Hurricane Season Finally Here (Kind Of)

In 2004 and 2005, we were told, the effects of global warming were being brutally demonstrated by increasingly severe hurricane seasons. Not only were there more storms, but they were stronger as well. In 2004, Florida was hit by four strong hurricanes, while in 2005 Katrina devastated New Orleans and southern Mississippi, Rita slammed into the far-eastern Texas coast, and Wilma inflicted much damage on south Florida. And then the onslaught tapered. This year, the El Nino effect, caused somehow by warm waters in certain places in the Pacific Ocean and which somehow stunts tropical storm growth in the Atlantic, has been going on strong. And the Atlantic tropical storm output has reflected this, with the first named storm (Ana) not occurring until relatively late in the season, just a few days ago. As Ana trudged westward across the Atlantic toward the Lesser Antilles, it began to weaken. Meanwhile, Bill, the next of our storms, began to develop in the eastern Atlantic, roughly following Ana's path. And then, presto!, seemingly out of nowhere, Tropical Storm Claudette, with maximum sustained winds of 50 mph and rainstorms almost entirely on its eastern side, materialized in the Gulf of Mexico and soon thereafter hit the Florida panhandle. Now we're left with the original two: Ana, a mere tropical depression now, going through the Greater Antilles (where even more weakening is expected); and Bill, strengthening into a full-fledged hurricane but whose path is forecast to take it eventually into the northern Atlantic, away from land.

Being a Floridian for almost my entire life (much of it in south Florida), I have gone through periods of intense personal interest in hurricanes and their paths. It is a bit exciting when one appears to be heading my way, even though the odds tend to work against a direct hit. I do think, though, that the media tends to go a bit overboard when covering mere tropical storms (maximum sustained winds between 39 and 73 mph), especially the weaker ones (like Claudette). It is as if the act of sticking a name to a storm gives it more news "pizazz"!

Gainesville's Cofrin Nature Park

In the midst of an area of heavy traffic congestion on the way to the overcrowded Oaks Mall area lies an unassuming little park, Cofrin Nature Park. Named after recently deceased area philanthropist David Cofrin, this pleasant getaway is a fresh respite from the stress of urban living. At the entrance are a tennis court, a children's playground area, and a picnic area. A few steps past this is the start of a looping nature trail, complete with a view of a tiny creek that runs through the park.

I found walking the Cofrin Nature Park's trail to be refreshing, shorter then either Loblolly Woods or Ring Park and much less confusing than the latter. Again, no admission is charged there, although parking spots may be hard to come by if the park is crowded (when I went, I was the only one there). I recommend this park to anyone who wants to briefly escape their urban existence and experience a little nature for a while before returning. For those who like to walk or jog for exercise, the trail is very suitable.

Cofrin Nature Park is located at 4810 NW 8 Avenue. Here are some photos I took of the place.

Beliefs and Belonging

It can be quite maddening to observe the health care debate going on in this country. Twisted, false notions seem to have lives of their own, resisting clearly expressed debunking. You're going to lose your insurance, the government will tell you what doctor to go to, you will have to wait for months to see a doctor, this is socialized medicine, and (worst) the government is going to kill grandma (using death panels) in order to save money. I'd like to focus on the last-mentioned falsehood.

Over and over again, people in the media (not just liberals, but mainstream journalists as well) have laid to rest this rumor (or so I would have thought) by revealing its source: a provision in the proposed legislation that provides government reimbursement of physicians who give end-of-life counseling to their clients (including giving information about living wills, almost universally endorsed and promoted in the past by politicians of both major parties). Now we have Glenn Beck continuing to rant about this false rumor as if it were still true, while politicians like Sarah Palin and Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley tweet and speak about death panels and "killing grandma" when they obviously know better. And ordinary (I resist using the designation "normal") citizens continue to shout at politicians in town hall meetings with this ridiculous accusation. What's going on?

There is a doughnut shop across the street from the Starbucks I'm currently sitting at. Many of the times that I go in there, I see several generally elderly people, mostly men, sitting around and loudly discussing politics. Only what they might call "discussing politics" is, to me, just verbally regurgitating what right-wing "information" they heard from their idols on TV and radio. As a matter of fact, one common lead-in to a statement is "I heard Rush say the other day..." These folks obviously relish each other's company and enjoy the ritual of going down there, swilling the java, chomping on the rings, and spewing out the dogma. One of the unwritten rules there though, is that contradictory input from anyone of a different political viewpoint is not welcome. So if you want to play with them (i.e. be liked and socially accepted by them), you need to either express agreement with whatever outlandish opinions they express, find SOMETHING they say to agree with, or keep your mouth shut!

I know what I'm talking about when I say that many people view expressing a belief (or a disbelief) as a matter of belonging and being accepted within a social group much more than as a matter of expressing an honest, personally-arrived-at assessment. I think a lot of this originates from the fact that most people come from religious backgrounds and most of them still practice a form of organized religion. Within just about any religion I can think of, there are certain propositions that, on the surface, are preposterous, but which the religion's adherents still openly express belief in. If you have lived your whole life from childhood expressing preposterous viewpoints that you personally find yourself intellectually rebelling against but still are expressing because you feel compelled to do so in order to be accepted in that religious group, then it will probably carry over into other areas of your life. Including politics.

