Perusing Past Election Result Maps on Wikipedia

This morning I've been using Wikipedia to go over presidential election results from the past 70+ years, concentrating on the nationwide maps showing the general election results, broken down by individual counties.  I was surprised that my current home county of Alachua, home to the University of Florida and a supposed "blue" Democratic area in northern Florida surrounded by a sea of "red" Republican counties, went for George (H.W.) Bush in 1988 over Michael Dukakis.  And in the extremely close election between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon in 1960, it was the Republican Nixon who won Alachua while surrounding counties went for JFK.  But then again, that 1960 election was the last one that consistently had the South pretty much run by very conservative Democrats (the "Boll Weevils").  For example, if you look at the map showing where the biggest support for Franklin Roosevelt was in his 1944 election against Thomas Dewey, it was in the southern states.  But in 1964, the South underwent a realignment that would only be interrupted when favorite son candidates Jimmy Carter (Georgia) and Bill Clinton (Arkansas) successfully ran for the high office.  Conservative wing Republican Barry Goldwater won the Deep South in '64 and, four years later, independent candidate George Wallace would split it with Nixon.  Nixon swept the area (and almost the rest of the country) from George McGovern in 1972, and the shift of conservative southern Democrats to the Republican Party had begun. Still, there are pockets of strong Democratic regions in states like Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina in spite of their states' now consistently Republican orientation.  However, there are other states in the country whose shifts are a bit more puzzling...

Until the past few elections, for example, Kentucky was one of those states that could go either way.  The Democratic strong areas were always in its far western area near the Mississippi River and in its far eastern area near West Virginia.  Now those areas seem to have gone over to the Republicans.  Speaking of West Virginia, it used to be strongly Democratic...but has undergone a flip-flop of its own.  Another state that has drastically changed its political orientation is Oklahoma, which used to have a large Democratic base in its southeastern section but which now seems to be uniformly Republican...

Being someone who loves to pore over maps, I could spend hours upon hours looking at the ones Wikipedia provides.  I trust their data, although I know that there are areas that Wikipedia's articles might just be suspect for their objectivity.  But when it comes to data like this, they are a great source.  They're also useful for keeping up with sports standings, too!

The Books I'm Currently Reading

Right now I'm in the process of reading three different books...and each one is part of a series.  I'm about three fourths of the way through Stephen King's latest novel Finders Keepers, which is book #2 in his ongoing trilogy...Mr. Mercedes was the first one.  I'm liking the second book more, which introduces new characters and a new story while integrating them with the heroes of the previous book...and has hinted at what the third and final book may entail.  I'm also a little more than halfway past A Memory of Light, the final, fourteenth book in the Wheel of Time fantasy saga by Robert Jordan, with Brandon Sanderson writing out this volume (as well as the previous two) following the original author's untimely death (not that deaths are ever "timely" in nature).  Naturally, as you might expect at this stage of the game, the events are leading toward a crescendo with the forces of light and darkness facing off on many different fronts.  And the third book I'm reading is Isaac Asimov's Foundation, the first of seven books in his science fiction Foundation series.  He wrote the first three in the 1950s and then waited nearly thirty years before producing the last two...and then tacked on two prequel novels.  I've just begun my rereading of Foundation...

I also plan to read mystery writer Sue Grafton's "P" is for Peril after finishing A Memory of Light.  So I have plenty of reading to occupy myself with for a while...

Went to Retreat in Ocklawaha with Melissa This Weekend

This weekend I joined Melissa at a retreat held at a Lake Weir resort in Ocklawaha, Florida (a few miles southeast of Ocala) for some students and alumni of Asbury Theological Seminary, which she attends.  Melissa went down there Thursday, but as I couldn't get time off from work, I had to wait until Saturday morning to join her there.  The focus of the retreat was marriage and leadership, with different people making presentations on various topics.  The atmosphere was relaxed and informal with about 16 in attendance. They provided us with breakfast, lunch and dinner Saturday and breakfast on Sunday morning before the final presentation, which was how to foster creativity. I enjoyed the whole experience as well as the facilities, which provided (as you can see from the pictures) a grand view of the lake...which I had never visited before. Saturday evening I also enjoyed an after-dinner table discussion with some new friends when we discovered a mutual affinity for books...especially stuff in the science fiction/fantasy realm. Everyone was not only friendly but showed a warmth and acceptance that I had not experienced to such a degree with events of this type.  Melissa and I are both grateful for having been able to go there...  

