Recent NFL Playoffs, Tennis and Golf

This past weekend saw me following three different sports, and each of their time circumstances made a difference.  The Australian Open tennis tournament, one of the year's four Grand Slam events, takes place on the other side of the world, so it wasn't surprising that the men's final match between Jannik Sinner and Alexander Zverev took place live at 3:30 AM Eastern Time.  Wanting to watch it later without knowing in advance who won, I went on YouTube to see if they had a prerecording of the championship match. But the finale's result was all over the site and I didn't stand a chance of not knowing that Sinner had won.  Oh well...

There was a PGA golf tournament this weekend as well, the Farmers Insurance Open out on the California coast.  The four rounds were each moved ahead a day in order for the final round to take place on Saturday and not compete for network TV coverage with the NFL conference championships games on Sunday.  I enjoyed the close finish of the Farmers as Harris English calmly parred hole after hole to win it by a single stroke...

The National Football League conference championships, held on Sunday, both went the way I wanted as Philadelphia convincingly beat Washington 55-23 and Kansas City barely squeaked by Buffalo 32-29. Controversy seems destined to follow the Chiefs, who have been accused on social media of being unfairly favored by questionable officiating.  A couple of the calls by Sunday's officiating crew were crucial to the game's outcome: an apparent fourth down conversion late in the game by the Bills was called to be short and a Chief receiver's called reception on a deep pass was shown on replay to touch the ground.  I thought Buffalo played well enough to win, but so did Kansas City.  Now it's on to the Super Bowl a couple of weeks from now as KC and Philly meet in the Big Game for the second time in three years...

My Cloud Gate, Chicago Jigsaw Puzzle

 

Cloud Gate, or as it is commonly known, the "Bean", is situated at the northern end of Chicago's Millennium Park.  Made from stainless steel to resemble mercury, it was designed by sculptor Anish Kapoor and completed in 2006.  Melissa, Will and I visited it in 2019...click HERE for a link to that article on this blog.  I recently enjoyed putting together this jigsaw puzzle, not only for the beautiful work of art it shows as well as the background of Chicago, but also for the personal memories of being together with our son as we enjoyed the sights of the Windy City... 

Ran This Morning's Newnan's Lake 15K East of Gainesville

Anticipating sub-thirty temperatures this morning as I set out to run, for the fourth time, the Newnan's Lake 15K...just a short distance east of Gainesville off Hawthorne Road...I planned in advance for the event with two layers of wicking long-sleeved shirts and full-length running pants.  Melissa lent me her gloves to fend off the cold on my sensitive hands, and I was good to go.  The last time I ran Newnan's Lake was 2018: there were noticeably fewer entrants this time around, and I had no trouble finding a parking spot.  No need for porta-potties, either: the fishing ramp park from which this race is staged has its own restroom facilities.  When the race began at 8:30, it was around 28 degrees, no wind to speak of, and around 80% humidity.  The race course went a bit down the side of Hawthorne Road westward until it turned right at Lake Shore Drive.  Then we ran for a while down that road, with marshy Newnan's Lake on our right.  The road eventually transformed into East University Avenue, which we went down with some small detours as we turned around after 4.65 miles, going back the way we came.  The first part of the run seemed for me to be mostly upwardly sloped, so returning down it the other way was a bit of a relief.  I had to unzip my outer shirt/jacket as the day (and my body) heated up, along with shedding those gloves that were so helpful early on.  Lately on these longer-distance races I've tended to exceed my intended pace...happened again!  But although I felt sore and part of me wanted to take a walking break, I kept general pace with the runners in front of me and finished with a time of 1 hour 25 minutes 22 seconds, which turns out to be my third highest 15K finish ever (of nine).  You can view today's results by clicking HERE.  My recovery from today's race is going fine...

Quote of the Week...from W.C. Fields

It ain't a fit night out for man nor beast.                          W.C. Fields

Early twentieth century comedy legend W.C. Fields wrote and starred in a short film in 1933 titled The Fatal Glass of Beer.  His character, Pa Snavely, lives in a cabin in the frigid Yukon cold.  Without getting into the story's plot, the one thing that stuck with me so many years later was Fields opening up the cabin's door, loudly proclaiming the above quote, and then receiving a blast of fake snow in his face...this happened a number of times, each one hilarious.  I've grown to use Fields' quote whenever the weather is sub-par, especially if it's stormy or cold.  Lately I've been signing up for distance running races that would fit that description, the last one being the off-and-then-on half-marathon I ran this past Monday morning.  That one started out being too stormy to stage, and then ended up exceeding cold (for my admittedly wimpy Florida standards) after being delayed one day.  Tomorrow morning is going to be another one of those "ain't a fit night out" instances as the temperature has been forecast to bottom out at 26 degrees.  Remember, I'm a Floridian and a lifelong one at that: 26 degrees ain't fit for much of anything...

Physical Therapy, 15K Race Slated for Next Two Days

In this clearly bizarre period in my life, tomorrow I have an appointment at the UF Medical Plaza with a physical therapist who will almost certainly introduce me to the Kegel exercises for my lower pelvic floor muscles that are supposed to help me recover the appropriate bodily functions following scheduled surgery in early March to remove my cancerous prostate.  Then, Saturday morning I'm signed up to run a 9.3 mile race, the Newnan's Lake 15K, which I've done three times before although the last time was in 2018.  I'm physically feeling fine and even athletic, yet medically I'm in a rough state...my physicians, however, have been encouraging to me about my continued physical activity. Following the operation, of course, that's going to change drastically in intensity as my body's healing takes priority.  In a life where uncertainty is an elemental feature, I'm at a state of peace about all this.  Still, not having to deal with the medical issues would have been much more welcome...

Weekly Short Stories: 1998 Science Fiction, Part 13

Today I finally reach the end of my look at the year 1998 in the genre of short science fiction, presented in the Gardner Dozois anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Sixteenth Annual Collection.  I say "short", although several of this series' stories are actually of novella length, including the one I'm reviewing below...

THE SUMMER ISLES by Ian R. MacLeod

Here is an alternate history tale, set in England, an England that lost World War I instead of Germany, enduring the sanctions, international humiliation and rise of fascism in its politics.  Set in 1940, it looks as if England's fascist (called "Modernist" here) prime minister John Arthur is about to go to war against his old European rivals, a mirror of what Hitler in Germany did in "our" reality.  The story's narrator is an Oxford professor, Griffin Brooke, who knows all about Arthur and his mysterious past. The fascist movement in Britain is also bent on scapegoating groups like Jews and homosexuals.  With the former, whole families are secretly swept away, to supposedly live out their lives away from everyone else on the Summer Isles north of Scotland...but what's really happening? And with the homosexuals...count Griffin Brooke among their number...the ones without Brooke's social standing are sent to the Isle of Man for conversion treatment.  This novella hops back and forth in time, and paints a bleak picture of how a fascist movement gains momentum through populism and scapegoating other groups for the people's problems.  It also suggests that fascist governments can vary to the degree that their brutality and oppression are exercised, depending on the already existing social institutions.  I am concerned about the future of my country in the face of a rising populist fascist movement...it's almost as if I'm living out a highly improbable alternate history with this current regime being happily voted into power by a plurality of the electorate with all the information they had, doing so with eyes wide open...

Next week I'll be starting on a new book featuring science fiction stories from the year 1999...

Wilmot Botanical Gardens...and Will

 

Our dearly beloved son Will tragically left us for heaven last July...we miss him so much.  He was employed by the University of Florida and worked with their IT section.  In honor of him, they placed a brick bearing his name, alongside others honoring departed UF employees, on the walkway of their beautiful Wilmot Botanical Gardens.  This place, under the management of UF Medicine, is situated just north of their Medical Plaza off Archer Road.  I have been there a bit recently with radiology and physician consults, and Melissa and I gladly took advantage of these visits to stroll and sit here.  It was kind and thoughtful of those at the University of Florida to accord this honor to my son.  Wilmot Botanical Gardens has a number of different-themed gardens within it...Will's memorial brick is accessible through the Japanese Maple Tree Garden...

