Just Finished Reading Veronica Roth's Allegiant

A couple of days ago I finished reading Veronica Roth's futuristic teen sci-fi Divergent trilogy, which culminated in the book Allegiant.  Once again, protagonist Beatrice "Tris" Prior is struggling to make some sense of her strange, violent world full of factional warfare and genetic manipulation.  There are people in control who, in our own time, could only being described as bigots with their eugenics philosophy that allows them to judge and subjugate others according to their genetic makeup.  Along with her boyfriend Tobias, also known as "Four", Tris encounters a threat to her formerly factionally-ordered world of Chicago and must, as she has repeatedly done in the past, draw upon her Dauntless faction's instinct for boldness as she plunges headfirst into the conflict. 

In the first two books Divergent and Insurgent, Roth presented the narrative in the first person as Tris was experiencing it, giving an easy look into her thoughts.  With Allegiant, though, she split the narrative between Tris and Tobias...this puzzled me to begin with.  But the logic of that sharing of the narrative was revealed later.  I was counting on certain things happening as the story resolved itself.  For example, the first part of Allegiant is relatively short on action and long on explaining, a problem I've also encountered with the final books in other series (Tad Williams' Otherland and Stieg Larsson's Millennium come to mind).  But the story picks up again...and the finale is very unexpected.  This bothered me a lot at first, but as I considered it, the author's ending for this trilogy was both bold and appropriate...I'm sure I'll remember this series longer than others because of it.

Today is March 12 and the movie Divergent is set for release on March 21.  Not that I'll go out to see it at that time: usually I wait for the fanfare to abate before I set out to see an interesting movie in a less crowded setting.  That setting might even eventually be my own living room if I just wait for the DVD to come out or watch it on pay-tv...

Major League Baseball Soon to Start 2014 Season

The Major League Baseball exhibition season is winding down, with the regular season set to begin early next month.  With it, I am setting out to determine which teams to root for and which to root against.  I have to admit to a biased personal interest in the East Divisions in both leagues.  In the National League, I traditionally support the Atlanta Braves and Miami Marlins, but I also am interested in how the Phillies, Mets, and Nationals are doing...and although I don't particularly like any of the latter, I also harbor no animosity toward them either.  The same applies to the American League, with me pulling for the New York Yankees and Tampa Bay Rays...with a non-hostile interest in the Orioles, Red Sox, and Blue Jays.  I had been rooting against Boston in the past, but last year they won me over in the playoffs and I was glad to see them beat St. Louis in the World Series.  I'm not sure how this concentration of mine on the East came to dominate my baseball interest, but maybe it's similar to being interested more in the Southeastern and Atlantic Coast conferences in football and basketball.  There is a tendency for me to root for the other teams in these conferences even if my favorites aren't playing...even in championship tournaments and bowl games.  My only exception to this is my opposition to Alabama football winning anything...as long as Nick Saban is their coach.

So in baseball I've developed something on the order of an "eastern pride": I have my favorites in the eastern divisions but prefer any of their teams in games outside their divisions.  In pennant races as the season rolls along, there is a tendency to want my favorites' closest competitors in the standings to lose...but I'm changing.  If the Yanks and Orioles are battling it out near the end to see which team goes to the playoffs, and Baltimore plays a team like, for example, Cleveland,  I'm going for Baltimore anyway...even if an Oriole victory hurts New York's playoff prospects. 

I'd like to watch more baseball games this year, at least those involving teams in the East.  I want to get to know each team's lineup in greater detail so that I can enjoy the games more as well...

Missed First Episode of Tyson's Cosmos

I had just enjoyed a week off from work and was scheduled to come back in last night at eleven, but saw that the new edition of Cosmos, featuring astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, was scheduled to be on Fox at 9 PM.  Unfortunately, I felt that the need to rest before going off to work outweighed my enthusiasm for this show and I now hopefully await the opportunity to see a rerun of it sometime later this week.  I like science television series like Wormhole and The Universe...Cosmos definitely belongs squarely in this genre.