Folks like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Sean Hannity offer to many people a cozy, easy access to our political system and the news, with ready-to-go analysis that appeals to them and provides a sense of belonging within a political movement. The term "dittohead" (referring to the commonly-found Limbaugh fan who always agrees with him) applies here. For although even I myself occasionally "ditto" some things that ol' Rush says, I still take each thing he says and filter it through my perception of what is reasonable or not. A "dittohead", on the other hand, uses a different process. (S)he first decides to belong to Rush's "family" and THEN absorbs everything he says as gospel truth. Just as the member of a religion would sit there and absorb everything their clergy would say to them as truth. Beck and Hannity fans commonly do this as well. (To be fair, I think quite a few liberals do this sort of thing with MSNBC's Ed Schultz, Keith Olberman, and Rachel Maddow, too.)

So hearing someone expressing a belief about something is a little more complicated than simply attributing it to their actual feelings. For many, expressing certain opinions, even if they are patently false, is a vital part of a social compact that they have made in a personal desire to belong to and be accepted by a particular group, be it religious, political, or just social. To this betrayal of people's rational thought processes, I say pass the doughnuts and shut your mouth!

Vick Conditionally Reinstated in NFL

Michael Vick, the former Atlanta Falcons star quarterback (three Pro Bowl selections, $100 million-plus multi-year contract) is now being conditionally reinstated into the National Football League after serving eighteen months in prison for his role in staging dogfights and the resulting severe cruelty to animals. Vick has naturally been kicked out of the league for two years. He has been the object for anger and hate among the general public, and why not? Here was a guy who had it all: an athletic superstar, very wealthy, and well-liked in his community and across the nation. What possessed him to engage in dogfighting?

On the other hand, cruel exploitation of animals for economic gain or leisure is a time-honored tradition. Look at our beef, pork, poultry, and seafood industries. How much do most of them concern themselves with the well-being of the animals they raise for food? And what about hunting and fishing, which involve "human beings" using increasingly advanced technology to inflict painful deaths on wild animals? I am currently visualizing Sarah Palin shooting moose from a helicopter. How far removed is that really from Vick's crimes?

Having said all that, I believe that Michael Vick deserved to be prosecuted and reviled for his crimes. But I also believe in rehabilitating and allowing those who have served their sentences for the crimes they committed to be fully allowed back into society. Roger Goodell, the NFL's commissioner, apparently agrees with me on this and has permitted Vick conditional reinstatement as a player this year, eligible to play in the regular season on the sixth week. Former coach Tony Dungy has volunteered to mentor Vick through this period. Vick has been very vocal with contrition and regret for his crimes as well as gratitude for the opportunity given to him now to do something positive with his life. The Philadelphia Eagles have signed him to a short-term contract that is conditional on him making the team and staying true to his reinstatement terms. Good for them!

I have read and heard hardliners who apparently want Michael Vick to be banned from football forever and still feel great anger and hatred toward him. But, like Tony Dungy, Commissioner Goodell, and the Eagles, I believe in second chances and reconciliation. I am rooting for Vick's second chance to be a success for all concerned!

Four Movies on TV, Part 2

[Bruce Willis in Die Hard]

I put off watching Die Hard, starring Bruce Willis, for more than twenty years. Finally, on a night that I was glued to my recliner, it came up and I watched it in its entirety.

One of the factors that had earlier been working against me watching Die Hard was the fact that I didn’t particularly like the character that Willis portrayed in his successful prime-time mystery/romance series Moonlighting. But that character, presented as a counterpoint to co-star Cybil Shepherd’s, wasn’t really a good enough reason to avoid Willis in the movies. This was strongly borne out when I saw his riveting performance as an international terrorist in The Jackal. After seeing what a complete actor Willis was, it was only a matter of time and opportunity before I saw him in Die Hard.

Die Hard is a story, set in a Los Angeles skyscraper, that deals with terrorists/crooks who take over the building and use the novel ploy of terrorism as a cover to commit a large robbery there. I was stunned to see that their leader, the arch-villain Hans Gruber, was played by Alan Rickman, the same actor who has played Severus Snape so well in the Harry Potter movie series. Although his voice as Gruber was identical to Snape’s, Rickman’s appearance was very, very different. I understand that Rickman is primarily a stage actor in Britain whose only two major film credits to date are: Die Hard and the Harry Potter series! With his enormous talent, he should be appearing in many more movies. But then again, Rickman’s paucity of cinema appearances may be by his own design.

In Die Hard, Willis portrays a New York policeman who is visiting his somewhat estranged wife, who works in the aforementioned skyscraper and is attending a large company party there. While Willis is sulking around his wife, the bad guys sneak into the building and take the partygoers hostage. But by sheer luck, Willis isn’t in the hostage group when this happens and then spends the rest of the movie as a Rambo-type warrior hiding within the building, knocking off the hoods one by one and generally aggravating Rickman’s Gruber character.

Meanwhile, on the outside the police (except for one officer), FBI (whose chief agent was the villain in the James Bond movie License to Kill), and media behave collectively as a bunch of counterproductive morons, each with its own special agenda that has little to do with aiding Willis in rescuing the hostages and stopping the criminals.

The action was great, Willis’s character was very compelling and easy to sympathize with , and I couldn’t argue with Hans Gruber as a character embodying pure intellectual evil. And the fact that a sequel to Die Hard came out a few years later should give a clue as to how the movie ended.

