Gainesville's Cheesecake Factory to Open in September

When our son Will was attending the University of North Florida in Jacksonville a few years ago, we'd visit often, and while there in the pretty southeastern section of the city near the campus, frequented their excellent Town Center with its many stores and restaurants (and multiple Starbucks). One area we tended to concentrate on was their huge Barnes & Nobles bookstore (with an embedded Starbucks, naturally) and the adjacent Cheesecake Factory restaurant. Since then our own local, smaller Barnes & Noble off Archer Road closed down and we've been long anticipating a brand new Gainesville Cheesecake Factory somewhere in the newly developed store area off Archer as well.  Well, we're not getting B&N back, but I just read on my local newsfeed that on September 17th our own Cheesecake Factory will open its doors.  It is said to be located next to the Whole Foods store, which is in the lot where Wal-Mart and Lowes used to be before they both closed and moved further west.  I love their dinner menu and even more their extensive list of specialty cheesecakes...can't wait! H-m-m, let's see...I think I'll try their tiramisu cheesecake first...

Will Tom Steyer Influence Presidential Campaign as a Candidate?

Hedge fund billionaire and long-time Democratic Party political donor and activist Tom Steyer has just declared himself as a candidate for president and will join the already heavily crowded field jockeying for media attention and name recognition.  Steyer has the advantage of having placed nationwide television ads throughout the past two-plus years calling for Donald Trump's impeachment and has built up a large database of supporters from which he may draw upon to obtain the necessary diverse source of contributions that the party demands in order to qualify for its televised debates.  It is doubtful that he will make tomorrow's cut to qualify for the second round of the debates to be held at the end of this month, but he's probably looking further ahead anyway and has plenty of his own money he can spend on television ads.  Steyer, besides his "Impeach Trump" movement, is known as a long-time advocate for the environment, especially when it comes to fighting climate change and developing alternative sources of energy.  Besides that, he should be more of a moderate along the lines of current frontrunner Joe Biden and might end up cutting into the former vice-president's support. I'd like to see him on the stage next to the other candidates and hear what he has to say, but then again I thought there were already way too many participants and the number needs to be whittled down.  But don't expect that to happen with the second round at the end of this month...it will be the same format with two debates, each featuring ten randomly selected candidates.  As for Tom Steyer, his being very wealthy doesn't bother me in the least, but I'm afraid that this won't fly very far with many other Democratic voters who are wary after real estate mogul and reality TV celebrity Trump's election...

Just Finished Reading John Lennon's In His Own Write

John Lennon of the Beatles wrote a few books along the way of his musical career, the first being In His Own Write, which came out at the height of Beatlemania in 1964.  Although it received popular press at the time, this small collection of nonsensical and ironic stories and poems probably wasn't read by many people.  After having just finished reading this rather short book, I think I know why...

I just checked out James Joyce's final work, Finnegans Wake, from the library.  In it words and phraseology are deliberately distorted in their spelling and application, making it pretty difficult to figure out what the [expletive] he's talking out almost all of the time. Apparently, Lennon had read some of Joyce since he employed the same strategy of misspelling and such...but he still was able to slyly get his meanings across and concocted some wickedly humorous short stories in the process.  His intentionally muddled writing is one reason I think few people ever got around to reading this book, which is loaded with overwhelming irreverence at many of society's institutions, including religion, ethnicities, genders, politics, and more.  Just two years later people would be burning Beatles records in protest after Lennon, in an interview, had simply stated in passing that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus Christ, yet In His Own Write contains some pretty explosive material in itself.  Why not check it out for yourself...you can search and read it online in pdf now.  I thought it was pretty clever and imaginative for him to have come up with this stuff, and he was only around 24 when it was published.  A warning before you read it, though: some of the humor is really dark, and the political incorrectness here is often way over the top...

Hurricane Barry Strikes Louisiana with Massive Flooding Ahead

Last Monday I mentioned in passing on this blog that an anomalous tropical storm system...anomalous because it originated in the mainland U.S. instead of western Africa...was forecast to possibly become a tropical depression toward the end of the week and drift westward once it entered the Gulf of Mexico through the Florida panhandle.  Well, almost all of that came true...except for the fact that it's now the end of the week and the storm system has developed into a full-blown hurricane, Barry, which is now (early Saturday afternoon) entering the southern coast of Louisiana.  Already there are reports of flooding and malfunctioning levees while the worst of the storm by far is still offshore in the Gulf.  By the time all of it has crossed over to the mainland, there will in all likelihood be catastrophic flooding throughout Louisiana as well as Arkansas and those parts of the South bordering the Mississippi River...the fact that this system is slow-moving is aggravating the situation...

Quote of the Week...from Isaac Asimov

To succeed, planning alone is insufficient.  One must improvise as well.  ---Isaac Asimov.

Somehow I regrettably inadvertently erased this original article, so here's a short summary instead of what I wrote.  Isaac Asimov, who passed away in 1992, wrote a famous science fiction series of novels titled Foundation in which humanity populates millions of worlds in the galaxy thousands of years into the future, under the rule of a centralized empire...which itself is crumbling.  Hari Seldon, a mathematician, has invented the field of psychohistory through which he plans the quick recovery of the empire after its demise...if certain important steps are taken at the right times decades and even hundreds of years down the line.  Its a good plan...initially...but unfortunately the way reality goes, unexpected occurrences happen that disrupt the Seldon Plan and those adhering to it must improvise to the best of their ability.  I'm not sure whether Asimov had this in mind when he made the above quote, but it dovetails well with his series, which I just finished reading again and am now working on his Foundation prequel novels.  The quote has a universal application: while planning in most endeavors is recommended, even essential, there almost inevitably comes the time when something comes up to throw a monkey wrench into everything.   The coach of a sports team can lay out the strategies for a game, the manager of a business can have their schedule and staffing down on paper...and I can have my own personal day set out before me in an organized, structured way.  Yet injuries happen, delivery trucks are delayed, employees call in sick...and all sorts of annoying things happen to me over the course of the day that disrupt my plans.  So it's important to incorporate allowances for some occasional chaos and value its management so that, even if it isn't until the next day or soon thereafter, the original (or slightly modified) plan can continue.  As ol' Forrest Gump once said just after he stepped in a big pile, "stuff" happens....such as my previous accidental erasure of this article...

The Four Public Faces of Donald Trump

This is not a pro-Trump or anti-Trump article...although in all frankness after hearing what's been going down with the 2020 alternatives offered by the Democrats, especially from that last debate with Kamala Harris figuratively kicking Joe Biden in the knee over retroactive political correctness, the current president is starting to look better by contrast.  No, this is about his public persona and how he chooses to present himself.  So without further ado, here are the four public faces of Donald Trump as I see them...

1 TRUMP'S TWEETING
It's no-holds-barred with the President and his Twitter habit of immediately responding in emotion-laden and insulting terms to public figures expressing criticism or opposition to him, often referring to them as losers and whatever organization they might be affiliated with as failing.  It's a bad example of vindictiveness and a sad lack of grace that I'm afraid will negatively influence how people in general respond to negativity from others in their own personal lives, even if they don't like Trump...

2 TRUMP'S RALLIES
When Donald Trump is preaching to the choir of his devotees, he reminds me of rock stars Mick Jagger or Steve Tyler when they are onstage in concert performing their act as he contorts his facial expression and gestures while amplifying much of what he Tweets about others.  He also reminds me...when he's in this setting...of early twentieth-century Italian dictator Benito Mussolini: just go on YouTube and watch how that dude looked when he got up in front of a crowd.  The overwhelming majority of the negative reaction to Trump is due to this act of his along with his Twitter habits, which may please some of his most solid supporters but causes just about everyone else to cringe in revulsion...

3 TRUMP ON SCRIPT
I was truly impressed by our President when he gave his first State of the Union address back in January, 2018.  He had his prepared script and delivered one reasoned, rational argument for his policy proposals after another and set the tone...had he stuck to script...for a productive presidency that could have brought the country together...or at least forged a center-right majority behind him and his efforts as Ronald Reagan had been able to do.  He's great when reading prepared material and it saddens me that he doesn't do it more...

4 TRUMP IN INTERVIEWS
Donald Trump the Debater is what we get when he submits to interviews like the ones with Lester Holt or George Stephanopoulos or one of his many impromptu press conferences while standing outside Air Force One or the White House.  Usually lacking here is the ridiculous self-caricature that typifies his rallies, as well as most of the more extreme personal bashing.  Instead, in these settings Trump focuses on directly addressing the questions posed him and bluntly gives his answers, laying out his reasons and why the other side is wrong.  To me, this is Trump at his best...with "Trump on Script" a close second...

At this stage in the game, I don't think that Donald Trump is going to lose his hard-core base of support as he runs for reelection...especially with what's been coming out from the Democratic candidates with their obsession over political correctness.  But instead of acting like a contrived stage act, he would greatly enhance his prospects if he were to coax moderate Democrats by simply doing what he has already clearly shown that he is good at: sticking to scripts during speeches and staying open and available for interviews...the Tweets and rallies are not aimed at the people he needs to attract for victory next year...

