Charlie Crist's Caucusing Plan

If Florida's formerly-Republican and now-Independent sitting governor and current Senate candidate Charlie Crist somehow manages to pull out this election and make it to that legislative chamber, then how will he caucus? The question of whether Crist will side with the Republicans or the Democrats has been bandied about lately, with the somewhat cryptic answer being provided from somewhere within the governor's camp: he'll caucus with whichever party has the majority.

In a purely politically expedient sense, this is probably a very good idea. Although I wouldn't think that it is such a good idea that Crist should want it publicized in advance. Still, it does take away the excuse for a voter to reject him solely on whether or not he is going to somehow tip the Senate's balance of power against their party. Well, kind of... actually, not at all!

If Charlie Crist (is elected and) wants to caucus with whatever party is in "control" of the Senate (and I use the word "control" very loosely), then he will have more of a say with proposed legislation, especially at the committee level. But if he wants to reassure concerned voters against the notion that the balance of power is in his hands...well, that would be a fallacy.

For the sake of argument, let's assume that Charlie Crist is elected. If either party, aside from Crist's seat, has 51 seats, then it truly doesn't matter, for organizational purposes, which party he declares for. Also, if the split is 50-49 in favor of the Democrats, he would side with them as Vice-President Biden would be constitutionally empowered to cast the 51st vote for the Democrats. But what if the entirely possible scenario develops where the Republicans have a slim 50-49 margin?

In this case, Crist does hold the balance of power. If he sides with the GOP, they have a 51-49 margin. If he sides with the Dems, they have a 51-50 margin with Biden's tiebreaker. So I don't think it is unreasonable to keep probing him about his intentions regarding party affiliation should he win.

The way I see it, though, is that from the viewpoint of a Democrat noting how my own party's nominee is so hopelessly behind in the polls, it would be prudent for me to support moderate Crist just to prevent extremist (in my opinion) Republican Tea Party nominee Marco Rubio from "representing" me in the Senate. For six freaking years!

Running DX Back Up to 12 Miles

Yesterday I set out on my run around the neighborhood once again, determined to have a "long-mileage" day. I had extended my course by 1.14 miles, meaning that should I complete it I would attain 12 miles. And I did, while avoiding experiencing the kinds of lower leg and foot aches and cramps I regularly experienced in cooler weather early this year when covering similar distances. I attribute this to following renown marathon runner Jeff Galloway's sage advice to take periodic short walking breaks throughout the run.

I always run the first seven minutes and then walk for one. Then I run six, walk one, run six, etcera, until the run is completed. By doing this, I calculate that I actually run about 95% of the distance. I have noticed that I not only feel more refreshed and energized at the end of each walking break, but also I correct my stride to a more comfortable form upon resuming my running. And by doing this, it gives me the enormous psychological advantage of breaking up my run into shorter segments, with a walking break never too far off into the future, regardless of the ultimate length of that day's run.

In spite of my walking breaks during yesterday's 12-mile run, I still ran comfortably ahead of the pace I had set during this past February's LifeSouth Five Points Half-Marathon, held here in Gainesville. So I fully intend to take walking breaks throughout any future long-distance races I enter.

Speaking of future races, there is a half-marathon in Gainesville scheduled for November that I plan to enter. On December 19, Jacksonville will be holding its own marathon. On January 11, 2011, the wild-and-extremely-crowded (last year had 24,000 runners) Disney World Marathon happens. And in mid-February, I'm back to Gainesville's Five Points event, this time planning to go the full marathon distance.

Well, that's my agenda as far as upcoming long-distance races are concerned. As for September and October, there are also plenty of those painfully short 5K races in which I could run. But as I have written before, these have become too tedious in more ways than one. If I can find a race during the next two months that is reasonably long and not too far away from Gainesville, then I may just enter it. Otherwise, I'll just stick to my neighborhood running, gradually increasing my mileage over the next several weeks.

GOP Can Take the Senate

Unlike those Democrats who criticized Robert Gibbs for suggesting that the Republicans might take back both the House of Representatives and the Senate, I think that the White House Press Secretary was right on target with his comment. I'll leave the more complicated House picture for others to analyze (it's considered more likely to switch parties anyway). Instead, I'll look at the Senate, which currently favors the Democrats over the Republicans 59-41.

That margin means that the GOP would need to pick up ten seats in order to wrest away control, since as Vice-President, Joe Biden can cast tie-breaking votes should a 50-50 situation result (which happened briefly in the first few months of 2001, with VP Cheney making similar tie-breaking Senate appearances for the Republicans). Since about only a third of the seats are up for election, there would have to be a remarkable change in the Senate's party composition for the Democrats to lose ten seats. Let's look at this.