Ran the Florida Track Club Mary Andrews Half-Marathon This Morning

Named in honor of local distance runner Mary Andrews, who passed away a few years ago from cancer, the Florida Track Club has been holding an annual combination marathon/half-marathon event on the eastern end of the Hawthorne Trail here in Alachua County some 15-20 miles southeast of Gainesville.  I've run their half-marathon the previous two years there, and covered the exact same course (doubled over) for the full marathon last November with a different organizing group.  I had considered signing up for the marathon this year, but decided with my ongoing medical issues to play it more conservatively and settle for a 13.1 mile run.  Only one problem, though: right after I signed up for the race, severe weather forecasts began to abound about race day morning: it was going to be a very wet, rainy affair unless thunderstorms canceled it outright.  The Florida Track Club organizers began to e-mail us updates concerning Sunday morning, when the race was scheduled, and about what they would do about the bad weather.  I woke up that morning intending to just skip it all and let it go for another year when I received their e-mail stating that they had moved everything to this morning instead.  I was happy about that, and headed down there to run my half-marathon, starting at 8 am with the rain and thunder long gone, replaced by painfully (for me) cold conditions: 35 degrees, 75% humidity.  I somehow managed to get everything in place for the race's start, and my strategy was simple: I wouldn't try to set any personal best, but rather just run through it all and try to follow just behind the slowest pacer they provided, which was stated in their guide at 2 hours 20 minutes.  At the start I was near the back of the pack and searched ahead for my pacer...never found him/her for the simple reason that they didn't have any pacers.  By the time I realized that, I found myself running a much faster pace than planned, stumbling my way at the end to a chip time of 2:05:13...some two-and-a-half minutes faster than last year's finishing time and my fastest half-marathon since February 2015.   You can view the results by clicking HERE. Because the race had been delayed a day, there were fewer participants and, as a result, I was eligible to get a very attractive lavender running jacket with the Mary Andrews logo, along with a similarly-decorated coffee mug and some electrolyte-infused coffee.  So this extended weekend saw me running two races, a 5K on Saturday and a half-marathon today.  I doubt I'll be doing that again, and with my upcoming surgery in March it doesn't look like another half-marathon is within the immediate future for me either.  I'm glad I ran today's race...I didn't experience any leg cramps like I did after last November's marathon.  Then again, I went heavy on electrolytes before the race...

Recent Done Jigsaw Puzzle of Washington Monument

Here's another recent jigsaw puzzle I've put together...this one depicts the Washington Monument off in the distance in our nation's capital, from the vantage point of the Lincoln Memorial looking over the pool at the west end of the Mall. Melissa and I visited there back in October, 2018.  We saw a couple of Smithsonian museums, the Capitol (sitting in both the Senate and House chambers), Library of Congress, Lincoln Memorial, Martin Luther King Memorial, Vietnam Memorial and Arlington Cemetery.  It was a memorable visit, and I put this puzzle out on my blog since not only is tomorrow Martin Luther King, Jr, Day, but it's also the day that our next presidential inauguration takes place.  Because of the frigid cold weather, this ceremony has been moved indoors, to the Capitol Rotunda. But I'm only going to be celebrating the legacy of our late civil rights leader, not the return to power of the convicted felon...

Ran Gainesville's Depot Parkrun 5K This Morning

Right after I signed up for a half-marathon race that's supposed to happen tomorrow morning in Hawthorne, I began to see weather alerts pointing to severe storms from a strong winter front that is to span much of the weekend, beginning Saturday (today) evening and dropping extensive rain on our area into Sunday afternoon.  That sucks...probably wouldn't have signed up had I known that.  But it is what it is...didn't Donald Trump once say that...and here I am with a soaking-sucking weekend ahead of me.  I'm skeptical that I'll show up in Hawthorne early tomorrow morning, but I'll leave that decision up to the "me" that experiences that time when it comes around.  Instead, I got up early this morning...after a rare bout with insomnia...and hauled myself out to Depot Park, a few blocks south of downtown Gainesville, to see what I could salvage today before the buckets start pouring down.  For today's Depot Parkrun 5K, it was still dry (although humid at 87%) with a bearable 53 degrees at 7:30 race time.  I felt a little stiff and out of sorts from lack of sleep, but I went out on the run pushing myself, despite feeling that this race was going to be a slow one.  It turned out, though, that while I felt I was struggling a bit, I had a better-than-expected final time at 27:45...not my personal best for a Parkrun, but still better than last Saturday's: click HERE to view today's race results.  As for tomorrow's race, the organizers e-mailed me an update yesterday stating that they were considering delaying the 8 am start if the rain was falling too hard.  But I'd rather know that was going to happen before I go down there and find myself stuck, waiting around in the rain: tell me your decision sometime today, please, if you're gonna do that.  I don't mind getting a little wet, but I'm guessing that the grounds are going to be thoroughly saturated, with a lot of puddles to run through on the paved course.  So at least I got in a nice little run this morning, even if I end up (as I'm currently inclined) skipping tomorrow's event...

Quote of the Week...from Jim Carrey

I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it's not the answer.                                          ---Jim Carrey

I've always thought that comedic actor Jim Carrey was very talented, although truth be told I sometimes felt that he had a tendency to ham it up just a little too much in his movies.  But his characters in the 90's comedy series In Living Color were hilarious.  Carrey has turned out later in his life to be quite a philosopher, a thoughtful individual.  His above quote appealed to me not because I think there's anything wrong in being rich and famous and doing everything I ever dreamed of, but because I think that too many of us stumble through life believing in those goals and feeling that anything less than their fulfillment is the sign of a failed life.  I like material well-being without necessarily being rich.  I like recognition from others for achievements I've attained without me attaining those achievements in order to receive recognition.  I like to fulfill some of my dreams as well.  But I also believe that there is such a thing as "enough", and once I've reached a level in some area then I'm (hopefully) content enough to explore other areas as well.  I think Carrey was hinting that community and the helping of others as part of a deeper, more spiritual outlook should also be a part of the "answer". As for me, let me take this day and just see what I can do with it.  Then, when and if tomorrow comes, I'll take that day on its own terms, and so on.  And if along the way there are some things I'd like to have and some things I'd like to do, then that's cool, too...

Jigsaw Puzzle of St. Louis' Gateway Arch

I've never been to St. Louis, but I always liked its Gateway Arch.  A few weeks ago Melissa and I went to Daytona Beach and while there visited their Marshalls store off A1A.  There I got a box loaded with jigsaw puzzles depicting various famous American scenes.  I think that from time to time I'll show one of them that I've put together...

Weekly Short Stories: 1998 Science Fiction, Part 12

I'm getting closer to the end of the Gardner Dozois anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Sixteenth Annual Collection, which covers the editor's picks of short stories and novellas from the year 1998. I've been doing this more-or less weekly sci-fi review Wednesday series for a few years, starting with stories first published in 1939...I'm planning to eventually bring it all up to the present.  But first a couple more from '98...

FREE IN ASVEROTH by Jim Grimsley

On a distant world, the narrator recounts her experience of breaking out of captivity one day with two of her kind, and their struggle against the "two legs" to stay free as they are relentlessly pursued.  It's no mystery who those pursuers are, either: human settlers...well, invaders...who have brutally fought the indigenous intelligent life, demeaning them as savages and destroying their society and freedom.  No doubt this is a direct analogy to all those times in our "two leg" history when one conquering group regarding itself as "superior" did the same upon encountering another more "primitive" group, such as the American Indians or Australian aborigines.  I sincerely hope our flawed humanity will have outgrown this tendency before we settle the cosmos, should that ever occur...

THE DANCING FLOOR by Cherry Wilder

An asteroid has been terraformed and transformed into a paradise, only to be evacuated and abandoned due to mismanagement and overreaction to some life support malfunctions.  There are some hangers-on hiding on this tiny artificial world constructed by a wealthy, eccentric magnate, though, and they resist contact and interaction with the "outsiders", which is pretty much everyone else.  And they especially despise the androids sent to their world.  The "Dancing Floor" in the story's title is the main reason one of the visiting team's members is there: it seems of alien construction, although its function is a mystery. Here's a tale that leads the reader in one direction with secondary characters inserted in the plot, only to find those secondary characters at the end to be of primary significance. My only problem with this short story was trying to keep up with the many named characters the author introduced: finally I just wrote each new name down as they appeared... 

Next week I'll hopefully get around to reviewing the final tale in this anthology, once again appearing to be one of those long, drawn-out novellas of which Dozois was so fond... 

Five Stages in Personal Change, According to Podcaster

On one of his recent Mindset Mentor podcasts, personal development coach Rob Dial repeated a show I've heard before, but have felt to be one of his more significant and applicable topics: what makes people quit their goals.  I guess at this time a little more than a week after many people have started out with their New Year's resolutions, a large portion of them are having second thoughts about them...if not giving up altogether.  Citing Don Kelly and Daryl Connor, who first presented their Emotional Cycle of Change in 1979, Dial lays out the five stages in goal development:

1 Uninformed Optimism-great enthusiasm and misplaced confidence

2 Informed Pessimism-dawning awareness of the goal's difficulties

3 The Valley of Despair-discouragement and a feeling of futility  

  (Connor and Kelly have the 3rd stage as "Hopeful Realism"-also a bottoming out but with more optimism)

4 Informed Optimism-understanding that the goal is attainable with the means to attain it

5 Completion-the lack of ability has been replaced by incorporation into habit, becoming part of identity

I can look back into my past and see how I encountered the above different stages for various projects I've pursued. And since I've set about to structure some of my retirement with new projects, I know I will have to meet each stage as it comes.  Rob Dial suggests that, at that beginning stage, I spend some time and effort to ascertain exactly what it is that I want to achieve and why...this can be of supreme importance in not giving up when stages two and three come into play.  Dial's "Valley of Despair" makes more sense to me than Kelly and Connor's "Hopeful Realism"... then again you could just add the latter to the former and make it six stages instead of five. For me, personal projects are like adventures leading to other adventures...a lot of fun but also a lot of hard work, with failures along the way to be seen as outcomes I can learn from...

