Excessive Smiling: An American Pecularity

Back when I was twelve and in the seventh grade in junior high school, I had an assigned afternoon slot on my schedule for math study lab, which I shared with a small number of classmates.  One of these, Randy, was a bit of a smart-ass snobby extrovert who would fit into the general depiction of an "alpha male".  He was a stout believer in grinning, and seemed to have a problem about me not sharing his outlook, calling me "Smiley" in sarcasm.  The idea was to make me feel bad and inferior because I wasn't constantly beaming like him (and other students): I just shook it off with the best of humor that I could muster.  In truth, though, it's this insistence in American culture for people to always be smiling with their teeth on grand display that the rest of the world sees as peculiar and worth criticizing.  Most folks, it turns out, are like me in that they are much more hesitant to smile, using that expression more in alignment with actual feelings and tending to be more close-mouthed with it.  Here, though, it's seen as a sign of social confidence and strength and emphasized much more.  I recently saw a YouTube posting in Russian where the host delved into this curious American phenomenon: it was a revelation to me.  So all these years I was the normal dude...should have known.  I know when I do those weekly Depot Parkruns, there's always a photographer present who gets shots of the participants during the event and then posts them within a day or two on Facebook.  Most everyone is grinning from ear to ear at the camera while I usually appear as deep in a frown even though I'm feeling quite happy...that's just me, and I'm guessing that's how the larger part of humanity does it as well...

Scheffler Wins First '25 Golf Tournament with Outstanding Score

It looks as if professional golfer Scottie Scheffler is back on track with his game, after having to recover from a hand injury late last year following a spectacular season that saw him win several tournaments and even the Olympic gold medal.  He shot a mind-numbing 31 under par in the CJ Cup Byron Nelson Classic, held in McKinney, Texas, a few miles from Scheffler's home town of Dallas, winning by eight strokes.  I can see from watching some of the action there this week that weather plays an enormous role in how the golfers play...apparently those treacherous winds I've witnessed in previous tournaments were much tamer with this one.  Scheffler seemed to have his game together in all of its aspects...good for him!  Of course, other than fellow Texan Jordan Spieth and a handful of other notables, there was a general lack of big names entered in this tournament...I wonder how Rory McIlroy or Justin Thomas would have done here.  Well, I guess it's on to the next week, wherever they happen to be playing...

Watched Today's Kentucky Derby, Hype and All

Earlier today I watched...as has generally been my pattern...the drawn-out, hyped coverage of this year's version of the Kentucky Derby, the first of the Triple Crown of American three-year-old thoroughbred horse racing.  Taking place at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Kentucky, it is full of tradition with all the flowers, ornate clothes and hats...and of course all that Kentucky booze.  Before the race, Journalism was the listed betting favorite, and different analysts and celebrities weighed in on which horse they picked to win the race, composed of twenty horse/jockey combos crammed onto a slick, muddy track on this rainy day.  As for me, a few days ago I picked Sovereignty out of the lineup because I liked the name and the horse wasn't an extreme long shot.  I also looked to see what trainer Bob Baffert had entered in the race...I'm something of a fan of his and was dismayed at his suspension for the past few years for a violation in an earlier race.  The only horse of his was Citizen Bull, so I kept an eye on that one.  The race itself went well, although everyone in it was thoroughly muddied at the end.  As it turned out, Baffert's entry, drawing the undesired pole position, started out strong in the lead but faded to finished 15th.  And Journalism and Sovereignty, training pals from their horse farm in nearby (to me) Ocala, fought it out for the win at the very end, with "my" horse pulling away.  It was a satisfying race to watch and, you know, I didn't need to wager a single dime on it in order to enjoy it all.  Now on to the second jewel in the Triple Crown, Baltimore's Preakness at Pimlico, in a couple of weeks.  Usually the Kentucky Derby winner runs in the Preakness, but that isn't always the case as the trainer has to ascertain the horse's condition... 