Tyson, like Britain's Brian Cox, is a talented scientist who has the relatively rare ability in his profession to popularize his often very obscure field and translate complex ideas into language that gives people a greater insight into how the universe works.  The problem is that, while many people enjoy speculating about the nature of the universe and our place within it while cheering on space programs designed to extend our presence and knowledge, relatively few consider it enough of a priority worthy of investing the money needed to fund such programs and missions.  On the politically conservative side, many see anything even partially government-sponsored as anathema to their "don't tread on me" ideology, while many liberals on the other end regularly roll out the argument that the money spent into space exploration could better be used to help the needy here on Earth (or for a different interest of theirs).  This still leaves a section of the population who want a stronger space program, but unfortunately they tend to be less politically active about pushing their agenda. And when push comes to shove, there always seems to be a better place to spend the money.

Cosmos was originally produced in the 1980's and featured the late Carl Sagan. That earlier edition was naturally a bit outdated in some areas, but in others, especially when referring to manned space travel, it seems sadly "advanced"...almost as if we've been doing little since to extend our frontiers...

Just Finished Reading Life of Pi by Yann Martel

The other day I finished reading Yann Martel's celebrated fictional novel Life of Pi.  Perhaps you've heard of it; if you have, then you also probably know of the famous protracted scene of the protagonist Piscine Molitor Patel (or more familiarly, "Pi") in a life-and-death standoff with a full-grown Bengal tiger on a lifeboat, crossing the Pacific together as castaways from a shipwreck.  So I don't think that's really giving away very much, although this dire circumstance does take up more than half of the book.  Life of Pi deals with more than this adventure as there is a plethora of topics discussed to great length on its pages.  The deeper message I got from Life of Pi was twofold: one, it is important to believe in something...and not sit on the fence in spiritual matters (even a confirmed atheist is better, according to Pi the storyteller, than a doubting, uncertain agnostic).  And two, every living thing has its important place in the world and has value.  Martel's intense probing of religion and biology (especially in the areas of zoology and ecology) was mesmerizing to me.  But he also went into great detail regarding the steps taken by Pi to survive on a lifeboat in the open seas for a very, very long stretch of time.  As well as delving into the psychology of animals.

Life of Pi was first released in 2001, and was made into an award-winning movie in 2012.  There are three different scenes from the book that I am very interested in seeing how the film version treated them.  One is how the zebra, hyena, orangutan, and tiger played out their tortured relationship and the second is the mysterious island...with the peculiar algae.  The third involves an alternative, "no animals" account of Pi's ordeal given near the end...and how the movie chooses to express this.  Yes, this is one book whose film adaptation I anxiously want to see.  But having just said that, I can't help but wonder how much of the philosophical, introspective nature of the book will be lost in a more action-oriented treatment on the big screen.  Anyway, I can always go back to the book should the movie be lacking in that regard.  Should be interesting to compare the two versions...

A Return Visit to the Santa Fe College Planetarium

It had been several months since I paid a visit to my local planetarium, located at Santa Fe (formerly "Community") College.  Last night I decided to go and hear what planetarium producer/director (and star of television's Star Hustler sky-gazing show) James Albury has to say about the spring sky.  With tracks from pieces by Isao Tomita, Vangelis, and other artists playing in the background, we were treated to a basic lesson in astronomy, covering  concepts like azimuth and altitude, the spring equinox, planetary motion (including retrograde motion), how one's latitude affects the portion of sky visible to them, and other interesting concepts.  I never tire of Albury going over the same basic material, for his style of speaking is warm and humorous.  Still, from time to time he would pause during his presentation to ask those in the audience still awake to clap...I'm not quite sure others were on the same plane as me. 

I timed my arrival at the planetarium so as not to be too early, and after being once again automatically given the unmerited senior discount at the entrance, one of the three sharply dressed assistants there informed me that I was the first one arriving for the show.  So for a few minutes I was the only one in the "big room", sitting back and enjoying the solitude, darkness, and ambient music.  When others came in eventually, they were always in groups...but with group outings to places like this, you know that some within those groups are coming along for the group's sake and not because they have any abiding interest in what's going on in the night sky.  But it was plain that, being there this time by myself, I was a "true believer"...and as it turns out, for nearly fifty years.

