Factors in Choosing the President

The new President that we, as a collective people in America, will be choosing this November, is going to have to make many crucial decisions regarding our lives and the place of our country within the world. Many problems will crop up that demand an appropriate mixture of judgment, action, restraint, and balance. Where the President stands philosophically will determine his or her actions to a large extent. And there are two broad areas in which I see the potential Presidents differing.

One area is where to achieve a balance between the public good and private interests. Issues such as undocumented immigration, energy conservation and independence, and problems with our health care and insurance system are examples that a future President will need to come down on one side of the public/private dichotomy or the other. The other area is how a President should react to events in the world that either directly bear on American security and economic interests, or indirectly affect us through disasters, wars, or human rights issues arising elsewhere. What is the appropriate balance between projecting a forceful, imposing image of U.S. military might and projecting the image of America as the world's hope for benevolent, peaceful change through diplomacy and trade? If a foreign government behaves in a provocative manner against the United States, how will the new President react?

Part of what will determine the new President's decisions will be based on the aforementioned philosophical points. And it's not just a conservative vs. liberal question. On illegal immigration and foreign policy, conservatives favor a big government approach, while liberals favor more state intervention in issues like health care, energy, and the environment. But, of course, the candidates' philosophical take on the issues is not the only factor in affecting the next President's decisions. It will also be the quality and demeanor of that individual's personality, as well as that of his or her advisers. And the ability to clearly convey his or her vision of where the nation needs to go to the American people is also crucial.

So there you have it: the skeleton of how one should evaluate prospective Presidents. Not by whose aide said what about a rival candidate. Not by how much money a candidate raised. Not by whether the candidate has been winning "red","blue", large, or small states in the primaries and caucuses. Not by the gender, age, perceived race, religion, or political pedigree of the candidate. Not by what the candidate's spouse said. Not by the candidate's middle or married name. And not by whether one candidate seems to be more likely to win. The office of President is too powerful and the stakes are too high to vote for irrelevant reasons. But vote we shall, for better or for worse!

Favorite Songs of 1983

The rise of music videos dominated my take on popular music from back in 1983, with most of my listening taking place in front of a TV set. The biggest act of that year, Michael Jackson (from his Thriller album), came out with songs I liked in Billy Jean, Beat It, and PYT (Pretty Young Thing). Also, the final album of the Police, Synchronicity, produced tracks like King of Pain (not on video) and Synchronicity II (one of my favorite Police songs). Robert Plant showed a slower, mellower side as a solo artist with Big Log and In the Mood. Awful accompanying video notwithstanding, Pat Benatar's Love is a Battlefield was her best, in my opinion. And speaking of what love is, my all-time favorite of the Eurythmics, Love is a Stranger, had a great video to go with it. The Moody Blues slipped into the mix almost unnoticed an upbeat release titled Sitting at the Wheel. Neil Young paid homage to rock n' roll's doo-wop era with his funny Wonderin'. Wall of Voodoo's Mexican Radio was enhanced by the screaming-funny video. Speaking of funny, Men at Work's Be Good Johnny may have been the funniest, while their more sober It's a Mistake had a catchy beat to it. Eddie Grant and Donna Summer imparted a Caribbean flavor to the pop music scene with Electric Avenue and Unconditional Love, respectively. The Human League's inspiring Keep Feeling Fascination (the only song of theirs I liked) was a 1983 product. Dance-wise, the Kinks had Come Dancing while Men Without Hats had The Safety Dance. Kid Creole and the Coconuts had their Male Curiosity, a (very) minor hit. Our House, by Madness, completed the comic impression that this year was making in music. Perhaps the most sarcastic song in the history of music came out in 1983: Jackson Browne's masterpiece Lawyers in Love. Styx produced a veiled protest against Japan's takeover of the technology of automation with their cryptic Mr. Roboto. Electric Light Orchestra fell flat (but not with me) with their Secret Messages. The video was a cute takeoff on old pulp sci-fi/fantasy serials. Paul McCartney's So Bad was an uncommonly good song (and video, with Ringo Starr drumming). I saw the video for Invisible Sun by the Police during 1983 and fell in love with the song. The same was true for Donald Fagen's New Frontier. Pete Townshend had two earlier, very good songs of his publicized in '83 via videos: Rough Boy and Face Dances Pt.2. Elton John made one of his many comebacks with his defiant I'm Still Standing. Patrick Simmons, from the Doobie Brothers, had a minor hit that I liked: So Wrong. INXS's The One Thing was my #3 favorite song from 1983, coming out early in the year. The Fixx, with a generally pacifist/philosophical theme to their music, had several songs exposed through videos. My #2 favorite song for '83 was their Saved By Zero. I also liked their One Thing Leads to Another. And my top favorite tune from 1983 is from the Scottish band Big Country for their loud, shouting, positive song (with a guitar-made bagpipe sound) In a Big Country.