Ran This Morning's Depot Parkrun 5K in Gainesville

This morning I got up and, unlike last Saturday when I felt a twinge of pain behind my left leg, got ready to run the Depot Parkrun 5K for the first time since before my prostatectomy surgery on March 6th...a little more than eight weeks ago.  The temperature and humidity for this early May event in northern Florida was typically unpleasant at 68 degrees and 89% mugginess.  But I've been through them before and wanted to return to the old routine, confident that I could cover the 3.1 mile course after some successful training outings around my own neighborhood.  The theme for today's run (or walk, if that suits your fancy) was "may the force fourth be with you", except of course it was May the Third...oh well.  There were quite a few people there today at the park...I was surprised to get a close parking spot after leaving home a little later than expected.  On my run today I resolved to get into my established "groove", which I did in short order.  I was frankly surprised to see that I was running at a pretty solid pace, and at the end...in spite of the unpleasantness from that high humidity...had no problem finishing at 28:19.  That's a very encouraging result.  No pain, no energy drain, not even excess sweating.  As for next week, maybe I'll do the Parkrun, maybe not.  If I do it, maybe it'll be a run, maybe a walk...or maybe some overdue volunteering.  You can view today's results by clicking HERE...

Language Acquisition Through Conversation: I'm Working On It

Here in Gainesville...and in many other locations, I hear...is an informal group called Language Exchange Party.  They meet the first and third Fridays of the month at 7 PM, at a restaurant that borders on Depot Park, the place I do my (more or less) weekly runs and walks.  I've known of them ever since the start of the year as I was looking for some venue in which to practice the foreign languages I'm studying, but had to first deal with my own medical issue.  I was thinking about going there this evening but decided to pass on it, college graduation going on and all...we'll see how it goes a couple of weeks from now.  Their group is free and, like I said, informal.  They say that, upon entering the place, you select stickers representing both your best languages and those you are pursuing, enabling everybody to sort through the crowd to find suitable conversation partners.  I would don stickers representing English, Russian, Spanish and Chinese, preparing myself to spend much of the time with my first language as I converse with others learning it.  I have some strategies with Russian, Spanish and Chinese for engaging in conversation as well, both relating to how children pick up their first language.  One is to use stream-of-consciousness speaking, casually connecting words and phrases that at least approximate the meaning of what I'm trying to convey without obsessing on "perfect" grammar or word selection.  Another is to copy my brilliant niece Melanie who, when she was just 20 months old, would go around everywhere and point to just about anything that captured her attention, loudly and clearly naming it...that vacation trip in June, 1981 was unforgettable.  With the latter, I think adults who are studying new languages tend to lag behind with naming things and probably focus too much on just grammar and general vocabulary and phrases.  In any event, I plan to try out my "experiments" in language acquisition some time starting in May: stay tuned...

My April 2025 Running and Walking Report

As I continue to recover from my prostatectomy surgery on March 6, the recommended six-week post-op delay before I could begin running passed in mid April, and I consequently began to reintroduce running into my workouts.  Before that I was walking a lot, and resumed my participation in the weekly Saturday morning Depot Parkrun 5K, walking on April 5 and 12.  On the 19th I mixed the 3.1-mile walk with running, with encouraging results.  My recovery from the surgery has three facets to it.  One, the healing of the necessary surgical wounds involved in the robotic laparoscopic removal of my seriously malignant prostate.  Two, my body's ability to recover functions lost with said prostate's removal, chiefly urinary continence.  And three, the future (starting in may-May) periodic blood tests to ascertain whether the cancer, diagnosed as localized within the prostate, was completely removed or whether I need further treatment.  The healing seems to have gone very well and the bodily functions, mainly improving, are still a work in progress, with me cautiously optimistic.  And those future checkups and potential treatments are simply going to be an aspect of my life from now on...better to just get used to them.  As for my workouts in April, I have been employing my personally-designed  3.3-mile course in my own residential neighborhood here in far-northern Gainesville to great success, either speed-walking the distance or mixing it up with running.  Regarding May, in a couple of days on the 3rd I plan to fully run the Depot Parkrun and then continue consistently trying to make it to that weekly event, running some of them and walking others.  It's heating up here in northern Florida and I'm taking this into account by keeping my training reasonable and my distances relatively short.  So far, so good.  I'm also checking into whether to introduce sprinting into my running routine...

