Weekly Short Stories: 1992 Science Fiction, Part 6

Here is another round of reviews of 1992 sci-fi tales appearing in the Gardner Dozois-edited anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Tenth Annual Collection.  At that time...and for years before and after...I mentioned before that I worked essentially an early morning graveyard shift at the post office processing plant here in Gainesville.  Also, during this time I often rode my bicycle the nearly eight miles to work and back, something that I would never do these days...not because of the physical demands but rather because I've grown to distrust other drivers with their myriad sources of distractions when they're supposed to be focused on the road (and my very vulnerable presence on the side).  But back to those stories...

THE ELVIS NATIONAL THEATER OF OKINAWA by Jonathan Lethem and Lukas Jaeger

A futuristic story, as are so many in this genre, it's also brief, but to the point. It distills what we see in our current popular media culture of celebrities into the absurdity of elevating shock over artistic substance. A musical band seeking recognition thinks its big moment has arrived, only to find itself shunted aside by an influential agent who only sees a future in one of its quirky members.

THE TERRITORY by Bradley Denton

This is an alternative history story about the passage through the American Civil War of perhaps our best-known writer, Samuel Clemons...who later wrote under the pseudonym Mark Twain.  There is a crucial moment when "our" history changes and it involves the fate of Clemens' brother Orion as they face the marauding Kansas Redlegs.  The story to me was true to Sam Clemens' incredible sardonic wit and theorized that sometimes alternate scenarios can return to their original paths, more or less.  I enjoyed it...

THE BEST AND REST OF JAMES JOYCE by Ian MacLeod

Four years ago, I read Irish writer James Joyce's chief defining work, Ulysses...click on the title to read my reactions.  Subsequently I picked up a copy of his later piece Finnegans Wake and was instantly befuddled.  Joyce likes to present "stream of consciousness" narratives, if you can call them narratives, and this can be difficult for the reader who is trying to discern what is real and what is imagined. This story by MacLeod puts Joyce the artist in an array of alternative history universes...with time travel thrown in for good measure just to complicate things further.  In one passage the United Kingdom isn't in northern Europe but just off the coast of Africa, in another it's been at war against Tsarist Russia for more than a century.  Joyce for his part slips in and out of different roles, one as a physicist on a dirigible and another as a popular poetic recording artist fusing the hip Moroccan music scene with Irish traditions...it's all a little too much to take. My suggestion: read this story like you would one of James Joyce's novels and just try to flow with it all...it may be all you can do with it...

Next week I conclude my look at the year 1992 in short science fiction...  

Physical Therapy and My Reactions

Over the course of my adult life, I have had the occasion to use the physical therapy services provided by UF Health on three different occasions.  In 2003, after I strained my right shoulder trying to change a flat tire, I went to their office at Magnolia Parke off NW 39th Avenue and submitted to their plan, which largely involved resistance training with plastic bands...very low tech and portable.  Then, following my open-heart surgery in 2021 in which my chest was literally sawed through and then fastened to fuse back together, I had to regain upper body strength and movement...for this they sent a physical therapist to my home.  He worked out yet another low-tech program of both upper and lower body exercises designed to restore flexibility and strength, and I use it to this day, incorporating elements into my stretching and exercise routine.  My latest foray into the world of physical therapy is ongoing, a product of my lower back spasms back in June.  Once again, I am back at the physical therapy office, but this time around the program seems to be more athletically oriented, with me working out on exercise machines that I have to go to my gym to access.  Now I am a member of a local gym, but it's not the easiest place to get to and it's usually pretty crowded, too, while the ever-changing machines I'm referred to are hard to find among the many types they have there.  I appreciate my physical therapist's knowledge of what needs to be strengthened with me in order to avoid further problems, but at the same time wonder whether he couldn't fashion a varied routine that I could more easily practice at home without all the fancy equipment.  Also, with my current regimen everything seems to change each time I go there...that, I understand, is called "progression", but it's difficult to keep on track with what I'm supposed to be doing from one week to the next.  Oh well, I have just a few more weeks of this...I'll go along with the program but think I'll suggest a more convenient and enduring set of exercises that I can more readily perform at home...

Podcaster Rob Dial Discusses Ways to Deal with Stress and Anxiety

On a recent Mindset Mentor podcast, personal development coach Rob Dial cited the Mayo Clinic's "Four A's" to deal with anxiety, expanding upon each of them.  As Dial says, stressful situations are a natural part of living and in today's time of accelerating information, the Internet and smartphones, it is only going to intensify.  Stress in itself isn't bad, but rather the anxiety it can produce.  How to get around it? Dial points to the Mayo Clinic's suggestions, explaining that you go through each "A" in order to meet the situation.  They are Avoid, Alter, Accept and Adapt.  First, if you can avoid unwelcome stressful situations, then by all means do so.  If that isn't possible, then try to alter the worst parts of the situation to make it more manageable.  If you still don't get relief, then try to accept what is going on, and ask yourself whether your resistance to it isn't contributing in large part to your anxiety while feeling forgiveness toward anyone playing a role in it.  Finally, if you're still experiencing anxiety-producing stress, then consider adapting by changing yourself and your attitude toward it all, asking yourself why it is causing such trouble and working to see it in a more positive light.  Dial also recommends starting a personal stress management journal, writing down about such situations you may encounter and your strategies and progress for dealing with them.  Concluding his show, he added that practicing mindfulness of your present physical surroundings can aid in interrupting the ongoing pattern of stress and allow you to refocus in a more positive way.  Ultimately, it's all a matter of breaking things down to more manageable habits of thinking and action.  I thought it was one of his better podcasts...

Just Finished Reading Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng

Our Missing Hearts, the 2022 novel by Celeste Ng, is the third book I've read of hers since Little Fires Everywhere and Everything I Never Told You...click on the titles to read my previous reviews on this blog. In this latest work of hers, it is sometime in the near future in an America painfully recovering from an abrupt economic downtown as Chinese people are unfairly targeted as scapegoats for the crisis. And a new set of repressive laws, P.A.C.T., has been enacted that justify discrimination and censorship against Asian-Americans, even to the point of the government taking away their children as punishment for dissent.  It's a dreary, heartbreaking world as young Bird, a little boy whose mother Margaret, a Chinese-American dissident poet, has protected him from being taken away by leaving him and his father.  But Bird wants to find her, and she leaves a clue that he follows with the aid of his local librarian, a sympathizer to the resistance.  It became quickly clear to me not far into the book that this story is a combined reaction by Ng to (1) the way after 9/11 that Muslims and Middle Eastern people in America were often stigmatized following that traumatic event, and (2) the tendency for China...and by irrational inference, Chinese people in general...to be blamed for the Covid-19 pandemic that broke out in 2020.  The big difference as I see it between the two is that the American president at the time of 9/11, George W. Bush, took great pains to prevent any kind of bigoted reactions while during Covid, then-president Donald Trump made a repeated point of scapegoating China and the Chinese.  It's very clear that Celeste Ng, of Chinese ancestry but born and raised here in the United States, had a message to convey regarding what is ultimately not just an American problem with prejudice and scapegoating but a human problem of which history over the ages has provided extensive examples.  Yes, it's a depressing tale, this book, and I'm afraid that just about every society on Earth has elements within it that will gladly trample on someone else's rights because of their own fears and willful ignorance.  I didn't enjoy reading Our Missing Hearts, but I don't think that was the author's intention anyway...

Ran Gainesville's Weekly Depot Parkrun 5K This Morning

This morning I somehow got out of bed early and make my way to Gainesville's pretty Depot Park, a few blocks south of downtown.  There they hold their weekly Saturday morning 5K (3.1 miles) Parkrun, which is free and volunteer-run, having originated from England which is loaded with such events.  It's the 20th time I have participated in it since 2019, running the four-lap course 19 times and walking it once.  And it's the first time I've been there in two months, due mainly to successive lower back and illness issues.  The weather at race time (7:30) wasn't very hospitable, but being in the middle of summer I wasn't surprised: 75 degrees and 85% humidity.  They had a higher number of participants than usual, and I always like seeing more "seasoned" elderly athletes there like I did this morning.  I decided to run this one and finished 38th in the crowd with a time of 32:52: a good finish considering the unpleasant warmth and mugginess.  On the drive back home, I decided to cut closer to the University of Florida campus, where I saw a number of students moving into their respective apartments for the upcoming term...that has to be exciting for them!  Yesterday I was entertaining the notion of spending this morning down in the Ocala area...Baseline Trailhead Park off SE 58th Avenue to be exact...where they regularly hold (NOT free) races of 5K, 10K and half-marathon distances.  Although the course there is a there-and-back path, repeated to fit the distance and might seem a little tedious, this is still a good way to get in a half-marathon.  Only I don't think I'd run it during the summer...no, I'd like to try walking the distance at an elevated pace.  And then I thought, why not first try it on my already created training course around my neighborhood?  So that's my upcoming goal, to do just that.  You can see the online posted results of today's Depot Parkrun by clicking HERE...

