Crummy Campaign Makes Me Want to Skip TV News

I may have to just skip watching the news on TV altogether until after Election Day this November.  It is so, so tedious listening to candidates, their hired spin doctors, and the hack media “pundits” laying out the political manure thicker and ever thicker, until the stench is unbearable.  So until it’s over, I say goodbye to CNN, HLN, FoxNews, MSNBC, and the “old three” ABC-CBS-NBC.  Besides, I can get my news easily from the newspaper and the Internet.  After all, it’s going to be bad enough having to put up with the increasingly nasty mudslinging political ads for the next six and a half months…

There, that felt better just writing it out!

P.S. I still think that Newt Gingrich would have made a better Republican nominee than Mitt Romney.  For one, nobody, regardless of how conservative or liberal their political sentiments are, has the faintest clue as to what Mitt Romney would do were he elected as president (except possibly Mitt Romney, but then I’m not even sure about that).  With Gingrich, though, you can get a pretty good idea about his agenda.  Plus, Newt has some charisma going for him, something totally absent in the presumptive nominee.  And speaking of Gingrich, the landing of the space shuttle Discovery, riding piggyback on a large aircraft, at Washington D.C. earlier today reminded me how much the former Speaker of the House supported our space exploration efforts.  Neither Obama nor Romney seems to have the slightest interest or vision for the space program, sorry to say…

List Madness: I Rank the James Bond Movies

Before any arguments ensue, let me take a page from the late Richard Milhaus Nixon's repertoire and "make one thing perfectly clear": this rankings list is solely based on my relative enjoyment of the James Bond movies.  For example, I have heard good things about On Her Majesty's Secret Service with its one-time Bond portrayer George Lazenby, but I personally thought this Bond was completely off-character.  And some others have blasted the two movies featuring Timothy Dalton as Bond, especially License to Kill.  But once again I'm going by my own preferences and I thought Dalton was a great James Bond.  To each his own, I suppose.  Anyway, here is my list.  Following each movie title (and year) I have the actor playing James Bond in abbreviations: Sean Connery [SC], George Lazenby [GL], Roger Moore [RM], Timothy Dalton [TD], Pierce Brosnan [PB], and Daniel Craig [DC].

1-Goldeneye, 1995 [PB]
2-Casino Royale, 2006 [DC]
3-You Only Live Twice, 1967 [SC]
4-License to Kill, 1989 [TD]
5-Doctor No, 1962 [SC]
6-For Your Eyes Only, 1981 [RM]
7-Thunderball, 1965 [SC]
8-Die Another Day, 2002 [PB]
9-Diamonds Are Forever, 1971 [SC]
10-Goldfinger, 1964 [SC]
11-The Living Daylights, 1987 [TD]
12-The Spy Who Loved Me, 1977 [RM]
13-From Russia With Love, 1963 [SC]
14-Live and Let Die, 1973 [RM]
15-Moonraker, 1979 [RM]
16-Octopussy, 1983 [RM]
17-Tomorrow Never Dies, 1997 [PB]
18-A View to a Kill, 1985 [RM]
19-The Quantum of Solace, 2008 [DC]
20-The World is Not Enough, 1999 [PB]
21-The Man With the Golden Gun, 1974 [RM]
22-On Her Majesty's Secret Service, 1969 [GL]
23-Never Say Never Again, 1983 [SC]

I understand a new Daniel Craig Bond movie is coming out this year.  Let's hope that it returns to the level of Casino Royale...

Yanks Home Game on ESPN Now

Ah, yes, this is the way it should be... I'm sitting back in my recliner right now on my day off, enjoying a home New York Yankees game on ESPN HD.  And to top it off, it's the bottom of the fourth inning and the Yanks are beating their overrated opponent, the Los Angeles Angels, 5-1.  It's getting to be a spring ritual for me, each year getting to know the "new" Yankee lineup.  Of course, there are the old stalwarts like Swisher, Jeter, Rodriguez, and Rivera.  But there are also new faces as well.  Well, I guess I'll just sit back now and enjoy the action (and the long, long stretches of accompanying inaction)...

NBA Musings

In spite of my earlier conviction that I would never be interested anymore in the National Basketball Association after the pointless impasse between management and labor that resulted in the threatened cancellation of this season, I can't deny my interest in this exciting sport.  So the greedy money grubbers all eventually realized that, regardless of which side of the conflict they were on, they stood to lose an enormous amount of money from prolonging it.  An agreement was consequently quickly reached in time to salvage a shortened regular season.  But I was bummed out anyway over the incredible avarice going on here...

