New Year's Day at Busch Gardens Tampa

Yesterday for New Year's Day, I took my family to Busch Gardens, where we enjoyed the park, along withs its rides, animals, and generally pleasant ambiance. Here are some photos of our experience there.

Happy New Year 2009

I want to take this time to wish my readers, family, and old friends a very happy, prosperous, and healthy new year. You mean a lot to me and have enriched my life by being in it.

Since I try to make this blog an honest reflection of my own thoughts, and since I am quite an imperfect person, I'm sure that, from time to time, you have come across something here that you disagreed with. And sometimes that disagreement may have been on a "grand scale"! Thank you for keeping the faith and continuing to read my paltry attempts at writing. And for leaving your well-appreciated comments!

Bully Coaches

Once, when I was eighteen, I was running laps around my local middle school track. It was August and late afternoon. I looked over in an adjacent field to see a football team practicing, fully uniformed with helmets and pads. And there was a half-crazed coach running around among the players, screaming at individuals and creating a general atmosphere of intimidation. No, of course this wasn’t college or even high school football. But it wasn’t even a middle school team. The boys being verbally harassed were about five-six years old! And the coach towered over these little children.

I see this phenomenon of overly-aggressive coaches loudly spewing their anger at their players’ perceived imperfections a lot. The little kiddie tackle football team (that in itself is kind of weird to me) was an extreme example, but I see it going on a lot in middle school and high school, too. I understand that one of the important aspects of team sports is for the players to learn how to play in an organized, disciplined way as well as to learn how to take orders from authorities (i.e. coaches) and effectively translate them into action. But this can be accomplished without bullying.

It’s been a while since I’ve gone to a game involving kids and “adult” coaches, even on a level as informal as flag football, and seen the players actually acting as if they’re having fun. Almost always, the tension level is excruciatingly high, and the coach, even one who is relatively competent and “easy” on the kids, tends to make the game (whatever it is, be it basketball, football, etc.) much more complicated than it really has to be.

When a little boy (or girl) is on the basketball court, (s)he cannot truly participate in the game in the way that it was meant to be played if the coach is on the sideline continually yelling out this or that instruction or criticism. This overdoing it, I believe, is an almost universal tendency among coaches. But some have a character issue as well: these are bullies, pure and simple.

When I am watching a high school girl’s game where one coach is badgering not only his own players, but also loudly questioning the referee’s calls and even knocking down his own chair (even when the game’s outcome is no longer in question), I conclude that this man should not be in a position of authority over children like this. It’s one thing to feel a sense of mission toward helping young people do well in sports. It’s another to deliberately put oneself in a position of authority over young people in order to have somebody in their lives to lord themselves over!

Of course, coaches are supposed to do their jobs with the aim of actually winning games. But they are not just teaching successful game strategies and teamwork to their young players. They are also teaching them what to expect from people in positions of authority after they grow up. And the lesson I’ve been seeing imparted too often in organized children’s team sports is that authority figures are loud, mean, abusive bullies! Thankfully, my children have had more nurturing coaches who know what it’s really all about!

Learning Chinese Characters

I am trying to figure out the best way for me to build up a personal vocabulary list in Chinese that I could regularly practice reviewing. About fifteen years ago, I had memorized about 1,700 characters whose writing, meaning and pronunciation I knew. I would practice writing them down from memory once a week. I had arranged them in the alphabetical order of their Romanized “pinyin” transliterations. I did this weekly review for several years, but realized that I wasn’t making the headway in actually learning the language that I wanted. For one, although each Chinese character is technically considered to be a “word”, what we in English would call a “word” is often (if not usually) a compound of two (or more) characters in Chinese. Hence just knowing of a character in a compound Chinese word, although it can give a clue to the word’s meaning, comes up short when trying to understand a text written in Chinese. There are also much more than 1,700 characters in Chinese, so I am continually confronted with strange characters that I have to stop and look up in a dictionary. And if this weren’t enough, Chinese now has two forms of writing: the Traditional (still used in Taiwan and over much of the world) and Simplified (used throughout mainland China and Hong Kong). Almost all of the dictionaries available in bookstores nowadays use the Simplified characters.

I am making it a personal project of mine to expand the list of characters I am memorizing (and reviewing) to a substantially higher number, while including the most common compounds used with each character as well as their Simplified forms. I’m also considering memorizing each character’s “radical” number to help me look them up in more traditional Chinese dictionaries, as well as to help me find them on certain websites that enable me to type out Chinese characters. From time to time, I’ll post my progress with this ambitious endeavor on this blog.

Monday Newsbreak: 12/29

--The tragic conflict between Israel and Palestinians erupted again this week after Israel, in response to shelling by Hamas in the Gaza Strip (following the end to a cease fire between the adversaries), began bombing Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip. Naturally, many deaths and wounded are reported. Since the militants base themselves in the midst of civilian populations, any air strikes are bound to incur civilian casualties. And this has been the case here as well. So I’m trying to figure out the rationale behind either party’s actions (the shelling and the bombing). And the only thing I can come up with is that the leaders in that part of the world are making war decisions for domestic political consumption and not in the long-term interests of the people they claim to represent and protect.

--My local newspaper, the Gainesville Sun, is really pretty crappy. You wouldn’t believe how little news they actually report on in their Sunday edition. I’m relying more and more on Internet news sources to keep up with what’s going on. The only real redeeming sections of the Sun are the opinion/editorial page and the local news. I still can’t get a good site on the Net that gives me good local Gainesville news. And the Gainesville Sun’s reporting on local sporting events that don’t involve the University of Florida or major high schools is pathetic.