The website RealClearPolitics is very good at keeping abreast of the various public opinion polls for races nationwide. By looking at them on a state-by-state basis, I came to my first conclusion: the Republicans will probably hold on to all of the seats they currently hold (even though Ohio seems like a potential loss right now with it being relatively close). This might change during the last few weeks of the campaign as Tea Party GOP candidates Miller and Paul, although currently ahead of their Democratic opponents, appear to be vulnerable in their respective states of Alaska and Kentucky. Assuming though, that they win and retain their party's seats, then what about those currently-Democratic seats in play this year? In Arkansas, North Dakota, Delaware, and Indiana, it is a bygone near-certainty that they will go Republican, taking the Dem lead down to 55-45. But that's still a clear majority, right?

There are several other races where Democratic Senate seats are in trouble. Incumbent Bennet is behind in the Colorado polls. Now we're at 54-46. In California, Washington, Wisconsin, Illinois and Nevada, the polls have the two main candidates in each race pretty much even. That's five seats, and the Republicans are drawing a much higher, more enthusiastic voter turnout in this election season. So unless the trends reverse themselves, all of these seats could easily go Republican, giving them the 51-49 margin they need to run things as a majority party in the Senate.

Although personally a Democrat, I don't see Republican control of both houses of Congress as necessarily such a bad thing. For one, it would makes Obama's reelection in 2012 much more viable, given the almost constant "blame Congress first" mindset on the part of the American public no matter which party is in control. Secondly, losing control of Congress might just be the thing to wake up those inexplicably apathetic Democrats who apparently are destined to sit out this year's election (I don't get people who won't vote because of lack of enthusiasm).

On the down side, it would be harder for Obama to get his judicial nominations confirmed. I imagine that at least one more Supreme Court justice may retire during the President's first term. Also, whenever the opposition party takes control of Congress during an administration's tenure, they almost always begin to start probing around with investigations and "independent" prosecutors to uncover (or manufacture) scandals within that administration. I don't see any change from this pattern happening with Obama and the Republicans.

Still, it's only the beginning of September and we have two full months to go. But I have yet to see the Democrats show the kind of aggressive ads that they would need to have at least a fighting chance. Certainly they have enough material they can use to attack the Republicans. Why aren't they barraging the media with it?

Read Sue Grafton's "F" Novel

Yesterday I went down to my local public library to submit two suggestions for purchase. While I was there, I did what I usually do and browsed throughout the place, finally deciding to check out a couple of books.

One of them was mystery writer Sue Grafton's "F" is for Fugitive, one of her alphabetical Kinsey Millhone detective series (I think she's gotten through "T" or "U" so far). I had already read her "L" is for Lawless, "A" is for Alibi, and "B" is for Burglar, so I knew pretty much what I was in for: smoothly written, humorous writing giving the reader ample opportunity to participate in the guessing game of "whodunnit".

Grafton is really an excellent writer, as I don't always pick up a novel one day like this and finish it the next. I think I'll have to pay a quick return visit to my library and check out another "letter"!

College Football & the 2010 Gators

I suppose that now is probably as good of a time as any other to deliver my two cents' worth about the upcoming college football season, due to commence this coming weekend. The team I am primarily following is naturally the University of Florida, based here in Gainesville. With last year's enormous hype about senior star quarterback Tim Tebow, the Gators' #1 ranking for week after week, and their convincing Southeastern Conference title game loss to eventual National Champion Alabama, there is a marked difference in this year's squad and outlook. The Gators are no longer considered the best team in the conference and there are many questions about the new starters, especially so since junior John Brantley will be replacing Tebow. But as I have written before, I think that Brantley will make the Gator offense much more explosive with his passing ability than did Tebow. On the other hand, I have observed over the years that a team with a good ball control offense, especially with a player who is consistently successful on third or fourth down with short yardage in getting first downs (as Tebow was so successful at), tends to not only have better field position over their opponent over the course of a game, but also rests their defense and keeps the opposing offense off the field. And that is my main concern with Florida: can Jeff Demps and the rest of the Gator running attack step up and consistently keep drives alive with short-yardage runs? We'll see.

Florida's first game is on Saturday September 4 and, as usual, is at home against a smaller college. This time it's against Miami of Ohio. It will be interesting to see how the Gators' offense presents itself on the field, but it won't be until subsequent games that they are truly tested. And they will be severely tested with early games against Tennessee, LSU, and their nemesis Alabama (on the road in Tuscaloosa).

Other than that, I haven't paid a lot of attention to college football. I still don't know how teams can be ranked like they are when no one has yet played any games!

Facebook vs. Blogging

I have written on this blog before, noting how I didn't understand the great appeal of Facebook. I have been observing my wife and daughter get totally into this Internet networking thing, though, and they like it a lot. Finally, it began to dawn upon my oft-slow mind what it's all about. And why it runs in direct contradiction to my own philosophy of blogging.

