My Take on Downed Malaysian Jet in Eastern Ukraine

The understatement of the year may be that there is a lot of bad feeling going around concerning the recently shot-down Malaysia Flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine, causing the deaths of nearly 300 passengers and crew, among them many Dutch.  I'm convinced that Russian separatist rebels, armed with anti-aircraft missiles from Putin's Russia, shot it down mistaking it for Ukrainian fighters that were actively engaging them in warfare.  It is a terrible tragedy, but in the context of war, it is also an accident.  Clearly no one was trying to shoot down a passenger jet.  The U.S. and most every other nation under wartime conditions have committed their own share of accidents with innocent deaths resulting from them.  The corridor of the flight, which apparently was heavily used (but no more, obviously), took it directly over the combat zone.  Many critics in the West are pointing an accusatory finger at President Putin for arming the rebels with missiles sophisticated enough to target and hit such high flying planes, and I think he is definitely operating in a warmongering, land-grabbing mode.  But I believe that you can't go about business like usual in your own little peaceful bubble and intrude into war zones without expecting some potentially catastrophic results to arise.  The main problem I'm having with Putin and the Russian rebels is the cover-up and denial they seem to be engaged in following the fact, which they should have admitted as an obvious mistake and assumed responsibility and apologized for while cooperating with the crash investigators and recovery team.

The Russians living in eastern Ukraine, before the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991 into its constituent republics, had always considered themselves as being part of Russia even though Krushchev in the 1950s had redrawn their area into the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.  But back then it was all one big country, and they didn't have to submit as a minority within another country to that country's majority political direction.  The same goes for the Crimean region that Russia just annexed through force a few weeks ago.  Seeing for years within Ukraine that there was a deep division between the regions populated chiefly by ethnic Russians and the majority Ukrainian areas that caused serious crises in previous elections, the leaders in Ukraine should have been wise enough to allow referendums in the affected areas for the people to democratically determine their destiny, be it remaining with Ukraine, becoming independent, or rejoining Russia.  This way that Putin has of crisis-by-armed-crisis confrontational behavior destroys any trust or good will toward Russia that had been built up after the fall of the USSR and is only going to serve to militarize the rest of Europe in fear that he will seek further territorial gains elsewhere...

Blog Topics Need Widened Scope

Sometimes I reflect back on the kind of topics I choose to write about on this blog.  In the last few months, my articles have been rather narrow in scope.  They have chiefly been about books I've read, sports stories, my running progress (or lack thereof), the weather, and my very occasional visits to the beach.  There's nothing wrong with any of these subjects, but I used to write more about the news, politics, philosophy, and religion as well.  If you examine the archives here, especially the older articles, you'll find more about these.  Of course, with news, politics, philosophy, and religion, I'm also much more likely to ruffle a few feathers here and there among my readership...even when I express mainstream opinions, like I did when I happened to write a "religious" article lately on the "end times".  But you know, I'm not getting any younger and I have an increasingly stronger feeling as I age (I'll be 58 in October) that, looking back on my life from the end, my regrets will come more from missed opportunities than from acting when I should have restrained myself.  So I've decided to ratchet up my writing a notch or two and bring up topics that may or may not qualify as being controversial...as I used to.  After all, there's all kinds of stuff to look at: Russia/Ukraine/Putin, Israel/Gaza, the 2014 campaign season, discussion of Christian/Biblical topics, and various societal trends.  Oh, and I also used to publish lists of my favorites in music, literature, and TV.  Maybe I'll do a little more of that, too...

Just Finished Reading Robert Jordan's The Fires of Heaven

I recently finished reading the fifth book in Robert Jordan's fourteen-part The Wheel of Time series, this one titled The Fires of Heaven.  I have to admit that this series, of all of the fantasy series that I have read, is turning out to be my least favorite.  And it's the longest!  I have a number of objections, one of the biggest being its pretentious tone.  Another problem is that I am experiencing a great deal of difficulty in empathizing with the characters I'm supposed to be caring for.  They seem to spend the greater part of their time together arguing and insulting one another. One of the series subplots that I do like concerns the character Perrin and his developing romance with Faile.  So what did Jordan do with The Fires of Heaven but completely exclude them from the narrative, as if they never existed!  He'd better quickly pick up on their story in the next book if he expects me to continue on reading (if he were still alive, that is)...

