Weekly Short Stories: 1999 Science Fiction, Part 10

Here we are again, with another week gone by as I delve further into the Gardner Dozois anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Seventeenth Annual Collection, featuring tales published in 1999.  The two short stories I'm discussing below go in two opposite directions, the first deep into the distant past and the second far ahead in the future.  But ultimately both deal in some fashion with the question of what is consciousness, and what forms can it take...  

BORDER GUARDS by Greg Egan

A "young" man wakes up out of his "death" to resume living among his peers in a manufactured world, thousands of years into the future (and in his own life).  He is essentially immortal, due to an invention from late in our own 21st century.  As he encounters a certain woman, he learns lessons about the value of life...and death as well.  This story bothered me in that it assumes that consciousness is completely independent of the brain and that a durable machine can serve as its replacement home.  Then again, I never accepted the "transporter" idea in Star Trek, either.  Sure, the individual materializing on the other end is a carbon copy of the original, but didn't that original person that got "beamed" disintegrate into death? 

SCHERZO WITH TYRANNOSAUR by Michael Swanwick

This is one of those annoying time travel stories that I thought writers like Robert Heinlein had pretty well written into the ground concerning all the potential paradoxes involved, particularly in traveling into the past. This "time" a business is thriving late in the Cretaceous period just a few thousand years from the meteor strike that would cause extinction to the dinosaurs.  One of the employees observes a raptor dinosaur show, resembling in a way Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park, but in this case it's the human tourists traveling back in time, not the dinosaurs transported to the present.  The paradoxical scenarios presented here keep accumulating until in the end the reader is tempted to just say to hell with it all.  Guess you might infer that I'm a bit skeptical about this sub-genre of science fiction...

Next week I'll see if I can't comment on further stories from the Dozois anthology covering the year 1999...

Happy Income Tax Deadline Day

April 15, Tax Day, has come and is about to end for 2025.  Having worked for the post office here in Gainesville for 37 years before last year's retirement, I am well acquainted with the extraordinary measures they would take on this day, with SW 34th Street traffic backed up from the main processing plant's entrance as folks would wait to the last minute to file their taxes, and then dump off their returns at night to get them postmarked "in time" before midnight.  Nowadays, of course, we have software to do most of the tedious work and calculations while payments can come electronically out of our bank accounts or refunds likewise deposited into them.  Melissa and I, because of the tragic circumstances in 2024 with our family, had more difficulty than usual with our filing, but we somehow managed to get it all finished with several days to spare.  I remember back in Trump's first term when he was pushing his own vision of tax "reform" through Congress and Ted Cruz opined that filing one's income tax should be simple enough to do on the back of a postcard.  To which I would offer one of my rare "thumbs up" to the junior senator from Texas.  In any event, it's over for another year...

Congratulations to Masters Golf Tournament Champ Rory McIlroy

I watched a bit of the Masters Tournament this past weekend...yesterday Rory McIlroy managed to pull off a sudden death victory over Justin Rose to win his first Masters, completing what the golf world calls the "Grand Slam" of victories in all of the pro sport's major tourneys.  Congratulations, dude. The sports announcers were all full of sympathy and concern about McIlroy's failures in the past to get this one last tournament title, and wasn't it great that he finally pulled it off.  Rory, who has been coddled and guided since early childhood when he was discovered to have an aptitude for the game, has of course long been a very rich multimillionaire with worldwide name and face recognition.  So no, I'm not on board with the emotions spilled out on his behalf.  On the other hand, the social media seemed overly concerned about his relationship with his wife and her degree of support after the tournament...really, as if that's anybody's business.  Yet unlike with other sports, in professional golf you're expected to make a big show of being with your spouse and kids after knocking down the ball on the last hole.  I'm okay with everyone coming together at the end, sure, but this does sort of open up the athletes' private lives to unwelcome media scrutiny.  I've known a kid who grew up in a family where his own father was a coach in a certain sport, and he was groomed from early on to become a star player in it.  Everyone around sucked up to this kid for being such a big-shot player and he gained a lot of popularity...and I think it all went straight to his head.  I hope he's enjoyed a good life since leaving his "glory days" behind at my high school, but like McIlroy, if I hear of him having done well in that sport since then, there's really nothing for me to say beyond those simple congratulations... 

Another Jigsaw Puzzle...and Melissa Takes Her Sister to the Beach

 

Recently Melissa bought me a new jigsaw puzzle, a humorous 1000-piece painting of Yellowstone National Park with its Old Faithful geyser...I just completed it about an hour ago.  Meanwhile, she has taken her sister Krista for an overnight stay at Ormond Beach...that's them out on the balcony.  I'm glad Krista got this chance to get out on an excursion with Melissa...she has endured quite an ordeal with medical issues in the past two months and we are all praying for her recovery and a happy, healthy life.  So here I am at home, being babysat by my dog Daisy.  I hope that things are going well for you as well...

Speed-Walked This Morning's Depot Parkrun 5K

In the past on April 12th I would remember my late father, who passed away at age 87 in 2013, for today is his birthday.  Very sadly, I must add my son Will to the observance, for not only is today his birthday as well, but he tragically died last July...he would have been only 35 today, with his whole life in front of him.  I don't know that I will ever get over his passing...I just know that I miss him so, so much.  With this in mind as I got up early this morning, I remembered going on a Depot Parkrun walk with him and Melissa last May.  Will had been recovering from some back surgery a few weeks before and was making good progress...he gamely joined us in covering the four-lap, 3.1 mile course.  Today I walked it as I am, too, recovering from my own surgery, prostatectomy, and still adhering to the recommended walking instead of running: so I speed-walked it, enjoying the 51 degree weather at race time (85% humidity) and pushing myself to a final time of 41:23.  Click HERE to view today's results...

Hailstorm and Mini-Tornado (?)

Early this evening, while Melissa and I were eating out with a couple of dear old friends, Gainesville experienced a freak hailstorm that tore through much of the city.  We observed the spectacle from the restaurant window as pellets of ice bounced off the parked vehicles.  On the drive home the streets were strewn with the green branches and leaves torn from surrounding trees when the ice ripped through them.  The ice when we finally pulled up in front of our home was big enough to have come out of our freezer...pretty impressive, the most widespread hailstorm I can remember.  But to top that off, a couple of hours before we left, one of our big shade umbrellas on our back porch was suddenly lifted straight up from its basin...either by an extremely strong gust of wind or a small tornado...and transported through the air above our house and deposited in our neighbor's front yard near the mailboxes by the street.  We've had umbrellas blown down before, but never to that extent...

The Masters Golf Tournament Has Begun

Earlier today the Masters Tournament, the first of the professional golfing four "majors" of the year, began in Augusta, Georgia.  Justin Rose finished the first round at 7 under par, a three-stroke lead over defending Masters champion Scottie Scheffler.  I watched much of the TV coverage, which was carried on ESPN.  It was fun to recognize most of the golfers, and I was a little surprised by Rory McIlroy, who looked as if he might challenge Rose for the first round lead, only to experience some bad holes late on the "back nine" and find himself far back in the field.  For this major tournament, the LIV tour, the established PGA's rival in golfing, contributed its own star golfers that I usually don't get to see, like Bryson DeChambeau, Jon Rahm and Sergio Garcia...nice to see them out there all competing together with the PGA's own.  Frankly, after watching some of the LIV "action" in some of their tournaments, I was disappointed, not only in this league's overemphasis on team golf, but also in the televised coverage that focused way too heavily on putting and over-hyping its biggest names.  Now that some of them are back "down to earth" with the rest of the pros, let's see how they do.  For one, I'd like to see Bryson do well: he's just one stroke behind Scheffler...

Weekly Short Stories: 1999 Science Fiction, Part 9

It's Wednesday and time once again to address what I've been reading in the realm of short science fiction.  The book I'm going through is an anthology, edited by the late Gardner Dozois: The Year's Best Science Fiction, Seventeenth Annual Collection...covering short stories and novellas published in the year 1999. The tale I'm about to discuss might be termed a novella, and maybe just a long short story (or a short long story).  In any event, here's my reaction to it...

MOUNT OLYMPUS by Ben Bova

Ben Bova is one of those old-school hard science fiction writers who, like Robert Heinlein before him, envisioned what the emerging travel-to and exploration-of neighboring worlds in our solar system would be like in the years ahead of us.  You can learn a lot about astronomy and space travel from this particular story, which presents a fictional scenario about what it would be like to be on Mars, fly a specially-designed plane onto the surface of its massive, long-dormant volcano Olympus Mons, and then set out down into its caldera.  The story, written in plain language without some of those obnoxious literary pretensions I see in other writers, also seeks to be inclusive with the mission's crew, from different parts of the world and with their own special stories, motivations and concerns.  I found myself liking these people and rooting for them, much in the way I would for a Star Trek episode and its characters.  I wonder if Bova included some of those appearing in this story in any other material he wrote.  I liked Mount Olympus and wish there were more stories in the anthology like it...