People who network using Facebook are basically taking people they already know and using the site to draw themselves closer together. If newer "friends" are added, then these are mostly relatives or friends of those they already know. So with Facebook, we see a kind of tribal, clannish drawing together of people, a (sophisticated) kind of semi-closed community that is largely reflective of the participants' already-established relationships. To me, this is too much like the stereotypical view of life in a small town, where everyone knows each other and the minutest details about their lives. And which includes excluding outsiders whom they don't think merit being admitted into their "circle". Apparently, this kind of social existence is what many actively seek. But not me.

No, I tend to be a bit insulated about sharing my life with others. Wait, you say, you've been writing a blog on an almost daily basis for well over three years, putting it all out there for anyone in the world with Internet access to see. If that's you saying that, then I would respond by agreeing with you somewhat and then making my point: by doing this, I am not drawing in the wagon trains around me with family and friends like in Facebook. No, I am instead reaching out to ANYONE in the world who is interested in communicating with me! If you're a friend who reads my ridiculous blog, then that is totally cool and welcome. But I also appreciate it when people from just about any place imaginable drop in to read what I have, whether or not they happen to agree with me. This sort of thing just doesn't happen on a Facebook level.

As for me sharing details of my personal life on my blog with strangers, two points.
One, I don't share the most intimate stuff. Two, I regard what I do share as basically "human" information that others, regardless of their background and belief systems, can relate to as they are also most likely very closely involved in the lifelong act of "being human". In other words, this is the diametrically opposite emphasis from the tribalism of Facebook.

Since my blog gives anyone the opportunity make pertinent comments about any of my articles, even anonymously, I feel that it provides at least structure conducive to reasonable interaction. But still...

The overwhelming trend seems to be increasingly in favor of Facebook and away from traditional blogging. Maybe I need to make a concerted effort to join up with some of those blog directories and circles that I come across from time to time. Just to allow others greater exposure to the blog.

Rain, But Scarcity of Tropical Storms

As you can see, the weather here in north central Florida has been quite rainy lately. But still there is little sign of the supposedly intense, busy hurricane season we were going to be experiencing this year. I remember about this time in late August 25 years ago in 1985, when the "E" storm, Hurricane Elena, was briefly threatening to come ashore on the Gulf of Mexico side at Cedar Key and engulf Gainesville (only to abruptly change its direction at the last moment to the WNW). So far, we're only barely up to "E", with Earl, just a tropical storm, out in the eastern Atlantic, threatening no one. Will things pick up during the next few weeks, which is the busiest time in the hurricane season? Most likely, but it doesn't look like it will be an exceptionally busy time, either.

Not that I'm complaining, but this does make those meteorological prognosticators look like they don't know what they're doing!

Erasing Superman

The other day I had to call a plumber out to my house. Everything went fine, and my problem was fixed. I looked outside at the plumber's vehicle, only to see the above-pictured familiar image (with a slight modification): Superman, or should I say Superplumber.

Superman has so ingrained itself within our popular culture that it is not surprising for a small business like my plumber's to choose to depict it as part of an advertisement. Yet when recording artist Sufjan Stevens placed his own comic version of "the man of steel" on his 2004 Illinoise album cover, his own record company, concerned that the image might result in a lawsuit from DC Comics, held up the album's distribution until a new version was produced. So the initial copies of Illinoise that had been distributed to music outlets for sale were all recalled and modified versions were rereleased, without the Superman image on the cover. It probably cost Stevens a lot of momentum with his album sales, having it held up like that.

And that's too bad, considering that Illinoise was a themed album examining various aspects of the state of Illinois, its history, and Stevens' personal experiences of having once lived there. One of the songs on it was a tribute to Superman, whose Metropolis roughly corresponded to Chicago (while his friend Batman's Gotham City corresponded to New York). I felt that the album cover, which was a mosaic showing various themes covered in the songs, was entirely appropriate, in an artistic sense, with Superman's inclusion on it.

Yet the Superman on the plumber's truck is nothing more than a tacky ad, with nothing of artistic value or even intent. But isn't there something a little more to the point about all this?

For one, isn't the whole concept of "Superman", as adapted to comics and commercially exploited, basically in itself rooted in German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche's "Übermensch" from his book Also Sprach Zarathustra? And doesn't the idea of an all-powerful savior fit as well into the traditionally messianic culture that permeates Christianity, the predominant religion here? Ultimately, when does a trademark or symbol become so much a part of the popular culture that enforcement and restriction of its unauthorized use become arbitrary and counterproductive?

If I owned the Superman copyright, I would welcome the use of the Superman symbol by plumbers, musical artists, or others. After all, this is free advertising for my product! I suppose, though, that if someone exploited the Superman theme and image to make a porn movie, then perhaps it might be appropriate to step in and have a few words with the filmmaker!

In other words, copyright enforcement is not an exact science. There needs to be some reason employed here both by those owning copyrights and by those who want to use symbols and trademarks. If someone is discussing or artistically examining something that in some way involves someone else's copyright, that discussion or examination should be free from interference or censorship. Perhaps this is where the line was drawn with Sufjan Stevens, with the song permitted to go through but the cover art not. But I hold that the album cover is part of the artist's expression, not just the audio content on the CD.