Weekly Short Stories: 1949 Science Fiction, Part 2

As I continued looking at what editors Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg chose to included in their anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 11 (1949), I realized that all of them came out years before I was born in 1956. Each of us has this "zero" point in the chronology of years, with the history predating our existence on Earth somehow seeming not quite as real as that through which we have personally lived. Science fiction stories aren't limited in time as to their content, but their writers are since they write them in the context of the current time setting, in this case seventy years ago in 1949.  I always have to keep this in mind when reading these stories as the language can sometimes get a little politically incorrect, especially with regard to women's roles in society.  Here are my reactions to four more stories in the book...

MANNA by Peter Phillips
A company has created and is marketing a new kind of superfood-in-a-can and has built one of its factories on the site of an old monastery...which is incidentally the dwelling place of the ghosts of two monks deceased centuries earlier.  In order to fulfill their obligations for ascendency, Brothers James and Gregory secretly "spirit" away can after can of Miracle Meal back to their original century when the local population is suffering badly from famine.  In the meantime, the home corporation is puzzled at the food's inexplicable disappearance and the story goes on from there.  I thought this story was kind of silly in that it attempted to merge the ideas of ghosts, spiritual ascendency, and subatomic physics into something that made a kind of sense...which it failed to do for me...

THE PRISONER IN THE SKULL by Lewis Padgett
This is what I would call a "loop" story, in which the ending leads back to the story's beginning.  John Fowler, a morally-compromised, shallow, and materialistic young man answers his doorbell one day thinking it is his almost-as-shallow girlfriend.  Instead, a gaunt, featureless man with a haunted demeanor and inability to formulate words enters.  Fowler at first tries to rid himself of the unwelcome and troubled intruder, but soon discovers that he is gifted with technology and is continually coming up with new inventions that Fowler tries to get patent rights for himself.  He keeps the man, whom he dubs "Norman", confined in a room as he exploits his abilities while refusing to help him in his quest for a cure.  This is a story where the protagonist is the villain...but justice will prevail nonetheless in the end. Or is there an end?

ALIEN EARTH by Edmund Hamilton
In my opinion by far the best of these four stories, Alien Earth takes place in the present (around 1949, that is) as a teak merchant explores a remote area of Indo-China before it later became the nation of Laos.  He and his guide encounter an indigenous man whose motions and even bodily functions are at one hundredth the rate of normal people.  He appears at first to be motionless but then is shown to be purposefully moving...at a tremendously slow speed.  Our protagonist discovers him to be just one in a cult of plant worshippers...the adherents consume a special drug that slows their processes and perceptions down to this level...a level at which they can perceive trees and other plant forms as active, sentient beings.  Indeed, what they experience is an alien earth and a fantastic concept.  But what are the trees are going to have to say about this tree-killer when they find him down at their level? Thank you, Edmund Hamilton, this tale is worth remembering...

HISTORY LESSON by Arthur C. Clarke
My sister Anita, older than me by four years, while still in high school one evening decided to read me a few short stories she encountered...tales like Ray Bradbury's The Small Assassin, Bram Stoker's The Iron Maiden, and this one by Arthur C. Clarke.  It is the final line that makes this brief story memorable for most, but upon rereading it many years later I was more interested in the first part, which relates the final extinction of a much-declined humanity eons into the future as the last remnants find themselves trapped between fast-moving, converging glaciers from the north and south.  This group, at the very end, sets up an area to safely store and protect from the glaciers items from their distant past, including an old, never-used-but functional asteroid beacon and something in a disc-shaped container.  Much later, Venusians travel to Earth and discover the beacon and objects.  Clarke wrote many of these kinds of very short stories with zingers at the end.  If there is a lesson to History Lesson, I think it's that it's way too easy to make erroneous assumptions about the past based upon fragmentary evidence...

Next week I'll cover some more science fiction short stories from 1949...

Wimbleton Tennis and Tour de France Bicycle Race Ongoing

It's early July again, which means that two usually ignored sports are in the headlines once again: tennis and bicycle racing.  England's Wimbleton, one of the major Grand Slam tournaments in professional tennis, is underway as well as the Tour de France multi-stage bicycle epic that crisscrosses that country with a different course each year.  I haven't gotten around to viewing any of the tennis, which basically consists of players grunting, shrieking, and moaning as they swing and hit the ball back and forth in a very structured and delineating setting...kind of boring if you ask me.  The bikers aren't much better...that is, if what I'm focusing on is the race itself.  But my attention when I'm watching the Tour de France (which is shown on NBCSports) is mainly on the scenery as the contestants, all pretty much looking the same in their tights and alien-ish helmets, pedal up and down hills and around curves, through countryside and village, as onlookers on the roadside cheer them on.  I caught a little of it this morning, and I can say with the utmost confidence that I have no idea whatsoever who is currently in the lead, which is probably just as well since I wouldn't recognize any of the names anyway.  Four-time Tour champion Chris Froome, whom I would have recognized, isn't participating after suffering a horrible wall crash in a race last month that caused multiple fractures...

I think I'll start watching some of Wimbleton in the days to come...probably with the sound down to avoid those annoying sounds coming out of the players' mouths.  One of the interesting things about these two events is that since they're both from western Europe, they take place live in the morning hours and also get replay coverage later on in the day.  I can't say I'm a terrific fan of either sport, but sometimes it's fun to switch from time to time and watch something different...

New Tropical System Forming from Mainland U.S.

A tropical low weather system, currently over the southern U.S. mainland, is expected to reach the Gulf of Mexico south of the Florida peninsula in the next couple of days, strengthen at least to tropical depression level, and consequently dump a lot of rain and stormy weather on northern Florida later on this week.  The "experts" generally expect it to drift in a more westward direction, away from us in north central Florida. Normally I wouldn't even mention this on my blog, but I read on social media where one meteorologist...name unknown since I can't recover the post...noted that this phenomenon of a tropical system originally coming off the U.S. mainland is unprecedented in his experience. All the other Atlantic systems that got their start over land have originated in western Africa, even those that eventually made their way into the Gulf of Mexico.  Since that area in western Africa is essentially scorched hot and dry desert land, I'm not sure what this says about what's in store for us in the southeastern U.S....who knows, maybe this will "blow over" and just be a rare curiosity.  Then again, if this begins a new recurring trend, then I want to record its beginnings here on this blog.  After all, can you remember plotting the course of a tropical system by starting with Georgia?

USA Women's National Soccer Team Wins Another World Cup

Congratulations to the United States women's national soccer team, led by Megan Rapinoe, Carli Lloyd, and Alex Morgan, for winning the 2019 Women's World Cup today after defeating Netherlands in the final match, 2-0.  Rapinoe scored the Americans' first goal on a penalty kick in the second half and Rose Lavelle kicked in a spectacular shot just a few minutes later.  They're celebrating now in France with their second straight World Cup and fourth overall, while the U.S. men's team is playing Mexico right now in Chicago for the CONCACAF Gold Cup.  CONCACAF...international soccer really likes to go overboard with the acronyms...is the division of FIFA (the umbrella soccer organization) that encompasses the nations of North America.  Mexico would rather be playing in CONMEBOL, which is just a ridiculous way of saying South American soccer, since the teams there are more competitive and would challenge them more in their training for the next Men's World Cup tournament in 2022.  The CONMEBOL Copa America match between Brazil and Peru was also played today with the heavily-favored Brazilians prevailing 3-1.  Rapinoe was very critical of FIFA for having scheduled the finals for both men's national team tournaments on the very same day as the Women's World Cup championship match...and I have to agree with her viewpoint on this.  Still, it's rather handy for me, being off from work and all today, to be able to follow the action at my leisure...although I couldn't find any stations broadcasting the Brazil-Peru match.  As for the Mexico-USA contest, I hope I don't sound too unpatriotic but I'm finding myself rooting for our friends from south of the border since I follow their premier professional league more closely than our own Major League Soccer, the UANL Tigres from Monterrey being my favorite team (and the current league champion).  It will be fun to see how this match turns out...it's still scoreless in the early going...

Currently Rereading Isaac Asimov's Foundation Series

I'm not sure if this is the third or fourth time around, but I am currently rereading the late Isaac Asimov's celebrated science fiction series Foundation, which he began writing as a 1942 short story but didn't publish the first three novel-length volumes until the 1950s...and then finished the main five-part series much later during the 1980s, along with a couple of prequel novels.  I just finished book number two, titled Foundation and Empire, and am now reading Second Foundation.  I did review these books earlier in this blog...here are links to those articles:

#1 FOUNDATION
#2 FOUNDATION AND EMPIRE
#3 SECOND FOUNDATION
#4 FOUNDATION'S EDGE
#5 FOUNDATION AND EARTH

Other: PRELUDE TO FOUNDATION

I haven't yet read the other prequel, title Forward the Foundation, nor have I read any of the spinoff Foundation novels written by other science fiction writers after Asimov's death in 1992.  For now, I'm content with going through the books I've already read...