In April of 1964, my father took me aside one evening and showed me his very old Boy Scout handbook where it had maps of the night sky.  He explained that the stars were grouped into things called "constellations" that made it easier to identify them in the sky.  It was very much like the "connect-the-dot" puzzles I had grown up with.  We then went outside in the front yard to observe the night sky.  I don't exactly remember, but I think that Leo the lion was the first constellation I ever saw out there. After this initial experience, my interest in constellations and the night sky took off like a rocket...in the second grade I could reproduce the night sky on paper from memory for any season...

Mr. Albury's show about the springtime evening sky, to me, was a little off the mark as he tended to first heavily focus on traditionally winter constellations like Orion, Taurus, and Gemini while only briefly touching upon Leo and totally ignoring Virgo, the two of them dominating the spring evening sky (along with Bootes).  Then he jumped over to Hercules, which to me has always signified the month of July.  Oh well, at least he did dwell a bit on the asterism of the Big Dipper (within the constellation Ursa Major), which is at its highest in the north during the springtime evening.

If this show were taking place further south, like in Central America or the Caribbean, I would think that Crux, or the "Southern Cross", along with Alpha and Beta Centauri, would be objects of focus.  Of course, with the planetarium projector at his disposal, the director might have mentioned them anyway, in spite of our being too far north in latitude to observe them.

But there was a lot to cover in this show and it was only for a hour...so stuff had to be left out.  I still enjoyed it a lot and plan to return in a few weeks' time.  The planetarium has other shows on its schedule, such as a kid's matinee show about atoms and molecules, a show about eclipses, and two different musically driven graphic/optical presentations, one based on Led Zeppelin's greatest hits and the other on Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon album.  For me, I'm a little more on the "astronomy" side of the picture and may just stick with those types of programs... 

Dreary Skies, Too Much Rain Recently

I awoke this morning to another day of overcast skies...how many in a row has it been so far?  The forecasts have it finally clearing today, however.  At least now it is longer raining.  I can't recall anytime since I've been living here in Gainesville when the ground was so saturated with water.  I like for there to be some rain, but this season must be close to a record.  At my three-car house, we used to park a couple of vehicles side-by-side on the grassy lawn adjacent to the drive-way, but forget that now: it's two in the driveway and one on curbside.  No doubt were someone to attempt parking on the grass, the car would get hopelessly stuck.  Gainesville's streets and parking lots have a lot of standing water on them as well...and I'm noticing more fresh potholes appearing on some of our already neglected streets. 

Normally I like overcast skies, especially when I go out to run in my neighborhood.  But the slippery condition of the roads isn't something that I feel like contending with, especially while I am just recovering from a strained lower back.  I think I'll just stay indoors to do my running until things dry up a bit...

Gainesville City Commission Election on March 11

Early voting has already begun for this year's Gainesville City Commission races.  They total three in number: one at-large seat for which the entire city gets to vote and two by districts.  Mine is District Two, a seat currently held by conservative Republican Todd Chase.  Chase, by all accounts as far as I see it, seems to be doing a reasonably good job on the commission, so I'll probably vote for his reelection when I get myself to the polls on Election Day, which is March 11.  The at-large seat is open, however, since incumbent Thomas Hawkins has to vacate it due to term limits.  The two chief candidates, both Democrats, are Annie Orlando and Helen Warren.  Orlando seems more business-oriented while Warren is more into public service.  However, in spite of this and the fact that I want my city to be more pro-business, I think that Warren seems more reasonable when it comes to balancing environmental concerns with development.  I think the Sierra Club is probably a fine, worthy organization but I don't think that they should be dictating my city's growth policy...and their strong support of Orlando bothers me.  Both candidates seem to want to repair the streets, which to me is MY main issue...

So in the two races I'm going to vote on I will support a conservative Republican and a liberal Democrat.   I want Gainesville to be pro-business and bullish on economic development while working hard to maintain its roads and develop a top-quality public transit system.  Naturally, I don't expect Chase and Warren to see eye-to-eye on everything, but I do hope that, should they win their respective elections, they would work together to make Gainesville a better city for its residents.  If you are someone registered to vote here in Gainesville, please look at where the candidates stand on the issues that matter most to you, make an educated choice...and VOTE!