--The eastern U.S. has been hit by severe cold and snow this past week. But where I live in northern Florida, the temperatures have been much warmer than normal. Temperatures have risen to the low 80’s (Fahrenheit). I’m grateful not to be living in frigid conditions with snow and ice, but I would like it to be a little colder, please!

--Let’s see, before the National Football League season began, I picked the Dallas Cowboys to make the Super Bowl. But the turkeys couldn’t even make the playoffs, being humiliated in a 44-6 season-ending loss to divisional rival Philadelphia. At one point in the game, the Cowboys turned the ball over to the Eagles (through fumbles or interceptions) on five consecutive possessions. San Diego, the other team I had picked to make the Super Bowl (I picked them to beat Dallas), managed to make the playoffs with a clutch victory over Denver Sunday night. Meanwhile, the teams I am rooting for the most, the Miami Dolphins and the New York Giants, are both flying high into the playoffs. Yippee!

Congratulations, Miami Dolphins!

Almost beyond belief, the amazing Miami Dolphins, who almost went winless last year at 1-15, went on the road against the Brett Favre-led New York Jets and won 24-17 a few hours ago, clinching the AFC East championship for the 2008 National Football League season. And they did it with quarterback Chad Pennington, whom the Jets had released after signing Favre. The final Dolphin regular season record was 11 wins and 5 losses, which was the same as their arch-rival New England Patriots. The Dolphins won the division, though, because of their better record within the division. And joy of all joys, the Patriots, my least favorite team in football, was eliminated from making the playoffs as a wild-card team when the Baltimore Ravens secured that last spot with a victory over Jacksonville.

Speaking of the Baltimore Ravens, it’s funny how one team will seem to repeatedly get entangled with another in a fateful way. For example, consider these points:

--The last time Miami made the playoffs (2001), the team they played was Baltimore (losing to them 20-3).

--Late last season, it looked as if Miami would go the entire season without a win. Until they pulled out an improbable close victory over who else but: the Baltimore Ravens!

--Last year’s Dolphins head coach was Cam Cameron. After Bill Parcells was hired into Miami Dolphins management, he decided to replace Cameron with Tony Sparano from the Dallas Cowboys. Cameron was in turn hired as the offensive coordinator for who else but: the Baltimore Ravens!

--Earlier this year, Miami played at home against Baltimore (and Cameron), losing 27-13. At the time, that put their record at 2-4. Miami then won nine out of their next ten games to pull out the AFC East title.

--Next week, Miami will play their first (and hopefully not their last) playoff game against who else but: the Baltimore Ravens!

Parcells, Sparano, and company succeeded by mixing mistake-free play, some special razzle-dazzle playmaking, and a disciplined, professional approach to the game. The Dolphins showed a lot of guts by pulling out several close games, some of them come-from-behind victories. They were also fortunate with few serious injuries to their players (as opposed to the Patriots, who lost star quarterback Tom Brady for the duration of the season). Although Miami had their stars (like Ronnie Brown, Joey Porter, and Ricky Williams), they played with the spirit of a team united as a force to be reckoned with.

Win or lose next week, this is a team that is fun to follow!

Does Our Regime Change Make a Difference?

Folks on the political left and right, whether they support Ralph Nader, the Green Party, the Libertarian Party, or another group, often complain that it makes no real difference which of the two major parties are in power: their policies don’t differ enough from each other to give the people a real choice. To some extent, I understand this viewpoint.

Consider U.S. foreign policy as it looks right now under the incoming Democratic Obama administration. We’re still planning to be in Iraq a while, and are envisioning an escalation of war and U.S. troop buildup in Afghanistan. While keeping in place the same Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, from the outgoing Republican Bush administration. So it seems as if the American people didn’t really enjoy a choice in the general election about the wars we are engaged in.

Look at the economic recession and the meltdown of financial companies and the U.S. automobile industry. The transition from Bush to Obama regarding government bailouts and loans appears to be almost seamless, with the main difference between the two being that one (Bush) hates labor unions and wants to blame them for the auto industry’s woes.

The dangerous trend toward government surveillance of its own citizens on the pretext of fighting terrorism is obviously a by-product of Bush’s policies. But Obama, in his role as senator, has also supported extending surveillance of Americans.

Regarding gay rights, particularly as they pertain to the current hot-button issue of gay marriage, both Bush and Obama seem to be on the wrong side of this issue, although Obama “appears” to generally support gay rights.

What about our policy about illegal immigration? Once again, Bush and Obama present very similar agendas on this issue, this time showing a more inclusive, constructive approach to the problem. Naturally, this doesn’t fly too well with those who want to build a wall covering our borders.

Of course, there are important areas in which the two parties differ a lot.

Obama wants to change Bush’s tax cuts to where they favor lower and middle class taxpayers more than the wealthy. He also plans to begin an ambitious public works program designed to repair and improve the country’s transportation and communications infrastructure, while steering our economy in a “greener”, more environmentally-friendly direction. Speaking of the environment, he also believes that more should be done to fight global warming. Obama fully supports federally-funded stem cell research. And he is bound to nominate judges who are more likely to support the 1973 Supreme Court Roe vs. Wade decision that legalized abortion on a national level.