Yesterday's Republican Presidential Debates on Fox News

Yesterday all seventeen major Republican candidates for president faced off in two debates.  The ten making the "cut" were onstage at 9 PM on Fox News, while the other seven held their pee wee debate earlier at 5.  The idea of having such debates this early in the campaign season makes little sense...until you realize what may be the main force driving it: big money campaign donors.  And why not, with no restrictions on political contributions anymore after the U.S. Supreme Court, in its Citizens United decision a few years ago, equated spending with protected "free speech".  If you happen to be a politically active tycoon, you are going to wait until the field of candidates gets whittled down to the point where the more viable candidates who represent your interests are left...no point in figuratively flushing your money down the proverbial toilet, after all...

This morning the folks on Fox News were all giddy about their debates, and discussed who did well and who didn't.  The consensus view seems to be that Marco Rubio came across better in the prime time debate while Carly Fiorina stood out in the other.  As for the others, somebody said that Jeb Bush seemed to struggle a bit with his answers while another regarded Rand Paul as looking too "sour".  As for me, I find this spectacle to be a bit on the hilarious side...both the debate and the analysis.  Not only is it way too early in the campaign to hold debates like this, but with our cyber-technology in 2015 anyone can get access to information about the candidates just by punching in a search on their computer or cellphone.  Not that they would, mind you...most folks are terribly apathetic about politics, even when we're talking about the presidential race.  After all, when 40% of registered voters sit out a tight presidential election, the idea of trying to lure their interest fifteen months before the next one with debates between seventeen contenders approaches the ludicrous...unless, as I already pointed out, you're someone looking for a promising candidate to fund with your fatcat money...

Tomorrow Marks 70th Anniversary of Atomic Bomb Drop Over Hiroshima

Tomorrow, August 6, 2015, will mark the 70th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb over Hiroshima, Japan by the United States in its quest to quickly end World War II and avoid its remaining stated option of invading the island nation.  Such an invasion would doubtless have cost many, many more lives....not just of Americans, but also of the Japanese, both soldiers and civilians...and would have completely devastated that country.  Three months earlier, the Allies accepted the unconditional surrender of Germany after its leader, Adolf Hitler, had committed suicide and the country was already invaded and militarily conquered.  In early August of 1945, neither condition was applicable to Japan...its military rulers not only were still firmly entrenched in power with the nation essentially intact (although badly scarred from Allied bombing), but it still occupied the bulk of populated China and Indo-China (including Vietnam) at that time.  The Japanese did not practice surrender, instead fighting to the death even when their situation was hopeless and choosing suicide over surrendering in battle after battle on the Pacific Islands over which they fought the Americans.  With this scenario facing the United States, its leaders opted for the nuclear strike in hopes of convincing the Japanese militarists that their chances for remaining in power were fruitless.  But even after seeing the horrible effects of the atomic bomb on one of their cities, they still refused.  Three days later, Nagasaki was hit by the second, and hopefully last ever, atomic bomb dropped on a populated area.  Finally, they surrendered almost unconditionally: their emperor, who reportedly had pushed for the surrender in the end to save his people, was allowed to remain as such, at least in a titular, ceremonial role...

The development of the atomic bomb in the United States during World War II came after Albert Einstein, a Jewish emigre from Hitler's Germany and his anti-semitic policies, wrote a letter to President Roosevelt warning him that the Germans had already split the atom and were very possibly engaged in an effort of their own to develop such a weapon from this process.  The irony is that it was Japan that ultimately was hit, not Germany.  Another twist in all this was the gross underestimation of the devastating effects that the radiation from the bomb had on the population surviving the initial impact, especially that from the fallout that descended from the skies for days after the explosion.  Even after all this, the American military, when they dropped a demonstration A-bomb on the Bikini Atoll in the Pacific the following year, did not realize that the ships they had placed in proximity to the bomb would be hopelessly contaminated with radiation...the Naval authorities in charge of this explosion had wanted to put sailors back on them and guide them back into American ports to show that ships could withstand nuclear attacks. It was very sobering to see the level of contamination the bomb had produced.