Quote of the Week...from Dean Karnazes

To call running "fun" would be a misuse of the word.  Running can be "enjoyable". Running can be "rejuvenating." But in a pure sense of the word, running is not fun.                  ---Dean Karnazes

Dean Karnazes is a popular ultra-long-distance runner and has extensively publicized the sport. The above quote is from his autobiographical book Marathon Man: Confessions of an All-Night Runner, which I bought on my Kindle. The setting is his first-ever ultra race, the Western States Endurance Run of 100 miles.  Not one who even remotely sees covering this type of distance for myself...even on a bicycle...I tend to take Dean's philosophical ramblings and apply them to shorter distances...much shorter distances, but still distance running all the same.  And he's right about running not being fun although I think he's a little nit-picky about distinguishing that from "enjoyable".  All the same, it's an activity more than a sport to me, although I have entered a number of races since I resumed running in 2007 at age 51. Dean Karnazes in his book describes how he would train in the wee hours of the morning running out on the streets, past businesses and through neighborhoods.  Now in this world full of busybody "Karens", skittish armed residents and near-vigilante neighborhood watchers I'm not about to try to emulate that early morning routine of Karnazes, in spite of the fact that in this foul, excessively hot and humid stretch of the summer, at least weather-wise that would be the best time to run.  No, I think I'll continue to train indoors, at the gym, and in broad daylight whenever I do venture down a neighborhood street.  I'm still running, though, and continue to derive inspiration...as well as amusement...from Dean Karnazes' compelling personal story...  

My Own Take on Ukraine, for What It's Worth

Just a brief piece here on the war in Ukraine, a full-blown invasion by Putin's Russia (with the help of Lukaschenko's Belarus) since February of last year.  I get the Russian leadership's problem with a large, instrumental part of the previous Soviet Union...broken up in 1991 after a failed military coup...now an independent nation outside the realm of its control.  A very large component of the former USSR's economy was in Ukraine, both agriculture and industry...as well as many Russians themselves. The political landscape there was evenly divided between pro-Russian parties and those favoring closer ties to western Europe to the point that Putin felt he could try to manipulate outcomes of elections.  When that ultimately failed, he invaded Crimea...initially a part of Russia proper until Soviet boss Khrushchev assigned it to Ukraine in the 1950s...and instigated armed revolts in the country's eastern sections.  It is those areas that Russia has succeeded in occupying and holding on to, already annexing them and insisting that they regard any recovery of land there by Ukraine as an invasion...talk about the pot calling the kettle black!  Russia to me...and I am only referring to the autocratic government behind the invasion of Ukraine, not Russia or Russians in general...is completely responsible for this war in which their military has targeted civilian sites like apartments, hospitals and schools.  Still, the two countries will always be neighbors and I want them to arrive at a cease-fire arrangement that will allow their people to resume a peaceful and civil life.  Right now, whenever I read that someone or some country has proposed a plan to end the conflict, almost immediately they receive a torrent of criticism from different sources.  As for me, I think that blessed are the peacemakers, but often it's the ones trying to break up the fight who end up with no appreciation for their efforts.  The only viable outcome for this, in my opinion (and you're free to disagree, but that's your opinion) will be an accord that ultimately neither side is very happy with, folks on both ends afterwards rising up to claim that it is a betrayal of their own side's interests...

Weekly Short Stories: 1992 Science Fiction, Part 5

It's Wednesday again, time for yet another look at bygone years in the realm of short stories as I continue my look at the year 1992 and the Gardner Dozois anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Tenth Annual Collection.  That year our firstborn child, Will, was a toddler, turning two that spring...it was a pleasant chore loading up the car with all his assorted "furniture" for short excursions to relatives and the beach.  At work I was entrenched on the graveyard "Tour 1" shift at the post office, working their flat sorting machine.  And Steve Spurrier was beginning to hit his stride as Florida Gators football coach, on his eventual way to five Southeastern Conference championships.  But back to those stories...

THE LAST CARDINAL BIRD IN TENNESSEE by Neal Barrett, Jr.

This is a short piece, presented in the form of a play that mostly likely will never be performed.  A family is living in a future society based on high tech, but that technology has long run down while the people left over don't seem capable or willing to fix it.  The wife, her incapacitated husband and a friend dominate the dialogue...they display ignorance, prejudice, and the kind of downward-spirally adaptative behavior to their circumstances that, frankly, I see all around me these days.  Kind of chilling, actually...

BIRTH DAY by Robert Reed

Artificial intelligence one day in the story's not-so-distant past had united on Earth and transformed itself into an entity and force far beyond its original creators' ability to comprehend...and now humanity is living the consequences.  Sounds like Terminator or Matrix, right? But no, it is benevolent toward all of us, and to demonstrate that annually, it holds its own "Birth Day" celebration by providing on that date everyone with their own personal hearts' desires.  When I consider how Alexa, online search and social media algorithms and other contemporary manifestations of a budding AI, another chill envelopes me...

NAMING NAMES by Pat Cadigan

This tale treats the notion...going back to the yarn Rumpelstiltskin by Jacob Grimm of long ago, that each of us has a secret, true name, and that were another able to discover it then they would have complete control over us.  A woman with such an ability to extract others' secret names learns that her father possessed the same skill and that her mother, now his adversary, wants to lead her to confront him.  As this story progresses, the author inserts another idea, which I think is profound: that which you attain mastery over may well attain its own kind of mastery over you...

Next week, more sci-fi from '92...

Podcaster Lays Out Ideas for Focusing and Being More Productive

Personal development coach Rob Dial's latest Mindset Mentor podcast was about unlocking productivity and creating focus.  This is a recurring theme of his, and one that tends to attract my attention...so here goes.  He says that focus is saying yes for a set period of time to ONE thing while saying no to everything else.  In other words, eliminate distractions.  There's a lot of common sense distilled in Dial's message, which he breaks down to seven items: (1) remove your distractions, (2) prioritize your to-do list, (3) break down your large tasks into smaller tasks, (4) focus on your progress, (5) get enough sleep, (6) stay hydrated, and (7) take breaks.  I could do better with all of these...yet it's the first one, removing distractions, that is my most difficult.  There are two kinds of distractions as I see them, internally or externally imposed.  If I have the TV on in the background while I'm trying to study or write, then that's something I'm doing to myself.  If I'm around other people and haven't effectively communicated my own boundaries about my temporary need to be free of their interruptions, then that's on me as well.  Still, in those situations, distractions, however minor they may seem, can wreck concentration and focus and markedly set back progress.  Rob Dial is a big opponent of multi-tasking, which he claims greatly diminishes the value of any directed activity. I agree if they are similar in nature, but something like, say, running or walking while listening to an audiobook shouldn't cause any problem.  Better though, to focus on the one thing, as the Australian rock group INXS once sang about more than forty years ago...

Gloveless Glover Wins FedEx St. Jude Golf Championship Sunday

Yesterday I enjoyed watching the FedEx/St. Jude PGA golf tournament, held in Memphis, Tennesse. In it Lucas Glover, a 43-year-old veteran of the circuit for decades without many victories to show for it, overcame the putting difficulties of his previous years and won his second straight tournament.  I was rooting for him to succeed, although it did get a bit "old" for me to repeatedly hear announcers bring up his age...I'm 23 years older!  But I get it, this is sports, and when you start getting into your late thirties, folks begin to diminish your future prospects for success.  The course at Memphis is loaded with water traps that tend to destroy golfers' rounds...yet even the best of them can't seem to be able to realize this when they're driving the ball.  Glover ended the regulation 72 holes yesterday evening tied with Patrick Cantlay for the lead.  On the very first sudden death hole, Cantlay drove his shot straight into the water, pretty much handing the tourney to his more methodical and cautious opponent.  I was impressed more than anything at Lucas Glover's consistency from hole to hole...it reminded me of how Brian Palmer managed to run away with the (British) Open a few weeks ago while his more known competitors floundered on the course with their mistakes.  I'm looking forward to next weekend, for I am not only a fan of the men's PGA regular circuit but also of the second-tier Korn Ferry tournaments, the seniors' "Champions" tour, and the LPGA. Go golf! By the way, the temperatures in Memphis yesterday mirrored that here in Gainesville.  Glover, who in spite of his name doesn't wear gloves while golfing, had to repeatedly dunk his hands in ice as he struggled to withstand the hot conditions...

Walked a "Hot" Neighborbood 5K This Evening

It's been an incredibly hot summer, and the heat doesn't seem to be letting up.  I haven't run much outdoors during the past few months...yesterday I even skipped the weekly free local 5K race because it was 80 degrees and 93% humidity at just past 6:00 AM.  Today I decided to go on a fast walk at sunset around my neighborhood, for just a little more than a 5K distance.  Only problem was that, at 7:40 PM with shadows draping everything outdoors, the temperature was a staggering 98 (heat index of 106), with at least a reasonably dry humidity of 41%.  I walked a fast (for me) pace for the duration...my Runkeeper phone app recorded my record of 3.23 miles covered in 51 minutes, 2 seconds...a 15:49 minutes/mile pace, much slower than the treadmill walks I have been doing at my gym.  But treadmills usually give you faster times, and the indoor, cooled temperature there is usually around 70.  So, I'm happy with this effort and plan to try inserting more neighborhood fast walks into my schedule, and for longer distances when the time permits.  In any event, I don't think I'm as susceptible to the heat as some others are, although I wasn't about to run my neighborhood course under these conditions.  As it was, I felt good for this entire walk although the heat was clearly evident...