Still, although in an indirect sense I'm probably paying for this league of the filthy rich through advertising and TV programming rates, I am not paying any more than anyone else. I may choose to watch a game on TV instead of something else, but I am not attending games.  Nor do I buy anything that has the official endorsement of the NBA, its teams, or players.  But I have found avoiding the NBA to be difficult, so here I am close to the end of the regular season and beginning to look forward to the playoffs.

Steve Nash and the Phoenix Suns are my personal favorites: this is because Nash is my favorite NBA player.  His playmaking intelligence and skill on offense reminds me of Peyton Manning's mastery of offense in football.  Were he playing for another team, I'd be rooting for them instead.  However, the Suns just might miss out on the playoffs this year.  And there are other teams I tend to support as well.

Here are my favorite NBA teams, listed by preference:

1--Phoenix Suns
2--San Antonio Spurs
3--Dallas Mavericks
4--Boston Celtics
5--Chicago Bulls

And here are the NBA teams I oppose the most, starting with my least liked:

1--Los Angeles Lakers
2--Oklahoma City Thunder
3--Well, that's it, actually...these are the only two teams I really want to see lose.  I used to be vehemently against the Miami Heat, but something recently completely turned my opinion of them around. When Peyton Manning was considering joining up with the Miami Dolphins, Heat stars Dwyane Wade and Lebron James publicly promoted the NFL franchise and expressed their wishes that the star quarterback would move his career to Miami.  So what that it didn't work? That still left me with a good enough feeling about them that I often find myself rooting for the Miami Heat (unless they're playing one of my aforelisted "Top Five", that is)...

One way for the Thunder to redeem themselves to me would be for them to defeat the Lakers in the playoffs, should they find themselves matched up in a series.  As for the Lakers, they can redeem themselves if they do but one thing: get rid of Andrew Bynum, who assaulted a Dallas player on the court during a playoff game last year. I can't root for any team that would accept this kind of thuggery...

The Worst James Bond Movie Ever

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion: as for me, the worst James Bond movie ever made is the 1983 Never Say Never Again, a rogue production not fitting in (at all) with the "official" series.  The story wasn't even original, with the plot and characters from the 1965 blockbuster hit Thunderball shamelessly ripped off with the story flow very sporadic. But the most disappointing aspect of Never Say Never Again was the dismal performance of original Bond actor Sean Connery, after much fanfare was made about him returning to his old role. Connery appeared stone-faced and apathetic throughout the movie, as if he were just there on the set to clock in to work, put in the time, and pick up his paycheck.

This movie also has by far the worst scene in the entire James Bond series, an overly long, drawn out fight, almost seeming to be conducted in slow motion, between the aging Bond and one of the heavies.  What a sad, sad spectacle.

The one redeeming element of Never Say Never Again was the scintillatingly villainous performance of Barbara Carrera, who played a sadistic, sexy assassin working for the evil SPECTRE crime organization. But she was in the movie too little, sad to say, to salvage this monumental waste of the moviegoer's time.

It might be argued that the 1967 comedy/spoof Casino Royale was the worst James Bond movie, but it never had any pretensions to being anything other than a farcical vehicle to further showcase the comedic talent of Peter Sellers.  So generally speaking, that film doesn't get counted as being one of the James Bond movies.

And because of its independent nature apart from the other films in the series, some don't even count Never Say Never Again among the Bond collection.  But it's there, like it or not...although I challenge anyone to say that they liked it with a straight face (and not lying like a politician).

Perhaps accusing Never Say Never Again of being a rip-off of Thunderball is a bit unfair, though.  After reading up on it a bit, it seems that the whole Thunderball project was immersed in controversy and legal wrangling, with different parties claiming ownership over the story's rights.  So maybe I was pointing the "blame" finger at the wrong movie. Regardless, though, I thoroughly recommend Thunderball... and thoroughly DON'T recommend Never Say Never Again.

Welcome (Temporary) Reprieve from Smoky Haze

A fire currently consuming about 20,000 acres north of Gainesville, in the Columbia/Baker Counties border area, has sent noxious clouds of choking smoke southward to cover my once-fair city for the past few days, making a mockery out of any consideration of mine to do any outdoors running.  So instead I had been resorting to the indoor treadmill, which though is not as desirable as open-road running, at least suffices as a temporary measure.  Today, however, although I could still sniff a hint of smoke in the air, the haze had dramatically lifted enough for me to hit the road again.  This I did with gusto, finishing my run having covered 7.74 miles (with my customary near-constant pace, giving me a time of 1:09:11).