Piano on the Eights: 3/12

These past eight weeks in my piano-learning odyssey were highlighted by a recital on February 10 that I played at. I was one of twenty-five students, about a quarter of us adults and all of us students of the same teacher. I played an excerpt titled Melody in F by Rubinstein. I prepared a lot for it in the days preceding the recital, and when it was time for me to go up and play in front of the audience, it seemed as if someone else was playing the piece, with me in the background! So, the recital went off pretty well for me. My son, who is a much better pianist than me, also played at the recital.

I continued practicing as usual, and am still feeling as if I am not putting in the needed time and effort to reach my full potential. I practiced on excerpts from Borodin's Polovetzian Dances, Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, and Joplin's The Entertainer, among others. I have begun to focus more on the "back" part of the keyboard where the black keys are. I believe that treating this section as the "starting point" for my keying, instead of as an area that I go to only when specially demanded by the printed music, will greatly facilitate my learning of the musical theory and my skill at playing.

Horizontal Ladder Monkey Bars

As you may already know (if you have been reading this this blog regularly), I am a big SpongeBob SquarePants fan. Well, on their Lost Episode, Patchy the Pirate (not animated) left his suburban Encino, California home with his treasure map to find the tape of the lost episode (that he had lost). The map directed Patchy to a playground where, for some absurd reason, he felt compelled to undergo all of the kiddie rides there before he started digging. Among the rides was one of those types of horizontal ladder monkey bars that I used to play on as a kid. Being an adult, Patchy naturally looked totally silly walking, instead of swinging, under the bars, still painstakingly clutching on to each rung as he crossed it.

At my old elementary school, we had a couple of these types of monkey bars, and it was something of a competition among some of us to see who could swing across the bars to the other side while skipping as many rungs as possible. Just about anybody, with some practice, could skip a rung while passing across, but only a few of us (me included) could make it skipping two. But on a couple of occasions, I observed classmates making the "trip" skipping three rungs!. But I never got that far.

Nowadays, like Patchy, whenever I come across one of those horizontal ladder monkey bars (which is becoming increasingly rarer), I usually find them way too low for me to swing from. But once, a few years ago, my family and I were approaching Atlanta from the north. A few miles north of that great city, we stopped off at a state park with a well-equipped playground. With horizontal ladder monkey bars. And they were very high up off the ground! But I found, as I tried to cross one, that my arms and shoulders had become so much weaker over the years that I could barely just stay put hanging from a rung, much less cross the "ladder"! But I realized then that it would be a fun thing to get myself into better shape by practicing crossing them after I returned to Gainesville. Only I never did find any that were high enough off the ground for me to swing from. And besides, the trend in playgrounds nowadays seems to be equipment made from plastic or wood. Apparently some do-gooder somewhere decided that the metal equipment posed a greater danger to children. But having seen Patchy cross the bars on that SpongeBob episode for what seemed like the umpteen-millionth time, it suddenly occurred to me that it would be fun to check out if there are still any of those around town. And if there are, this may be the start of a new training program to complement my running (I don't care for weight-training: but that's another story). Who knows: I may just get to be a three-rung skipper after all!

Monday Newsbreak: 3/10

--After being stripped of delegate representation at the national convention because they went against party rules to schedule their presidential primaries early, Florida and Michigan are becoming the focus of intense debate within the Democratic Party. Should they repeat their primaries to give the people in these very important, populous swing states a legitimate voice as to who they want their nominee to be? Of course, I say the answer is YES! This in spite of the fact that holding the Florida and Michigan primaries again would probably help Hillary Clinton to catch up in terms of delegate totals with Barack Obama, whom I support. But we're otherwise talking about 366 disenfranchised delegates in two states that may well determine the outcome of the 2008 presidential election! Unfortunately, there seems to be a standoff between the governors of Florida and Michigan, who do not want their states (and taxpayers) to have to pay the costs of holding the additional primaries, and the Democratic Party leadership under Howard Dean, who wants the states, not the party, to handle (and pay for) any re-voting.

-- The buzz around Florida these days is that popular governor Charlie Christ is "campaigning" to become John McCain's running mate for the general election. And why not? I like him, and he, like McCain, is conservative but pragmatic. Governor Crist is not beholden to the right-wing ideological "correctness" people who, I believe, are dragging their party down toward defeat this November.

--The weather here and across the eastern part of the U.S. has been atrocious this past week, with winter stubbornly refusing to go away. Here in northern Florida on Friday we had tornadoes (causing two deaths in Lake City 40 miles north of me) with heavy rain, thunderstorms, and high winds. On Saturday, the storms had passed over, but the winds just picked up even more. Sunday morning saw subfreezing temperatures across the Gainesville area, something I don't remember experiencing this late in the season since I moved up here thirty years ago. I just hope that the rain that deluged us will help to prevent the outbreak of fires this spring.

--The University of Florida men's basketball team is now down to their last hope for reach the NCAA Championship Tournament this year to defend their National Title, with their close-but-insufficient 75-70 loss to Kentucky at Lexington Saturday. And that hope is simply to confound the experts and win the upcoming Southeastern Conference tournament outright! But I don't see that happening, as much as I want it to be. So, unless a miracle occurs and Florida does prevail, I'll be pulling for the Tennessee Volunteers in the tournament. Tennessee last year had a team good enough to win it all, but were defeated in an extremely close game against Ohio State.