But the main problem I have with Jordan's Wheel of Time series is the same one I have with George R.R. Martin's A Song of Fire and Ice.  There are too many characters, kingdoms, and subplots going on, with the confusion increasing with each successive book.  It is said that after the eleventh book, Jordan had intended to wrap up the series in the twelfth, but he died...leaving another fantasy writer, Brandon Sanderson, to finish it up.  But the story was apparently so convoluted that Sanderson needed to write three more books to bring it to a proper conclusion!  And here I am, a frustrated reader after only five books completed...

Pleasant Overnight Stay at Daytona Beach

I'm sitting here writing this early in the afternoon [published on this blog later in the day] at the Hampton Inn in Daytona Beach, looking out on the swimming pool area from the dining room.  Melissa and I came over here for an overnight stay, and it has been very pleasant.  This Hampton Inn is the newest one in town, located a little bit north of the boardwalk area.  We spent most of the time here lounging around the pool and the beach, naturally.  I managed a 1.6 mile run about three hours ago...it was pretty hot, but I was surprised by how well I felt running it. The weather has been cooperative for the most part, although yesterday evening it stormed a little.  We're going back to Gainesville a little later this afternoon...

Lebron James Owes Nothing to Cleveland Area

Four years ago, when superstar National Basketball Association forward Lebron James made his decision to leave his old Cleveland Cavaliers team to join the Miami Heat as a free agent, it seemed that many in the media accused him of deserting his home town and roots.  Now that he has made the decision to return to Cleveland, he is receiving positive press for returning to his "home", as if he were somehow personally responsible for staying there his whole life.  Yet I know of no other professional athlete in any sport who has had this sort of injunction placed on them.  Do top athletes like Carmelo Anthony, Deron Williams, Chris Bosh, Dwight Howard, the Manning brothers in football, or anyone else feel the slightest pang of guilt at choosing to play in a sports city far from their own upbringing?  What about foreign born athletes like the Yankees' Masahiro Tanaka or basketball's Dirk Nowitzki, Pau Gasol, Manu Ginobli, and Tony Parker...are they being "disloyal" to their homelands by playing in the United States?  Isn't it truly preposterous, then, to confine this "rule" to one and only one individual, namely Lebron James?

When Lebron James played for Cleveland the first time around, I felt that, despite the great talent he brought to the court, he was socially immature and exhibited very poor sportsmanship at dealing with defeat...as exemplified by his behavior following playoff series defeats to the Orlando Magic and Boston Celtics.  However, after he  joined up with Miami I began to notice a more mature Lebron James who seemed to care about others and who displayed grace when things didn't always go his way.  Now he is returning to play for the Cavaliers and I wish him all the best there.  But I sincerely hope that Lebron isn't going back because he feels that he owes anything to them just for having grown up there...because he doesn't and never did!

Just Finished Reading Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn: The Final Empire

Seeing that I am five books through a fourteen-part fantasy series by Robert Jordan and having already read through an eleven-volume fantasy series by Terry Goodkind, I thought it would be refreshing to embark on a series that was a tad shorter...say, a simple trilogy.  So I decided to read Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn trilogy, beginning with Mistborn: The Final Empire.  As it turned out, that original idea of a simple trilogy with this series was wrong: Mistborn is an ongoing project of Sanderson's, as he plans to make a "trilogy of trilogies" out of it, with nine total projected books.  He's working on the second trilogy, and I will probably eventually catch up to him as I did with George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series...and then await the next installment.  But in the meantime, I just finished reading book number one.