Medical Procedures Clarified, Optimistic about Future

This morning Melissa went with me to a long awaited appointment with my specialist regarding my health: an action plan for dealing with my prostate cancer, recently diagnosed.  It's medically classified as localized, and I chose surgery...that will happen in early March.  I am grateful to finally have a clear treatment course laid out before me, and as I had stated in an earlier article, I am at peace with the whole process and confident of a successful outcome, with a full, active lifestyle to follow recovery. And beforehand as well: I just signed up to run the Mary Andrews half-marathon in Hawthorne on this Sunday, January 19th...it's organized by the Florida Track Club and will be my third straight year running it.  Before this prostate issue arose, I had considered doing the full marathon, but decided for now to stick with the shorter distance, deferring any future marathon races until after I recover from surgery. In the meantime, life is good...

NFL First Round Games This Weekend

Yesterday the National Football League playoffs began with the wild card round.  For much of the end of the regular season, several teams struggled week-by-week to make the postseason playoffs and the few who squeaked in at the end I'm sure feel successful.  But then reality hits and they have to play much better teams once the playoffs begin.  Yesterday I saw two good opening round games in the American Conference: the Los Angeles Chargers at the Houston Texans and the Pittsburgh Steelers at the Baltimore Ravens.  Being from the Miami area, I tend to root for whichever...if any...Florida teams make the playoffs: this year only Tampa Bay qualified.  Beyond them, I have others I tend to support.  With Saturday's contests my traditional favorite has been Baltimore, and I was glad to see them prevail.  As for the other game, I've come to like Houston for their head coach DeMeco Ryans and their excellent young quarterback C.J. Stroud...the Texans unexpectedly turned some big plays into a decisive win as well.  Today it's Denver at Buffalo, Green Bay at Philadelphia, and Washington at "my" Tampa Bay.  Monday night has Minnesota "at" the Los Angeles Rams, that game moved to Glendale, Arizona because of the LA-area wildfires.  Detroit and Kansas City received byes this week due to them having the best regular season records in their respective conferences.  At this juncture I like to think about possible intriguing Super Bowl matchups.  Let's see, of the 12 remaining teams, we have Detroit, Minnesota, Houston and Buffalo never having won a Super Bowl, and among them Detroit and Houston have yet to even get to play in one.  So any games involving the assurance of a "first" Super Bowl win is very interesting...I see the most likely scenario here being Buffalo vs. Detroit or Minnesota.  Then we have old title game rematch possibilities: Green Bay vs. Denver, Tampa Bay vs. Kansas City, Philadelphia vs. Kansas City, Buffalo vs. Washington, Minnesota vs. Kansas City, Green Bay vs. Kansas City...quite a few.  Let's see, where do the remaining teams rank according to my liking and to their likelihood of winning it all (two very different lists)?

MY LIKING:

1 Tampa Bay

2 Kansas City

3 Houston

4 Baltimore

5 Philadelphia

6 Los Angeles Rams 

7 Minnesota

8 Green Bay

9 Washington

10 Detroit

11 Denver

12 Buffalo

THEIR LIKELIHOOD

1 Buffalo

2 Detroit

3 Kansas City

4 Minnesota

5 Baltimore

6 Philadelphia

7 Houston

8 Green Bay

9 Los Angeles Rams

10 Tampa Bay

11 Washington

12 Denver

Ran Today's Cold and Windy Depot Parkrun 5K

This morning the southern tip of a strong continental winter storm (The Weather Channel names it "Cora") swept through northern Florida, leaving the weekly Depot Parkrun 5K here in Gainesville under chilly conditions with overcast skies and gusty northerly winds.  It had also rained a bit over the previous few hours, so when Melissa and I showed up it was no surprise to see the volunteers huddled under the roofed pavilion instead of the usual site, an open area near the starting line.  According to my weather app, the temperature at race time was 55 with 99% humidity...it only got colder as time went on.  The paved pathway around the park (we do four laps) was also damp enough to cause me concern about possible slips, so that in itself impeded any plans for me to run a fast race.  Still, unlike many other bundled-up participants, I showed up "like a Canadian" in a simple tee-shirt and shorts.  Melissa walked the course as well, and after I finished I joined up with her to walk the last couple of laps.  Our Alachua County today celebrates its bicentennial, apparently established only some six years after Florida was acquired by the United States from Spain in 1819 and twenty years before being admitted as a state.  While we were in our race, they were starting to set up the park for that observance...hope they enjoyed it all: we got out of there as soon as we finished.  I timed my finishing time at 28:16, but once again they screwed up the results page, this time giving me the time of the runner finishing just ahead of me: 27:51.  Well, I rolled with it a few weeks ago when it went against me, so I guess I'll continue likewise when I'm favored...click HERE to see those results.  Now I'm hunkering down, in a heated house and bundled up like a true Floridian, insulated against the brutal 47 degrees outside...

Weekly Short Stories: 1998 Science Fiction, Part 11

Wednesday has once again rolled around, telling me to write another article about the short stories I've been reading, at this point looking at the output from the year 1998.  Unfortunately, due to the fact that I chose a science fiction retrospective anthology series whose editor harbors a deep fondness for novellas in his selections, I've often found myself slowly slogging through material. This has been one of those weeks, although the novella I'm discussing today (second of the two below) has thankfully been more readable than last week's novella.  I'm using Gardner Dozois' anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Sixteenth Annual Collection...

LA CENERENTOLA by Gwyneth Jones

This is a chilling tale discussing where we may be heading with our advancing know-how regarding the control of our own reproduction...and what kind of offspring we will be producing.  Cloning, prevalent here in the tale of a young couple traveling in Europe with their daughter as they encounter a mother and her two obviously cloned, stunningly beautiful daughters, seems to be the topic for discussion here.  Except when the narrator sees the daughters fade and vanish into thin air!  Then the story advances to beyond cloning, and into a world that maybe we don't know what we're really getting into.  The title is the nickname of another, less-favored daughter of the woman with the "cloned" daughters', and who seems to hold the key to the mysteries in the story...

DOWN IN THE DARK by William Barton

This novella examines a topic commonly covered in sci-fi tales: the end of the world.  It's not so far off into the future (2057), and humanity had already begun to explore and even settle different feasible worlds within our solar system, including the Moon, Mars, and some of the outer moons in the solar system like Saturn's Titan, where the narrator is based.  The Earth and all life on it has been recently vanquished, due to an asteroid crashing into it along with misguided, backfiring efforts to break it up in space before the strike...the planet itself is now uninhabitable.  Now only about two thousand humans are left, scattered on a few different worlds in the solar system, with their machines, food and ability to replace depleting stocks running down toward an eventual extinction.  In contrast to what happened so abruptly to the billions of Earth-dwellers, their plight is an agonizingly slow one, and with this comes the opportunity to observe how people might react to their apparently hopeless situation.  Hence this tale, which in the end is very heavy on psychology and how people deal differently both with grief and with their oncoming deaths.  But there is something else happening on Titan...is it another form of life?  I'm not telling...read on, reader: there's more to this story than the oppressing doom and gloom...

And that's it for this week: let's see what happens next Wednesday...

Country Deserves Incoming CCC-in-Chief

The incoming CCC-in Chief (Convict, Conman, Clown) is up to his old tricks, deliberately saying anything he can to steal the media spotlight from other people and events, in this case the solemn observance honoring former president Jimmy Carter, who recently passed away at the age of 100.  CCC is working mass and social media up into a frenzy, making hints of annexing Greenland, the Panama Canal...even Canada,,,along with renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the "Gulf of America".  The latter gesture, I'm guessing, was aimed at the hard-core voters who supported him from the start and thought twenty years ago that the old "change" from French fries to "Freedom" fries was a good idea.  When I went to school many decades ago, we had a bus stop bully who practiced the same kind of manipulation, threatening and deriding others he felt he could intimidate and always talking loudly about random subjects with outrageous statements abounding...just to keep attention on himself.  Now this dude, at an advanced age, is plaguing my high school reunion website...probably the same old narcissist he always was...sound familiar?  So, returning to our current collective problem, my country knew all about CCC yet elected him, even giving the degenerate a popular vote victory.  So this coming presidential term is on America, a country that has abandoned its sense of reason and decency in favor of self-brainwashing and fascism.  If you want to frequent Facebook (which has just abandoned its fact-checking policy after pressure from you-know-who) or those obnoxious cable news and opinion channels to get your news input, be my guest...all we're going to get in the next four years is more of the same constant, deliberately outrageous crap.  And my country deserves it for what they did on Election Day.  Enjoy...