So basically, with a few very big differences, those in the far-left and the far-right are correct in asserting that there is too much continuity of policy that occurs when one major party transfers power to the other. It does sometimes seem that we, the voters, have been shortchanged, even disenfranchised, doesn’t it? But let me add one very, very important point.

Look at countries in other parts of the world where one party has dominated politics for decades on end, even though free elections are regularly held. What incentive exists for those in power there to truly serve their people’s interests when they see almost no danger of being turned out of office? And what about a country ruled by an individual who clings to power at all costs, even at the expense of the lives of his own people? Case in point: Zimbabwe, where Robert Mugabe absolutely refuses to transfer the reins of power to anyone else. What if, instead, there had been a two-party system there (even with each party expressing very similar takes on the issues), that every few years had caused power to shift from one party to the other? Yes, perhaps the voters might have felt a little cynical that their votes didn’t seem to make much of a difference. But the act of changing the people in power every few years is in itself very valuable and protects the people from having to endure rule that is mired in corruption and even possibly dictatorial (which is sadly the road that Putin’s Russia, a country that I greatly respect, seems to currently be traveling down).
********************************************************
Yes, I wrote something for Saturday although I had earlier said that I was going to take that day of the week off from blogging. Maybe in the future I'll just publish a photo of something that interests me on Saturdays instead.

Open Spaces Deprivation

It may seem odd when I tell you that I grew up in overpopulated, crowded South Florida, moved to a less crowded, smaller city in northern Florida, and miss the wide open spaces down there. But it’s true. Although there ARE trees in South Florida, the area is historically grasslands and scrub. You notice this change in the landscape as you travel south down the Florida Turnpike past Orlando. In Gainesville, where I live, trees dominate. And, I have to admit, I feel a little claustrophobic about it!

When I used to go outside as a kid, I was accustomed to seeing big, open skies greeting me. The place in Davie where I went to school was even more denuded of trees than my home neighborhood. When I went distance running around there, I was basically just running through a vast field. Now in Gainesville, a big field is to me something of value, to be treasured. I could do my running down shady, beautiful country roads with trees surrounding me and their canopies hanging over me. But I’d much rather run around the perimeter of a vast field where the sky is wide open above me and I can see far off in any direction.

I feel much more closed-in outdoors in Gainesville than I did in Hollywood/Davie, where I grew up. I remember the very enjoyable run I had a few months ago down the crowded beach at Ormond Beach. And then I realized: NO TREES!

Maybe I need to move to Nevada!

Twilight by Stephenie Meyer

I just finished reading Stephenie Meyer’s novel Twilight, which has been showing as a blockbuster movie hit (I haven’t seen it yet). I have no intention of spoiling the ending, but I doubt that I am giving anything away when I reveal that Twilight is about a romance between a teenage girl and a “teenage” vampire boy. This story is probably more appealing to girls than it is to boys, but I thoroughly enjoyed reading it and plan to read the rest of the series (without being in major hurry, though).

Presented in the first person by the protagonist, seventeen-year old Bella Swan, Twilight is a poignant revelation of life and people from the viewpoint of an adolescent girl whose parents had split up years earlier and who has decided to move from her mother’s house in Phoenix to live with her father in very rainy northwestern Washington state. She makes new friends easily, but discovers that there is a group of students who have deliberately set themselves apart from the others. Among this group is a very interesting boy, by the name of Edward Mullen, and with whom she falls in love. I’ll leave the eventual outcome of the story to the reader. Bella, like so many teenagers (I remember, having once been one myself), has a tendency to become completely enveloped in her feelings about herself and her romantic interest. I do want to point out that Twilight’s plot has a tendency to move along at an easy, slow pace and then suddenly become charged with excitement and high action. So if you’re reading it and may be thinking that it’s just another teenage romance novel (albeit with a vampire twist), then…think again! Read it through, and you may be rewarded at its end (although I had become a bit concerned about the protagonist’s capacity for rational thought by that point).

I read up a little about author Stephenie Meyer’s inspiration for Twilight, and discovered that she patterned it after Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. I then asked myself why I wasn’t reading more of the great literary classics. So I’ve decided to do so! I am starting with For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway’s celebrated novel about the Spanish Civil War. I may have a actually read it before as an English assignment in the ninth grade (c. 1971), but since my mind was so distracted back at that particular time in my life that I had trouble concentrating on anything very long at a time, my memory of it may be very faint (the reading assignment could have been A Farewell to Arms, though; I do remember reading Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea then).

Who’s the Senator?

It is funny how, the further away we get past the election, the more U.S. Senate seats become open! I remember Bush in 2000 picking for his Cabinet losing candidates Michigan’s Spencer Abraham (lost to Debbie Stabenow) and Missouri’s John Ashcroft (lost to dead Governor Mel Carnahan). So that didn’t involved open seats to be filled. But now, other than the never-ending recount in Minnesota between Al Franken and Norm Coleman, there are a few open seats due to Obama’s Cabinet selections and his (and his running mate’s) election.

--In Illinois, we have the scandal whereby Governor Blagojevich is being impeached, investigated, and accused of selling Obama’s open seat.

--In Delaware, Vice-President-Elect Biden’s seat will be filled by a relative unknown, with the “idea” that his son, currently serving in the military in Iraq, will come back to reclaim it for the Biden name in the 2010 special election.

