Succumbed to Bracket Fever...But I Quickly Recovered

As I had written in last Monday's article, I wasn't very enthusiastic about jumping on board the "bracket express" regarding the NCAA men's basketball tournament, which has just begun.  Savvy businessman and generally very rich guy Warren Buffet offered a billion dollars to anyone who got all of their picks on their bracket correct, along with $100,000 to each of those with the twenty best brackets.  And I was going to forgo filling out a bracket in spite of this lucrative offer, which wouldn't have cost me anything other than a few minutes of my time.  But Facebook made it too easy yesterday...

I happened to be on Facebook when lo and behold, there was an advertisement for Buffet's bracket offer (sponsored by Quicken Loans).  All I had to do was click on the button they provided, open a Yahoo account, fill out the bracket, and submit it...all free of charge.   This bracket offer didn't include the first four games...just the field of 64, with today's games beginning the whittling down process.  And the whittling down of eligible "bracketeers" hit my own home early: when I awoke this afternoon, I had already discovered I was a billion bucks poorer when I found out that, against my predictions, Harvard had upset Cincinnati and Dayton had done likewise with Ohio State.  Still, it was fun while it lasted. Which turned out to be not very long at all.

I can still have some fun with my bracket by seeing how far the teams I picked to do well can get in the tournament.  In my Elite Eight version of the games, Florida defeats Syracuse, Virginia defeats North Carolina, Wisconsin defeats Arizona, and Louisville defeats Duke to give the Final Four field.  My championship game has Florida winning over Louisville 66-62.  So far, this is all possible, although my #1 seeded Gators seem to be experiencing a degree of difficulty putting away #16 seed Albany right now...

Rereading Karnazes, Looking Over My Own Running Goals

Once again I've picked up one of my favorite books and am now rereading it.  It's Ultramarathon Man: Confessions of an All-Night Runner, by Dean Karnazes.  As you might easily have guessed, this is a book about long-distance running.  The author is a renown "ultra" runner, choosing distances far beyond the 26.2 mile marathon event. Once he even ran in a 199-mile relay event...only he ran ALL of the race's 36 legs by himself!  I have no plans to ever enter a race for more than 26.2 miles...and for the immediate future I'm just interesting in races between 5K (3.1 miles) and the half-marathon (13.1 miles).  But Karnazes, or "Karno" as he is affectionately called by friends, so effectively and enthusiastically crystallizes the importance of boldness, clarity, and determination for his running that his example is applicable not only for anyone attempting more modest distances in running, but also for people engaging in other sports...or other endeavors, for that matter.

It's important for people to recognize their own limitations, as Clint Eastwood's Harry Callahan character would say in the movie Magnum Force.  But with this realism also must come a "can do" attitude that recognizes one's potential for growth and success...and be willing to undertake the hard work necessary to bring about significant positive change in the targeted area.  It is also important to be specific about one's goals: for Karno, it was about becoming trained for certain upcoming races and then successfully finishing them within his time goals. Lately that goal-oriented behavior for me has languished, to be replaced by routine-based behavior.  For the past three weeks I have been dealing with strained back issues, which made the question of me looking forward to any races in the immediate future a moot point.  Before that happened, my typical running pattern had been for most of the year a matter of me fitting in my "miles" without a discernible goal in the near future.  That doesn't mean that, during the course of a calendar year, interesting races didn't come up for me to participate in.  But I either hadn't been training up to them or had given such events a low priority, making it easy for me to pass them by.

This year I would like to step up my running to a level that gives me the confidence to enter and run well in any half-marathon race, at any time of the year.  That's where my routine comes in.  Now for those half-marathon races: I need to check my favorite half-marathon calendar website and begin planning for more distant races up north to run in during the hotter (and too hot for Florida) summer months.  And now this is where Ultramarathon Man can help me.  I first read this book a little more than four years ago, and it greatly helped to inspire me to train for my first ever half-marathon race.  Hopefully, reading it again will help me recover some of that earlier enthusiasm.  But also, I hope to gain some fresh insights from Karnazes' writing, as so often happens when I go back over material I've covered before...