Suspicious of Endorsements for Judicial Candidate

I see this sort of thing every time there is someone running for a local judicial seat, and it bothers me enough to vote for the opponent in that race: inevitably ads will come out on TV or in the newspaper listing all of the different law enforcement organizations endorsing one of the candidates.

I don't have a problem with any organization choosing to endorse anyone for elective office. But when I visualize a judge at work, up there presiding over a criminal hearing or trial with the prosecution on one side and the defense on the other, my confidence in his or her impartiality is threatened by the knowledge that one side feels that it is going to get favored treatment. And let's face it: the police are the tool of the prosecution.

On this election day, we have a candidate for Alachua County Judge. In my Gainesville Sun this past Sunday was a full page ad listing all of the important people supporting the candidate in question. The first name on the list was that of Alachua County's current sheriff. At the top of the ad, in bold print, was listed the candidate's endorsement by both the Police Benevolent Association of North Central Florida and the Fraternal Order of Police Gator Lodge 67. Which was all well and fine for them; like I said, to each his own. But it created the impression, at least with me, that these organizations believe that the candidate, once seated, will bestow deferential treatment to cops over the accused against whom they testify.

This is why I am henceforth voting for the "other guy" in judicial races where one candidate receives the lion's share of law enforcement endorsements. Besides, think about this as well: the judge isn't supposed to give special deference to important community leaders over the average Jill or Joe. But that list of bigshots backing this one particular candidate also gives me the impression, however ultimately false it may turn out to be, that it will be the social elite who will benefit unduly from this man's jurisprudence, to the disadvantage of ordinary members of society whose names aren't expected to pull weight in a newspaper ad.

In spite of this, I think that voters in general gobble up these endorsements for judges and will most likely sweep this particular candidate into power by a landslide. Maybe he will be a good, fair judge. But these types of endorsements have had the reverse effect on me, turning me strongly away from the judicial candidates who receive and publicize them.

Major League Baseball Races on Aug 23

As I had hinted at a month ago, I am once again examining the races in the various MLB divisions, especially as they apply to teams I am following. Here goes:

The best race in baseball involves teams I generally root for: the New York Yankees lead the Tampa Bay Rays by a game in the American League East, with the Boston Red Sox six and a half back and Tampa's main challenger in the wild-card playoff position race (the three divisional winners, plus the best second-place team, make the playoffs in each league). We're at the stage in the 162-game regular season when there are 37-39 games left to go, so although time is dwindling away, there is still nevertheless time for a currently-lagging team to make a serious move for contention with a surge. And the Red Sox have historically been a surging team. We'll see how they do this time around.

In the AL Central, the Minnesota Twins have pulled away to a five-game lead over my Chicago White Sox, something that I had expected to happen. The Detroit Tigers have badly faded out of contention. In the West, Texas seems poised to run away with that title.

The National League East has the Atlanta Braves in a tight race against Philadelphia, leading the Phillies now by only two and a half games. Florida and the NY Mets are essentially out of it, playing around .500 ball this late in the season. The Central contains a surprise: Cincinnati is ahead of St. Louis by three and a half games; I had expected the Cardinals to already be pulling away in this division. My Chicago Cubs have faded badly at 51-74. The West has San Diego strongly expanding their first-place margin to a big eight-games over the rest of the pack. The three second place teams Philadelphia, St. Louis, and the San Francisco Giants are also in the thick of the race for that wild-card National League slot.

It is in the East in both leagues where most of my interest lies. In the NL, it is a simple matter of me rooting for Atlanta and against Philadelphia. But since I like both the Yankees and Rays, my main concern in the AL is that Boston suddenly doesn't get a long winning streak going and knock one of them out of the playoffs at the end of the regular season.

I'll see if I can't check out how the standings are going a month from now as well. By then we should have a pretty clear picture of who is going on into the playoffs and who will be looking forward to next year.

Foreign Language Study Fun But Humbling

I think the way that foreign languages are taught in school completely misses the point. Instead of beating in repetitious grammar patterns with a limited vocabulary, they should have been flooding us with vocabulary at the expense of the grammar. I spent many grueling years in elementary and high school studying under such a curriculum with the Audio-Lingual-Materials (or ALM) system of language instruction. It was an utterly dreadful experience. As humans, we all have a natural capacity to pick up on grammar. But all of the grammar in the world won't help if you can't think of the word you want to express or understand the word you read or hear!

For me, studying foreign languages is a pastime, a fun activity much akin to doing puzzles like sudoku or kakuro. I don't see myself necessarily becoming fluent in them, but I do have varying degrees of success in learning some of them. And the Internet is a paradise for anyone wanting foreign language exposure!