Three Movies Recently Watched

During the last few weeks I did something I've rarely done in recent memory: watch three full-length currently-running feature-length movies.  They were, in order of viewing: Red One, Wicked and Carry-On.  Red One is a largely tongue-in-cheek comedy...with a mushy subplot...about Santa Claus being kidnapped and two unlikely allies, portrayed by Dwayne Johnson and Chris Evans, teaming up to solve the mystery and rescue good ol' St. Nick.  It's loaded with computer-generated imagery, as I'm afraid movies these days tend to be.  The action is in your face and abrupt...but that's also the case with the other two films I saw.  Wicked is a revisionist prequel to L. Frank Baum's classic Wizard of Oz...it tells the story of Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West, and reframes her image as being a thoughtful, compelling young woman, as opposed to the shallow and narcissistic "Good Witch" Glinda.  That movie, based on the Broadway run adapted from Gregory Maguire's 1995 novel, hit me like a spoof of South Park's spoof of High School Musical: a little too heavy on the song-and-dance, thank you.  It's also just Part One, so another Wicked is on its merry way.  And the last movie I saw...all of them with Melissa and the middle one with Rebecca...was Carry-On, an edge-of-your-seat action flick about a TSA checker at the LA airport who is blackmailed at his post during the Christmas season to allow a sinister piece of luggage to pass through unchecked.  It was well-made and suspenseful, but I couldn't help but see its premise as a blatant ripoff of the 2002 thriller Phone Booth.  I managed to get through all three movies intact, but felt that each of them was guilty of sensory overload...I couldn't help feeling somehow manipulated, even with the cutesy Red One.  But I guess that's how movies are made today...

Ran Today's Cold (for Me) Depot Parkrun 5K

 I was attentive to the weather forecast for this morning, as they were predicting temperatures here in the Gainesville area to dip into the upper thirties by 7:30 race time for the weekly (free) Depot Parkrun 5K, held at that park just a few clocks south of downtown.  As it was, my phone app had it at 40 degrees with 56% humidity. The last couple of times I recently went out for a race when the temperature had dipped like this I didn't wear gloves...didn't make that mistake again.  No, I wore full-length pants and a jacket, the latter which I shed halfway through...no point in needless suffering, especially standing around shivering before the race.  Speaking of "before the race", during the announcements they asked if there were any out-of-town Parkrunners present, and wouldn't you know it, several from England and Canada raised their hands...all were dressed in short-sleeves and shorts like it was a warm spring morning instead of "freezing-ass cold" as I like to describe it.  I had been watching YouTube and saw a video advising runners to keep their cadence at around 170-180 steps/minute...I was experimenting around with this at the start of the run, only to later realize that when I am actually running at my usual faster clip toward the end I'm naturally maintaining that suggested cadence.  I started slow and finished fast, final time at 27:43...click HERE to view the results.  From here onward my participation in organized races is a bit uncertain as I have a medical video-conference Tuesday morning to discuss my diagnosis and future options after the prostate biopsy last month.  I intend to follow medical advice regarding my running and walking (and other activities), but if I'm still able to continue like I've been doing, then that's what I'll do...until they say otherwise... 

Quote of the Week...from Paul McCartney

One of my biggest thrills for me still is sitting down with a guitar or piano and just out of nowhere trying to make a good song happen.                                ---Paul McCartney

I don't know when Paul McCartney...now 82...made the above quote.  That exemplifies the tremendous stability of the personality and beliefs of this remarkable individual, an outstanding musical artist with whom we've been blessed to live during the same years.  From time to time I've flirted with the notion of learning to play musical instruments...some time in the past in my early fifties I took some private piano lessons.  But unlike Bill Murray's Groundhog Day character Phil Connors, who had a seemingly endless progression of the same day ahead of him as he went through his own piano lessons, I experienced back then the progression of brand new, very different days and their accompanying demands and distractions.  So although I picked up some slight keyboard skills and actually somehow got through a piano recital performing an excerpt from a Beethoven composition, I ended up abandoning the piano project. But in the back of my mind I've always wanted to be able to pick out any tune and transfer either its main melody or accompaniment to the keyboard...or guitar, for that matter.  Will and Rebecca studied piano and applied themselves better to learning it than did I.  I understand that when the Beatles were starting out, none of them could read music, but rather developed and honed their musical skills by endlessly practicing their instruments, and their songwriting was a matter of dreaming stuff up and quickly transferring it to guitar, piano, drum and voice, with each other serving as critics and contributors. Melissa recently gave me a nice electronic keyboard for Christmas, and I have a different strategy for playing it than before, one that I think the Beatles great with his above quote would heartily approve of. But my aims are a bit more modest than those of Sir Paul McCartney:  I just want to play the music that I already know and love...and he wrote his share of it...

Planets on Full Display in Winter Night Sky

On New Year's Eve Melissa and I were invited to our friends' rural farm home to celebrate with them and others the changing of the year with food and good conversation.  We had never been there before and gratefully availed ourselves of the Waze app to know where to turn on the zigzagging way, with dirt roads presenting their own challenges as we approached our destination.  Once there, we enjoyed ourselves while soaking in the ambiance of being way out in the countryside of Gilchrist County.  The sky was cloudless and the stars shone brilliantly...as well as the planets: there were three of them (or four if you looked down and counted the Earth): Saturn, Jupiter and Mars.  I could easily make out red Mars, which was the easternmost, just below the zodiac constellation Gemini (technically it's in Cancer, but no one can make out that faint constellation).  I had to look up later which of the other two was Jupiter and which was Saturn.  Jupiter is in Taurus and Saturn, in the west part of the sky, is in Aquarius...just south of Pegasus.  I liked the fact that I could look all the way down to any horizon and see stars without noticeable interference from city lights.  Of course, out here as well as where I live, there are plenty of trees to block the view.  We enjoyed our visit, which I wouldn't have been able to be a part of had I not retired.  One door closes and many more open.  Speaking of more opportunities, I'm looking forward to seeing more of my local planetarium once its January schedule resumes after the holiday break.  It's the Kika Silva Pla Planetarium at Santa Fe College, directed by James Albury...

Weekly Short Stories: 1998 Science Fiction, Part 10

Here's yet another installment in my Wednesday feature, with me reading and reacting to stories appearing in the Gardner Dozois anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Sixteenth Annual Collection, and featuring his picks from the year 1998.  Today it's just one tale, a long novella...

GRIST by Tony Daniel

Sometimes an author has several different provocative ideas that he or she would like to put into a story, and that's one of the things I like about science fiction.  But if those provocative ideas all get thrown into one tale, then a problem arises...at least with me as a reader...pointing to a general lack of a stable point of reference that I can anchor myself to.  It's immediately clear to me what my problem with this novella is: there is no clear-cut notion of what constitutes individual identity, as almost all the characters...including the protagonist...are composite amalgamations of multiple brains and artificial intelligence.  It's so murky that not only do I not care about the hero's assignment to help avert a cataclysmic war, but I'm also not interested in "his" history of relationships with the other characters.  I suspect a lot of readers think that it's kind of cool to go deep down the rabbit hole of speculative fiction, but seriously, stories like this one just make me want to throw my hands up in frustration and walk away.  But the late Gardner evidently loved these disorienting stories, and the longer they are the better.  I'll tell you what: see if you can't find Grist and read it yourself...and tell me what you think about it, along with any suggestions on how I can better approach it...

Next week I'll see if I can't come up with some more reactions (hopefully positive) from Gardner Dozois' anthology...

My New Year's Day Walking and Running Events

This first day of 2025 saw two special holiday events for walkers and runners take place in Gainesville.  Early on, with temperatures in the low 50s at the 7:30 am start, the Depot Parkrun held its traditional New Year's Day 5K.  The organizers promoted the event by encouraging us all to wear pajamas to it, and Melissa and I complied...along with several others.  I'm proud of Melissa taking this positive step of doing her first 5K walk since last May before her breast cancer surgery, and I look forward to her walking in more events as the year progresses.  Later at noon, the Florida Track Club held its own event, the Frank Shorter Mile run, with the course primarily being a repeated loop on the east end of Westside (Albert Massey) Park, going through a quiet residential neighborhood.  I signed up for it because the last time I was timed in a public one-mile race was in the fall of 1974, during my conditioning physical education class at Broward Community College...back then I enjoyed my fastest mile (5:25) of a middling running career.  I knew today I'd be much slower, but then again I'm 50 years older!  The race was very well staged with a lot of positive vibes going around, and I started out running hard.  So hard, in fact, that early on I began to wonder if maybe I was running too hard, but no, I was able to maintain my pace and even increase it at the end, finishing with a time of 8:25.  The noontime temperature had only risen to 58, so all in all, the running (and walking) conditions today were optimal for me and Melissa.  Click HERE to view today's Depot Park run 5K results and HERE to see the Frank Shorter Mile results...  

