AAF can do well with its eight teams and establish a sense of stability from year to year, they just might be able to establish themselves as a more permanent fixture in the American professional sports landscape.  And they should succeed as long as they get their games shown on broadcast television by major networks and/or cable channels like ESPN...

Ran Another Depot Park Parkrun 5K This Morning

Back on January 5th, after having signed up online, I ran in my first Depot Park Parkrun here in Gainesville.  The Parkrun is a network of non-profit races held...without entry fees...at various locations throughout the world: Florida now has three, in Gainesville, Clermont, and Pensacola.  My original intention last month was to make a regular weekly habit of running in it, interspersed with times that Melissa would go with me to walk together the 5K (3.1 miles) course that involves four laps on a very interesting winding and sloping trail around the park.  Last month I enjoyed the run, although near the end I had a short bout of hacking coughs...today was worse as I struggled with this for most of the run.  Although I was primarily running against my last month's time of 30:00, I did finish 13th out of 46 participating, also being the oldest male runner. My finishing time at 30:36 was a bit slower...here's a link to the race's results page: [results].  Still, even with my struggles and slowness it was a triumph of sorts as I had been suffering from some lower back pain recently that kept me from running and had reduced my walking to a hobble.  The weather at 7:30 race time was pleasant enough...about 57 degrees with 42% humidity.  But the wind was strong from the north and was a bit irritating when I faced it...

On a different note, although I wasn't planning to run the Five Points of Life half-marathon here in Gainesville this month as I have five times in years past, I had already mentioned that they had drastically changed their running course, which traditionally had run through the heart of Gainesville, going up and down the challenging hills of NW 16th Avenue, passing through downtown, and then through the University of Florida campus and even in and out of the football stadium...a great running experience!  Now, though, for whatever reason the course runs southwest of the city west of I-75, much of it up and down Archer Road.  The marathon course is ridiculous: I looks as if about 17.3 miles of the 26.2-mile distance involves running down Archer Road and back...sounds like a very boring course to me!  Will I run the Five Points half-marathon in the future?  I don't know, but this new course isn't helping me to decide in the positive...

Quote of the Week...from Stephen Hawking

Keeping an active mind has been vital to my survival, as has been maintaining a sense of humor.
                                                                            ---Stephen Hawking

Stephen Hawking, the renowned astrophysicist and decades-long survivor of the debilitating and usually quickly fatal disease ALS who finally passed away last year at age 76, has many good quotes...I even discussed the same one in two different blog articles.  The above quote is spot on for me, as I try both to keep my mind active and find things in life to laugh at.  But to me, being continually engaged in learning new things and finding and relishing the humor in my life has always been an integral part of who I am and isn't just some survival strategy.  When I see others who are utterly devoid of humor or are so close-minded that they refuse to try to see things from the viewpoint of someone with a different perspective, I don't react by thinking that they will soon perish, but rather perceive that they are lacking elements in their lives that would otherwise give them fulfillment and contentment.  Besides, in a way everyone has an "active" mind, but do they engage in thinking that enhances their skill levels and understanding of the world and other people, or do they absorb themselves in fruitless mental tape-playing reinforcing their own vanity, grudges, delusions and regrets?  I submit that you cannot be a compassionate person without the ability to laugh, especially at yourself.  I look at some of these "new wave" politicians, some of them running for president, and see neither humor nor compassion in their hearts.  I think a lot of people in today's runaway world of political correctness...and PC sees no humor in anything...are experiencing their careers and futures being ruined by past gaffes that they originally intended to be funny, even going back decades in the process.  But I digress...

I think I'm going to carefully look at the current and upcoming field of presidential candidates on the Democratic side and pick one to support over the others.  Two prerequisites: they have to be thinkers on both sides of the issues, being able to explain the other guy's side as well as their own.  And they must have a sense of humor...and a little grace wouldn't hurt, either.  As for my own thinking, I don't believe I have a career in astrophysics on my "event horizon", but that doesn't mean I can't study on my own level black holes and other areas of cosmology in which the great Stephen Hawking excelled...

Just Finished Reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain

After reading Mark Twain's 1889 novel A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, I thought I'd go back and read some of his other famous works...I just finished reading his 1876 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, a book I had begun reading before but never got around to completing.  I vaguely remember watching one of the movie adaptations when I was a kid and knew that the climax has something to do with a cave, but couldn't recall anything else other than the famous con job Tom did on his friends at the beginning to get them to whitewash the fence for him.  Orphaned with his little tattletale brother Sid, Aunt Polly has the task of caring for him...and quite a task it is as Tom is virtually uncontrollable, constantly getting himself in all sorts of trouble.  Read for yourself all the adventures he has with his friends Joe Harper, Huckleberry Finn, and Becky Thatcher, and get a sense of what life was like in early-to-mid-nineteenth century Missouri, then still a slave state with plenty of racial prejudice.  Twain used that "n" word from time to time here in the boys' dialogs...but I believe he was faithfully describing how people spoke back then, not promoting any agenda of his own.  Instead I'd like to touch upon an observation I made while reading this story...

I don't know where the expressions "finders keepers" and "possession is nine tenths of the law" come from, but it is clear in Tom Sawyer that the people in his society were respectful of the notion of property, much more than in today's world.  An example: Tom's church gives out tickets for Bible verse memorization...collect enough of them and they hand you a brand-new Bible.  Now Tom never studied his verses and knows next-to-nothing about the goings-on in the Bible, but he still has his mind set on winning one for his own.  So he goes around to all his friends and trades things for their tickets...one day in church he stands up and turns in enough tickets to get a Bible, to the congregation's astonishment.  Standing in front of everyone, Tom proudly receives his new Bible and is asked to tell them who Jesus's first disciples were.  Hesitating for a moment, he blurts out "David and Goliath!"  Tom's fraud in procuring the tickets having been exposed didn't matter...he possessed them and got the Bible, property rights respected.  Another incident happens at the story's end that affirms this strongly held respect for people's rights of possession, but you can discover that for yourself if you choose to read the book.  The sad, sad twist to all this is that the exaltation of property rights extended even to that of possessing other people...

Well, that's the second book I've read from Mark Twain in the last week or so...think I'm finished?  Not a chance!  I'm about to embark on what's generally considered his masterpiece: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn...

Weekly Short Stories: 1942 Science Fiction, Part 4

I'm concluding a look back at the best in short science fiction in 1942, at least from the viewpoint of the anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 4 (1942).  This is one of my favorite volumes from the series, which spans the years 1939-1963.  Here are the final stories...

THE TWONKY by Lewis Padgett
Lots of writers use pseudonyms for an assortment of reasons...Lewis Padgett was special because "he" was actually the wife and husband writing team of Catherine Moore and Henry Kuttner, who collaborated on many stories during this era.   The Twonky, in my opinion, was an inferior precursor to their following year's masterpiece Mimsy Were the Borogroves, which I hold high as my all-time favorite science fiction short story.  In The Twonky a "person" from a technologically advanced time accidentally slips through time-space-dimensional barriers and finds himself in a radio factory (TV hadn't taken off yet in 1942). Told to go to work by a foreman who thinks he is an employee, he uses what skills he has and constructs what looks on the outside like an ordinary radio console but after delivery to the eager customer turns out to be something pretty scary...

QRM-INTERPLANETARY by George O. Smith
The term "QRM" is used in amateur radio to ask the question "Do you have interference?"  And interference is the focus of this story as an ignorant supervisor takes charge of a very complex communications relay station positioned in the orbit of Venus.  This guy comes in with all his authority but very little knowledge...his arrogance and micromanagement remind me of...well, never mind.  This is a story that teaches quite a bit about science, both in terms of radio propagation and astronomy.  And it's also clearly a lesson about misplaced authority and the folly of misapplying business models to science and technology.  Nowadays I'd say the same about insurance folks...also elevating the financial bottom line over anything else...and who act as if they know more about medical care than the physicians...

THE WEAPONS SHOP  by A.E. van Vogt
I have a problem with the premise of this story, which if I reveal it might involve spoiling it for the reader...maybe you should stop here if you plan to read it!  Well, let's just say that during one of those common sci-fi scenarios of a dictatorial and corrupt future empire, a small town wakes up to find a "Weapons Shop" suddenly standing there in an empty lot...ready for business.  Only problem is that the door won't open for anyone with harmful intentions.  But Fara, a local repairman who blindly follows the empress, gets through although he is suspicious of this place of defiance, which promotes freedom through the possession of very advanced arms...sounds like the NRA's pitch in today's world, doesn't it?  The problem I had with the premise is that although by buying and "appropriately" using one or more of these weapons one can assert their freedom and independence, this all hinges on the behind-the-scenes support of a very powerful, secret organization much more technologically advanced than the oppressive government being resisted...and that's the contradiction I see here.  The Weapons Shop is a sequel to last year's story See-Saw and was expanded into a series by van Vogt.  As a story it is well-written, but I much prefer his Asylum, also from 1942...