Ah, the Internet. Yes, there are translation tools like that found on Google. There is the incredible Wikipedia: pick your language and jump right on in! One can pick the language of choice and delve into blogs written in that language, with the option of practicing it by submitting comments. And there are numerous sites giving access to radio and television programming in various foreign languages from countries spread across the planet.

The one possible drawback involved with immersing oneself in foreign language study is that it is an incredibly humbling undertaking. For no matter how much progress I make in learning a particular language, there will always be many, many others who are much better at it than me. Including little bitty children, fresh out of the crib! Ouch!

Christopher Plover and Lev Grossman

Lev Grossman, literary critic for Time magazine and the author of the best-selling novel Codex, wrote The Magicians, a novel that reflects and expands upon the world of magic as revealed by J.K. Rowling in her successful Harry Potter series. Only with Grossman, his novel painted the characters (his own, not hers) with true humanity, each one a mixture of the good and bad, the weak and the strong; Rowling instead tended more to ascribe virtues and vices to distinctively mark her individual characters. For this reason and many more, I enjoyed reading The Magicians. After all, with Harry Potter, I kept identifying myself with protagonist Potter's adversary Draco Malfoy, who in retrospect was much more realistically human than any of the "good guys". With Quentin Coldwater, the main character in The Magicians, there is plenty of "dark" Draco to go around, not to mention a good dose of virtue as well.

Grossman also drew upon the fantasy genre of the earlier twentieth century, making frequent reference to Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia. But his chief inspiration was a series of "lighter" fantasy novels written earlier by an American named Christopher Plover titled Fillory and Further. In the fantasy realm of Fillory, there were talking animals, a supposedly evil woman who froze time, and... are you thinking what I'm thinking? That damned C.S. Lewis totally ripped off Plover when he wrote Chronicles of Narnia! The outrage of it all! Well, I could see that good ol' Lev Grossman saw this as well, not wanting to miss a chance to elevate Plover to his proper place as a premier, trailblazing fantasy writer. So he made Plover's Fillory the centerpiece of The Magicians. Good for him, at least a little justice being done here...

I managed to find a website devoted to preserving the memory of Christopher Plover and promoting his books about Fillory. The books, pictured on the right-hand side of the page, corresponded to Grossman's depictions in his novel. This only made me more indignant at the injustice done to Plover's literary legacy. Then I looked at the bottom of Plover's website at a list of links. All of them referred back to Grossman and The Magicians. The website was a plant, a hoax.

There never really was a Christopher Plover nor a series of books about a fantasy land called Fillory. Grossman invented it all and even had a little fun with his hoax. I even found another site that gave a review on Plover and his series. What a chump, for that reviewer to be taken in like that (after all, I only bought into it for a few minutes)! But wait, I'll bet that review was also a plant by Grossman!

The Magicians is just the first book about Quentin Coldwater and his adventures through a life of magic. It is very, very adult-themed, so I don't think it will make the Scholastic Book-of-the-Month Club (if there really is such a thing) anytime soon. But it was fun and interesting reading. The sequel is reportedly due out sometime in 2011; but having already experienced firsthand how Lev Grossman can mess around with people's minds, I'll just let myself be pleasantly surprised if and when it comes out. And then make sure my local public library stocks up on it!

Hey Grossman---you da man!

National Party Leaders & Their Involvement in Partisan Primaries

Why are prominent national political figures involving themselves so heavily with the intra-party primary season this year? I can't remember this ever happening before, at least to this degree. Sarah Palin is flying around all over the country pulling for "her" candidates while rival Newt Gingrich is backing his choices, often in opposition to Palin's. In the Kentucky GOP senatorial primary, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell supported loser Trey Grayson while outgoing senator Jim Bunning strongly backed winner Rand Paul. In the Democratic side, we already witnessed the debacle in Pennsylvania, where the Obama administration actively tried to get incumbent Arlen Specter's opponent (and eventual winner) Joe Sestak to drop out of the race for the U.S. Senate. And here in Florida, Bill Clinton has flown down to campaign for Kendrick Meek against Jeff Greene. Why?

This all makes me a little bit uneasy somehow. It seems to me that the national figures should let their parties' state and local elections play out naturally. Only after a nominee has been chosen should they then get out and campaign against the "other side". I know that, being a Democrat, were I to decide to toss my hat into the ring for an elective office, it would really badly irk me to see Clinton, Obama, or another well-known figure visibly campaign for one of my opponents against me. Especially when I had grown to respect these people over the years for their sense of fairness and judgement. I imagine that the same is also true for those civic-minded Republicans running for office when they see party bigwigs stumping for their opponents. It is as if the parties are so heavily into top-to-bottom control that they feel that they can't allow the actual people to decide for themselves!

Pinyin vs. Radical-Based Chinese Dictionaries

There are basically two types of Chinese-English dictionaries out there. One is the traditional arrangement, by radicals. The other is by romanized transliteration, nowadays pretty much always using the pinyin system of transliteration. I have both kinds of dictionary. And a few thoughts to share.