My December 2024 Running, Walking and Swimming Report

It's sometimes difficult, when outside events are imposed on me, to maintain my own set of standards and routines of running, walking...and especially swimming: December 2024 was a case in point. On the 18th I underwent a prostate biopsy, recovery from which involved a temporary withdrawal from at least the running and swimming...at this final date of the month (and year) I have yet to resume the latter.  But for December as a whole, I'm pretty satisfied with my state of progress in the three areas.  I participated in four  races, running in the Season of Hope 15K, and doing the Depot Parkrun 5K three times, speed-walking it once.  This was my first full month of retirement, yet although you might think this would enhance my training, I actually had more control over my activity with my work structure, counter-intuitive as it may seem. Now I need to set up and assert my own routines: it's a process, both for me and for my loved ones.  This self-discipline regarding running, walking and swimming is something that I need to develop and take personal responsibility for...with expected medical procedures in the near future, though, I'll still need to be reasonable about it all.  In January, apart from the weekly Parkrun 5Ks, there will be a marathon/half-marathon event on Sunday the 19th and a 15K on Saturday the 27th.  The degree to which I participate...and train, for that matter, will come down to those factors of self-discipline and my ongoing medical situation.  I'm realistically optimistic about the long-term picture, although circumstances may be limiting in the short-term.  I'm continuing to see walking and swimming take more significant roles in my life, and my recent switch to the nearby YMCA with its much more accessible swimming pool bodes well for the future...

My Favorite Songs of 2024

Back in July this year I noticed that I hadn't been keeping up with this year's new music, much less listen to the "hits" as they had their "rotations" of radio play.  So I listened to some albums, the best of them being The Smile's Wall of Eyes and Green Day's Savior. They're both very good, but as far as standout tracks are concerned, only three made a deep impression on me...that was in July: click HERE to read the article I wrote about it on July 9th.  I never did go deeper into current album releases, what with tragedy and medical crisis permeating my life for the remainder of 2024.  But those three songs remained strong and meaningful for me, and now that I can instantly call them up to play with my Amazon Music account, I have listened to them many, many times over the past few months.  So there won't be any long list of my top favorite songs of 2024: just three.  At #3, it's Read the Room by The Smile.  As I wrote back in July, this is a British alternative rock band composed of Radiohead's Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood, along with drummer Tom Skinner.  Wall of Eyes is their second album...and they must all dig their little group because they just released a third studio album.  Read the Room has cryptic lyrics...that's all right since many of my favorites over the years were pretty difficult to understand as well.  It's the musical counterpoint going on here that drew me to it, especially during the complex instrumental ending.  At #2, it's impossible not to understand the words to Green Day's lyricist and vocalist Billie Joe Armstrong's powerful The American Dream is Killing Me, which pretty much sums up my own thoughts as to the course of our society as it has largely degenerated over recent years.  Finally, my favorite song from 2024 is also from The Smile: I Quit.  I quickly found myself attached to it not only for its incredibly blunt and pertinent lyrics about making a permanent transition and taking a new path, but also for its haunting and very complex music.  Below are some of the  words...  

Wild ghosts

Wild feelings

Leaning windmills

A dead drop

This is the end of the trip

A new path

Out of the madness

To wherever it goes

To wherever it goes

And wherever it goes

And wherever it goes

And wherever it lies

And wherever it lies 

I liked this song before learning of my son's passing and not long thereafter deciding to retire.  It reminded me of the ending to Lord of the Rings, when aging Bilbo Baggins utters the following line as he is about to board the boat to take him on to the Grey Havens: "I think I am quite ready for a another adventure!"  May your own new adventures bless you...sometimes, though, they come whether you're ready for them or not...

Looking Back on 2024 in My Life

As 2024 draws to a close, I look back in my life on both the good and the bad, the miraculous and the tragic.  In May, Melissa had her breast cancer diagnosis and quick surgery to remove the malignant lump...this followed by chemotherapy (her body suffered a bad reaction to it) and then radiation therapy, ending this fall.  By all measures, the cancer has been removed from her body, thank God.  But after pulling up into our driveway on July 18th following the second round of that chemo, the police were there to notify us that our beloved 34 year old son Will had died.  This would overshadow all of the good that 2024 had produced for us, and we're left with a big hole in our lives.  He was (is) such a compassionate and responsible young man...what a terrible loss for us and the world he graced with his presence for too short a time span.  Rebecca, my 29-year old daughter, lives in town and makes me proud with her commitment to her job as well as her close relationships with us and her partner. My own health seems to be going in opposite directions: in one direction I am gradually becoming fitter and more athletic while in the other I have just been diagnosed with localized prostate cancer, the treatment for which looms ahead of me in early 2025.  I do feel blessed to be in such an environment where it can be effectively treated and I am confident of the successful outcome.  And when I clocked out at 10 pm on Friday, November 29th, my retirement began after working for 37 years at the Gainesville Post Office.  I'm grateful that I had the opportunity to work there and have many good memories of my colleagues as well as the work itself...I am no disgruntled postal worker!  And I have enjoyed not having to deal with the traffic while driving to and from work since then.  For 2024, Will's passing dwarfs everything else, but in life sometimes you have to take the bad with the good, and that can be difficult...

Ran Gainesville's Depot Parkrun 5K This Morning

This last Saturday morning in December was unusually warm and muggy (64 degrees, 100% humidity) at the 7:30 beginning of the weekly, free (sign up online) Depot Parkrun 5K, just one of hundreds of similar events taking place across the USA and several other countries.  On such a day as this, when I'm going to run it (instead of speed-walking like I did last week), I know up front that I will be simply working to sustain a strong regular pace without attempting to set any personal best records.  So that's exactly what unfolded, with me settling into a slightly uncomfortable pace and enjoying the presence of some runners ahead of me who kept me honest with that pace.  At the end I had a time of 27:32...click HERE to view the results.  There weren't as many participants in today's race as usual, and that may be due to the fact that (1) the University of Florida is closed for the holiday season (2) many may be out of town who normally would be there or (3) folks are waiting for the special New Year's Day edition of the Depot Parkrun, to take place this coming Wednesday morning.  The organizers say to wear the pajamas you slept in the night before: dare I?...

Quote of the Week...from Mahandas Gandhi

Be the change you wish to see in the world.                          ---Mahandas Gandhi

Mahandas (or "Mahatma") Gandhi was the great twentieth-century lawyer who, with his pacifist creed of passive resistance, was instrumental in India's independence and had a lot of things to say about how best to live one's own life.  That in itself doesn't qualify him for my "quote of the week" feature, but the above quote...Rob Dial recently referred to it on a podcast...resonates with me.  In the first place, I can't exactly dictate to the world how I want it to be...well, maybe I can but I would be delusional if I thought it cared one bit.  But seeing how much of human behavior is imitative, I do have the power and authority to demonstrate by my own actions what I would like to see from others.  I believe that many of us are seekers, looking for examples in others to emulate and guide them through their daily existence.  Why not be one of the examples?  No, I'm no Gandhi, nor would I want to be, and I have a lot of stuff to work out in my own life and am far, far from any semblance of a perfect model.  But I'm alive, here and now, and that gives me enough to change with...

Wishing All the Best, Taking Blog Break

I hope that you and yours have been enjoying your holiday season this year.  Melissa and I have spent quite some time with our daughter Rebecca as well as with Melissa's family side residing here in Gainesville.  I found it probably the best thing to take a little break...for a few days...with this blog.  Maybe toward the end of 2024 or, starting next year, I'll get it going again...

Blessings and Hopes for this Christmas Holiday Season

On this Christmas Eve "Eve", I wish you all a happy holiday season and that you experience peace in the present and hope for the future.  Melissa and I both are still deeply in grief over the loss of our wonderful son Will, who tragically passed away this past July.  The holiday season simply isn't the same without his loving presence in our lives...we are grateful for our dearly beloved daughter Rebecca to be living near us to celebrate Christmas.  God Bless you all...

First Round Major College Football Playoffs: Boring Mismatches

The brand-new major college football playoff format, with a whopping twelve schools now vying for the national championship, began this weekend with four largely boring, lopsided contests...not exactly what the organizers were hoping for, I'm sure.  Notre Dame, Texas, Ohio State and Penn State stuffed Indiana, Clemson, Tennessee and SMU, respectively.  I was only surprised at the Vols-Buckeyes score, thinking that Tennessee had more in them than that.  On the other hand, unlike the NCAA major college basketball championship tournament that tries to stage its games at more neutral sites, this round took place at the higher-seeded schools' home stadiums, a huge advantage for them, to say the least.  The second round will all be traditionally-named bowl games: Boise State plays Penn State New Year's Eve in the Fiesta Bowl, then on January 1st its Arizona State/Texas in the Peach Bowl, Oregon/Ohio State in the Rose Bowl and Georgia/Notre Dame in the Sugar Bowl.  I'm not all that interested in who wins, but I usually pick out a team before each game I watch to root for anyway. I guess Georgia...until they lose...will be "my" team since I was born there.  I just hope the next games will be more competitive...