Always Knowing What to Do

I’ve come to believe that the key to effective living is to progressively instill in myself positive habits that eventually fill up every waking moment in the day. Trying to “stop” doing this or that has never been effective for me. But replacing a bad habit with a good habit does work well. The most important thing of all is to able, at any given moment, to discern the proper course of action for me to take.

But knowing what to do at all times requires a great amount of soul-searching, because inevitably conflicts will arise between different courses of action, both of which may seem to be for the good. I need to lay out my priorities in life and create and react to situations according to how they bear on them. And if something happening doesn’t relate to my values, then perhaps I should just let it go. In this category I place all of the past grievances and grudges that I’ve allowed to build up inside of me for so many years about people and situations that no longer have any relevance to my life, either now or in the future. This, in essence, is the Biblical idea of “holding captive every thought”, since actions originate from thoughts. If my thoughts are in line with my values and goals, then they pass my test and can stir me to action. But if my thoughts are full of anger, fear, impatience, compulsion, or greed, then they must be let go. Nothing of value can arise from this negative energy. So, in order get good at knowing what to do at any given moment, the first habit I need to instill is to thoroughly examine the value of what I allow myself to think about! And this self-examination has to be continuous, because it only takes a moment for me to slip up and royally screw things up with destructive thoughts (which much too often can end up with destructive words)!

When I am at work and am working in my “home base” of operations, I instinctively know exactly what I need to do at any given moment in order to be the most effective worker possible there. But if I am moved to an unfamiliar section, I will make work decisions that may not be the most efficient use of my labors. And of course, the difference is that I am habituated to the patterns and needs of my own section. Expand this notion to one’s whole life and you may see what I’m driving at with this article. By “holding every thought captive” and gradually filling my day up with effective habitual behavior, I will succeed in always knowing what to do.

Weight Loss and Maintenance on the Eights: 3/8

Although I didn't keep up well with my weigh-ins in late January/early February, the last eight weeks saw me finally getting serious about my weight. All I did was exercise more (I began to run daily) and be more careful about excessive eating (although I did hit the doughnuts from time to time). But I made a good amount of progress! It shouldn't be too much longer before I reach my own personal goal of getting down to the 150's (lbs). Here's my weigh-in record for the past eight-week period:

DATE WEIGHT (lbs)
1/12........182.0
1/19........180.0
2/09.......174.6
2/23........171.8
3/01........167.2
3/08........165.6

Gainesville Radio Declines

From time to time over the course of this blog, I've extolled different radio programs that some of my local Gainesville, Florida radio stations were broadcasting. 100.5-WHHZ "The Buzz" played independent/alternative music that I couldn't hear anywhere else. 99.5-WBXY, a talk radio station, had the Gregg Knapp Show. Knapp, at one time a local Gainesville morning talk show host, has built up a nationally syndicated show played on several stations. He is a conservative who employs reason, humor, and respect for dissenting callers to get his points across. 850-WRUF has, on weekday afternoons, the Sporting News Radio network. It replayed the morning broadcast of the Dave Smith Show. And Dave Smith has to be the funniest and most interesting sports talk personality around. On 97.3, WSKY "The Sky" would, starting at midnight, replay an hour from the previous night's Coast-to-Coast AM broadcast. This was fun to listen to as I drove home from work at that time.

I have mentioned each of the previous examples on my blog, praising this programming. So what happened?

WSKY decided to rid itself of the Coast-to-Coast AM replay, opting instead to play another hour of the Jerry Doyle Show. Doyle is just another of those right-wing conservatives who dishonestly portrays himself as being equally disaffected with both the Republicans and Democrats (as do folks like Michael Savage, Neil Boortz, and Bill O'Reilly). So instead, I now have to tune in to 1100-WTAM-Cleveland or 1200-WOAI-San Antonio to hear my Coast-to-Coast AM replay. Sometimes I can pick them up, sometimes I can't.

Immediately after I published my blog article praising Dave Smith to high heaven, 850-WRUF changed to broadcasting the afternoon Sporting News Radio program, with a different host. Competent, but not Dave Smith!

I tuned in to WBXY one early evening to find someone named Mark Levin in Gregg Knapp's time slot. At first, I thought the dude was just filling in for Knapp, but to my horror, I discovered that Levin's show replaced Knapp's. Mark Levin's views mirror Gregg Knapp's, but his style and demeanor are exactly the opposite: he's mean, arrogant, disrespectful of dissenting calls, shrill, and angry. Just the sort of person the right-wing conservative talk show listeners apparently want, I suppose (Levin's show is growing nationwide by leaps and bounds). Well, WBXY, you lost me on that one!