Yes, that was a pleasant reprieve from the haze, but I am realistic: the winds can and probably will shift again, sending the smoke back my way (in which case its the treadmill again).  Besides, as the parched ground is all around us in drought-stricken northern Florida, we already have a plethora of wildfires popping up all over the place, not just north of us.  Sadly, I don't see the situation improving anytime in the near future...

Michael Moore Invites You to Walk With Him

Michael Moore (you know who he is, right?) is one of those "Tweeters" whom I follow (I follow several highly opinionated people with political views spanning the spectrum).  In the recent few weeks, he has been doing something pretty cool: "virtual walking".  Well, maybe that's not quite as accurate a term as I would like: Moore actually is physically going out on walks.  He just would like to invite you to "share" in his experience by walking "with" him (in a virtual sense, that is).  So, for example, he'll tweet that he's going to begin his walk at 1 PM.  That means that people following him on Twitter can walk and, I suppose, communicate with him via the "Twit" app on their smart-phones. Or perhaps people will get some sort of feeling that, even though they may be out walking alone, in a sense they are somehow walking with Michael as well (and derive a feeling of social connection).

I wonder if somebody out there is interested in some "virtual running" as well, as I am more interested in that than I am in walking.  You don't need a celebrity like Michael Moore on Twitter, though: just finding someone on Facebook who is into running might work just as well...

Medical Concerns Cleared for a Year...Somewhat

Since last August, I have been experiencing an assortment of medical issues, with one of them overriding all of the others and making them seem trivial in comparison.  Yet through all these months of concern and medical test after medical test, I have experienced no symptoms arising from this condition, which if shown to be worsening, could demand some pretty heavy, major corrective surgery.  Yet on each successive test, culminating with today's, I have been the same as before, no worsening at all indicated.  So my chief medical specialist has decided to just space out the tests a year apart, a pretty good bit of news, if I may say so.  This means that, hopefully, I can live my life as I do right now without any changes.  Still, I was cautioned against overly strenuous physical activity, which the good doctor seems to think includes marathons and even half-marathons (on the former, I agree; with the latter, no).  Oh well, those races are overpriced to run in anyway, I guess, and here in Florida they're only offered in late fall and the winter.  Still, I can engage in some shorter distance events (which are cheaper) just to get a little social dimension going with my running hobby, and these shorter races are more of a year-round proposition.

So let me check out the upcoming local races and get myself back into the swing of things.  If I do decide to participate in a race, though, it will be not to finish ahead of others or to achieve a fast time.  Rather, it will be for me a fun meeting with other people who share my interest in running.

Stephen King’s Obdurate Past, My Obdurate Future

Stephen King, in his latest novel 11/22/63, repeatedly refers to the past as being obdurate in nature.  What does he mean by this?

First, you need to understand King’s context here.  11/22/63 is a story about time travel, specifically of someone (the protagonist, Jake Epping) who is able to “step backward” from 2011 to 1958…and then try to prevent John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963.  During his struggles to rectify history and make things “right”, he encounters all sorts of inexplicable obstacles to the fulfillment of his quest that seem random and happenstance.  So the past is obdurate, according to Epping’s first person account of his experiences: it does not want to change and will resist efforts by time travelers to alter history, well-intentioned or not.  After reading 11/22/63, I have something to add to Stephen King’s observation regarding the nature of time: it isn’t just the past that is obdurate: so is the future!

I think that there is a good reason that many people believe in the inevitability of fate, in spite of their willful attempts to determine their own destinies.  I myself have had my own personal projects that seemed to be stymied in crucial moments by seemingly unrelated reasons, causing me great discouragement.  But you know, for those endeavors in which I matched time’s stubborn resistance to change with my own stubborn determination to succeed and never gave up, it seemed to have the ultimate effect of “changing time’s mind” to the point where it recognized the new path that I had made for myself as the legitimate progression into the future.  So this obduracy of time may just be a device, implanted within our own consciousness, to filter out the things we actually care enough about to commit ourselves to, even in the face of daunting and arbitrary obstacles.