Gator Basketball Raises Playing Level

I'm wondering a little this morning whether the University of Florida men's basketball team read my blog article a few days ago, in which I claimed that they, outstanding season so far notwithstanding, had fallen into the pattern of playing down to their opponent's level.  After all, they had bested a very good, NCAA tourney-bound Kentucky on the road in a close contest by playing strong defense, pulling away in the closing minutes.  Then they struggled unexpectedly in three consecutive games against inferior opponents, all contests up in the air until the very end.  But now they've gotten two more games behind them, and it looks as if the Gators have risen to my challenge, whether or not (probably not) they did read my article...A few days ago they blasted LSU 79-61 (it was actually 77-48 before the subs came in).  Then, last night they dominated South Carolina in the second half on the way to a 72-46 drubbing.  Now that's the kind of confidence-building play I wanted to see, and it couldn't come at a better time than the end of the regular season, just in time for the Southeastern Conference and NCAA tournaments.

Speaking of the SEC tournament, it is set up in a peculiar manner, with two "rounds" occurring before the quarterfinals...and it is this quarterfinal round in which Florida, naturally top-seeded, begins its tournament play as one of the surviving eight teams.  But I suppose this inequity of two extra games that the lowest seeded teams have to get through is the price they had to pay for floundering though the regular season.  And I understand that the number of SEC teams, fourteen, doesn't make it easy to set up an elimination tournament.  Sixteen teams would be ideal for the purpose (although I think we have too many schools in the SEC as it is), with everybody having to win four games to win the championship.  Still, no one team should have to play two more total tourney games than another...this would have easily been remedied if they had given the top two seeded schools the bye into the quarterfinals and had the other twelve matched off by their seeding in the first round...still getting the needed quarterfinal total to eight teams.  I suppose, though, that being a Florida fan it doesn't much matter since the Gators are going to be "off" for a while within the tournament until their game comes up...

But that tournament isn't the immediate concern for Florida: they have a chance to go undefeated, 18-0, in conference regular season play.  All they have to do now is win the finale, scheduled for this Saturday.  They'll be playing at home, but their opponent will be those pesky Kentucky Wildcats again.  Now that should be one good game...

Reading The Goldfinch and Life of Pi

I have this habit of usually being in the middle of reading more than one book at a time.  Right now, I am splitting my reading between the recent NY Times #1 fiction book The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt, and Life of Pi by Yann Martel.  Melissa already read the latter and highly recommended it to me.  At this writing I have only read a few chapters in each book, but I am already immersed in the two authors' divergent worlds, each of them very interesting.  In The Goldfinch, I spend some time retracing my paths from my visit to Manhattan four years ago...especially the walk "through" Central Park down 79th Street and the subsequent visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  In Life of Pi, the author treats me to a "captivating" discussion about animals and what truly constitutes being wild as opposed to being in a zoo...as well as attempting an unorthodox blending of zoology with religion.  The geographical setting at the start of this novel is personally unfamiliar to me: the city of Pondicherry in southern India.  So far I've learned a few new things about history, zoology, comparative religion, and geography.  And I have a feeling that there's a lot more "education" to come.
 
I think I picked a couple of winners to read, and look forward to looking back on them after I'm finished...

News: Crimea, Weather, Oscars...with the Emphasis on Crimea

I've been sitting around the house most of today, with a recovering strained lower back, surfing around the TV.  Mostly I've been watching the news and sports channels.  The major news stories are Russia's ominously escalating occupation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula, the severe winter storm (that The Weather Channel names "Titan") sweeping through the northeast, and who won the Oscars last night.  The first of these stories is currently in a state of flux and is due to dramatically change (probably for the worse) in the next 24 to 48 hours.  As is the weather, although being that I live in Florida the great Titan has no direct bearing on me.  And regarding the Academy Awards, I couldn't care less who won or lost.  I suppose I can get myself worked up into a panic over Ukraine and Russia, but I see that there are plenty of others out there who seem eminently more capable of panicking than me. 