And finally, perhaps the biggest offense to me on my local radio scene is WHHZ's decision to alter their musical format (without telling anybody). Now they are playing the same stuff that they used to deride their rival 103.7-WRUF "Rock 104" for playing: Alice in Chains, Metallica, Papa Roach, Linkin Park, and so on. Not that I don't like some of what these artists have produced, but I can already get that stuff elsewhere! WHHZ will still throw in songs that were on their old playlist, but they seem to have largely shut out the new independent/alternative songs from airplay. WHHZ, if I want to hear "Rock 104" music, I'll tune in to "Rock 104", whose signal is much stronger and easier to pick up than yours! Fortunately, I have discovered that the exact same music that "The Buzz" abandoned is now being placed on Cox Digital Cable's Channel 915. And without commercials!

Favorite Songs of 1984

For 1984, my musical interests were confined to mainstream pop/rock. I enjoyed watching videos as well. There was a lot of jumping and running this year: Van Halen's Jump and the Pointer Sisters' Jump for my Love had finely crafted hits with great videos while long-time British act Slade finally had their (short-lived) breakthrough American hit with Run Runaway. My favorite Manfred Mann (Earth Band) song came out in 1984: Runner. German singer Nena's dual-language hit 99 Luftballoons (with English and German versions) told a story about a nuclear holocaust caused by a simple mistake. This, ironically, had almost actually happened twice in the USSR the previous year, without the West catching "wind" of it! The first REM song I ever heard, South Central Rain (I'm Sorry), featured a long-haired, wailing Michael Stipe and is still one of my favorites of theirs. Bronski Beat raised social awareness about the plight of gays facing violence from bigots with their haunting Small Town Boy. The Thompson Twins, after a string of obnoxious hits, finally came out with a compelling song that spoke to me: You Take Me Up. Naturally, it went nowhere on the charts and was hardly ever played. More than three years after John Lennon's murder, his Nobody Told Me, a sweet, catchy song with very interesting lyrics, was released as a single. Prince's movie Purple Rain came out in 1984 and, from it, two songs I liked: When Doves Cry and, especially, the raucous Let's Go Crazy. Speaking of raucous, there was nothing quite as raucous as Eddie Van Halen's guitar interlude in his group's Hot for Teacher. Queen had an artsy song and video in Radio Ga-Ga. Talktalk's It's My Life stood well on its on as well as in conjunction with its excellent animal-studded video. Rod Stewart, over the years only sporadically producing songs I liked, hit the bulls-eye in 1984 with Infatuation, showing that a simple rock n' roll tune, done with intensity, can go a long way. Drive, by the Cars, was, for a long time in 1984 my favorite song of that year, but overplaying on the radio tired me of it. John Mellencamp's protest song Pink Houses, carrying over from 1983 and mistaken by then-President Reagan as a positive song about America, grew on me in '84 and still is growing. Aside from Check it Out, it's my favorite of Mellencamp's. The group Depeche Mode released Everything Counts, a sobering indictment of the ascendency to power of big business and big politics. It introduced me to that band and was my #3 favorite song that year. My #2 favorite song of 1984 (as I lived through it) was Cyndi Lauper's extremely tearjerking Time After Time. I initially disliked it because of its maudlin video, but after hearing it on the radio for a few times, it too, grew on me. But 1984's greatest (in my mind) song comes from the resurgent and reinvented band Yes for their incredible exercise in harmony: Leave It.

Marx and the Bottom Line

The nineteenth-century German philosopher and economist Karl Marx has left an enduring mark on human history, with various socio-political movements arising from his materialistic interpretation of human history and the evolution of societies. Different socialist and communist organizations, for better or for worse, sprouted up as a response to his writings and exhortations. The past century has been very turbulent and bloody as a result of some of these movements, although others were peaceful and law-abiding. Countries that have truly attempted to create a Marxist society generally haven’t done all that well. But Marx, as I see it, did get one important thing right.

Marx put forth the notion that in human society, high-sounding and idealistic principles are only relevant in how they relate to the bottom line: pursuit of material gain. Being someone who has been indoctrinated his whole life with the notion that the spiritual transcends the material, this observation has taken a while to sink into my consciousness. But the more I think about it, the more I believe that Marx was correct.

When I think of non-profit organizations, for example, I naturally first think of how good it is that some people are so altruistic as to want to spend their time so selflessly helping others. But in truth, those heading these organizations have carved out secure niches for themselves, with incomes that don’t depend upon success in a competitive dog-eat-dog economy (as well as having tax breaks). Look at the changing perspective of local, state, and federal government on social vices like gambling, alcohol, and smoking. The bottom line that lends these “industries‘” officially-sanctioned support is that the government derives tax revenue from gamblers, smokers, and drinkers. Many of the discipleship and stewardship classes that are offered in churches have as an underlying motive not the interests of the churchgoers, but the material interests of the church, as the study material emphasizes how God requires the churchgoers to financially support the church (and its paid staff) as well as perform unpaid service in the form of volunteer work. And what about the issue of illegal immigration? Why do some Republicans ally themselves with Democrats and support a form of amnesty for these undocumented workers in the U.S. (or at least benign neglect)? I can’t speak for all of them, but it’s a well-known fact that businesses who are able to use legally-unprotected workers from abroad can financially exploit them and drastically reduce their own operating costs, thus increasing their profits. So some of the politicians may have different motives for their “merciful” attitude regarding undocumented immigrants. And why are we as a nation concentrating our attention so much in promoting democracy in the Middle East, and not, say, Africa? Could it just possibly be that our economic bottom line is tied up with our petroleum imports? Just think about all of the different issues surrounding us today and ask yourself whether or not there is really a material bottom line influencing them, regardless as to how the issues are being portrayed.