In spite of all the rhetoric these days about how countries like Iran want to get the "bomb" in order to attack others...like Israel...it is obvious to me that self-defense from invasion is the primary goal.  Ukraine had the atomic bomb, left in their control when the Soviet Union disintegrated in 1991...but they voluntarily gave it up...and now, they've had to suffer an invasion indirectly instigated by their neighbor, Russia.  Name me one country that, after developing nuclear warfare technology, has been invaded by another.  You can't, I bet.  Now look at a place like Iran, which was brutally invaded in 1980 by Saddam Hussein's Iraq.  Then they watched as the U.S. and its allies invaded Iraq in 1991 following its 1990 invasion of Kuwait.  And then after 9/11, the invasion and long occupation on either side of Iran...Iraq on the west and Afghanistan on the east.  Speaking of the latter, of course the USSR was earlier engaged in a protracted, fruitless occupation and struggle in that country after invading it in 1980.  So if you're the Iranian leader and see all of this going on around you, wouldn't you, too, want to protect yourself and your people against invasion?  And that's the problem I see nowadays with nuclear proliferation.  We can rant and rave all we want about how evil the nuclear bomb is, but we are still creating conditions that motivate others to get it for themselves...

Just Finished Reading Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

The satirical novel Good Omens, a collaboration by Neil Gaiman (I recently read his novel Neverwhere) and Terry Pratchett, pokes some fun at the convoluted narrative some Christians like to spin (and, for a few, obsess) about the "Last Days".  This farcical adventure through the apocalypse turns down a different path than the standard tribulation horrors that feature the charismatic and evil Antichrist character.  Instead, the newborn son of Satan gets accidentally switched with another baby at an English hospital...and gets brought up instead in a normal, loving family environment in an English town with the name Adam Young (the boy, not the town).  Meanwhile, the supposed Antichrist, sent (in parody of the Omen movie series) to the American diplomat's household, gets the focus of the fanatical nanny sent to guide him, along with an eventual trip to the Plain of Megiddo in anticipation of the Great Battle. Sensing that something went awry with plans, demon Crowley and angel Aziraphale, mutual friends working on different sides who both have become unduly accustomed to their assignment on Earth among humans, set out to discover where the real Antichrist is and try to get rid of him before he wreaks havoc across the world...

There are several subplots and minor characters in Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch (its long title).  For example, it is revealed that any audio cassette left for more than 48 hours in a car transforms itself into The Best of Queen...so there are plenty of references to their songs (some of which I really like).  There are the Four Horsepersons of the Apocalypse (the one representing War is a woman, hence the change), which has Pollution replacing Pestilence.  There is the legacy of Agnes Nutter, a 17th Century witch whose book of prophecies are always true to the last detail and whose descendant Anethema carries the last remaining copy.  And there is the Witchfinder Army, a group led by a hilarious, cantankerous old man named Sgt. Shadwell (my favorite character in the novel) and which includes a technologically inept young man named Newton Pulsifer...

Good Omens is loaded with funny little pieces scattered here and there...there is hardly a spot in it devoid of humor.  But if you have a religious orientation in the Judeo-Christian tradition, you may disagree with the theological assumptions expressed within it.  Just keep in mind that this story is not to be taken literally and analyzed for its flaws.  It is deliberately a farce, understand?  That being said, I can't imagine a similar satire being published about a certain other world religion, one in which some of its adherents go rioting and some on rampages of murderous violence whenever they judge its scripture or prophet to be "insulted"...

One word keeps getting a lot of attention in Good Omens: ineffability.  It is used by Aziraphale to explain away the often confusing decisions God makes...after all, the term refers to anything that is so grand and complex in scope that it is beyond understanding, not to mention the unpronounceable true name of The Lord.  It is the "ultimate" explanation for everything, I suppose...a real discussion-ender... 

Watched German and English Pro Soccer Matches This Afternoon

I just saw what might be called the first German professional soccer match of this season...or the final one of last season, depending on your point of view.  The Bundesliga and the other German leagues begin their regular season in a couple of weeks, and I'll be able to watch some of the matches on Fox Sports 1 (Channel 62 here in Gainesville on Cox Cable).  But on Sunday, they played what they called the "DFL Supercup" match pitting 2014-15 Bundesliga Champion Bayern Munich against the DFB-Pokal tournament winner for that year.  This time around, it was Bayern-Munich against Wolfsburg, and the latter won on penalty kicks after a 1-1 draw in regulation.  It gave me an opportunity to acquaint myself with German soccer as I plan to watch plenty of it in the months to come.  I haven't as yet picked out a favorite team...I'll just have to watch and see.  The broadcast I just watched was a replay of Sunday's match...

Right now, as I am getting myself ready to walk out the door and go to work, Fox Sports 1 is showing a replay of a preseason match between English Premier League rivals Chelsea and Arsenal, both based in London.  I'm rooting for Arsenal this season...they finished a distant third to Chelsea last year, but they had a very strong second half of the season.  Still, I consider Chelsea to be the clear favorite to win the title again...