Quote of the Week...from Epictetus

Be careful whom you associate with.  It is human to imitate the habits of those with whom we interact. We inadvertently adopt their interests, their opinions, their values, and their habit of interpreting events.                          Epictetus

Epictetus was a Greek Stoic philosopher from the late-first to early-second century A.D. and whose quotes are full of wisdom...here's a link to another of his I discussed three years ago: [link]. It seems that it's very popular nowadays to encourage people to be introspective about their childhood, paying attention to any early traumas they might have experienced that would lead to negative manifestations in adulthood.  I, on the other hand, believe more significant than this is that as children we unconsciously imprint ourselves after the personalities and habits not only of our own parents...be they beneficial or harmful...but also after others in our family as well as our friends, teachers...and even enemies.  And furthermore, with our age of mass media in full swing, by simply viewing them and listening to them regularly we can "associate" with complete strangers and emulate their worldview and demeanor, often without even knowing the source of what we are doing.  That's one reason why I have issues with what I see on my television screen with politics.  On one hand we have a president who takes everything said about him personally...positive or negative...and "doubles down" by attacking any critics in the most insulting personal terms.  You can object to his character and still unconsciously adopt some of his behavioral patterns...after all, he is the model of a success story in this world that exalts celebrity, politics and wealth.  On the other hand, we have a slew of people who repeatedly demonstrate their inability to discern the context of some of the more legitimate statements that Trump and others often make, commonly applying political correctness standards to them in order to condemn them as "racist" or some other condemnatory appellation...Democratic presidential candidate Julian Castro's recent accusation of conservative talk show host Laura Ingraham as "a white supremacist" is just one example of many.  I don't want to be like either Trump or Castro...both model a kind of knee-jerk reactiveness to others with aggressive and demeaning speech...it's kind of hard, though, to avoid them if I'm a regular follower of the news.  Still, I think that much more pervasive than these media figures are those with whom we personally associate as a matter of course in our daily lives.  I've said it before that in interactions with others I tend to remember much more clearly my own part in them other than others' contributions...yet I need to keep in mind that as a human being I am wired, as the great Greek philosopher has intimated, to emulate those around me whether I like them or not and whether I know what I'm doing or not.  Consciously avoiding loud and aggressive people, as Max Ehrmann wrote in his prose poem Desiderata, is a good step toward protecting myself in this regard...

Just Finished Reading Casino Royale by Ian Fleming

Ian Fleming was a British naval intelligence officer who, after World War II, became the highly celebrated creator and author of the James Bond spy series in the 1950s and 60s, which became an incredibly popular and long-lasting movie franchise with other writers continuing the exploits of Secret Agent 007 long after Fleming's death in 1964.  His first novel, the 1953 Casino Royale, was initially made into a puzzling satirical movie in 1967 having little relation to the book and later on with another same-titled movie, starring Daniel Craig as Bond, that followed the story line more closely.  Still, the characters, settings, and plot of Craig's Casino Royale sometimes diverge quite a bit from Fleming's original novel.  For one, the author characterizes his protagonist as more naïve and prone to mistakes and self-doubt than the cinematic version.  In Fleming's story, Bond plays a high-stakes baccarat card game against villain Le Chiffre, a double agent for the Soviets, at a French casino...in the movie the game is poker, Le Chiffre is more of a free-lancer with a debt to a shadow organization (later identified as "Quantum"), and the setting is Montenegro.  Timewise Fleming's book is the middle of the Cold War while Craig's movie is in the present time, loaded with advanced computer technology. Little of the movie's background story leading up to the casino drama is in the book, and Rene Mathis, here a French intelligence officer, like Felix Leiter of the CIA is shown with no suspicion about his unimpeachable integrity.  Some of the scenes are eerily the same, though, and the enigmatic figure of Vesper Lynn leads our hero astray in both stories.  I liked both versions and look forward to reading Ian Fleming's second James Bond book, Live and Let Die...

Weekly Short Stories: 1949 Science Fiction, Part 1

I began my look at some of the best in short science fiction from seventy years ago, according to the retrospective anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 11 (1949).  Today I'll be reacting to the first three tales in the book from the year in which NATO was formed, the Soviet Union exploded its first atomic weapon, and Harry S. Truman was beginning his first and only elected term as U.S. President after he served almost all of the late Franklin D. Roosevelt's fourth term.  Here they are...

THE RED QUEEN'S RACE by Isaac Asimov
I just finished reading Asimov's 1955 novel The End of Eternity, which examines travel back in time and the paradoxes it can produce.  In The Red Queen's Race, a idealist scientist devises a method to send a modern chemistry text, translated to ancient Greek, back to that era in hopes of redirecting the flow of history away from the devastating wars experienced in the twentieth century...and to forestall the threat of nuclear warfare.  The ending reveals the results of his efforts...which kind of reminds me of what happened when Harry Potter and Hermione Granger tried their own version of time travel in J.K. Rowling's third book of her series, The Prisoner of Azkaban...

FLAW by John D. MacDonald
A short, short story with a major knockout revelation at the end, Flaw is about the first mission to send men to Mars and back.  Like our Apollo 10 flight around the moon, this one will circle the Red Planet and return to Earth.  A young woman, engaged to one of the astronauts on the mission, anxiously awaits his return...they've exchanged rings and he's wearing hers with a ruby and a flawed design.  That ostensibly insignificant fact turns into a major factor at story's end as we're informed of very somber news about our place in the universe...

PRIVATE EVE by Lewis Padgett (Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore)
If my memory serves me correctly, the People's Republic of China has set up a surveillance state in which hundreds of millions of cameras are currently spying on the population, setting up an essentially totalitarian society.  But even here in America it's difficult to go into public...at least in more urban areas...where the cameras around aren't recording your movements as well.  Private Eye is set in a future where the walls themselves record everything everybody does...but there are privacy laws and only those charged with serious crimes are subject to having their past actions reviewed and scrutinized.  The protagonist in the story wants to commit a murder but knows that in the future, once it's over, the authorities will be able to see his every past action leading up to it and hear everything he has said along the way. So given this almost omnipresent surveillance, how does he plan out and execute his crime?  Even more than a sci-fi crime tale, this is an examination of adult psychology...but that's not surprising since the authors, actually the married writing team of Henry Kuttner and C.L. "Catherine" Moore, were probably the greatest at probing into people's personalities and motivations in a science fiction context...

Next week: more short science fiction from 1949...

Just Finished Reading The End of Eternity by Isaac Asimov

The End of Eternity is a 1955 science fiction novel by Isaac Asimov, technically unconnected with his many other works about the rise and fall of the robots, the Empire, and Foundation.  In it there is a clandestine organization on Earth called Eternity that operates outside the normal rules of time and whose operators...recruited and trained humans called "Eternals"...observe and analyze over the centuries of time the different societies and make small changes to affect the progression of human history in a benign direction, with their means of temporal transport involving rapidly traveling up and down the time spectrum in something called a "kettle".  The problem is what constitutes "benign" and ultimately leads to the story's climactic crisis.  The catalyst for critically examining Eternity's role in determining the fate of humanity is Andrew Harlan, a young man who has just recently become an Eternal and pretty much has the run of time itself as a Technician, i.e. an Eternal who actually effects the needed changes.  He finds in the course of his work that Noyes, his love interest from a much different century than his own of origin, will never have existed if a planned change is made...so he spirits her away to a hidden time far off in the future and the trouble starts to mount.  There is a very important lesson of analogy about our own growing Nanny State here in America where the government seems determined to tell us what we can produce, consume, and engage in based on their determination of what is good or bad for us...Asimov's story makes the point that danger, risk, and crisis are crucial elements to a society's growth and even its very survival: take them away and it will stagnate, weaken, and ultimately die...

I've read books by Isaac Asimov and Stephen King, both wildly successful writers, on how they set about to write a story.  King likes to take ordinary people that the reader can identify with and place them in extraordinary circumstances from which they must struggle to overcome and survive...he rarely outlines in advance how he will end a story and has stated that he often does not know its conclusion before he actually writes it.  Asimov, on the other hand, outlined his fiction, which in the case of The End of Eternity was absolutely indispensable: there's no way he could have come up with such a satisfactory, conclusive ending had he employed King's "let's just see where this goes" writing strategy.  I guess there's room for both approaches to writing: a loose outline with allowances made for divergent forks in the road.  As it is, I happen to like both Isaac Asimov and Stephen King as fiction writers...and The End of Eternity is a big "thumbs up"...

Obstructive Ornamental Horticulture

I realize that even if I do everything I can while driving to be safe, there will still be a risk of something happening beyond my control.  Yet it angers me when I consider the strange phenomenon of ornamental horticulture in parking lots that seem to deliberately obstruct my view of moving traffic when I have to make a decision while at a stop sign whether to go or not.  The above two photos I took this afternoon at my local Publix shopping plaza illustrate my point: one moment it's clear and then suddenly here comes this vehicle barreling down past the hedge row...which seemed to be consciously planted in such a fashion as to obstruct my view and is continuing to be trimmed to maintain that concealment of potential traffic.  I don't get it...I myself love ornamental horticulture and the cultivating and shaping of plants is something that I appreciate seeing, especially in what would otherwise be barren, desolate asphalt lots.  But why can't those contracted out to design and maintain this horticulture show some common sense consideration for drivers, bicyclists, and pedestrians and be careful to make sure that the view is clear at intersections and that vision of oncoming cars isn't blocked?  Yet I never hear anyone but myself complain...backing up just two or three feet further from the road before they start with the shrubbery would greatly enhance safety and still beautify the area.  I've seen much worse obstruction than in these two pictures, and my workplace employee parking lot is ridiculous in this regard.  You'd think that with all the regulations that businesses have to undergo at the local level that there would be ordinances to restrict this sort of thing...especially here in Gainesville where the local government seems to have some sort of phobia about businesses displaying signs.  Go figure...