Skipped Today's Depot Parkrun Because of Mugginess and Heat

This morning I got up at six and took the dog out in the backyard to do her stuff, checking to see my cellphone confirm what I was already experiencing with the weather: it was 80 degrees with 93% humidity...ugh! I had intended to drive down to Depot Park just south of downtown Gainesville to participate in yet another of their free weekly 5K "parkruns", but experience has taught me that distance running over such a temperature/humidity combination is a formula for disaster. So, after I brought Daisy back into the house, I went back to bed...incidentally sleeping for another four hours. In retrospect, though, I probably should have gone anyway and just walked the course.  And walking is something I'd like to do more and more of, whether I'm just going around the neighborhood or doing a race.  Since it doesn't seem like it's going to get cooler around here anytime soon, I think that's a prudent move on my part...although I can still run within my nice, air-conditioned house or at my local gym until things get more tolerable outdoors.  Well, as far as the Depot Parkrun is concerned, there's always next week.  Yes, I really should get out there on Saturday mornings and make a habit of covering the distance, be it by running, walking...or crawling...

Quote of the Week...from Jimmy Conway in the movie Goodfellas

You learned the two greatest things in life: never rat on your friends, and always keep your mouth shut.             ---Jimmy Conway (played by Robert Deniro) in the movie Goodfellas

Goodfellas is one of my favorite gangster movies, right up there just behind The Godfather.  In it, young Henry Hill, the narrator character, says that ever since he could remember he always wanted to be a gangster.  Working for a local mafia group, one day he gets arrested, jailed, and appears before a judge...with his boss's lawyer standing at his side.  Released, Henry expects to be rebuked for having been arrested, but instead everyone...including the Head Honcho (played by Paul Sorvino), celebrates and congratulates him: why?  Well, Hill's mentor in organized crime, Conway, explains it in the above line: the young lad didn't rat, and he kept his mouth shut.  Later in the film a grown-up Ray Liotta plays the narrator character...a sterling performance, along with those of Deniro and Joe Pesci.  For me, you don't necessarily have to be in a criminal gang for the above "code" to apply...to partially steal Hill's line, ever since I can remember there have been at least two "societies" with their respective rules: the official one where official authority figures like schoolteachers and police enforce the official rules and laws, and the other societies under the surface that others dominate to circumvent the official society.  To get "in" one needs a connection and an invitation...and once you're in, then you'd better follow their code because they have their own means of enforcement, and it usually doesn't involve due process.  I've never been one to follow either the straight or crooked paths, so with me regarding underground or underworld groups, ignorance is bliss although it's intuitively evident that there's something else underlying the aboveground social order.  I see an analogy in the science fiction Matrix movie series: the Matrix is everywhere: it's where you work, shop, go to church, go to school...even when you pay your taxes.  I believe there are a lot of people who crave that kind of connection and, when they are in a new social setting, quickly set out to find the "cool" people in order to get "in".  But not me: I think I'll just remain an individual and flow with the passing scene...and keep my mouth shut...

Back to Gym

After months untold of not availing myself of my local gym, back in May I resolved to make a determined point of getting out there following work (I get off at 10 PM) and spending a few minutes on the treadmill and occasionally the elliptical cross-trainer.  And I was pretty good about going there, too, resisting the temptation to just continue homeward and crash in front of the television. My main focus was building up my walking speed, as I am advancing in years (I will be 67 in October) and although I like to run long distances, I'm thinking that perhaps it would be better on my joints to mix in more low-impact walking with my running.  I was successful at that, getting a sustainable walking pace of 5 mph (12-minute mile) before two different health issues sidelined me from vigorous physical activity.  But now I am back in business again, Tuesday night using my Gainesville Health and Fitness gym after work and easily walking 1.6 miles on the treadmill at a more relaxed 4.4 mph pace. I plan to devote Tuesdays and Thursdays to gym visits, along with a resumption of my Saturday morning 5K racing at the Parkrun in Depot Park just south of downtown.  One observation that hit me hard while at the gym last night: everyone there was very, VERY young and I was the only one around my age.  I know that women have the option with GHF of using another location specifically designed for them: I don't suppose they could set aside some space somewhere for old folks like me...

Weekly Short Stories: 1992 Science Fiction, Part 4

Below are four more reviews of mine as I read through the 1992 sci-fi short story anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Tenth Annual Collection, edited by the late Gardner Dozois. In 1992 I was working at the post office in the "graveyard shift" processing flats (magazines and 8½ x 11 envelopes) on the flat sorter machine, both to specific Gainesville routes according to the addresses or to other offices in the area.  I liked this work, because it gave me the change to spend long stretches of time learning and reviewing different subjects of interest, and I also dug listening a bit to music, with Rock 104 being my favorite station that time.  I'm still working in the same building, but have things changed! But anyway, back to those stories...

 

THE GLOWING CLOUD by Steven Utley

This is a brilliant time travel story set during the days of the 1902 eruption of the volcano Mount Pelée on the West Indies island of Martinique.  The time traveler there from the future is on a mission to find and bring back a fellow time traveler, a fallen renegade.  During his ordeals on Martinique, he not only has to deal with his target, but also his missing companion on the assignment.  And of course, there is the volcano, spewing ash and rocks all over the area, ruining everything they touch, killing off the birds and livestock in the process.  The exact date and time of the most fatal part of the eruption is, of course, history to our hero...unfortunately the island's inhabitants, especially the local politicians in charge, are completely clueless regarding their grim fate.  A suspenseful, historically enlightening novella...

GRAVITY'S ANGEL by Tom Maddox

Set in a contemporary time in the American southwest, a supercollider has a full docket of projects for it.  But a woman physicist from a competing organization sneaks in a special one of her own design, regarding the creation of a singularity, and that's when the mayhem truly begins.  A good commentary on the economics of scientific research as well as the glass ceiling for women who make key discoveries but are denied proper recognition...

PROTECTION by Maureen F. McHugh

This story paints a dismal picture of a leftist totalitarian state taking over America, with criminals and political dissidents sent to "re-education" concentration camps much in the old Soviet and Chinese style of the previous century.  A woman inmate, uneducated and sent there for assault and petty thievery, befriends a man incarcerated for his political work.  It becomes clear that the authorities need information from him, which he refuses to divulge.  For me, it's always been assumed that this kind of future scenario would come from the political left, but I sadly see a large growth of authoritarian fascism from the right in recent years...regardless whichever direction you're looking, it's all ultimately a human failure...

Next week: more about science fiction short stories from 1992...

Podcaster Steve Kaufmann's Compelling Views on Language Learning

Podcaster Steve Kaufmann, a 77-year old polyglot who has learned 20 languages, often has some good advice about learning foreign languages.  He stresses the need to build up a vast passive vocabulary of known words in whatever the target language happens to be...that Babbel commercial showing the woman proudly given directions to the Parisien taxi driver just won't cut it in real conversation.  Although some 80% of the words in a spoken language tend to arise from just 20% of its words, both Steven and I can guarantee you that you won't get very far in a regular conversation with a native speaker if you just know that 20%.  When I worked many decades ago at a local Chinese restaurant, much of its kitchen was staffed by Vietnamese people, several of whom I befriended. I decided to try to learn a little Vietnamese then and could engage in some conversation with them as we worked.  Of course, the big pressing need here was for them to learn...and quickly...how to speak English, and our talking was overwhelmingly in MY native language, for their sakes.  Kaufmann reiterates this important point of engaging with a native speaker of another language, especially if it takes place in their country.  According to his experiences, he must already be at a reasonably proficient level in that foreign language, else the native speaker may well revert to English if it is the best means for communication.  And many people across the world want to practice their English on travelers!  Kaufmann often exhorts people not to be so concerned about being perfect in their speaking efforts with others...communication is the goal, and you will make many mistakes, there's no getting around that.  But the flip side is that whoever you're trying to speak with in the foreign language may decide that the mistakes are too many.  For me, "speaking" a foreign language has never been my primary goal, but rather being able to fully understand it when I hear it, along with reading fluency.  What I like about Steve Kaufmann is that his expert observations over the years affirm my own: build up that large passive vocabulary first.  And if conversation opportunities arise, then fine: take advantage of them but don't let your speaking ability at any given time define your progress for you...

Podcaster Has Good Advice on Developing Good Habits and Skills

Last week in one of his Mindset Mentor podcasts, personal development coach Rob Dial touched upon a topic that he's covered in the past, and one that I've come to strongly believe in.  The importance of consistency in small things...establishing little by little the habits I want to develop in order to improve my life cannot be understated.  Dial suggests something he calls the "30-30" rule: take the next thirty days and focus on one specific habit to instill, devoting a pre-set thirty-minute block of time to it.  And then thirty days later, pick another desired habit to work on the next thirty days.  He doesn't recommend me loading my schedule up with multiple thirty-minute blocks...no...one habit at a time.  Dial says to select ONE specific skill or habit to work on and determine the resources I need to obtain in order to successfully pursue it.  I get his focus to avoid overloading the mind, but I already have a pretty elaborate routine of short daily activities in a multitude of areas...this doesn't mean that I will abandon working on them to just do one thing.  But yes, identifying one NEW area to work on improving and picking up good habits with it...the "new thing of the month" so to speak, makes a lot of sense.  Rob Dial also emphasizes keeping daily records of my level of progress, helping both to direct my focus better and to hold me more accountable to myself: I already do this.  He adds to this the importance of not being perfect all the time in what I do, but rather to "show up" whether I'm having a good or bad day.  Yeah, this particular podcast resonated with me.  As for podcasts in general, I consistently keep up with two programs, Dial's and Steve Kaufmann's.  Kaufmann is the polyglot who has a lot of sound, practical advice about language learning, and whose learning site LingQ I've subscribed to and faithfully study on a daily basis.  What podcasts do you like to regularly follow?