The next movie from that night that I saw (for the umpteen millionth time) was the 1967 Arthur C. Clarke/Stanley Kubrick collaboration 2001: A Space Odyssey. I’ll write about it in a few days.

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On a completely random note, I received a comment from my Summer of 1969: So What? entry a couple of days ago, but decided not to publish it. The submitter had nothing to say about my article, but instead promoted his/her video presentation on YouTube. I have nothing against that per se, but the substance of the comment needs to be pertinent to my article. To that individual, I suggest a resubmission of your comment that at least demonstrates that you read my article and have some type of reaction to it, agree or disagree.

Perseid Sighting Preempted

Due to health problems I've been experiencing (not critical, but incapacitating) this week, I wasn't able to see the Perseid meteor shower as I had planned. It was pretty overcast the last two nights anyway.

Truth is, living within a city of more than 100,000 residents like Gainesville makes it difficult for me to observe the night sky the way I want to. Add to the urban environment with its night lights the fact that there are so many trees everywhere blocking the view and you can see that star-gazing simply doesn't work here for me. I need to find a dependable location in an open field or hilltop on the outskirts of Gainesville to be able to reasonably observe the night sky.

As for figuring a way to photograph celestial objects with my cheap binoculars and digital camera, that didn't work out either. But I do have an old telescope stand that I believe I could place on a tabletop and attach the camera to it. Then, with a long exposure setting I may be able to capture the moon, some stars, and planets. But for the time being, I am not in physical condition to do much moving around, so this project will have to wait for a future opportunity.

The Summer of 1969: So What?

Yeh, I know that this summer marks forty years since anyone first set foot on the Moon. Back in the summer of 1969.

Yeh, I know that the Tate-LaBianca murders, instigated by Charles Manson and executed by his flock of murderous all-American young zombies, also occurred forty years ago this summer. In 1969.

Yeh, that so-called “greatest musical concert of all time”, Woodstock, also took place around this time forty years ago, in 1969.

And yeh, the Beatles walked across Abbey Road (Paul shoeless) for their famous album cover in the summer of 1969.

So what? Why is the mass media obsessing on summer, 1969?

True, the Apollo 11 moon mission was a milestone in human achievement. But then-President Nixon, who talked to the Apollo 11 astronauts on the moon live from the White House, slashed the Apollo missions, canceling planned moon voyages and ending the last one in 1972. In the 37 years since, all manned space trips have consisted of going in circles closely around Earth.

Manson and Woodstock were certainly symbols of the times back then and are interesting for studying human nature gone awry and for listening to some good music, but our recent history is full of other examples. And album covers...well, they're just album covers.

Why make “40” the anniversary year anyway? Didn’t people used to have to wait until “50” before they did this sort of thing? And speaking of “50”, why aren’t we talking about 1959 anyway?

In 1959, the Cold War between the US and the USSR was going on full strength. Both sides were fighting each other through proxy wars in third world countries, building up their nuclear missile arsenals and designing newer long-range missiles, and engaging in the space race (the Soviets had the edge in 1959). In America, a national campaign had begun to upgrade educational standards in the sciences and encourage development of new young scientists and engineers. If you’re old enough (like me) you may remember those old Bell Science films starring bald bespectacled “scientist” Dr. Frank Baxter, who introduced very interesting, entertaining and inspiring programs about diverse scientific topics such as genetics, subatomic particles, time, the Sun, the weather, the five senses, the circulatory system, and language. These were part of that national effort going on then.

And many, many other events were transpiring in 1959 as well. The civil rights effort was going on full steam, especially in the South, and rock n’ roll music dominated the popular culture.

Is there a sort of disconnect that occurred at some time between 1959 and 1969, making people want to remember the latter while ignoring or forgetting the former? Or maybe it’s something simpler.

Perhaps the emphasis on 1969 is simply due to the fact that far more people around today personally experienced it and remember it. I myself only turned three in the fall of 1959, so my memories of that year are completely confined to my home and family. And of course, I had no idea that I was living through 1959 while I was living through 1959!

But the professional media should take that into account when deciding what to commemorate. I think people would be much more enlightened to hear accounts about—say Castro consolidating his power in Cuba in 1959 while became gradually more estranged with the US in the process—than to hear the same old stories about Woodstock or Manson (or Neil Armstrong’s “that’s one small step for man” verbal goofup).

For many younger people of course, both 1959 and 1969 are years of the past that happened either before they were born or during their early childhood. What I think is the main reason for 1969’s emphasis nowadays is that many of those responsible for putting on these retrospective stories on television, printed media, and radio were old enough to remember the events of that year but too young to remember what went on fifty years ago. But that’s no reason to ignore the very important year of 1959.