MIMIC by Donald A. Wollheim
Although many of my favorite stories from this anthology were pretty lengthy, Wollheim proved with this five-page tale that you don't have stretch out a story to come up with a quality product.  Mimic is about the concepts of mimicry and camouflage as different species have evolved to use them to escape predators...but what about today's world when humanity itself stands as the biggest predator of all?  One of the greatest endings I've ever read...Wollheim, by the way, was the publisher of this anthology series...

Next week I begin the book on short science fiction from 1943...

State of the Union Address Tonight at Nine

Tonight at nine President Trump will deliver his one-week-delayed annual State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress, with the U.S. Supreme Court justices also expected to attend.  It will take place in the House of Representatives chamber in the U.S. Capitol building...Vice-President Pence will be visible behind the president to his left and House Speaker Pelosi to the right. I thought last year's speech was one of the high moments of Trump's presidency so far, as he accentuated unity, national security, and economic prosperity in it.  Unfortunately, the gracious tone with which he spoke quickly withered away afterwards and the next morning he was back to his same old Twitter antics...this morning on the Senate floor Democratic Minority Leader Chuck Schumer alluded to this and remarked that whatever kind unifying and reconciling message Trump purveys this evening will be meaningless without him consistently following up on it afterwards.  Although I was impressed with last year's address, I was dismayed a few days later when, at one of his strange campaign rallies with the usual lot of grinning and nodding adoring sycophants appearing behind him, he suggested that the Democrats in the House chamber who hadn't risen up and applauded his speech were guilty of treason...yeah, that, I sadly suppose, is the real Donald Trump, regardless what he says tonight from his prewritten script.  Still, I plan to listen, once again on the radio at work...

My Reactions to Yesterday's Super Bowl

Interested in how people reacted to yesterday evening's Super Bowl between the Los Angeles Rams and the New England Patriots to determine the 2018 National Football League season champion, I watched a little TV today and surfed a little Web ...the prevailing view seems to be that the game wasn't all that great but the halftime show was pretty good...even spectacular to some.  I beg to differ...

I don't know where it came to be that low-scoring games...in whatever sport one's discussing...are somehow of a lower quality that those where the scores shoot through the roof.  I found the tenacious defense in yesterday's Super Bowl, as practiced by both teams, to be absolutely extraordinary!  In play after play not only was the pass rush strong enough to harass the quarterback, be it Jared Goff or Tom Brady, to throw hurried passes, but the coverage was amazing as defenders repeatedly reached in at the last second to bat down passes or knock them from the receivers' arms.  The low score, 13-3 with the Patriots finally prevailing, was indicative of this defensive domination...I'm glad that Brian Flores, the winners' defensive playcaller, will become my Miami Dolphins head coach starting next year.  The one thing I didn't understand was how little the Rams used their franchise running back Todd Gurley.  When he did run, he usually did quite well...but he spent most of the time on the sidelines while his offense was on the field.  Gurley had been recovering from a knee injury but the team kept repeating that he was healthy to go...so what gives?  His presence most likely would have been a major game-changer...

As for the halftime show, I have become totally numbed by all the light shows and pyrotechnics in concerts nowadays...so I wasn't at all impressed by the excess I saw in this regard.  The headlining act, Maroon 5, sounded all right but I didn't get the semi-strip-tease performance of their lead singer, who seems to regard himself as irresistible to women, at least onstage.  I'm not into the rap/hip-hop scene musically, but the performers who shared the stage with Maroon 5 were more entertaining...although I couldn't understand a word they were saying (probably for the best, anyway). Maybe the best feature of the show was the televised overlaying of an old SpongeBob SquarePants episode where Squidward leads the band to the Super Bowl: that was funny.  I think my main problem with the show was that it was seemed too frantic and rushed, but maybe that's because (1) they had a lot to fit into a short time and (2) a lot of folks nowadays seem devoid of anything resembling an attention span...

I'm not happy with the Super Bowl's outcome, with New England winning its sixth Super Bowl title. But they deserved it, and it was a very good game, others' assessments to the contrary notwithstanding...

Virginia Governor Northam's Strange, Offensive Yearbook Picture

It's been a couple of days since Virginia Governor Ralph Northam's 1984 medical yearbook profile page showed a picture of somebody wearing "blackface" standing next to another in KKK attire, both holding drinks.  Underneath the regrettable photo was a supposed quote of his, attesting that since there are more old drunks in the world than old doctors, then bring me another beer.  I get it, other students with personal pages in that yearbook probably had gag pictures and quotes on them as well...all in fun, right? But, dude, you had to know that this would not be a good picture to promote and identify with, didn't you?  DIDN'T YOU?

Northam's initial reaction to the revelation was to put out a written apology acknowledging his poor judgement with wearing blackface...but since then has denied doing so, claiming that he wasn't even in the picture.  In the meantime, almost the entire Democratic Party, led of course by those grandstanders running for president, are calling for him to resign as governor, which he has been serving as for a little more than a year.  Before that Northam was Virginia's lieutenant governor for four years.  And yet all this time, with all the high-paid opposition research supposedly done on candidates in these very competitive political times, no one had come up with this amazingly offensive photo...and in one of the places you might think researchers would have gone to at first...what incompetence!  And about the racial aspect to this all? It's apparent to me that Northam...and most likely the white classmates he buddied around with...were a bit flippant, insensitive, and careless about race and tried to joke around about a topic that has been the source of great suffering, indignity, and persecution in the past.  But that's what happens when people surround themselves with the same little clique of friends, each feeding off the others' words until they begin to mistake the perspectives (and warped sense of humor) of their limited social circle as being those of society at large...I strongly suspect this is what happened in medical student Northam's case.  Oh well, if he hasn't resigned yet I think he probably will before too long...

Just Finished Reading A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

Back in the primitive days of computerdom it was considered a great innovation to have a CD slot on one's PC to play music, and the educational CD-ROM came into existence as well...a lot of information can be stored on these discs.  I soon became the owner of a set of three CD-ROMS, each claiming to be the complete fictional works of a famous author: William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, and Mark Twain.  Yet I rarely used this format...now I'm wondering whether I want to dig them out and examine them.  For Mark Twain's 1889 novel A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, which I just finished reading, is no doubt included...

There is a lot of narrative to this novel...it is initially in the first-person by the author himself but switches to that of a New England native, Hank Morgan, who after suffering a head blow during a fight finds himself back in the times of Camelot when King Arthur supposedly reigned over England...in the sixth century.  Hank brings his Yankee independence and technological knowhow to this situation, cloaking his abilities as being that of a magician, one superior to the envious Merlin...and King Arthur buys it!  Along the course of the story he sees firsthand the injustices caused by what he deems the outright fraud of nobility, but also notes that the masses of oppressed people themselves willingly submit to their domination, something continually very consternating to him. Hank has his own ideas about how to change this society, and he uses America's late-nineteenth-century model of freedom, science, and self-reliance to implement it...including the development of electricity and mass communications.  And we know that Hank made it back to our time (i.e., 1889) because M.T.,the original narrator, had met and interviewed him.  Other than that I think I'd better leave the finer points of characters and plot to you should you want to read it someday.  Instead some side thoughts...

First of all, the dialog between Hank and the people of King Arthur's era is uproariously funny and reminds me of the hilarious repartee between Groucho Marx and others when the moustached comedian would continuously follow one zinger with another...now I wonder whether Groucho derived some of his act in part from Twain's writings.  For that alone I'd recommend this book, but there's more.  Hank's narrative, which really reflects the thoughts of Twain, is very incisive as he observes what's going on around him and it carries much application to the world today.  For one, I never did understand why folks in America are so interested in and endeared to English royalty...didn't we have a revolution to get away from that sort of thing?  And for another, I look at the political landscape today and marvel at how some of the poorest groups of people regularly support political leaders and parties whose very actions go directly against their own best interests...you can read this from either side of the political spectrum if you wish.  No, "our" politicians aren't technically "nobility" although that great Don Henley line speaks to me: "We're beating plowshares into swords for this tired old man that we elected King" (referring to President Reagan).  Yes, we in America have substituted other forms of royalty for that which we abandoned in 1776. And Twain, through his protagonist, had a lot to say about a Church that so monopolized religion and its expression that it had become a corrupt political institution in itself and a rival to the nobles in subjugating the vast majority of the people...

There have been a number of film adaptations to A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, including one in 1931 starring Will Rogers and another in 1949 with Bing Crosby...this one was a musical...a musical of all things!  I can't imagine how anyone could read this book and come away with a musical...well, now I'm intrigued, so I guess I'll have to watch it sometime.  But I'm already confident that, regardless which movie adaptation you see, you'll still be missing a lot of what the book has to offer...and maybe the most important parts...

Quote of the Week...from Mark Twain

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.
                                                                                  ---Mark Twain

I just finished reading A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by the great American author Mark Twain (real name Samuel Clemens).  Twain wrote in the late 1800s and early 1900s...he was a philosopher and humorist, but even more so a blunt appraiser of what it is to be an American.  I'll go further about that novel in tomorrow's posting, but for now I want to examine the above quote of his, which rings so true to me and on more than one level...