Weekly Short Stories: 1999 Science Fiction, Part 12

Sometimes the story I'm reading is a little lengthier than usual, and sometimes I have different demands on my attention over the course of the week: I think both may have been at play here as I have just one 1999 tale to discuss below.  It appears in the Gardner Dozois anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Seventeenth Annual Collection.  The entry's title certainly got my attention...

PHALLICIDE by Charles Sheffield

The setting here is Utah in more or less the present era.  A young woman who appears to be something of a scientific genius is performing some kind of advanced research at a private facility in a hush-hush project.  Then she realizes she has just lost a week of time for which she cannot account...she was supposed to be visiting her family.  Then her "handler", a high official in a renegade offshoot of the Mormon church...renegade because it still illegally practices polygymy and early teenage marriage...interrogates her and she recovers the lost memory.  The project is centered around coming up with effective drugs to enable the church elders to maintain their sexual potency in far advanced age.  But our scientist has had enough of all this, having experienced for herself the worst of this kind of child abuse.  And then...well, read that title and then read on to the story's end.  And that ending: what exactly was she dreaming up in her head that made her smile?

Next week: more from 1999...  

Finally Went Down to the Friends of Library Book Sale for April

On this overheated, muggy late-April day, I decided to get on down to Main Street here in Gainesville to attend yet another Friends of the Library book sale.  They're held each April and October, at least in non-pandemic years, but I was considering skipping this one, with today being their next-to-last day of the sale.  Around noon when I got there, it was pretty crowded but at least there wasn't a long line in order to get in like two or three days ago.  I focused on the foreign language books, and they had an unusually wide selection of material.  I settled on one item to purchase, a Japanese-English idioms dictionary...complete with transliteration and sentence examples...for just one dollar.  It's something I can just keep by my side at the recliner and look at from time to time.  I was thinking about looking at their jigsaw puzzle selections, too, but they would have made me place my book out on a table where anyone could have walked away with it...so I demurred and went on home.  Besides, I have plenty of puzzles at home to do...

My Top Favorite Songs In April 2025

Back at the start of the year I wrote that it might be fun to revisit an old habit of mine from the early 1970's, which was to reflect on each of the calendar months at their close and select a "song of the month".  For example, 52 years ago in April of 1973, it was Stealers Wheel and the Gerry Rafferty-led band's hit single Stuck in the Middle With You.  This April is almost past, and I've picked a song for it as well: Nothing I Need by Lord Huron.  Maybe it got some radio play, maybe not: since I generally don't listen to the radio for my music anymore, I wouldn't know.  All I do know is that it is in the current rotation on Amazon Prime Music on their Fresh Indie channel.  Another song, April's runner-up for me, is Before You I Just Forget by Fontaines DC.  And for #3, I like Zero Sum by The Smile.  I still consider Fontaine DC's Starburster as my "song of the year" so far, but there are still many months to go.  I'm also think of researching recent album releases of different acts I like and see if I can't find some deep tracks on them.  As for Nothing I Need, it sounds more like it belongs back in the seventies when there was a lot crossover between country and pop, with more than a few hits combining the two. This song fits the bill in that regard as it reminds me a little of some of Kenny Rogers' early tracks...

Packaged Evening News Like Box Lunches

It's hard for me to take the televised news seriously anymore, beyond the barest of facts they present before being mercilessly spun out of recognition by people with no more qualification to do so than you or me.  In the midst of all the hyper-serious stuff being presented, it gets really bizarre when the announcer keeps teasing the viewing audience to stick around to the end of the show for a preview of the network's special upcoming show.  That happened recently on ABC Evening News with David Muir, as Muir kept referring, with a twinkle in his eyes, to the upcoming National Football League draft that would immediately follow the broadcast. As if this were such a special treat that went beyond my wildest expectations.  Please. I went to a church function last Saturday that offered a lunch break on the premises, complete with box lunches.  They were very thorough and meticulous with the various nutritional components.  There was a nice little chicken salad wrap, a little cup of seasoned pasta, a little fresh fruit cup...and each packaged meal was complete with a brownie for dessert. Because, after all, we just have to have everything at least a little bit sugar-coated, right?  Somehow, though, I think I'd rather the news be free of that embellishment.  I really don't need the distraction of a football draft, or even the human interest regular segment...ABC has its "America Strong" "good news" to close out its news broadcast.  It's as if we've sat at the table, eaten our salads and nutrition like good little girls and boys, and now need our sweet dessert reward...all carefully designed and packaged in a little box. I do like those prepared lunches, though.  What was it that Mary Poppins said?  Oh yes, a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.  I believe she sang that to little children, which seems to be the way that the news media treat us...