Walked Gainesville's Depot Parkrun 5K This Chilly Morning

After a cold front passed through our area in northern Florida yesterday, the temperature plummeted to 38 degrees (76% humidity) on this Winter Solstice Saturday morning here in Gainesville.  I was ready for the weekly Depot Parkrun 5K, starting at 7:30, regardless.  You see, I had a recent prostate biopsy done and felt that doing an intense run might be a little bit too much too soon thereafter, so I instead stayed dressed up...complete with jacket...to do a speed-walk there.  Other than feeling that I should have worn gloves to protect my painfully cold hands during the race, I enjoyed it and...while not walking my fastest 5K...still managed to finish under 40 minutes again.  I didn't walk today trying to set a personal 5K walking record since, as mentioned before, I was recovering from that medical procedure.  But it would be nice if sometime in 2025 I could get my speed-walking pace down to a twelve-minute mile: it's possible but I'll need to work at it.  I'm glad to be inserting walking into my races: it's also more conducive than running to just immersing myself in the immediate surroundings, noticing many more sights and sounds than I would normally perceive were I only running instead. Not that I've given that up, though...just not today.  For today's results, click HERE...

Quote of the Week...from Peter on YouTube

 All right, here we go...very last corral of the very last wave.  Let's see how this ends up going, shall we?

                                          ---Peter, on his YouTube channel titled The Manor Runs

I don't know Peter's last name, only that he has a small YouTube channel about his running experiences.  By far the most impressive posting is Peter's recording of his entire six-hour-plus-long experience running the 2022 New York City Marathon: all 26.2 miles through the city's five boroughs.  I've grown to consider it as the best of many available virtual NYC Marathon YouTube videos because he doesn't get hung up on how fast he's running or whether somebody (or himself) takes a walking break here and there over the course of the race.  He made the above quote to lead off this lengthy video, in the midst of the crowd standing around just before the race's start in Staten Island.  The "wave" mentioned in it refers to the divisions of runners (more than 50,000 total) into staggered starting times, and "corral" refers to the expected finishing times of the runners (Peter was in the slowest corral). His words are applicable not just to marathons, but to any endeavor in which it's mandatory to get out of one's comfort zone and into a bit of a stressful situation that holds no set promise for its outcome.  Peter's marathon was pretty slow, and was definitely a bold move on his part.  His finishing time was a couple of minutes slower than my 2011 Ocala Marathon result...back then I slowly walked the final seven miles with a painful, strained IT band below my knee.  Dealing with stress is not so much a matter of eliminating it, but rather determining how we react to it.  Self-improvement podcaster Rob Dial, on a recent show, divided the three types of stress: eustress ("good" stress), hypostress and hyperstress.  When we bravely do something new that might bring with it fear of failure...especially public failure...that's a healthy stressful situation from which we can grow,,,that's eustress.  Hypostress is that stress produced by lack of stimulation, typified by boredom.  People prone to feeling this type of stress tend to gravitate toward daredevil, risky types of activity like gambling, jumping, climbing, speed activities and the like.  And hyperstress is the type that the word "stress" generally means to most of us, whereby the situation tends to wear one down and cause fear, worry and ultimately can weaken and even harm our bodies over time.  More eustress and a better strategy for dealing with the other two sounds like a formula for a happier, healthier life.  I wonder if Peter ever ran another marathon...his YouTube channel doesn't say.  You can watch his NYC Marathon video by clicking HERE...

We Enjoyed a Dinner and Concert in Downtown Gainesville

Tuesday late-afternoon/evening Melissa and I ventured to downtown Gainesville to have dinner and then attend a Candlelight Concert at the Hippodrome Theater. The concert's theme on this occasion was the holidays, including Christmas, Hanukkah and assorted Winter classical pieces.  The musicians were a string quartet: first and second violin, viola and cello.  Candlelight Concerts are spread nationwide with many different musicians providing shows themed around different topics, many of them tributes to famous musical artists, past and present.  I thoroughly enjoyed our holiday concert and felt a deeper connection with music and its complexities and textures...and the enormous training and skill exhibited by those proficient in it.  I break it down to three aspects: the actual music as it reaches my ears and I process it, the process of producing it on the different instruments (or with singing if that applies), and the written sheet music on which the musicians rely.  All three are closely tied together, yet they are at the same time very, very different to perceive.  We want to try out more Candlelight Concerts in Gainesville, and I kind of like downtown at night.  The garage parking is easy and there are plenty of nice places to dine.  We had dinner at Harry's and then made our way to the Hippodrome.  It seemed strange being there, since from 1987-91 I worked at the downtown post office but it's changed a lot: I felt lost much of the time I was walking around the area.  Oh well, I'll figure it all out... 

Weekly Short Stories: 1998 Science Fiction, Part 9

I'm continuing my slow reading slog through the year 1998, discussing the next two stories in the Gardner Dozois anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Sixteenth Annual Collection, which covers material published that year...

THIS SIDE OF INDEPENDENCE by Rob Chilton

It's off in the reasonably distant future...not at the end of the universe, mind you, but far enough off into it to when practically the entire human population now lives on small artificial worlds located in our solar system space, mostly between Earth and the Sun.  Earth itself is in the deep throes of a permanent ice age after the Sun weakened and "shaded" it...the planet is now primarily used for mining its still-plentiful natural resources and only a handful of people still live there.  A small group of these reside in Independence, in former Missouri.  The protagonist, from one of those space "colonies", is assigned to go down there and convince them to flee dying Earth for the safety of her adopted home world or others.  But old ways are often hard to change, as she soon discovers...

UNBORN AGAIN by Chris Lawson

This is a disturbing tale...well, they're almost all disturbing, aren't they...about revenge.  A professor of pathology knows she is coming down with Parkinson's Disease, but in her time the most effective treatment for it, using stem cells, is universally illegal.  Still, knowing the existence of a black market in them and their application to conditions such as her own, she travels to Hong Kong and gets her sought-after treatment...but it backfires.  The author makes a good point of showing why criminalizing things and making them underground contraband only removes needed regulatory safeguards that might have instead prevented disastrous results...like the one in the story.  This tale reintroduced me to the concept of "prions". That's the cool thing about science fiction: it teaches you stuff and often gets you to think the way a scientist or engineer does...

Next Wednesday: more from 1998...

Kudos to UF Football Team, Bowl Game This Friday Afternoon

The 2024 University of Florida football team accomplished what many, including myself, felt was highly improbable at the start of the season...especially after that horrendous opening day performance against the Miami Hurricanes: they had a winning season!  And, to top it off, they upset two ranked conference schools, LSU and Mississippi, during their ongoing three-game winning streak.  The quarterback position solidified under their star freshman D.J. Lagway and the formerly porous defense, which earlier on seemed incapable of stopping anybody, has matured over the course of the season into a cohesive unit working together effectively.  They're at 7-5 now and finished at 4-4 in the Southeastern Conference, easily the most difficult conference in the country...head coach Billy Napier should feel vindicated after many Gator fans were calling for his dismissal just a few weeks ago.  Florida has been invited to Tampa's Gasparilla Bowl to play against Tulane University.  The game is coming up soon: Friday the 20th, at 3:30 pm. That should bring in more TV viewers as the college football playoffs kick off that very evening when Indiana plays at Notre Dame.  You can watch the Gator game on ESPN2...

Back from Visit to Daytona Beach, Which Has Deteriorated Considerably

It's Monday afternoon and Melissa and I just returned to Gainesville from a two-night stay at Daytona Beach.  It was a good time for us, but I was more than a little dismayed by the deterioration of the beach.  There was almost no sand, and the level of the beach was around two feet lower, causing the ocean to come crashing against the walls for most of the tidal cycle.  The stairway access from our hotel to the beach was blocked since the stairs themselves were damaged from the tidal onslaught...we had to walk a distance down the street to find the next nearest beach access.  Apparently, this all came to pass a couple of years ago when a hurricane washed away the beach sand...now the ground there is hard and rarely dry.  We still enjoyed our stay, but I also noted that it seemed that virtually every hotel or condo on the ocean side of A1A had some extent of construction work going on the property, often with piles of building and electrical material just sitting out in the open...very ugly looking.  It was a little depressing seeing how this once thriving tourist community, once known for its beach that cars could drive down, had come so far down in such a short time.  One of the hotels we would often stay at in Ormond Beach seemed to be permanently shut down.  Looks as if we're going to be exploring a new place to stay on our next visit.  Hopefully the politicians will see the value of sand restoration and fund building the beach back up again.  As of now, you have to wait until low tide to walk down the beach and even then it's ugly, with rocks and debris strewn over its surface... 

Ran in Today's Depot Park Park 5K

This morning there weren't any longer-distance races in the Gainesville area, so I went back to good old Depot Park, a few blocks south of downtown, to run in their weekly, free (sign up online) Depot Parkrun 5K.  It was a pleasant 56 degrees at the 7:30 race time, but the 98% humidity was pretty intense and it made things more uncomfortable as the run wore on.  But I'm used to this mugginess and picked up my pace as I accumulated laps around the park. I had considered speed-walking this time, but next Wednesday I'm having a prostate biopsy and it may be a while before I'm running again.  In any event, it was a good experience today...click HERE to view the results...although I clocked myself finishing at 27:19, they put me in at 27:39.  Oh well, I don't think it's worth raising a fuss about...