Enjoying Watching Golf on TV

During the last four days one of my "activities" has been to watch television coverage of different golf tournaments taking place at the time.  There were three: the Women's Scottish Open, usually presented live in the morning (my time), the Wyndham Championship Men's tourney from Greensboro, North Carolina, and finally the Utah Championship in the Korn Ferry tournament (professional golf's version of a minor league).  In all three I enjoyed how the different golfers tackled the holes with their strategies and felt a kind of peace watching the game that I don't experience watching team sports or even individual contests like tennis.  Like I've written before, I have never played actual golf...only the miniature variety.  One thing about golf: the best players seem to need a lot of careful instruction and nurturing from childhood, and this doesn't come cheap.  I'd like to try my hand at the game, but I don't think that at my age (66) with a recent history of back muscle spasms, I'd get very far: better to stick with the miniature circuit!  But this doesn't prevent me from enjoying watching others play golf.  Not only do I like seeing the same players from week to week, but I dig the different locales and the surrounding scenery.  During the recent (British) Open held just south of Liverpool that Georgian Brian Palmer won going away, the course design couldn't have looked more different than what the golfers went through this weekend in North Carolina.  Next week the PGA will hold its annual FedEx Cup Championship, this year at TPC Southwind in Memphis, Tennessee.  The bigger names in the men's sport have been noticeably absent from today's action, but I'm sure they'll all be there for the "big" one...

Blog is Back, Vacation Good But Not as Planned

As my two-week vacation winds down...initially planned as an ambitious out-of-state (and country) excursion...Melissa and I find ourselves content with staying here in Gainesville.  We both experienced very untimely illness at its onset and had to cancel those plans, which we intend to follow through with at some future date.  Yet recovery has been good for both of us, and I am looking forward to resuming my active lifestyle at its previous level.  And yes, the blog is back after a two-week break from it...

Vacation, Illness, Blog

Melissa and I were to start a two-week vacation today...we still have still the time off, but our more ambitious plans were scuttled until a later date when we both fell ill this week...we're still smack dab in the middle of recovery, making progress with it.  When we're better, we can see about some alternate plans for the remainder of this period...for now it's rest, rest, rest. I'd mentioned in an earlier article that this blog would probably get a bit of a break during this time.  I still plan to take a brief vacation from it, but who knows: if I feel the urge to write and post something, don't be surprised.  But if not, I should be back by the end of the first week of August...

Quote of the Week...from Ernest Hemingway

I like to listen.  I have learned a great deal from listening carefully.  Most people never listen.

                                                                         ---Ernest Hemingway

In spite of my high school English class experiences practically ruining it all for me, I later came to read most of Ernest Hemingway's classic novels, among them For Whom the Bell Tolls being my favorite.  I especially appreciated his stated plain writing style, avoiding fancy and cryptic techniques employed by some of his contemporaries that often garnered them undeserved critical acclaim but made their works largely unreadable by the general public.  Today being his birthday, I thought I'd throw in one of Hemingway's quotes in celebration, and this one rang true to me...well, mostly true.  I think most folks, when engaged with others in conversation, are only half-listening, at the same time preparing the next thing they will say themselves.  On top of that, people tend to hold on to personal narratives concerning just about any person, place, thing, or issue.  They will be happy to "listen" for a while if the speaker is affirming that narrative and be equally happy to zone out or cut them off if they diverge from the script...and if the message is a mixed one, with some welcome information said along with some unwelcome facts, then it's a simple cognitive sleight of hand to accept the affirming stuff while ignoring the rest.  I can extend this all to reading, too, as well as whatever media channels one tends to prefer plugging their respective brains into.  If the message affirms a dearly held narrative belief system, regardless of reality, then they'll be a loyal audience...this is the world we live in today, where the population insulates themselves within comfortable belief bubbles where feedback loops reenforce distortions and lies as long as they fit the pattern.  Yet Hemingway died in 1962, so this sort of thing's long preceded the Internet and mass media manipulation tactics of today...

Podcaster Lays Out Ways to "Hit Goals"

Personal development coach Rob Dial, on his Mindset Mentor podcast, often recycles the same messages, and the best presentations often appear on this blog. I know I'm repeating some stuff here, but the way I see it, if it ain't worth repeating, it's probably not worth stating in the first place!  This podcast had him listing and describing "Seven Steps to Hit Any Goal", as it is titled.  Now I'm usually not into setting goals as be-alls and end-alls, but rather as incremental steps, or milestones if you will, in my transforming into the person I want to become.  That having been said, let's check out these goals...

1-Fixate on exactly what it is that you want.

2-Determine exactly what you will give up to achieve the goal (Rob's favorite point).

3-Figure out a date (deadline) you're going to hit the goal by.

4-Create a plan to hit the goal and start immediately.

5-Write a clear and concise statement...condensing the first four points into a mission statement.

6-Take the statement from #5 and read it out loud to yourself at least twice a day.

7-Determine how you can make it easier on yourself.

Does a lot of this sound obvious to you? It did to me...duh, these are all good suggestions toward achieving a felt goal.  Yet the host left out the most important step: once you've figured out and done these seven steps, you still have to work diligently and patiently to attain your goal's fulfillment. Of course, that one is also obvious to most of us, I believe.  Rob Dial gives credit to self-help book author Napoleon Hill in his book Think and Grow Rich for most of his pointers. The fact that Hill was something of a con artist in his day doesn't mean he didn't have some good things to say...you just have to filter it out from all the other crap...  

Weekly Short Stories: 1992 Science Fiction, Part 3

Here are some more of my reactions from science fiction short stories appearing in Gardner Dozois' anthology series The Year's, Best Science Fiction, Tenth Annual Collection.  1992 was the year of the Rodney King beating in Los Angeles and the subsequent riots that rocked that city.  It was also a year of economic turndown that doomed the Bush administration in his reelection bid that November...he had enjoyed extremely high approval ratings just the year before immediately after the Persian Gulf War that drove Saddam Hussein's Iraq out of Kuwait.  But let's get back to those stories...

A LONG NIGHT'S VIGIL AT THE TEMPLE by Robert Silverberg

In a far-off future, humanity worships the memory of three alien beings who visited many thousands of years earlier and who promised a glorious return.  The Warder Diriente, chief officer of the main temple that worships them, is bound to ritual...as well as a growing belief he has kept secret, that his faith's theology doesn't quite ring true.  But the temple's caretaker Mericalus has no such qualms about speaking his mind, and disturbs the Warder, one day suddenly appearing for him to follow...and shows something that turns it all upside down.  But it's the Warder's reaction to this that was the story's profound message: isn't that what all religions do when confronted with contrary facts...

THE HAMMER OF GOD by Arthur C. Clarke

In a future distant enough for humanity to have ventured out into far deep space, a ship "out there" is given a grave task: deflect a sizeable asteroid determined to have a 99.9% chance of hitting Earth and destroying all life there.  But what happens when they hit a snag in their mission? Hope all seems lost, unless... Clarke gives a grim science physics lesson on the effects of drag force at the end...

GROWNUPS by Ian R. MacLeod

This story reads like a fanciful Ray Bradbury coming of age story in what seems like good old apple pie Middle America...until the presence of "uncles" is revealed as an apparently third gender.  As young Bobby goes through adolescence and approaches the time when he, like his friends, will "grow up", he is apprehensive about the pain he will endure during those few days.  His friend Kay is skeptical about everything and doesn't want to leave childhood, and she is very suspicious of the bitter-tasting milk that all the children have to take.  And what about the uncles, they seem to be manipulating the whole situation...the ending is an eye-opener.  Good, suspenseful tale that makes one think about their roles gender-wise...

GRAVES by Joe Haldeman

In the Vietnam War, there is one detail duty no one wants...that is, unless they want to remain alive...and it's Graves Registration, where they find the killed soldiers' bodies and effects, bag them and ship them off for processing: pretty gruesome if that's all you see of the war.  One day two soldiers on that assignment come across a very peculiar corpse, looking like no soldier but rather more like an elderly man deceased of natural causes.  Suddenly gunfire erupts and their commanding officer is brutally killed while in mid-sentence. What happens at the end when the two finally are able to escape the battle scene and later come back is hair-raising...a speculation into possibilities of the biological strategy of mimicry...

The next two Wednesdays I will be on vacation and plan on a brief break from this blog during that time. I should be back reviewing sci-fi short stories from 1992 next month...

Constellation of the Month: Draco (the Dragon)

For most people, I'm guessing, if the name "Draco" evokes any image, it's that of Harry Potter's Hogwarts classmate and adversary Draco Malfoy (excellently portrayed by Tom Feld in the movie series adaptation), both a bully and snob but somebody I nevertheless felt a deal of sympathy toward.  But since much earlier Draco has been a prominent constellation in the far northern sky, best seen during clear July evenings.  Representing a dragon, imagine the connected stars as its sinuous body winding around the polar Ursa Minor (the Little Bear or Little Dipper) to its north, with Ursa Major (Big Bear/Dipper) to its south near the dragon's tail, finally ending with its easily discernible head near Lyra and its wonderfully brilliant star Vega.  Thuban (Alpha Draconis) many thousands of years ago used to be the North Star, due to the Earth's precession (akin to a top's wobbling while spinning). Draco, although clearly visible to observers in northern latitudes, possesses no first magnitude stars and only three at third magnitude or brighter.  One of the things I'd like to do if I ever get around to traveling south of the Equator is to observe the celestial South Pole on a clear night, along with the various constellations close by that are too south for me to see from Florida. Conversely, people living "down under" may experience difficulty seeing Draco if their own latitude is too far south. Going back to J.K. Rowling's memorable series, Draco Malfoy is (finally) one-up on Harry Potter in that he is named for a constellation...that's cool: I guess he thought so, too, since he later named his son Scorpius... 