Being a native English speaker, I grew up regarding language in primarily its spoken form, with the Latin script roughly (sometimes VERY roughly) reflecting pronunciation. Chinese is written using characters, each of which usually has a unique pronunciation (unlike with Japanese) and represents a concept or "idea" of sorts. Chinese makes tremendous use of compounding, usually with two characters combined, much in the same way that English forms "barnyard" or "sunshine". When I read Chinese and come across an unfamiliar character (quite a common occurrence), I don't know how it is pronounced, just from looking at it. Thus my dictionary arranged by pinyin order is useless, and I am left resorting to the radical-arranged dictionary. A radical is a character unto itself which comprises a part of other characters, albeit often in a distorted form. Which can make it a bit difficult at times looking up characters by radical. Within each radical category in the dictionary, characters are arranged in the order of number of strokes.

Also, the Internet Chinese keyboards I have seen so far rely on radicals. So with any character that I do know, I have to first know its radical and then browse down the list under that radical's heading to the character in order to type it. Pretty damned tedious! I would rather first browse through the character-in-question's pinyin spelling and then click on it. If there are any pinyin-based virtual keyboards like this, I haven't found them yet.

And of course, if I am just listening to someone speak Chinese and I want to look up a word in the dictionary, the pinyin dictionary is the must and the radical dictionary is useless.

What a bother!

Oh, on top of that, did I mention that Chinese is basically written with two different competing writing systems: the traditional and the simplified? No, I didn't.

Double bother!

Brett is Back: All is Well Again with NFL Football

Brett Favre cracks me up. In fact, he's so funny that I have come to be one of his major fans, wherever he decides (or has trouble deciding) where he wants to play (or if he really wants to play). During Favre's Super Bowl heydays in the mid-nineties with the Packers (while I was miserably following --and still do-- the Miami Dolphins), I was barely aware of the man. Now, in his early forties (such an old guy, not at all like me--wait, I'm 53), Favre is kicking ass all over the league as a Minnesota Viking quarterback and enjoying the accolades he so richly deserves. But there's one thing, the thing that really makes him funny (and so wise).

Brett Favre hates training camp and exhibition games. To him, they are complete B.S., and I don't mean Bachelor of Science. He knows what he has to do when he gets out on the field, so why waste time and possible career-ending injury with all of that high-contact activity? So for the past two seasons, he has either announced his retirement from the game or hinted at it, essentially with the view of avoiding that tedious and unnecessary part of the pre-season. And each time, he has come back. Hopefully, his coach won't put him out there on the field very much in the Packers' remaining exhibition schedule.

Football is an injury-intense sport. It becomes ridiculous when teams' starting rosters begin to become depleted because of injuries, even before the season starts. Take the University of Florida Gators. The website for AM 850/WRUF lists some of their players' injuries, which includes a concussion to star running back Jeff Demps. And they haven't even played any games yet! So I think that if you are a player and can get away with it, better to avoid that hazardous period. Which is what Brett Favre was able to pull off.

Once I was watching a sports channel and they were poking fun at how Favre would warm up before going out on the field: he would bend his legs and stretch each of them a couple of times and then trot off, doing nothing more. Which is exactly how I warm up before running! A kindred spirit, I would say!

Inception: My Take (with Plot Spoilers)

Again, here is my warning: I will reveal stuff that happened in the movie Inception, so reader beware...

Now that we've got that clear, let's go on.

Inception is the first movie that I can ever recall going to see in which I personally insisted on going back promptly and seeing it a second time. There's a good reason for this: there are little clues left at various parts of the movie (starting at its very beginning) which I believe go a long way toward explaining its very cryptic conclusion and I wanted to check them out. My suspicions were confirmed.

I'm presuming, since I have already taken great pains in stating that I will reveal plot details of Inception, that you either already saw it or couldn't care less about seeing it. If you're in the latter group, then what are you doing wasting your time reading this article, you turkey! And since you probably did see it and want to read a fellow viewer's reaction, I'm not going to waste your time and mine recounting the movie's outline and finer details. No, I'm interested in the "cliff-hanging" mystery at Inception's tail end. You know, the continually spinning top.

Inception begins with dream-thief-for-hire Dom Cobb (played by Leo DiCaprio) washed up bloodied and tired on a beach, where he is taken to the opulent house of an very old, oriental man. We discover at the movie's end (when this opening scene's conclusion is shown) that this man is Saito, a powerful Japanese businessman (played by Ken Watanabe). Saito, at this advanced age, is seen taking one of Cobb's possessions, a small top, stating that he'd seen it long before in the past, and then spinning it on the tabletop. Then, we are suddenly taken in the film to what seems to be (at first glance) the past, when Saito is much younger, although now the same age as Cobb (if you didn't see the movie, I think I already lost you).