Heavy Rainy Season Beginning to Annoy Me

Living as I have for decades here in Florida, I am accustomed to stretches of rainy weather. But this summer of 2015 seems to be one of the most extreme...and I not just being subjective about it.  My front and back lawns for weeks have been slushy and muddy...the ground is supersaturated with water. And for the past few days, a cyclone centered in the eastern Gulf of Mexico just off the coast has been stationary, churning band after band of rainy, stormy weather at us.  Don't get me wrong...I like a moderate amount of rainfall, especially as it helps to work against the possibility of forest fires that have afflicted the area during the last twenty years.  But this current pattern is interfering with my outdoor running plan as I want to train my distance up to a race-ready level.  And I don't want to get soaked every time I go out there, not to mention be subjected to the high humidity level associated with this weather. The irony of it all is that this is happening during a hurricane season that was forecast to be very light.  Yet that storm system out in the Gulf looks an awful lot like a tropical storm on radar to me!

Sooner or later this low pressure cyclone will move on...hopefully sooner than later.  You know, come to think about it, I just wrote a blog article a little more than a couple of weeks ago lamenting the horrible weather then!  So I'm not just now "beginning" to be annoyed at it after all, as one storm system just seems to give way to another...

My July 2015 Running Report

In July I ran a total of 316.7 miles, spreading this mileage out through several different shorter runs each day.  My longest single run was 6.2 miles.  And I ran on all but one of July's 31 days...

In August, I will try to maintain my overall mileage while attempting longer runs and making myself more accustomed to outdoor weather and terrain.  I'll be doing this using marathon guru Jeff Galloway's technique of running for set blocks of time, interspersed with short walking breaks.  For me, the "run 6 minutes, walk 1 minute" formula has worked best in the past and I plan to use it again to increase my distance on single runs.  The aim is to be ready should I decide to go ahead and participate in a long-distance race in October, either the Bay Marathon in Apalachicola or the Alachua Lake Half-Marathon just southeast of my hometown of Gainesville...

Just Finished Reading the Book Mystery by Jonathan Kellerman

Jonathan Kellerman is a psychologist who also has written several books, including a slew of mystery novels featuring Los Angeles-based psychologist Alex Delaware as he teams up with police detective Milo Sturgis. I finally just got around to reading one them, titled Mystery...reportedly the 26th in this series.  Who knows how many Kellerman has written by now or even plans to write.  I do know that his psychological approach doesn't exactly gel with me.  Here, let me lie back on my coach and explain how I feel about it, doc...

As for the actual narrative, story, and characters (all which involve the investigation of the shooting death of a mysterious beautiful woman...appropriately nicknamed "Mystery"...after a party held at the closing of a famous old L.A. hotel), Mystery ranks right up there with the best of the genre, although the ending reminded me of those Perry Mason courtroom dramas where the guilty party suddenly breaks down and profusely confesses to the crime just before the final commercial break.  On the other hand, as I unfortunately see it, there is a great amount of what I call psychological coddling in this novel as Delaware plies his trade by poking around into others' psyches and manipulating them by turning the psychologically effective catch phrases and pushing the right buttons to get  the responses he wants.  A master manipulator, indeed.  Plus, he is continually making a big deal about his profession's ethics and how he can't say this or help with that. I don't think I would get along well with this guy, and that can be a fatal judgment when talking about reading through a long series.  In contrast, I quite empathize with Sue Grafton's protagonist Kinsey Millhone in her alphabet mystery series.  And, to illustrate my point, I've gone through 15 books in it so far.  So I don't know how many more Alex Delaware mystery stories I'm going to read...I do have another that I picked up dirt cheap at that Friends of the Library book sale last April here in Gainesville, so I'll most likely give Kellerman another chance...

Fox Sports Channels to Show Bundesliga Soccer Starting Next Month

I was happy to hear just now that several Bundesliga games for the 2015-16 season will be shown on Fox Sports 1 (Gainesville's Cox Channel 62), beginning in mid-August.  The Bundesliga is Germany's premier professional soccer league, and it is right up there with Spain's La Liga and England's Barclay's Premier League in stature as one of the world's most competitive and talent-filled leagues.  If I carried on my cable TV Fox Sports 2 and/or a couple of Fox's other sports channels (which I don't), I'd be able to see more Bundesliga...but then again, I have other things to do besides sitting there watching soccer on TV for hours on end.  And besides, now I'll be able now to regularly follow soccer in four leagues: MLS (Major League Soccer), Mexico's Liga MX, Barclay's Premier League, and now, Bundesliga.