It seems to be a permanent fixture on the news channels: whatever is being reported, be it issues or politicians, somebody's got to come out with a poll showing how the American people feel about them.  And majority rules here: whichever side "wins" the poll, the moderators tend to treat it as the final, ultimate confirmation or rebuke of what or whom they're asking about.  Lately in the news they've been polling a lot on two issues: Trump's wall and the Mueller investigation.  Right now, Trump is down and Mueller is up, if you go by the public opinion polls.  But what do the masses of questioned Americans really know about either issue?  Most of them probably don't pay much attention to the news or the issues, and even for those who do, their knowledge falls far short of the experts and involved players...so it all comes down to a political popularity contest in the end...

In my younger elementary and high school years I formed my own opinion about being on the "side of the majority".  In the social life back them bullies were preponderant and the prevailing attitude of the "majority" was not to ostracize them like mean ol' Scut Farkas was in the movie A Christmas Story, but rather to suck up to them, befriend them, and even participate in shunning and belittling their chosen victims...even teachers in that time sided with bullies, placing all of the responsibility on the victims having to stand up for themselves.  That kind of majority rule soured me very early on to this concept, and I've subsequently never enjoyed social settings where a leader will whip up mass enthusiasm within a crowd...even less when it is sprinkled with derision expressed at adversaries, real or imagined...sometimes I wonder whether many who have psychologically bonded with Donald Trump did so because he brought back nostalgic feelings of youth when they themselves were bullies, toadies, or suckups…

No, I'm not so keen on the idea that if most of the people in a particular setting agree on something, then that automatically means that they're right.  For many folks are fodder for manipulation, especially for the type that pits them in an adversarial relationship with others...when this happens, reason and common sense...as well as compassion, grace, and mercy...tend to fly out the window...

My January 2019 Running Report

As the new year began I had high hopes of possibly running both a half-marathon and a 15K race in January...unfortunately about a week into the month I came down with some lower back pain that put an end to my high ambitions.  Still, on the 5th I ran in a 5K race: Gainesville's Depot Park Run, which takes place every Saturday morning and is free...donations and volunteer work are always welcome, though.  I enjoyed that run and thought it would be a good idea to make a weekly habit of it, either running the course or walking it with Melissa whenever she wanted to go.  But that hasn't happened yet, although this Saturday I'm looking into returning.  I don't think I'll be running this city's Five Points Half-Marathon in February either...I'm not in shape for it and the fools completely changed what had been a fantastic course: instead Melissa and I are visiting Savannah that weekend...

Despite missing 9 days of running due to that backache, I still managed to run a total of 65 miles in January, with 5.2 miles being my longest single run.  I'm still looking forward to running longer distances, but maybe I've reached the point where 10K and 15K races should be the distance limit.  But "official" racing isn't why I run anyway: I like the activity for its own sake...

Weekly Short Stories: 1942 Science Fiction, Part 3

This week as I continue through the anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 4 (1942), I have run across two rather long short stories...novellas might be a more appropriate designation.  They are Nerves by Lester del Rey and Barrier by Anthony Boucher...the titles may sound familiar if you'd read this blog over the last couple of years: I've reviewed them both previously.  One of the problems with a really long "short" story is that the author sometimes doesn't seem to know exactly what to do with it...with Nerves del Rey wrote a full-length novel adaption a few years later.  But I had hoped that he would have pruned out some of the excess narrative and made it shorter...I guess that was hoping for too much, though.  Well, let's see if I can't throw in a couple more thoughts about these stories...

NERVES by Lester del Rey
Nerves lays out...way back in 1942...a foreboding picture of what a nuclear reactor meltdown would look like, both in its danger to the surrounding community and environment and in terms of the horrible effects of radiation and burns on human casualties.  The story focuses on two physicians thrown into this disaster shorthanded, an elderly doctor experienced with established medicine and a young, unexperienced doctor who understands much about atomic physics and the effects of radiation.  How these two interact may be the best part of Nerves, although I still can't get over the author seeing this 3 years before the first atomic bomb was exploded, 13 years before the first nuclear reactor was built, and 37 and 44 years before the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl meltdowns, respectively.  Here's a link to my 2017 review of Nerves: [link]…

BARRIER by Anthony Boucher
A young man with no particular specialized knowledge or skills is hired by the inventor to be the guinea pig in a time machine going from our "present" time (i.e. the early 1940s) some five hundred years into the future.  He quickly discovers to his horror that he is now in a totalitarian, stagnant society, the Stasis, that forbids any kind of scientific or artistic innovation...people can even be arrested for not conforming to dictated rules of grammar.  A time barrier has been built to prevent anyone from the future with notions of how better to run things from infiltrating their time and wrecking the Stasis...our time traveler finds himself both pursued by the "Stappers", that is, the enforcers of the Stasis, and temporally imprisoned, unable to return to our present century.  He befriends some members of the resistance movement and then the time travel paradoxes begin to present themselves.  As a matter of fact, if you're looking for the story to end all stories about the paradoxes involved in traveling through time, then this one is for you.  And here's a link to my 2017 review of Barrier: [link]…

Next week I should be able to conclude my look back at the best in short science fiction from 1942...

Optimizing Unconscious Competence at Work

I've mentioned before about how I admire the work ethic of NFL quarterback Tom Brady, bemoaning in the process that he plays for "my" Miami Dolphins' chief rival, the Patriots.  Brady is known to stand facing a wall and endlessly repeat his stances and throwing motions in order to perfect them and reinforce these actions to the point where they become unconscious, freeing him to think about more pressing issues during a game...like his receivers' sometimes errant pass routes or that linebacker who's unexpectedly coming up at him on a blitz. Brady's philosophy of work is similar to mine in that first you master every aspect of your assignment that you can turn into unconscious routines, and that involves looking on a micro-level at the precise ways that you arrange things and the order in which you perform your functions.  I believe...and it has been borne out over the course of my work life...that if you can commit as much of your job to unconscious competence, then that will allow you to focus your intelligence and volition on the inevitable glitches and exceptions that arise from all sources.  I've recently begun a new job assignment at my workplace and I've still working hard on getting everything in order...the basics are simple enough but it's also easy to get tripped up over details if I'm not careful.  But I've found that while I still have a ways to go before I've made those parts of this assignment fully unconscious routines, I am still better able to effectively react when things don't go as expected.  But I also realize that I work as part of a team and that there are aspects to my work that involve me respecting how those with whom I directly work do things.  So if one day I walk into a room and the setup I am used to arranging has been done a little differently by someone else, then I flow with it...I think a lot of us sometimes forget that in our jobs...especially those that involve processing material commodities or providing services to the consumer public...we're also charged with treating our fellow employees in a constructive and respectful manner.  And, bringing it all back to the beginning, I suspect that this area is also one where Tom Brady excels...why, oh why does he have to play for New England?

Just Finished Reading The Marvelous Land of Oz by L. Frank Baum

A few months ago I had decided to read L. Frank Baum's lengthy series of short novels about the mythical land of Oz after noticing the complete set on my sister's bookshelf when we visited her and her family back in 2017, but never got around to following up on the first book, naturally called The Wonderful Wizard of Oz...from 1900.  The written story turned out quite a bit different from the 1939 blockbuster musical movie version starring Judy Garland, but I enjoyed Baum's writing style and it was pretty funny.  Then, while recently reading Robert Heinlein's sci-fi novel Podkayne of Mars, I noticed that its protagonist Poddy, a girl in her late teens, was a big Oz fan and made numerous references to different characters in the series.  This turned my attention back to Baum and I just finished reading book number two, titled The Marvelous Land of Oz, which he had published in 1904...

In this story there is no sign either of Dorothy or the Wizard of Oz, although at least they were mentioned in passing: no reference at all was made to the Cowardly Lion.  Oz is benevolently ruled by Scarecrow while his best friend the Tin Woodman reigns over the land of the Winkies.  The story is centered around a boy named Tip who has been placed in the custody of a sinister old sorceress named Mombi.  One day, while harvesting pumpkins, he decides to play a prank on her by cutting out a face on a pumpkin and setting it up, complete with a wooden body and arms and legs, to surprise her.  Surprised Mombi is, and she decides to prank Tip in return by sprinkling life-enabling magic powder on it.  Jack Pumpkinhead, as Tip calls him, is a genial but rather stupid sort...but the sorceress threatens to turn Tip into a statue and use Jack instead to perform her chores.  So Tip sneaks out with Jack and escapes, taking with him Mombi's stash of life-powder.  They go out in search of the Emerald City where they hope the King, who is Scarecrow, will help him with his situation.  Meanwhile, there is an insurrection in Oz as the girls, led by General Jinjur and armed with knitting needles, take over and make the men do all the domestic work.  Scarecrow and company escape and seek help from the Tin Woodsman.  Meanwhile, Tip has brought a sawhorse to life with the pilfered powder...he ingeniously calls him "Sawhorse"...