So far the land that Russia is occupying is overwhelmingly populated by other Russians, and who seem very content with the presence of these soldiers.  As a matter of fact, Crimea has historically been a part of Russia proper until in the 1950's when the USSR's dictator Nikita Khrushchev reassigned the territory to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic...all in all a technically bureaucratic move since back then it was all the same country anyway.  The ethnic Ukrainians predominate in the north and west of Ukraine while ethnic Russians form the majority in the east and south (including Crimea), comprising a very large minority within the country as a whole.  It is the political divide between these two groups and their alignments that has caused so much electoral/political turmoil since the country became independent with the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991.  I'm sure that Russia's president (apparently now for life) Vladimir Putin would love to annex all of that eastern and southern Ukrainian territory with primarily Russian populations...and I wouldn't be surprised if the Russians living there supported him in this.  And this is where the big threat to this situation lies: how far does Putin plan to go with his idea of "protecting" native Russians in neighboring countries when they have a large minority status in them?  Ukraine isn't the only place like this, and Putin just got his rubber-stamp parliament to approve a measure authorizing the forced annexation of neighboring lands whenever it is deemed appropriate (by Russian authorities, of course) to protect the Russians living there.  Sounds ominously to me like Hitler and his claim on Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland in 1938...

Just Finished Reading Veronica Roth's Insurgent

Continuing along with Veronica Roth's popular Divergent trilogy, I just finished reading the second book, titled Insurgent.  Once again, sixteen year old Beatrice "Tris" Prior, judged "divergent" in her strange divided culture of five distinct personality types, is struggling to survive, protect her friends, and make some sense over the breakdown of her once well-ordered society.  It all takes place in what was formerly Chicago, but this once-great city in Roth's future vision has been greatly depopulated and mysteriously cut off from the rest of the world.  This scenario had me speculating on the ultimate truth of the situation here, and why this society had been divided into five clear-cut personality factions.  As it turned out, I was right to go down that path since this is where Insurgent leads, ending with a teaser about what's going on in the "outside" world.  I enjoyed reading Insurgent, although as is commonly the way it is with these trilogies, the innovation of the first book has dissipated and we already know that matters won't be completely resolved and explained until the third book.  But I'm already looking at this series as one big, connected book (similar to when I read Lord of the Rings, actually a trilogy in itself) so I'm just two thirds of the way through it.  The last third will be the book Allegiant, which I'll be starting on soon.

In an earlier article I alluded to the fact that the movie Divergent will be coming out in theaters on March 21.  Now I'm seeing it hyped like crazy on the covers of several entertainment magazines.  I'd like to watch the film version of Divergent, if only to see how they handle those cool daredevil stunts performed by those belonging to the "Dauntless" faction...

Relaxing At Daytona Beach this Weekend

Melissa and I are spending a couple of days here at Daytona Beach, at a hotel overlooking the ocean. Yesterday evening it was very windy and cool, and looking out from the balcony it looked to be high tide with the surging ocean leaving almost no beach.  Late this morning, though, the tide is lower and we now have a beach to look at (but the water is still full of white caps).  Not that I plan to go out into the ocean, understand...I am more into walks (and runs) up and down the beach.  And I will try a run or two here before we leave if my strained lower back feels better (it started hurting yesterday afternoon).  But the sky is beautiful and blue, temperatures are warming up to around 70 degrees, and we are enjoying our time here.  We're thinking about a late lunch/early dinner at the nearby Aunt Catfish restaurant, just on the other side of the Intracoastal...

Here are a couple of high and low tide pics along with another view, all from the seventh-story balcony of our hotel room...

 

 

My February 2014 Running Report

In February I kept up with my monthly total mileage goal of 100, amassing 103.05 miles.  I also managed to run on 27 of the 28 days, with the longest single run being a personal comeback triumph: the 13.1 miles of my first half-marathon race since last March, this one being the local Five Points of Life Half-Marathon on February 16.  My final time was way off at 2 hours 7 minutes (the previous three I finished in less than 2 hours), but the main goal of finishing one was a resounding success.  I also finished it strong, with some energy to spare.  Earlier, on February 1, I had reentered the racing "world" with a reasonable run in Gainesville's Education for Life 5K at Westside Park (and points east).