My June 2019 Running Report

In June I ran a total of 157 miles, missing one day with 9 miles being my longest single run.  It's been a struggle against the outdoors oppressive heat and humidity...and the heavy rainfall we've recently experienced has been an impediment to me.  Whether or not this trend of increasing mileage keeps up for me depends on how my body reacts to it all...I'm probably going to need to take more days off from running for recovery in the future as a set policy.  I didn't run in any races this past month, and although 5K free races are held at Gainesville's Depot Park every Saturday morning and July 4th will feature the annual three-mile Melon Park at Westside Park, as of now I don't feel any special desire to participate in any of them. Looks like it won't be until the fall before I run any public races...

Just Finished Reading Four Three Two One by Courtney C. Stevens

Usually when I visit my local public library (Millhopper on NW 43rd Street) I browse around the cart that contains "Play-Around" audiobooks. They are basically listen-only MP3-like small cartridges containing an entire book, with me only having to supply my own AAA battery and earphones.  The other day I ran across the 2018 young adult novel Four Three Two One, by Courtney C. Stevens, in this format and checked it out.  I just finished it and, although it probably wasn't targeted at my age group, I still came away from it thinking that it had a universal message that applies to everyone...

Golden, or "Go", Jennings is a seventeen-year-old survivor of a New York City bus bombing the summer before that killed nineteen...including the young psychopathic bomber...and spared only four, including Go.  The other survivors are her boyfriend Chandler from Kentucky, Rudy...who had flirted with her just before the disaster, and Caroline, the bomber's girlfriend.  One of the first-responders who helped save the four has started a college scholarship drive for them, had the destroyed bus rebuilt from its ruins, and is staging a reunion in New York to celebrate them and their lives.  The story line, told mainly from Go's point of view, examines how each of the four survivors struggle with the torment of guilt, not only of surviving the attack when others didn't, but also of their common believe that each of them in their own way contributed to the disaster and are therefore unforgivable.  It is the ongoing interaction...much of it in conflict...between these four and others that sets the theme of the story.  And Go's new friend Vicky gives a classic lesson on how to be supportive of survivors in situations like this.  It's a timely tale, very appropriate in this sad time of public shootings in schools and workplaces, and addresses the all-too-often occurrence of suicide on the part of survivors.  A good read, I recommend it...

Quote of the Week...from Charlie Daniels

So I jes' reached out an' kicked ol' green-teeth right in the knee. ---Charlie Daniels

The above quote...if you're from my generation...is probably one you're familiar with.  It's from the Charlie Daniels Band 1973 hit Uneasy Rider, one of the funniest songs ever recorded.  It relates the experiences of a long-haired traveler of the time who finds himself in a "redneck-lookin'" Mississippi bar, surrounded by hostile locals making disparaging comments about his appearance and looking for a fight.  The quick-thinking narrator, sensing his impending beating, thinks up a distraction and kicks one of the "regulars", then going off on a rant about green-teeth infiltrating the Ku Klux Klan and working undercover for the FBI.  It's good enough for him to escape and reroute his trip to L.A. "via Omaha".  This song came to me as I already knew that Joe Biden, although not possessing any green teeth that I know of, was destined to figuratively be kicked in his knee during last night's second Democratic presidential candidates' debate...the question was who would be doing the kicking.  I had thought Cory Booker would have gotten the assignment, but alas, he was separated from ol' Joe after being placed in the first debate on Wednesday.  So it turned out that California senator Kamala Harris did it, repeatedly and directly criticizing Barack Obama's hand-chosen two-term vice-president on the issue of race, even dredging up his opposition forty-plus years ago to forced school-busing.  The mainstream media reaction to their onstage exchange was that Biden had lost and Harris had rebooted her campaign, in which she had fallen nationwide to around the fifth-place level among the contenders.  Now don't get me wrong: I am not at all critical of Kamala Harris for her strategy of going after Biden...any more than the dude kicking that guy with the green teeth was wrong for using misdirection to get out of his own predicament.  My problem is with the spin going all around in the media about how great she was and not pointing out the so clearly obvious and cynical motivation behind her action.  One of Joe Biden's greatest assets so far has been his relative popularity above the other candidates among the African-American community...besting even Booker and Harris, both black.  The debate ploy that Harris used was intended to chip away, if not destroy, this level of support and bring green-teeth's Biden's polling numbers down and elevate her own among this demographic group.  Like I said, this is politics and I don't disparage her having done so...but I'm getting the feeling that the "fix" is on and the media talking heads out there don't want the former vice-president to be the Democratic Party nominee.  We'll see whether this turns into a trend and whether I begin to echo the current White House occupant that it's all rigged...

My General Reaction to the First Democratic Debate Last Night

I didn't hear all of the first Democratic presidential debate last night, which featured half of the field of twenty candidates achieving at least 1% in polling.  But I did listen to the first hour and as such got a pretty good idea about these ten people and their strategies with their respective campaigns.  Most of them seemed to feel that it was necessary to practically shout out their answers to the posed questions in order to establish their credentials as being passionate...Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, Jay Inslee, Bill de Blasio, and Tim Ryan stood out in this regard. Beto O'Rourke and Tulsi Gabbard seemed clueless and unprepared...no surprise to me there.  And I appreciated the thoughtful answers from Amy Klobuchar and John Delaney, although the latter had an annoying tendency to go way beyond his allotted time and even ignored the moderator's call for him to stop.  A lot of people seemed to think Julian Castro did well...compared to O'Rourke I suppose he did. Most of the contestants seemed to be in a competition to assert their own far left ideological supremacy over the others...once again it was Klobuchar and Delaney who stood out in contrast to them with their own more reasoned, nuanced answers.   Personally, I think the debate helped Elizabeth Warren probably more than anyone else and put Beto O'Rourke in big trouble from which I doubt he will recover.  From what I did hear, I thought the panel of questioners did a pretty good job of sticking to the issues and away from personalities. Should be interesting to hear the rest of the field debate tonight...

Weekly Short Stories: 1948 Science Fiction, Part 3

I concluded my look back to 1948 at the year's best short science fiction with the final four tales from the anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 10 (1948).  A dismal outlook on humanity's future and aberrant children are their themes...pretty standard sci-fi fare.  They're not my favorites, but each has its own message.  Here are my reactions...

IN HIDING by Wilmar H. Shiras
Timothy Paul is a thirteen-year-old boy who seems the prototype "average kid"...B-grades in school, doesn't isolate himself socially...but his teacher is concerned about Tim's growing absentmindedness and senses something's wrong, contacting Peter Welles, a psychiatrist.  Most of the story is about how Dr. Welles coaxes Tim to open up about his own life, and it soon becomes clear that he is at super-genius level and has been deliberately concealing that fact in order to avoid trouble with others in society...especially his own grandmother, who is now his guardian after his parents died years earlier from radiation sickness.  And here is where I see a major problem in society: someone begins to stand out with their intelligence and talent and others resent their superiority and set out to "put them in their place". I wonder how many of us as children employed Tim's strategy of concealment...and how many are still doing it, as adults...

KNOCK by Fredric Brown
Knock is a quirky short, little tale about a vastly different alien race that wiped out all animal life on Earth as a preparation for their own settlement, but before they doused the planet with poison spray they took samples of different species for their "zoo"...including two humans.  Walter Phelan finds himself being one of them and has been isolated for two days since the attack, other than his contacts with the strange conquering creatures, who treat him well in his confinement and whom Walter always calls "George".  The horror of such a disaster befalling our planet is only magnified when Walter discovers that since the aliens themselves don't reproduce sexually, many of their "samples" will die off since they don't have both males and females to perpetuate the species.  And he wonders about the other human left alive...

A CHILD IS CRYING by John D. MacDonald
Another story about a super-genius kid, the setting reveals what happens when he...unlike Timothy's concealment in the story In Hiding...openly reveals his talents: the military buys him off from his parents.  The officers, in the midst of nuclear tensions and conflict, seek to extract as much information from him as possible.  This is problematic since little Billy can mentally suggest people to hurt themselves if they get too aggressive...sounds a bit like Stephen King's novel Firestarter, doesn't it?  But when they discover that Billy's incredible reasoning ability gives him the power to predict the future, his interrogators cannot hold themselves back as they desperately seek to discover their own fates...

LATE NIGHT FINAL by Eric Frank Russell
Another conquering race from the stars...this one so humanoid in nature that they can pass for ordinary people, lands on Earth on the outskirts of a small Wisconsin country town in the form of several warships.  Their militarist commander wants the glory of forcefully subjugating the population, which confounds him by being friendly and hospitable.  His own men gradually lose their sense of discipline and loyalty as they encounter the locals and interact with them.  The reader may initially get the impression that this is all a story about the present time, but that's not the case at all.  It felt a bit like a "reverse" Mars is Heaven by Ray Bradbury, which I reviewed last week...but the ending is vastly different and carries a statement about where humanity's best chances for long-term survival lie...

Next week I begin my examining of the best science fiction stories from 1949 as I continue reading this anthology series...