Other than the defending champions Bayern Munich, I'm not very familiar with the teams in the Bundesliga.  But that's about to dramatically change...

Looking at Upcoming Running Races

It's close to the end of July this year and I feel it's also time for me to consider what I am going to do about the upcoming long-distance running races: which ones I should enter and how I should go about training for them.  The most immediate race coming up in my general area is the Alachua Lake Half-Marathon, which is a run down the Hawthorne Trail just southeast of Gainesville, something I've done twice before in the Tom Walker Memorial Half-Marathon.  This race will take place on Sunday, October 11.  Then there is the Bay Marathon/Half-Marathon in Apalachicola, which is on the Florida Gulf Coast in the panhandle.  I'd been looking at this one ever since 2010, but I never felt ready enough to participate in it.  It will be held this year on October 18...by that time I sincerely hope the weather here will have cooled down a bit.  I probably should make a decision soon about either this race or Alachua Lake (but not both) and whether I want to go for the marathon or half-marathon distance should I go for the Apalachicola one (which frankly sounds more interesting).  I need to recondition my body to running on asphalt again as well as under adverse weather conditions...I think my general endurance level is pretty good.  However, in spite of the mileage I've been accumulating, my weight could stand lowering by about 20 lbs...so wiser eating is a must if I don't want to be hauling extra luggage with me on every step.

Aside from the Alachua Lake and Apalachicola races, that Tom Walker Half-Marathon will be held on November 14.  And there are my two favorites to consider: the Ocala Marathon/Half-Marathon in January and Gainesville's Five Points Marathon/Half-Marathon in February.   Besides these there are various events planned for surrounding areas, most notably in Jacksonville and other cities on the north Florida Atlantic Coast...

Just Finished Reading Sue Grafton's "O" is for Outlaw

As I continue going in chronological order reading Sue Grafton's alphabet mystery series, I have just begun going through a string of books that I haven't read before.  "O" is for Outlaw, which is the first of these and which I just finished, is definitely a first-time read, and it delves not only into main protagonist (and first-person narrator) Kinsey Millhone's past and her first marriage, but also into our country's past with its military involvement in Vietnam.  Kinsey discovers relics from her school years as one of those storage locker profiteers calls her up and sells her a box containing them: apparently, her ex-hubby Mickey Macgruder, also an ex-cop, lost his storage space, along with the contents, due to lack of payment.  Knowing that it wasn't like him to default on his debts, she investigates and finds that he has just been shot near his apartment in Los Angeles (a few miles down the road from Kinsey's mythical hometown of Santa Teresa) and is now deep into a coma with little hope of recovery.  As she investigates his case, she draws first suspicion and then cooperation from a couple of LAPD detectives...and then gets drawn back into her brief bygone marriage to Mickey and the circumstances of their split.  It all revolves around the death back then of a Benny Quintero, a Vietnam veteran who was wounded at a major battle there in 1965.  Mickey is suspected of the murder although he never was charged...but he resigned from the police because of it and Kinsey suspected his guilt...leading to her leaving him then.  Now everything is up in the air as other characters and details from the past filter their way into the story.  Kinsey's goal is to exonerate her husband, who she now believes was innocent, and to discover who shot him and why...

Naturally, I'll leave what happens for you to find out.  I felt that this story was significant in that it touched more upon Kinsey's past life than the others.  And, of course, the Vietnam War angle was very interesting as well...

Some 1965-66 Nova Elementary School Memories, Part 6

Well, it's time once again for me to explore some of my memories of my fourth grade experiences at Nova Elementary School in Davie, Florida during 1965-66.  And it will also be my last entry in this series, which for many of you has to feel like an exercise in irrelevance.  Nevertheless, here I go again, this time discussing a few of the "social" trends taking place then within the student body.  Remember, we're talking about 9-10 year-olds...

--There seemed to be an ongoing competition among the boys as to who could play the drum beat to the song "Wipeout" with their hands on their desks the fastest.  It was a very common occurrence to be sitting in a classroom and hear some kid performing a session.  I even tried it myself with poor results...

--Also, mainly a "boy" activity, was the game of "Split", where the two opponents would face off standing close opposite each other on a grassy or dirt surface.  They would then take turns throwing a pencil into the ground on one side or the other.  If it stuck, the other player would have to move whatever foot the pencil fell closest to alongside the pencil and pick it up...and then take his turn throwing it.  Whoever was first to either make a throw that didn't stick or couldn't stretch enough to reach the other's throw lost the round.  This game was an obsession with many for a while that year...

