Jordan's Wheel of Time Series Guilty of Information Overload

I am currently in the midst of a very long fantasy novel, which in itself is just one of fourteen novels in a series.  The author is Robert Jordan, the series is The Wheel of Time, and the novel is The Shadow Rising, the fourth installment.  Jordan has this tendency to inundate the reader with copious amounts of obscure and esoteric knowledge about his version of magic, prophecy, and fantasy world history.  It can get to be overwhelming at times, but I am learning to anticipate sections in the story that are most prone to this...and am relishing those other sections that just concentrate on the plot and character development. The main indicator to all of this is whichever character Jordan happens to be using at any given time to tell the story.  If it's Mat or Perrin, then I enjoy the narrative...mostly free from all the pretentious mumbo jumbo.  But if the characters are Rand (the Dragon Reborn) or any of the Aes Sedai women, then watch out...here comes a new flood of very crucial "facts".  I understand that, in all fantasy series, the author is committed to creating a separate, special world with its own history and dynamics...and there is a need to communicate its essence to the reader.  But dude, I'm drowning in this stuff!

It used to be that the character of Mat Cauthon irritated me to no end...that is, until I began to realize in the third book that the passages that featured him were relatively free of the cumbersome weight of new information.  Now, he is the character I like and identify with the most...while Rand, who is the series' chief protagonist, now seems distant and unapproachable.  The development of his character seems to come in leaps and bounds, often with little to explain his change.  I wonder, since this IS a very long series, with ten more books after this, whether the situation I've described with these characters will ever change and maybe, just maybe, Jordan will give us readers a break from the layer upon layer of background material...

Finally Finished Reading 1945 Science Fiction Anthology

It took a while, but I got around to finishing reading Isaac Asimov Presents: The Great SF Stories 7 (1945), an anthology of that year's best science fiction short stories, edited by Asimov  and Martin H. Greenberg.  The final two stories in it are De Profundis by Murray Leinster and Pi in the Sky by Frederic Brown.  These two writers had other entries in this book.  De Profundis presents the narrative from the point of view of a completely alien, waterbound life form that describes its encounter with humans.  Leinster did a masterful job of creating a sense of what intelligent life could be like elsewhere, and how that intelligence did not automatically mean that it would abide by the same moral codes that we have.  It packed a lot of message for such a short tale.  Pi in the Sky was more of a commentary on our capitalistic society with its heavy emphasis on advertising...put into a science fiction context.  For unfathomable reasons, the brightest stars in the night sky are suddenly drastically changing their positions...in apparent total disregard to the laws of physics and the barrier of the speed of light.  This story could not have been written nowadays in the science fiction genre, since authors now feel the need to convince and impress the reader with the scientific viability of their speculations.  Older writers like Frederic Brown and Ray Bradbury often produced science fiction without taking the "science" part of it into full account, not having been trained in the area like other writers.  But Pi in the Sky, like so many of Brown's other pieces, has one of those endings with a "kick" to it...and a message about how we look at things in "our" world.

Well, I suppose I can go back to my book chest and randomly draw out another year in science fiction to explore.  Wonder which one's gonna be next...

Yesterday's Disturbing Belmont Stakes

Yesterday, like so many others who were watching the Belmont Stakes on television, , I was rooting for California Chrome to pull out a victory and win the first Triple Crown in horse racing since 1978.  But alas, it was not to be, and Tonalist won a very close, exciting race.  California Chrome made a good run at it, but did not have the energy to overtake the leaders at the end and finished tied for fourth place.  I had watched the horses in the few minutes before the race and thought somehow that Tonalist needed watching...and that California Chrome was unusually relaxed, in contrast to its behavior before the Kentucky Derby and Preakness.  It was what happened immediately following the race, though, that bothered me...

First of all, I understand that the media was all focused on California Chrome since it was going for the big Triple Crown prize.  But once it had lost, the attention should have been directed at the actual winner, which was Tonalist.  Instead, the cameras almost completely ignored Tonalist, its jockey, trainer, owner...and went into a quick interview with the jockey for loser California Chrome.  They eventually interviewed Tonalist's jockey, who was very dignified and respectful.  Then they went over and interviewed California Chrome co-owner Steve Coburn, who went on an angry rant, crying foul and accusing those who had entered horses just for the Belmont and not for the other two races as being cowardly.  Besides the very unsportsmanlike tone of his comments, I think that Coburn was a bit of a hypocrite, too.  His horse California Chrome had been running with the advantage of a special strip placed above his nose that helped with breathing.  The Kentucky Derby and Preakness had allowed it in their rules, but the Belmont would have prohibited it had it not changed its own rule on the subject just to placate the California Chrome people.  Yet Coburn, with this special favored treatment given him, chose to play the victim and self-righteous accuser...