Work or Vacation, It's All Good

Sometimes it's a good idea to just sit here and write some free-flowing stuff.  Right now, it's midmorning on a Monday, my workweek ahead of me before I begin a two-week vacation.  But I have found that, within my daily normal routines...and that includes going off to work...I can find a sense of purpose, balance, relaxation and refreshment in my life that many tend to believe can only happen with an absence of structure and accountability.  For me, a vacation is a break in my routines, time to experience something new and different, and possibly go on an adventure.  Whether I'm traveling or not during this period, I am content with the time off, as well as when I return to the "old grind" when it ends.  Structure's good...but so is adventure.  Things like this blog, foreign language study and an assortment of other daily routines I'm engaged in may take a brief break during that time, but there is also fun living in that present moment and experiencing whatever gets thrown my way.  It's all good...

Just Finished Reading Hot Six by Janet Evanovich

Picking back up Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum mystery book series after several years, it took me a little bit of time to recall all the main recurring characters and circumstances...but after reading High Five last week, I felt that the next book would be a quick work of reading...it was.  In Hot Six, almost comically incompetent bounty hunter Stephanie Plum, who works for a Trenton, New Jersey bail bonds company to bring in people missing their appointment court appearances, still plies her trade...with the typically mixed results.  The story's main theme is the disappearance of her mentor Ranger, a mysterious man who seems to be always on the edge of the law and more of a James Bond type.  Ranger is being implicated in the murder of one of the sons of an aging local gangland boss.  One of Stephanie's competitors gets her company's assignment to capture and bring in Ranger...Stephanie herself cannot belief that Ranger could be a murderer and sets out to find him and investigate the killing on her own.  Weaving through the plot, as usual, is her family...including feisty Grandma Mazur who lives with her a spell, her friend Lula who works at the bail bonds office, and her cop/lover Joe Morelli, who seems secretly involved in the investigation as well.  Plus, Bob the golden retriever may have made his series debut here after Stephanie ends up virtually adopting him. And as usual, others are hounding her, including a creepy pair of men tailing her everywhere and often threatening her: they're after Ranger as well.  As good mystery books go, the plot undergoes a couple of interesting twists before it all gets turned upside down at the end.  I was okay with Hot Six, enough to go on to the next installment of Evanovich's series.  I enjoy the earthy first-person narration of protagonist Stephanie Plum, and the humor here is top-notch.  It does, however, portray violence as a more common, everyday occurrence than I'd like to imagine....

Enjoying My Day Off with Family and Learning

I've been enjoying my day off, first of two, with Melissa and my grown children...as well as exploring the learning opportunities provided by three Internet applications, one of them only instituted late last year.  As I've already written on this blog, YouTube is loaded with interesting educational content, and you can find out just about anything...as long as it isn't invasively personal...by searching their site.  While browsing them a few weeks ago, I came across polyglot Steve Kaufmann's endeavor of LingQ, a language-learning site designed to teach languages the right way (at least the way I see it), by gradually building a large passive vocabulary in the target language through reading and listening, with graded lessons and opportunities to insert my own material from the Internet.  They also provide tutors and teachers online, and the range of available languages for study is wide.  I may use this blog to write regularly about my progress here, much as I have done with my past running.  It's all very interesting and has become even more so through the very recent innovation, an AI chatbox called ChatGPT that searches the Web for textual material to formulate answers to an incredibly wide variety of questions.  It was on Kaufmann's YouTube channel that I first heard about ChatGPT...I asked it to write a couple of stories that I plan to translate into the languages I'm studying and then transfer them over to LingQ for study...pretty impressive stuff. I am also going back to the very beginning of this blog, back in April of 2007, and translating those articles I wrote to my target languages and studying them on the LingQ site: since this blog has more than 5000 articles, there is an endless supply of stuff from it I can use.  I also use the Kendra Listening Practice YouTube channel to improve my listening skills, as well as listening daily to brief segments of radio broadcasts in the languages I'm studying.  I can tell I'm making progress, but it's a long journey to proficiency and confidence in them...that's okay with Steve, whose observations and philosophy on language learning pretty much resonate with mine: his main emphasis is making it all interesting and fun...

Quote of the Week...from Ringo Starr

Well, actually here are two quotes from the great drummer for the Beatles, one short and one comparatively long:

The second side of Abbey Road is my favorite.

I've never been able to sit round on my own and play drums, practice in the back room, never been able to. I've always played with other musicians.  It's how I play, there's no joy for me in playing on my own, bashing away.  I need a bass, a piano, guitar, whatever, and then I can play.

A week ago, I was faced with a quandary: both Ringo Starr and science fiction writer Robert Heinlein had birthdays on July 7th, I picked the latter...but why not just feature the star of A Hard Day's Night today?  I totally get his take on Abbey Road, the last album recorded by the Fab Four before their acrimonious breakup that resulted in Paul McCartney suing the other members as well as their manager, Allen Klein.  When Abbey Road came out in 1969, I didn't hear it other than the singles release of Something and Come Together...I didn't care for either song.  But over the next couple of years, I began to hear other tracks, and was blown away by the Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight/The End medley toward its end...featuring mainly Paul.  I say mainly because the start of The End is nothing other than a Ringo Starr drum solo...in fact, the only drum solo he ever recorded for them.  And from what I've read about that recording session, he was very nervous and uncomfortable about it.  Of course he was, that's obvious if you read the second quote above.  Ringo was always an accompanier, fitting in seamlessly with the rest of the band and what they were doing, never demanding the spotlight himself.  And yet, when he was in that first movie of theirs, he was brilliant.  I'm very happy that he's still around today and doing so well...all the best to you and yours, Ringo!

Some Wimbledon Comments as End Nears

Although my eyes aren't glued to the television, I've been generally keeping up with this year's edition of the Wimbledon tennis tournament taking place in England.  It's easy to do, since their afternoons are our mornings and, wouldn't you know it, my mornings happen to be free! It's reached the finals for the women's singles and the semis for the men's.  After the big stink made after the Azarenka-Svitolina match when both of them avoided the customary good-spirited interaction at the net, I bet a lot of folks were banking on a repeat of this scenario if Elina Svitolina, from Ukraine, faced up against Aryna Sabalenka, who is from Belarus, one of the aggressor countries against Svitolina's homeland.  As it turned out, both Svitolina and Sabalenka lost out in their respective semifinal matches against Marketa Vondrousova and Ons Jabeur, who will play for the title on Saturday.  The men's semifinals tomorrow pit Novak Djokovic against Jannik Sinner, and Daniil Medvedev against Carlos Alcaraz.  I had written a few days ago that I wasn't faulting Svitolina for saying in advance she wouldn't be speaking to anyone from Belarus or Russia, but while I sympathize with her, I believe that if each of us is an ambassador of our own countries, then we have a choice to make.  Either we can say it's war and march in lock step with our national leadership or we can choose, at least on a personal level, to promote peace and mutual respect.  In times of war, though, peacemakers are often severely criticized as sabotaging their country's resolve...even sometimes branded as traitors.  As for Sabalenka's loss earlier today, I'm a bit sad although I do like Jabeur, too...she's got to be the favorite in the next match.  I feel similarly about Daniil Medvedev...he's from Russia but, along with Sabalenka, never seemed to garner much fan support even before dictator Putin decided to invade and devastate a peaceful nation for territorial gain.  I think it's because they're both introverts, very intense with their game but not exactly the most outgoing of folks and pretty expressive when they get frustrated...I can relate to that!  Well, I can't root for Sabalenka anymore, but Medvedev is still alive and kicking.  It's gonna be fun watching it all unfold tomorrow morning on ESPN...

Weekly Short Stories: 1992 Science Fiction, Part 2

Today I continue my look at short stories from 1992 as they appeared in Gardner Dozois' anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Tenth Annual Collection.  1992 was a presidential election, and just a year earlier it looked as if incumbent George H.W. Bush (known back then as just George Bush) would glide to an easy reelection, his poll numbers being so high after the successful Persian Gulf War.  But the economy tanked into a recession, and the entry of populist businessman H. Ross Perot most likely took away more votes from Bush than from his Democratic Party opponent Bill Clinton...the later easily won election although he only garnered some 43% of the popular vote.  But back to more of those stories from that year...

TWO GUYS FROM THE FUTURE by Terry Bisson

The security guard at an art museum has no idea of her destiny until "two guys from the future", as they call themselves, suddenly materialize one night in her presence...just like on Star Trek.  This is a funny satire on time travel stories...yes, they're overripe for satire if not outright ridicule...

THE MOUNTAIN TO MOHAMMED by Nancy Kress

This story, even from 31 years ago, is an apt indictment of the deplorable state of health care in this country, showing the potential nightmare scenario of society split between the insurable and unisurable, depending on one's gene scan.  One physician with a conscience decides to buck the system and treat those refused insurance...in this case no good deed goes unpunished.  Yet the ending reveals an underlying logic to his suffering... 

THE COMING OF VERTUMNUS by Ian Watson

A struggling young art critic and author, living in a near-future when envionmentalism threatens to curb technological and industrial development, is offered a chance by a Texas magnate to enter an incredibly contrived conspiracy involving discoveries of pornographic paintings from the Austrian Hapsburg late sixteenth century.  I learned quite a bit of history here, unless of course the author made it all up.  The story also delves into counter-conspiracies, false flag actions, and the effects of mind-alterning drugs on people's perspectives.  Very disturbing but wonderfully written...