--"Cat's Cradle" was an activity that both girls and boys seemed to enjoy.  There would be a pattern in a closed string that the players would take turns transferring, preserving it and then enhancing it.  I played it a little, too...a strange game...

--Among the girls, I saw many playing "Patty-Cake", a mutual hand-clapping activity that thoroughly intimidated me.  I never did see how they could remember how to synchronize their hands to meet each other for such long stretches of time...

--Among some of the boys developed an voluntary, informal "fight club" that reminded me a little of the same-titled movie (although without the blood).  I participated in it for a while, but due to my scrawniness then I had to bow out after a while for the sake of survival...

--That year, the Batman TV series would come on ABC Tuesdays and Thursdays ("same bat-time, same bat-channel").  Along with it came Batman comic books and trading cards.  I was heavily into both, and idolized Catwoman (played then by Julie Newmar of My Favorite Doll fame).  Often I'd go to school and hear the highlights of the previous evening's show...

--Toward the end of the school year, some of the boys discovered that by rubbing a smooth-edged coin like a nickel on their forearm for a minute or two, they would temporarily get a pleasant sensation before the pain kicked in.  Totally boneheaded.  One of the dumber of this group came into class one day with his arm bandaged and in a sling: he had bloodied it up and needed  to go to the nurse's station after using a dime instead!  Unbelievable...

--I don't rightly know why, but among some of us it was a status symbol to have possession of blocks of wax.  Maybe some of the kids ate it for all I know (most likely the ones rubbing coins on their arms).  The way to get some wax was to go to the Practical Arts Room down the hallway and ask Mr. Mielock for some wax.  Apparently, he would always hand some over to anyone who requested it, no questions asked.  I even went there and procured some myself, just to get into the experience...which ultimately made no sense whatsoever to me...

--I'm not much for the gossip of those times...let's see...Paige and Doug were an item, Hope hated the Beatles, Terry once made Mr. Johnston cry.  Sorry, that's the best I could do...

Well, I enjoyed going down memory lane and touching upon some of the things that stuck with me over the decades about the first year I spent in the Nova School system.  I wish I could remember other years as well as this one...

Pro Soccer: 2015-16 Mexican Liga MX Season Begins

The Apertura (first split-season) of Mexico's Premier League in professional soccer, also known as Liga MX, started the other day with Veracruz beating Guadalajara 2-0.  This evening, one of the Spanish-language TV stations will be showing the match between Cruz Azul, a team based in Mexico City, and Morelia, which is in danger of being relegated (demoted) to the next lower league if it doesn't dramatically change its recently losing ways.  I usually tend to root for Cruz Azul unless they happen to be playing my favorite team, the Tigres of UANL (based in Monterrey). And it should be interesting to see how much effort has been put into making Morelia's Monarcas more competitive...

Speaking of relegation, although Morelia was clearly the worst team in the league last year, the decision to relegate is placed on a cumulative three-year ratio of points earned per games played.  In soccer, a team gets three points for a win, one for a draw, and nothing for a loss.  In 2014-15, the Leones Negros ("Black Lions") of the Universidad de Guadalajara, just promoted after winning the lower league's (Ascenso) championship in 2013-14, were relegated back after losing a close season-ending struggle with Puebla to see which team would suffer this indignity.  The new team promoted up into Liga MX this year is Dorados de Sinaloa, which won the Ascenso championship playoff a few months ago...

Although I enjoy watching Mexican soccer, along with listening to the exuberant Spanish-speaking TV announcers, I don't like the Liga MX format of split-seasons with two champions per year (last year they were America, also based in Mexico City, and Santos Laguna).  And I really don't like their playoff system, which includes too many teams (eight) and punishes those who performed well in the regular season.  In my book, Tigres should have won the overall championship since they had the league's best record over the course of the year.  After all, regular season records are how they determine the champions in the English (Barclay's) Premier League and in other leagues across Europe...

Speaking of the English Premier League, they open their season the second week of August.  Now that's my favorite soccer to watch.  Hopefully, NBC Sports will continue to carry the games. Go Arsenal!   