Well, to refresh your memory, my dear Inception fellow viewer, through a convolution of events Cobb ends up working for Saito on a project to insert an idea into a rival company's heir while he is dreaming. This process is called "inception", hence the movie's title. In one scene, Cobb, having just come out of a very disturbing dream, is frantically spinning his top because he uses it to ascertain that he is no longer dreaming (in dreams, it keeps spinning; in reality, it eventually stops). Who should walk in on him suddenly but Saito, seeing the top (which Cobb calls his "totem") and what Cobb is doing with it. This very short scene, lasting only a few seconds, makes no sense to me being in the movie unless it had some special significance. And I picked up on that instantly when I saw Inception the first time.

Well, Cobb, Saito (whom I regard as the story's "wild card" character), and the rest of their team ensue on their adventurous project, which involves going through deeper and deeper dream states, each state embedded within a "higher" dream. During this, it is revealed that Cobb's totem used to be his wife's and that while they were in an extremely deep dream state (for fifty years of "dream time"), she hid it. Cobb searched around and found it, then using it somehow to plant an unintentionally tragic idea in his wife's mind. So with that it was established in the movie that someone possessing someone else's totem within a dream could perform inception on them.

During the dream adventure, Saito gets shot and dies (within the dreams). He descends to the same dream level (called in the movie "limbo") where Cobb and his wife had spent so much time. Near the movie's end, Cobb tells a colleague he is going to bring Saito back. And then that opening scene reoccurs, with Cobb adding to it his plea for Saito to return back to the real world with him.

Suddenly, without having to pass through the process of awakening in each of the embedded "higher" dream states (which his other team members had to experience to return to awakened reality), Cobb finds himself fully awake in the presence of all of his colleagues. Including Saito, who promptly makes a phone call that would enable Cobb to come back to his country (the U.S.) and be reunited with his children. Everything from that moment on in the movie works in Cobb's favor without a hitch. In the final scene, Cobb is back in his house and he fishes out his totem-top, spinning it on his desktop. He then sees his children outside and rushes to greet them. The camera then focuses on the top, which continues spinning, long after (in my opinion) it should have stopped. The movie then abruptly ends.

So I think that the "young, real" Saito saw Cobb's totem and, recognizing it for what it was, later, in that limbo dream state, used it to perform an inception within Cobb's mind. Which was that everything was a success, Cobb was back home (as was Saito), and reunited with his beloved children. Because the "elderly, dream" Saito knew he could never himself return and neither could Cobb. So this inception was actually an act of compassion on his part.

Well, that's MY take on it, anyway. What's yours?

My Amazon Kindle WTF Moment

I tend to be a little behind the times when it comes to the latest advances in digital consumer technology. Such is the case with the Amazon Kindle portable digital reader, which I understand can hold up to 3,500 books. As with MP3 technology for music, though, I have one outstanding problem with Kindle and its competitors: what to do with my extensive and space-consuming personal library of books. As was the case with my extensive, lower-tech record and cassette collection, I don't want to have to purchase a digitalized version of a book that I already have in book form. And anyway, much of what I have is out of print. So until I can economically (and legally) copy my own material and put it on a Kindle (or a similar product), I probably will hold back on purchasing one.

Having said that, I'm still pretty interested in Kindle, as I would dearly love to cut back on the clutter in my home by reducing book space. So I naturally noticed and read a Kindle ad on the back of a magazine recently. And it was then that my "World Trade Fenter moment" jumped off the page at me.

Maybe you can explain this to me in a way that makes sense. According to the ad, you can either buy Kindle with wi-fi only for $139 or you can buy it with "free 3G + wi-fi" for $189. Do you see anything a little incongruous with that last sentence, or am I missing something here? If the only difference between the two versions is the "free 3G", then why does this version cost $50 more?

.....I'm waiting.....

Alachua County School Board and Creationism

For the three open Alachua County School Board seats to be voted on August 24, I have had a difficult time distinguishing the candidates from each other, based on their comments about their philosophies concerning public education. Apparently though, others in my community have their own ideas as to who would best fill these posts, as I have seen an unprecedented plethora of school board campaign signs in people's yards and along the roadside. But Friday, that indecision dramatically changed for me.

In Friday's Gainesville Sun, staff writer Kimberly Moore wrote about a recent candidate forum for the school board candidates, held at a local retirement community. One of the questions was how the candidates felt about having creationism taught in public school alongside evolution. The answers startled me.

Of the candidates running in the three-district field, Bonnie Burgess, April Griffin, Felicia Moss, Wayne Gabb, and Jodi Wood all expressed a desire to see creationism taught in public school science classes as an alternative to evolution. Opposed to this were Gunnar Paulson, Carol Oyenarte, Jancie Vinson, and Rick Nesbit. And then there was a fence-straddling third group (the true politicians), composed of David Palpaut, Jennifer Deachin, and Christopher Smiley [who has submitted a comment correcting this report and stating his opposition to teaching creationism in public schools]. Their expressed view was that creationism should be taught, but in a religion or philosophy class instead of science.