Next week: more from '92...

Weather Here Still Sucks, By the Way

Let's see, the last article on this blog I wrote about the local weather sucking was on June 25...don't get any ideas that anything's gotten better: it hasn't.  The heat/humidity combination is the worst I've experience here in Gainesville, and it's been bad in summers past.  We're also getting bombed with torrential rains coming seemingly out of nowhere.  Early yesterday afternoon I was driving in sunny weather to work, planning to stop off at the Publix right next to my workplace.   But as I got to about a mile from my destination, I saw a rapidly moving zone of darkness in the sky headed straight toward me...suddenly I was in the middle of it, struggling to see through my deluged and foggy windshield on managing to finally park it at my workplace, abandoning any hope that day for a grocery visit.  And even though the rain finally abated some, the localized flooding it created made me have to walk through some suddenly very deep puddles just to get into my building.  Conditions like these recently have also contributed to my personal respiratory allergies, as weeds and other allergen-producing plants are rapidly growing out of control.  The only relief from this I see is to confine myself to air conditioning...and take a vacation out of the area starting July 23rd: looking forward to that...

Wimbledon Net Snub Set in Advance, Wrong Player Blamed

Victoria Azarenka is from Belarus, and her opponent this past Sunday in the Wimbledon's women singles tournament was Elina Svitolina, from Ukraine.  After their match, which Svitolina won, Azarenka did not walk up to the net to congratulate the winner...and the crowd booed her, reacting as if her actions were politically motivated because of the ongoing war being Russia and her country on one side, and Svitolina's on the other.  Of course, Belarus, is the ally of invading Russia, and Ukraine is the land and people being ravaged in an old-style imperial land-grab, the likes of which haven't been seen since Saddam Hussein's Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and the horrible conflicts in former Yugoslavia during the following decade. Svitolina, as Azarenka later pointed out in her own defense, had already announced that she would refuse to socially interact with any players from the two aggressor nations, even if they had given up their national affiliation as the Wimbledon authorities had demanded as a precondition of them returning to play after last year's ban.  I cannot judge Svitolina...what would I have done in her place...but neither can I criticize Azarenka, who is in a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" position.  On some level, these three countries will always neighbor one another, so I would prefer that individual citizens from them display a higher level of mutual compassion and respect for each other, even if their politicians...and I'm speaking mainly about the Belarus and Russian autocrats...don't.  Just the other day I wrote that EVERY match ended with the two sides, winner and loser, meeting at the net with friendliness, congratulations and encouragement.  Oh well, so much for that...

US Supreme Court Stacked, Ideological, Unprincipled

The recent rulings by a politically partisan, stacked United States Supreme Court have made a sick joke of our supposedly highest level of jurisprudence.  It was all foreseeable after Senate Majority Leader, Republican Mitch McConnell stole away a Barack Obama Democratic nomination in 2016 (nine months before that year's presidential election) on the excuse that "the voters should decide" who gets to nominate the new justice while in 2020 forcing through a Donald Trump Republican nomination just days before that year's election...which Trump incidentally lost.  And guess what? McConnell's very proud of what he did.  Now let's look at two rulings and focus on this court's leader, Chief Justice John Roberts.  In the 6-3 ruling striking down the Democratic Biden administration's planned forgiveness of up to ten thousand dollars of college student debt, helping 43 million Americans in the process...not just "billionaires" as Republican opponents like to argue...Roberts wrote that Congress had an appropriate role in the president's actions, which he claimed was denied them.  Yet back in 2010 when he ruled with the conservative SCOTUS wing to strike down a Congress-passed electoral reform bill that sought to properly regulate campaign financing, he had no problem interfering with both the legislative and executive branches, equating spending money with "freedom of speech" protected by the First Amendment.  As a matter of fact, this pretense version of a Supreme Court seems to like to invoke free speech whenever it wants to rule one way or another.  Another recent ruling, playing that First Amendment trump card, was to make an expansive ruling that a Colorado software entrepreneur was legally entitled to deny services to a gay couple due to the businessman's personal beliefs about their lifestyle. Yet John Roberts, from the beginning of his tenure as Chief Justice, always stressed that for a case to be held as worthy of a court hearing, the plaintiff needed to establish standing, meaning that some party had actually done something to them.  That didn't happen in this case, as our Chief Justice conveniently chose to ignore his cherished standard in favor of ideology.  And, sad to say, of all the six conservative justices sitting on the high bench, it is John Roberts who I regard as the most fair-minded!  Like I said, the US Supreme Court is stacked, ideological and unprincipled...truly a sick joke...and I haven't even started to discuss the alleged corruption on the part of Justices Thomas and Alito...

Just Finished Reading High Five by Janet Evanovich

Janet Evanovich is a prolific fiction writer whose Stephanie Plum mystery series has been very successful: Janet is eighty years old and just came out with the thirtieth Plum novel.  I began reading the series myself six years ago but drifted away after the fourth book.  I'm not sure why that was, since I liked the characters even if they seemed a little too much of a "Jersey thing"...it's all set around Trenton, and you might think from the dialogue that some of the characters just might be related to those on Jersey Shore.  Protagonist Stephanie Plum is a spunky if not very adept bounty hunter...too many of her efforts at dragging in bail jumpers on behalf of her cousin Vinnie's bail bonds agency end in failure, often dismally.  There are some ongoing back stories transferring from novel to novel, including her friendship with Lula, an ex-prostitute working now as Vinnie's clerk and who seems to possess more common sense than most of the other characters...especially Stephanie.  Then there's Morelli, a cop who's her main love interest and Ranger, a mysterious dude who helps her with some of the more daring, armed aspects of her trade.  In High Five, lots of different stuff is going on: Plum is assigned to bring in Briggs, a "little person"...of course, she botches it up and although he is turned in, his lawsuit threat causes Vinnie to temporarily house him with her in her apartment...that's hilarious.  The bad dude Ramirez (from the first book) has been let out of jail and is stalking our heroine for revenge...naturally, her ineptness prevents her from ever detecting him.  But what turns into the main story is the mysterious disappearance of her uncle Fred, who vanished in broad daylight while doing ordinary chores in town.  I liked the informal first-person narration by Stephanie Plum and the irreverent banter throughout the story was very funny, for the most part...especially with Briggs and Plum's inimitable Grandma Mazur.  High Five is a good, solid mix of humor and mystery...and of course, while there's danger you know that Stephanie will always be around for the next book.  Maybe I'll stick around longer to read the rest of Evanovich's series...if my reading can catch up with her speedy writing, that is...

Quote of the Week...from Robert Heinlein

One of the sanest, surest, and most generous joys of life comes from being happy over the good fortune of others.                                                         ---Robert Heinlein

Robert Heinlein, along with Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke, were the "Big Three" in science fiction writing during the mid-to-late twentieth century.  Heinlein, renowned for novels such as Stranger in a Strange Land and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (click on the titles to read my 2014 reviews) was also an ardent libertarian...but more principled about it than the phony politicians and rabble claiming that identity these days (but only when it is personally convenient for them).  Heinlein was a strong believer in personal responsibility for one's own life...to him anything less was self-victimization and servitude to others' agendas.  Do I agree with everything he's said or written? No way, yet the above quote of his is quite profound.  I've discovered that folks who put down others for achieving a success that perhaps they wanted for themselves have a tendency to be of this "woe-is-me, I'm a victim" mentality, and jealousy often crops up: here's another Heinlein quote to that effect: "A competent and self-confident person is incapable of jealousy in anything.  Jealousy is invariably a symptom of neurotic insecurity". Part of being a mature adult is displaying a dignified spirit of good sportsmanship, and not just when your own side wins.  Sore losers are perennial victims, glorifying in their own imagined martyrdom and seeing themselves as the center of everything...know of anyone in the news the past few years who fits this description? I've been watching the Wimbledon tennis tournament for the last few mornings and noticed something: in EVERY match, no matter how hard-fought, after they were over, the loser congratulated the winner and the winner in turn graciously consoled the loser.  Too bad some of our political "leaders" can't behave like that...