No, I'm not going to tell the rest of the story.  But with this one I may have found my favorite character: a "woggle-bug"...more specifically H.M. Woggle-Bug, T.E....who after having absorbed the lessons from a school teacher after hiding out in his school, is caught one day and magnified on a screen to the students.  A distraction occurs and the enlarged bug wanders off, hence the initials H.M. (highly magnified) and T.E. (thoroughly educated).  He reminds me strongly of Milne's Owl character in the Winnie the Pooh series: very pompous and arrogant about his educational level.  But the funniest moment may have been when Jack Pumpkinhead first meets Scarecrow and agree in their amiable discussion to get an interpreter...even though they already understand each other!  Yes, there's a lot of funny stuff in this book, and unlike with the first one, I wasn't getting myself sidetracked comparing it to the movie...

Since the Oz series is now public domain, you shouldn't have trouble getting it on the Internet.  YouTube has available public domain audiobooks...that's what I used this time around...

Today's Miserable Weather, Meaningless Football Game

Today has to be one of the most miserable days of the year, at least as far as the weather is concern.  It has been raining here nonstop in the Gainesville area with no relief in sight...plus, as the day has worn on, the temperature has plummeted.  Yuck!  And on this Sunday afternoon with me off from work, it might have been a good time to watch some football on TV...except that the only game is the meaningless National Football League Pro Bowl, their version of the all-star game.  Of course, no one wants to get injured in these contests, so the defense plays super-light, everyone who gets the ball races to the sideline, and the officials are continually quick-whistling plays over before tackles can be made.  So how is this a real game?...it's a joke, that's what it is.  I was watching it for a while but finally gave up.  Besides, if your team's star player gets injured today and it affects your season next year...well, better for him to skip this game in the first place, I say.  I read that players on today's winning side will received $67,000 and the losers $39,000, while the game's MVP is to win a new car.  Well, that's good for them, I suppose, although it does nothing to whet my interest in this nonsense...

Days like this were meant to be spent at work...that is, if your job is indoors.  On the other hand, there's nothing like this sort of weather (and lousy television) to put on some hot coffee or chocolate and grab a good book to read...

A Little More Political Reflection

If a Republican other than Donald Trump...say one of the leading primary also-rans like Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio...had been elected president in 2016, I wonder how vastly different the media reaction and coverage would have been in terms of its negativity.  Trump, if anything, has made the Democratic-leaning opposition lazy in that he serves up outrageous statements and actions almost on a daily basis, insulting people left and right and making all sorts of false claims.  I have no doubt that if Cruz or Rubio were in there, we would have neither this governing-through Twitter nonsense nor the regular pandering to the political base with the campaign rallies.  Instead, their messages would have been to the American people as a whole and that, although their policies may have been just as ideologically on the right as the current president's, they would have been more persuasive and less denunciatory in nature...in other words, more presidential.  Not that the late night talk show hosts wouldn't have all sorts of nasty things to lead their shows off with against a Cruz or Rubio presidency...they'd just have to work a bit harder at it, that's all.  And I say all this acknowledging that I, myself, am a Democrat.  But look at what just happened recently in Washington...

At their annual March For Life rally in the nation's capital...one of the relatively rare protest demonstrations conducted by political conservatives...there was outrage expressed at an infamous photo and an accompanying short video of teenage boys, wearing those dumb "Make America Great Again" red hats that signify support for Donald Trump, appearing to be taunting a poor old, innocent American Indian who was just there beating a drum.  How racist those kids are, the social media reaction virally went, they should be punished...and their Catholic school in Kentucky was actually considering suspending or expelling them when the situation's true context was revealed.  The boys were just gathered there waiting for the bus to drive them back home when a different group of protesters approached and began to taunt them.  Then the Indians came, with that drummer being the one to confront the boy, not the reverse.  The young man just smiled back at the Indian, the photo was clicked, and the smear campaign began with opinion-makers taking off with the story and running with it...

It's this sort of thing that gives me pause during this time of torrential criticism of the current president and the Republicans.  True, Donald Trump with his bullying, deriding nature has assuredly set much of the tone for the backlash from the left, but I feel that with even someone else in charge it would be much the same.  I didn't vote for this president, but he is my president and I want him to succeed in the areas that he has the Constitutionally-mandated responsibility for.  And one of the most supremely important areas is our national defense, which includes protecting our borders.  I've said it before and I'll say it again: Trump was the one elected, like it or not, and Congress should be deferential to him in his role of Commander-in Chief...he, not they, should be in charge of border policy.  Trump's mistake, however, was using an issue (the border wall) to hold the federal government...and eventually, the nation...hostage with a financial shutdown.  Now any future president from either party will be able to point back to this precedent and do the same with their own pet issues...thanks a lot, Donald...

Now about this "national emergency" notion that has some screaming "dictator" and "martial law": declaring national emergencies has become commonplace during the past few administrations, regardless which party has been in power...it isn't that big of a deal, except to the ignorant.  The only possible legal glitch for Trump declaring a national emergency at the border so that he can build his wall is that he might need to demonstrate a viable way to fund it...if he declares such an emergency it will certainly go to the courts, who lately seem to be the ones deciding on our border and immigration policies.  I'd rather see everyone, from both parties, just get together, with recognized experts on the subject, and work out the best possible policy that optimizes expense with border protection.  But that involves folks in D.C. being reasonable for a change, so good luck with that...

No, this border wall issue is not what disturbs me about this president.  My biggest concern is that he has been somehow compromised by the Russian regime of Vladimir Putin and is doing his bidding, however subtlety.  It's already been established that the Russians didn't influence the 2016 election by hacking and manipulating voting machines, but they did infiltrate social media with intentions to sway the election against Clinton and for Trump.  But I imagine every country in the world (including the U.S.) with interests in other countries are always trying to influence their elections...that is, when the countries they want to affect actually hold free elections.  I don't hold Trump and his cronies responsible for collusion or conspiracy...I instead hold those American voters responsible who bought this crap and let it influence their decisions.  So is Trump somehow beholden to Putin?...that's the only thing I wonder about now.  And if Mueller can't answer that in his investigation, it doesn't do me any good in terms of resolving this whole sordid affair...

Quote of the Week...from Ernest Hemingway

There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow men.  True nobility lies in being superior to your former self.                                                 ---Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway, of course, was one the greatest American authors of the twentieth century...I've read his novels The Old Man and the Sea, The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, and For Whom the Bell Tolls...that last one is my favorite of his.  Most successful people, like Hemingway, are often esteemed for having risen above the masses with their chosen craft and they deserve commendation for this...I myself have a grudging admiration of standout NFL quarterback Tom Brady, despite the fact that he plays for a team I always root against.   And wanting to be better than everyone else is indeed a good goal...but only up to a point.  If that's all that is motivating us to succeed, I believe we probably will be very disappointed in the end and possibly just give up, "playing second fiddle", "backup", or "also-ran" not elements of our personal vocabulary.  I think that was the problem with another NFL player, Tim Tebow, who was more concerned about being seen as the "best" over others than working hard to improve himself into being the best player God had gifted him to be...so he left the sport.  Hemingway showed his wisdom and indicated to me by the above quote that even had he not achieved such acclaim for his writing, he still would have continued pursuing it as a personal commitment...a noble commitment.  What are the things we are committed to improving on...even without any assurance of tangible recognition from others?  I agree with Mr. Hemingway and suggest that here is where real nobility can be found...           

Just Finished Reading Podkayne of Mars by Robert Heinlein

One of Robert Heinlein's lesser known works is his 1963 science fiction novel Podkayne of Mars. In it Podkayne...or "Poddy"...lives on Mars with her parents, precocious 11-year old little brother Clark, and the infant triplets that have diverted her parents' attention and cancelled a long-desired family trip to Earth.  Yes, by all this you can assume that it's some time off in the future and humanity has colonized Mars...plus Venus as well, its extremely overheated and poisonous atmosphere still unknown at the story's writing.  And yes, there are native intelligent life forms on both planets...Heinlein mixes this "soft" science fiction with "hard" passages describing space travel in detail that makes such a scenario nearly seem plausible.  Well, the Mars senator, who just happens to be Podkayne's uncle, hears of the trip's cancellation and invites her and Clark to accompany him on a trip to Earth...with a stopover in Venus.  At this point I won't go any further revealing the plot and instead will focus on two areas: super-intelligent Clark and the story's original and altered endings...

There is a mythos in our modern society about the incredibly smart little know-it-all kid who almost magically knows advanced science, math, and technology...like Stewie in Family Guy with his time machine or Artemis Fowl with his criminal shenanigans in Eoin Colfer's children novel series. Look at young Sheldon on TV...the kid just "knows" so much more than the dumb adults around him.  Clark in Heinlein's story is another example of a child whose intellectual level is vastly beyond what one would reasonably expect from even a genius at his age.  And why is it that these brilliant kids seem to tend toward manipulation and villainy?  I don't know about you, but I'm getting sick and tired of this recurring super-smartass-scheming-brat caricature I see in books and on the screen...