Next week: more about short science fiction from '99...

Taking Physical Recovery a Day at a Time

I'm continuing to gradually make progress in my recovery from my March 6 prostatectomy surgery that removed a cancerous prostate.  It's a day-by-day process in which I have to be careful between resting enough to allow my body to heal and challenging it in small increments to recover its previous strength and functionality.  While this is going on, I have upcoming appointments, the first one in a couple of weeks with my physical therapist, and then...following a blood test to assess my PSA (protein-specific antigen) level that might indicate some residual cancer remaining in the body...a late-May meeting with my urologist/surgeon to determine my future path of treatment (if necessary).  But there's no point in me being concerned about any of this: through it all I plan to take each day as it comes and do my best with the time allotted me...sounds a bit like Gandalf's advice to Frodo, doesn't it...

UF Wins Men's Basketball National Championship

Congratulations to the University of Florida men's basketball team for winning the NCAA Championship Tournament tonight with an exciting come-from-behind 65-63 win over Houston.  The Gators were trailing at half-time and fell further behind early in the second half, at one time twelve points in back of the Cougars.  Yet as was the case in their previous two tournament contests, they mounted a comeback and squeaked it out in the end.  This is UF's third basketball national title and the first under coach Todd Golden.  Yet it isn't the same kind of feeling I had when Billy Donovan piloted the Gators to championships in 2006 and 2007.  It's a completely different world in college sports, what with the transfer portal enabling schools to take in established players from other colleges...this version of Florida hoops is full of such transfers, especially their star, Walter Clayton Jr..  And their coach Golden had Title IX allegations investigated earlier in the season...and then suddenly dropped without comment.  A lot of us aren't sure what that all means, except that they had something to do with women accusing the Gator coach of stalking.  That being said, Florida won a hard-fought, close and exciting tournament... 

Transformational Progress in Language Learning a Possibility for Me Now

Earlier today I set out as a goal to investigate how to enhance my ability to acquire new vocabulary in the languages I'm studying...with Russian and Spanish the primary focus.  I think I may have hit upon something transformational that provides me all the comprehensible input I require to make the progress I know I am capable of.  Now I just need to stick to a regimen that allows me to attain that progress.  I'll get back to you in a few weeks about this journey, which suddenly has become much more promising.  I give the Canadian polyglot (and my senior by more than a decade) Steve Kaufmann much of the credit for steering me in the right direction...he has a lot of good advice on his YouTube channel...

Walked Today's Depot Parkrun 5K

This morning I returned to Gainesville's Depot Park, a few blocks south of downtown, to participate in their weekly Saturday morning 5K Parkrun.  This event is free...you just need to sign up online to get your barcode so that your results can be posted.  Still cautious about returning to running just four weeks following my prostatectomy surgery, I heeded my doctor's advice and stuck with walking...albeit doing it quickly.  The weather at 7:30 race time more resembled that of June than early April...66 degrees with 95% humidity. But my walk went quite well with me barely perspiring and suffering no discernible loss of energy...I finished at 42:28: click HERE to view the posted results.  Next week I'm hoping Melissa walks the 5K with me...I always enjoy walking with her.  And then, in subsequent weeks, maybe I'll begin to mix in some running as I continue to recover...

Just Finished Reading The 5 Resets by Aditi Nerurkar

I have to admit it: I'm a sucker for personal development books, and there is no shortage of them. I also dig podcasts and YouTube channels with this theme...Jim Kwik has a good one.  Recently he talked with Aditi Nerurkar, the author of one such book: The 5 Resets.  So I checked out an audio version from my public library system's Libby app. As she puts it, our brain has two special sections that sometimes work at cross-purposes with each other: the amygdala...which processes danger and produces the stress "fight or flight" response needed for survival...and the prefrontal cortex...used in planning and seeing the big picture.  But people in this modern, digitally-obsessed world of ours today are suffering from unnecessary and harmful chronic stress with that amygdala co-opting their mental functions...she proposes five ways, or "resets", to curtail it and enable them to have much less anxiety and burnout in their lives: 

1--Get clear on what matters most

2--Find quiet in a noisy world

3--Sync your brain and your body

4--Come up for air

5--Bring your best self forward

Aditi Nerurkar has a great premise for this book, but I left it with a laundry list of "shoulds" and "shouldn'ts", giving it a sense of disorganization.  Much of the material I was already familiar with.  Don't multi-task, take breaks with your work, do breathwork, practice mindfulness, cultivate an attitude of gratitude, don't try to change too many things at once, eat well (Mediterranean diet), exercise, get a good night's sleep, prioritize your life according to what's most important, avoid being overly digitally-dependent, and so on.  I enjoyed the book, and perhaps the greatest benefit I drew from it is just that sense of affirmation and enforcement of what seem to me to be pretty common-sense ideas. Now wouldn't you know it, Jim Kwik himself has written his own book, titled Limitlesd, and of course I just had to check out that one, too...I'm reading it now...

Maybe "Greatest" Rock Band List Should be Rephrased as "Favorite"

Whatever the algorithm or AI on Facebook happens to be, it has decided that I'm a rock music fan, especially interested in the classic rock of the twentieth century.  So I get a lot of posts on my newsfeed about this genre, much of it about the Beatles.  The other day I got a post on it from Forbes Magazine listing the 30 greatest rock bands of all time.  Okay, let's see what they've got.  Uh-oh, the Beatles were only listed at number two: sorry, this list is bogus.  Still, the top band in their estimation, Led Zeppelin, happens to be my own list's runner-up to the Fab Four.  Where I have the biggest problems with this list is how highly they ranked acts I dislike and then omitted some of the best ones from their list.  But it's all subjective anyway...better to present a list like this as their ranking of "favorite bands" instead of "greatest bands".  Forbes had Queen at #3...okay, I generally like them but not that much.  R.E.M., my all-time favorite American band, wasn't even on the list...neither were Yes, Soundgarden, the Police, Beach Boys, Moody Blues, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Doobie Brothers or Pearl Jam while several groups I dislike...like Van Halen, Kiss, Oasis, the Clash, Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden and Journey...were on it.  I guess to each his or her own...here are my top ten favorite rock bands:

1 THE BEATLES

2 LED ZEPPELIN

3 R.E.M.

4 RADIOHEAD

5 THE POLICE

6 THE DOORS

7 THE WHO

8 YES

9 THE MOODY BLUES

10 PINK FLOYD

Weekly Short Stories: 1999 Science Fiction, Part 8

I'm still plodding through the Gardner Dozois anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Seventeenth Annual Collection, which presents his picks of the best stories from the year 1999.  Today I'll discuss the next two in the book...

SUICIDE COAST by M. John Harrison

The author examines two converging trends in society: the compulsion of many to engage in daredevil activities, with the rush provided by the experience feeding into an ever-intensifying addiction, and the emergence of virtual reality and gaming, on a scale here so realistic that the story's final paragraphs turn that reality completely upside down.  A little hard to follow, this tale, but that ending was impressive...

HUNTING MOTHER by Sage Walker

As in the previous story, the author here combines two different ideas.  One is how people would survive...without declining...on board a multi-generational spaceship travelling to the stars for eventual settlement.  The other is the notion of genetically modifying humans by grafting onto their genes the genetic material of certain animals.  I found this tale a little depressing and too "far out" in more than one way as a dying mother, one of those genetic scientists on board this vast ship, has to deal with her own son, modified with predatory instincts (and claws) of a cougar...

Next week: more SF from '99...

Looking Back after Four Months of Retirement

It's now been four full months since I left my job at the United States Postal Service and began retirement.  Unlike a few of my predecessors, I have never had the slightest urge since then to take up any part-time paid work.  I do not miss in the slightest having to brave the often horrendous daily city traffic as I used to, arrive at my workplace, and then spend hours surrounded by cameras and spy windows trained on the workroom floor (and me) while enduring alpha male supervisors with pecking order complexes.  That said, my main (MDO) supervisor was thoroughly wonderful and I do strongly miss working with her, as well as with the overwhelming majority of rank and file people who have blessed this organization over the years.  As for the actual work I did, I treated it seriously enough to allow myself to get somewhat upset whenever something went wrong on the part of others...which was often enough.  For the most part, I was allowed some autonomy in my work, which I appreciate.  No job I imagine is completely stress-free, and mine was no exception.  Still, I liked the structure of discipline it imposed on my time, although since leaving there I have been replacing it with my own personally fulfilling projects.  Soon after my retirement, a reunion celebration was held at a local Mexican restaurant near my home, but I didn't attend.  I'm glad I didn't, after seeing the posted photos showing who all was there.  Sure, there were many good people, but also a couple of not-so-good as well. Since I retired I have had absolutely no desire to visit the place or know how things are going there.  Absolutely none.  During COVID, I felt that the people running this facility took a dangerously lax approach to the pandemic, and the decision to export our processing to distant Jacksonville only hurt customer service while limiting employee options.  I was also tired of a few clerks over the years obviously being hired on a special fast track into management, given special cushy assignments and the run of the building with little accountability, in contrast to the rest of us who had to wait our turn on a register and often have to wait for years to get a preferred assignment.  But here I am now, on the other side of all that...   