Out of the eleven horses running in the Belmont, eight had run in neither the Kentucky Derby nor the Preakness.  So I suppose if Coburn had gotten what he wanted, it would have been a three-horse race!  But think about what he was proposing, which was that only horses that had run in the Kentucky Derby and Preakness could enter the Belmont: it would mean that the winner would only be facing horses it had already beaten...skewing the odds in its favor.

There is a big reason why winning the Triple Crown is a big deal.  It is because such an accomplishment is a rare event due to the difficulty involved.  Winning it means your three-year old thoroughbred is the de-facto world champion, beating all comers.  But were things rearranged to the way Coburn wanted it, we would end up with probably at least three to four Triple Crown winners a decade, making the feat virtually insignificant...

NBA Title Series: Lebron's Cramps Detract from Game One

I got to watch most of the first half of  Thursday's opening game in the NBA Championship Series between the Miami Heat and San Antonio Spurs.  For the most part, the game was very exciting and evenly played...until with a little more than four minutes to go in the fourth quarter, that is.  For then, Heat MVP Lebron James went down with severe leg cramps and had to sit out the remainder of the game.  San Antonio was able to capitalize on James being out and go on a late-game run, winning going away by 15 points.

I like both the Spurs and the Heat, and have some trouble deciding whom to pull for in this series.  But regardless, I want for the star players on both teams to be healthy and playing at their peak level.  Before last night's game, there was concern that Spurs guard Tony Parker, although set to play in it, was recovering from a sprained ankle.  But as it turned out, if he was feeling any pain from that injury during the game, he did a good job of hiding it.  That's not taking anything away from Lebron James, though.  Once you're down with that kind of leg cramp (which I'm personally familiar with), you are incapacitated, period.  James has shown this problem in the past, though, and some are expressing concerns that he hasn't been attentive enough to keeping his body hydrated.  The air-conditioning in the San Antonio arena went out during the game and temperatures soared, becoming a possible factor in his cramps. 

Hopefully, this will be the last time in this series that we see an important player on either team being sidelined like that.  To me, it detracted from the hard-fought and well-deserved victory that San Antonio achieved Thursday night, giving some Heat fans the opportunity to use their superstar's physical woes as an excuse for Miami's loss.  For even had James not suffered leg cramps, the Spurs were still surging at the end of that game.  I just want to see the best playing the best and then see what happens...

Just Finished Reading Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment

First of all, it's important to emphasize that the edition I read of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's novel Crime and Punishment was a translation into English, not the original Russian version.  So what came out sounding a lot like Charles Dickens may not have originally been written that way.  Dostoyevsky was a contemporary of Dickens and Crime and Punishment came out in 1866.  It portrays a Russian society (the setting here is Saint Petersburg, the capital then) stratified along lines of class and education.  There is a lot of talk going around about radically transforming society according to whatever ideology one holds to.  The protagonist, Rodion Raskolnikov, who sees himself as an intellectual, has come to the conclusion that, for the truly great, historically significant people like Napoleon, laws that bind others in society don't apply to them.  In a very faulty twist of logic, he then concludes that, in order to be truly great (like a Napoleon), he needs to prove to himself that he isn't subject to law, either.  So he decides to commit murder, using as his target a an elderly miserly woman pawnbroker with whom he has done business.  How this all comes off, and how well Raskolnikov is able to escape the consequences of his deeds, is something that I will leave for you discover for yourself, should you be interested in reading it.  There is more to this story, though, and the subplots, while all centering around Raskolnikov, also deal with his loyal friend Razumikhin, Raskolnikov's mother and sister (who is in a difficult wedding engagement situation), a married man who once tried to seduce Raskolnikov's sister while she was employed at his estate as a nanny, and the family of an alcoholic clerk with whom Raskolnikov once had a chance meeting in a bar.  Their lives all intertwine as the novel progresses, and each character seems to come out of their experiences with Raskolnikov as a changed person.

For himself, Raskolnikov is vain, arrogant, and impulsive...not the most likeable protagonist I've read. Still, just when he seems to be utterly despicable, he then commits truly sacrificial acts of kindness toward others.  I can see how an actor might relish the prospect of portraying him in a screen or stage adaptation.  As a matter of fact, there is so much dialogue here that it almost reads as a Shakespearean-type play...