Robert Heinlein wrote an ending to Podkayne of Mars that did not sit well with his publisher, who insisted that he change it...which he reluctantly did: I read the revised version.  Yet, the original is also still out there and I understand that some editions feature both endings.  Talk about a schizophrenic novel.  In any case, I don't have to read the original ending to know what's different about it...all in all I enjoyed this short book, but it's not anywhere near the quality level of the author's Stranger in a Strange Land or The Moon is a Harsh Mistress...

Weekly Short Stories: 1942 Science Fiction, Pt. 2

Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 4 (1942) may be the best book in this retrospective anthology series looking back on the best in short science fiction.  Having said that, it's also true that many of the stories within tend to be rather long, approaching novella-length.  Of the three I'm discussing today, the first two take up a lot of pages and demand more of a commitment from the reader...but they are worth it...

THE PUSH OF A FINGER by Alfred Bester
It's early in the thirtieth century and society on Earth is in a state of balance, with scientists and statisticians secretly determining...in the Prog Building in Manhattan...what works and what doesn't.  They're biggest secret, which Carmichael, a hotshot newspaper reporter, manages to discover after infiltrating the organization, is the ability to predict distant future events with excruciatingly high levels of accuracy.  A crisis has occurred with a somber discovery: at a set time a thousand years later the universe will suddenly end...and the cause seems to be man-made and traceable back to the present.  A brilliant sci-fi mystery with a ridiculously silly ending...

ASYLUM by A.E. van Vogt
My favorite tale of the book, Asylum would more appropriately be deemed a science fiction horror story which involves extraterrestrial vampires and a super race of Galactic overseers.  Earth has not yet developed the credentials to join with the Galactics and their federation of worlds (sound familiar?), but they're keeping an observer around to keep an eye on things, his identity a secret.  Meanwhile the Dreeghs also have their sights set on Earth, but their motives are different: to harvest the blood and life energies of its inhabitants.  Two of them comprise the advance team...real bad-ass villains...and they hatch a plot to use another one of those hotshot newspaper reporters...this one named Leigh...to discover the Galactic Observer's identity so that they can eliminate him.  They suspect a scientist/inventor named Ungarn who lives on a meteorite near Jupiter to be their target and manipulate Leigh into leading them to their prize.  But there are plenty of plot twists and surprises awaiting everyone, especially the reader.  One of the best...and least expected...endings I've encountered in a short story...

PROOF by Hal Clement
There is a sub-genre of science fiction called "hard" science fiction in which the author, usually highly trained in the intricacies of science and/or technology, uses his or her knowledge to make the story more realistically plausible. Proof is one such example: the author, using details of subatomic and high-energy physics, paints a picture of life...including intelligent beings...existing IN the sun...and in other stars as well.  And yes, they have spaceships, too.  But what about the planets...and how would such entities perceive these accreted masses of heavier elements so foreign to the physics and chemistry of their native sun?  Another superb ending...did I not say that this may be the best book in the series?

Next week: more from 1942 in the world of short science fiction...

Just Finished Reading Beatlebone by Kevin Barry

In 2015 Irish fiction writer Kevin Barry came out with the novel Beatlebone, in which ex-Beatle John Lennon, in 1978, temporarily flees his domesticated lifestyle he has been living in New York City with wife Yoko and son Sean...he feels the desperate need to find and then stay for three days on a remote little Irish island he had bought eleven years earlier.  He plans to just sit there and scream and scream...a reference back to the Janov Primal Scream Therapy he had famously undergone with Yoko at the close of the Beatles era.  The problem John has...and one that dominates the flow of the story...is that although he had visited this island before in 1969, now he can't remember exactly which one it is of the hundreds out there.  He has an Irish character named Cornelius drive him around, steering away the clamoring press, finding lodgings, and introducing him to other usually very annoying characters.  The language in the story is stream-of-consciousness and difficult to follow as John lets out his thoughts and interacts with others.  There is actually very little said here about either the Beatles, John Lennon's former bandmates, or Yoko One and very much about not only his early childhood and his parents...but even his parents' lives before he was born.  One thing that struck me in Barry's fictionalized account was that folks in that part of the world believed in haunted places that sometimes distorted reality, even to the point of taking people to other places and/or times...I've read of this phenomenon before in other books.  And the notion that Lennon would just suddenly take off to a remote spot from his home has a factual basis: during his 1976-79 "retirement" from music-making while raising his little boy, Yoko and John immersed themselves in a kind of astrology in which she would abruptly assign him the task of briefly traveling to another part of the world and coming back...Barry referenced such a trip to Japan in this story.  But the author laid forth the proposition that John was suffering from musical writer's block and wanted to produce new material, hence this trip to his island.  The book's title Beatlebone reveals its meaning toward the story's end, which as usual I will refrain from giving away.  Later I read some very glowing, positive reviews of Beatlebone, but I have to admit that it came across to me like another self-indulgent version of the Beatles' critically-panned Magical Mystery Tour movie. Although I think that the music of the Beatles was terrific and groundbreaking, I never got into the personality cult mentality surrounding them.  That John Lennon was such a special, elevated person that his experiences and opinions transcended those of "ordinary" folks was never something I believed, but as a reader I felt I had to "play along" just to get through the story.  I didn't like it as much as others did, but if you like artsy, stream-of-consciousness types of literature, then this one's for you...

Patriots and Rams Advance to Super Bowl on February 3rd

In the National Football League playoffs yesterday, I watched both the National Conference championship game between Los Angeles and New Orleans and that of the American Conference with Kansas City going against New England.  Ordinarily I don't just sit there and watch entire games, but this time I did this that...with both of them.  They were very entertaining and suspenseful, both with anxiety-filled final moments in regulation and eventually going into overtime.  One of my teams won and one lost...ironically I feel a bit worse about the game "my" LA Rams squeaked out against the Saints, and all because of a horribly blown call near the end of regulation.  New Orleans had been driving downfield in a 20-20 tie and looking to run down the clock as they sought to take the lead and then deny Los Angeles any time to come back.  Quarterback Drew Brees threw a strong pass at receiver Tommylee Lewis just short of the end zone...just before the ball got to him Rams cornerback Nickell Robey-Coleman slammed and decked him, the ball flying on past them.  The officials made no pass interference call although it had to be one of the most blatant penalties I ever saw.  The result was that the Saints ran out of downs too early and had to settle for a field goal, after which Los Angeles had enough time left to march down the field and get one of their own, sending the game into overtime...which they won.  Well, I'm glad the Rams won, but not like that...

In the other game the New England Patriots beat the Kansas City Chiefs as the two teams, following slow offensive starts, together scored 38 points in the fourth quarter alone.  The Patriots won the crucial coin toss entering overtime, meaning that they would probably win since KC and New England were just going back and forth trading touchdowns at the end...and Pats quarterback Tom Brady executed a long, textbook winning drive.  I'm rooting for the Rams in February 3rd's Super Bowl...or should I say more accurately that I'm rooting against the Patriots...

Super Blood Wolf Moon Eclipse Tonight

Evan McMullin, one of the people I follow on Twitter, retweeted a posting by Space.com about tonight's lunar eclipse, visible from the Western Hemisphere...here's that website link. The moon will be at one of its closest points to Earth, which explains the "super" adjective, as it passes through our planet's shadow on the opposite side of the Sun...that's what a lunar eclipse is.  And lunar eclipses always occur during the moon's full phase...in January full moons are called "wolf moons".  During this eclipse the shaded part of the moon will still be visible, but a dim, dark "blood" red...hence the quirky title that the writer of this Space.com article, Elizabeth Howell, came up with.  She also gave a timetable for this eclipse, in Eastern Standard Time:

10:34 pm: Partial eclipse begins
11:41 pm: Total eclipse begins
12:12 am: Mid-eclipse
12:44 am: Total eclipse ends
1:51 pm: Partial eclipse ends

Tonight the skies here in northern Florida are expected to be clear...and cold.  I'm looking forward to checking it out...why don't you, too?

Just Finished Reading The Wishsong of Shannara by Terry Brooks

When fantasy fiction writer Terry Brooks completed his Shannara trilogy with The Wishsong of Shannara in 1985, I wonder if he foresaw writing some thirty-odd more spinoff novels and short stories based on it.  He has his share of loyal readers, but I was initially resistant to the series when the first book, titled The Sword of Shannara, seemed too derivative of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings.  But while recognizing that there will almost certainly be some borrowed themes from other fantasy series, Brooks in the second and third books of the trilogy wrote more original material.  The Wishsong of Shannara takes place a generation after the previous story as Wil and Eretria Ohmsford's daughter Brin and son Jair possess a special ability called the Wishsong...Jair's is limited to creating illusions but Brin can manipulate both mind and matter when she sings out the magic.  The parents are out of town just when the mysterious druid Allanon arrives and tells the brother and sister that evil is once again afoot, as evil murderous wraiths, allied with the gnomes and empowered by and subservient to the will of the Ildatch, a sentient book of dark magic, are in pursuit of them.  As the story develops, Brin and Jair find themselves on separate paths to try to destroy the Ildatch, which is hidden away in a protected marsh.  They each encounter allies who help them on their quests: much danger and high adventure mark this tale, as well as a lot of introspection and self-doubt among the characters.  My favorite character was the independent gnome tracker Slanter who after capturing Jair for the dark side ends up as his greatest protector.  Who, if any, will survive the ordeals and will they be able to fulfill their mission?  Guess you'll have to read it to find out...