Skipped Run This Morning, Attended Church Function

Normally, Saturday morning is the time for me to drive down to Depot Park, just south of downtown Gainesville, to participate in their weekly free Parkrun 5K.  Yesterday evening, though...following the viewing of the movie Conclave...I felt a twinge of slight pain in my leg behind the knee.  Not wanting to take a chance on aggravating a possible injury, I decided to skip the event.  No problem...I slept in and got some extra needed sleep: I can take it easier on the exercise and see how it goes.  Later today, Melissa and I went to the nearby United Methodist Church to attend a conference headed by Wesleyan scholar Paul Chilcote.  It was well-done and I felt a spirit of love and camaraderie there.  I did notice, though, a personal aversion to interacting directly with others.  It wasn't a matter of disliking anyone for any reason, but rather a physical reaction I experienced, as if I were somehow allergic to them.  Oh, one thing that kind of rubbed me wrong was Chilcote claiming at the end that he was an introvert...that dude apparently hasn't a clue about what the word really means.  Still, his message was welcome although I felt he invested too much time and emphasis on the official denomination and its founders.  Then again, I guess that contributed to how he got to rise like he did in stature within the organization.  That's fine: he's a good guy and I wish him well...

Watched the Movie Conclave Tonight

Since Melissa and I are Amazon Prime subscribers, we had the opportunity to watch the suddenly-timely movie Conclave on their channel.  I have to admit to being a bit resistant to sitting there through this fictional account of the selection of a new Bishop of Rome, i.e. the Pope, after the death of the incumbent pontiff.  But I thought, why not, especially after reading up on it that it received high critical reviews and starred one of my favorite current actors, Ralph Fiennes.  Fiennes plays Cardinal Lawrence, tasked as the manager of the Conclave.  The College of Cardinals, all with their red beanies, are shut off in a well-staffed and well-supplied building in the Vatican, and have to take repeated ballots to finally come up with their selection for the new leader of the Roman Catholic Church.  Since Pope Francis just passed away recently, this Conclave process is coming up soon, at the beginning of May.  The deliberations and negotiations behind doors will last as long as it takes until someone is finally elected.  As for the movie itself, I found sticking through it all rather tedious, with men representing different predictable factions vying for an edge against each other.  Scandal, tenuous alliances, megalomania and betrayal abound here...these "holy men" would fit in quite well with the Nazgul of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings for their coveting of power.  I'm not Catholic and I don't harbor any delusions that their situation is any worse than anyone else's...the urge to lord oneself over others is a human foible, largely male, as I have suffered from this desire on the part of would-be alpha-male "leaders" to make me subservient to them, going all the way back to childhood and continuing through school, work and even into old-age retirement.  I don't boss others around, nor do I want to: if you see yourself as my leader, then you ARE deluded and need to stay away.  Conclave's depiction of humans in conflict...albeit peaceful conflict...may enhance a story's dramatic appeal to many, but it left me flat and drained.  Who cares who they finally picked, and sadly, who cares in the real world how "our" Cardinals will  decide...

Just Finished Reading Wish You Were Here by Rita Mae Brown

A few days ago I decided to head down to my local public library to see about possibly replacing my old worn out library card.  After they told me it could still scan, I instead just went browsing and checked out a couple of books, one a mystery novel and the other science fiction.  I managed to select...from what was offered...the very first in a long series of books by Rita Mae Brown...with partial credit given to her cat Sneaky Pie Brown...called the Mrs. Murphy Mysteries.  Wish You Were Here introduces protagonist Mary Minor Haristeen, or more simply "Harry", who lives in the western Virgina town of Crozet with her cat Mrs. Murphy and corgi dog Tee Tucker.  This inaugural mystery centers around brutal murders of townspeople, preceded by the victims receiving in the mail cryptic postcards depicting gravestones with the phrase "Wish You Were Here" on the flip side.  Harry, who manages the local post office, is in the perfect location to see this unfold as the cards begin to arrive.  But she's not the only sleuth around. Mrs. Murphy and Tucker, who know everything and everyone around and who can talk fluently with each other and their other animal friends, are the main detectives: they just have trouble getting their ideas across to the often dense humans.  It's a funny book, and I appreciated how it featured a list of characters that I repeatedly referred back to as I read along.  Wish You Were Here is light, escapist reading (284 pages paperback) for folks who have an affinity (as I do) for cats and dogs. It first came out in 1990, and some twenty-odd other Mrs. Murphy novels have followed...I'm ready to get started on Book Two.  But first I think I'll tackle that sci-fi novel I also checked out...