My Running and Walking Report for March 2025

For the first five days of March I practiced running some at home, but following my surgery on the 6th, I have been told to cool that kind of activity for at least six weeks to allow for healing.  But walking? That's okay, but I didn't really resume that more moderate activity with any gusto until the catheter into my bladder...inserted 11 days before and the source of a bit of restriction and pain...was finally removed on the 17th.  Since then I've walked three of my 3.3 mile loops around my home neighborhood, and even managed to do a Depot Parkrun 5K walk this past Saturday, the 29th.  When I do resume some running...I'm looking right now at the last half of April...it will be only light, limited jogging-in-place within my home: no racing anytime soon.  Besides the walking I'm been doing this month, I've also been engaging daily in a no-impact exercise I created and dub "rock-running", whereby in a standing position I rock back and forth simultaneously on my feet, balancing the motion by thrusting my arms forward and back.  It accomplishes my goal of getting myself into a zone of increased heartbeat, moving my body and doing some minimal resistance work (without weights).  My recovery from the surgery at this writing seems to be going well enough...I just need to have some patience with it all.  I'll probably go back to Depot Park two or three times next month and continue walking the course...

My Songs of the Month for March 2025

March, by all accounts, should have been a month in which I listened a lot to music.  After all, I had my prostate cancer surgery on the 6th and, for the most part, have been taking it easy at home recovering from it.  But it's not as simple as it used to be when I was younger and we had a number of radio stations to easily tune in to for the current hits.  Let's see, back in 1973 my songs of the month for January, February and March were You're So Vain (by Carly Simon), Love and Happiness (by Al Green) and Hummingbird (by Seals and Crofts).  In this digital information era it should be easier to find good rotations of current hits...but other than Gainesville's local pop music station WYKS ("Kiss 105"), which plays a lot of (in my opinion) insipid, uninteresting music, there is no alternative rock station playing today's songs...and I'm just not attuned to country or hip-hop...although I kind of dig songs that fuse them with rock.  True, 100.5 WHHZ plays alternative rock, but they're focused more on past hits, as are other local classic rock and oldies stations.  Instead, I have been relying on channels on my Amazon Music account.  Here's my list of favorites for March '25, overlapping quite a lot with the ones from the previous two months:

1 UNDER THE RUG by Arcy Drive

2 STARBURSTER by Fontaines DC

3 ZERO SUM by the Smile

4 BESTIES by Black Country, New Road

5 EVERYONE OUT by Diiv

Under the Rug has a magnetic, old-time rock sound to it...nice to hear that hasn't completely fallen by the wayside.  But if I were to pick a "song of the year" for 2025 so far, it would have to be Starburster...

Walked Gainesville's Depot Parkrun 5K This Morning

It's been a little more than three weeks since my prostatectomy surgery, and although my physician does not want me running until a few more have passed by, he has encouraged walking.  So on this Saturday morning I walked the four-lap course through Depot Park, a few blocks south of downtown.  It was 60 degrees at the 7:30 race time with a 90% humidity.  My intention was to do a brisk walk, but not try to set any personal walking records either...after all, I'm still recovering and healing.  As it was, it was relatively easy to cover the distance this way, finishing at 44:52...enough to pass Stephen King's standard of 4 mph in his dystopian novel The Long Walk but more than six minutes slower than my 5K fastest walk. It's been a while since I last did a Parkrun...six weeks ago was the previous time.  There were a lot of people in the park today, and not just for our event.  But although it could be annoying at times with some other participants carelessly crossing my path, making me pivot to avoid colliding with them, I did enjoy getting back to the old routine.  I did not sweat a single drop during the walk nor did I experience any pain or fatigue.  Until the "okay" to resume running comes my way, I guess this walking will have to be the theme of my Depot Parkrun participation...unless, of course, I choose to volunteer some Saturdays there instead.  Click HERE to view today's results...

Major League Baseball Regular Season Now Underway

The official opening day for Major League Baseball's 2025 regular season began yesterday...although more than a week earlier it actually started in Japan with a two-game series between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Chicago Cubs.  Baseball is one of those sports that I can have on the TV and watch, with it not being important if I find myself distracted with another activity.  I find it interesting how the broadcasters show an imaginary virtual strike zone for each pitch...and how, just as often as not...on the close pitches the plate umpire calls it wrong as a strike or ball.  I think at this juncture that I'm pretty much cured of the notion of having a favorite team to follow...just get a game going and I'll figure the rest out for myself, and it doesn't matter how lopsided the score gets.  Baseball is a game that I have never personally played, although in physical education class in high school we did softball...I was a pretty decent singles hitter but never had any training with fielding or pitching.  In those classes I always had, as an "instructor", jock coaches who just got games going without teaching anything about the sport...and the kids who played in leagues outside school naturally dominated (and got higher grades). I remember back in the late 1970's and early 1980's how the "Superstation" WTBS, under Atlanta communications tycoon Ted Turner, would show every Atlanta Braves game live.  Now, though, that sort of service is solely reserved for paid premium subscribers and if I want to see baseball, I have to accept whichever matchup that they feel like serving up.  No problem, but I do get a little tired of seeing, for the overwhelming part of 2-3 hours that make up a typical game, all these multimillionaires just standing around doing nothing, the only consistent workhorses being the pitcher on the mound and the catcher behind the plate...

Kudos to UF Men's Basketball Team, Now in Elite Eight

My congratulations go out to the University of Florida men's basketball team as they have advanced all the way up to the Elite Eight in the NCAA 2024-25 championship tournament after putting on a strong second half to defeat Maryland, 87-71 earlier this evening.  I remember following the Gators' two (consecutive) basketball championship seasons much more closely (2005-06, 2006-07) and can even recall their starting lineups from back then...I know hardly anyone on this year's team.  Yet they're Gators, my alma mater, so "go team go" as they like to say.  Florida will play Texas Tech on Sunday for the West Regional final.  The winner will be in the vaunted Final Four.  Looks like some of Florida's old conference rivals, like Auburn, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee and Kentucky, are headed that way, too, with this weekend's remaining games to sort much of that out. And then there's Duke and Houston, two schools that could easily win it all.  Should be fun to follow...

Weekly Short Stories: 1999 Science Fiction, Part 7

Well, this month it hasn't exactly been weekly short stories on this blog...the last time I wrote this Wednesday feature was exactly three weeks ago...the day before my prostatectomy surgery.  But here it is again, and I'm picking up where I left off by discussing the next tale in the book I'm currently going through: The Year's Best Science Fiction, Seventeenth Annual Collection, edited by the late Gardner Dozois and featuring his picks of the best sci-fi from the year 1999.  Once again, I encountered a novella, this one by the renowned writer Frederik Pohl...

HATCHING THE PHOENIX by Frederik Pohl

Pohl was a major figure during the fabled Golden Age of science fiction in the twentieth century, a contemporary of Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke and Robert Heinlein.  Like them, he tended to write in a plain, easy-to-follow style that also reminded me of writers in other genres like Ernest Hemingway and Stephen King...this has sadly become more difficult to find in the genre of science fiction.  Hatching the Phoenix is just one of many stories in Pohl's fictional Heechee universe, in which an alien race, thought extinct, has bequeathed to a future space-faring humanity its advanced spaceship technology.  This story is told in the first person by its protagonist Klara, a super-wealthy investor/entrepreneur who reminded me of a more human and less fascist Elon Musk.  Klara is sponsoring and overseeing a special project, using black holes and gravitational mirrors, that has sent a ship, the Phoenix, to the original star system that was the site of the supernova explosion in 1054 AD creating the Crab Nebula.  The intention behind the project is to determine whether intelligent life had evolved on any of this system's worlds before the supernova wiped it out.  There's a lot of interpersonal relationship stuff in this story, and Pohl managed to slyly inject a bit of humor in it all.  But what impressed me the most was his prescient depiction of "shipminds"...similar to Clarke's 2001 Hal...that eerily predicted where we all seem to be speeding willy-nilly toward in our present times: near-total dependence on artificial intelligence.  Hatching the Phoenix was long, but an enjoyable read.  Wish I encountered more stories written this way...

Next week: more science fiction from 1999...