Budding Musicians Need Boldness, Confidence

After discovering the independent/alternative music artist Sufjan Stevens on AOL Radio and then exploring some of his works on YouTube, I felt that I had found something special. On his very long albums Michigan, Illinois, and The Avalanche, put out in a relatively short period from 2003 to 2005, song after song was a joy to listen to. And some like Casimir Pulaski Day, Pittsfield, Flint, and Detroit Lift Up Your Weary Head, have risen to all-time favorites of mine. Naturally, I wanted to hear his very first album A Sun Came, which he originally recorded back in 1998. Well, that debut album was a bit of a chore to listen through, to say the least. There were some pretty hideous songs on it (like Rice Pudding and Satan’s Saxophones) and some vulgar little tracks with Alvin-the-Chipmunk-like voices talking about people vomiting and the like. I’d say that, all in all, about half the album was a “throw away”, a quarter was reasonably listenable, and three tracks were pretty good. It was, to me, definitely his worst album. But that was O.K. because it was his FIRST, and in your first album you have to figure out what works and what doesn’t. And some of that analysis can’t come about until that first product is already out there for everyone to hear. What made this generally mediocre work stand out to me was the attitude that Sufjan Stevens stamped all over it, on every track, good or bad. An attitude of utter and complete boldness and confidence, bordering on (and at times crossing into) arrogance.

I have heard very talented, inspired musicians who have all the talent that it takes to become a major success. But they are too tentative and insecure, and they project that in their performances and recordings. Being bold and confident can cover up the weaknesses that everyone has in one form or another.

An artist has to foster the habit of producing works with the mind of satisfying personal standards and not those of others, be they friends, family, or the public-at-large. And then, once a work is produced, to have the courage (or gall) to let others in on it. While recognizing that there will always be a few (or more) who will thoroughly detest it.

Naturally, a creative musician usually collaborates with other musicians to produce recordings or give performances, and their feedback on the quality (or lack thereof) of that musician’s works can be either positive and nurturing or negative and destructive. It’s important that musical collaboration directs the artist to produce better works, but in the beginning I think the most important goal is to encourage and grow a strong sense of personal confidence that will be reflected in the product, even if that product contains some serious flaws.

Time Keeps on Slipping, Slipping, Slipping...

I was recently looking at the cover of an entertainment magazine that was depicting some stars of a reality show called High School Reunion. A high school was staging a twenty year reunion and the program focused on how some of its participants (those pictured on the cover) were able to work out their memories and relationships with each other, happy and sad. I looked at the assembled young men and women from the high school that was the subject of this show and said to myself, “I wonder what they look like now after twenty years?” Then I saw, on the cover’s left side, a small inset of the same people in 1989 and realized that this WAS how they looked twenty years later. And suddenly I felt very, very old.

It is becoming increasingly difficult for me to tell what age people are, be they young or old. The other night, I went into a local doughnut shop and got a couple of doughnuts, a decaf coffee, and sat down in their dining area to consume it. After a few minutes, a police officer walked in, asking employees for information about an apparent suspect that they supposedly knew. The officer asked the woman who sold me my doughnuts and coffee for her name and date of birth. This woman, who I had thought was quite elderly, then gave her year of birth as being 1951. She was only five years older than me! And then suddenly, once again, I felt very, very old.

At a steak house restaurant in Ocala with my family a few months ago, an employee there asked me if I wouldn’t like to see the specials being offered there for seniors. And suddenly, well, you know my drift.

I just joined AARP and received my membership card and handbook. And you can take it to the bank that I plan to squeeze every bit of advantage I can get out of my advancing age. Just wait until 55 comes around in a little more than two years!

And if people are coming to the conclusion that I’m that damned old just by looking at me, then I shouldn’t have any paranoid fears about people being frightened by an old geezer like me running down their street at one or two in the morning. Maybe it’s time that I come to peace with the fact that I’m growing older and that it’s a great time to be alive!

Fifth Grade School Film

During my fifth grade in elementary school (in early 1967), a film crew paid us a visit for a few days. They were going to make a documentary of my super-duper, innovative "exploding star" of a school and we were all going to be stars as well! Oh well, make that three of us: two sixth-grade boys (Gar and Rick) and Sandy, a fifth-grade girl. Microphones were installed on them and they were followed around with a camera crew to record how a typical day was for students at this marvelous institution. I remember this pretty vividly, as Henry, a classmate with whom I chummed back then, would take a perverse pleasure in sneaking up behind Sandy (who wore a microphone tucked inside her skirt) and saying idiotic things just to sabotage the filming (as well as surreptitiously trying to appear in the movie).

Apparently, my friend's efforts were not enough to stop educational journalism at its finest, and the filming was finally finished. A few months later, our whole class was called to an assembly, and we were treated to the final product.

We were told that this movie about our school was going to be shown soon on TV. But we were all going to be treated to a sneak preview. The movie began by showing Debra, another fifth-grader, sitting staring vacantly at her fingernails, each of which she had painstakingly adorned with gummed reinforcements. Everyone in the assembly erupted in good-natured laughter at that, and other rather random scenes of student "activity" were shown. Eventually, the three aforementioned students, the focus of the film, were featured and we followed the action, all of us proud that we were so honored and special to have a movie made about our school. And we all looked for ourselves in the movie. Funny though: as much as my friend Henry had tried to get filmed, it appeared that he never made the final cut!

I remember, a few years later, once seeing this film on television. And it wasn't at all honoring to my old school, after all. There were people on it criticizing the idea of just letting students going off willy-nilly at school studying at their own pace, with teachers more in the background instead of the forefront of the learning process. And, looking back, I sadly tended to (and still do) agree with that viewpoint. But I also had classmates who thrived in that type of academic environment, so I suppose that it's a terribly subjective matter to analyze. Besides, it wasn't all chaotic there; there were structured classes sprinkled in among the "free-for-all" times.