Enjoying Following Wimbledon Tennis This Year

A couple of years ago I was recovering at home from some extensive surgery, so I watched a lot of sports on TV, including the 2021 US Open in tennis, played in New York.  That's when I decided that high-level professional tennis was fun to watch, on a number of levels...and I'm speaking of the four annual Grand Slam tournaments held in Australia, France, England, and the United States.  Right now, I'm watching England's premier event, the Wimbledon Championships from southwestern London, played on grass...a surface that seems to favor certain players over others.  I like seeing the same faces in different tournaments, stars like Medvedev, Djokovic, Nadal, Tiafoe, Tsitsipas, Alcaraz, Kyrgios and Murray on the men's side and with women Sabalenka, Swiatek, Rybakina, Sakkari, Azarenka, Jabeur, Gauff, Halep and others. In 2021 dark horse unsung teenagers Leylah Fernandez and Emma Raducanu surprised their way with upset after upset, both reaching the women's US Open final, with the latter prevailing...Novak Djokovic was beaten that year in the same tourney's final by Daniil Medvedev.  Which brings me to a problem I have with tennis...as well as other sports.  It's the absence of certain big names that bothers me, chiefly caused by two factors.  The first, which is an element of high-level competition and training that strains the body, are the many injuries plaguing so many great athletes.  This year Andy Murray is back on the court following years of injury and recuperation.  But others like Raducanu, Simona Halep and Rafael Nadal aren't playing at Wimbledon because of injuries, and the great Roger Federer decided to finally retire from the active sport although he is a featured and honored spectator at Wimbledon.  The second factor is banning, whether it be from disciplinary action or as a political weapon.  Although Djokovic played in 2021 at the height of the Covid Delta Variant scourge across America that claimed so many lives, he was barred the next year from the same tournament because he refused a vaccine although the pandemic had greatly abated by then.  And last year, because Russia and its ally Belarus invaded neighboring Ukraine, the Wimbledon Tournament authorities, under pressure from the government, banned players representing those countries...so no Sabalenka, Medvedev, or Azarenka.  This year they came to their senses and allowed them to participate, albeit without national affiliation.  Well, if you've read this blog, you might have picked up that I tend to avoid identifying athletes anyway by which country they're from...so I'd go a step further and remove all those national flags on TV next to each player's name. As for Covid, I think the bans have all lifted, finally, from Australia and the US (France and England didn't impose them on unvaccinated players). It's still in the early stages of Wimbledon, and I'm working...yet my "free" time in the morning just happens to coincide with London afternoons, when most of the action is taking place.  So let the tennis continue...

Weekly Short Stories: 1992 Science Fiction, Part 1

And now it's time for me to move on to the year 1992 with sci-fi stories, and to a new book in Gardner Dozois' excellent annual anthology series, The Year's Best Science Fiction, Tenth Annual Collection.  At that time...and for three more years...I was working at my local post office processing center (I'm still there) sorting mail on their flat sorting machine on Tour I, which is postal jargon for the graveyard shift.  Let's see, I started working there in 1987, and in the nearly 36 years since then, I've done that shift in varying capacities for half that time...I'll have to write an article sometime about the pros and cons of working the wee hours of the morning.  But for now, here are my reactions to the first four tales in the anthology...

GRIFFIN'S EGG by Michael Stanwick

On a future sparsely populated Moon relying on natural resource production, industry and research, the leading team there endures a special bomb attack from a warring Earth of which the exploded agent turns most of the population into a hypnotic/paranoid trance state.  The fight for survival is on...how will the war back home end, and will it happen in time to rescue them?  The ending of this long, pretty contrived novella with numerous subplots delivers a surprise regarding the possible future of humanity, but I admit to having some difficulty tying it all together...

EVEN THE QUEEN by Connie Willis

Only a woman could have gotten away with writing this brief satirical piece about a future in which a new innovation has "liberated" women everywhere from having to undergo the vicissitudes of menstruation as well as its accompanying PMS.  But wait, a new feminist group has formed, trying to "liberate" women from their "liberation" and returning them to their monthly cycles.  As a male reader, I was content to just sit back and let them duke it out...

THE ROUND-EYED BARBARIANS by L. Sprague de Camp

Suppose that China's Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) had developed the technological innovations and seafaring impetus just decades before the Europeans began their colonial assaults on the Americas.  The "round-eyes", as they're called in this alternative history tale, would surely be in an entirely different and less advantageous situation. A Chinese official relates his experiences regarding one such soldier as Chinese, European, and Native American cultural norms clash in the New (and Different) World...I thought it was kind of boring, to be perfectly blunt...

DUST by Greg Egan

A story with an interesting premise that lets itself get muddled toward the end with a lot of esoteric metaphysical mumbo-jumbo.  A man, Paul Durham, narrates it in the first person present as he wakes up and soon discovers that he is a digitally created copy of himself: it soon becomes apparent when he discovers the limits of his new world with the backgrounds necessarily vague and artificial.  He knows of his creator's every motive since, of course, he is a copy of him!  What the original Paul Durham doesn't know, though, is that this copy has life and a sense of identity in spite of his non-biological nature...which leads the (copied) Paul down that long and winding road of metaphysical cognitive reverie.  But then again, the ending helps to make up for all that...nice surprise!

Next week: more from 1992...

Happy Fourth of July

Whoopee, I'm off from work!  Now that I got that off my chest, let me just wish you and your loved ones a happy American Independence Day.  Stay safe with the firecrackers and on the road.  As a dear recent president would say on many occasions, "God bless you, and God bless the United States of America."  And may I just interject one little word of advice to those getting carried away with politics and perceived conspiracies: set aside a little, teensy-weensy bit of time in your hectic schedule to try first to get your facts straight, and then to try to see things...if only for a couple of minutes...from the other guy's point of view.  I think if enough folks did that, it would make my beloved country stronger and healthier...whad'ya say, all you patriots out there?

Podcaster Spells Out Ten Mistakes Language Learners Make

Although I've only recently been listening to Steve Kaufmann's podcast, I have access to many he's done in the months before I heard of him.  Kaufmann is a polyglot...he speaks some 20 languages at last count...who founded a subscription-driven website, LingQ, that uses his techniques of language learning and offers it to others: I recently signed up and like it.  One of his earlier podcasts, from a couple of months ago, dealt with mistakes that language learners make.  Listed, they are:

(1) Expecting you can learn fast (don't have unrealistic expectations).

(2) Expecting to never forget words or grammar patterns you have learned (but learning is itself a process of forgetting and relearning).

(3) Trying to master the grammar rules in detail up front (nothing wrong in looking them up from time to time, though).

(4) Expecting the language to become clear too soon (patience, patience).

(5) Sticking with learning content that is too easy (good for review but need to challenge with more difficult material).

(6) Thinking you can get by with just a few words (once a native speaker starts to talk back to you then you'll realize you need to learn a lot more).

(7) Thinking you should speak well even if you don't speak often (it takes a lot of practice).

(8) Being afraid of making mistakes when you speak (Kaufmann just came back from Poland where he gave two interviews IN POLISH and laughed about all the mistakes he made).

(9) Speaking with only non-native speakers (non-native speakers tend to limit the range of their vocabulary).

(10) Dealing with the challenge from native speakers when they want to practice their English on you (either find some willing to speak in your target language or make an arrangement to alternate languages with those wanting to speak English).

Steve Kaufmann impressed me by his emphasis on the gradual assimilation of large amounts of words by reading and listening.  From time to time, I'll let you know how I'm doing on the LingQ site...

Sad About Loss of Late-Night Business in Gainesville

My work shift ends at 10 PM, and sometimes I like to chill out a bit at a coffee shop before heading on home.  Unfortunately, my hometown of Gainesville, Florida has, ever since COVID-19 hit us in 2020, become one of those places that roll up the sidewalks in mid-evening, with very few late-night spots left open.  I used to frequent a couple of Starbucks on the southwest, UF student-intense part of town that is close to my workplace.  Now they're closed by the time I get off from work, although rumor has it that the Target store on Archer Road has a Starbucks in it that still stays open late...I'll have to check it out.  Gainesville used to be known as an all-night kind of city, especially with its tens of thousands of University of Florida students as well as a sizeable Santa Fe College population.  When I was a student at UF in the late 1970's I spent many late hours studying at the 24-hour Krystal on University across from the library.  Except for Waffle House, though, in the northern part of Gainesville where I live everyone closes up shop far earlier than before.  There used to be a 24-hour district just north of Gainesville High School on NW 13th Street (US 441) that had all-night restaurants, a pharmacy, a doughnut shop and a couple of grocers...none of the places there now stay open late except convenience stores.  It's a shame, because that's one of the things I liked living here.  I'm not greedy about places staying open late: just give me to 11 o'clock and I'm out of there! Shoot, before COVID I could slip over to a Publix on Archer right near where I worked and replenish groceries, but no longer.  Now, not even the WalMart where I live, formerly 24 hours, stays open past 11...

My June 2023 Running and Walking Report

This past month has been a bit of a trial regarding my running and walking...halfway through I experienced some back trouble that not only sidelined me from most any strenuous exercise but also made me miss work.  I'm still in recovery, so I'm afraid that not much will be happening in early July...and at the end of the month Melissa and I will be going out of town on vacation.  So, I don't see myself returning to a regular routine in running and walking...and that includes any races...until after the first week in August at the very earliest.  As for early June, I ran Gainesville's Depot Parkrun 5K on the 3rd and 10th, and occasionally visited my local gym after work to do treadmill jogging and speed-walking work...I reached a sustained 5 mph speed with the latter.  Of course, when I do return there in August or later, I will need to resume my training at a lower level...but I'm optimistic.  In any event, right now my running has taken a necessary back seat to my walking due to my back recovery. But I still intend to participate in local fall running races like the Florida Track Club's 10K event in October followed by a half-marathon in November. And when I'm ready to go back to Depot Park for their Saturday morning runs, I'd like to continue with a least one race each month being a full walk with the rest being runs...

Quote of the Week...from James T. Kirk

The answer is "no"...I, therefore, am going anyway.     