And it is with this sort of perspective that I believe a positive, but limited legacy of Karl Marx will endure, since his strength was, after all, based on his studies and criticisms of (his then) contemporary society and definitely not for his (in my opinion) flawed vision of a utopian future.

High School Guidance Departments

In my high school, we had a guidance department. This was the place that a student could go to and receive counseling for post-high school plans. It was also supposed to be the place that a student could go to if he or she were having problems at school. The nature of a problem could range from simple trouble getting through a class (the curriculum was too hard, the teacher was unfair, the student had bad study habits, etc.) to personal problems. From time to time during the “Ad-Com” (administrative communications) period all students had to attend each morning, an announcement would be made to the effect that the guidance department was there for the students, and that any student could go there for counseling with their problems. Sounds great, doesn’t it? There’s only one problem here, though.

Like just about everything else done in this school, those in charge of running things presumed that students were just “little adults” who were completely responsible for their own actions. And if they weren’t mature or knowledgeable enough to react in an adult way to opportunities presented to them, then it was THEIR fault. In my entire time (from 7th through 12th grade) at this school, I never went to guidance for counseling with my problems (and I had quite a few, some severe). There are some very good reasons for this, the overriding one being that I didn’t trust the guidance people! My main problem as a kid was trying to deal with very aggressive (even to the point of being predatory) classmates around me. This was coupled with a plague of negligent teachers. Don’t forget that, like anyone else, I experienced my childhood advancing into the future one day at a time, with only my past experiences to draw upon. I did not have the luxury of looking back from a future perspective and saying to myself, “This guidance department they have here probably has some really nice people in it who will sympathetically listen to me, be my advocate, and make school more livable for me!” All I knew back then was that asking to go to guidance was a very public matter. It was always thrown about in a matter-of-fact manner that student so-and-so wasn’t present in class because he or she was in “guidance”. In my opinion, the staff in charge of running my school should have been much more proactive in getting students to use the guidance opportunities there by setting aside time to have each student go there and personally talk with a counselor, regardless of whether any need for one had been expressed or not. After all, one of the problems that the neediest have in any aspect of our society is that they don’t know how or where they can seek help. Sometimes you have to lead the horse to the water, you know!

One other thing that my school’s guidance department did that kept me away from it was that they used student volunteers, who worked there assisting the department employees during their free times at school. This may sound good on the surface, but remember that if a student is going there to talk about his or her personal problems, the last thing they would want is for some “volunteer” to overhear them from the hallway saying something of a personal, sensitive nature. Especially if it involved other students. And the sad fact was, some of the student guidance volunteers were also some of the most aggressive and gossiping students on campus! So I knew in advance, before I even opened the door to the guidance office, that I’d have to pass through this unwelcome gauntlet.

My advice to guidance professionals is to recognize that the children attending their schools are just that: children. And the ones with the biggest problems almost always are suffering from mistrust of others. It’s not enough to just say that guidance is there for those who want it: each student needs to be taken there regularly to be able to have at least one confidential conversation with a sympathetic adult advocate. Most kids with problems repress them, thinking that if there is anything wrong, then it’s their own fault, anyway. So, to guidance professionals: even though it may seem to be a “nice” thing to have them around, please keep student volunteers away from your guidance department. You’ll probably never know how many needy students you would otherwise have discouraged from seeking important counseling!

Monday Newsbreak: 3/3

The largely internationally-ignored area of western Sudan called Darfur, in a war of independence, has seen the stalling of plans for peace talks, due to unreasonable bickering among the leaders of the involved parties. And, as usual, in these situations, it is the innocent poor masses who have to pay with death, famine, disease, terror, and dislocation. Now, it appears, the Sudanese government is working in concert with janjaweed militias in brutally staging attacks there. The latest report is that the janjaweed destroyed the Darfur town of Suleia. So I ask, why is Africa "hands-off" when situations like this occur (see also Congo, Rwanda, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Zimbabwe, and so on) but if something happens in Europe (like Kosovo or Bosnia), it's an international crisis necessitating NATO's military involvement? I believe that, looking back at this time in history, there will be many who will point to the neglect of Africa's welfare as perhaps the worst tragedy of the times.

--Anxious to move up to a more prestigious ranking among American colleges, and too stingy to hire new professors, University of Florida President Bernie Machen (you know, the one with a multi-million dollar salary) has decided instead to drastically cut back on both freshmen and transfer admissions to the University in order, in a roundabout way, to decrease faculty-to-student ratios. When I see businesses starting to cut back like this, it usually signals the beginning of their decline and ultimate failure. The way to grow is to invest, stupid!