Mistborn: The Final Empire takes place in that mythical Final Empire, whose capital city is Luthadel.  For centuries the people have been oppressed by a seemingly immortal tyrant, the Lord Ruler.  There must be a lot of volcanic activity in this world, for everywhere in the daytime ashes permeate the air.  In the night, though, strange mists come in to settle the ashes and blot out the sky.  The common people fear the mist...but not all.  Within this society are people, born of nobles (in support of the Lord Ruler), who possess special powers, called allomancy, which derive from the burning of certain metals they ingest and which have their own specific superhuman effects.  On the fringes of this nobility, which enjoys the Lord Ruler's support, are people descended from at least one noble but who are considered common and who also have the ability to practice allomancy.  Among these are the rebel leader Kelsier and a young teenage girl named Vin, whose special skill at burning all of the allomantic metals earns them the designation of "mistborn".  Along with other more specialized allomancers like Ham, Breeze, Spook, and Clubs, they plot how to overthrow the Lord Ruler and liberate their society.

Sanderson, in this book, succeeded in creating a fantasy world vividly different from those about which I have read before.  Also, the very nature of the Lord Ruler, including exactly how he had saved the world from the "Deepness" in the distant past and apparently continues to do so is a mystery that the book reveals at the beginning of each chapter in the form of old journal entries of his as he struggles with his burdensome role and newly-found powers. Much of that mystery continues to the end of this first book and beyond: I'm looking forward to seeing how Sanderson reveals what really happened long before and what dire threats this interesting fictional world now faces... 

Very Stormy and Humid Weather Lately

The weather for the past week here in north central Florida has been has a progression of severe storms, constant rain, and intermittent mugginess.  Both the rainfall and lightning strikes have been much stronger lately than I've seen in years...I wonder whether there isn't some defining general weather phenomenon causing this. I do remember that, at the start of the record-breaking 2005 hurricane season, we experienced a lot of wet tropical weather, but what we're experiencing now is much more electrical.  Also, it transcends the typical pattern we see during the summer, when the temperature and storm conditions usually intensify during the day into late afternoon outbursts after generally clear mornings.  But the storm threat is around the clock: the other morning lightning was crashing around me at 5:30 during my "lunch" break at my graveyard shift job.

Besides the possibly of electrocution if I step outside during one of these many lightning storms, the sheer amount of rainfall has so saturated the ground in my yard that parking a car on it, or even pushing a lawn mower over it, causes heavy gash tracks.  But even above and beyond the lightning and rain, I have come to detest the extreme humidity and its unpleasant effects.  The other afternoon I walked around my block with Melissa and it felt like a run.  I'm not exactly happy with arid conditions either, but this is ridiculous! But the frogs around where I live seem to love it, though, if their continual, deafening noise indicates happiness...  

My complaints, however, seem to pale in significance when I turn on the news and they show what's been been going on further north around Pennsylvania and neighboring states...

Well, today it looks like we got a break from the bad weather...I hope it's the beginning of a new pattern...

World Cup Yields Germany as 2014 Champion

After watching several games in this year's FIFA World Cup men's soccer championship series, I have come to a conclusion about what constitutes "boring" spectator sports.  Earlier I had placed soccer in this category, as it seemed that all the two teams ever did was just kick the ball back and forth...if a goal did occur, it seemed to come as a fluke, not part of a strategy or the result of any special skill.  But now that I have become more familiar with some of the subtleties of the sport as it is being played, I can see how, by noting how the players are aligned and spaced on the field, I can often guess how the next few seconds of play will progress.  Toward the end of the Cup play, it almost was frightening, as a matter of fact, when more than once it seemed as if I were viewing the situation through the players' eyes when they would push the ball down the field in much the same way that I had envisioned them doing.  No, instead of the play being happenstance and random, it is really rather complicated and something quite to behold when it is well executed. 

I had been rooting for Argentina with their "Pepsi/Gatorade" star Lionel Messi to win it all...and they came pretty close, finally bowing to Germany 1-0 in a game lasting 120 minutes.  Some of the TV announcers expressed concern that low-scoring games like this were boring to watch, but I felt that it was fascinating to watch how the defenses of both teams were so quick to adjust to a change in possession and get down the field to exactly the optimal location in order to defend their goal...and when to come up and challenge whoever had the ball at the time.