My favorite character, though, in Crime and Punishment is the wily investigator Porfiry Petrovich, who reminds me a lot of the old TV sleuth Columbo in how he alternately disarms Raskolnikov with friendly exuberance and then subtly communicates something incriminating him...making Raskolnikov more and more nervous and uneasy. It makes me wonder whether the premise of that Columbo series wasn't at least partially based on this unforgettable character...

I suppose that, were I in a high school English class and asked to produce what I saw as a theme to Crime and Punishment, I just might salvage a "C" on my report by saying something like...the novel delves into the moral question of how important are the means taken in order to accomplish ultimately benevolent ends. Raskolnikov was definitely an "ends justify the means" kind of guy!  But then again, you never could know exactly what those English teachers wanted to hear from their students...

Heat vs. Spurs in NBA Final Series

Well, another entire year has come and gone, and here we are in the National Basketball Association final championship series, after all the analysis, speculation, and controversy...with the same two teams facing off.  And that's how it should be, with little to be surprised about.  These are the two best teams in the league right now. The Miami Heat are looking for their third straight championship while the San Antonio Spurs are looking for some "redemption" for their very close loss in the series to the Heat in 2013.  Leading up to this, I had been looking forward to the exciting matchups between Miami and Indiana, and between San Antonio and Oklahoma.  But unfortunately, with only a couple of exceptions, the games were rather lop-sided with one team dominating the other.  I would have preferred game after game coming down to the final minute or two.  I'm especially disappointed with the Thunder, who had a bit of difficulty on defense containing the Spurs. 

The first game between the Heat and Spurs will take place on Thursday at San Antonio.  I probably won't get to see much or any of it, and I have no idea who'll win the game or the series...

Still More Great Science Fiction Short Stories from 1945

As I approach the end of my reading of The Great SF Stories 7 (1945), here are three more stories, two of which I've already discussed written by the same authors.  Murray Leinster, who also wrote First Contact, has his second (of three) entries in this anthology with Into Thy Hands.  It, to me, is an unsatisfactory account of how a very religiously dogmatic fifteenth-century people handle the concept of advanced extraterrestrial life and its advanced technology.  Of course, as predictable as it could be, they are close minded and call everything the works of the devil!  Ho-hum, once I saw the pattern developing here the story became pointless...it was a chore to read it through...but I did.  The next story, Giant Killer by A. Bertram Chandler, is more of a novella than a short story and relates the violent struggle for power of a very brutal society of "people" living in a very enclosed environment and how their leader finally comes to terms with their ultimate enemies, the "giants", who live out in the great open area.  In the introductory comments, co-editor Martin H. Greenberg refers to Giant Killer as an example of a "closed universe" story.  Ultimately, that "universe" is revealed, as well as the true nature of the protagonists.  Thumbs up from me, although it is a little long (but from no fault of the author).  The final tale is by Henry Kuttner and is titled What You Need.  If you're a fan of the old Twilight Zone television series, this title may ring a bell: this is actually the story that episode is based on...although the characters and plot are a bit different.  The same theme is present in both versions, though: a strange man has the knack for looking into the future and determining different people's needs for upcoming situations.  What he gives (on Twilight Zone) or sells (this short story) is often puzzling, like an egg or a pair of shears.  By the way, elsewhere in this anthology is Kuttner's story Camouflage and his collaboration with his wife Catherine L. Moore titled The Piper's Son (written under the pseudonym Lewis Padgett).

I have just two more stories to go before I finish 1945 and start on another year of great science fiction short stories...

What Really Bugs Me About Major League Baseball

It's getting to be the time of the year when some Major League Baseball teams are feeling the pressure of having their seasons start to slip away from them.  The Tampa Bay Rays, Cleveland Indians, Texas Rangers, Kansas City Royals, Cincinnati Reds, Pittsburgh Pirates, San Diego Padres, and Arizona Diamondbacks must all feel as if their backs are up against the wall.  Anything less than a solid winning trend over the course of the next few weeks will probably seal the season for them, with little hope for subsequently making the playoffs. I didn't put the Houston Astros or Chicago Cubs on that list because they most likely weren't expecting to be in the running anyway, and the defending World Series Champion Boston Red Sox have already begun to dig themselves out of the bottom and back into the hunt.  And in the National League East, only five games separate all of the teams in that bunched-up division, so the Philadelphia Phillies and New York Mets don't need to panic yet. But I'm especially concerned about the Rays, who seem to be in an overall team slump, neither hitting, fielding, nor pitching well.  You can't explain it by saying that they had some injuries: EVERYBODY'S had injuries...but the winners are getting around them.  Still, the stress of the Rays and some other teams doesn't really detract from my enjoyment of the game...but I'll tell you what does...