Perseids Meteor Shower Here

When I was much younger (starting at age seven in the spring of 1964), I was an avid star-gazer, quickly learning to recognize (and draw) all of the common visible constellations and their brightest stars. Along with this, I became aware that, at certain dates through the course of a year, meteor showers would make their presence known. The greatest of all of these was and is the Perseid shower, which peaks around August 10-13. In all of these years, though, I never got a good look at a meteor shower, not even the great Perseids.

And they're coming again this year, of course. Because of my work schedule, I may be able to see a few meteors this time around. But this year, the Moon will be passing from the full phase to last quarter for the peak nights of the Perseids. And it will be in the same general part of the sky as the constellation Perseus, where the radiant (focal point) of the shower is and where most meteors are usually observed. Although this will most definitely interfere with the quantity and quality of my meteor sightings, I've decided to go ahead and see what I can. I'm going to experiment around with my digital camera, binoculars, and an old telescope to see if I can pull a "MacGyver" and put them together to capture some cool images for posting (even if they are only of the Moon). If I'm in any way successful, I'll post them on this blog.

Of course, the fact that I consistently miss out on meteor showers isn't completely due to lack of opportunities. Most of the time, I'm either sleepy, sleeping, or just not interested. But when I did have more interest in seeing them as a boy in the 1960s, it seemed to always be too cloudy whenever I was allowed to stay up late for this purpose. Maybe in this, my sixth decade of life, this will change as well. After all, the Perseids will be going on strong for more than one night, so one overcast night shouldn't be that big of a deal.

Town Hall Meeting Disruptions

A couple of years ago, John Kerry came to the University of Florida here in Gainesville to hold a public forum on various issues of interest. The meeting was structured similarly to the town hall meetings that politicians nowadays hold so often. During the question and answer period, Andrew Meyer, a UF student, hogged the microphone and posed some pretty provocative questions to the Massachusetts senator. For his efforts, Meyer was wrestled down to the floor by the local University Police, Tasered ("don't Tase me bro'"), handcuffed, arrested, and carted off to jail. Later he apologized for his behavior (although the grossly overreacting police didn't for theirs).

But now when I turn my television on, I am witnessing town hall meetings across the country whose "participants" are much, much more disruptive and unruly than Meyer ever imagined being. And many of them, I understand, don't even reside in the area where the politicians' districts/states are. Quite unlike Meyer who, as I said before, was a UF student.

As for the University of Florida incident, Andrew Meyer quietly waited for his opportunity to speak and only after he was standing at the microphone did he begin his (retrospectively quite humorous) ranting. But in these current town hall meetings, the politicians conducting them can barely hear themselves speak without hecklers, who are usually standing up en masse, yelling and gesturing. And these folks are angry, vicious, and aggressive.

There's nothing at all humorous about this. No, it's scary, not just for the politicians there but also for the legitimate citizens attending these meetings. The conduct of these disruptors of civic events is, in my opinion, much more deserving of police intervention than anything that Andrew Meyer unwittingly (or deliberately) concocted.

From what I have been able to gather, various right wing and Republican-backed special interest and lobbying groups have devised a strategy regarding the proposed health reform bill whereby its proponents in Congress, almost always Democrats, are to be hounded and harassed at their own town hall meetings, both to prevent them presenting their reasons for supporting health care reform as well as to give an impression in the media of a popular grassroots uprising against it. But I believe that this strategy has backfired. And the main reason for that is the loony-tune "birther" movement.

The "birthers", who believe and loudly proclaim that Barack Obama is not eligible to be president since he really wasn't born in the U.S.A. (all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding), brought organized town hall disruptive behavior to the national media's attention. So when the most recent wave of unruliness and harassment began, this time regarding health care reform, the only people fooled by it were the ones already opposed to health care reform.

The birthers are an example of a loose social/information feedback loop. They listen to the same radio talk shows (Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck, Savage), watch Fox News because it's "fair and balanced" (i.e. reinforces their ideology), regularly consult the Drudge Report website for the latest "news", flood each other with paranoid e-mails, etc. It is easy for groups to spring up that have strange ideas with the communications networks that we have to today, along with the choices that their users can make to reinforce their own prejudices, fears, and ignorance while shutting out any contradictory input. The other day, I heard someone on C-Span refer to this kind of behavior as "cocooning". And I think this concerns both politically left and right-leaning groups.

Frankly, I think that anyone, regardless of their political leanings, who goes to these meetings and behaves in this undignified manner, while in reality just being a puppet on someone else's string, must be suffering from a terrible lack of self-esteem. They all look and sound like a bunch of damned fools to me!

Justice Sonia Sotomayor

Congratulations to Sonia Sotomayor for being confirmed by the Senate as the next U.S. Supreme Court justice Thursday by a vote of 68-31. I think she will be an excellent justice and wish her many healthy, happy years on the court. I have long supported her nomination by President Obama as a choice of moderation instead of ideology, but apparently many Republican senators have chosen to oppose her anyway. Which makes me (and some in the media I've heard) wonder why the President shouldn't just go ahead and make any future Supreme Court nominations primarily based on ideology.