Plan to Listen to Upcoming Democratic Presidential Debates

I have a choice with this ongoing presidential campaign between just sticking my head in the sand ostrich-like and trying my hardest to ignore all of the noise around me or becoming as well-informed as I can be regarding the different candidates and their character, ideology, and positions on the various issues. I've decided on the latter strategy and as such will be listening to the Democratic Party debates being held tomorrow and Thursday evening from 9 to 11.  Broadcast from Miami, each debate will feature ten candidates...drawn at random from those polled at 1% or higher...and will be shown on the NBC channels as well as being available with online streaming from NBC.com and other sources.  I said "listening" because I'll be at work or driving home for most of each debate's duration. Of course, I already know that my purely audio impressions often differ from those I get from both listening and watching, as they did during the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings and Trump's State of the Union addresses...

Even if you're not a Democrat and plan to support Trump in next year's election, you probably might want to tune in as well...I'm sure Limbaugh and the other conservative opinion makers will be doing so.  Looks like Cory Booker, Beto O'Rourke, Elizabeth Warren, and Amy Klobuchar will be headlining the Wednesday debate while Thursday's will feature Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, Bernie Sanders, and Kamala Harris.  And the others, of course, will be looking to capitalize on their brief moment in the national spotlight to kickstart their campaigns and gain some recognition.  As for me, I've always liked Klobuchar for her intelligence, reason, and pragmatism and am repelled by a few candidates who are more into political correctness and emotionally manipulating the electorate...for now I'll leave these unnamed.  And I'm more than a little skeptical about those espousing pie-in-the-sky solutions to our nation's problems that have virtually no chance of becoming law during their administrations should they find themselves elected...

I'm also interested in hearing how the questions are posed and whether they are fair to the candidates or more slanted and tailored to play "gotcha" against one or more of them.  Yes, I'll be tuned in...how about you?

Working on Rebuilding Running Endurance

I've been increasing my outdoor running workouts as I gradually expand my own created course around my neighborhood and the adjacent ones here in far northern Gainesville.  Yesterday I covered 5.5 miles in midday 93-degree conditions while taking regular interspersed walking breaks along with a sports drink to sip on.  Although it got a little grueling at the end with the heat, I feel I made some good progress with my running and plan to go out again likewise tomorrow morning...maybe for a little bit longer as I continue to build up my distance.  I used to have a course that stretched through Northwood Pines, Northwood Oaks, the NW 53rd Avenue trail between 34th and 43rd Streets, NW 37th Street and the neighborhoods past that church, NW 43rd Street past Talbot Elementary and into the subdivision on 62nd Avenue, Felasco Park past the TV-20 WCJB station, NW 52nd Terrace, NW 53rd Avenue to the shaded, winding neighborhood of big homes off NW 57th Way...and back again.  Depending on how long I felt like running (or had some outside limit placed on me such as actually having to go to work), I could end up running quite some distance, topping 15 miles a number of times and achieving 26.6 once (at 4 hours 23 minutes).  But my long distance running endurance has admittedly dwindled a bit over the past three or four years and I'd like to return it to where I was running down all those convoluted roads and pathways and racking up the big miles: should be interesting...

Just Finished Reading On the Road by Jack Kerouac

My experience with beatniks has always been very limited...since they're pretty much extinct by now I suppose that puts me in a better position to discuss them than most people nowadays, although my "contact" was through the early sixties sitcoms Beverly Hillbillies and Dobie Gillis.  Yet the characters in these shows satirizing the Beat aren't all that far off the mark...I know because I finished reading Jack Kerouac's 1957 novel On the Road, which defined the movement.  The Beverly Hillbillies beatnik I remember the most from the two or three episodes that focused on them was the dude who just lied there on his back and never talked...now that's the acting role I was born for!  And in Dobie Gillis, goateed beatnik Maynard, played by future Gilligan Bob Denver, stole the show with his antics and speech.  So I had a pretty generally favorable view of the Beat Generation as people who had their own special lingo and appearance, were totally immersed in the present moment and people around them, and had a special thing for jazz.  That pretty much describes Kerouac's experiences as well as he...in the guise of narrator Sal Paradise...crisscrosses the USA...and later Mexico...hitching rides, taking buses, and using other means of locomotion while describing his friends and the land and people they encounter.  And of all his friends, it's Dean Moriarty who epitomizes the beatnik: totally irresponsible with his friends and lovers, he bounces off one experience into another...and then expects everybody else to follow him as he follows only his own whims.  Which they do, including Sal...much to my consternation: you see I have a strong antipathy to loud and aggressive personality types who expect me to fall in behind them as a passive follower.  So no, using the Beat movement's parlance, I didn't "dig" ol' Dean one bit...but it was interesting to see how others in the story kept forgiving him for his many offenses since he had such a charismatic sway over them...

With On the Road I was initially impressed by the author's vivid, detailed imagination of the different settings, characters, and experiences until I later read that he had actually pretty much lived through it all himself and that the "fictional" characters had real-life counterparts.  It all takes place around 1947-49 as millions of young men, back from World War II, are in states of flux and uncertainty about their futures, with the G.I. Bill being enacted around this time to subsidize their college educations and their eventual upward social mobility into conventional, middle class prosperity.  In the meantime, though, many just drift around, some even adopting the hobo lifestyle traveling by boxcars...something narrator Sal keeps expressing his desire to do himself without ever getting around to it.  There is a peeling away of some of the old gang from Sal and Dean as they marry, get stable jobs, and have children.  But Dean never seems to change as he "keeps the faith"...

The other night I saw a CNN show about the 1960s which examined the hippie counterculture movement in the second half of that decade and how it had its origins in the Beat movement of the fifties and early sixties.  But they also showed a clip of Jack Kerouac criticizing hippies, and I get what he was saying.  Beatniks were into experiencing everything on its own terms, not rejecting everything, while those in the later counterculture movement seemed intent on reinventing their own lives apart from the rest of the real world. Hippies were preachy and superior...beatniks were just cool.  I never did care too much for all that crap that went on in San Francisco and Woodstock, but I always kind of dug beatniks....but not Dean Moriarty...

Press and Rivals Playing Gotcha with Politicians' Comments

Did you ever see the 1970 movie Patton, starring George S. Scott as the brash World War II general?  There were scenes in it where he is allowing the press to ask him questions, and his off-the-cuff, careless answers are almost always taken out of context to paint him as a brutish villain who even sympathized with the Nazis...nothing could have been further from the truth.  I remember this film because I see something going on nowadays...not only with President Trump, whose offhand remarks have become his trademark, but also about politicians on the Democratic Party side.  Leftist freshman representative  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, already known for her flamboyant rhetoric and an outspoken critic of former vice-president Joe Biden on several issues, was recently asked in an interview a pointed question about his well-documented tendency in the past to get all touchy-feely-huggy out in public and that it disturbed some women. AOC...as she is commonly referred to...responded in what I thought was a restrained and respectful way toward Biden. Yet the later headlines made it look as if she were trying to resurrect the issue.  Biden was also criticized by rival Democratic candidate Cory Booker for having commented that even back when there were segregationist senators they were all able to get along better with each other than the broken, polarized situation in that body today...Booker failed to see the point of Biden's argument and instead accused him of praising segregationists.  Biden then angrily replied that he never had a racist bone in his body. Ocasio-Cortez then commented that it was Biden who owed Booker an apology for defending himself against his accusation.  Trump, of course, gets no respect and is even ridiculed for comments he makes that are obviously taken far out of context.  For example, he tweeted that the moon was part of Mars and the jokesters went wild with his supposedly incredible ignorance when all he was saying was that going back to the moon was to be seen as part of the plan of eventually going to Mars...to laugh at him for this reveals one's own stupidity, in my opinion.  Donald Trump may not like Bob Woodward's book Fear, which described the workings of the beginning of his presidency, but it fairly showed that he is tends to impulsively change his mind a lot, has a very short attention span, and is pretty sloppy with his speech and Twitter...all making it very easy for his critics to come up with material.  It's no secret that I dislike our current president...and I'm not all that fond of AOC or Biden, either.   But when they express themselves I try to understand the main ideas they are trying to impart and not just play "gotcha" while trying to distort their message into one that politically harms them...

Quote of the Week...from Stephen Covey

I am not a product of my circumstances.  I am a product of my decisions.   ---Stephen Covey

Stephen Covey is the author best known for his bestseller Seven Habits of Highly Effective People a few years ago.  He is a major advocate of people being proactive and not reactive with their lives.  In truth, the way I see it, we are products of both our circumstances and our decisions.  Albert Einstein once wrote, "Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid." In other words, genius begins with one's reasonable recognition of their own abilities and limitations...that's not being negative, for making such an assessment can point to the areas where their genius and talents can instead be fully realized.  Also, folks tend to get into the habit of living their lives according to narratives of self-victimization, that is they either dwell on mistakes others made in their upbringing or identify closely with a demographic group that has been (or still is) maltreated in society and, well, why bother trying when the system is rigged against you? My response is while discrimination has always been a problem and sadly will probably continue to be one, and just about all of us can find some negative things in our own personal pasts to blame someone else for, sometimes it's better to lay that aside and focus our thoughts and efforts on our own behavior.  For when I look back on trials and setbacks in my own life, my memory tends to focus more on how I reacted to them than the events and situations themselves...including those who may have perpetrated some wrong against me.  But that involves me, for the sake of effective living, ridding myself of the notion that my circumstances define me and instead orienting myself around my own decision-making, which in the long run by far determines who I really am and where I will go in life...