I am sick and tired of these asinine petty little feuds going on between players and teams. Earlier, in a game between Tampa Bay and Boston, Rays shortstop Yunel Escobar stole third base late in a game that they were leading by five runs.  This instantly infuriated the Red Sox players, "unpleasantries" were loudly exchanged, and before you knew it, the benches were emptying out.  Then, during the yesterday's game as Escobar was completing an easy force-out on Boston reserve player Mike Carp at second base, Carp deliberately tried to slide in, off the base and at Escobar's legs, well after the play was over.  Escobar just leaped over this provocative maneuver and walked away as if nothing had happened.  Earlier in that same game, Rays pitcher David Price, very obviously in deliberate fashion, hit Boston slugger David Ortiz on the hip, most likely in retaliation for Ortiz having stood too long at the plate admiring his home run off Price in last years League Championship Series.  As a fan, I don't get either of the so-called offenses that had been "committed" by Escobar or Ortiz.  Having only a five-run lead, even going into the final inning, is no sure thing, and as a fan I expect the winning team-at-bat to do whatever it takes to add to that lead...and that means scrapping for every base they can get. I mean, why should anyone even remain in the ball park as a paying fan in the latter innings if the players are all just supposed to be sweet and cuddly with each other?  Now THAT'S offensive!  And regarding sluggers standing there for a moment at the plate admiring their home runs, what's wrong with that?  Ortiz wasn't rubbing it in on Price...he was putting on a show for the fans, which they love.  These players need to get off their collective high horse and begin to recognize that they are just coming off of their behavior looking like a bunch of touchy prima donna multimillionaire crybabies... 

My May 2014 Running Report

A month ago, I had, as a goal for May, for me to cover more miles per run.  Although I haven't gotten the distance to between 5 and 10 miles, as I want, I did make an improvement, with me running a couple of times for 4 miles and amassing more than 3 on several occasions.  I ran on every day in May and had a total running mileage for the month at 103.3 miles.

Lately, my running has been more of an exercise routine than before, when I was striving for new personal records and participating in various races.  But I'll accept that, for it's still doing me some good.  Before March 2013, when my work schedule changed, I used to run late in the morning when the humidity had finally dropped to an acceptable level but the temperature had yet to heat up too badly.  And on weekdays, my neighborhood had very little traffic to contend with at that time of the day, so it made running more pleasant as well.  Nowadays, though, after I wake up and am the most prepared to go running, it is mid-to-late afternoon.  There is a lot of traffic then and it is usually the hottest time of the day, not to mention more likely to be raining than before, when I would run in late morning. 

So for June, my running goals are to continue to exceed my monthly target of 100 total miles.  I'm not, however, going to pressure myself to run every day.  Instead, I want to have more of a pattern of alternating days in which I run longer distances with days in which I run little or not at all.  Should be interesting...

The Government Knows It All and Won't Tell Us...Sure

I was listening again on the radio to George Noory's Coast-to-Coast AM late, late night show...which probably isn't the healthiest thing in the world to do...when he had as his guest Linda Moulton Howe.  Howe is a regular on the program and presents herself as an investigative reporter about topics in line with the show's themes: the paranormal, UFO's, conspiracies, etc.  I'd characterize her approach as distinctively sensationalist and encourage anyone hearing her reports to take them with a grain of salt.  The other night she was going on strong with a report about a hybrid breeding program that supposedly had been going on for decades between the U.S. government and reptilian aliens from Zeta Reticuli (somewhere out there in the great beyond).  She interviewed a woman who claimed to see one of these human/alien hybrids, but apparently the government was covering up everything about the program because there was no record of the people she claimed to be involved in it.  I've heard this sort of dumping on the U.S. government on this show before, whether the discussion was about UFO/alien contact disclosure, chem-trails, remote viewing, assassination conspiracy theories, secret societies, reverse engineering, strange disappearances, or whatever the guest of the night happened to be pushing as a topic (often with a book that he or she was touting).  It seems to me that anyone can claim anything, no matter how ridiculous it is, insist that the government is involved in it, make up any details they want to, and then accuse the government of engaging in a cover-up when, surprise, there doesn't seem to be any record substantiating the claims or of the people supposedly involved.  What would folks like George Noory and many of his guests (but not all of them, thankfully) do without our good ol' federal government to scapegoat?  They'd maybe have to go into something more (shudder) honest ...