If Obama were to be able to nominate another justice (or more), his best opportunity to pick someone with his ideological bent would be sometime during the next year. After all, the U.S. Senate currently has 60 Democrats in it (although Nebraska's Ben Nelson is often a Democrat in name only) and the 2010 elections may reduce their number to a level that couldn't defeat potential Republican judicial filibusters. But then again, Democratic senators running for reelection in 2010 may not want to be saddled with having to vote for a nominee on the far left with the political fallout that this could portend for them.

But sometimes you have to just do what you think is right and let the (political) chips fall where they may.

When John Roberts was nominated by President Bush to replace William Rehnquist as Chief Justice, this represented no essential ideological shift on the court, as both justices had a conservative judicial ideology. When Samuel Alito was picked to replace Sandra Day O'Connor, though, the pick represented a substantial shift in the court to the right. This explains why about half of the Senate Democrats voted in favor of Roberts while only four of them voted for Alito. Since Souter's replacement with Sotomayor would, as was the case with Roberts, represent no substantial change in the Supreme Court's ideological makeup, one might have thought that the GOP would have taken this opportunity to show how reasonable they were. But since (in my opinion) they blew it (only nine out of forty Republican senators voted for her), who knows what they'll get next time around!

One side note: it was gratifying to see Senator Al Franken presiding over the final debate and voting. Since the duty of presiding over the Senate generally falls to junior senators in the majority party and Franken is the junior Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, having him up there made very good sense. I think he did an impressive job.

Interesting Popular Science Shows

I am intrigued by some of the programming I get on television, especially the shows on The Science Channel, Discovery, and The History Channel that deal with matters such as the Big Bang Theory of cosmology and the often cataclysmic history of the Earth. The other night I was treated to a series of shows about these topics, much to my delight.

On the Science Channel, I witnessed the continuing rise of a charismatic young science/educator: the University of Manchester's physicist Dr. Brian Cox. Dr. Cox quickly hits the viewer with his overwhelmingly happy, smiling persona and then infects with his enthusiasm for scientific discovery and the scientific process. His specialty seems to be in the area of subatomic particles and how to (1) reconcile their behavior with Einstein's General Theory of Relativity into a comprehensive theory of "everything" and (2) discovering more about the nature of the Big Bang by creating an environment similar to that which occurred soon after that event. With the new Hadron Supercollider near Geneva, Switzerland, Cox, along with many of his colleagues, have designed experiments that should either answer many of their questions or open up many new areas of inquiry. I am looking forward to more appearances by this bright, energetic and talented young scientist.

As for the Earth, it is amazing to me how the scientific method has discovered so many incredible events that happened in our planet's unwritten history:

--The creation of the Moon from an early collision with the Earth of a planetoid-type object, and how that object's iron eventually comprised the Earth's core.

--That the overwhelming majority of the Moon's (and implicitly the Earth's) craters occurred at about the same time 3.9 billion years ago, due to Jupiter and Saturn coming so close to one another that the change of gravitational pull on the asteroids released many of them to the inner part of the solar system.

--About 650 million years ago, the Earth went into a deep freeze "snowball" period that came close to extinguishing what life there was; volcanic activity eventually melted the ice and brought up temperatures.

--Earth's high oxygen content in its atmosphere is almost entirely due to microscopic algae-like organisms that converted sunlight into oxygen on a mass scale about 500 million years ago. And they can still be found in Earth on the west coast of Australia in the form of their rock deposits known as stromatolites.

--At about 250 million years ago, more than 90% of all marine species and over 70% of all land species were exterminated when a large section of the Earth's molten mantle rose to the surface in the form of massive volcanic formations and eruptions, covering the planet with ash (known as the Permian Extinction). [Wikipedia does offer other possible scientific explanations for this mass extinction.]

--More recently, in North America the mega-mammals (the mammoths and mastodons), along with the Neolithic human society known as the Clovis, were wiped out when an asteroid/meteor hit in what is now the Chesapeake Bay region, superheating the air, causing massive fires, and choking off sunlight.

And I've left out quite a bit (the dinosaur extinction is "old hat" to me). But it's all very fascinating to me. And it makes me sad to know that so many young people are being deprived of these great wonders which true science is revealing because of a narrow fundamentalist religious doctrine that insists on a 6,000 year old universe!

Baseball Mid-Season Trading

It hasn't been all that easy for me to get to know the different major league baseball teams I've decided to follow this year. Naturally, the ones whose games are shown the most in Gainesville (Florida Marlins, Tampa Bay Rays, Chicago Cubs, and Chicago White Sox) have been the easiest, with me becoming familiar with many of the names in their lineups. But now the tradition in this sport of teams making major trades in mid-season has turned over some of which I've been trying to do.

Take the last Cubs game I saw. Suddenly they have this player who just came over from Pittsburgh and that one who just arrived from Colorado. And I don't know what players they gave up to get these new ones. What saddened me though, was the Cleveland Indians trading their ace pitcher Cliff Lee (and my favorite player on the team) to Philadelphia for some future prospects.

The reasoning is this: teams who are still in the hunt for post-season glory want to strengthen their lineups with as much talent as they can get. So they seek stars from teams who are already essentially out of the race this year. Those teams usually receive a number of lesser stars and younger, less developed talent that they feel can help them to rebuild and come back the next year. Also, unloading expensive star players can free those losing teams up financially to sign up other players that they feel will better help them to win. But it can get to be confusing, though, keeping up with who's playing for whom.