Last spring I suffered from plantar fasciitis in my right foot, which caused my running progress to suffer for a couple of months.  But I changed the type of shoes I wear, both for running and for general use, and instituted two routines of foot/leg stretching that dramatically eased the pain...which for quite a while has remained inconsequential.

I'm continuing with my running routine and goals.  Whether or not I run any more races anytime soon is up in the air and depends a lot on other circumstances in my life.  But I do know now that I can handle the half-marathon distance again...

Florida Men's Basketball Team Playing Down to Competition

The nationally top-ranked University of Florida men's basketball team is on a roll, having won twenty straight games with an unblemished record in the Southeastern Conference.  They are in the driver's seat for the upcoming NCAA championship tournament, for if they continue like this and garner a number one regional seeding, they should be good for at least a couple of games before they encounter substantial competition.  That having been said, the Gators have a problem with putting away opponents, be they weak or strong.  In the past three games, Florida played markedly weaker teams in Auburn, Mississippi, and Vanderbilt...but only managed to pull away from them in the closing seconds of their games, winning them by scores of 71-66, 75-71, and 57-54 respectively.  This seems to indicate that this Florida squad tends to play down to the level of their opposition...reminding me a little of how the NBA's two-year reigning champion Miami Heat have played during their own title runs.  I hope this analogy carries further, into the NCAA tournament and onward to championship glory.  On the other hand, I've followed this single elimination tournament since 1970 and have seen too many examples of prohibitively favored teams bowing out early to inferior opponents.  I think it's about time for this already successful Gator group to step it up one level higher...

Finished Reading Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy

I just finished the final book in the late Swedish writer Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy, titled The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest.  Not as suspenseful or action-packed as the first two novels, this final one served the purpose, as many other series do as they approach their end, of tying up all the loose ends, explaining and resolving everything.  The focus is the character Lisbeth Salander, a distrusting but highly intelligent, computer hacking young woman who had been subjected to years of state-sponsored abuse and false accusations.  The redemptive message I got from this final installment in her saga was that there really were people who were on her side...finally, when she recognized this truth, her own personal healing process could take place.

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest wasn't anywhere near as interesting as the other two stories in the Millennium trilogy (especially that fantastic first book The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo), but if you're one of those John Grisham legal novel junkies, you'll like reading through Salander's trial, and how her attorney nailed the opposition. 

I understand that all three books of Millennium were adapted to film in a Swedish production a few years ago, but currently the more famous film adaptation (starring James Bond's Daniel Craig as Mikael Blomkvist) is only out so far for book #1.  Hopefully, they'll do the other two as well...

Eight Days a Week, the Beatles, and Me

A few days ago the media commemorated the fiftieth anniversary of the momentous first visit of the Beatles to America, when they first appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show.  They had already been recording for a year in England and had a backlog of material to release.  Normally, the record label that a musical act signs on with will stagger the release of past music so that they won't be competing with themselves, but with the Beatles different companies had rights to their earlier recorded music for release in the United States. So Decca and Veejay Records had their own Beatles singles that they released early in 1964 (such as Twist and Shout and Please Please Me), simultaneously with the main label of Capitol Records (which put out hit singles like I Want to Hold Your Hand and She Loves You).  The result that spring was an astounding Fab Four dominance of the Billboard Top 100, with five different Beatles songs topping the list at one time...a feat never again matched.  Later on in the year, after the summer in which United Artists and Capitol competed over the release of overlapping material largely associated with their hit film A Hard Days Night, Capitol Records finally settled down into being the only label releasing their music (until 1968 when Apple Records was established, that is).  At that time, they released a big singles hit, titled Eight Days a Week.  I never did like that song, although I did enjoy the flip side I Don't Want to Spoil the Party.  For one, back then (approaching my eighth birthday) I thought the lyrics were silly, not recognizing the deliberate exaggeration about the week's span of days that Lennon/McCartney used to make their point.  Now, though, I have a different take on the song's lyrics...