--The University of Florida men's basketball team stands in danger of missing the NCAA Championship Tournament this year, due to a weak pre-conference schedule and then average success during the SEC's regular season. That's O.K. with me, though. The Gators had no starting seniors, and their leading scorer, Nick Calaithes, is a freshman! They still have a chance at the "big dance", but even if they don't make it, they're a shoo-in for the National Invitation Tournament. Considering that they had no starters returning from last year, Florida has done an exceptional job this year!

--Robin Herbst and Julie Miller have written an intriguing book titled The Cheap Book: The Official Guide to Embracing Your Inner Cheapskate. This book, apparently largely tongue-in-cheek, is nevertheless supposed to give out a lot of pointers for saving money in the ever-tightening economy we are going through. I think I'll go down to my local bookstore to take a look at it. But I may just stand there reading without purchasing it, wanting to stay true to the book's spirit! Who knows, if the authors catch wind of my example, they may just want to include it in the book's next edition (but I want a free copy if they do)!

Jigsaw Puzzles

Those great old Laurel and Hardy short slapstick comedy films always seem to be based on Laurel unwittingly drawing hapless Hardy into some ridiculous kind of trouble, with them eventually being chased about all over the place by angry people (usually including policemen). In one of my favorites, the action takes place around a table where a jigsaw puzzle is laid out. And every time one of the characters rushes by the table, they get distracted and have to stop for a minute to work on the puzzle! To me, this film captured the essence of what I like so much about jigsaw puzzles: if, say, a 500 to 2000 piece puzzle is set up on a table somewhere, then anyone can just come by and work on it at their own convenience and then walk away, having contributed their little share to the final product. It doesn't matter what the puzzle depicts, nor does it matter at what stage of the solution it's at. This is good, old-fashioned free-form play at its best, hearkening back to the days when as children, we would just run around all day, making up games on-the-spot as we went, with no demands that we had to follow this rule or that rule.

I also like doing jigsaw puzzles because it really is a good, complex exercise in visual perception. When I start out with a puzzle, I dump out the pieces on the tabletop and turn them over so that they are all face up. While doing this, I usually cull out any end-pieces and set them aside. Then, I connect the end-pieces to give the puzzle its frame. After that, I find similar pieces and place them together in general areas. Much of the puzzle can be done this way, but there is another facet to a jigsaw puzzle. Usually, there is a large part of it, such as the sky, grass, or water, that has the same feature on it and for which the shape of the pieces and very slight gradations in color are the only things to go on. And it is here, with the most difficult sections, that I ultimately derive the most enjoyment from putting them together.

Working on a jigsaw puzzle is one of those activities that people can do throughout their lives on a continuous basis, from infancy all the way through childhood, adulthood, and into old-aged infirmity! As a matter of fact, one of my Christmas presents this past December was a good-looking 1000-piece puzzle. I think it's finally about time for me to open up that box for yet another jigsaw puzzle adventure!

Campaign Situation

Unlike back in 2004, I am very pleased with how the current presidential campaign season has gone so far. John McCain, a decent, brave, non-ideological conservative who is strong on national defense, is going to be the Republican Party's nominee. Barack Obama, a great communicator along the lines of John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, is in a good position to win the Democratic Party's nomination. If this holds true, then the November election, for me, will be a matter of choosing whom I like the most and not whom I dislike the least (as it was in 2004).

One of the problems with the primary phase of the campaign is the intra-party animosity and hurt feelings that necessarily accrue between different candidates and their supporters during the arduous and hard-hitting campaigning. The Republicans, ideologically-elitist right-wing radio talk show hosts notwithstanding, seem to be coming back together in the spirit of reconciliation that the situation demands, if victory is to be had in November. Even McCain's only significant remaining challenger, Mike Huckabee, is running basically a positive issue-based campaign. The Democrats, though, may be in for a bit of trouble. If Hillary Clinton doesn't see the writing on the wall after March 4 (when the Ohio and Texas primaries are held) and withdraw from the race, I'm afraid that the bitterness that is rising in this campaign may not be extinguishable. I believe that the Clintons might become spiteful and unforgiving about losing, but I also believe that most of their supporters would be quite happy at supporting Barack Obama as their candidate in the general election. I don't see (based on the public opinion polls) how Hillary can win by huge margins in Ohio and Texas (she may even lose the Lone Star State). And if she is counting on making up for her primary and caucus losses by wheeling and dealing for superdelegates, then I believe that she is bordering on the delusional. I say this, feeling that if their situations were reversed, Obama would have the grace to bow out and throw his support to Clinton after next week's results. Hillary can make a big impression on me if she moves toward reconciliation (barring unexpected landslide primary wins next Tuesday). I'd love to see an Obama/Clinton ticket in November!