Now that the European professional leagues are getting set to open their regular seasons soon, I am looking forward to watching more of this sport on TV wherever and whenever I can find a match being shown.  Who knows, maybe I'll even find a favorite team to pull for...

Just Finished Reading Stephen King's Mr. Mercedes

I just finished reading Mr. Mercedes, which is Stephen King's most recent novel.  The story centers around the struggle between a psychopathic murderer who drove a stolen car into a line of people awaiting a job fair, killing eight, and the retired police detective bent on catching him. The killer, an expert at computer hacking, stalks the detective and tries to provoke him to suicide...but his actions only serve to motivate him.   

Unlike many of Stephen King's other works, Mr. Mercedes contains no elements of the paranormal.  It is instead a classic cat-and-mouse struggle between good and evil as represented by people living out their lives in the real world. I actually, however, prefer King's stories that delve into more speculative/alternative reality stories like It, Lisey's Story, Insomnia, and 12/22/63.  The characters in Mr. Mercedes seemed to me like recycled characters from some of King's earlier works: I felt that I already knew them, but that they were in different stories with different names.  No, I wasn't particularly impressed with this book. I instead would recommend other recent Stephen King books like Joyland and Doctor Sleep...  

FIFA World Cup Now Down to Four Teams

Today begins the semifinal round of the FIFA World Cup of men's soccer, with Brazil pitted against Germany.  Not only is Brazil's star player Neymar out with an injury, but another key player, team captain Thiago Silva, is suspended for this crucial game because he accumulated too many penalty cards in the previous game.  That rule, along with the asinine off-sides rule in soccer, in my opinion detracts from the sport: instead, they should institute something like in ice hockey, where they charge penalty minutes after which they let the guilty player return to the game.  Then, fans could look forward to seeing their hero come into the game at a certain point, adding to the dramatics.  I'm rooting for the Brazileiros...but the bigshots who get paid for pushing their opinions in the media seem to be lining up behind the Germans.  In the other semifinal contest, to be played tomorrow, "my" team Argentina will play against the Netherlands, led by their dive-happy jerk Arjen Robben.  There are teams in sports, like the current New York Yankees, that I root for because of one great player (in NY, it's Derek Jeter).  Then there are teams that I WILL OPPOSE just for one player that I despise... in Holland's case, it's that diver Robben, who robbed Mexico with his antics, faking fouls by diving with accompanying pained facial expressions.  For that alone I would have rooted against Amsterdam...but I also like Argentina and their brilliant offensive genius Lionel Messi.   So GO Argentina, my current favorite for the Cup...

Looking at Other Pro Soccer Leagues

I've been checking out the Internet a little to see how the American-based MLS professional soccer league stacks up against other professional leagues across the world.  I was surprised to find it up in the rankings...in 12th place on one site and even in 7th on another.  The top leagues are clearly Barclay's English Premier League, La Liga (in Spain), and the German Bundesliga.  Having experienced a string of exciting FIFA World Cup matches (most of which did NOT feature the U.S. team), I have joined a growing group of Americans more interested in watching soccer beyond the once-every-four-years scope of the World Cup.  I have seen Barclay's shown in the past on one of the sports networks, the MLS regular season is currently ongoing, and the Spanish-language Univision shows some other leagues at different times (usually on weekends).  I'd like to become more familiar with the various teams in the biggest leagues...as well as those in the MLS.  Just the other day, the MLS Houston and New York teams had a good, close game that went back and forth.  I'm looking forward to more...

It seems that the European pro soccer leagues run from around August to May.  Apparently, the Americans stage their play earlier in order to get a jump on the American football season, which still draws by far the greatest interest among U.S. sports fans...

Just Finished Reading Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

I just finished reading The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins, culminating with the final book, titled Mockingjay.  The society that heroine protagonist Katniss Everdeen struggles to come to grips with is set far off in the future and involves a centralized dictatorial government (set in a place known as The Capitol, located somewhere in the Rockies) that oppresses the surrounding districts that comprise North America.  A rebellion has formed, though, and its leaders have embraced and promoted Katniss as its public relations/media leader as she has gathered a large following from her former participation in the previous to-the-death Hunger Games...when she openly defied The Capitol and its brutal ruler President Snow.  The rebel movement's symbol is the mockingjay, a hybrid new species combining mockingbirds and a genetically engineered bird called a jabberjay.  Katniss has deep reservations, though, about the rebel movement and particularly its leader, President Coin.  As the story progresses and the rebels advance, it begins to look like the last line in The Who song Won't Get Fooled Again: "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss".  But does Katniss get fooled? Don't count on it...