Time for New AlphaSmart

I initially do most of my blog writing on my AlphaSmart portable word processor. Since I don't need an Internet connection to write, this nifty little machine works well for me.  It runs on three AA batteries and lasts for months before I have to change them out...and there is no need to ever plug it into the wall.  Anything I type on it is automatically saved into one of the eight files, each of which has a large capacity.  I don't need to go through the "saving" process: just turn off the AlphaSmart and whenever I decide to turn it back on, there is my last writing, right where I left off.  It also has a good spell check feature that is invaluable to me.  The keys and the keyboard are the same size as that on a regular laptop or desktop computer, so no special adjustment is needed here for typing. Of course, whenever I write something for my blog on it (such as this entry), I'll need a means of file transference, which is also provided through a connecting cord.  No special software is needed to sync the AlphaSmart with the computer.  On top of all this, AlphaSmarts are lightweight, small, and sturdy.  I usually just load mine into my backpack along with any books or notebooks I'm using.

This current AlphaSmart I am using I just bought used at a good price off Amazon ($44 including shipping).  It's the third one I've had (I got my first one in 2000).  I tend to use them a lot...you can see from the pictures of my "new" and "old" AlphaSmarts that I get my money's worth out of them.  The last one eventually lost several keys, but it was still functional until I began having difficulty turning it on.  So, it was time for a change and I switched to a better (albeit earlier) model that shows what I am writing much more clearly...

To Bracket or Not to Bracket

The 2014 NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament has now been set up, with 68 teams making the "cut".  Warren Buffett has offered a billion dollars to anyone submitting a perfect "bracket" that gets all of the winners right.  I think $100,000 will go to the best 20 brackets (I suppose they have a strict protocol for figuring that out).  If you're someone who likes filling out brackets every year, this is your moment!  As for me, I would rather just sit back and enjoy the games...having followed the NCAA tourney off and on since 1970, I am keenly aware of the overwhelming preponderance of upsets and the unpredictability as to when they will happen.  And we are talking here about 67 games! No, instead I'm going to take each game as it comes, figure out beforehand which team I want to win, and cheer on.

And as far as the teams I will support are concerned, here they are, in the order that I like them:

1 Florida
2 North Carolina
3 Louisville
4 North Carolina State
5 Tennessee
6 Michigan State
7 Virginia
8 Providence

...and that's it.  The other sixty teams can do well as long as they don't mess with the above teams; I'll just have to take each game as it comes to determine which team I want to win.  If any two of the "eight" face off against each other, then I have my order of preference listed.  And no, I don't think NC State or Tennessee will probably go very far, but it would be cool if they did...

Just Finished Reading Terry Goodkind's The Pillars of Creation

I have just gotten through volume seven of Terry Goodkind's twelve-part fantasy series The Sword of Truth.  This book, titled The Pillars of Creation, represents a departure of sorts from the first six stories as it introduces a new character, a young woman named Jennsen, who dominates throughout as the chief protagonist.  Richard and Kahlan, the series' traditional protagonists, don't make their appearance until the very end of the book.  Still, the settings are the same as before, only this time the story flows through Jennsen's experiences as she tries to make sense of the war going on between the Imperial Order (the bad guys) and Richard Rahl's D'Haran Empire.  She undergoes great trauma as she witnesses the violent death of her mother at the hands of what looks to be D'Haran soldiers.  But she is rescued by a man named Sebastian...and he just so turns out to be the chief strategic officer for the Imperial Order.  As Jennsen grows closer to Sebastian, she is convinced that Richard Rahl (who is really the "good" guy) had her mother killed and is searching her out to kill her, too.  So Jennsen works hard and fearlessly to support the Imperial Order...and to personally kill Richard herself.  The underlying reason as to why she might be in danger from the Rahls has to do with a newly-introduced idea: offspring of Rahl emperors who do not possess magical abilities are both invulnerable to magical attacks and able to hear the words of the Keeper of the Underworld (like the Roman god Hades) in their minds.  In truth, though, Richard did not even know he had a sister, much less this trait of his non-magical siblings.  In a subplot to the story, Richard's (also unknown to him) non-magical half-brother Oba heeds the words of the Keeper in his head and progressively becomes more evil and sadistic.  At the end...well, I don't want to give it away, but just think: this twelve-part series still has five more books left in it, so how much is going to change?!  I will say this much, though: the "lessons" of The Pillars of Creation are completely in line with those of the previous books: (1) life is in the future while death is in the past, (2) we always have our own choices to make about our own lives and are responsible for those choices, and (3) reason reigns supreme as a force of good.  I can handle all of that...they seem like great ideas to me (although I think I'd like to modify (3) a bit to include "love").  I just wish that the author would be a little more subtle in conveying them...