Little Victories in My Recovery

I'm plodding on ahead with my recovery from the prostatectomy surgery on March 6, savoring little victories as I go along.  For example, although I'm not supposed to run for a few weeks as this would interfere with my healing from the operation, I can walk...I'm encouraged to do so. Still, I'm not trying to speed-walk like I was doing before entering the hospital.  No, but I still try to maintain at least a moderate pace although if I'm walking with others, I'm only too happy to follow their pace.  This morning I decided to go out into my home neighborhood and walk my 3.3 mile loop course.  It was 71 degrees with 61% humidity...not quite as cool and dry as I would have liked, but I realize that as spring progresses it's just going to get worse.  I had no problem finishing the course (at 54:18) and never felt any pain or loss of energy.  It was fun to get out in the sun and go down all the familiar streets, greeting others as I passed by them.  Little victories, I think, are indeed important in a recovery like the one I'm experiencing...

Just Pick a Side

Hard Rock, the entertainment/resort company that is prominent in my home state of Florida, has recently been airing a slew of TV commercials, some featuring recording artist Post Malone, that tout their online "service" allowing players to gamble on sports.  I suppose that if you're into that, then good for you...it's just that much easier to put your hard-earned money on the line.  So in this vein I see a company responding to a demand within the population that satisfies them.  I see other companies likewise doing this.  For example, many addicted cigarette smokers welcomed the advent of vaping, which did away with the carcinogenic tobacco elements they would breathe when "lighting up",  but which still provided them that craved nicotine effect.  Again, a demand met by companies' innovations...good for them, again.  Where I have a problem, though, with both of these examples is when the companies go out of their way to create new "needs" among the potential consumer pool that previously did not exist.  Making vaping seem cool to young people who never touched a cigarette in their lives is like this.  Or go back to Hard Rock, expanding the gambling to generally ignorant folks who don't know enough to at least make an educated guess about who will win or lose a sports contest.  With them, their latest pitch is a gimmick they have on their app whereby participants can still lay down their money and bet by simply "picking a side".  It all sounds so fun and inclusive, or at least that's how the ads make it look: come on and join the party!  But here again is a company expanding its consumer base to create a need that simply wasn't there before.  I guess, though, that's the essence of advertising, isn't it, to make the fool targeted potential consumer feel somehow inadequate or less than acceptable if they don't climb aboard with the company's agenda...  

Update on Pathology Report After Surgery

The pathology report on my surgically removed prostate and lymph nodes was posted on my medical portal online Friday evening...supposedly, the urologist who performed the surgery on March 6 is going to call me on the phone tomorrow to discuss it and my path forward.  Melissa, who is a registered nurse and understands the often arcane jargon presented in laboratory reports and summaries, concurred with me that this pathology report had some very good news.  The prostate was substantially compromised with an aggressive form of cancer: this was expected...and obviously, not the good news.  The good news is that it is now out of my body and the lymph nodes...the first destination of such a malignancy on its way to metastasis...have been analyzed and determined to be clear.  Now I'm a cautious person in many respects, and I would rather hear this all straight from the doctor's mouth.  So that's where I'm at right now, waiting for that call.  In any event, I will be having a blood test to determine my PSA (protein-specific antigen) level before my follow-up visit to this urologist in late May.  The PSA level has with it a relatively high correlation with the probability of cancer, so that test will be pretty important with all of us hoping and praying that it will be very low... 

Unsportsmanlike Behavior Among Professional Athletes and Coaches

I have been watching sports on TV of late, mainly golf, tennis and basketball.  I have to tell you, it kind of grates on me whenever I see an athlete or coach get overly angry about something and begin to act like a baby in front of the camera.  Not naming anyone specifically, but these are top-level figures who have achieved a reputation for quality in their respective areas.  It's one thing to pitch a fit on the court or greens because your shot went wide or you didn't get the call you wanted...sometimes that kind of behavior is rationalized as a way to motivate oneself or teammates to play with more passion.  But I've also seen how some of these, after the match or game has ended, refuse to participate in the traditional congratulations with the other side and/or attend press conferences.  I know that, in at least the professional sphere, athletes and coaches often have the responsibility of making themselves accessible to the press written into their contracts, and as such should consider this as much a part of their "game" as what transpires during the competition.  So, no, I don't like to see folks lose their composure while playing, but that's a lot more understandable...in the midst of heated, intense competition...than just storming off in a huff after it's all over...

A Week After My Prostate Removal Surgery

It's now been eight days since I underwent anesthesia and surgery to remove my malignant prostate at UF Health here in Gainesville.  Since then, my recovery has been a bear, but I'm making good progress so far in spite of the pain, discomfort and limitations on my bodily functions and mobility.  After discharge the day after the six-hour operation, which employed laparoscopic robotic surgery to remove the prostate and some surrounding lymph nodes, I've been at home with an established recovery routine...and my dear Melissa to care for me.  We're also grateful for the well-wishes and food train donations from some of our cherished friends.  This procedure requires the temporary insertion of a Foley catheter into the bladder afterwards...very annoying but so far I'm withstanding it well.  It's scheduled to be removed this coming Monday, and afterwards it will be another fork in the recovery road as I use Kegel exercises...and time...to eventually regain my ability to control my own bladder.  The prostate and those removed lymph nodes are in pathology now, with the latter being tested to confirm that, indeed, the cancer had not spread to them.  If it has, though, they have a treatment program with that, too.  I guess my two main concerns during this phase of recovery have been the restoration of digestion and excretion, shut down during surgery due to anesthesia and inserted CO2 gas, and dealing with pain and the agents used to alleviate it.  I feel I'm now finally at the stage where I can rely on over-the-counter pain relief like Tylenol and Aleve without needing to ingest the prescribed drugs that can have their own side effects.  So far, so good with all that, but of course I have to take things from one day to the next.  Ever since the morning after surgery I have been ambulatory, with no difficulty in walking.  Of course, anything like running or resistance training is a matter to be delayed for a few weeks.  I thank everyone for your concerns and prayers, and I am indeed grateful to live in such a time, place, and circumstances that would enable me to enjoy such high-level medical treatment...

Weekly Short Stories: 1999 Science Fiction, Part 6

This past week, as I continued reading through the annual retrospective anthology series edited by the late Gardner Dozois titled The Year's Best Science Fiction...this volume covering 1999 material being the Seventeenth Annual Collection...I managed to get through just one story.  Tomorrow I'm having surgery and see possibilities for a little more reading time in the week to come as I recover.  That's good, because the next story after this relatively short one is a long drawn-out novella...

WRITTEN IN BLOOD by Chris Lawson

A Muslim man is taking his daughter with him to Mecca as he is fulfilling Islam's Fifth Pillar by going on a pilgrimage there.  Told from his daughter's perspective, "Da" is a trained biologist who is in remission from cancer.  There they encounter a vendor selling a special product: the Qu'ran encoded into one's own blood.  Da takes him up on the offer, and as the story's ending reveals, most likely suffers the consequences of that action.  I felt that this story was sensitive to Islam and its believers, and I learned a few things about their prophet Muhammad in the process.  As for imprinting a document...or pictures...onto one's own DNA or blood is concerned, the author raises the point that while doing so might be done as a gesture of faith or  personal preference, it could also eventually be used against the person to identify them as being part of an group in disfavor, exposing them to persecution down the line.  In an allegorical sense, I think all the trails of ourselves that we leave in the Internet are doing something similar, don't you?

My intent for next Wednesday is to keep on reviewing stuff from the Dozois anthology...

Another Jigsaw Puzzle by Thomas Kincade

I just finished another 500-piece jigsaw puzzle by artist Thomas Kincade.  I like the scenes he depicts...this one is definitely a place I'd like to hang out at!  On a completely unrelated subject, I'd like to briefly bring up the widespread outrage I'm picking up on in social and mass media over what our current, thoroughly disgusting president has been doing on a wide range of decisions.  It's not that I don't generally agree with the criticisms I'm reading and hearing, but rather that the main problem, as I see it, is that American voters are responsible for the mess we're in.  THEY voted the jerk into power.  I have only one vote.  People had all the information they needed FOR YEARS to vote otherwise, but that didn't change anything.  So go ahead and spill out your outrage, for all the good it will do...

Podcaster's Episode about Toxic People

Personal development coach and podcaster Rob Dial sometimes has shows I'm interested in...some not so much.  Today he had a good topic: toxic people and strategies to escape their harmful effects.  His first piece of advice was to identify the toxic people in your life, and that doesn't necessarily mean folks who are annoying.  Toxic people are manipulators who can be aggressive in trying to establish control, often by expressing personal interest and then twisting the information they gather against you.  Dial suggested that, once such a person is seen for what they are, you then assume the role of a "grey rock", that is, be boring and uninteresting, giving the offender nothing to grab hold of about you.  Well, I gave it a thought and I think I came up with my "Number One" toxic person: Donald Trump.  I certainly would be a grey rock to him should the opportunity arise, but I doubt that the two of us will ever cross paths.  My strategy concerning this despicable, evil soul that my fellow Americans were foolish enough to elect is to follow Dial's final piece of advice: avoid the toxic person.  That's a bit of a challenge, since part of Trump's obvious strategy is to be in the news headlines each and every day, making provocative actions and statements that deliberately offend and frighten people.  Yet I would never wish harm for this individual, who I regard as an asset to Putin's Russia and the furthest thing possible from being a patriotic American...more a convicted felon and traitor who should be locked away in prison...   