--Hillary Clinton’s New York seat appears to be headed, barring any unforeseeable developments, for JFK’s daughter Caroline. Considering that the senator she would be replacing had no elected political experience when she won it in 2000, I consider discussions about her “inexperience” somewhat bogus.

--Ken Salazar, the Colorado senator who will be Interior Secretary, is vacating his seat as well.

All the above seats that have opened due to Obama’s victory should be kept Democratic, since all of those states’ governors (with the authority to appoint the replacements) are also Democrats. Of course, who knows what Rod Blagojevich is plotting to do over in Illinois!

As for the Minnesota race, it looks as if we’re getting down to the nitty-gritty of special committees legally designated to count challenged ballots. At this writing, Franken has about a forty vote lead over Coleman. It looks, right now at least, as if Franken may have the upper hand. But legal challenges from the eventual “losing” side are almost certain to delay the swearing-in of the “winner” in January.

Empty Campus Celebration

To celebrate the emptying of the University of Florida campus this past Saturday for the Christmas holiday period, I drove out there Sunday night, parked along University Avenue in one of the many vacant spaces near Buckman Hall, and ran through the deserted campus. It was heavenly, to say the least! I ran east on University past Library West to U.S. 441, then turned right and ran south along it past Tigert Hall, again turning right. I ran past the towering, seemingly misnamed Little Hall (actually named after a guy named Little) to Grinter Hall and then Century Tower (a beautiful bell tower featured on many UF postcards). I passed the Hub (where the bookstore and cashier used to be) and ran down the sidewalk toward the Reitz Union, adjacent to the field where I used to watch free movies (like Young Frankenstein). Before reaching the Reitz Union, though, I veered a little to the right and met up with North-South Drive, where I turned north. I then ran up that road until I got to Weil Hall, where I turned right, running down Stadium Road with the Florida football stadium to my left. Coming back toward the Hub, I turned left and ran north past Buckman Hall back to University Avenue and my car. It was a good, pleasant 16:16 run for an undetermined distance. I passed only two pedestrians, met up with no bicyclists, and once I was on campus away from the main roads, was passed by exactly one car. Yes, this is the life!

It’s funny how so much on campus at the University of Florida has changed, and yet at the same time there are timeless buildings like Weil Hall standing there, looking exactly the same to me as they did thirty years ago! Maybe I’ll continue to take advantage of the holiday break and do some more running down there. I’d better be careful where I park on weekdays, though. I remember going down there during Christmas break a few years ago and being served a ticket even though the parking lot was empty! Served by the University Police, the same bunch who served Andrew Meyer his Taser. Don’t ticket me, bro’!

Monday Newsbreak: 12/22

--Up to 30,000 more American soldiers may be soon sent to Afghanistan to fight the Taliban (and supposedly Al-Qaeda) there, thereby doubling our presence in this poor, war-torn, and culturally very different land. The government there, you see, is weak, and they need us to stay in power and fight off the bad guys. All I see from this is the tired, age-old scenario whereby our soldiers are placed in situations where they are surrounded by the indigenous people there, most of whom just want to go about living their own lives and minding their own business, but who are automatically regarded by us as suspicious and potential enemies. More shootings of innocents and violations of others’ homes and villages are in the works. And if anyone shoots back at us? Why, they’re terrorists, of course! Sound familiar?

--In the “domestic outrage” department, executives for banks receiving government (and hence taxpayer) bailouts reportedly are receiving $1.6 billion in bonuses and benefits. These people really do consider themselves to be in a class high above everyone else!

--Russia recently crushed an opposition demonstration by a group led by chess champion Garry Kasparov. But they don’t live in an insulated world anymore, one where they could control the inflow and outflow of information. And the relatively benign liberal opposition may seem rather tame in comparison to what may be in the works: widespread unrest due to the worsening economic conditions there.

--There has been a mixed response after Rick Warren was picked to deliver the invocation at Barack Obama’s inauguration. The main opposition is by those pointing out Warren’s depiction of homosexuality as sinful and his opposition to gay marriage. But he’s probably the best that Obama could have gotten from the evangelistic Christian community. Warren recognizes the problem of global warming, believes that Christians should do more to fight poverty, and has done much to fight AIDS. His treatment of liberal Democratic presidential candidate Obama was magnanimous and fair, so it’s understandable that the president-elect would be eager to return the favor. He also probably realizes that Warren is not going to go flying off at the mouth during the invocation. Which is not necessarily a sure thing, considering the range of pastors out there. And Obama is getting a minister (Joseph Lowery) who supports gay rights to deliver the benediction.

--The Miami Dolphins find themselves in the incredible position of being the only team in the AFC East to “control their own destiny”, going into the final week of regular season play. If they beat the New York Jets on Saturday, they’re in the playoffs. If they lose, then they’re out and either New England or the Jets make it. But even if that happens, it’s been quite a run for them. Tony Sparano, the Dolphin head coach, should win Coach of the Year hands down!

War, Peace, and Splinter Groups

The Middle East is full of problems, as any moderately-informed human is aware. There are conflicts going on all over the place: Israel vs. Palestine, the Lebanese factions, the Iraqi factions, Turkey vs. the Kurds, the Sunnis vs. the Shiites, political/religious struggles within Iran, Iran’s nuclear program, Afghanistan's civil war, the hunt for Al-Qaeda leaders, Pakistan’s problems, etc. And many of us reasonable, peace-oriented souls ask why the discordant parties can’t just sit down together and work out reasonable, peaceful solutions to their disputes. Well, this is close to impossible, as I will explain.