I don't see those in the third group as being on my side with this issue; they are liable to side with the pro-creationism group on important votes. This leads me with four [correction: five, with Smiley's correction] possible candidates to choose from in the three districts. I'm not sure, but I think that MY district is Nesbit's. Or do I get to vote for all three districts? I guess I'll find out in the voting booth. Better that I research all three districts!

Is teaching creationism in public schools that big of a deal to me? Yes. Creationism is a branch of Christian apologetics designed to "paper" over principles of modern biological and cosmological science which appear to literally contradict that religion's scriptures and doctrine. It results in the demonization of honest and significant scientific work and of those who perform it. Making legitimate science controversial is nonsensical to me, and electing candidates who would impose their religion on the public at taxpayer expense just isn't the way to go. Anyone is free to believe whatever they want to believe. They can worship at the religious institution of their choice and give religious instruction to their own children. There are also the options of private religious schools and home-schooling for those parents who think that modern established science is somehow "of the devil". But public schools should be free of religious tampering with their science curriculum.

Misdirection: World Travel for Missionary Work

I am suspicious of people who always seem to be catching a plane to this place or that, never staying in one location very long. They always seems to have the most legitimate reasons for their almost constant travel. They project to me (and most likely to others) an air of the utmost importance. After all, people who travel a lot are important people, doing important, useful things. Right? RIGHT?

I have no problem, really, with those who either have the means to travel for enjoyment and self-fulfillment or who, in the course of their work, quite understandably take in the sights and experiences of their travels (like my friend in New York). I would, too! But sometimes I wonder whether, with some, they use whatever the stated purpose of their travel is to justify their addiction to it. And here I am primarily thinking of church missions work.

It seems that the latest "big thing" in churches nowadays is to spread the Gospel message abroad by planting churches in as many countries as possible, with the expenses incurred by this being paid for by the church's membership in the form of offerings and fund drives. I know from personal experience of church leaders who seem to be in an almost continual state of travel to and from various countries scattered across the world. The churches they helped to establish have pretty much become self-sustaining, run by those countries' own people. Those who travel like this have others foot their bill, but don't have the needed accountability to justify what seems to me to be an excessive amount of plane-hopping. They will always be able to cite those in far-distant churches and communities who ask for their help, and what better God-honoring way than to deliver it to them in person? And after all, we're not talking about staying in ritzy hotels, but rather in often squalid conditions. But to me, that's just a rationalization obscuring the point. And the point is the "perpetual motion" buzz delivered by the travel.

As with any other thing, travel for travel's sake can get to be habitual, with the travel addict searching out excuses to set out again and again. Being someone who doesn't travel that much, I believe I can more readily observe this trait in others. Those who travel to excess, though, turn things around and try to paint themselves as somehow being self-sacrificial for the sake of others.

I'm not decrying the use of travel for overseas missions work; after all, the Great Commission in the book of Matthew commands missions work for believers. I just think that, as with any worthwhile endeavor, care needs to be taken to discern what constitutes reasonable travel and what constitutes travel for travel's sake. Otherwise, those in missions who are addicted to travel can always pull the wool over others' eyes through misdirection.

Summer Campaigning Down and Dirty

Is it just me, or is this year's (still only summer) campaign season the dirtiest in recent memory? It's bad enough that the division between the two major political parties has become so polarized; now, within each party, the primary battles have reached a new nadir in mudslinging.

This is particularly true in my home state of Florida. For the governor's race, on the Republican side, Bill McCollum, currently the state's attorney general and an established party figure, is trailing in the polls to upstart Tea Party candidate Rick Scott. And the attacks have been frequent and severe from both sides. In the Democratic primary campaign for the Senate, Kendrick Meek and Jeff Greene are likewise slinging too much mud at each other with their ads (particularly by Greene against Meek).

I can see how the GOP candidates for governor might get a little heavy with their ads, seeing how the winner of the nomination stands a pretty good chance to win the general election against Democrat Alex Sink (who also stands a reasonable chance of winning). But neither of the Democrats for the Senate seat is remotely close in the polls to Independent (and current governor) Charlie Crist or Republican Marco Rubio. So with the Dems, the attacks are actually much worse to witness as they have assumed a very hateful, vindictive nature, reminding me a bit of Frodo and Gollum's irrational and vicious struggle for the ring at Mount Doom.

I personally like Crist and Sink for the respective races, due in large part to the fact that they are both political moderates who seem to understand that with their elections they would represent ALL of the state, not just those who share their personal political ideologies. And they do try to bring people together in consensus whenever possible (easier said than done).

Overall, this has been a very depressing election campaign season to follow. Hopefully, we can somehow get the bad feelings behind us after it is all over and work together to make a better society for ourselves.

Reality check: Sure, like hell we can!