Staying Positive Through Life's Complications

In the midst of a number of complicating interruptions to the intended flow of my life into retirement, I am still building a foundational structure on which to live out each day in a way that nurtures my competency, intellect, physical health and social relationships.  It does help for me no longer having to adhere to a 40-hour work week while being in a location under the authority and restrictions imposed by others, not to mention being freed from making the 17-mile round trip each day through often treacherous traffic.  My closest relationships, by far the most important of which is with Melissa, are supportive and want me to be strong, healthy and happy.  I think I'll try to satisfy them by being just that, whatever distractions happen to come my way.  And the recent prostate cancer diagnosis and my scheduled surgery this Thursday to remove said prostate is one of the major ones...

My Daughter Gets Married

Today my daughter Rebecca married her partner in Lakeland.  Melissa and I attended the ceremony, held there at Lake Parker.  Rebecca's spouse's family was also there, and we enjoyed their company, celebrating this important change for my daughter's life.  May their relationship bloom into something strong and enduring...I love them both...  

My Running and Walking Report for February 2025

For the first three weekends in February I participated in three races, speed-walking a 5K and the running the other two, one for 5K and the other for 10 miles.  My workouts were going well, that is, until February 19th when I suffered a bout of inflammation in both legs, especially in the calf area under each knee.  Two days later I had pretty much recovered, but to this day still have aches in the area and am not at 100%.  It feels a bit like arthritis, and my shoulder areas suffer some twinges as well...I had been doing push-ups to develop my upper body strength.  As far as races are concerned, it's over for a while not only because of that inflammation, but also because I am scheduled for prostate removal surgery (prostatectomy) on March 6th because of diagnosed cancer there.  I will need recovery time afterwards, and, besides, it's just going to keep getting warmer outside.  Later on in the spring I'd like to go back to trying a modest swimming routine mixed in with walking and a little running, but my more athletic efforts will be taking a back seat to surgery and recovery...

My Songs of the Month for February 2025

I didn't listen much to my music channels this past month, but I did hear some songs I liked more than others.  The preferred genre is Indie-Rock, and much of what I liked in January slid over into February.  My favorite song of the month was on January's list: Starburster by the Dublin, Ireland group Fontaines DC.  Number Two on the list was Besties by Black Country, New Road.  And the third favorite is January's song of the month for me, Everyone Out by DIIV...

Weekly Short Stories: 1999 Science Fiction, Part 5

As I continue to reflect on stories from 1999 I 'm reading from the Gardner Dozois anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Seventeenth Annual Collection, I find myself a little "unstuck in time"...as Kurt Vonnegut might put it.  For me growing up and into early adulthood, the year 1999 was a far-off future time, science fiction in itself. Not only did it figure in Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick's space exploration classic movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, but we even had in the early 1970s a syndicated sci-fi TV series called Space: 1999 that starred old Mission: Impossible stars Martin Landau and Barbara Bain.  This was long before Prince enshrined the year with his 1983 hit 1999.  But now the year 1999 is more than a quarter century into the receding past.  Anyway, let's take a look at a couple of those stories...

GREEN TEA by Richard Wadholm

A "hard" science fiction tale about revenge, I found the technical descriptions of spaceship hardware and arcane narratives about chemical/physical breakdowns of exotic, dangerous substances hard to follow as the story's narrator describes, as an obvious survivor, the heavy loss of life and destruction as a ship transporting dangerous cargo must scramble against all odds to avoid its own destruction...and possibly that of the star system it has entered.  I did make it all the way to the end, for which I'm very proud of myself.  This isn't a story you can rush through, and I felt the author went out of his way to make it a difficult read...

THE DRAGON OF PRIPYAT by Karl Schroeder 

The nuclear reaction meltdown at Chernobyl in 1986 is the basis of this tale, set twenty years later in the "future" 2006 (you know, our "past" 2006).  It seems that the supposedly secured site is emitting toxic radiation, a "release", and an investigator is sent there to, well, investigate.  Is a terrorist group behind the new danger?...I enjoyed reading about how the surrounding environment responded to the Chernobyl debacle over the years.  The author added the twist of virtual reality here as an alternative lifestyle...

Next week I continue looking at 1999 in science fiction...

Miss the Good Old "Boring" Days

I'm looking forward to attending my dear daughter Rebecca's wedding this coming Saturday...it will take place in Lakeland.  My wishes and prayers are with the two of them as they stake out their lives together.  I will always miss and grieve for my son Will, who passed away last summer.  My wife Melissa's sister is now a patient in the same hospital where I'll be undergoing my prostatectomy surgery on March 6th...we are likewise praying for her successful treatment and recovery from her afflictions.  Some folks get restless and discontent over what they perceive as their boring lives.  I, on the other hand...other than my daughter's marriage...would be very happy with a vast sea of relatively eventless days stretched out before me.  But that doesn't seem to be in the works anytime soon...

Latest Jigsaw Puzzle

 

Here's a pic of the jigsaw puzzle I just did over the past weekend.  It's one of four in a box of scenes by the artist Thomas Kinkade that I picked up at my nearby Wal-Mart. Every puzzle has its own challenges, and consequently puts me just enough outside my perceptual comfort zone to serve as a nice little exercise.  Now on to the next one...

Political, Media Manipulation Will Only Get Worse

A few weeks ago, while surfing through YouTube in their section devoted to running, I "ran" across a couple of Canadian middle-age brothers who decided to tackle distance running and triathlons in order to get themselves fit after undergoing some health scares.  They're really a couple of top-notch athletes, it turns out, and they have their own channel committed to their ongoing efforts and accomplishments.  These two are, however, a bit insufferable with their self-promotion and putdowns of those they don't feel measure up to their standards...I felt early on that they held themselves to be on a higher plane of existence than me.  That's okay, they have their thing and I mine...to each our own: I don't HAVE TO watch their videos.  I cannot say the same regarding our recycled president and his musky wingman.  It's clear that the convicted felon that my own country saw fit to return to office has, as a centerpiece of his strategy, the notion of keeping himself the focus of media attention EVERY DAY with some new outrage to say or someone to offend.  Sadly, I think he's on to something...America is hopelessly hooked on reality television and celebrities: the more off-the-wall they are, the better. Some folks think that all they have to do is outlast this president and then things will return to normal, but I think the change is permanent.  From now on future candidates, on both sides of the political divide, will apply the lessons in mass manipulation they're learning here to their respective campaigns. If you think it's bad now, wait 'til AI and quantum computing attain their full realization and seamlessly merge into our mass and social media, forever blurring the distinction between fact and fantasy. Hell, it's already happening.  At least those Canadian brothers are real (I think).  On the other hand, it seems to me that the American voter doesn't even care anymore what is real or not: they just care about how it all makes them feel...   

Strange Inflammatory, Painful Leg Episode This Past Wednesday

Late afternoon this past Wednesday (2/19/25) I was napping in my living room recliner.  Upon awakening, I found both of my legs painfully immobile just below the knees, and had difficulty walking around without the aid of a pole.  This continued throughout the evening...after a good night's sleep I was much more mobile, but still at a loss as to what happened.  I hadn't been running any hardy Wednesday than usual...if anything, a little lighter.  I was running in a different building, on a wooden floor...why would that matter, though?  It's Saturday now and my leg muscles have a sore...although not bad...feel to them and I have resumed light jogging in place around the house as before.  I wonder whether I might have picked up a virus somewhere that manifested itself in my legs...I am vaccinated for Influenza Type A.  Or maybe I became a little too dehydrated and the body reacted, I don't know.  I am drinking more hydration, though, and am guardedly optimistic that this sudden inflammatory episode was isolated and won't return.  As of this writing there is no pain, only a residual background soreness.  I'm leaning toward the dehydration explanation and am liberally drinking fluids...

Weekly Short Stories: 1999 Science Fiction, Part 4

We've arrived at another Wednesday, and as such it is time for me to comment on the latest science fiction short stories I've read as I continue to go through the past, year-by-year, using as a story reference the Gardner Dozois anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Seventeenth Annual Collection, this volume featuring picks from 1999...

DAPPLE: A HWARHATH HISTORICAL ROMANCE by Eleanor Arsnason

On a distant world is a (furry) human society where the gender roles are inverted to a degree, and homosexual behavior is the accepted norm with heterosexual unions are highly ritualized and generally considered undesirable.  In this setting a girl has her sights set on putting on plays for others, following in the tradition of visiting friends of her sea-faring family.  Only problem: putting on traveling shows is considered "men's" work...she has some barriers to overcome, as well as a few life-threatening adventures, as this interesting narrative progresses.  This story illustrates the often arbitrary way that societies (including ours) construct themselves with their traditions and taboos...