---Admiral James T. Kirk, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock 

I was always a big fan of the Star Trek original television series...it pained me that early on in its run my parents insisted on watching Bewitched on our one TV set from 8 to 8:30 Thursdays, directly opposite hour-long Star Trek's first half.  So, for some time I knew a lot of episode endings, but not what led up to them.  After finally realizing what a popular cash cow the series was, somebody had the sense to start a movie Star Trek series, albeit more than a decade after the original series was unceremoniously cancelled in 1968.  The third of these, The Search for Spock, is the sequel to the second, The Wrath of Khan, in which Leonard Nimoy's character Spock willingly sacrifices his life to save the starship Enterprise and her crew.  Unknowing of Spock's Vulcan customs, Kirk (played by William Shatner) releases his friend's casket to a soft landing on the strange, distant planet Genesis. Later Spock's father berates him for not reuniting the body with Spock's spirit, which he had given Dr. McCoy (Deforest Kelly)... yeah, I know this is getting a little weird.  Long story short, Kirk wants permission from his superiors in Star Fleet to return to Genesis and retrieve Spock's body...but he is denied because of the controversy surrounding that planet.  So, he walks up to his all-star skeleton crew and delivers the above quote.  I used it today because, well, in life sometimes you have a decision to make, and sometimes it goes in the direction of defiance and not compliance.  As individuals each of us has choices that can determine where we want to go in our respective lives.  It may be tempting to look "sideways" at someone else who is taking a different path than us, especially when that path seems to keep crossing our own from time to time.  Then it's tempting to fall into the trap of comparing ourselves to others and to begin to doubt our own resolve.  I can guarantee you this: no matter what you do or not do, there is always somebody out there who will criticize your decision, and sometimes even get nasty about it.  Then again, on the positive side of all this, there's another "Jim" I'd like to quote: the musician Jim Croce, who sang in his hit I Got a Name, "I've got a dream, I've got a dream.  Oh, I know I can share it if you want me to.  If you're going my way, I'll go with you"...  

Just Finished Reading The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss

The past few weeks I've been exploring podcasts and videos...Timothy Ferriss has a podcast, as well as a best-selling book titled The 4-Hour Workweek.  In it he makes the claim...backed up by his own recounted experiences...that people don't need to limit their lives to the ordinary, humdrum routines of nine-to-five jobs or careers that spill over into their private lives with homework, emails and the like.  No, it's possible to fashion their own lifestyles, and to his credit, Ferris doesn't just leave it there with a lot of vague, positive exhortation: he gets down to the nitty-gritty of the self-liberation process, spelling it all out step-by-step.  The dude is obviously super-intelligent...I've heard his podcast as well, and sometimes I felt while reading this book that his message was for someone with mental faculties far beyond my own.  Part of the book's premise is to convince the boss that working remotely (for me at least) is more productive than working on-site, allowing for my freedom of movement and even extended travel abroad.  Another part is how to delegate my remaining work to others while I soak up the sun in some exotic dream place or climb mountains or whatever suits my fancy.  While I applaud Ferris' attention to detail in explaining how this can be accomplished, I do have a problem with his sales pitch for this book.  Back in the 1990s I experienced a similar argument from an Amway meeting I was invited to attend.  The idea then was that all you need to do is get enough hard-working folks "under" you and then you'll be freed to go ice-fishing in Canada or do whatever you want.  I even heard a coworker tout the company as an alternative to the "dead-end" job we were working.  I think there is a personality type out there, a restless soul who is prone to travel addiction and sees hopping on planes to this place or that as an absolute necessity when they want to appraise the quality of their own lives.  The notion of tending to a steady job, being good at it, and more or less staying in one locale while occasionally traveling to fun spots is, to them, a kind of surrender...I, on the other hand, don't feel the need to follow suit.  The 4-Hour Workweek encourages deception on the job in that the employee has to convince their boss that their performance in person is markedly worse than when they are away from the office...that, to me is unethical.  There's also another problem: like in the classic Broadway show and movie titled You Can't Take It with You, everybody in the featured Vanderhof family lives in their roomy house doing whatever they want...but they still depend on the paid, structured labor of others, including their own housekeepers.  When Mr. Ferriss is visiting all his exotic places, I'm sure that he is constantly around others engaged in their employment which support his adopted lifestyle...does he think they're all losers in dead-end jobs?  I tend to see all this in a more universalist light, believing that while it's good to improve your living conditions...including allowing for more travel and fun...life in all its different levels of perception, struggle, and relationships is much more complex and interesting than the way this book's author presents it, even if he is one bigshot smartass son-of-a-gun...

Weekly Short Stories: 1991 Science Fiction, Part 8

Today I conclude my look at 1991 science fiction short stories as they appeared in the Gardner Dozois-edited anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Ninth Annual Collection. Here we go...

JACK by Connie Willis

Best of today's four stories, in my opinion, it's England during the Battle of Britain in 1940 when the Nazis bombarded it relentlessly.  The civil defense is spotlighted here, and one of their more difficult tasks is to search bombed areas for survivors buried beneath the rubble.  Enter a mysterious man who has an uncanny ability to find them, even when there seems to be no evidence of their presence.  This fascinating story seamlessly transforms into another genre and asks the question: just who is the monster here?

LA MACCHINA by Chris Beckett

This is a robot story naturally set in a future where they have taken over the traiditonally menial jobs in society. Looks like there is a renegade robot running loose, one who "thinks" on a higher level of complexity and betrays a sentient nature. The protagonist hunts it down...but isn't ready for the paradigm shift about robots at story's end. This one kind of reminded me of Asimov's robot stories...

ONE PERFECT MORNING, WITH JACKALS by Mike Resnick

Here is a prequel story to Resnick's 1988 Kirinyaga...press on the title to read my reaction. It's about the Kikuyu leader Koriba who emigrates from his native Earth...and from his hopelessly transformed homeland in Kenya.  And it's also a story about a father and his grown son parting ways. A brief bittersweet tale...

DESERT RAIN by Mark L. Van Name and Pat Murphy

A sculptor transplanted from her beloved San Francisco area to the despised southwestern desert after getting married to a man deeply involved in computers and artificial intelligence is introduced by him to Ian, whose digital presence surrounds her in their home while hubby is gone most of the time. It's easy to guess where this is all going, but what impressed me was how the author back in 1991 understood AI devices like Alexa and others like "her".  On the other hand, didn't the breakthrough movie 2001: A Space Odyssey anticipate it all 24 years earlier with Hal?

Next week I begin the next book in the Gardner Dozois sci-fi anthology series, covering the year 1992...

Steve Kaufmann Weighs In on Passive vs. Active Vocabulary in Languages

Steve Kaufmann, whose LingQ website I use as a subscribing member, speaks some twenty languages to varying degrees and has his own ideas about how to learn languages.  He strongly emphasizes the building of a large passive (listening and reading) vocabulary as the foundation upon which a smaller subset of active vocabulary (speaking and writing) can grow.  His philosophy is that communication is the main function of language and that making mistakes (and learning from them) is a necessary element of the learning process.  I understand his take, for during my own limited excursions in trying to converse with native speakers in their own languages, I would usually start it out by saying something simple I just learned.  Then, the other speaker would come back at me with words I've never learned...of course, since I was going at it without first developing a substantive passive vocabulary to draw upon.  Some of these language learning businesses get on TV and show somebody going to a foreign country ordering food or giving the taxi driver their destination with flawless pronunciation...as if that somehow proves they can now fluently speak their target language.  I've been using Steve's LingQ and am very satisfied with it and hopeful that my progress will lead, in a reasonable period of time, to passive near-fluency in the languages I'm studying.  He also has his own self-titled YouTube channel...check it out and see if he doesn't make a lot of sense...

Podcaster Discusses Self-Displine

Last week personal development coach Rob Dial listed and discussed seven ways to help his listeners practice self-discipline.  He brings up a good point: when is practicing self-discipline bad for you?  Well, the only thing I could think of is that maybe some folks want to inculcate what they think are helpful habits when they actually are detrimental to them.  Other than that, I'm on board with Dial's message.  In a sentence, his seven suggestions are: 

(1) In a task, focus on the opportunity it brings instead of the obligation going with it...almost any endeavor contains both elements.

(2) Do the small things and fundamentals really well "day in, day out". This syncs with James Clear's notion of "atomic habits".

(3) Design your environment to make your action/discipline easier.  For example, if you're trying to lose weight then don't stock up on sweets and other comfort foods.

(4) Move your body, being physically active either with sports or exercise.

(5) Employ the "Countdown 5-4-3-2-1" method on any difficult task that involves crossing a threshold you're hesitant about...Dial says the momentum helps push you to take the necessary action.

(6) Ask yourself how you can make this disciplined action easier.  This to me sounds a lot like (3), and Dial didn't elaborate on it...maybe we can whittle it all down to six suggestions!

(7) Get an accountability partner, either one on is doing the same general thing as you or is a very annoying, persistent individual who will refuse to let you off the hook if you slide.  And be ready in return to serve that person as their accountability partner if so asked.

A lot of this I'm sure I've already written about from previous Mindset Mentor summaries on this blog.  But that's good: I totally dig overlapping and redundancy when it comes to personal development...

This Recent Weather Sucks...More to Come

Although today's temperatures skyrocketed here in Gainesville today, I did enjoy the break from the storms and sporadically torrential rain we've been experiencing for well over a week.  But it was too good to be true: I checked my phone weather app and they're predicting more bad weather next week and the first few days of July, with this Wednesday for some reason giving us a break (although it's supposed to get up to 95 that day).  I'm quite accustomed to the summer pattern weather around here, where each day as the temperatures spike the blue sky gives way to puffy cumulus clouds...and then come the thunderheads bringing winds, thunder, lightning, rain and cool relief.  Doesn't seem as if we're getting this kind of weather, though...at least not yet.  Also, I didn't think we'd already have three named Atlantic tropical storm systems before even reaching July, but here we are: I wonder if it's too early yet to utter the words "hunker down" (with the AC set to max)...