Weekly Short Stories: 1999 Science Fiction, Part 11

Today I discuss two well-written stories from 1999 that appear in the Gardner Dozois anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Seventeenth Annual Collection.  I always like to see Robert Silverberg's presence in these anthologies, and Paul J. McAuley likewise contributed a thought-provoking entry.  Here's my take on them...

A HERO OF THE EMPIRE by Robert Silverberg

Close to novella-length, this is an alternative history tale that speculates on how history may have progressed had the Western Roman Empire remained as a powerful entity into the seventh-century, AD.  A member of the Emperor Justinian's court has been sent, ostensibly in disgrace but in reality to be a spy, to the stark desert land of Arabia where he not only befriends the Eastern Empire's representative there, but also meets up with a local charismatic fanatic who simultaneously enthralls and scares him with his convictions.  I wonder, given the violent touchiness certain world religions have toward those who they feel are taking liberties with their ideology, if Silverberg's 1999 story might have had a different fate were it submitted for publishing following 9/11 only a couple of years later.  Not that it contains anything offensive, but that ending might have been just a bit too unsettling to an intolerantly true believer...

HOW WE LOST THE MOON, A TRUE STORY BY FRANK W. ALLEN by Paul J. McAuley

Here's a truly "hard" science fiction story, that is, one with scientific viability playing a key role in its plot and outcome.  Here the reader gets a crash course...without the advanced mathematics...on black holes and the degree of threat that they might pose if close to Earth.  "Frank W. Allen" in the title is apparently the first-person fictional character relating the events that, in a near-future scenario, indeed determine the fate of our moon.  Along with his physicist colleague, working on the moon to fix problems at various research sites, the two arrive at a somber conclusion after an accident at a base on the Far Side.  You might gather from this that Earth and its life would be in peril...yet astonishingly, this doesn't seem to be the case.  An intriguing story that makes me wonder whether something like this could actually occur...

Next week I continue looking at the year 1999 in short science fiction...

Happy Earth Day...If Your "Truth" Allows It

So today is officially Earth Day...are we still interested in it?  After all, it's only the one planet we know that can sustain life in our universe.  But then again, that pesky former vice-president Al Gore did come out, a little more than a couple of decades ago, with his An Inconvenient Truth book that presented the widely-held view among climatologists that the world is warming at an alarming rate, due to man-made forces.  Ever since then, the issue has been divided on political lines with the Democrats generally supporting measures to counteract climate change and the Republicans in a "convenient" state of denial as they go full speed ahead with fossil fuels.  I remember back in April 1970 when another Republican, president Richard Nixon, was there at the inauguration of Earth Day.  In spite of his flaws, this was a president who understood the fragility of our home planet and supported environmental regulation.  It's sad to see much of this fall by the wayside as people nowadays choose their own "truths" and condemn the "other side" as enemies...

Saw Physical Therapist Again Today

Today I went on my appointment to see the physical therapist assigned me regarding my recovery from prostatectomy surgery on March 6th.  Although it has indeed been more than six weeks since that time and the general guidelines for resuming running allow for it after that interval, my therapist seems a bit more cautious about it, handing me a paper with some preconditions for returning to running that, frankly, I find a little unreasonable.  Oh well, I'm the one who has to make the decisions about that, and I think I'm being cautious enough.  In any event, I have four new exercises to work on daily, and then next month I'll have a follow-up p.t. appointment.  My physical therapist is also a runner, she does marathons, and is recovering from a leg injury probably caused by overtraining...I have to take this into consideration when taking her advice.  Some of the paper's criteria about running, interestingly, don't seem to matter when discussing simple walking.  Being someone whose sensibilities about health indicate that between active and sedentary, the former is usually the best road taken, and taking into account that I won't be doing any races anyway that are longer than 5K until October at the earliest because of the hot spring and summer here in northern Florida, I'm inclined to stick to what I've been doing.  Which is cautiously incrementally challenging my body...alternating with resting it well...as I continue to heal...