I work the "graveyard" shift on my job, reporting in to work at 11 PM and getting off at 7:30 the next morning.  My days off are Saturday and Sunday.  When I do come home from work, I am usually too sleepy to be good for anything else, so I do my sleeping from mid-morning to mid-afternoon, after which I start my new day.  So today, for example, I woke up on Tuesday afternoon and will stay up (other than a little nap later on) until Wednesday morning.  So my day is in fact an overlap of Tuesday and Wednesday, making it more understandable as to why I so often get the days of the week mixed up.  In truth, I could give my own "personal" day my own "personal" name: combine Tuesday and Wednesday and I get "Tuwen"...which incidentally happens to be going on right now.  In this way, yesterday would have been "Montue" and tomorrow "Wenthur".  But once I awake on Friday afternoon and I find myself off for a couple of days, my sleeping pattern reverts back to sleeping late at night when I would be at work on other days.  Consequently, I still have Friday (albeit abbreviated), Saturday (in full), and Sunday (also shortened).  So although I'm not exactly living eight 24-hour periods each week, I am still essentially functioning on a schedule of  "Eight Days a Week":

1 Sunmon (Sunday + Monday)
2 Montue (Monday + Tuesday)
3 Tuwen (Tuesday + Wednesday)
4 Wenthur (Wednesday + Thursday)
5 Thurfri (Thursday + Friday)
6 Friday (remainder)
7 Saturday (all)
8 Sunday (daytime)

Naturally, if I were to use these mostly artificial designations around others, no one would know what I was talking about.  Which should help, I think, to explain the degree of temporal disconnect I have been experiencing since I changed over to this work shift nearly a year ago...

Finished Reading The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis

I just finished another reading of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe of The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis.  This was the first book of the seven-part series that Lewis had published, but chronologically it is the second one...and chronological order is what I've been following in my reading.  Let's see...I think this was my third time around reading it, not to mention having seen the film adaptation twice.  I like this story, which is a clear allegorical presentation, in the form of the great lion Lord Aslan, of Christ's atoning substitutional sacrifice upon the cross ("deep magic from the dawn of time") and his subsequent resurrection ("deeper magic from the dawn of time").  It is clearly the most well-known and performed of the Narnia tales.

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe picks up during wartime when siblings Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy are sent into the English countryside to stay at their elderly relative Diggory's large house.  Playing hide-and-seek, Lucy first stumbles upon a large wardrobe, into which she enters to hide...and discovers that beyond the hanging coats stand trees and a snow-bound, winter world.  It's Narnia again, only that the few decades on Earth since Diggory visited it represents a lapse of hundreds of years in Narnia's time.  The evil witch queen has overrun Narnia and has put it into a deep, permanent winter, and the creatures living there are fearful of her cruel and oppressive reign.  Edmund later follows Lucy into this land and, well, he has some pretty nasty attitude issues that lead to a great deal of trouble.  Aslan comes to the rescue, but even he is subject to laws by which he must abide.  And herein lies the Christian message of redemption through faith.

I think one of the coolest things about The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe was in the final chapter and in the manner that Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy manage to make their way back home...and how time factors into this!

UF Men's Hoops Number One

Congratulations are in order as the University of Florida men's basketball team extended its school-record winning streak yesterday to nineteen games with a close road victory over Mississippi yesterday, 75-71.  The Gators are now 25-2 overall with a perfect 14-0 Southeastern Conference record.  And since they have been ranked #2 nationally...and since #1 Syracuse has just lost two straight games, Florida stands to move up in the next poll to #1.  Head coach Billy Donovan keeps things in perspective, though, dismissing the importance of the rankings and stressing that the "whole is greater than the parts"...unselfish teamwork is what has gotten them this far.  Still, the "parts" are talented and productive: Scottie Wilbikin, Michael Frazier II, and Patric Young are leading the charge.  The Gators are strongest on defense, collapsing around their opponent and often making it nearly impossible to approach the basket, much less get off a decent shot.  Still, in recent games, they have displayed an Achilles' heel of sorts, allowing a lot of three-pointers against them that kept weaker opponents in close games.  They'll have to solve that one if they want to go all the way in the NCAA Tournament.  Offensively, Florida doesn't score that much, and stands to be in trouble as well should they fall far enough behind in championship-level games.  In spite of this, they remind me of the cohesiveness and spirit of those two UF national championship teams in the previous decade, and I'd put them up against any team in the country and give them a high probability of victory...