Just Finished Reading Ulysses by James Joyce

Back in the late 1970s, when I attended the University of Florida here in Gainesville as a student, I would go to the Reitz Student Union to relax...it's been rebuilt two or three times since.  But then on the first floor, on the west end of the building, was a student lounge area where we could sit back in big comfy cushioned swivel chairs and watch TV.  On the opposite wall was a painting that looked as if anyone at random had just taken their brush and thrown up different colors...an abstract work, but one that "experts" in the field no doubt thought possessed a high degree of aesthetic value.  That's kind of how I felt after reading Irish writer James Joyce's 1922 novel Ulysses: it's widely considered by many in the literary field to be one of the greatest works in English language literature...but it often left me scratching my head in confusion...and a little anger.  The main characters are compelling enough: Leopold Bloom, a Jewish Dubliner in his middle ages, is portrayed going through "a day in the life".  He knows about  his wife Molly's infidelity and hides from her suspected lover whenever their paths cross.  The secondary protagonist is Stephen Dedalus, who is frustrated with his manipulative roommate and struggles to make a name for himself as a writer and a scholar of Shakespeare.  Joyce presents these characters and others they meet by revealing their streams of thought...which usually meander in all kinds of directions, causing at least with me a sense of drift and uncertainty as to who is doing the thinking and often wondering what happened to the general story line.  Many times while reading Ulysses I had to stop and ask myself whether the narrative was the real progression of the plot or an imagining of one of the characters: Joyce seemed not to care how he presented his story, and I suspect he probably deliberately obfuscated it to encourage a sense of mystery and intrigue to provoke readers and scholars to analyze it more deeply.  Also, I was not in Joyce's Dublin at the time and do not know the different references to contemporary personalities nor the political and religious divisions and issues of the time, other than that Ireland had been seeking independence from the United Kingdom after an armed insurrection and was negotiating an agreement.  The language in dialogue is often steeped in dialect and as such difficult to comprehend. Much is made of Bloom's Judaism and his place in an Irish society with Catholicism being the dominant religious presence. Joyce named his novel after Homer's The Odyssey and the characters Leopold Bloom, Molly Bloom, and Stephen Dedalus supposedly correspond to Homer's Odysseus, Penelope, and Telemachus, respectively...and the book's chapter titles reference sections from the ancient Greek epic.  I had read The Odyssey beforehand, thinking that it would help me better understand Ulysses: didn't work...

All that having been said, I felt that there was a lot of humor in Ulysses, and I concentrated on following the sections of narrative in bite-sized chunks instead of trying to integrate everything I encountered into the larger story.  This book was initially declared obscene in the United States due to its often explicit sexual references, and although it was first published as a complete novel in 1922, it wasn't until the mid-1930s that it became available for general reading in the U.S. and the United Kingdom.  Well, if you're going to write with the view of recording people's real thoughts, then I guess you're probably going to throw in a bit of sexuality as well, humans being wired as we are...I had no problem with the sexual content, but then again I'm looking at it from the vantage point of 2019 and our society's values, not 1922 and theirs.  Ulysses is a difficult book to read, for sure...I'm glad I read it but am also glad that the other books I have read were mostly written with more consideration for me as their reader...

An afterthought: I mentioned before that Ulysses was about "a day in the life" of Leopold Bloom.  I wonder whether the late Beatles great John Lennon had been influenced by Joyce and his defining work, since he also had a tendency to play around with words, both in his own literature and his song lyrics...including, of course, A Day in the Life...

Weekly Short Stories: 1948 Science Fiction, Part 2

I continued my review of selected science fiction short stories from the year 1948 as they appear in the anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 10 (1948) with an interesting observation: the length of these stories tends to be quite shorter than those from earlier anthologies which at times were more novellas than short stories.  There are six listed below, all relatively brief...but that doesn't make them any less significant or worthy.  Here they are...

MARS IS HEAVEN by Ray Bradbury
The first ever manned expedition to Mars lands with its crew of seventeen...on a lawn of green grass.  Why, outside the ship it looks like one of the quaint small towns that Bradbury was always writing about, and furthermore, people are coming out of the houses to greet the long distance voyagers: their own deceased relatives and old friends, now looking quite alive and well.  The shock of experiencing this has its effect on the crew which is overcome with joy and abandon, and only Captain John Black begins to suspect something's amiss here.  While reading it I wondered to myself how clueless this crew must be and then I thought, that's the whole point...how many dubious things do we incorporate unquestioningly into our own personal narratives because they "fit" them and resonate with us on an irrational, emotional level?

THANG by Martin Gardner
For such a short, short, story (one page long) this is an exercise in imagining scale on an extremely large level. The title character is an entity who feeds on star systems...but that's not the end to it.  In my view, I get what the author was trying to express but sometimes a story can, well, just be TOO short...

BROOKLYN PROJECT by William Tenn
It's sometime in the future and, like so many science fiction scenarios, society has become more totalitarian with the State pretty much running everything, including science.  The big project at hand is to employ a time machine that can take pictures of its surroundings at intervals of millions of years...starting with the Earth's beginning.  A dissident group of scientists had warned of the consequences of meddling with the past like this, but of course they are all "silenced" in one way or another.  The time machine is activated and the observers note the pictures coming back from the past through each interval.  Only something isn't quite right...although none of them can detect it.  But it's pretty clear to the reader, which is what makes this story memorable...

RING AROUND THE REDHEAD by John D. MacDonald
This story delves into another common science fiction theme, that of entering into other dimensions of reality.  A tinkerer/inventor is on trial for murdering his next door neighbor, whose only remains seem to be small fragments of brain tissue in the shrubbery between their houses.  Our hero, convinced of his own innocence, knows everything that happened and insists on taking the stand, to the consternation of his own lawyer.  It seems there is a ring-shaped device that he came upon when a room in another dimension opened up suddenly, and through it he can explore other dimensions and extract things...and people (including a beautiful redheaded woman) through them.  Where does the neighbor fit into all this and what happens?  Guess you'll have to read it to find out...

PERIOD PIECE by J.J. Coupling
A man with memories of a past hundreds of years gone by is carted around from one social gathering to another off in the distant future and relates to his listeners what it was like "back then", as he is deemed a time traveler. Along the way he begins to entertain doubts as to why he is being handled in this way...and ultimately about his own identity.  I've wondered myself whether we can be truly certain that there ever was a past since we're all imprisoned in the present moment and our very memories of a supposed past are accessed in the "now" as well...

DORMANT by A.E. Van Vogt
It is the present...that is, it's 1948...and a U.S. Naval destroyer goes to a remote small Pacific island where they believe the Japanese had stored supplies for the war that just recently ended.  On it they discover a massive rocklike formation...and it seems to be moving up the island's mountain!  It's actually an alien creation that feeds on radioactivity...and wouldn't you know it, they've been testing atomic bombs in the Pacific.  And now this ominous thing is beginning to wake up from its dormancy of millions of years and resume its mission...and you really don't want to know what that is...

That's it for this week...next week I conclude my look at short science fiction from 1948...

Congratutations to St. Louis Blues and Toronto Raptors

Being a vicarious sports fan...meaning that I follow all these sports I never participate in myself...I have to congratulate a couple of teams for winning their respective leagues' championships a few days ago: the National Hockey League's St. Louis Blues and the National Basketball Association's Toronto Raptors, neither of them expected to go the distance.  The Blues struggled in their series against both the Dallas Stars (I thought Dallas was the better team in that one) and San Jose Sharks and were clear underdogs facing the Boston Bruins in the Stanley Cup finals...but came out on top in an exciting seven-match series.  As for the Raptors, most of the NBA's Eastern Conference attention was on Philadelphia and Milwaukee, yet under the leadership of Kahwi Leonard, along with a great supporting cast including the underrated Kyle Lowry, Pascal Siakam, Marc Gasol, Danny Green, Serge Ibaka...the list goes on...they overcame the 76ers winning the final deciding game of the series as Leonard broke a tie with time running out, shooting a three-pointer that bounced four times off the rim before settling in the basket.  Against the Bucks, the Raptors were even more impressive, earning the right to face twice-defending champion Golden State in the final series.  The Warriors, sadly, were hobbled throughout the finals: their star Kevin Duran was recovering from injury for the first four games and was out...in game five he played one quarter and blew out his achilles tendon and is now expected to miss the next season.  DeMarcus Cousins rejoined the squad for the series after his own injury and was effective in helping them to stay in it.  But what sealed the coffin for Golden State in their quest to win a third straight NBA championship was Clay Thompson's two injuries in the series, the last one leaving only Stephen Curry as the team's truly effective outside shooter and he could not overcome the Raptors' defensive pressure as Toronto won the sixth and final game 114-110 to secure the championship.  Both Toronto and St. Louis, although each franchise has a long record of regular season success, count this year's championships as their first ever...I'm looking forward to seeing how they do next year.  With the Raptors, their success may come down to whether Kawhi Leonard stays in town or moves elsewhere to play...