Much of Mockingjay is about the relationships between Katniss and her friends, particularly in regard to her efforts to rescue and restore her old Hunger Games partner Peeta.  Although it is clear that Katniss is a victim of the system and circumstances, she has a tendency to wallow in self-recrimination, blaming herself for everything bad that happens around her.  But then again, I wonder how many combat veterans have had to deal with that issue, especially if they survived situations that caused loss of life among their buddies but spared them...

The best part of Mockingjay is one crucial insight and decision that Katniss makes toward the book's end...a decision that I thought was so cool that I had to reread it a few times!  I enjoyed this series more than most of what I have read lately.  I have yet to see any of the movies, but now that I've read it all it might be a good idea to get started...

FIFA World Cup Now Down to Eight Teams

The 2014 FIFA World Cup of men's soccer has now progressed to the quarterfinal stage, where only eight teams remain to contend for the title.  In spite of their goalkeeper's heroic play (Tim Howard, with an incredible 16 saves), the United States lost to Belgium 2-1 and are now out of the running.  The teams that remain, however, promise some exciting games to come...

The quarterfinals will run on Friday and Saturday, with the following matches slated:

Friday July 4
--France vs. Germany
--Brazil vs. Colombia

Saturday July 5
--Argentina vs. Belgium
--Netherlands vs. Costa Rica

As for me, now that the U.S. is no longer contending, I have my own favorites to follow: Colombia and Argentina.  We'll see how far they go...with their respective opponents Brazil and Belgium up next for them, it may not last the weekend!  I do have one prediction, even though I'm not a particularly astute soccer fan: the eventual 2014 champion will come from the Brazil/Colombia and Argentina/Belgium matches...

Finished Reading Inheritance by Christopher Paolini

I finally finished reading Christopher Paolini's four-part Inheritance series, which began with the famous book Eragon (made into a movie), progressed to Eldest and Brisingr, and concluded with Inheritance.  I would be less than honest were I to claim that it was my favorite fantasy series, but then again it wasn't the worst, either.  Paolini did take a lot of themes from other fantasy works, especially from Tolkien's Lord of the Rings.  This made me wonder to myself whether some of the ideas he introduced that seemed innovative on his part weren't actually taken from fantasy works that I hadn't yet read.  However, in spite of his obvious borrowing, Paolini was able to establish a legitimate fantasy world with its characters, history, and rules of magic.  He also emphasized the idealism that societies very different from each other and with a history of mutual conflict and prejudice could eventually be able to work out their differences and become allies...and eventually friends. 

Anyone who embarked on this series recognized that the main protagonist Eragon would eventually have a showdown against his antagonist, the evil King Galbatorix...and it naturally came toward the end of Inheritance.  Ultimately, it was wisdom, not brute strength, that would determine the outcome of that confrontation...something that I appreciated.  The climactic scene between Eragon and Galbatorix did not, however, take place at the very end of the book.  Instead, there was much material following it that sought to tie up all of the loose ends of the various characters' lives.  And yet Paolini slyly allowed some room for future spinoffs of this series...at least I think he did it intentionally....

My June 2014 Running Report

In June 2014 I managed to keep my running at a reasonable level despite some personal hardships.  I ran a total for the month of 100.6 miles, and my longest single run was for 5.4 miles.  I ran on 27 of the 30 days as well.   Most of my running was indoors, and I made extensive use of the treadmill.  The main thing to be said for my running in June was that I maintained my level of fitness and endurance without doing anything to appreciably elevate it.  But sometimes just keeping things the same is what is called for...