Identifying with Groups, Judging Those in Others

When I was in my very early years of elementary school, my teacher for whatever reasons of her own decided to play a little sociology game on us...although we were thoroughly clueless as to what was going on.  Her idea was to find out which state in the country we came from, from which she would assign the designation "Yankee" or "Rebel".  Having been born in Georgia, I discovered that I was a Rebel...and quickly became quite proud of that label...without having any idea as to what it meant other than that I was consequently against the Yankees (and better than them).  Those who were Yankees took their assigned name proudly as well, and we all went around for several minutes boasting how much better our side was than the "other" side.  This arbitrary assumption of labels and then assigning virtue or contempt to people by which labels they have assumed is a natural symptom of the human condition...but we like to pretend it isn't.  So in politics we attach ourselves to a particular party label and then make excuses for our side when they are in power while vilifying those in the opposing party in the most personal and hateful manner...just because they have a different perspective on things. Maybe the passion of adhering to a certain system of beliefs and principles figures into it to a degree, and I'm sure that people get very politically passionate when they perceive that a particular special interest of theirs may be at stake...but I'm inclined to believe it has more to do with the feeling of belonging to a designated group and automatically wanting to put down other differing groups...because they are the perceived enemy on the outside. 

It doesn't have to be politics, though...maybe someone looks a little different.  We blindly abide by the artificial categories of "race" to classify folks by looks and then get proud and defensive of whichever "race" we think we belong to.  Religion, economic status...whatever division we make, there will be an assigning of sweeping attributes that have little to do with the usually limited  parameters of the categories in question.  Just look at the last presidential election and how the two sides sized each other up: one side says the other are a bunch of moochers who want more "stuff" from the government, while the "flip" side regards the other as either being bigoted or greedy (or both).  And of course the leaders of each side get lambasted for all sorts of character defects by the other side, accusations that are more often than not gross exaggerations if not outright falsehoods.  Look at President Barack Obama and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie right now.  Both are being accused of being dictators, which is hardly the truth, and the accusers are folks who identify with the opposing party. How convenient for them.

Whether we're talking about politics, racial-ethnic identification, gender, religious affiliation, level of wealth and/or education, age, or other categories, why can't we confine our judgments regarding people who seem to belong to different groupings to those aspects that actually pertain to the grouping and refrain from making sweeping condemnations against their character, intelligence, and motives?  Well, I sadly think I already know the answer: it is our innately human tribal, clannish nature along with a deplorable stubborn unwillingness to put ourselves in the other's shoes and try to see where they're coming from...

Enjoying KenKen Puzzles

I am a puzzle enthusiast.  Specifically, I like numerically-based logic puzzles like Sudoku, Kakuro, and Hidato.  The keys to solving them are that each puzzle has only one, unique solution and that the filling in of each box with the correct number derives from eliminating all other possibilities.  No guesswork is needed to solve them, just logical inference.  So I feel a little like a Sherlock Holmes sleuth when I successfully unravel a solution.  I suppose that of the three types of puzzles I have enjoyed, Kakuro, which resembles a crossword puzzle (only with numerals instead of letters) is the most interesting.  It is also known as "cross-sums".  My local newspaper has a weekly Kakuro puzzle (each Thursday) and daily Sudoku puzzles.  Also, my HP printer has an application that prints out a Hidato puzzle and three Sudokus daily.  I have also gone through some Hidato, Sudoku, and Kakuro books...with the latter two I've enjoyed the Puzzle Wright Press series of books based on martial arts levels (white, green, brown, and black belts).  Now I'm embarking on a different numerical logic puzzle, called KenKen.

According to the intro in White Belt KenKen, KenKen was invented ten years ago by a Japanese math teacher, Tetsuya Miyamoto.  Its grid is similar to that of Sudoku, only that with KenKen outlined areas within the puzzle are marked according to the sum, difference, quotient, or product contained within...while as with Sudoku each line and column contain a unique arrangement of numbers.  I started with the easy level (5X5 an 6X6 grids) and have progressed to the Brown Belt KenKen book, expanding to 8X8 and 9X9 grids.  Try it out for yourself if you like puzzles like Sudoku...