In conflicts that have polarized the opposing sides to the point where they have been at war with each other, are currently fighting in wars with each other, or are considering going to war with other, there is a strong sense of patriotic duty for those involved to be stalwart and loyally support the aims of whichever side they are on. In these highly inflammable circumstances, the simple act of talking with one’s enemy, much less working out compromise peace treaties with them, is seen at best as a sign of weakness and at worst as a sign of betrayal. Look at the cases of Anwar Sadat of Egypt and Yitzhak Rabin of Israel. In each case, they stepped away from war and embraced peace with their opponents. And paid for it with their lives, being assassinated by parties within their own countries who accused them of betraying their people.

In like manner, it does little good to sit down with groups claiming to represent an opponent, work out an agreement with them, and then see more radical groups splinter off from them and continue the violence. I keep hearing of our efforts to help Israel negotiate a peace with the Palestinian Authority, which only controls the West Bank; its rival Hamas runs the Gaza Strip. But whatever treaty results from any successful negotiations will not only be completely rejected by Hamas as being a betrayal by the Palestinians responsible for it: there will most likely be elements within that same Palestinian Authority that will break off and continue the fighting. Even if Hamas itself were to sit at the negotiation table and accept a deal, that organization’s leaders would be risking being deposed and possibly assassinated. And the organization would just spin off more radical splinter groups.

I can understand why any leader in that part of the world would be very cautious about proactively trying to promote peace with their enemies, with the risk of assassination by disaffected members of their own side so strong. It will take some momentous acts of heroism on the part of some Middle East leaders, as well as a lot of good fortune in dodging bullets and bombs (launched from their own ranks) to be able to finally create the kind of peace that the people in this area thirst for. Hopefully, our new president (we really are putting an awful lot of pressure and expectation on him) will be able to serve as a benevolent, trustworthy arbitrator in the promotion of peace there.

Blessed are the peacemakers!
********************************************************
You may have noticed over the past recent weeks that I haven't been publishing any blog entries on Saturdays. Actually, this is a new development: I think it would be a good idea to take one day off from the blog. But I'm still open for comments (and sometimes writing replies to them) on Saturdays. And if you are writing your own blog, I may be visiting it (and possibly submitting a comment on it) on that day as well.

Who Started It?

My daughter is currently taking a class in logical reasoning as one of her eight grade courses. She is learning various fallacies that people tend to accept without thinking. I have a fallacy to contribute, although I don’t think that it is necessarily a fallacy in logic. Rather, I think this fallacy belongs in the field of ethics: the idea that one side in a drawn-out conflict can claim moral superiority over the opponent by claiming the other “started it”.

Let’s suppose that I am living thousands of years ago in a land that my ancestors have dwelt in for countless generations. And let’s further suppose that a group of nomadic people come to the borders of my homeland and lay a retroactive claim to it, stating that their god had promised it to them before “my people” had ever lived in it. They then use this as a pretext to claim that we are trespassers on “their” land and are therefore “starting” a conflict with them. They attack us, wiping out whole cities and even killing all of the women and children. Because we were "trespassing" on “their” land. And let’s even further suppose that it’s back in what we regard as today’s era, sixty years ago. And people claiming in some way to be descendants of those nomads are again driving out, on that very same land, people who had been living there for generations. Once again, the pretext of the “promised land” and the accusations that those living there were trespassing on their rightful land is used.

Using the pretext that someone else started a conflict with aggression is an old manipulative trick that people need to be savvy of. The U.S. openly provoked the North Vietnamese with warships in Hanoi’s crucial (to their own security) home harbor in August 1964. After some shots were fired at the ships, U.S. President Lyndon Johnson, in the midst of an election campaign, framed the conflict to make it appear that the North Vietnamese started it. In fact, he used a specially convened meeting of congress and the media to blow up the contrived (by us) incident to Pearl Harbor-like proportions (I know; I was there, watching the entire charade on television). And the resulting congressional resolution opened the way for the tragic Vietnam War.

Sometimes a conflict between peoples goes back so far in time that it’s pointless to try to ascertain who started it. Look at the tension in former Yugoslavia between the Muslims and Christians. Or on Cyprus between the Greeks and the Turks. In Northern Ireland, both sides can point to atrocities against the other. The Irish Catholic side, though, likes to claim victory in any argument by pointing out that it was the English who first invaded their island.

And now we come to perhaps the most tragic, war-torn spot on the planet: a zone that encompasses the Darfur region in western Sudan and the eastern part of Congo. The rebels involved in both wars are justifying their parts in the conflicts by claiming self-defense for the people they represent. But the wars themselves are killing off the very people they claim to represent. An outsider should not (in my opinion) go into analyzing these situations with the notion that one side is “good” while the other is “evil”. But that seems to regrettably be the pattern in which America has conducted its foreign policy over the past few decades. Can I at least just hope that the Obama presidency can change this?

Hooked On Coffee Shops

The idea of sitting around somewhere drinking coffee goes way back in my life. I mean way, way back. To Opa-Locka when I was only two and my mother and I would visit her friend Betty a few doors down. All three of us would sit around the kitchen table drinking instant coffee (mine mostly milk). But for a large part of my childhood, the coffee drinking experience faded in importance. Until the time my father signed the two of us up for one of those New-Age-type self improvement seminars that seemed to be everywhere in the seventies. It was October 1972, and the seminar was being held at the Marriott Hotel near the Miami International Airport. During the seminar, there would be breaks between the presentations, and my father and I would often go down to the lobby to sit around the restaurant bar there and drink some coffee. And that experience stuck very, very deeply within me as a strong, vivid, positive thing.