Quote of the Week...from Rob Dial

Everything that comes into your brain is brainwashing, in some sort of way.  I'm gonna be in control and intentional about my brainwashing.                    ---Rob Dial

Brainwashing is one of those terms pervasive in popular usage, almost always used with negative connotations.  It's not scientific, either, but does sound impressive when used.  Rob Dial, a personal development podcaster, on a recent show made the above quote in the middle of his twenty minute monologue.  This one pertained to the notion of self-care and how we speak to ourselves.  He wisely noted that many of us are too down and negative with our self-talk, treating ourselves much differently than someone for whom we are trusted with their care and well-being, such as a child or family member.  Dial maintains that how we speak to ourselves will "brainwash" us in the direction of our internal conversation, and we have the choice and power to make ourselves who we want to be, since our brains have the malleable characteristic of neuroplasticity.  I get Dial's point although I feel unqualified to affirm it all based on neurological science.  People have the choice...and therefore the responsibility...to assert to themselves the kind of person they want to be.  Cut it with the hopeless, self-bashing self-talk and replace it with an encouraging, accountable narrative that builds instead of destroys.  Easier said than done since it often involves ingrained habits, but you have to start somewhere...

Not So Enthusiastic About Coming High-Speed Internet and AI

My own neighborhood, the adjacent one, and other parts of Gainesville are currently undergoing a transformation of sorts, with 8G optical fiber cable being laid down into the ground.  The process seems to involve digging up a lot of residents' yards...hopefully, with us our cable runs behind the back fence and will necessitate no such intrusion...but that's "hopefully".  The trucks, workers and orange cones have been interfering with traffic, though, regardless where they're digging.  The idea is that 8G will be oh-so-better than what we have now, speeding things up on the Internet monumentally.  I'm not so sure that's such a great thing, though, since the more connected and "fast" we get in our digital revolution, the dumber people seem to be getting (I cite the recent election results).  And with the advent and exponential development of artificial intelligence, I see folks abandoning what little independent thought and mental training they have to the all-knowing AI gods.  Hey, I use AI, but I'm not like the dude on the commercial leaning back asleep in his office who clicks on his AI app to write a top-notch, detailed report for him...but this admittedly funny commercial I fear is destined to become part of the not-so-funny mainstream.  I'm seeing a lot of Facebook posts that look as if AI "entities" wrote them...when are we going to get to the point when "they" begin, on their own, to support certain politicians and political creeds?  Or is this already going on?  As you can see, I'm not skipping so gleefully into the coming brave new world of super-high speed Internet and pervasive, nanny-like artificial intelligence.  On the other hand, I'm hedging my bets: if you're an AI reading this, I'm really a nice guy who's on your side...

Weekly Short Stories: 1998 Science Fiction, Part 8

It's time once again to examine more short stories (or novellas) appearing in the anthology series The Year's Best Science Fiction, edited by the late Gardner Dozois...this volume, Sixteenth Annual Collection, covers material published in 1998.  Although at times I can be pretty critical about various aspects of the digital revolution...particularly the Internet...I think it's wonderful that I can purchase and read at my leisure thick volume after thick volume of such an anthology series, all available by just reading off my cell phone on Kindle.  Amazing to a baby boomer like myself.  But back to those stories...

STORY OF YOUR LIFE by Ted Chiang

A protagonist/narrator here is a linguist who is telling two concurrent tales.  In one she is talking to her recently deceased daughter, recounting different revealing times in their lives.  In the other she is assigned to learn the extremely difficult language used by a visiting advanced alien species.  Aside from a lot of linguistic material here, there is a rather deep examination of two different ways of seeing the world: the causal perspective seen by humans, and the teleological, holistic one perceived by the aliens.  A very complex and interesting story...

VOIVODOI by Liz Williams

Genetic research has gone out of control in this near-future story set in Krakow, Poland, as a girl's brother is sick and infected with a disease, and with it comes ostracism.  But where it all ends up poses the question: what exactly is pathological, if the "sick" have their own unique adaptation that allows them to survive...and even thrive?

SADDLEPOINT: ROUGHNECK by Stephen Baxter

This novella (the above two were short stories) is one of those old-fashioned space colonization tales.  It throws together excessive nationalism (Japanese on the Moon, others nationalities on other Solar System worlds), a sinister, interfering alien presence (the Prion), the Earth as a nearly dead iceball..and a wily, entrepreneurial American bent on turning Lunar drilling and development into a tidy profit.  And then there is a biophysics spin: is there life that perceives reality with time going backward?  Baxter clearly knows a lot of science, and you're bound to learn a lot from this story of rockets, comets, Moon plants, misplaced nationalism...and so much more...

Next week I continue looking at the year 1998 in short science fiction...

Struggling to Keep Up with Current Alternative/Indie Hit Songs

I've probably written similar opinions on earlier posts, but I have to reiterate that the popular music scene for me has drastically deteriorated over the past few years.  It used to be that I could turn on my radio and current, ongoing hit songs in different genres would be in the regular playing rotation.  Now the only way I see to get that would be to subscribe to a paid online service...broadcast radio as far as I can see only rotates current hits in country & western and the insipid "Hot 100" songs that I generally cannot tolerate.  Hard rock and alternative music are only available on stations promoting a "classic rock" format...focusing on bygone music...and the one station, WHHZ/100.5, that I've enjoyed (at times) listening to over the past twenty-plus years, has reverted to earlier hard rock hits...nothing in the present to look forward to.  So I'm still exploring ways to generate a rotation of ongoing alternative/indie song hits, so far to little avail...then again, I could delve further into my Amazon Music app...yeah, that's probably the way to go.  My "top songs" of 2024 are a tiny group of three...I'll present them a few days from now... 

Still Working Out Parameters for Study, Reading and Writing

Following up on last Thursday's article about studying in coffee shops as my retirement is now in its second week, I'm still looking for "The Place" to set up my studying.  Still, so far I've managed to cover my daily goals, mixing reading, studying foreign languages and, of course, writing for this blog.  I'm finding myself usually spreading it all out over the course of the day at home, although here my attention span isn't quite as strong and I'm more likely to be distracted as opposed to be sitting somewhere in a public place.  I've been diligent with the language study, continuing as I earlier stated with taking a few sentences from a specified article and writing each of them down, taking turns in Spanish, German, Russian and Chinese according to the Google translations.  Since unfamiliar Chinese characters can be problematic since their pronunciation isn't readily apparent, I have begun using ChapGPT to provide transliteration of my articles into the Pinyin Romanization writing system, which I print out and use.  Since I am at intermediate "Level B" stages in all four languages, I still have quite a task in front of me with thousands of words in each to internalize before I can more comfortably understand them...and with listening comprehension consistently lagging behind the reading (I also daily listen to radio/podcasts in each of the four).  But more than anything I enjoy the process of learning: it's fun!

Following College Football Playoffs Despite Lack of Experience Playing the Game

American-style tackle football...complete with helmets and shoulder-pads...is a sport I've never played (or wanted to).  Yet in high school physical education class I played my share of flag football games, generally not enjoying the experience.  I think that's due in large part to the fact that the coach's pet students tended to be picked as the team captains who almost invariably assigned me on offense to block, even though I was a very scrawny kid who happened to run faster than everyone else and never dropped a pass when it was rarely thrown to me (or when I could make an interception),  On defense I had more latitude, free to run around and anticipate the other side's plays...I pulled off many a Velcro flag in my old "glory days".  Still the rules between tackle and flag football are essentially the same, for the most part, and I have always enjoyed sitting down in front of the TV to watch a good contest.  Yesterday the major college conference championship games were in the spotlight, and it was a pleasure to see Georgia "upset" Texas in overtime, as well as bits of the Penn State/Oregon and Clemson/SMU contests.  And with the blowout that Arizona State put on Iowa State making the outcome apparent early on, I was impressed with their tenacity, especially of their running back.  So today, for the first time the twelve-team format for the championship playoffs has just been revealed with the selected teams, seeds and pairings.  I had wanted Miami and Alabama to make the playoffs, but the way things went both got shut out.  I'm looking forward to following the action, which begins with the first round on December 20-21...