The truth, I'm sure, is that our government does keep secrets, some of which may be necessary for our national security and some of which are possibly just self-serving.  I don't have a problem with legitimate journalists going out to gather specific information on improper government cover-ups.  But what I often hear on Noory's show sounds like a lot of nonsense that is also self-serving for those who perpetuate it...

The End Times, As I See It

I usually don't listen very much to George Noory's late night radio show Coast-to-Coast AM, but last night he had as a guest someone who was discussing a broad range of topics, which included the "end times".  Although it wasn't his main point of the interview, he brought up the same point of view that I have long held...

Many people... too many, in my opinion... cling to the desperate hope that we in this present world of ours are in something they call the "end times" or "final days".  Usually, this involves a Christian eschatological perspective and the books of Revelation and Daniel figure heavily in their analysis of current events and trends that they interpret to be biblically relevant. Things are going to keep getting worse and worse...until Jesus comes back on Earth to set things right, overthrowing the bad guys and keeping his people with him for a glorious thousand-year reign...after which the Final Judgment will take place.  I would personally be more interested in all of this were I, like the elves in much of fantasy fiction, essentially immortal.  But I have my own individual "end times" and "final days".  Besides, doesn't being a saved Christian mean that Jesus has already become my savior and that the Holy Spirit dwells within?  Whether I die today, next year...or I live to be 120, my end times on Earth are quite probably independent of most of what goes on elsewhere.  Which may be the key to why at least some are so concerned about apocalyptic prophecy...

During our brief span of life here on Earth, we come to share our time with others and have family, friendships, and associations.  We're all contemporaries...but each of us entered life one-by-one (unless we're twins, triplets, etc.) and each of us will leave it the same way.  I believe that a lot of people are fearful of dying anyway, but the idea of dying while life continues as usual for the rest of the world is unbearable for them.  So it is a comfort to feel that when they go, so will pretty much the rest of the known universe.  That's why it is almost unheard of for people to discuss "end times" as being far off in the distant future, beyond their own individual life spans.  They are in essence projecting their impending personal "end times" to everything else...

I'm not saying don't read the Bible and try to understand and live out its meanings.  What I am saying is that I don't think that it is a productive exercise to obsess about world events and the return of Jesus...especially if you have already invited him into your life as your lord and savior.  If you are already there, you don't need to be elsewhere!

Gainesville Needs a Bus Route Spanning West 34th Street

Florida's State Route 121 is a pretty interesting stretch of road.  For one, its name transcends state lines: as you go north on it into Georgia, you find yourself driving down Georgia State Route 121.  Then, as you keep going on, across the Georgia/South Carolina state line, you're then on South Carolina State Route 121.  It finally ends just a few miles south of the North Carolina border, not far from Charlotte.  Usually, the numbers of state routes change from state to state, but SR 121 goes through three of them.  It also goes straight through my home town of Gainesville, Florida, with the more commonly used name of West 34th Street. 

I live just a couple of blocks from Northwest 34th Street, in far northern Gainesville.  My workplace is on the far southern fringe of Gainesville, but on the same street: Southwest 34th Street (SR 121).  This is a very important, heavily traveled road that connects the northern to the southern part of the city.  Yet in the 37 years I have lived here, my city bus service has deliberately avoided servicing a giant area surrounding the middle part of this crucial traffic artery.  Instead of there being a route that goes straight up and down West 34th Street, one has to plot a very circuitous route to get from the north to the south (or the reverse) on it.  For example, were I to take the city bus from near my home to where I work, both of which lie on the same street, I would end up taking an hour and a half to cover the 7.5 miles on the bus.  Simply driving my car, though, is about a 20-minute proposition.  Guess which choice I make?  Even when I ride my bicycle, it only takes about 40-45 minutes max, and I own a very cheap, ramshackle bicycle!  But wait...even if I ran down 34th Street to my destination, I'd still beat out the bus!

My city bus service goes out of its way to cater to the University of Florida student needs...I don't mind that because they pay for it up front with their fees.  But permanent Gainesville residents should have a say in the route and schedule creation process as well.  Were there a route that just ran up and down West 34th Street, I would make liberal use of it, to the point where I would definitely purchase a long-term pass.  With the current situation, nobody wins...