Terry Brooks' Shannara trilogy reminded me of Isaac Asimov's Foundation science fiction series in that each successive volume jumped ahead in time instead of just being a direct continuation of the preceding book...I kind of liked that: each installment is a complete story in itself.  Now that I'm finished with the original series, I may from time to time look into some other Shannara series that Brooks wrote over the ensuing decades...  

Quote of the Week...from Marilyn vos Savant

Be able to cite three good qualities of every relative or acquaintance that you dislike.
                                                               ---Marilyn vos Savant

Marilyn vos Savant is probably most known for her weekly quiz/advice column in Parade magazine, inserted in numerous Sunday newspapers.  She's credited as having an extremely high IQ, for what that's worth, and doesn't mince words about her opinions on a wide range of subjects...some of these I'm not terribly in agreement with, to put it diplomatically.  Yet she does have a lot of wise quotes, and I picked the one above because it goes counter to popular sentiment today.  Whether it's politics, reality TV, social media, school, the workplace, or any other venue, people tend to vent negatively about others in their lives or the news without couching their criticisms with some praise and understanding.  Trying to see things from the other guy's viewpoint...which is empathy...is crucial to maintaining a balanced view of others, especially those we dislike.  We're all mixed bags with good and bad...Marilyn's advice rings true to me: instead of harping on how bad someone else is, why not put your time to better use and see them for their positive traits?  Some folks in my life are disagreeable because they don't like me either, and can probably list all sorts of reasons for this.  I can't make everyone like me, and I don't want to anyway.  And I can't always like others, either.  But everyone's got something to appreciate and recognizing that fact can potentially point to improved relationships between us...

Work, Pain, and the Politics of High Drama

The last few days for me have been a bit distracting...I've been learning and getting used to a new job assignment at work, suffering from a nagging backache, and naturally...just when I wanted to get off from work and rest and recover...a sudden, excessive amount of overtime.  Well, I think I have my new assignment down pretty well, the back is much better (but still sore), and that overtime thankfully dried up for the time being.  Still, I think I'd better wait a few days before I am ready to resume any sort of running.  As for working extra hours, part of that is my own responsibility since I signed up to get overtime: I'd just like it in more moderate amounts, please...

In spite of work and physical pain, I've been noticing what's going down in the news and am dismayed by the total level of disfunction in our elected national government.  The latest chapter in this nonsense has President Trump abruptly cancelling a secret trip by House Speaker Pelosi to visit our troops serving overseas...and in doing so betraying the secret publicly.  This is in apparent retaliation to Pelosi's hesitation in allowing him to deliver his State of the Union address on January 29th if the government is still shut down.  She has the authority to do so...the President is obligated by the U.S. Constitution to give Congress an annual report on the state of the union, but he can accomplish this with a written report.  Still, I'd like to see him deliver the speech in person...his State of the Union address last year was one of his best speeches.  Too bad Mr. Trump is incapable of sticking with a script...if ever there was someone who needs to, it's him...

And I'm sure there will be more high drama coming out of the White House, since being a drama queen is one of the things our president is truly competent in and is something that his "base" seems to relish.  What saddens me the most about all this is that I happen to agree with some of his proposals and policies, but he seems more interested in making everything an issue about himself, first and foremost.  Well, there's not a whole lot I can do about that...I feel sorry for all the federal workers who are not being paid and for those Americans who are not receiving important services due to the shutdown...

Weekly Short Stories: 1942 Science Fiction, Pt. 1

I continued my look back at old science fiction short stories by reading the first four in the anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 4 (1942). This volume contained some amazing...and mostly lengthy...tales, some of which speak to us in our world today.  Here are the first four...

THE STAR MOUSE by Fredric Brown
Old science fiction stories are often full of eccentric, reclusive scientist/inventors with their quirky little projects.  A common theme back then was one who designs the first rocket to outer space...Fredric Brown used it in this story as a kindly old scientist first catches Mitkey, a little mouse formerly living undetected in his home, and then sends him up on a rocket.  While in space an unknown small asteroid, inhabited by very small, intelligent beings, intercepts Mitkey's flight and they infuse the little mammal with human-level intelligence and alter his vocal apparatus to allow him to speak...which he does in the scientist's thick German accent.  When he returns to Earth and asks someone for directions to his old home in New Jersey...well, you can see the farcical direction this is heading...

THE WINGS OF NIGHT by Lester del Rey
Two space workers soft-crash-land their ship on the moon after one of its parts malfunctions.  As they approach a very smooth area to land, the ground suddenly opens up and they go deep under the surface to the distant bottom...where an ancient intelligent being, the last of his kind, lives and has a desperate need for his race's survival.  Can the two parties communicate to help each other out of their predicaments? And what about one of the men, who tends to display bigotry toward beings different from himself?

COOPERATE--OR ELSE! by A.E. van Vogt
It is the future and humans have explored and settled far off into the galaxy, including a place called Carson's Planet. On it live the ezwal, apparently unintelligent animals that provide them food.  On a spaceship a captive ezwal, revealing its species' truly intelligent nature, has taken over the ship and killed all but one of its people...a Professor Jamieson, who escapes on down to a jungle, sea, and monster-infested nightmare of a planet with the ezwal in hot pursuit.  The ezwals want to expel humans from their planet, but to do so involves no one knowing of their intelligence...so Jamieson has to die.  But the professor realizes that in order for either to survive on this extremely hostile world, they must cooperate with one another.  This story was written at the precise moment in history during World War II in which the Democratic allied nations added another ally: the totalitarian Soviet Union, which was suffering a brutal invasion from Hitler's Nazi regime...

FOUNDATION by Isaac Asimov
I've already read and thoroughly enjoyed the five core books of Asimov's Foundation series, in which humanity, so far off in the distant future that they've forgotten their planet of origin, lives under the rule of a galactic empire. A"psychohistorian", Hari Selden, envisions that empire's eminent breakup and subsequent eons of brutal, chaotic infighting before civilization can be restored.  His strategy to drastically shorten this dark period involves setting up two scientific outposts on the opposite ends of the galaxy...but the very scientists he dispatches are ignorant of his true intentions.  Before the novels starting coming out in the 1950s Asimov had already laid out the groundwork in the 1940s with a series of short stories...this was the first.  Great ending!

Just Finished Reading Elevation by Stephen King

Last year Stephen King came out with an unusually small book...I would have missed it had I not one day been browsing the shelves of my local Books-a-Million.  I quickly put my name on a waiting list and checked it out from my library.  The book consists of the title novella plus a short story titled Laurie.  As for the story Elevation, it reminded me a little of Thinner, a much earlier novel King wrote under the pseudonym Richard Bachman.  In that tale a man who gets on the bad side of some gypsies is cursed with losing weight, no matter how much he eats.  Elevation's premise is similar: Scott Carey, a resident of that infamous fictional Maine town of Castle Rock, is progressively losing weight as well...but his paunchy, overweight appearance remains the same and he keeps feeling better!  Meanwhile a married lesbian couple is having difficulty overcoming the prejudice of the townsfolk as they generally shun their new Mexican-themed gourmet restaurant.  It is the interaction and emerging relationship between Carey and the women, along with the foreseen logical ending of his weight loss, that dictate the flow of the story. I enjoyed it without having to commit very much time to getting through it, but in the end I wished it were longer (and had a different ending)…

The short story Laurie is about a recently widowed elderly man living way down yonder in Florida.  His concerned sister gets him a little puppy for companionship: at first he objects, especially when confronted with Laurie's "accidents", but then the two bond.  And there is an adventure at the end waiting for them as they go for a walk one day...

Neither Elevation nor Laurie would make my top ten list of Stephen King stories, but for the characters he introduces with such feeling the reading is worth it.  Sometimes the weird things he makes happen to them don't make a lot of sense, but I can definitely see myself and others I know within those characters' personalities.  Check it out...