PEOPLE CAME FROM EARTH by Stephen Baxter

Here Baxter, a noted "hard" science fiction writer, lays out the parameters for a Moon colony of people, cut off from Earth after it foolishly destroys itself in high-tech warfare.  Due to nano-weapons that destroyed the metal used in high technology, the remaining lunar population, their bodies thin, light and fragile and susceptible to wasting disease, no longer has the metals used in their previous higher state of technology, forced now to revert to more primitive agriculture and engineering.  A lunar man's young nephew is enthralled with the papers and legacy of Leonardi da Vinci...their conversations, along the boy's rapidly deteriorating health and the colony's race against time to develop its technological base...form the basis for this sobering piece...

Next week: more from '99...

AI Moving Fast Over Us

I have lately been noticing on YouTube and Facebook that artificial intelligence, or AI, has exploded in growth with the number of posts and channels dramatically increasing.  What's more, not only the AI-generated text but also its video presentation are coming chillingly close to resembling actual known people's images and writings.  I wonder how the Internet we've grown used to will look in just, say, five years and whether it will be recognizable.  AI presents its own challenges, especially coupled with the development in quantum computing that stands to massively empower processing speed and memory.  What's real and what isn't...that looks to be the fundamental question ahead of us as we trudge forward into this brave new world.  I've already seen commercials where users are using AIs as confidants, seeking personal advice from them..."really"?  What's the future going to be like?  Maybe each of us will have our own AI accounts, and with special glasses and audio we can have anyone we want around us, down to our most stringent specifications...who needs all those icky real people?  In the Ron Howard-directed award-winning movie A Beautiful Mind, mathematical genius John Nash, played by Russell Crowe, hallucinated his own circle of friends and colleagues...but it was revealed that this was an element of his schizophrenia.  Are we entering a time of mass insanity...or have we already arrived?  What a time to be alive...

Effectively Steering Conversation a Personal Challenge

Over this past weekend I found myself in three different social situations in which I was more or less habituated to take a background role in conversation and let others dictate the flow and content.  Coming away from it all, I'm not sure if that's a good or bad thing.  On the plus side, this doesn't leave me overthinking later on about whether I misspoke about something and offended anyone.  But on the minus end, it all kind of left me bored since I know many of these good people out there have skills and interests, some of which they could help me develop if the communications were more directed and substantial (and interesting).  As I make my way into the wonderful world of retirement, I'm seeing more effective interactions with acquaintances and strangers as a kind of personal challenge.  And since there is no shortage of people out there, there should be plenty of opportunities to experiment with this conversational tactic or that.  But it's all pretty uncomfortable...I tend to be on the far reclusive end of "introvert".  On the other hand, enduring others going off endlessly with their boring rants and tedious talking points is uncomfortable as well...might as well get them talking about something I care about...

My Jigsaw Puzzle of the Golden Gate Bridge

 

Here's the final of the seven jigsaw puzzles I put together from the box depicting different notable American scenes I got last year...actually, it's the first one of the bunch I did.  The Golden Gate Bridge connecting San Francisco with Sausalito and northern California is another of those symbols of American engineering prowess.  I've never been there, but that climactic scene in the James Bond thriller A View to a Kill was impressive to watch.  This was the biggest of the puzzles at 1000 pieces, and that undifferentiated sky took up way too many puzzle pieces to be enjoyable.  Guess it's time to go get some more puzzles...

Ran Gainesville's Depot Parkrun 5K This Muggy Morning

This morning I drove out to Gainesville's Depot Park, just south of downtown, to participate in yet another of their Saturday morning free 5K Parkruns.  Sometimes I speed-walk the four laps around the pretty park there, but I usually run it like a race...that's what I did today.  It was 65 degrees and a stifling 97% humidity at 7:30 race time, though, and as is usually the case, I gave myself permission to just cover the distance if the muggy heat started to mess with me.  But all went well, weather-wise, and although the conditions were admittedly uncomfortable I found myself well-prepared to keep a reasonable pace going throughout, finishing at 27: 32.  There were a lot of people there this morning, including some little kids for whom this event was brand new and unfamiliar.  I wish them the best with their running futures, including figuring out that you don't sprint past other runners and then come to a grinding, sudden halt immediately in front of them, forcing folks like myself to take evasive action to avoid a collision.  That was a bit annoying, at least at the beginning, but in Parkruns you get quite a cross-section of the human population on the course, and even some canines...sometimes evasive action is necessary with these as well.  I'm glad I went there...click HERE to view today's results (when they're finally posted).  You can join in on the Parkrun experience by Googling their website and signing up (as said, for free).  They'll provide you barcodes that you can print out and take with you to the race for them to scan so that your finishing time can be posted with all the others. Parkrun began in England and has spread worldwide, growing here in the USA...

Happy Birthday, My Sweet Melissa

Today marks the fortieth time I get to spend with my dear wife Melissa on her birthday...1986 was the first, shortly after we met.  Yes, for most of us today marks the annual celebration of love known as Valentine's Day...we're into that as well.  Melissa, what a blessing you have been and are to me...let's keep it going with these birthday celebrations for several more decades!  I love you so much...

Recently Assembled Jigsaw Puzzle of Mount Rushmore

 

Mount Rushmore, near Rapid City, South Dakota, is one of the places I'd like to visit some day.  Situated in the state's Black Hills, the huge faces carved in granite depict four historically-significant US presidents: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln.  This National Memorial was sculpted, after US government authorization, by Gutzon Borglum, but the use of federal lands whose ownership is disputed by Indians has made the project, starting in 1927 and completed 14 years later, somewhat controversial.  My experiences with Mount Rushmore are tightly connected to the climactic scene in the great 1959 Alfred Hitchcock movie thriller North by Northwest, in which hero Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint flee there to escape the murderous bad guys, led by James Mason and Martin Landau.  The irony of it all is that the actual "Mount Rushmore" footage was done on models created for filming in Southern California!  Yes, I'd dig going over to South Dakota to check it out, as well as the nearby memorial to Crazy Horse that has been under construction since 1948 and still is far from completion.  Anyway, Mount Rushmore was the setting shown in one of my seven Americana jigsaw puzzles, pictured above...

Weekly Short Stories: 1999 Science Fiction, Part 3

This past week I only managed to read one short story in editor Gardner Dozois' anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Seventeenth Annual Collection, and which features his picks published in the year 1999.  Back then I was working at the Gainesville postal processing facility, sorting out mail on their flat-sorting machine while doing the graveyard shift.  That meant I was awake all night and could listen to late-night talk radio, most notably Art Bell's kooky, quirky Coast-to-Coast AM show that explored the paranormal, UFOs and conspiracy theories, to name a few topic categories.  But back to the Dozois anthology... 

GALACTIC NORTH by Alastair Reynolds

This is a tale of three people, very much in the future when humanity has not only spread out and settled the cosmos but has also mastered biology and medical science to the point that heads can be severed...and preserved, to be later reattached to the body.  Yes, it's pretty scary and gross, but the real horror to this true horror/science fiction story is the unintended consequence of the development of terraforming technology that is unleashed into the wild reaches of space, to develop on its own beyond anyone's control.  A woman is committed to protecting the thousands of "sleepers" on board her ship, but must land it on an asteroid as a ferocious, sadistic pirate seeks her cargo and forces her partner to betray her.  The rest of the story relates her very-long quest for revenge against both of them, and against the backdrop of a nameless doom destroying all known life in the galaxy.  Pretty heady stuff...normally I'd say that stories like this leave me cold, but somehow this time it all clicked together...

Next week: more from 1999...

Melissa and I Attend Our Second Candlelight Concert

Last December 17th Melissa and I went to downtown Gainesville to attend a Candlelight Concert at the Hippodrome Theater...click HERE to read the article I later wrote about our experiences then.  This evening we went back down there to the same place for yet another concert, this one a tribute to the Beatles.  The featured string quartet performed their renditions of several Beatles hits and is based in Jacksonville...I recognized most of the players from before.  I was seven years old when I heard my first Beatles song, I Want to Hold Your Hand, which the Fab Four, as the Beatles were often dubbed, performed on the Ed Sullivan Show in February 1964...our Candlelight Concert musicians performed this one as well.  They also went through several years and albums, doing Help!, Michelle, Eleanor Rigby, Here There and Everywhere, I Get By With a Little Help from My Friends, All You Need is Love, Penny Lane, Hey Jude, Lady Madonna, While My Guitar Gently Weeps, Blackbird, Come Together and Here Comes the Sun. The audience was very enthusiastic and appreciative of this show, as were Melissa and me.  They are quite the talented and inspired musicians, these four, and we look forward to another visit with a different theme.  The only drawback I saw was the tight, restricted parking available downtown...even the quartet commented on that...