Just Finished Reading the Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins, is the first novel in a trilogy with the same name.  It is in the science fiction/adventure/young adult genre of fiction and involves another of those strange, dystopian societies of the future which develops following a cataclysmic apocalypse.  North America is divided into twelve districts, tightly controlled and oppressed by the dominant center (around Denver) called The Capitol.  In the past, the districts had rebelled against their rule and, after having been conquered (and a thirteenth district completely obliterated), an annual punishment was set up to remind them of their subservient status.  Each year, each district is to supply, by the drawing of a teenage boy and a teenage girl as "tributes" to play against those selected from the other districts in a contest-to-the-death, called the "Hunger Games", in which the lone survivor brings material prosperity to their home district.  The story, written in the first person by protagonist Katniss Everdeen, describes how her little sister is selected and she volunteers to stand in for her as a contestant.  Katniss is in District 12, corresponding roughly to Appalachia, and in which the main economy is coal mining.  She is an expert hunter with the bow and arrow and is at home in the forest.  This will do well for her in the struggle to come. 

The Hunger Games are not just a matter of survival against others: the Capitol leaders have made this event into a highly political national media extravaganza, with the entrants treated like celebrities and coached into how to present themselves to the public...even in the middle of their desperate fight for survival.  There is obviously something highly allegorical about all of this...I don't think I'll have to wait too long before some of this sinks in for me.  I already have a couple of ideas: one concerns society's almost obscene fixation on reality television with its characters and their contrived personalities and relationships, and the other concerns the truly obscene specter of young people in economically depressed areas feeling compelled to enlist in the military and go off to war just to be able to make a living.

The characters in The Hunger Games are quite compelling and unforgettable.  I haven't seen the movie version yet and now look forward to seeing how it portrays them.  But regardless how it all turns out, I don't think I will be satisfied at the end of this trilogy if the Capitol and its despicable despots aren't completely and utterly wiped out...

Just Finished Rereading Christopher Paolini's Eldest

Still plugging away at Christopher Paolini's Inheritance Cycle series of four fantasy novels, I just completed, for the second time, book #2, titled Eldest.  In it, young Eragon, along with his psychically-connected (to him) and talking dragon Saphira, go northward to live with the elves for a while and undergo training to improve their magical powers and develop a workable philosophy for dealing with both magic and war.  And it is war that he is facing, as his enemy Galbatorix is marching south to invade rebel-supporting Surda and crush the Varden rebel force there.  Meanwhile, Eragon's cousin Roran is trying to rescue the people of their hometown of Carvahall from the evil and (pretty scary) Ra'zac  by evacuating them and taking them to Surda on a boat.  Roran's trials are interesting; Eragon's training is boring.  But it all comes to a head at the climactic end of the story, which I have to admit pleasantly surprised me when I first read it years ago.  In Eldest, Paolini inserted a great theme: friends becoming enemies and enemies become friends. It set the stage for the next novel, titled Brisingr (named after a word of magic used in the series).  Brisingr was supposed to be the third novel in the originally-planned trilogy, but regrettably, Paolini decided he needed two books to express all he wanted for the series conclusion. I haven't yet read the last book, titled Inheritance, but Brisingr was so boring the first time around that I left it halfway through.  This time, though, I'm going to finish it!  But first, I'm taking a little detour by next reading the first book in the Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins, aptly titled The Hunger Games (I deliberately avoided the movie in order to read the book first)...

America Back on the Moon

Sometimes I think that people, when regarding other spherical celestial bodies like the moon or Mars, tend to impose their sense of scale based on what the Earth is like.  It's easy to do this, especially with the moon, as it truly looks from our vantage point like a worthy counterpart to our own planet, albeit a very dry and desolate counterpart.  The truth is, though, that it is much, much smaller than Earth...how much smaller, you ask?

If you were to impose a map of the continental United States on one showing the visible lunar surface, with the same scale of distance for each map, the U.S. would essentially cover most of it and would span the horizons from east to west!  Think of Miami being near one horizon and, traveling in a west-northwestward direction, Seattle would be clear on the opposite lunar horizon!  That, my friends, is pretty small...and once you realize this, then look out at the moon your next opportunity and you just might come to the same conclusion that I did.  Which is that our moon is a lot, lot closer to us than it seems!

By the way, regarding that superimposed map of the America on the moon, try this link to see
what I mean: http://www.trendhunter.com/trends/moon-scaling

I'd like to believe that my article's title wasn't so misleading, that we were actually going back to the moon.  Frankly, I don't see why they couldn't just send a couple of modest missions up there each decade, just to remind the folks out there that we still have the capability to get there and back.  I would have preferred we did what our previous president, George W. Bush, had set into motion, which was to work to set up a permanent base there.  But our current president Barack Obama scrapped that plan almost immediately upon taking office...and we're now going nowhere in a hurry...