Easter Celebrated with Family

I hope all of you who celebrate Easter have enjoyed this holiday today.  You have to be something of an astronomer to determine, on your own, on which date this honoring of Jesus' resurrection falls within each calendar year.  The formula is: Easter (as celebrated in the West, not in the Eastern Orthodox churches) lies on the first Sunday following the first full moon following the first day of spring...for some reason it goes that way, maybe you can enlighten me on why.  Melissa and I spent it at home, with various folks in our family stopping by to enjoy lunch with us...what a blessing.  Later on in the day I watched the conclusion of the ongoing PGA golf tournament, the Heritage Classic held in Hilton Head, South Carolina.  Justin Thomas held on in sudden death to win his first tourney in some years...good for him, I guess.  I'm not a golfer...the irony is that were I one, I probably wouldn't have any interest in rooting for one over another in these tournaments.  After all, I'm a runner and I absolutely could not care less about the premier runners in the world or this country...or even in my own home town of Gainesville, for that matter.  That's another thing that maybe you can enlighten me on why...  

Just Did Gainesville's Depot Parkrun 5K This Morning

It's been a little more than six weeks following my surgery, and going by their guidelines about when I can resume running, I decided for today's Depot Parkrun 5K...held weekly at that park just south of downtown Gainesville...to mix in some running with the speed-walking I had been doing for the previous three weeks.  So, for the first three (of four) laps, I would walk the front side and run the back side.  On the last lap I ran most of it...finishing with a hybrid walk/run mix time of 34:51.  It was obviously more tiring to add in the running, but at this writing it's a little more than two hours since my finish and I feel fine...no pain or soreness.  Melissa went with me today...always encouraging...and she gamely walked half the event: keep it up, Sweetheart! It was a reasonable 60 degrees at 7:30 am race time...the humidity was a muggy 94%. You can view today's results by clicking HERE.  Depot Parkrun is just one of the Parkrun organization's hundreds of events held worldwide.  It's free, and you register online to receive a printable barcode that you take to be scanned after the race...then your results are posted online.  It's been a good habit for me for the past few years, especially regarding my recovery from my two surgeries.  

Chicken Family Jigsaw Puzzle

 

I just finished another jigsaw puzzle.  This one, a 300-piece depiction of a chicken family complete with rooster, hens and chicks, is a painting by Linda Picken titled "Farm Friends"...she has her own country property out west with lots of different animals on it.  I picked it up a few days ago at a chain crafts store on Newberry Road here in Gainesville.  I liked the combination of all the different colors and shapes in her picture...as well as the bigger individual pieces...

Six Weeks Now After Surgery

With today it is six weeks since I was operated on (six hours duration) to remove my cancerous prostate.  In spite of that and staying overnight in the hospital, I was never officially admitted there and was released the following day around noon as an outpatient.  That I didn't stay longer, though, was okay with me as I don't entirely relish hospital stays...my guess is that you probably don't, either. My progress after the surgery, beginning with an 11-day cathetorization of my bladder and a degree of pain and difficulty with sleep, has continued to the present day, with the predicted incontinence gradually lightening up...although I always had a substantial degree of control over my bladder from the moment the despised catheter was finally removed.  Aside from another "predicted" issue that may or may not be resolved during the next few months of healing, the only thing now concerning me with this unwanted medical episode in my life is next month's PSA (protein-specific antigen) blood test to determine the probability (or improbability) that the cancer had remained on a microscopic level in my body.  My urologist/surgeon expressed to me his confidence that there is a 65% chance that I was cleared of it, but I still have a month before I find out.  Regardless, my provider seems to have it all worked out with future treatment (or lack thereof), whatever the test results reveal.  In the meantime, life goes on and I intend to live it to the fullest...

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...