This Blog is Five Years Old Today

Today marks the fifth anniversary of this blog of mine.  The past few weeks have been more sports-oriented...well, modify that to spectator-sports-oriented...well, modify that again to couch-potato-in-front-of-the-television-sports-oriented!  Oh, well, that seems to be where my attention tends to be directed right now.  I'm haven't been in much of a philosophical state of mind lately, and politically speaking I feel such a sense of hopelessness about the breakdown of political leadership around me, as well as the incredibly inane, ridiculously low level that the 2012 presidential campaign season has come to, that it pains me too much to write about it.  And although I often write about personal matters (such as my running), even that has been subdued for various reasons, some of which I would rather not discuss in this type of forum.

Still, I plan to keep plugging away at it, and hopefully you will be able to derive something of interest and/or value from my writings, which of late have veered somewhat away from serious matters and more toward sports and entertainment...

Statistics and Carlos Pena

If there is one thing I know about major league baseball, it is that statistics dominate discussions about the sport.  But statistics simply don't always serve as a good predictor of what's going to happen in any particular game.  Take yesterday's season-opening contest between the Tampa Bay Rays and the New York Yankees.  Rays fans were welcoming, after a year's absence, Carlos Pena back to the team.  Unfortunately, he had been suffering through a serious batting slump in the preseason, hitting only around .100.  To compound things, the starting pitcher for the Yankees, CC Sabathia, had thoroughly handled Pena in past games, with the Rays batter only able to muster one measly hit in more than 20 plate appearances.  And then there is the Yankees star relief pitcher, Mariano Rivera, against whom Pena had been hitless.  Sounds like a hitless game to me for Carlos, right? Wrong!

All Pena does is hit a grand slam home run against Sabathia in the first inning and then drive in the winning run in the bottom of the ninth with another hit, this time against nemesis Rivera.  So...just throw the statistics out the window, for all that they're worth!

2012 MLB Season Commences

The Major League Baseball season has begun again, with all 30 teams entertaining high hopes for 2012.  I am looking forward to watching a few games, although I don't plan to be fanatical about it.  As for the teams I plan to follow, this year I'm going to play it cool and just get to know those teams whose games are broadcast more often.  Here in Florida, a channel broadcasts Tampa Bay Rays and Miami Marlins games. Sometimes I can pick up a game on the MLB channel.  And ESPN tends to spotlight games featuring teams in major markets like New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles.  And, oh yeah, there's that WGN/Chicago channel, which will broadcast a few Cubs and White Sox games.

Above and beyond watching baseball to root for "my" team of the moment, I enjoy just sitting there watching the interaction between pitcher, hitter, and catcher, regardless who is playing or what the score is.  And keeping track of the unfolding situation within each half-inning as hitters reach base (or not) and managers try to figure how to score runs (or prevent them) can be pretty interesting as well.

Here are some things in baseball I'm NOT interested in: Fantasy Baseball, which players are making the most money, behind-the scenes talk about players and managers, and excessive attention to obscure statistics (e.g. Batter "X" is hitting .286 with a runner on second with one out in road games against teams in the same division).

Oh, one other thing I like about baseball: with the high-definition picture quality available today, I can not only enjoy watching the game: I can also enjoy watching the people in the stands watching the game!

Kentucky's Fans Are a Riot

The University of Kentucky won the NCAA championship basketball tournament Monday evening with a 67-59 win over Kansas, after its fans had rioted in the streets, spreading vandalism following their victory over cross-state rival Louisville in the semi-final game Saturday.

I have never been able to figure out the mindset of Kentucky fans, anyway.  Violent riots because of happiness after a win?  H-m-m.  It brings to mind what they once did following a home football game against my Florida Gators. 

It was back in the 1990's sometime while UF had Spurrier as their coach.  The Gators were in Lexington, just whippin' up on the Wildcats on a Saturday afternoon (like they usually do).  As I recall, the score was something like 55-7 in the fourth quarter.  Then, Kentucky managed three straight scores and was able to cut the final margin to 55-28, still a runaway Florida victory by any account.  Also, you could easily imagine the amount of substitution going on with second-string Florida players getting some on-field playing opportunities.  So that "great" Kentucky fourth quarter wasn't exactly comparable to a match between first teams. Still, after the game was over the Kentucky fans were so enthralled by their last three touchdowns that they acted as if they had actually won the game, rushing en masse out onto the field and even taking down their own goalposts! Still, as hilarious as that may seem, at least they didn't riot as they did the other night.

I have relatives on my wife's side of the family living in Lexington, and they naturally root for UK and are thrilled with their championship.  Good for them.  I wonder, though, what they think about the riots...