Super Bowl Teams Finalized Next Sunday

It seems like I'm following more of the NFL playoffs this year than I usually do...that's interesting seeing how all three Florida teams experienced losing seasons and missed them.  Yet I enjoyed some of the scenarios, including defending Super Bowl champion Philadelphia somehow getting into the playoffs and both Los Angeles teams as well.  Teams I dislike such as New England and New Orleans got first-round byes and then went on from there to the conference championship round.  Sadly, Seattle, a team I've grown to follow over the years largely due to their head coach Pete Carroll and versatile quarterback Russell Wilson, bowed out early to Dallas.  Well, with the Eagles gone as well, my favorite of the four remaining teams has to be Kansas City with its brilliant second-year quarterback Patrick Mahomes.  They'll be hosting the Patriots in the American Conference championship game next Sunday the 20th at 6:40 PM, broadcast on CBS.  Earlier that day will feature the National Conference finale with New Orleans at home against the Los Angeles Rams, the game set for 3:05 PM with Fox carrying it.  My ideal scenario would have a Chiefs-Rams Super Bowl, but the Patriots and Saints, each franchise with its legacy of cheating and subsequent punishment, will probably prevail next Sunday...in which case I'd be forced to pull for New Orleans against despised New England.  But we'll see...

The Rolling Stones, The Who, and Me Still Hobbling Onward

The day after I wrote on this blog my tentative plan to enter an Ocala long-distance running race a week from now, my sporadic lower back pain returned, causing me to hobble around in much the same way as comedian Tim Conway's "old man" character.  I'm confident I'll recover as I have a number of. times in the past and eventually get back to hitting the road, albeit not to Ocala or anywhere else very soon.  In the meantime I'm looking at ancient rock bands like the Rolling Stones and The Who and marvel at them as they keep on touring and (very occasionally) recording.  It's a bit ironic that with the latter, their creative force, Pete Townshend, had left the band in 1983 because, like with the Beatles in 1967, he was tired of touring and wanted The Who just to be a studio band...the others strongly disagreed with him on this.  Now he's all over the place touring, and the last studio album the band released was in 2006.  But wait, they just announced a brand-new album to come out later this year!  Meanwhile, the Stones keep on touring and touring without any plans of coming out with any new original material...but with more than 300 songs in their catalog why should they?  And, after all, they did release in 2016 an album devoted to covers of old blues songs...

Oh, by the way, Paul McCartney, not to be outdone by his old rivals in the music business, has come out with yet another LP, this one titled Egypt Station.  I didn't care all that much for his music after he left the Beatles, although his first two solo releases, McCartney and Ram, were very high-quality. Yet I wonder if I shouldn't have given him more of a listen in his later works...the last song he recorded that I heard was The World Tonight from his 1997 Flaming Pie album and I thought it would have stood well as a Beatles track...

I'm still listening to the radio and trying to like the current output of "hits", but to little avail.  I'm thinking of making a listening project this year to go through the collective output of artists like McCartney, The Who, Rolling Stones, and others...including those later albums in their careers that never get any radio exposure.  And one more "by the way": Pearl Jam's releasing a new album later this year, too.  I have a strong suspicion that the worst songs of these legends of rock are still on a higher level than most of the "popular" music played today...
 

Just Finished Reading The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie

When I go to my local public library I often go to the audiobooks section, often coming across books recorded in the Playaway format.  Playaway audiobooks consist of a small cartridge resembling a large MP3 player...you supply your own earphones and AAA battery.  The other day I checked out a Playaway edition of American Indian writer Sherman Alexie's young adult novel titled The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, first published in 2007.  It is told in the first person by a Spokane Indian boy, Arnold "Junior" Spirit, describing his life from his hydrocephalic condition as an infant...causing early problems and an enlarged head...and on throughout his youth in the Spokane reservation in eastern Washington state as he deals with widespread bullying and other issues.  One of his reservation school teachers notes that he is bored with the low level of education provided there and suggests he attend a "white" public school in a nearby town...Arnold does so and becomes shunned as a traitor by others in his reservation, including his best friend Rowdy.  The story continues on from there...you'll have to read it for yourself to see where it goes...

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian was a very compelling and alternately funny and sad view of what it's like to grow up on a remote Indian reservation...I've since read that the author himself is part Spokane and shared much of his own life's story in the novel.  Sadly, I also read that last year some aspiring women writers came out with complaints against him for hitting on them during some writing workshops that he was involved with.  Alexie apologized for his forward behavior, but many in the literary community still have shunned him and even withdrawn past awards.  No way do I condone his past behavior, but at the same time I think that his works should stand on their own merit.  One problem I have with celebrityhood in our culture is the tendency of people to either idolize their favorites or vilify those they dislike, instead of realizing that we're all cut from the same mold and while our misdeeds deserve criticism and sometimes punishment (and sometimes severe punishment), none of us are truly perfect and blameless.  People are complex entities and there's good and bad in all of us, believe it or not.  Sherman Alexie is clearly a flawed man and he admits it...the irony of some of those who have made him into a literary pariah of sorts is that they had earlier lauded his portrayal of people in general as being flawed as well...

Quote of the Week...from Mitch McConnell

Remember me? I am the guy that gets us out of shutdowns. It's a failed policy.     ...Mitch McConnell

The United States Senate's Majority Leader, Republican Mitch McConnell from Kentucky, made the above quote on August 28th, 2014 while he was still the Minority Leader and Tea Party activists had steered the House of Representatives to shutting down the federal government back then during the Obama administration.  But then is then and now is now and McConnell has turned 180 degrees, now being the impediment in the Senate to allowing a vote on an appropriations bill that would reopen the government and which it had already previously approved, 92-6.  The Democratic-controlled House just passed the identical bill, sending it back to the Senate, which the Republicans under McConnell control 53-47.  The bill would probably not pass by the same overwhelming margin this time around, but still enough for a two thirds margin large enough to override a Trump veto.  The ultimate question then would be whether enough Republicans on the House side would be willing to also vote to override the veto...I'm doubtful about this.  Still, the Majority Leader's quote demonstrates his utter lack of principle as the only thing that matters to him is total partisan victory on whatever issue happens to be at hand...

I'm sure most Americans are very frustrated by this whole business of shutting down the government over a proposed security wall on our southern border.  I think a long-stretching visible barrier would be a good, important component to our border policy and completely reject the notion by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that it is "immoral".  But I do not accept the President's decision to close down the federal government indefinitely, putting so many people in financial distress, in order to achieve "national security"...it's diminished us, not strengthened us.  Neither Trump nor Pelosi seem to be in any mood to compromise, and now it looks as if Trump will declare a national emergency to get his wall funded and built.  To all those who think such a thing would be the act of an authoritarian dictator, ABC News listed some national emergencies proclaimed by the previous three sitting presidents, six by Bill Clinton, eleven by George W. Bush, and ten by Barack Obama.  And Donald Trump has already declared three national emergencies...did you know that?  So maybe this could be an avenue to eventually restore government funding...if the courts don't block it, that is. If you've read this blog, you already know that I am no fan of Trump, but he is the president and as such has as one of his highest duties the protection of America.  Maybe we can disagree on his conclusions, but we should defer to him on this as our president, like him or not...

College Football Playoffs Over, NFL's Continuing

Now that Clemson has won its second major college football championship over Alabama in three years, it finally looks as if Nick Saban's firm hold on college football supremacy is over...at least for now.  Clemson coach Dabo Swinney has established his own claim to the best college football coach...and he's a lot, lot more approachable and likable than the Alabama coach.  Plus, unlike Saban, he didn't abandon a prior commitment to another team in mid-contract in order to get his "dream" job.  In honor of Dabo, I give Clemson honorary status as the "third" Florida team in the Atlantic Coast Conference and plan to support them next year...

In the NFL, the playoffs are down to eight remaining teams...in the wild card round last week only the Philadelphia-Chicago game went my way, and just barely as the Bears placekicker muffed a last-minute winnable field goal following an improbable Eagle comeback.  Philly is playing this Sunday at New Orleans (4:40 PM) while the other Sunday game has New England hosting the LA Chargers (1:05 PM).  On Saturday at 4:35 PM Indianapolis will visit Kansas City while the Los Angeles Rams will be at home against Dallas in a game starting at 8:15.  For these four games I'm rooting for Philadelphia, the Chargers, Kansas City, and the Rams. Although the best-case scenario for me would see an Eagles-Chiefs Super Bowl, an all-Los Angeles championship game stands as a tantalizing possibility.  And that would be a kind of justice, wouldn't it, after all the years that this large, great city had been deprived of even one National Football League franchise...

Weekly Short Stories: 1941 Sci-Fi, Part 4

I conclude my look back at 1941's short science fiction with the final five entries in the anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 3 (1941).

SOLAR PLEXUS by James Blish
Blish, who wrote several of the Star Trek books that came out after the TV series, was already an established science fiction writer for decades...this is one of his first stories.  Brant Kittinger, a lone scientist stationed at the edge of our solar system, is abducted by a ship run by robots...robots imprinted with the memories and neural circuitry of humans, most notably their leader, the late Murray Bennett.  Only one problem: they've lost their reason for what they're doing and Bennett's robot wants to place Kittinger into a robot to help guide them.  Horrified, the scientist has to think fast about getting out of his predicament.  Not one of my favorite stories...