More on My Radio Listening Options

I was writing a few days ago about how one of my local radio stations around Gainesville, 100.5/WHHZ/"The Buzz", switched its musical programming format back to independent/alternative and away from the hard rock it had been exclusively playing for about six years.  Well, after listening to it for a while, I have to make a slight correction in my assessment...

It's true that WHHZ is playing more of what I would deem to be indie/alternative music, but they are also continuing with some of the harder stuff...of which, incidentally, I also approve!  Recently, I wrote an article praising the old Seattle grunge band Soundgarden, so knowing that this station will also play some of their material, along with other acts like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots, Alice in Chains, Rage Against the Machine, Tool, and Linkin Park, adds to the appeal of its programming.  Of course, this tends to thin out the more indie type music that I'm likely to hear...so perhaps I should keep up with my Internet listening as well.  Also, the signal from WHHZ is relatively weak, and I can't pick it up on my MP3 player.  Instead, it is on my personal push-button radio station rotation when I'm driving. 

Speaking of my favorite stations while driving, what are they?

AM: 850 WRUF and 1230 WGGG (both sports)

FM: 100.5 WHHZ and 102.9 WOKV (both alternative rock)

Also on FM: 104.9 and 105.9 (oldies), 97.3 and AM-980 (conservative talk), 89.1 (public radio), and 90.5 (traditional Christian music).

Note that nowhere among my favorites are stations playing country and western, hip-hop/rap, electronic "party", or "top forty"  hit music.  Please also note that this is no accident, since I tend to steer clear of that stuff.   I also tend to shy away from contemporary Christian music in favor of hymns and older songs of faith, so I clearly prefer the 90.5 (BBN) station to the one on 91.7 (Joy-FM). There used to a station on AM-1390 that had liberal talk programming, but it seems to have left the air.  As did Alan Colmes and his evening show that used to be on AM-980. That's a shame: I like hearing different perspectives on the news and issues, not just one side slamming the other. In this area broadcast radio is abominably inferior to other types of media.

I don't listen all that much to the radio...except perhaps when I'm driving, so I really don't need too many good stations to listen to.  Well, let's be frank: I really don't need ANY of them...if they all went off the air tomorrow I don't see how my life would suffer at all!  After all, most of my favorite songs nowadays I have never heard played on the radio (and probably never will).  As a matter of fact, I can easily get all of just about anything I would want from radio off the Internet and television, and to a more satisfactory degree at that...

Camelopardalis Meteor Shower Late Tonight

On the ABC evening news show a little while ago, they mentioned that overnight will occur what many think should be a spectacular meteor shower.  Unfortunately, they devoted very little time to the story and missed out on important details.  Such as when and where.  So I looked up on the Earth and Sky website and got the scoop...

This is a relatively new meteor shower, called the Camelopardalis Meteor Shower.  Camelopardalis is a faint and obscure northern constellation representing which African animal?  You guessed it...of course, it's a giraffe!  Anyway, the central (or radiant) point of the shower will be in this nondescript section of the sky...just face due north and try to find Polaris (the North Star).  Then go down from it just a little and that's where you should train your eyes for the meteor shower.  The optimal time for the most meteors should be from 2 to 4 AM. 

I have no idea how spectacular or not it will be, and I won't be able to witness it.  Unfortunately, I'll be at work then, making eight hours of unsolicited overtime on my off day in spite of the claims of my organization that this sort of thing isn't going to be happening anymore.  But for most of humanity, this interesting-sounding meteor shower will be out there to see (well, that part of the population that lives north of the Equator, that is).  If you're in North America, then just look northward a few degrees above the horizon at the indicated time...

Still More Sci-Fi Short Stories from 1945

As I continue reading through Isaac Asimov Presents: The Great SF Stories 7 (1945), I am amazed at the insight and prophetic vision that some of these writers have shown.

In The Vanishing Venusians, by Leigh Brackett, settlers from Earth on Venus (well THAT wasn't exactly prophetic, was it) encounter dangerous life forms native to that planet that they must conquer in order to survive.  But leave it to human nature for people come up with the most ingenious ways to completely wipe out their biological competitors...while at the same time appearing to be heroic in the process. Decades later, a pang of guilt about what happened to native Americans and their culture, along the demise of the once millions-strong buffaloes in the American West would become an accepted part of our own national consciousness...but in 1945 Brackett laid it all out in this great allegorical tale.