My Running in March and (Hopefully) April

After missing five straight days of running due to illness and recovery, I finally got back into the swing of things today, hopefully reestablishing my earlier routine.  I ran 6.2 miles on my local YMCA's treadmill, avoiding the summer-like ninety degree conditions outside.

March represented a mixture of success and failure with my running.  Until I got sick, I had been keeping up with my projected 100 miles for the month.  But I still finished with a respectable 89.08 miles.  I ran on 23 of the 31 days in March, with my longest run being for 8.0 miles. 

April may turn out to be problematic for my running for a few reasons, some of which I will withhold from this blog.  But one stands out: the weather looks to be hotter than it has been for this time of the year, so the mileage figures may drop on that account alone. Still, on a day-to-day basis at least, my plan is to consistently go out and run a moderate amount each day and let the future take care of itself...

Stephen King's 11/22/63

I have finished reading Stephen King's latest novel, his time travel story 11/22/63.  From the title (and that you now know it involves time travel), you can probably surmise its overriding theme: an attempt to go back in time to prevent the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy on that date.  Having already witnessed an early Twilight Zone episode with the protagonist "stepping back" to try and avert Lincoln's assassination, I was "taken aback" myself, in a manner of speaking, the other day when, while channel surfing I landed upon a "later" Twilight Zone episode with its hero thwarting JFK's murder itself.  So the formula is definitely an old one...

I liked Stephen King's version of this theme because, in his typical fashion that I have come to appreciate, it has great character development, coupled with a greatly detailed exposition of those times (1958-1963) in which the time travel took place.  And it resonates with me personally, because although I was only a little kid at the time, I remember what that era was like as well.

Every (good) author of time travel tales brings something unique and special to the genre.  King, this age's master storyteller, naturally does as well with his revelation that the past is obdurate: it does not want to change and will act to hinder any change-minded travelers by setting up obstacles in their path.  Throughout the story this theme takes on a sinister nature, with the past being the enemy of protagonist Jake Epping and causing all sorts of problems (and even tragedies).  But at the end...well, I guess you may already know, the end of Stephen King stories can pack a pretty big punch, and regarding the "obdurate past", it's a pretty heavy blow, as well as a perspective-shifter...

One of my all-time favorite time-travel movies is Groundhog Day, a non science-fiction comedy that, at least to me, has the Hindu-like theme of repeating one's living existence until perfection is attained (King touches upon this as well in his Dark Tower series). In both Groundhog Day and 11/22/63, there is a feature I term the "reset button" in which whatever the time traveler just changed in the past gets wiped clean and the past goes back to being just as it was before the "meddling".  When I learned of the "reset" in 11/22/63, I felt that this would be a device used somehow to end the story.  Was I right? Ego-inflating or not, I'm not saying.  After all, I want YOU to read Mr. King's excellent story and throw some feedback my way...

Unattractive NCAA Title Game: Ky vs Kan

The NCAA men's championship basketball game is set for Monday, with my least favorite team in the tournament, Kentucky, favored to beat Kansas.  Kentucky got there by beating "my" team, Louisville, 69-61.  And Kansas held off Ohio State 64-62.  I'm pulling for Kansas in the finale, in the same spirit that I rooted for the New York Giants to upset the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl five years ago.  But then again, we're talking about Kentucky in basketball, not New England in football.

Governor Etch-a-Sketch and President Open Mike

Just to illustrate how futile this presidential campaign season truly is, here are a couple of examples that should enlighten you, whatever your political perspective may be. Recently, one of GOP frontrunner Mitt Romney's campaign managers, in a television interview, dismissed his "guy's" shameless catering to the extreme right wing of his party by comparing his campaign to the toymaker Ohio Art Company's flawed product Etch-a-Sketch: once Romney is assured of nomination, he'll just, like the children's toy, conveniently erase the image he's been pushing for the past six years and create a brand new one that the centrist voters will supposedly buy.  And during a recent summit meeting with figurehead Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, President Obama leaned over to confidentially tell real power Vladimir Putin's dupe that once he (Obama) is reelected, then they (Obama and Putin) can deal with some of the more thorny missile defense issues between the two countries.  Unfortunately for the President, there was an open microphone that picked up his comments.

So both candidates, Romney and Obama, should be suffering heavily now for these gaffes, right?  Well, the last public opinion poll shows Obama picking back up the ten percent in job approval rating he had most recently lost due to spiking gasoline prices.  And Romney continues to chug on toward the Republican nomination with his arsenal of fatcat donors and a not-so-surprising endorsement from George H.W. Bush.