NIGHTFALL by Isaac Asimov
Arguably Asimov's best short story of all time, Nightfall is set in a different star system with six suns...the planet in question, populated by humans with a comparable technology and civilization to ours, never sees nighttime or even darkness because there are always suns to keep everything in light.  But now only one, faint sun is above the horizon...and an astronomer has learned from a cultist group that a heretofore unknown planet is about to eclipse it, causing planetwide darkness for several hours and bringing out the multitude of mysterious stars to vision.  In the past...every two thousand years or so...advanced societies on the planet had suddenly and inexplicably disintegrated into chaos and civilization had to rebuild: was this periodic phenomenon the cause?  Asimov examines not only the phobia of being in darkness that such a situation would create for people unaccustomed to it, but also how complex such a solar system would be and how this would make learning about forces such as gravity much more difficult.  An excellent tale on many levels...

A GNOME THERE WAS by Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore
Kuttner and Moore were a husband-wife writing team that often wrote under the pseudonym "Lewis Padgett".  This story is about a clueless labor agitator from California who goes uninvited into a Pennsylvania mine to organizer workers there, only to get himself lost and then turned into a gnome.  The gnomes, you see, live in those mountains and have their own society and culture...they fight a lot, eats rocks, bathe in mud...and work, work, work.  Our hero desperately looks for a way to become human again and escape the gnomes.  This story tries very hard to be funny, but I just thought it was awfully annoying.  Not one of the talented Kuttner and Moore's best works...

SNULBUG by Anthony Boucher
Another speculative sci-fi story about the nature of time.  A medical researcher, needing funding for a new lab, has conjured up a demon to help him get his stingy ex-boss to provide the money.  But the diminutive demon, named Snulbug, doesn't look or act as if he's capable of doing much of anything.  The scientist, looking to the future, sends him out to get a copy of the next day's newspaper in hopes of finding something he can use today.  He then discovers that any attempts to change the flow of time will be rebuffed...a different tactic will be needed.  I thought it was strange that someone who was trained in the scientific method would be summoning a demon through magic, and it's here that I have a big problem with this story...

HEREAFTER, INC. by Lester del Rey
An overly pious and self-righteous man deliberately denies himself the pleasures of living, believing that in the afterlife he will be rewarded for his virtuous lifestyle.  He looks down on everyone else, especially his free-living boss.  One day he wakes up to discover that although he still lives in his miserable, scant apartment, his workplace and the city outside have suddenly changed.  This is a call to those who think that they will be rewarded in heaven for their good works and who wish ill on others who don't meet up to their own extremely self-righteous standards...

Next week I begin looking at short science fiction stories from the year 1942...

Looking to Run 15K or Half-Marathon in Ocala on the 20th

Back in the 2011 Ocala Marathon, which featured a course running through beautiful horse country south of the city, I managed to painfully finish it despite an IT-band injury just below my right knee causing sharp pain whenever I ran.  I had gotten to about the 10-mile mark with no real trouble, but that pain then began to make itself known and intensified to the point when I had to alternate short runs with short walks...walking at a moderate pace caused little pain.  By the 19-mile mark I told a volunteer that I was ready to quit the race...she encouraged me to walk out the rest of it so that I could say that I finished a marathon.  Well, I did just that, finishing in around 6 hours.  After that I abandoned marathon races and focused on half-marathons as my distance race of choice...I've completed 11 of them so far, including the Ocala Half-Marathon in 2013 when I finished with my second-best time for that distance at 1:55:20. Since then I've never gone back down there and the race organizers themselves abandoned the marathon event, transforming their annual January race into a choice between the half-marathon, 15K, 10K, and 5K distances.  This year it's coming up on Sunday the 20th, and after being informed that I can wait until race-day morning to register on-site, I'm seriously considering going down there.  But which race would I run...

Ideally, running and finishing a half-marathon is what I want, but I finished a local 15K (9.3 miles) race a month ago and kind of like that distance, too.  Next month I plan to run my 6th Five Points Half-Marathon here in Gainesville (I hear they're going to have a completely different race course, sad to say), so I can defer a half-marathon run to that time.  No, I'm thinking maybe that a 15K in Ocala might do me well this time around, but I probably won't know for sure which race to run until I get there...

About the 2020 Presidential Campaign, Even This Early

Within just a week after the 116th U.S. Congress was sworn in following the 2018 midterm elections, it looks as if the 2020 presidential campaign season has already begun...unless of course you recognize that incumbent president Donald Trump already seems to be in a perpetual campaign.  Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren has been campaigning through Iowa, site of the first voting event in 2020, the Iowa Caucuses. She's delivered some fiery, passionate speeches and that's good: I like her.  Only problem is that, at this most early stage in the campaign, it sounds as if she's already lost her voice.  And former vice-president Joe Biden just announced that he will soon be revealing whether or not he will be seeking the Democratic nomination for president.  I'm predisposed to supporting ol' Joe, but I fear that he might not have the tenacity to stick it out through a brutal primary campaign season, much less the general election campaign should he garner the nomination...he's always making a major deal about wanting to focus on his family, as if none of the others have their own families.  It's one thing for him to have sat out the primary season in 2008 and only have to campaign in the general elections of that year and 2012 as Barack Obama's running mate...this time around he'll be facing several candidates politically left of him and bent on portraying him as being too moderate.  I'm also keeping a close eye on Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's medical trials of late...she's been contending with cancer and, although she said she'd like to stay on the Court another five years, you can't always chart your own future course with accuracy...especially with the kind of medical issues she's been experiencing.  In 2016 when Justice Antonin Scalia passed away during the Democratic Obama administration, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to consider the president's nominee, Merrick Garland, deferring Scalia's replacement to the winner of that year's election...eventually Republican Donald Trump as he picked Neil Gorsuch instead.  Should Ginsburg or anyone else leave the Supreme Court in 2020, will McConnell stick to his stated and already-implemented "principle" and defer that nomination as well to the winner of the 2020 election?  If I were a betting man, I'd wager that he would weasel out of it all with some lame excuse and quickly allow Trump to handpick another conservative to stack the court.  But it's all still a little early, isn't it...

Just Finished Reading A Cry in the Night by Mary Higgins Clark

Mary Higgins Clark has written many bestselling suspense novels...for some reason I've only read one of them that I can remember, and that was a few years ago.  I recently had the opportunity to read one of her earlier books, A Cry in the Night, from 1982.  It's about a divorced woman with two daughters whose ex-husband keeps hitting on her for money and criticizing her life choices while reneging on his child support obligations.  She meets an emerging young artist while she is working for a Manhattan art gallery. They marry and move back to Minnesota, to his childhood small town on the edge of the woods there...unfortunately her ex has moved there as well and his continuing, unwelcome pursuit of her is starting gossip among the townsfolk.  As the months follow, she discovers disturbing aspects to her new husband's overly-controlling behavior toward her, his callousness about life, and his obsession with his long-dead mother that cause a rift between the two as she tries to show more self-determination in their relationship.  It all eventually leads to a frightening climax, previewed by the scene in the story's opening chapter.  I felt that for the escapist, suspenseful entertainment it provided, A Cry in the Night was a good, short novel, well written and unpretentious in its ambitions.  I like to read books like this from time to time and plan to check out other books by this prolific and skilled writer...

My Preferences for the 2018 NFL Playoffs

In 2018 I was convinced that although the Philadelphia Eagles had enjoyed a storybook regular season in the National Football League, they would sadly go nowhere in the playoffs after their start quarterback Carson Wentz was injured.  Shows how much I know about football: backup QB Nick Foles stepped right in and led the team to perhaps the most exciting Super Bowl victory ever, over the New England Patriots...by far my most hated team in the league.  So as the wild card games take place this weekend, I will wisely make no predictions...but that doesn't mean I won't express my preferences...

The following is how I rank the twelve NFL playoff teams according to my liking, not necessarily how good they are:

1 SEATTLE SEAHAWKS
2 PHILADELPHIA EAGLES
3 KANSAS CITY CHIEFS
4 BALTIMORE RAVENS
5 LOS ANGELES CHARGERS
6 LOS ANGELES RAMS
7 CHICAGO BEARS
8 DALLAS COWBOYS
9 HOUSTON TEXANS
10 NEW ORLEANS SAINTS
11 INDIANAPOLIS COLTS
12 NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS

And here are the matchups for today and tomorrow:

Today:
INDIANAPOLIS @ HOUSTON, 4:35 PM on ESPN
SEATTLE @ DALLAS, 8:15 PM on FOX

Tomorrow:
LA CHARGERS @ BALTIMORE, 1:05 PM on CBC
PHILADELPHIA @ CHICAGO, 4:40 PM on NBC

So consequently I want Houston, Seattle, Baltimore, and Philadelphia to win these wild-card games.  As for the following week in the playoffs, the lowest seed wild card winners in each conference will play the #1 seeds (Kansas City in the AFC and New Orleans in the NFC) with the other wild card winners playing the #2 seeds (New England in the AFC and the LA Rams in the NFC).  The only teams I feel any sense of loyalty to are the Seahawks and Eagles...may their games be blowout victories.   And I want to see the Patriots lose big in their game next week.  Other than that, I'd just like to watch some exciting, close, and well-played games...