Just Finished Reading Towers of Midnight by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson

The late Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time fantasy series is very long, fourteen volumes in total.  Jordan died after having written the first eleven books, and fantasy writer colleague Brandon Sanderson took up the project of completing the series with the final three books.  I just finished reading Towers of Midnight, which means that I now have only one more book to get through before I'm finally finished with this long, drawn-out saga.  The main characters of Rand al'Thor, Mat Cauthon, Perrin Aybara, Egwene, and Elayne, to name the most prominent, are all still in there fighting for their cause, "The Light", against the Dark Lord...and the Last Battle looms ahead.  Other than the prophecies that seem to paint a picture of peril, if not outright tragedy, for some of the protagonists, I'm keeping mum about what happened in Towers of Midnight...not wanting to give away the story to prospective readers (or to anyone currently involved in reading this series).

The author(s) of The Wheel of Time series had one advantage over another fantasy series author, George R.R. Martin of A Song of Ice and Fire renown.  His HBO series adaptation, Game of Thrones, has diverged from his books, which creates a bit of an issue in that he has still at least a couple more books of the series in the works.  Will Martin change the books to fit the TV series?  That would be lamentable if he did.  At the very least, I believe that his involvement in Game of Thrones on HBO has to be distracting him terribly from getting on with his writing of the next book, which I am impatient to get started reading.  At least Jordan and Sanderson (and their readers) never had to deal with that when composing The Wheel of Time...

Most Likable Candidate Most "Likely" Will Be Elected President

Lately on TV, public opinion polls have come out that should be disturbing to Hillary Clinton as she campaigns to be elected as the next U.S. president in 2016.  They tend to reveal that people in general don't find her to be very likable.  Now whether one candidate or another has a more genial or compelling personality has not influenced my own choice for president since I began voting in 1976, but the past several elections show a trend of the more likable candidates, regardless of party affiliation, winning the elections.  In the past two, Barack Obama has shown to be more likable than either John McCain or Mitt Romney.  George W. Bush's homespun, plain way of presenting himself was much more amenable to people than the stuffy Al Gore and John Kerry from 2000 and 2004, respectively.  Bill Clinton's outgoing and positive demeanor won over many people as he beat George H.W. Bush and Bob Dole in '92 and '96.  That same George H.W. Bush...of course, simply known in 1988 as George Bush...had a clear personality edge over the stiff Michael Dukakis in that year's contest.  Probably the most obvious example of all this is how Ronald Reagan charmed the nation in 1980 and 1984 while stomping over Jimmy Carter and  Walter Mondale.  And that same Jimmy Carter, who had transformed himself into a morose and preachy president by 1980, had won enough votes with his almost constant smile and encouraging words to squeak by Gerald Ford (also considered to be a "nice" guy) in 1976.  Now I realize that other people may disagree as to who was more or less likable in various of these elections...I'm just going on my own gut feelings about all this.  And I went against the "likability" trend when I went to the polls in 1984, 1988, 1996, and 2004...

There's obviously much more to the job of president than being able to win a popularity contest.  Unfortunately, the cynical side of me feels that it is exactly how millions of American voters make their decisions about this very crucial office...and they tend to be the ones that tilt the election to one candidate over the other...

Controversial Penalty Call in Mexico's Advance Through Gold Cup (Soccer) Tourney

The 2015 CONCACAF Gold Cup in soccer, which consists of the nations comprising the northern part of the Western Hemisphere, is now down to four teams.  Today the United States will play Jamaica and Mexico will play Panama.  The winners will face off in the final match.  I have been rooting for both the American and Mexican teams, but with the latter I have a little problem after seeing their last match in the quarterfinal round against Costa Rica...

I didn't see that Mexico-Costa Rica match, which was played last Saturday night, in its entirety.  As a matter of fact, I would have completely missed it had it not gone two overtimes.  Soccer matches traditionally last 90 minutes...plus "stoppage time" tacked on to the end based on accumulated game interruption time.  In elimination games (which this was), two overtime periods are allowed to see if either side can win it.  Then, after 120 minutes (plus that stoppage time) if the score is still tied there is a penalty kick shoot-out, the last resort to resolving these contests.  Well, when I discovered this match was going on, 110 minutes had elapsed and the score was still 0-0.  It looked more and more like Mexico and Costa Rica were headed for a penalty kick shoot-out.  The 120 minute mark passed, and 3 minutes of stoppage time was allotted.  After 122 minutes, just seconds before the end of the final overtime period, A Mexican player desperately kicked the ball high into the penalty zone of Costa Rica's.  Another Mexican player lunged at the ball to make a goal-scoring header, but he missed and fell to the ground.  A nearby Costa Rican defender was then called for a penalty foul when he clearly was shown in replays to not be responsible for it.  With seconds to go in this two-hour contest, Mexico then kicked in the penalty shot to win the game, 1-0.  Although I was rooting for Mexico, I was very disappointed in how it all ended...