And Cliff Lee going over to the Philadelphia Phillies? Oh, no! I'm rooting for the Florida Marlins to overtake them in the standings, and now ol' Cliff has gone over to the "dark side"! But there is some good news: the trading deadline for the season has passed, so now the various teams are stuck with their players, like them or not. And to me, even if a team is having a losing season, part of the fun in watching them is seeing the same players going up to bat and being in the field at their positions. Now if they can just stop spitting all the time!

A Walk Through Ring Park

Yesterday, as part of my series of excursions into Gainesville's interesting network of nature parks, I visited Alfred A. Ring Park off NW 23 Boulevard. Called simply Ring Park for short, it is located within a mile of bustling US 441 and Gainesville High School in the heart of Gainesville, but you wouldn't know it by stepping into it. Having first heard of this park, (almost hidden behind an Elks lodge) on an Internet running site (someone recommended it as a training course), I had thought it was a playground-type park with a little hiking/jogging trail encircling it (according to its map on the Net). Was I surprised!

Ring Park revealed its advantage over my Loblolly Woods experience when I found easy parking at its entrance. Upon entering it, I found it to be unexpectedly very primitive, even more so than was Loblolly Woods. The usually dirt path on the trail was often very rocky, full of jutting tree roots, and hilly at times. There were parts of it that contained puddles, not very conducive to a light jog. Fortunately, on my premiere trek I had decided to hike the park, not run it.

A little ways into Ring Park, I discovered a place where there were sheltered picnic tables and a small plastic kiddies' slide setup. That was the first and last vestige of anything resembling my preconceived image of this park! After passing this place, the trail become more and more primitive. I finally reached a beautiful golden creek and a fork in the trail nearby. I unwisely went to the right when I should have gone to the left. For by doing this I had inadvertently left the loop and gone deeper into the wilderness. But I kept walking, thinking the whole time that I was returning to the park's entrance (and my car). Finally, I did hear some traffic up ahead and I knew that I was almost back. But then I stepped out of the woods and found myself at NW 16 Avenue! Ooops! I had to go back into the park and retrace my route back to the other end. In short, a planned twelve to fifteen minute hike ballooned into more than thirty minutes. The park does have a detailed map at its entrance, and it looked much more complicated than the simple "loop" I saw on the Internet.

Ring Park is much more interesting to me than Loblolly Woods. There is parking and a place for picnicking with restrooms. And the trails do have benches periodically spaced for tired travelers (Loblolly Woods also provides this). The scenery is much more interesting as well. And, as also is the case with Loblolly Woods, there are no admission fees.

Here are some pictures I took of my experience at Ring Park.

Are Blogs Declining?

This is by no means scientific; I'm going largely on my subjective interpretation of what's going on around me. But it seems to me that the popularity of "regular" blogs is declining somewhat, with many formerly avid bloggers and blog readers instead flocking to other Internet networking magnets like Facebook and Twitter.

I see many more references to Twitter on television nowadays. Why this switch? I believe it has a lot to do with the fact that people in general have a very short attention span and don't have what it takes to either patiently follow more lengthy blog articles or to consistently invest the time to compose them. There may also be the "herd instinct" at work here; Facebook and Twitter are currently "where the action is". And finally, these two sites speed up social interaction on the Web considerably. This contrasts with blog commentary, which is slower paced.

Personally, I greatly prefer the slower and more thoughtful pace of blogging. I don't understand how anything of substance can be expressed on Facebook or Twitter, and I like having the time to mull over any comments I receive on my blog before possibly responding to them. I can put any pictures or videos on my blog that I could on Facebook, and my articles can be easily searched by topic on Google. Having written this blog since April 2007, I also quickly learned the extreme importance of establishing a well-founded context that backs up any potentially provocative statement of mine that could be misinterpreted. This context is often lacking on Facebook postings and is virtually nonexistent on Twitter (due to its imposed text limitations).

I think I'll just stay on my blog, thank you. I just hope that, even with this (possibly imaginary) decline I'm perceiving, those companies providing this wonderful opportunity for self-expression will recognize its enduring value and importance for our society and continue this tremendous public service.

Four Movies on TV: Part 1

I had an interesting "movie night" at home the other night. All from my cable-provided television. First I caught the ending of Clint Eastwood's first spaghetti western A Fistful of Dollars. Then I watched, for the very first time, Die Hard: Bruce Willis's foray into motion pictures after his success in TV's romantic detective series Moonlighting. After Die Hard, I switched to Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick's epic science fiction collaboration 2001: A Space Odyssey. And finally, I began watching the James Bond movie The Spy Who Loved Me, which starred Roger Moore as British spy Bond and Barbara Bach as his Soviet partner/rival. It was a case of being glued to my chair all night.

Although Eastwood's A Fistful of Dollars predated his The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly by about four years, it was the latter that I saw first, and not until the early 1980s at that. It was after the 11 pm local news, and I had to be at work at 10 the next morning. But my local station was showing The Good, the Bad and the Ugly right after the news and I said to myself, I'll just watch this movie and go to bed when it's over around 1:30 or so. Well, the movie dragged on and on and on. And on and on. With all of the commercials thrown in, it wasn't until 3:30 when the movie ended. And I wasn't too happy the next day trying to stay awake! But here's the point: that movie, as quirky and flawed as it was, made such a deep impression on me that I couldn't turn off the TV. And it still remains as one of my all-time favorites.