Once I moved to Gainesville in 1977, sitting out and drinking coffee became almost second nature to me, and it has stayed with me to this day. A few years ago, I purchased a very sturdy, portable word processor called AlphaSmart that runs on AA batteries seemingly forever, and have been going out, drinking coffee, and writing on it ever since. As a matter of fact, I’m doing it now!

Since 2000, Gainesville’s coffee shop picture has been increasingly dominated by the Starbucks chain, which I believe now has more than ten stores in town. I prefer flavor-roasted coffee, which Starbucks regrettably doesn’t market as a brewed product. Bookstores Books-a-Million and Borders do provide flavor-roasted coffee at their cafés. There are several other competing coffee shops in town as well.

But of course I really don’t need to go to a specialty place for coffee. A Krispy Kreme Donut shop (minus the “donuts”) will do quite well, as will any fast-food place like McDonalds or Burger King. And I’ve also learned that just brewing some of my own coffee at home and bringing it out on my front porch can often produce the same “coffee shop” effect for me!

Union Newsletter Article

I just read an article by a regular columnist in my state union newsletter. He spent his first paragraph describing how he was a regular Wal-Mart shopper. Yes, he knew that this went against a lot of union sentiment, since Wal-Mart is pretty strongly anti-union. But he shopped there anyway because of the prices. And he cited the present tough economic times as a mitigating reason. That’s fine with me. I buy stuff there, too. But where’s the writer going with this?

Next, the columnist related how shoppers are warned against direct contact with shopping carts in places like Wal-Mart (it could have been any other place as well, but Wal-Mart was used as an example) because of the enormous amount of germs on the handles, even including fecal matter. Okay, I’ve heard that, too. Now I know the columnist shops at Wal-Mart and that he’s hip to the dirty shopping carts. There’s got to be a point here somewhere.

And then he finally gets down to what he really wanted to say. You see, the postal service has, like many other organizations, lost quite a bit of money lately and are in a “downsizing” mode right now. Management has offered early retirement without any real incentives in order to reduce the total work force and save money. This has been unsuccessful, since those retiring early would be giving up benefits and a lot of retirement income if they did this. Next, management on the national level enacted a decision eventually ending the generally preferred “Tour II” daytime mail-processing shift that, incidentally, attracted a lot of the more senior clerks (many of whom management wants to retire early). The writer thinks that this decision was designed to pressure those senior clerks to go ahead and retire since many would otherwise be forced into graveyard shift positions with terrible days-off. And then it all came together: Management, according to this writer, was treating workers as if they were the fecal matter on Wal-Mart’s shopping carts!

Look, I belong to my union and believe that organized labor and collective bargaining is good for society in general. But it’s true that, in hard times, cutbacks have to be made. The only other alternative that postal management has would be either to drastically cut back their services (which would destroy their recovery from these hard times and accelerate their future losses) or to lay off the junior employees. They may end up doing a combination of these two anyway, but first they are looking for other options that don’t involve putting people in unemployment lines or cutting back service. And offering early retirement and shifting work hours around are legitimate, relatively benign actions, especially when considering the alternatives.

In a perfect world, everybody works as long as they want to, when they want to, and get all of their benefits whenever they freely choose to retire. But companies need to make hard decisions at times in order to stay afloat. For this union writer to compare how management treats its employees to how he regards fecal matter on shopping carts is not only shortsighted, but also tasteless and “grossly” unfair.

Tetherball

Napoleon Dynamite is one of those movies that thoroughly cracks me up every time I see it. Basically a comedy about a gangly, awkward, and sensitive high school boy growing up in Idaho, this movie has a lot in it that reminds me of my youth. And I guess this appeal to people’s memories is one of the main reasons for its general popularity. In this age of sequels, I don’t know why they haven’t done one of this film, too.

The main character, naturally named Napoleon Dynamite, has one sport of which he is the master (at least in his own mind): tetherball. He’ll invite anyone he talks to for a game, and if they accept, watch out! Napoleon shows no mercy as he slams the ball around the pole, far out of his opponent’s reach.

Like Napoleon, I was a tetherball “master”, although I was much younger than him. Actually, I was in the third grade. My elementary school in West Hollywood, Florida had several tetherball poles on its playground, and I quickly learned how to outmaneuver others to victory. My parents even bought me my own tetherball pole, which we put up in my back yard. So I became quite unbeatable at something for a brief period in my life. But, alas, as is the case with Napoleon Dynamite, there really isn’t a future for tetherball jocks. There are no tetherball teams in high school that you can letter in or put on your school resume, you can’t get an athletic scholarship for college in tetherball, and there are no professional tetherball tournaments or leagues. I can’t hire myself out as someone’s personal tetherball trainer or coach. Shoot, there aren’t even any tetherball saloons in which I could hustle some unsuspecting suckers out of a few bucks!