Writing Stories on the Eights: 2/29

At the beginning of this year, I proposed to begin writing fiction. But this goal hasn't panned out for me during the past eight weeks. The main reason for this, I believe, is that I haven't yet established a specific time and place in my daily "walk" through life in which I can fully devote myself to this endeavor. I did write a rough outline for a novel (or novella), but have only written about six pages worth of story material. This must change! I have to get over the feelings of inadequacy that inevitably crop up whenever I critically examine what I've just written. Also, I need to let the story take over my writing and for me to not worry about how "perfect" it has to be. Most of all, I have to get myself into the "writing zone"! I'm currently reading The Wastelands, Stephen King's third volume in his Dark Tower series. In it, one of the characters, an eleven-year old boy, is horrified to discover that for his final essay that he is about to turn in at school, he has written a crazy-sounding stream-of-consciousness piece that he is sure will land him in a mental hospital if his teacher were to read it. As events turn out, his teacher did read it and rewarded him with an A+ and great praise. And that is how I must write, too: on the "edge", where the words can sometimes express and bring up dangerous emotions and thoughts. The fear of myself being exposed in my writing has to be faced and overcome. Because in the end, it is exactly that which I want to do!

Favorite Songs of 1985

1985 had many good songs, so I don't have room here to include every one I liked. The year began with an emergency plea in the form of a British song Do They Know It's Christmas, by an assemblage of British pop stars. There was famine in eastern Africa (due mainly to war) and the record was put out to fund relief efforts. The U.S. would follow suit with their We Are the World (although I didn't like that song). Even later that year, John Mellencamp came out with his Rain On the Scarecrow, decrying the plight of farmers in financial trouble across America. Murray Head's One Night in Bangkok presented a unique picture of a chess tournament competing with the night life in Thailand. Blanc Mange's underrated and underplayed Don't Tell Me was a very upbeat dance song with a "happy" video. Prince went "Beatles" with his Raspberry Beret. My favorite Bryan Adams song, Summer of '69, came out in '85. One of the best videos ever made, the comic book adventure of A-Ha's Take On Me, accompanied a sweet, synthesizer-based loved song. Wham, George Michael's vehicle to stardom, had my favorite of theirs with the exercise in frustration Everything She Wants. Tom Petty's Don't Come Around Here No More stood well enough on its own without the overblown "Alice in Wonderland" video that came with it. Sting's first solo effort produced three memorable tunes: If You Love Somebody Set Them Free, Love is the Seventh Wave, and Russians. Duran Duran's Save a Prayer, released earlier, was a big hit with me in 1985. Jefferson Starship (I think that's what they were calling themselves then) released their salute to San Francisco, We Built this City. Possibly Foreigner's greatest song, I Want to Know What Love Is, was an early 1985 hit. Don Henley's catchy All She Wants to Do Is Dance was a funny satire on American foreign policy in Latin America. Depeche Mode's "masterful" Master and Servant, from 1984, didn't reach my ears until the next year. The same was true with my #2 favorite song from 1985 (as I lived through it): Frankie Goes to Hollywood's explicit, smashing record Relax. And my top favorite of 1985 was by Tears For Fears: their first big hit in America, the somber and sad (but lively) Everybody Wants to Rule the World (with another great video to go with it).

The Writing Zone

In his excellent novel Bag of Bones (which I just recently read), Stephen King made frequent mention of something called "The Zone". No, he wasn't referring to the diet plan that balances fat, protein, and carbohydrate consumption. King's "Zone" was a mental state that a writer would get into that greatly enhanced his writing ability. Being in the Zone is something akin to being in a trance, where outside distractions simply do not intrude upon the writer's thoughts, enabling him to experience a world of his own creation and draw his writing cues from that world. I happen to know for a fact that this "Zone" is a reality for me. There are times when I can barely put one word ahead of another. And then something will happen and I am completely immersed in my writing, with whatever going on around me seemingly inconsequential and even unreal. With such experiences, I often find that after snapping out of my "Zone", I've written quite a bit of material. And often, when I read back through what I've written, I feel disturbed at the content, which is usually quite a bit more outspoken and blunt than how I would normally express myself. Often, I will write a blog article this way and then delay publishing for a few days because of my discomfort with it. Right now, I have a couple of articles like this and am asking myself how appropriate they are to put out on my blog. But I think that this is a good thing, because it means that I am beginning to write out on "the edge". And the edge is where all writers want to stay, both to attract readership and to be honest about both their feelings and writing.

I can see right now that one of my greatest obstacles to becoming a prolific writer is that I can only slip into the Zone under certain conditions. Usually, these conditions don't exist at home, so I often go out to a coffee shop somewhere, where often I can get myself into the required state. But in order to write anything substantial, I need to train myself to reach that "Zone" state at home somehow, and to elicit the needed cooperation in this endeavor from my family. My major role model for prolific writing has to be the late great science fiction writer Isaac Asimov, who was basically in the Zone all of the time, even when he wasn't physically writing things down! Asimov is credited with having written 500 books, but I'll be happy with a small fraction of that!

Beach and Theme Park Yearnings

It has definitely been too long since I've had the pleasure of going to the beach or attending one of the fine theme parks surrounding Gainesville (from a distance). I am ready to take a day trip out to Universal Studios and their Islands of Adventure park to ride the rides and stroll around the crowds. The problem I have is that it's sometimes difficult to be able to get everyone in my family synchronized with their schedules to allow some free time for us all to make an excursion together. Also, we have passes for the rest of the year to Universal, but this actually creates two problems for us. One, if you go there and don't buy special "express" passes that allow you to bypass long lines, then you're liable to be spending too much time waiting in line for a small number of ride opportunities. Two, having the Universal passes makes going there a priority over other parks like Wild Adventures (in Valdosta, Georgia) or Busch Gardens (in Tampa). Personally, I enjoy these parks more than Universal. The lines are almost always much shorter than Universal's, and the rides are comparable in quality (actually, I generally prefer the rides of Busch Gardens to those of Islands of Adventure at Universal). But there always seems to be something on our schedules that rules out a theme park excursion.