With the way that news is presented nowadays, one channel, FoxNews, made a lot of hay about Obama's open mike gaffe, while another, MSNBC, pushed the story about Romney's "Etch-a-Sketch" campaign. CNN covered both but dwelt on neither: both stories are apparently gone and forgotten, as far as they are concerned.  I suppose the upshot to all this is that neither story is strong enough to sway the problematic "undecided" voter, who will probably wait until just before the election and then make their decision based on completely irrelevant, emotional, and stupid reasons.

Being a kid once, I had myself yearned for an Etch-a-Sketch back in the early-to-mid 1960s.  I had seen the commercials showing how easy it was to draw pictures on the screen, which gave the appearance of something very high tech (at least from a child's perspective).  But one Christmas I got one as a gift and was very disappointed when I discovered that I could only draw straight vertical or horizontal lines on it.  Those TV ads were a fraud and I knew it, although I hadn't yet learned the word "fraud".  So when I first heard of the political reference to Etch-a-Sketch a few days ago, my fraud-sensitive ears automatically perked up...

Viral Attack Nixes March Running Goal

It doesn’t look as if I will be attaining my monthly running goal of 100 miles in March.  I had been keeping pace with that goal, but Tuesday afternoon a severe respiratory virus hit me hard and I have been sidelined.  Maybe I’ll be able to resume running by Saturday, but that won’t be enough to make up the difference.

I’ve had my share of seasonal allergies and sinus infections in recent years, but I have usually successfully avoided colds, the flu, and any nasty virus in between.  But not this week, unfortunately.  Usually, I can function through the sinus infections and allergies.  But a virus can completely shut me down, which by Wednesday was exactly what happened.  Today seems a little better, though, and I foresee further improvement tomorrow.   But when I was in the worst part of it yesterday, I couldn’t imagine ever recovering, it felt so bad…

The Neighborhood Terrorist

The recent tragedy of the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, an innocent teenager shot to death by overly zealous "citizen cop" George Zimmerman in a Sanford, Florida subdivision, has yet to be fully investigated. But this story has strongly galvanized public opinion, which seems to largely be going down the path of a narrative of racial persecution. Martin was black and his shooter wasn't. End of story, here comes Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and company to instantly whip up furor about how blacks can't even walk the streets without the danger of being persecuted, even to the point of death. Sadly, I think that they are correct. But there is a broader, even more ominous issue involved here, partially obscured by the racial framing of this tragedy.

I do my running primarily around my home neighborhood, in which I have lived since 1989. I run down the same streets and past the same houses over and over (and over) again. I'm not black nor do I wear a hoodie when running. In fact, I look like some pathetic white middle-age codger with a running shirt, shorts, cap, and running shoes. I hold (very visibly) a Gatorade bottle in my hand while running. Still, from time to time I have the unsettling experience of noticing vehicles slowing down around me and even stopping in the middle of the road as I run by, as if they are trying to determine whether I "belong" in "their" neighborhood. There seems to be this presumption that pedestrians are de facto suspicious and motorists are de facto legitimate, when in reality it is the person alone on the street who is more vulnerable to the motorist.

The idea that people-at-large can pack guns on themselves and go about judging who "belongs" and who doesn't, frankly, scares me. As a matter of fact, it is a form of terrorism, as far as I am concerned. This dude Zimmerman was warned by the police not to follow Martin, but he kept on. He was the aggressor, but in his mind he was the "good guy" trying to protect the neighborhood. And that's the operating definition of a vigilante: someone who thinks they're the "good guy" and who presumes the personal right to enforce their judgements against the "bad guys", even with violence and killing. But the effect of this behavior is to terrorize people to the point where they are too afraid to walk the streets in their own neighborhood anymore. So we're talking about more than a vigilante: the term "terrorist" fits more to me.

I have to compare which type of terrorism threatens me the most, the "Al-Qaeda" brand that brings out the stereotypical image of an Islamic extremist, or the home-based type in which individuals run rampant imposing their (often prejudicial) black-and-white worldviews on others with the force of arms. And I sadly must conclude that it is the latter category that imposes the greatest threat to me. By far. How about you?

Early Evening Sky Spectacle Returns

Looking out upon the west early in the evening, I see once again a spectacle involving the moon, Jupiter, and Venus. Only this time it is Venus above Jupiter, still very beautiful to behold. And now, looking toward the east, I see Saturn as well.

I wonder how many people even look up in the evening sky, and then, of those who do, how many know or even care about what they see...