Eventually, I lost interest in tetherball, seeing that no one could beat me in it, as well as the fact that the new school I went to the next year, five miles down the road, never played it. The pole in my backyard came down, but the ball and its tether remained. It became the favorite toy of our long-lived cockapoo dog Michelle (named after the Beatles song), who would grab the tether in her mouth, clamp her teeth down on it, and then slam the ball back and forth on the floor. And sometimes one of us would grab the tetherball and have a playful tug-of-war with Michelle (always letting her win in the end, of course).

It’s nice to know that there’s still tetherball being played somewhere. It did help my self-esteem quite a bit back in the “good ol’ days” of 1964-1965.

Monday Newsbreak: 12/15

--President Bush, on a surprise final visit to Iraq, suffered the indignity of a shoe attack at a press conference in Baghdad. One of the journalists, whose family had suffered terribly during the war, threw his shoes at the President, shoe-throwing apparently being a major insult in that part of the world. Bush graciously declined the shoes, though, declaring that they were size tens. What a guy!

--Disgraced Illinois governor Blagojevich is probably doing a lot of people a favor these days by hogging the news headlines. Never mind the tanking economy, the severe cholera outbreak in Zimbabwe, the wars and famine in central Africa, and the worsening situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The people want to hear about Blago, so that’s what the press is shoveling out to them!

--Speaking of cholera in Zimbabwe, the Mugabe government there has now stooped to accusing Britain of causing the epidemic. As the limbo song goes, “How low can you go?”

--I read in Sunday’s paper that an interstate bicycling road system is in the works. But right now it’s only in the planning stage. Not meant to be done on the scale of our Interstate Highway System, this network should help development of viable bicycle-friendly routes that will enable bicyclists to more safely travel on the open road. But if what they’re planning still involves me sharing the road with monster semi trucks, then thanks but no thanks!

--The University of Florida's Shands Hospital purchased the local Alachua General Hospital a few years ago, renaming it “Shands at Alachua General”. Now they are closing it down, this investment not giving them an acceptable return. Before, Alachua General Hospital served the generally poorer central and eastern side of Gainesville. Now those living there who need emergency room care will have to go to already-crowded Shands down the road. Meanwhile, Shands is constructing a large building called “Shands Sleep Disorders Center at Magnolia Parke”. Not that I think sleep disorders are trivial, but it seems that Shands has its priorities more than a little screwed up!

--The NFL's Miami Dolphins continued their stunning one-year turnaround by improving to 9-5 and a tie for first place. If they win their last two games, they’re in the playoffs. Unbelievable!

The Prisoner

At the beginning of the 60s TV series The Prisoner, an unnamed secret agent apparently working for Britain one day angrily storms into his employer’s “headquarters” in London and slaps his resignation letter down on the desk. After storming out of the place, he goes to his apartment and packs up for what appears to be a tropical island vacation. But before he can finish packing, someone releases a kind of knock-out gas into his apartment. When the agent awakens, he is in a strange resort-like place called “The Village”. None of the residents/prisoners there have names; they instead are assigned numbers. The “guards” have numbers, too, and are mixed in with the inmates so that none of the prisoners really know “who’s who”. Our hero is henceforth referred to as Number Six. The “mayor” of the Village, which changes each episode with a guest star, is Number Two. Which begs the question: who is Number One?

The Village is an open prison, location unknown (until the end of the last episode), and run by the “bad guys”, whoever they are. The inmates are political prisoners, spies, and anyone else deemed to have important information to impart to the Village authorities. With Number Six, there is one overriding question that he is continually asked: “Why did you resign?” But he successfully resists the temptation to reveal his reasons, which are implicitly important but never stated.

The Prisoner, which lasted two seasons in the late 1960s as a summer series on CBS, consists of seventeen episodes. The star is Patrick McGoohan, “Number Six”, whose character alternates between foiling Number Two’s schemes to extract information from him, sabotaging the works of the Village, and making unsuccessful attempts at escape (often dodging an oversized self-propelled beach ball/monster called “Rover”, which incapacitates people, sometimes even suffocating them, by sitting on them).

In spite of its relative brevity, The Prisoner stands as a truly great series in the history of television. Several of its episodes would rank right up there in my all-time favorite television episodes list. Perhaps the most important theme expressed in it is the question we all face: With our dual nature as individuals and social creatures, where do we draw the line and curtail our individuality for the sake of the group? And furthermore, how do we define what the “group” is? The people immediately surrounding us, or a more abstract conceptualization (country, family, humanity, etc.)?

All of its greatness notwithstanding, the final episode of The Prisoner, written by McGoohan himself, was rather disappointing and very confusing. I remember my mother, a very ardent Prisoner fan, becoming furious at the ending. I’ve watched it a number of times, thinking that I may possibly have missed something, and have finally concluded that it was a “rush job” and intended to be more symbolic than realistic. And decided to try not to let it detract from the rest of this excellent series.

Here are my personal top five Prisoner episodes:

#1 A, B, and C---Number Six’s dreams are manipulated and televised with the aim of surreptitiously getting him to reveal the reason for his resignation through his underground connections, using three people he had known (with the code names A, B, and C). A great concept, and an utterly brilliant ending!

#2 Free For All---It’s election time in the Village, and Number Six is pushed into running for Number Two’s “seat”. The deceptions, folly, and cynicism of campaigns and politics are mercilessly exposed in this disturbing episode.

#3 A Change of Mind---Because of his defiant actions, Number Six has been adjudged “unmutual” (I love that word). The remedy: a lobotomy-like laser operation. Will this be the end for Number Six? I’m not telling, but this episode has another knockout ending! (So I guess that means it's NOT the end for him, as you probably already knew.)