Into Thy Hands, by Lester Del Rey, is a post-apocalyptic tale which involves a group of robots that a wise scientist/engineer had built and programmed to lay the foundation for the resurgence of humanity.  Yet there is doubt about the plan's success when one of the crucial robots, misinterpreting some Bible verses he is exposed to, mistakenly sees himself as Adam and begins to impose the Garden of Eden story on his environment.

The third story, Henry Kuttner's Camouflage, examines what it truly means to be human, when an engineer, after a terrible accident destroys the rest of his body, is reduced to essentially a brain with connections, within a life-supporting mechanical box.  In this story, this individual retains his identity...even maintaining his marriage, although many around him doubt his humanity.  An attempt to hijack an atomic plant he is guiding on a spaceship to the Jovian moon Callisto brings the debate to the foreground, as the criminals on board, trying to wrest control of the ship from him, simultaneously debate with him while trying to find where he is hidden in order to "turn him off"...like a machine.  That this story discusses a concept like an atomic plant twelve years before the first operational nuclear reactor in the world sounds impressive...until you realize that another science fiction tale from three years earlier discusses in detail a nuclear plant meltdown...36 years before Three Mile Island and even years before the atomic bomb was first detonated!   

I have five more stories to read in this book...and then I'll reach back into my big box of old sci-fi anthologies and randomly pull out another one...

Just Finished Rereading Christopher Paolini's Eragon

I've mentioned in an earlier article that I decided to go back to Christopher Paolini's Inheritance fantasy series, which I had previously put down (both figuratively in criticism and literally, "putting it down on the table") without finishing.  Now I'm determined to see the reading project through and have successfully reread the first book Eragon without too much pain.  But now I'm on book # 2, Eldest, and the pain is starting to coming back...

First of all, let me say up front that Paolini's writing is good.  Others seem to think, though, and with good cause, that he coopted much of the story of Eragon from two sources: Star Wars and Lord of the Rings.  I agree that he could have been more circumspect with that, especially his naming his main hero character Eragon with such striking resemblance to Aragorn, the name of Tolkien's ranger hero (I get what he was thinking, though: replace the E with D and you get Dragon).  That having been said, though, Paolini did a good job of creating his own new world, with its own "rules of magic", that is clearly distinguishable from other fantasy settings.  And let's just be frank about all this: all fantasy series feed off each other! Robert Jordan, one of the all-time great writers in this genre, was very forthright in admitting that his first Wheel of Time novel, titled The Eye of the World, was written with the idea of recreating much of the narrative present in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings first book, Fellowship of the Ring.  In fantasy literature, you have specially named swords, reluctant "chosen" savior/heroes, dragons, elves, dwarfs, wizards, talking animals, questions about the hero's true father, sorcerers/sorceresses, witches, tyrant kings/emperors, important dreams, cryptic prophecies, magic with various limitations, monster enemy hordes, harrowing chase scenes, epic battle scenes, the hero rescuing the captured damsel, healing by magic and herbs replacing modern medicine, court intrigues, exotic invented languages, strange names with diacritics....all of this isn't just Paolini being a copycat: it is PERVASIVE throughout this genre and ALL draw from it to a degree, some just a little more than others.

So I did finish reading Eragon and am now beginning the second of the four books, this one titled Eldest.  So far, so good, although there isn't a lot of interesting stuff here...mainly, political intrigues going on between the various factions that Eragon has to figure out, although Paolini is at least making things interesting with the subplot about Eragon's cousin Roran.  Oh, by the way, I think that one of the reasons for such vehement criticism leveled against Christopher Paolini is that he was only fifteen when he came out with Eragon and that he had to do very little himself to get it published and promoted...seeing how his own parents ran an established publishing company.  I think a lot of aspiring writers resent his fast track to fame and fortune and consequently are likely to be more negative about their reactions to his writing.  And having a generally panned movie come out for Eragon doesn't help much either...

Break from My Writing Today

This has been one of those days in which my brain simply has not gotten into gear with the writing.  Usually I can come up with one thing or another to write about...actually, I can think of a lot of things, but I just don't feel up to the task.  Let's see...I have three more short stories to discuss from my 1945 science fiction short story anthology.  Or, I could write some about the theological concept of the "end times" and how much emphasis it really merits in people's daily lives...and what "end times" means to me.  I could  talk about the disparate ways that the political left and right often frame the issues, to the point where it often sounds like the two sides are talking about two different things.  And there's other stuff, too, but it'll all have to wait...

Maybe I'll get around tomorrow or in the ensuing days to raise some of these topics.  For now, I think I'll just take it easy, sit back, and watch some baseball (another potential topic)...