About Yesterday's Super Bowl Contest

A few weeks ago at the start of the National Football League 2024 season playoffs, I listed the participating teams in the order of my liking.  For the American Conference I had Kansas City as my favorite and with the National it was my home state's Tampa Bay...with Philadelphia in second place.  So yesterday's Super Bowl matchup between the Chiefs and Eagles was pretty good as far I was concerned.  Yet although back then I liked KC more than Philly, something happened during the course of events that reversed that.  Former Seattle Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll is someone with an admittedly flawed past (see his tenure coaching USC), yet I was captured by his style and enthusiasm while coaching in the pros.  And he has just been hired as the new head coach of the Raiders, a team that I had grown to root against over the course of the decades.  Formerly based in Oakland, and for a few years in Los Angeles, they are now in Las Vegas and are big division rivals of Kansas City.  Beyond my geographical support for Florida teams, I tend to gravitate toward teams whose players and/or coaches earn my respect and admiration.  Already a fan of Pete's, that kind of diminished the Chiefs for me by comparison and elevated the Eagles.  So when Philadelphia pretty much demolished Kansas City in yesterday's Super Bowl held in New Orleans, that was quite all right with me.  I don't know how the Raiders will do next year...it'll be interesting to see how fast Carroll can turn them around from their dismal last-place season in '24.  As for the "who's who" celebrities attending the game, who cares: I'm guessing that most of them were there just to be seen and talked about, including He Who Must Not Be Named...

Just Finished Reading The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle

The Talent Code is a 2009 book by Daniel Coyle that seeks to derive truths about how people successfully develop talent.  Coyle works from the notion that talent, although often considered innate, must undergo a process in order to achieve mastery in any particular area.  He divides the elements of talent development into three parts: deep practice, ignition and master coaching, in the process supplying numerous (maybe too numerous) examples to make his points.   Coyle insists that the growth of myelin in our brains is specific to the things we learn to do, and deep practice contributes to that growth for the specific area.  One breaks a learning project down to chunks, or sections, assimilating each one through repeated failing to proficiency.  Ignition is the spark of motivation exploding into a passion.  And deep coaching involves imparting the appropriate information to the client/student's talent formation at the right time.  Throughout his presentation Coyle refers to special places that seem to produce an inordinate amount of overachievers, and seeks to explain why this is so.  After finishing the book, I had to ask myself what new information he had imparted to me.  Sadly, there wasn't much here...maybe you would get more from it, I don't know.  But with his idea of breaking things down to sustainable chunks, I definitely see that as an affirmation of what I already knew.  And yes, with that deep practice and ignition, I have experienced what some have termed the "flow" state when my progress in an area, suddenly takes off and seems almost effortless.  Do I recommend The Talent Code? Well, it can't hurt and I was able to check it out from my public library, so it didn't cost me anything either.  Not exactly a ringing endorsement, but sometimes a rereading can provide me a different angle to it all...  

Ran Florida Track Club's Micanopy Ten-Miler Race This Morning

I had long planned to run the 2025 version of the Florida Track Club's February event, the Micanopy 5/10 Miler...I picked the ten miles option, of course.  The day began a little roughly as I experienced a rare bout of insomnia last night and finally just decided to stay up after only about three-four hours sleep.  Then, when I was driving the fifteen miles south through Gainesville and on to Micanopy, I had to contend with some of the thickest fog I have ever experienced.  Still, thanks in part to my Waze app, I got there in plenty of time and handled my pre-race business in time.  The temperature at 8:00 race time was 58 with the pea-soup fog providing 100% humidity...it heated up a bit during the run.  There were 128 people in the race, a little over half doing my ten miles.  I decided beforehand that I would go nice and steady, running with my only walking breaks happening on steep hills.  And there were a few of those that I speed-walked up.  I noticed that the extra five-mile loop that we ten-mile racers went down was configured in the opposite direction from last year's race...later I found out they switched the direction every year.  I liked this year's direction (clockwise) more.  It seems like everything went according to plan, except that I had more energy left at the end and finished second in my age group with a time of 1 hour 36 minutes 50 seconds, more than two minutes faster than my previous personal best (last year) at this distance.  They handed out post-race, as awards, a cool-looking cap with the Florida Track Club logo on it...Melissa suggested I wear it on next week's Depot Parkrun.  And so ends, for the foreseeable future, my running/walking races longer than 5K.  You see, I'm having surgery early in March and it may be a few months before I feel I'll be ready to tackle runs like today's.  That's okay, I just feel grateful for the opportunity for that surgery.  And besides, you and I both know that during the spring and summer here in northern Florida you usually don't see many opportunities for long distance races.  You can view today's race results by clicking HERE...

Quote of the Week...from Bob Dylan

What's money? A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do.                                  ---Bob Dylan

I quote Bob Dylan here with a little hesitation because I lifted it off Facebook...maybe he really said it or maybe not, but I don't think it reflects unfairly on him if he didn't.  I like it, but with one caveat.  You might say to yourself, sure, Bob, you have all that money, so it's easy for you to downplay its importance.  But I would disagree.  Dylan's gone through both lack and wealth and as such can make a better assessment of money's worth.  My possible difference with his above quote stems from his "wants to do" conclusion.  If what you want to do is avoid discomfort and just live life on an exclusively hedonistic level without regard to your health or the welfare of others, I'd hardly call that being a success.  But if you know what you stand for and incorporate some personal responsibility and social accountability into that "wants to do" in a balanced way, then sure, I'm all on board, Dylan: sign me up...

My Jigsaw Puzzle of Hoover Dam

 

In the box of assorted jigsaw puzzles of Americana that I got a few weeks ago is one of Hoover Dam, the giant engineering project during the Great Depression years in the early-to-mid 1930's connecting the Herbert Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt administrations.  Bordering Nevada and Arizona, it takes the Colorado River and functions as flood control, irrigation and a source of hydroelectric power.  Many lives were lost during its construction, but it stands as a "can do" symbol of American know-how and potential.  I've never been to Hoover Dam...have you?  I'm guessing that most visitors have other places on their travel agenda as well, the Grand Canyon probably one of them.  Thanks to Wikipedia for the information about this dam...

Weekly Short Stories: 1999 Science Fiction, Part 2

Here's my second week of looking through the Gardner Dozois anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Seventeenth Annual Collection, presenting the editor's picks of the best short sci-fi to come out in the year 1999.  When 1999 began, the country was in the throes of a presidential impeachment as the Republican Party decided to score political points against the current Democratic president, Bill Clinton, after he was discovered to be lying about a consensual affair while in office.  In light of the current occupant of the White House and his own much more serious shenanigans, it's amazing how the level of partisan political divide in this country, as well as the standards of behavior expected of our leaders, has deteriorated.  But I'm reviewing stories, right?  Here's what I thought about the next two appearing in the book...

1016 TO 1 by James Patrick Kelly

Read "10 to the 16th to 1", this story has a distinct Stephen King feel to it...awesome! It's October 1962 and a boy has to come to grips way too early in his life with the politics of impending nuclear Armageddon after he encounters a strange man named "Counts", who seems to know all about the future.  What does this individual want, and which direction will history go if he fulfills his new-found "friend's" modest request regarding then-President Kennedy's handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis?  The story's ending should be sobering for all of us here in 2025...

WINEMASTER by Robert Reed

Many years ago the 1960's hit science fiction series The Outer Limits has an episode starring Robert Culp titled Demon with a Glass Hand.  The premise with Reed's tale here is similar, as in a rather dystopian future a whole segment of humanity has been miniaturized...and the authorities, after criminalizing their existence, are out to get them.  One individual, named Winemaster, is trying to protect them from the pursuing agent Blaine...it becomes a suspenseful battle of wits...

Next week: more from "party like it's" 1999... 

My Preferences with NFL Teams Over the Years

A few minutes ago I was watching the Fox Weather Channel, and the two announcers were taking a brief break from their meteorological meanderings to shoot the breeze, so to speak, about their loyalties to different NFL teams.  With them, there was that early support for a team that they grew up around.  But as adults living in other places and following certain players and coaches, their preferences over the years changed with their new situations.  That's me, too.  I grew up in the South Florida area, just a few miles north of Miami, and as such was a big Dolphins fan. Their early seventies' Super Bowl appearances (3) and wins (2)...not to mention that still-unmatched season of 1972...more than likely extended that loyalty for many decades beyond, even long after I had grown up and moved away from the area.  I still like to see them succeed, but feel they blew a golden opportunity for greatness a few years ago when they let go head coach Brian Flores.  And their current "star" quarterback Tua Tagovailoa, although admittedly talented, had established himself as an injury-prone, "fragile" athlete even back when he was taking hikes at the University of Alabama.  But the Fins coach Mike McDaniel...unlike Flores...has insisted on sticking with Tagovailoa, and, frankly, it's been painful watching Miami play, either with Tua in there or on the sidelines while his backup struggles.  No, of late I've tended to be more of a Tampa Bay Bucs fan if geography figures into the equation, although I've just never gotten myself attached to Jacksonville, which is much closer to Gainesville.  But I also now tend to root for certain players and coaches regardless of where they work.  One of these is Pete Carroll, who piloted his Seattle Seahawks to two Super Bowl appearances and one victory...he has an infectious, positive, exuberant sidelines attitude, totally into the game and his players' welfare.  Pete has just been hired as the Las Vegas Raiders new head coach...I guess now I'm a Raiders fan! Oh, and regarding the Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles, I think they're both pretty cool, too...