#4 Living In Harmony---I see this episode as the conceptual forerunner of the Matrix movie series. After all, Number Six is no longer in the Village (or so it seems, at least on the surface). He instead is a loner cowboy, like Clint Eastwood in those old spaghetti westerns. Instead of the Village, he is stuck in a violent western town that he cannot escape from. The town’s judge tries to get Number Six to agree to be sheriff. The sometimes thin barriers between the scripted characters that people portray in their various social roles and the reality of their own personal feelings are examined in this episode, exploding at its conclusion.

#5 Checkmate---Number Six is determined to escape. He selects some fellow prisoners to join him in an escape plot. First, he points out to them, it was important to know just who in the Village were the “prisoners” and who were the “wardens” disguised as prisoners. Number Six shows his accomplices how the demeanor of those around them could reveal their true allegiances. And the (once again) surprise ending bears this out very ironically.

Get a hold of The Prisoner on DVD, if you see some around for sale. With only seventeen episodes, I doubt that it would set you back very much. You, like me, would probably become very intrigued by this provocative series. And if you do this and can figure out what the final episode means, let me know!

Two Stories: The Shack and Contact

[Warning: Contains plot spoilers for The Shack and Contact]

I recently finished reading William P. Young’s novel The Shack. It is a fictional novel portraying a man’s struggle with grief over his young daughter’s abduction and murder during a vacation trip many years earlier. One day Mack receives a cryptic note inviting him to a meeting with “Papa” in the very same country shack that his daughter had been killed in. Angry at first, he decides to go there and see who “Papa” is. And he ends up meeting God in the three persons of the Trinity (“Papa” is one of them and appears to him as an elderly, ebullient black woman). When Mack arrives at and enters the dilapidated, bloodstained shack, it and its surroundings are instantly transformed into a beautiful little cottage and well-kept grounds. Mack stays the weekend there, and through his dialogues and interactions with the three persons of God (“Papa”, Jesus, and holy spirit), he renews and strengthens his faith. Coming back, he suffers an automobile accident and wakes up in the hospital to find that time had apparently stopped in the “outside” world, for it is still the same day that he had set out for the shack! Mack recounts his experiences to his best friend Willy and his wife. Both accept his honesty behind his told experiences. But in the end, Mack knows that his encounter with God was essentially unprovable and always meant to be very personal.

The late scientist/educator Carl Sagan was quite vocal in proclaiming his atheism. He was equally adamant about his disbelief in the paranormal as well. But that did not stop him from writing his acclaimed novel-turned-movie Contact, which starred Jodie Foster as an astronaut who travels through space to have humanity’s first direct encounter with alien life. When she finally reaches the targeted planet for the contact, she discovers that the alien entity is presenting itself in the form of her beloved father. That experience is very personal in nature, much like Mack’s is in The Shack. And also, Jodie comes back to Earth to discover that her ship never took off. As was the case with Mack, the long stretch of time in which she experienced her voyage and encounter happened in an instant. And also like Mack, she had to reconcile with herself and others the extent to which her experiences were real.

In Contact Carl Sagan explored, from an alien’s point of view, how a first encounter with humans would most wisely be set up. He concluded that it would be done in such a way as to reduce the culture shock that would inevitably emanate from a highly publicized contact. Hence the very personal, subjective, and unprovable nature of the experience. In The Shack, it is God who is seeking contact. The message is that God wants relationship with all of humanity, but like the alien in Contact, goes about this one human at a time. And once again, the experience has a very personal, subjective, and unprovable nature to it. Both Foster’s character and Mack nevertheless, after some personal doubts, come out of their experiences personally transformed and feeling positive about their new (in Contact) or strengthened (in The Shack) relationships with the alien/God.

Just noting the similarities between The Shack and Contact doesn’t necessarily imply that William P. Young incorporated Sagan’s theme and transformed it into a Christian message. The two authors may each have been drawing on an common idea that’s been around for a while: when approaching an animal in friendship, go slowly and come down to its level to alleviate its fear and distrust. And assuming a role in that animal’s own social structure can both make it feel comfortable and go a long way toward successfully establishing contact.

Similarly, more technologically-adept cultures now tend to go easy on exposing themselves to more primitive cultures when encountering them. The idea nowadays is to avoid affecting the technologically-primitive culture adversely by quickly learning and imitating its ways so as to be as familiar and acceptable to it as possible.

The Shack will read differently, depending on whether or not you have been discipled in the tenets of evangelistic Christianity. To someone like me who knows the essential “ins and outs” of this faith, the book is just a repackaging of its doctrines to both seem more palatable to the believer and attract the interest of nonbelievers. Nothing wrong with that, but I would like to make one strong point. The big, big issue a lot of folks have with religion is that God chooses to be invisible and directly unapproachable . The Shack totally refutes that by making the deity visible and directly approachable. But it’s fiction, not real! And I think some people are reading and interpreting it reverently almost as if it were an added book of the Bible! Please don’t do that!
*********************************************************
Yesterday's Personal Stuff
I practiced a little piano, but laid off of the running to drive up to Jacksonville, pick up my son from college there, and bring him back home for Christmas vacation. What a wonderful reunion! It's great having the whole family back together again. I continued reading Twilight and Black House, both stories beginning to take a rather sinister twist.