Some States' New Electoral Vote and Ballot Laws Seriously Misguided

When I heard of the movement of some Democratic-controlled state legislatures to enact laws giving their presidential electoral votes to the candidate receiving the highest popular vote total nationwide I initially thought that it was relatively meaningless, considering that all states passing these laws had clearly gone for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election anyway...it would only have teeth if swing states like Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Michigan would go for it or if the states with more Republican leanings would go against their political instincts.  In other words, I initially concluded that giving one's own state's electoral votes to the popular winner needs most of the country to go along with it to be truly effective, something that simply is not going to happen.  However, a more recent development has been going on in some states as they have passed laws barring any presidential candidate from their ballots if they won't release their income tax returns.  The U.S. Supreme Court in the past has struck down such restrictive laws and I expect (hopefully) that they will again.  But in the meantime, an ugly scenario is being created by the mix of these two different laws.  Let me explain...

Take a look at California, by far the most populous state in the country, and which has both the law giving its massive amounts of electoral votes to the popular winner and that banning a candidate from its ballot who refuses to reveal his or her tax returns.  Then even though voters will be able to write in that candidate's name on their ballot, the effect will be to artificially drastically diminish his or her vote total...not just within California but also for the entire nation's popular vote tally.  And all these other states are by their own laws depending on the viability of that popular vote figure to determine their own electoral votes.  If the tax/ballot restriction movement isn't quashed by the courts, then I fear that Republican-controlled state legislatures would pass their own retaliatory laws having the effect of banning top Democratic candidates, using their own criteria in doing this. These two different laws simply do not mix...frankly, I wish neither of them had ever been considered in the first place...

Enjoyed Watching the U.S. Open Golf Tournament This Weekend

I hadn't planned on watching any golf on TV this weekend...I hadn't done so in years.  But I was captivated by the beautiful Pacific Ocean, harbor, and beach background to the Pebble Beach golf course on the mid-Californian coast...where the annual PGA United States Open is held, one of the major golf tournaments.  The leader at the close of Saturday was Gary Woodland, who had only a one-stroke lead over Justin Rose and at age 35 was still looking for his first ever majors victory.  Brooks Koepka, who had won the U.S. Open the previous two years, was also in contention.  By the time the leaders reached the final holes today, Rose had faded while Koepka had surged to second place, finishing his round two strokes behind Woodland.  But Woodland, who was previously 0 for 7 when defending a tournament lead going into the final day, showed exceptional poise and consistency, getting a long birdie at his turn on the 18th to finish with a three-stroke win over Koepka...

I've never played any "regular" golf although I've always been pretty good at miniature golf...at 62 I'm probably not going to go buy a set of clubs at this point.  But it was fun to follow the sport, something I used to do when I was much younger and stars like Jack Nicklaus, Lee Trevino, Gary Player, and Tom Watson were consistently on the leader board.  And for some reason, as I watched golfer after golfer drive the ball off into the rough yesterday and today, I thought of the scene in that old James Bond movie Goldfinger when 007 plays a major prank on the title villain while playing against him.  Like horse racing or next month's Tour de France bicycle races, some sports I follow only during major events...maybe I'll be checking out golf like this, too.  Let's see...the next major tournament will be the British Open on July 18-21, to take place at Dunluce Course in Northern Ireland.  Now that I recognize some of the players it should be fun to follow...although I'm expecting the scenery to not be as good as Pebble Beach...

USA Women's Soccer Antics Remind Me of South Park Episode

I've watched the cartoon satirical series South Park over the years...most of the episodes, especially recently, have been off the mark but a few are ingeniously brutal in their lampooning of our society's various foibles.  The 2006 episode Stanley's Cup is a case in point: nine-year-old Stan Marsh needs his bicycle to earn money with his paper route, but one day it is towed away.  He goes to the bureaucrat-in-charge to plead it back, but is told he'll have to do the favor of coaching the local Pee Wee hockey team first.  So Stan tries to coach a group of very young children who can barely balance on their skates or even nudge the puck in the general direction of the goal.  At the end of this convoluted tale, they find themselves playing the final period of an NHL game against the Detroit Red Wings after the scheduled team, the Colorado Avalanche, put them in instead.  Detroit essentially massacres the helpless little Pee Wee players en route to a 32-2 rout...and with each goal the Red Wing players whoop it up with grandstanding celebrations, as if they were actually accomplishing anything worthwhile.  That's the kind of reaction that I and most other observers had when our United States women's national soccer team won their first World Cup group stage match against Thailand 13-0, scoring several goals in the closing minutes to run up the score and acting like "Cartoon Detroit" with their boisterous post-goal jumping, screaming, and hugging.  I'm not against them winning 13-0 since the first tiebreaker in the group stage is the three-match aggregate goal differential...I don't think Team America will need to worry about that anymore.  But there is a point when excessive celebration in the middle of a rout becomes poor sportsmanship.  No, the Thailand team wasn't at all like South Park's Pee Wee hockey...it was still a competitive contest in the first half and they clearly had their own skilled players.  One of the U.S. players stated that the Thailand players wouldn't have a problem with their behavior...I think it's a mistake to presume graciousness on the part of someone whom you may have offended, though.  I'm still rooting for the good ol' USA, but a little more decorum and maturity...and grace...would help them more in their public relations efforts to promote this sport that grossly underpays them for their outstanding talent...

Quote of the Week...from Maya Lin

Math...it's a puzzle to me.  I love figuring out puzzles.                 ---Maya Lin

Maya Lin is the architect and artist responsible for the design of the Vietnam Memorial wall in Washington, D.C., which was initially considered controversial but is now widely esteemed as one of the greatest memorials anywhere...Melissa and I were very impressed when we visited it last October. Lin's above quote resonates with me as I have always thought that mathematics was taught in schools incorrectly.  If the puzzle-like nature of this field were emphasized in school instead of making it all a solemn judgment of the poor student's abilities and work ethic, than I believe we'd see a lot fewer people...including those with a high intellect...suffering mental blocks over the subject.  As for me, whenever I do pick up one of my several Shaum's Outline Series books on mathematics...and this series covers just about every course imaginable...I regard their "problems" as fun puzzles to work out, and the answers are provided along with explanations as to how to solve them.  And since I'm not going to school, there's no verdict coming down on me being a dumbass because I got a wrong answer.  So many people nowadays like to do puzzles such as Jumble, Sudoku, Kakuro (my favorite), Hidato, Crosswords, and others... I'm also a fan of jigsaw puzzles.  But believe it or not, picking up a Schaum's book about a particular field in math and going through it can be its own kind of fun puzzle experience...and who knows, you may discover that you're not as mathematically-challenged as you thought.  But keep it secret if you do this, otherwise folks will be asking you what you're going to do with your new mathematical learning while if you stick with the more "standard" kinds of puzzles they won't bug you over it...

Rainy June

June has seen a huge upward spike in rainfall for the Gainesville, Florida area, especially after the pretty dry conditions we experienced the previous month.  I'm not quite as averse as other people to walking out in it for a few minutes without an umbrella, but I do have an issue with oversaturation of the ground, along with puddles and slippery roads...and the associated proliferation of potholes.  I tend to avoid running outdoors when it's raining or has been recently because road surfaces...sometimes mixed with oil from parked vehicles...can seriously interfere with traction and vision.  Another problem is the presence at times of lighting, which was in the news recently when a young Floridian man riding a motorcycle on the interstate was directly struck by a lightning bolt and killed.  A few years ago I was running along Daytona Beach when a sudden, severe thunderstorm swept through and it was a race for me to get back to my hotel with lightning crashing around...a scary experience I don't want to repeat.  So while I acknowledge that in my northern Florida area the ground conditions had been getting dry enough for folks to begin sounding alarms about potential forest fires and the recent rains have "dampened" those concerns, I'm still looking forward for some drier weather...although that's not going to come anytime soon if the prognosticators are right...

Weekly Short Stories: 1948 Science Fiction, Part 1

I continued on with my look back at excellent short science fiction from the past as I moved to the year 1948, using the anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 10 (1948).  Here are my reactions to the first six tales from that book...

DON'T LOOK NOW by Henry Kuttner
"Don't look now" is the frequent comment made by what appears to be a very paranoid and delusional man to a reporter in a bar.  He is convinced that Martians have invaded and infiltrated Earth and are all around us...third eye and all, just like that old Twilight Zone episode made a few years later.  He uses the kind of fervent, detailed language paranoids use that often gets listeners hooked on their narrative, which can be pretty farfetched.  How it all ends...this story is pretty brief...I leave it for you to possibly read...

HE WALKED AROUND THE HORSES by H. Beam Piper
This is a story about an alternative history.  In 1809 Prussia a British diplomat traveling to Vienna in the midst of conflict with France's Napoleon walks around the horses at a stable...and disappears.  That causes enough consternation for the people around him, but from the perspective of the new, parallel world he has entered that has no Emperor Napoleon in it, the people there are just as confounded by his sudden unexplained appearance and historically absurd rantings.  It's a good history lesson if you're unfamiliar with this era and even delves back into our own Revolutionary War...

THE STRANGE CASE OF JOHN KINGMAN by Murray Leinster
One of those psychiatrists of the time who was into the trend of applying electroshock therapy to their patients has his eyes set on John Kingman, diagnosed as a delusional paranoid who has been a patient at a mental institution as far as anyone can remember.  The doctor goes back into the records and discovers he was first admitted in the late 1700s! And what about those six fingers on each hand and his tendency to sketch highly technical drawings that illustrate science and engineering principles yet undiscovered?  The story draws a line between true science and "pop" science and suggests that not knowing the difference can bring some regretful consequences...