My Jigsaw Puzzle of Stature of Liberty with Manhattan Background

The above image is yet another jigsaw puzzle I've recently assembled, this one a view of the Statue of Liberty in the Hudson River with Lower Manhattan...highlighted by the New World Trade Center skyscraper in the background.  I've been to New York City only once, back in 2010 with Melissa and Rebecca, and that time was very special to us.  We focused on Manhattan with our visit, staying at the Marriott Marquis hotel on Times Square, touring the whole area and building wonderful memories of the place.  Of course, back then the World Trade Center site was closed off to the public, with construction of the new building just in its fledgling stages.  If you go back on this blog to April of 2010 you'll find a few articles and photos pertaining to that four-day stay.  Some time in the future I'd like to go back, but then again there are also other places I'm looking forward to seeing in person...

Happy Groundhog Day, If You Can Get Past It

Well, at least according to the media treatment I've seen, it looks like Groundhog Day is rapidly achieving a greater status of recognition as a holiday.  No doubt the Bill Murray comedy with the same name has contributed much of the enthusiasm, but that movie came out way back in 1993...something else must be generating it as well.  We have been experiencing some pretty nutty winter weather as of late...especially down south with all the snow...maybe folks are more interested in the weather patterns.  Then, maybe people have decided to actually believe that animals like groundhogs really can predict the weather...judging from the recent presidential election result, they seem to be more susceptible to all kinds of bullshit, no matter how ridiculous.  For me, the movie, with Murray's Phil Connors character having to live the same day over and over again with no end in sight, carries with it not only the promise of a queer kind of immortality, but also the security of knowing exactly what will happen next in life and being able to learn how to be the best in just about anything.  Well, I'm reasonably confident that when I wake up after going to bed tonight, it will be the next day, February the 3rd...no immortality guaranteed, at least in this fleshy body, but it's still a reset if I let it happen.  Each day a new beginning...that sounds like a good formula to me, good weather or bad...  

Speed-Walked the Depot Parkrun 5K in Gainesville This Morning

In Gainesville this morning, unlike for the previous two weekends, extreme weather was not a factor in my racing.  For today's Depot Parkrun 5K, held at that park a little ways south of downtown, the temperature was a pleasant 57 degrees at 7:30 race time although the humidity was a little bit heavy at 93%.  I decided to speed-walk the 3.1 miles, seeing that it had been a while since the last time and I do like the idea of walking fast instead of running on at least one 5K per month.  There were a lot of runners and walkers this morning...later on at 11 am there was another race in the area that drew several hundred entrants.  I enjoyed pushing myself on this walk, but as before it seems that I've hit a wall when it comes to making a breakthrough with my time.  I want to get my speed-walking best time below 38 minutes for a 5K, but today I crossed the finish line at 39:15.  I wonder whether the slightly slippery asphalt surface...due to earlier showers...had anything to do with slowing me down.  I enjoyed the event, though...click HERE to view the results.  Next week the Florida Track Club is staging their annual Micanopy 10-Mile run, and I've already signed up for it.  I'm hoping the weather remains reasonable for that race as well, but there's no telling what it will be like from week to week...

Quote of the Week...from Albert Einstein

We are slowed down sound and light waves, a walking bundle of frequencies turned into the cosmos.  We are souls dressed up in sacred biochemical garments and our bodies are the instruments through which our souls play their music.                                    ---Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein here sounds a bit like the late Carl Sagan, who once on his Cosmos TV series proclaimed that we were made of "star stuff".  Without referring to dogmatic religious ideology handed down from generation to generation and often enforced through state-sponsored coercion, I like to speculate from time to time on our fundamental natures and the relationship between our perceived subjective identities and the objective reality of the world around us.  I think Einstein pretty much put it down accurately, beyond the quote's poetic quality.  I think that those of us who experience the grief involved in surviving the loss of a loved one...and ultimately that is a fate for each of us who are "survivors"...have to come to grips with the real value and significance of that departed person's life as they lived out their life span.  Each of us has our own "end" as well, but until then may my soul sing songs of gratitude and love through my own biochemical garments...

My January 2025 Running, Walking and Swimming Report

On this next-to-last day of the month, I thought it was close enough to the end to discuss January regarding my running, walking and swimming.  Let's eliminate swimming up front: it didn't happen in January, primarily because of colder-than-usual weather.  With walking...at least speed-walking...I still practiced it at home but didn't do it in any of my races.  I'm considering speed-walking the Depot Parkrun 5K this coming Saturday morning, but that's in a new month.  Now with running, there's a lot to report.  On New Year's Day I ran my first officially timed mile since college in the fall of 1974 (I did a passable 5:25 then at age 18).  It was the Frank Shorter Mile, organized by the Florida Track Club, and I enjoyed the experience although I was much slower than decades ago at 8:25.  In mid-January the same group held the Mary Andrews Half-Marathon, which I completed under adversely cold weather conditions after it was delayed a day because of thunderstorms.  A week later I did the Newnan's Lake 15K in similarly freezing conditions.  The rest of January saw me finish four Depot Parkrun 5Ks, three of them all-out runs and one a walk with Melissa through the course.  At home I practiced running daily, and added some resistance training, regularly and incrementally doing push-ups and dead hangs.  In January my date for prostate removal surgery was set in early March, and I've been cleared to continue with my running and other athletic activities.  I already signed up to run the Micanopy Ten-Miler race on the 8th...it will be my third time with this event.  Otherwise, I plan to go to Depot Park and run or walk their Saturday morning 5K race.   I feel completely well and energetic, which as I've written before doesn't exactly mesh with my recent prostate cancer diagnosis.  Oh well, looking forward to new adventures, athletic or medical...a little travel at some point would be cool, too...

Weekly Short Stories: 1999 Science Fiction, Part 1

Today I begin reviewing stories from the year 1999 as they appeared in the Gardner Dozois anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Seventeenth Annual Collection.  I remember that year...besides Prince's 1983 anthem heralding its coming...as being full of uncertainty about the coming Y2K, that is the year 2000, and the feared shutdown of computer-based society that was supposed to descend on us after the calendar changed at midnight.  Of course, nothing came of that...I wonder, though, about this acceleration in the development and implementation of Artificial Intelligence and ask myself whether maybe folks weren't worrying about the wrong thing.  In any event, below is my discussion of the one story I've being reading for the past week. Once again, it's a novella: Dozois sure loved "long" short stories...

THE WEDDING ALBUM by David Marusek

The anthology's editor, in his preface to this tale, referred back to an earlier story by Marusek titled We Were Out of Our Minds with Joy.  Both of them take place in the not-too-distant future, when biological and digital advances have brought into question the meaning of what it means to be alive and possess identity.  Told from the shifting perspectives of "sims", that is animated, life-size copies of real people that can freely be altered or even deleted at the "real" owners' discretion, the author seems to be forwarding the notion that artificially-constructed intelligence deserves some recognition for its own rights and interests.  In a world being overtaken in the 2020's by rapidly accelerating advances in AI, this to me portends something likewise that may be on our horizon.  That said, the story was hard for me to follow as the narrative had a tendency to confuse what is real with what isn't...

Next week I'm forging ahead with more stories from 1999 (hope they're easier to follow)...

My Songs of the Month for January 2025

Since I now have on my Amazon account unfettered access to music, I've decided to make more of an effort to keep up with the current songs out there.  Not any kind of music though: I'm partial to indie/alternative rock.  They have a channel called Indie-Rock, so in the past few days I've checked out what's coming out.  Back in the early 1970's, when I was in my mid-to-late teens, I used to decide my own personal "song of the month" according to my likes...I'm thinking of resuming that.  Let's see, what are my top songs of January 2025?

1 Everyone Out...by DIIV (pronounced "dive")

2 The Narcissist...by Blur

3 Starburster...by Fontaines DC

4 Zero Sum...by the Smile

All of the above are in the indie-alternative-rock genre of popular music...you can listen to them/watch their videos on YouTube, too.  There's another song I've heard from time to time that I like, but don't know how to find out who did it or its title...maybe it'll resurface sometime...