Also, as an alternative to the crowds, noise, and exhaustion associated with going to a theme park, a short stay at St. Augustine or Ormond Beach sounds awfully attractive, too. And there is a very comfortable hotel in St. Augustine that is just about the best I've experienced, and at a good price to boot!

Monday Newsbreak: 2/25

--Ralph Nader declared his candidacy for President in another installment of his never-ending quest to throw the election to the Republicans. In 2000, he actually convinced enough people that there really wasn't any significant difference between George W. Bush and Al Gore. Enough to give Bush Florida and the election. Four years later, very few people bought this line. And I predict that even fewer will in 2008!

--Presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain had to endure some nonsense from a New York Times article that insinuated a possible affair with a lobbyist from more than eight years ago. The really scary thing to me is that, with all of the important issues at stake in this election, some people would actually decide whom to vote for because of this sort of thing.

--Fidel Castro officially retired from being president of Cuba, ostensibly handing over power to his brother Raul. I wish that the Cuban people could have a path established for them that led to more freedom and prosperity. I don't believe in U.S. sanctions. All they seem to have accomplished is to consolidate the hold that Castro has kept on this wonderful island nation since 1959.

--It looks at this point as if Barack Obama is in the driver's seat to obtain the Democratic Party's nomination for President. One unfounded charge that I've heard leveled at Obama is that he only speaks in generalities. But he has expressed himself very clearly on many important issues, so I'm left with the conclusion that some people are just swallowing whatever the Clinton campaign is putting out about Barack hook, line, and sinker.

--Apparently, Pakistani president Musharraf is on the way out as opposition parties crushed his party in the recent parliamentary election. Enough, it seems, to make Musharaff's impeachment likely should he "elect" to stay on as president. It is crucial that whoever becomes Pakistan's next president enjoy the support of the people there. And Musharraf has lost his people's support long ago.

Earth is the Center of the Solar System

[Or I should say, Terran System]

I just read in today's newspaper the results of a study which concluded that as many as one out of five Americans believe that the Sun revolves around the Earth! The idea was to point out how ignorant Americans have become about very basic facts of science, but I have a bone to pick about this specific example.

One of the objectives of science is, given accurate and comprehensive data from observations, to derive the simplest and most viable interpretations of natural phenomena, often explained in terms of models and equations. This certainly holds true with the field of astronomy. And with the model of our Solar System that we universally accept as absolutely authoritative today. With our Copernican model, the Sun lies at the center of the Solar System, with the planets revolving around it in close-to-circular elliptical orbits. Earth is the third planet from the Sun. But this is not intuitively obvious from the point of view of the Earth itself. In fact, there is a more obvious interpretation that could have led to a vastly different model of the Solar System, but which would have fit with observed data as much as our model today does.

First of all, let me say that when I jump up in the air, the gravity from the Earth’s mass pulls me back down to it. But I would be equally correct in saying that the gravity from my mass pulls the Earth up to me! This is important, considering that our Sun is, far and away, the most massive object in the Solar System. It would naturally derive from this that everything else revolved around it. And this is why we accept as convention the model putting it at the center. But we can make a factually-accurate model of the Solar System with the Earth as its center!

To achieve this model, it must be accepted that all of the celestial objects of the Solar System, except for the Earth and its Moon, revolve around the Sun. But these objects, which include the planets, asteroids, and comets, do indirectly revolve around the Earth, since the Sun does (according to this Earth-centered model). The Sun, however, takes the orbital distance and position that Earth would take in the Copernican model.

The data would fit well with this Earth-centered model, and it is more intuitively obvious from an observer on Earth. But is it the simplest model scientifically? No, especially from an “objective” vantage point, far away from the Solar System. But sometimes we get carried away with notions of absolutes in science and some of these need to be countered.

Why make this point anyway? I suppose it’s just that the Earth-centered Solar System is considered to be subjectively-derived, while the Sun-centered Solar System is considered to be objectively-derived. But even with this, it’s all about from where one wishes to observe the Solar System. If an observer were looking directly down at the Sun from a point on a line lying perpendicular to the Solar System’s plane, then the Copernican model would be evident. But suppose that the same observer shifted position to be directly above the Earth. Then the Earth-centered model would be indicated, instead. It’s all about where one chooses to establish a point of reference. Terra is another name for Earth, so an Earth-centered system could be called the Terran System. But for convention’s sake, I’ll stick to the Sun-centered Copernican model, like everyone else. But beware of confusing conventions with absolutes! A model is just that: only a model. It is an abstraction designed to emphasize certain things over others, usually to illustrate a particular principle. And it has no intrinsic scientific value beyond that.