Writing Errors on This Blog

This blog has been around for a while...for more than seven years, as a matter of fact.  Every now and then, I go back into my archives and read what I had written in some bygone era.  Most of the time, though, when I read through back-articles, it is usually what I have recently written, in the past month or so.  But regardless of where (or more suitably, "when") I choose to read, I almost invariably run across little mistakes of spelling, punctuation, and grammar that make me shake my head.  How could I have let them slip by? After all, I reread each article usually at least a couple of times before I publish it...and again afterwards after I post its link on Facebook. I even take the pains to read it aloud to myself, for the mind often fills in or corrects errors...errors that are more readily noticed when heard but are often passed over in silence.  And yet, even with this precaution, I commit all sorts of mistakes with my writing. Some are intentional, like when I use the slang "gonna" instead of the more formal and proper "going to".  Also, I sometimes deliberately use sentence fragments, something that no doubt would earn me the ire of my past English teachers.  But in writing this blog, my intention is to convey a sense of the language as it is spoken and not to exasperate the reader with overly literary expressions and structures.    I suppose that one item, though, that I need some work on is my tendency to repeat the same word too often instead of using synonyms or alternative ways of expressing the same meaning.  This usually happens on the first draft of whatever I've been writing and gets cleared up, but sometimes I'll go back several days to a previously published article and grimace to myself how I not only would repeat individual words too much, but even whole phrases. Ouch!

Today's World Cup Matches Worth Watching

The so-called "knockout" round of the FIFA World Cup in men's soccer began today, and today's two matches lived up to their advance billing.  Both games pitted teams exclusively from South America: Brazil vs. Chile in the early game and Colombia vs. Uruguay in the latter.  I had gone to my local gym and was running on the treadmill, which conveniently has a television built into it.  So I watched a good portion of the early first half in the Brazil-Chile match, witnessing both goals that left the two teams tied one-to-one. I could tell by the way they were playing aggressively on offense (especially Brazil) that there would be a lot more goals scored in this match, but I had other things to do as I stepped off the treadmill, finished up in the gym, and then went grocery shopping.  As the afternoon wore on, I completely forgot about the World Cup.  Suddenly, though, it dawned on me that the first game should be over by then...so I checked it out on TV to see what the final score was.  To my amazement, it was still one-to-one...and this was after the thirty-minute overtime period following the ninety-minute regulation time!  It was my luck to witness the very beginning of the shootout that would ultimately determine the winner.  In such a shootout, which wasn't part of the previous group stage of the tournament since ties were allowed then, each team gets five shots on the opponent's goal (using a different player for each kick), with the ball placed just a few yards from the goal with only the goalie left to defend. As I watched it unfold, I could see that the whole process was more or less a guessing game on the part of the goalie to try to anticipate where the kicker would aim the shot...except for the couple of errant kicks that occurred. For the most part I didn't like this way of deciding such a hard-fought effort that emphasized teamwork to the extent that it did...although it WAS admittedly exciting.  Anyway, Brazil managed to prevail by one goal in the shootout when the final Chilean kicker hit the goalpost with his shot, which bounced narrowly away from the net and led to mass celebration among the Brazilians, on the field and off...  

The second game featured Colombia, led by young James Rodriguez, beating a Uruguay team that had lost its scoring leader Luis Suarez, who had been suspended for biting an Italian player in their previous game.  Still, Uruguay impressed me with their character as they came close to scoring several times in the closing minutes. Just as impressive was the Colombian goalie, who made several difficult saves...

I didn't just sit there all day today glued to the TV set watching soccer...I probably wouldn't have enjoyed it so much had I done so.  I just happened to be fortunate to have picked some of the most opportune moments in today's matches.  I wonder if my luck will hold up in tomorrow's games between the Netherlands and Mexico, and between Costa Rica and Greece.  I seem to have fallen into the pattern of rooting for teams from the Americas, so go Mexico and Costa Rica!

A couple more observations: in past World Cup tournaments, I had come to expect countries like Italy, England, and Spain to be powerful entrants challenging for the title.  Yet none of these made it past the group stage this time around! Startling.  Also, Colombia and the United States, two of the surprisingly successful teams so far, have coaches from Argentina and Germany, both strong soccer countries...