THAT ONLY A MOTHER by Judith Merril
This is a somber apocalyptic tale about a young woman carrying and giving birth to her baby daughter in an post-nuclear war environment where a large percentage of the newborn have serious birth defects and infanticide runs rampant as a result.  The most disturbing story by far in this group...

THE MONSTER by A.E. Van Vogt
Earth has been decimated by war, wiping out all life.  Aliens bent on conquering the planet for their own can resurrect life from the ashes.  Looking for the causes of the catastrophe they keep trying to bring back people from the past, but none of them can provide any answer.  Finally they resurrect one of the most recent humans...and he instantly vanishes!  And then the fun starts...this is the only story I know of that paints an optimistic picture of humanity after its complete self-annihilation...

DREAMS ARE SACRED by Peter Phillips
The third story of the six about an paranoiac, an institutionalized famed fantasy writer has slipped into his own fantasy dream...unwakeable...and the attending doctor enlists the aid of his pragmatic friend to enter that dream and bring the writer back to reality.  Uh...does this possibly remind you of the movie Inception, which is based on people entering and messing with others' dreams?  Seemed like a great original idea when I first saw it, but Peter Phillips had already laid it all out back in 1948...

That's it for this week.  More sci-fi short stories from 1948 next week...

2019 Women's World Cup in Soccer Underway

The 2019 FIFA Women's World Cup in soccer has begun its group stage, with 24 nations divided into six alphabetized groups of four...the USA is in Group F along with Thailand, Chile, and Sweden.  Chile and Sweden begin this group's play today while the United States will face Thailand.  All matches in the World Cup will be held at various locales throughout France.  Sixteen teams will quality from the group stage to enter the knockout rounds, culminating in the finale to be held on July 7th in Lyon.  The American team features Megan Rapinoe, Carli Lloyd, and Alex Morgan and are defending champions.  I'm looking forward to following the matches and hope you are, too...

This morning on the United States Senate floor, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer decried the disparity in pay between the American men's and women's national soccer teams.  He pointed out that the men's team was rewarded with a $5.1 million bonus for getting into the Round of Sixteen in their last World Cup...not the one most recently held in Russia since they didn't even qualify for it, while the women's team was given a paltry $1.7 million after they WON the World Cup in 2015...one third of the men's take.  Furthermore, women have already won three World Cups. The men, by contrast, have never even come close to winning a World Cup.  And you see a similar discrepancy in pay for men and women's league soccer.  But then again, this relegation of women's sports as secondary to men's isn't just in soccer...in the recent French Open in tennis the women's semifinals were exiled to secondary courts in order to focus the primary ones on the men.  It's too bad we live in a world like this...I think we'll be hearing more about this gender-based inequity in the days to come as the Women's World Cup coverage intensifies...

Later: USA beat Thailand 13-0 with Alex Morgan scoring 5 goals.  I originally got the match's date wrong...imagine my surprise when I finally got off from an extended work day only to see it being replayed on FS1...

Just Finished Reading A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul G. Tremblay

I follow Stephen King on Twitter, and he uses it a lot to express himself on different issues...more often than not to bash Trump.  Another thing he does a lot on it is recommend books to read: Paul G. Tremblay's 2015 horror novel A Head Full of Ghosts is one he has promoted...so I checked it out and just finished reading it.  My reactions...

If you want to create a scenario of true horror, then combining different scenarios horrible in their own right...like demon-possession, exorcism, paranoid ranting, and reality television...makes for a pretty explosive formula.  Yet as revolting as much of Tremblay's tale was, he deftly crafted it into an unexpectedly rational narrative whose ending made a kind of terrible sense...although it was very, very, disturbing and upsetting.  On the surface the story features a "typical" American family, with the father, mother, older sister (Marjorie) and younger sister (Merry) going through their typical American middle-class lives...until, that is, Marjorie starts to display disturbing behavior, which she claims is coming from voices speaking to her within her head.  The parents are at a loss and completely at odds with each other on how to deal with Marjorie's worsening apparent psychosis: the father, immersing himself into an offshoot sect of Christianity, seeks exorcism, convincing himself she is possessed while the mother, who rejects organized religion, wants secular medical treatment. The father wins out and then a reality TV show is set up to film the family through their ordeals, providing them with money to help with their burgeoning expenses.  The story, told from a future time by an adult Merry to a writer she is entrusting with her experiences, is centered around little Merry's place in the family and as Marjorie's main confidant and friend...as well as the chief witness to some of her scariest acts.  Their family crisis was difficult enough to read through, but having to put up with cameramen, directors, and producers traipsing though their house and rooms...along with the angry protesters lined up outside...lent the story a creepiness that verged on the obscene.  This is a tale of severe psychological warfare and I definitely do NOT recommend it to anyone with insomnia, nightmare issues, or weak constitutions.  Still, as I said before, the author crafted the whole thing very well: after all, this is a horror story. Read it at your own risk...if you read Stephen King's Thinner and were upset with how that one turned out, then you probably don't want to pick up A Head Full of Ghosts.  As for me, I think I'll be a little more circumspect about Mr. King's literary endorsements in the future...

Yesterday's Belmont and NHL, NBA Playoffs

Although I knew that the Belmont Stakes, thoroughbred  horseracing's third jewel in the Triple Crown, was taking place yesterday, I put the event to the back of my mind for a couple of reasons.  One was that I was driving down to Orlando and back to pick up Melissa from the airport and didn't think we'd be back in time for me to watch it.  The other was that very few horses from the earlier two races were competing...I was only interested in Tacitus and the Preakness winner War of Will.  As it turned out, I happened to be in the takeout section of my nearby Piesano's restaurant back in Gainesville when I tuned in to the race on my cellphone around 6:40 pm. It was pretty exciting to watch and very close...the eventual winner, Sir Winston, was at 10-1 and its rider skillfully rode past much of the field around the final turn, hugging the rails. And when he was blocked at the end he maneuvered to the outside and took the lead.  Had the race been a few feet longer I think favored Tacitus, who was closing in fast, would have overtaken him.  Although it was fun to watch, I doubt many people will remember this race...I only wrote about it here because I had written about the Kentucky Derby and Preakness and didn't want to leave the last one out...

We're nearing the closing of two pro sports league seasons for 2019, the National Hockey League and the National Basketball Association.  Both are in their final playoff series for the championship and the underdogs are in a position to close them out.  Tonight the St. Louis Blues will try to win their first ever NHL Stanley Cup championship as they play the favored Boston Bruins at home with a 3-2 series lead.  And tomorrow the Toronto Raptors, with a 3-1 series lead over two-time defending champion Golden State, will host the injury-plagued Warriors on Monday.  Will Kevin Durant return to the court after his left knee injury rendered him absent for the end of the Clippers series, all of the Trail Blazers series, and the Raptors series to date?  I'd like to see his return, but only if he's capable of playing at the high level that he needs to be at to keep his team in the series...

So that's it for sports...I also watch baseball games when they're on, which is good since we're running out of other major sports to watch...

Just Finished Reading Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

Gilead, a 2004 novel by Marilynne Robinson that won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction the following year, came to my attention after Melissa was assigned to read it for her current class.  The title refers to the fictional small Iowa town of Gilead where John Ames, a third-generation Congregationalist pastor, is in his late seventies and, realizing that his remaining time on Earth is running out due to a recently-diagnosed heart ailment, is writing the narrative as a letter to his seven-year-old son.  In it he reminisces about both his father and grandfather, vastly different personalities with diverging views on what it means to be a Christian.  Grandfather Ames is a fiery warrior who takes up arms supporting abolitionist John Brown in Kansas before the Civil War and then serves the Union cause during that conflict, losing one of his eyes in the process.  John's father, on the other hand, has a serious falling out with the grandfather and turns into a staunchly anti-war pastor during World War I, even tempted once to deliver a sermon describing the raging and deadly flu epidemic of the time that was killing so many young men as a blessing from God that would prevent them from going overseas and committing murder as soldiers.  The author also described how life was in this part of the country during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  His older brother Edward, whom he has always looked up to, becomes an atheist and their relationship tests both his own faith as well as that of his father...John Ames is continually examining his own beliefs as to their veracity instead of blindly adhering to a doctrine etched in stone. The narrative continues as John describes his own tragic first marriage when his wife Louisa dies giving birth to his daughter Rachel...who also dies soon thereafter.  Many years later he remarries, to Lila who is much younger than him and who bears their son in 1949...this narrative letter is set in the year 1956.  That's the general background for the story, but the ultimate focus is his relationship with the "black sheep" prodigal son figure of John "Jack" Ames Boughton, son of his longtime friend and Gilead's Presbyterian pastor who had honored him by giving his newborn son his name.  He is suspicious of Jack's motives for hanging around his family and befriending his son and wife...both men know of Jack's past waywardness on many levels and John feels very uncomfortable and defensive around him.  The relationship takes a turn for the worse when Jack begins to intensely question the pastor's Calvinist theology, especially with regard to the concept of predestination...he can come up with no satisfactory response.  I think, with all the text's postulating on different concepts, that it helps the reader to better understand Gilead if he or she has studied theology, been brought up in a religious family, or served in a pastoral capacity in a church...I struggled a lot with it.  But the historical references, along with the issues of conscience, belief, sacrificial love, and grace emphasized in the story made it worthwhile and it merits my recommendation to others.  Still, that theology stuff...do they really have to make it that complicated?