A Fistful of Dollars is much more compact, but the main character, the soft-spoken sharpshooting no-nonsense Man With No Name portrayed by Eastwood, dominates the movie (whereas Eli Wallach tended to dominate The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly). This film introduced to the western genre of movies the notion of the "anti-hero", someone with many character flaws (Eastwood's character killed with no remorse and was a supreme manipulator), mixed with elements of compassion, generosity and loyalty. In other words, the anti-hero concept sought to make the western "hero" more compatible with people as they really were instead of simple goodie-goodie superheroes (which John Wayne had worked into a successful formula for decades). It worked so well for Clint Eastwood that he carried his anti-hero persona into other genres like comedy (Every Which Way But Loose) and his Harry Callahan crime series. He has only improved over the years.

One side note: over the years, I have enjoyed seeing how different actors Eastwood used in his films kept appearing in them and what roles they played.

Next segment of this article (at a future date): Bruce Willis in Die Hard.

Personal New Year

In honor of the August 1981 personal resurgence, I will henceforth mark August 1 as the start of my own "personal" new year and set forth a set of attainable goals for the year to come, as well as a plan to progressively achieve them.

What happened in August 1981, you may ask. OK, you have my permission to ask, but since the answer is kind of personal, I'm not inclined to share it in detail on this blog. In short, though, I had hit a major rut in my life and, by changing my routines and focus, I was able to get back on track and attain a sense of hope about my future. Not that I now don't have plenty of things to be glad and hopeful about. But I know that I can do better.

In my self-assessment, one thing that I will do is make two different lists. One will be the things throughout my life that I did that gave me the greatest pride of personal achievement. The other will be of special "magic moments" I've experienced that, regardless of my own personal role in creating them, still stick vividly in my memory as compelling snapshots of my life that give it a sense of joy and interest. Reflecting on my positive experiences should help me in determining what goals I want to set for myself this year.

One possible pitfall of making goals like this is to aim too high too quickly. And then suffer the disappointing letdown of not being able to live up to my goals. Back in August 1981, I focused on one academic project and changed my personal routine around in a way that not only provided an effective setting in time and place in which to do that project, but also that enabled me to alter some detrimental lifestyle habits with which I had become bogged down.

So experience has taught me that, although I may want to progress in many diverse areas of my life, I need to change in a focused manner, one area at a time. I need to incorporate this as well in any plans I have for self-improvement this year.

Boston Cop's Racist E-Mail

Talk show host Glenn Beck, for whom I actually felt some respect when he worked at HLN, has gone completely off the deep end ever since he switched his employment to Fox News Network. It seems that Beck has been trying to out-Hannity right wing extremist Sean Hannity with his hateful comments about anything and anyone whose political sentiments are anything left of far right. Now he has gone and called our president a racist because he had the audacity to question a Cambridge, Massachusetts police officer's arresting of a prominent scholar in that scholar's own home. Wait, let me fill in the blanks: the officer was white, the scholar was black, and our president is black. Oh yeh, Glenn, that's got to be racist!

Now comes the news that in Boston (lying next to Cambridge) one of their police officers circulated a mass e-mail calling that black scholar a "banana-eating jungle monkey". But hey, when he was confronted with his words, Officer Justin Barrett said, "I am not a racist". And Barrett, who as an officer "of the law" carries a gun and Taser and handcuffs and whose testimony against suspects as a policeman carries undue weight in court, retained an attorney who said that his "comments were taken out of context".

Yes, attorney, let me read a little more of the e-mail to put it in better "context". Your client stated in it that had he "been the officer he verbally assaulted like a banana-eating jungle monkey [Barrett] would have sprayed him in the face with OC [pepper spray] deserving of his belligerent non-compliance." You're right, attorney, the context does change the meaning. It makes it worse.

Barrett was placed on administrative leave after the e-mail and may lose his job. Who wants anyone to lose their job? But shouldn't there at least be some accountability expected for the officer's actions? Nevertheless, I see ahead in my crystal ball the following events happening:

---Glenn Beck not only refuses to call Barrett or his comments racist; he turns it all around and further accuses President Obama somehow of causing Barrett to lose his job or suffer whatever disciplinary action he incurs.

---Sean Hannity gets (possibly former) Officer Barrett on his show and turns the racial-epithet spouting cop into a folk hero for the far right wing nuts, with the policeman having allegedly been hounded out of his job for political incorrectness by the intolerant left.

---Heads of various police and law enforment organizations hold another press conference, once again full of indignance and arrogance, and once again demanding apologies from whatever party they think that they can accuse of something. Without finding fault with Officer Barrett, for whom they collectively demand full reinstatement.

---President Obama DOESN'T invite this sorry dude to the White House for beer and pleasant chatter.

---The GOP targets for fund-raising white supporters of theirs with mass mailings capitalizing on their racial fears exploiting this sad incident, making it out to be an example of the administration behaving in a racist manner against whites. And making whatever happens to Barrett an example of political correctness gone wild.

Who knows what actually will happen. I do have a pretty cynical regard, though, for the right wing press. As well as for the way the police ominously seem to be setting themselves apart as a class superior to the rest of Americans. As for the Republican Party, well, that's the sorry state of politics nowadays. But I am pretty sure of my Obama/no beer prediction being a "slam dunk"!