At Starbucks on a Saturday Morning, Remembering

I am sitting right now inside my favorite Starbucks, at Magnolia Parke here off 39th Avenue in northern Gainesville on a Saturday morning, relishing my weekend off from work.  This particular Starbucks is apparently the favorite of many others, because ever since I came in today the place has been packed with customers.  Also, at least as far as the circles of people I know are concerned, when someone says "Let's meet at Starbucks", this is the Starbucks they are usually talking about (and Gainesville has many of them).  It has a bit of personal history for me: right after it first opened in 2000 I would come in regularly to study (and naturally drink coffee) as I finished up my history degree at the University of Florida (on a part-time student basis, something that I wonder if they'll still let you do).  They had as manager a guy named Marty, who "got it" when it came to making a business appealing to the public and making customers feel welcome and valued.  It was this same Marty who, just a few years later at a different Starbucks location on Newberry Road, suggested to a couple of joggers working at the nearby LifeSouth blood donor organization (which replaced Civitan here in Gainesville) that holding an annual marathon to publicize LifeSouth and its mission would be a good idea.  From that simple, casual conversation arose the annual Five Points of Life Marathon/Half-Marathon/5K event held in February (and in which I ran the half-marathon race in 2010 and 2014).  Later he was transferred to another Starbucks store on the other side of town...and then disappeared.  Nothing dire, I'm happy to say...just that he was no longer working for them, for whatever the reason(s).  I never did find out what happened to him.  Maybe he had badly screwed up or antagonized somebody above him in the company, maybe he went on to better things...or maybe both or neither of these happened.  But regardless of the reason for his leaving, I did consider him to be a good man who cared about his customers...and I wish him the best...

Gators Hoops Resemble Last Year's Louisville Team

I was just commenting to someone how this year's University of Florida men's basketball team reminds me of how Louisville played last year when they made their national championship run.  Well, after the Gators blew away Missouri in the second half of their opening game in the Southeastern Conference Tournament, an ESPN analyst came to the same conclusion.  With each team, it is seamless teamwork...almost as if there were some kind of psychic connection between the players...that impresses me.  Neither Florida now (nor Louisville then) has what you would call NBA-caliber stars in its starting lineup, but their respective coaches Billy Donovan and his mentor Rick Pitino have deeply instilled a spirit of unselfishness and tight discipline within their players.  And on both squads, there is a type of intense defense that closes down on opponents the closer they get to the basket...not to mention aggressive rebounding, stealing, and a quick transition offense.  I was very impressed by Florida's game today and see them doing well in the NCAA tournament. Their next SEC tourney game will be against the South Carolina-Tennessee winner, a game currently underway with the favored Vols leading so far 13-5...

Gainesville City Commission Election Results and Runoff

The Gainesville City Commission election that took place the day before yesterday elected two conservatives in the races pertaining to specific districts and put another into a close runoff for the city-wide at-large seat.  The voter turnout was low in the city overall, at about 15%, but in those districts whose seats were up for election it was up to around 40%.   Seeing how Gainesville as a whole tends to vote Democratic and liberal when the voter turnout is higher, as it is during elections properly held in November, I have drawn two conclusions from what has happened.  One is that the conservative minority in this town is much more passionate about expressing their political convictions than the voter at-large.  That's to their credit and makes me wonder a bit about those registered voters who only go to the polls when they are in the mood instead of regarding the vote as an important right, as well as a civic duty meriting priority in their lives.  So hats off to winners Todd Chase (whom I supported) in District 2 and Craig Carter in District 3.  They ran good, aggressive campaigns and were rewarded in the election.  My second conclusion from this voter turnout disparity between conservatives and liberals is that the high turnout in Districts 2 and 3 may not transfer in degree to the runoff election for the at-large seat in a few weeks.  Conservative Democrat Annie Orlando, who finished Tuesday's election in a near-tie with more liberal Democrat Helen Warren, benefited in that first voting from the more dedicated, higher-turnout conservative voters in those two district races.  I still expect her to benefit from a higher conservative turnout in the runoff election, but since those other two races have already been decided, I don't think it will be as high.  And that might be enough to hand Warren the election.  Should be interesting to see how this all turns out...

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...