About to Start Reading Stephen King's Mr. Mercedes

When I found out a several weeks ago that Stephen King, currently my favorite author, was coming out with a new book, titled Mr. Mercedes, I went to my local public library's website and placed a hold on the book.  Even though the book hadn't yet been published, I still initially found myself far down on the waiting list.  Well, the book's been out for a few weeks and, apparently, my county library system had ordered several copies of it because I was notified yesterday that it was ready for me to check out.  Today I got it and plan to read a good portion during the weekend.

I read somewhere recently that Stephen King plans to make Mr. Mercedes the first book of a trilogy...I'm not so sure that I like that idea very much.  No offense to the "King" intended, but his track record in this area in somewhat inconsistent.  He stretched out the first four volumes of his seven-part Dark Tower series over more than twenty years...and then finished it by rushing through the last three in a two-year span!  And his collaboration with Peter Straub of the connected novels The Talisman and Dark House was even more unsettling: their publications were seventeen years apart!  But more than that, the ending to Dark House clearly sets the stage for a sequel, which thirteen years later I am still looking for and see no sign of. 

Yes, I'm a little bit dubious of Stephen King's track record with series...at least pertaining to the regularity of their publication through time... but I also understand that he was engaged in writing a lot of other high quality books in the interim periods.  It was a lot different for someone like J.K. Rowling, who was focused on writing the Harry Potter series to the general exclusion of other books...

U.S.A. Advances in World Cup by Goal Differential

I awoke late this afternoon (my sleeping hours conform to a late night work schedule) to discover that the two World Cup soccer games just held resulted in the United States squeaking through, on the basis of goal differential, to the next, so-called "knockout" round of the tournament.  The Americans, who lost a close 1-0 match with group winner Germany today, finished at 1-1-1, tied with Portugal, who narrowly edged last place Ghana 2-1.  But because Portugal had been routed by Germany 4-0 in their first World Cup game, they had been at a disadvantage to other teams with tiebreakers.  So Portugal sadly goes home, but the U.S. advances to play Belgium, the winner of their group.  I haven't seen Belgium play, but any group winner has to be pretty good...

The Germany-United States match was held in Pernambuco in northeastern Brazil, which being closer to the Equator than, say Rio de Janeiro or Sao Paolo, does not enjoy the more temperate winter weather that the latter do in late June (we're talking the southern hemisphere, so the seasons are reversed).  Hot and muggy conditions...I hear the field was soggy...hampered the scoring.  This unpleasant environment may have aided the Americans by suppressing the scoring and keeping the Germans from piling it on as they had done with Portugal.  But I don't think a match has to be played near the Equator to cause this effect; I experienced much the same kind of stifling, humid weather yesterday afternoon when I went outside here in Gainesville to trim some bushes...

Tim Lincecum Pitches Another No-Hitter

I was in the process of e-mailing my home restoration contractor when, on my AOL site, they were reporting that San Francisco Giants pitcher Tim Lincecum had gone seven innings against the San Diego Padres without yet giving up a hit.  So I quickly ended the necessary e-mailing and turned my TV on to the MLB channel, which naturally was focusing on the ongoing event at San Francisco's ball park.  Lincecum was the epitome of coolness, in spite of the overwhelming cheering and standing ovation of the home crowd, as he confidently mixed up his pitches against the hapless Padres batters in the eighth and ninth innings and quickly got out of the game, on only 113 pitches, with his second no-hitter in two years...both against San Diego.  He also shone at the bat, scoring two of San Francisco's four runs and getting a hit in the seventh inning.

Lincecum is both a two-time World Series champion (2010 and 2012) and a two-time Cy Young Award winner for best pitcher (2008 and 2009).  Now he can add "two-time no-hitter" to that impressive list of accomplishments.  He is one of those pitchers, though, that can go out the next time he's due to pitch and give up several runs. So you never quite know what you're gonna get when Tim is out there! But although I'm not exactly a Giants fan, Tim Lincecum is one of my favorite players to watch.  He sure came through today...