Mexico's coach, Miguel Herrera, is a very colorful and fiery character who was very outspoken when his 2014 World Cup team was eliminated by the Netherlands in another very controversial penalty call...this one against his own team.  He claimed afterward that his opponent's players had taken several dives, faking fouls, and that the final call was clearly one such dive.  One problem with that, though, as I see it...I've watched Herrera's Mexican team over the course of several games and his players have been "diving" all over the field.  And that last penalty Saturday night looked a bit like a dive to me as well...

 All of that notwithstanding, I'll still be rooting for a USA-Mexico final match final...

Spent Past Weekend at Ormond Beach

This past weekend, Melissa and I went to the Atlantic coast to spend a couple of days at Ormond Beach, at a popular locally-owned hotel we'd gone to several times in the past three decades...there were a lot of old memories stored in that place.  We spent much of the time out at the pool and I read a lot and watched the beach, which was particularly crowded on this very hot and eventually very sunny weekend in July.  When we drove down there, the weather was very stormy.  It didn't let up until early evening, and on Sunday and Monday while we were there, the area was clear of storms...apparently resuming once we had left the area.  We ate dinner Saturday afternoon at the Charley Horse restaurant just down the road on A1A, but for the rest of the stay we ate food we bought at the nearby Publix or had carried with us.  Breakfast was provided "free" at the hotel (it never is really free), albeit a very modest one...nothing like the kind we were used to at the Hampton.  Still, we enjoyed our stay there.  Sunday evening, as we sat there by the pool looking eastward at the ocean, the area darkened due to the ban on beach lighting on account of the sea turtles.  The stars gradually began to appear in the sky, starting with the brighter ones like Vega, Altair, Deneb, and Arcturus.  Still, you had to know where to look to see them at this point in order to make them out of the dark blue background.  As the darkness of the night increased, more stars appeared, and I looked over my shoulder southward to see the constellation of Scorpius, with the planet Saturn positioned just to its west...

Over the last few days, I've been seeing all kinds of news stories on TV about shark attacks on bathers off the coast, as well as the stranding of one on a North Carolina beach.  At Ormond, we saw what we thought were shark fins many times breaking the water's surface, and they were often very close to the shore where there were people out in the water.  While walking along the beach, we also saw a multitude of small jellyfish lying in the sand.  I don't think I would have enjoyed going out in the water under these circumstances...

Just Finished Reading Letters to a Young Mathematician by Ian Stewart

Ian Stewart is an English Professor of Mathematics at the University of Warwick. In the last several years, he has written a number of books popularizing the study of mathematics...a subject I fear needs a heavy dose of popularizing.  The book of his that I just read, Letters to a Young Mathematician, gradually walks a hypothetical aspiring mathematician all the way from high school through college, graduate school, and then through the stages of her ensuing professional career in the field in the form of letters he imagines he would have written her. Along the way, he shows the importance of mathematics in our lives, how mathematicians think, how to learn mathematics, how proofs...the bedrock of mathematics...are very similar to stories in their structure, and some important career tips.  The book is short, only 203 pages, and I read it very quickly.  I left it feeling encouraged about mathematics, although I personally am not at all in the same position that the imaginary "Meg" or Ian Stewart are: their paths through this field were rather conventional, spanning the greater parts of their lives and going through the standard educational and career stages at certain chronological ages, whereas I am sitting here at age 58 looking at it from a slightly different perspective.  Still, I don't think it would hurt me to delve back into this field a little...I've just begun studying linear algebra and am practicing matrix operations.  They're actually quite fun, very much like Sudoku or Kakuro...only here I actually do need the "answer key" to tell if I got the right answer.  From time to time I'll report on the progress I've been making with my mathematical adventures...

Letters to a Young Mathematician is just one of a number of mentoring books out there which perform the twofold purpose of popularizing a particular field of endeavor for everyone to better understand while at the same time encouraging interested people among them to enter it...even if it is at a more modest level than that attained by the books' writers.  I can think of a couple more books like this: Ultramarathon Man by Dean Karanazes and On Writing by Stephen King.  As with mathematics, there are many people who would never take up running or writing because they fear they would look stupid to others...but with anything, you're going to stumble a bit in the beginning, so a little bit of humility is a needed ingredient in any such undertaking.  I happen to do all three to various degrees of success: running, writing, and once again after many years, mathematics.  I'll always find people around me better in them, but that's not the point: pursuing these fields is fulfilling in itself...