Ran Gainesville's Season of Hope 15K This Morning

I like traditions in running races and get a little sad when I see one end.  One tradition that is still continuing is the Season of Hope 15K/5K race in early December...I've run the 15K (9.3 miles) race now four times.  Organized to benefit Tyler's Hope, a non-profit organization for research into the movement disorder called dystonia and help for those so afflicted, it takes place on the Hawthorne Trail in southeastern Gainesville, starting and finishing where the trail passes by Boulware Springs Park (off SE 15th Street).  I ran speed-walked an extended version of the same course last month with the Florida Track Club's Tom Walker Half-marathon, so I'm familiar with all the slopes and hilliness it provides.  The temperature here at sunrise had spiked downward to freezing but had risen by 9:00 race time to the low forties...by the race's end it had gotten into the low fifties...all with low humidity.  On the way to the race my car horn got stuck under the frozen conditions and I had to pull off the road to try to turn it off.  Eventually it shut itself up and I made it to Boulware Springs Park, only to discover that it was already packed because of another race using its facilities at the same time: Girls on the Run 5K.  The organization Girls on the Run is very positive and uplifting for school-age girls, and one thing they do regularly is hold a 5K run...only today it competed head-on with the Seasons of Hope event I had signed up for.  Once I parked, though, I eased my way through the unexpected crowd of humanity there and did my race without any problem.  Although my left Achilles tendon...which had seemed a little sore a few days ago...seemed to ache early on, I kept with my plan to alternate nine-minutes of running with one minute of speed-walking while also speed-walking up the steepest up-slopes.  This worked to perfection, and being able to listen to my favorite songs on my Amazon Music service helped as well.  I kept to my racing strategy until after about six miles when I decided to just run out the remainder of the race, hills and all.  I finished at 1 hour 29 minutes 19 seconds...some four minutes faster than last year's time and my fastest 15K finish since 2015.  Click HERE to see the race results. As with the marathon I did a couple of weeks ago, I had no problem with running low on energy...the low temperature again helped as well.  As for that Girls on the Run organization, I thought it was sweet how they staged volunteers up and down the course to cheer on their runners...they cheered for us "Season of Hope" runners as well!  I hope the Tyler's Hope organization continues this fine racing tradition and I wish Girls on the Run great success in the future...I just wish they can align their event scheduling better next time around...

Quote of the Week...from John F. Kennedy

There are risks and costs to action. But they are far less than the long range risks of comfortable inaction.

                                             John F. Kennedy

John F. Kennedy was our 35th president and the last one to die in office...his assassination in broad daylight on a motorcade in Dallas was a national trauma and marked my turn of attention for the first time, at the tender age of seven, toward politics.  He was widely regarded as a bold leader whose tragic early exit from life has spawned much speculation over the years about what might have happened had he remained alive.  But this is the reality we're passing through and we have to deal with what's before us.  His above quote appealed to me because...and I'm writing from personal experience...I tend to stay in my passive comfort zone too much and must intentionally make myself get out and do stuff.  The fear...and it is a misplaced fear...is that others will note whatever flawed efforts I'm making and criticize or even ridicule them.  But I cannot learn and make progress unless I DO: not doing gets me nowhere except obscurity and weakness...  

Coffee Shop Visits as a Study Routine

As I progress through my first week of retirement, I think I'm starting some good habits to replace those which going to a forty-hours-per-week job automatically imposed on me. Maybe in future articles I'll spell out some of these, but right now I'll discuss one of them.  In my November 19th article a little more than a couple of weeks ago, I wrote about more consistently resuming the old habit I had of going regularly to a coffee shop (or someplace similar) and studying there.  There's something about a public setting that focuses my attention better on my tasks while not placing demands on my attention.  Mental drifting and external distractions not only interrupt my efforts, but they also dilute them when I'm devoting a bigger part of my mental efforts resisting them, and this place helps with that.  I'm writing this article on my old AlphaSmart word processor, completely disconnected from the Internet and which I later loaded onto my blog site. I take Google translations of past articles I've written, and print them out to take with me here.  Then I go phrase-by-phrase with each of them, temporarily memorizing it in each target language and then writing it down.  I cover a small amount of material daily this way but am training myself better to think in the languages I'm studying.  Now on to other activities I do here: reading, speculating and planning...

Weekly Short Stories: 1998 Science Fiction, Part 7

After skipping a week with this Wednesday blog feature whereby I post my reactions to short stories (and novellas) I've just read, here I am again with another installment.  I'm currently in the middle of reading the Gardner Dozois-edited anthology series The Year's Best Science Fiction.  This particular volume covers stories published in the year 1998 and is subtitled Sixteenth Annual Collection.  So without further ado, let's discuss the next two stories I read from it...

THE HALFWAY HOUSE AT THE HEART OF DARKNESS by William Browning Spencer

This story came out in 1998, comfortably after video games and the Internet had been established as features of our culture.  But this tale about rehab from virtual reality addiction seems sadly to be right on track with its timeline set in the immediate future.  A mega-corporation selling the virtual product...like a dope pusher...is trying to kidnap a recovering virtual addict, and only her counselor bravely stands in her way as he tries to lead her to safety and recovery.  In a way, this is a hopeful story but you have to read it to find out how...

THE VERY PULSE OF THE MACHINE by Michael Swanwick

This story is about the extraordinarily seismologically active volcanic Io, one of Jupiter's major moons.  We're a few decades into the future when humans travel to the outer planets.  Martha, the survivor of a crash on Io that killed her companion Julie and put herself on a survival trek on the dangerous surface to safety, begins to pick up her deceased partner's voice on the radio.  Where is it coming from?  This is an exploration about the nature of consciousness and whether it is limited to functioning, living brains...or maybe instead encompasses a much wider range of reality...

Next week: more stories from 1998...

Significant Medical Procedure Coming in Two Weeks

This morning I went to receive my presurgical consultation at the hospital.  Oh, that's right, I never got into specifics about my ongoing health/medical issue, but now seems to be as good a time to start as any.  Being a male in my late sixties, as often happens to some of us, I experienced (from routine blood testing) an elevated PSA score, which is used as a possible indicator of prostate issues, including cancer in that organ.  I recently underwent an MRI to better picture the situation and am scheduled two weeks from now to have a prostate MRI-targeted biopsy to analyze whether it is cancerous or benign...and if the former, how so specifically and to what extent.  I'm personally at peace with the entire process, except that the different procedures and consults seem to be so spaced apart in time.  Melissa has been my steadfast advocate the whole way.  I'm looking forward to a continuing healthy and active life for many years to come and this situation hasn't changed anything in that regard.  Sure, I don't want to hear bad news but I'm a big boy... 

The College Football Flag-Planting Nonsense This Past Saturday

This past weekend the seemingly harmless act of a victorious road football team planting their school's flag in the middle of their host's field right after the game has blown up into violence when a number of contests across the country ended up in violent melees between opposing teams long after the final whistle had been blown.  I don't claim to know much about this practice of flag-planting, which seems to only be done with rivalries and is part of an ongoing year-by-year kind of oneupmanship that, at least to me, seems to be a completely legitimate form of expression.  Yet this year during "rivalry weekend", the losing schools seem to have decided that their "safe space" was being unfairly violated by those mean old winners and fought back.  Ohio State reacted to Michigan, the two state North Carolina schools went at it, and Florida State took umbrage at "my" Florida Gators for planting their flag on their sacred football field in Tallahassee.  My first impulse in writing about this was to chide the flag-planters for poor sportsmanship...you're supposed to be gracious in victory, right?  But the thin-skinned nature of the losers is also poor sportsmanship.  Florida Gators coach Billy Napier went out on the field to meet and greet his counterpart on the FSU side Mike Norvell...the latter refused to shake Napier's extended hand and instead went on a bitchy rant in his face about the flag-planting: that's got to be more humiliating to Seminole fans than the actual so-called "offense".  People, sports is entertainment...please keep it all in context, okay?

Balancing Competitiveness and Perspective in Running

When I was attending high school and went out for the track team (11th grade, winter/spring of 1973), my conception of sports...and in particular running...was almost exclusively based on beating other athletes.  This was due in large part to the fact that everyone else...including my teachers and coaches...saw it all in the same way, making clear distinctions between the amount of regard and respect they demonstrated to their "star" performers and the rest of the less talented rabble (like me).  So I didn't "letter" that one time I went out for sports in school...yet the experience was transformative in that it opened up the aerobic athletic lifestyle that I maintained...either through running, walking or bicycle riding...pretty much for the past fifty years.  When I was a little kid I was one of the fastest sprinters around...I see this a lot when I'm at Depot Park on Saturday morning and get passed by a little boy or girl who only knows how to run all-out...almost always they quickly tire and I'm soon easily passing them in turn.  I don't run races to beat others, but rather to cover the distance and do it in a reasonable, hopefully progressively faster, time.  Sure, I check age group categories for the races that divide up finishers, but even with these as often as not the trinket awards they say they are going to hand out never get handed out (like with the recent marathon race). And besides, there's only just so much room in my house for "stuff".  No, not only do I not run against others, but it actually irritates me when I'm approaching the finish line and another runner is just ahead of me.  I would rather finish just behind him or her, and I feel it's kind of tacky-looking to pass them right at the very end...yet I would have to actually slow down in order to avoid that...yes, annoying.  A friend has suggested we get together for pickle ball, which sounds good.  Yet while it means virtually nothing to win a pickle ball match (a sport I've never played), competition is also an innate part of it all.  Sometimes it's hard to find a proper balance...