Just Finished Reading A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge

I was rummaging through a pile of stuff in the house when I came across a science fiction novel by Vernor Vinge that belongs to my son.  Upon further investigation into this author, I discovered that he has written a science fiction series titled Zones of Thought.  I got a copy of the first book, titled A Fire Upon the Deep, and just finished reading it...

One thing about science fiction that is often considerably different from more reality-based genres like mystery, crime, war, or romance is that the "world" that the author has introduced, along with the technology within it, involves an extensive use of new terminology and concepts.  This can make sci fi reading a bit cumbersome at the beginning of a story as the reader struggles to understand what the heck is going on.  A Fire Upon the Deep is no exception, with its own computer lingo and Vinge's idea of a galaxy divided into four different zones that affect attainable velocity and consciousness.  Since he didn't explain everything up front at the beginning, I had to just read on in faith until I could start to make sense of the scenario.  Once I did, though, it turned out to be a pretty good tale...and with well-developed characters who brought out the feelings of empathy, sympathy...and sometimes antipathy...that made them believable and memorable.

Three situations drive the plot in A Fire Upon the Deep.  One is the accidental reactivation, by human explorers, of a long-dormant, malevolent transcendant entity that threatens the very existence of life in the galaxy.  Another is the stranded party of people fleeing this Blight, as it has come to be called, as they struggle to survive around their adopted planet's dominant life form: the Tines.  And the third centers on an unlikely foursome as they race through space to rescue the survivors and recover from that group's grounded spaceship what may be the only thing that can stop the Blight...

Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of A Fire Upon the Deep, besides those four galactic zones, is how Vinge studies the concept of group identity and consciousness through the civilization of the dog-like Tines.  I was also impressed with his unpretentious writing style...this made it much easier to grasp the mind-stretching ideas he was introducing into his story...

So now I'm hooked on another series.  A Fire Upon the Deep came out in 1992.  The next book, A Deepness in the Sky (1999), is said to be a prequel to the first book.  And Book Three of the series, the last one to be published, was only released in 2011.  So Vernor Vinge's Zones of Thought project isn't exactly one that I should sit around awaiting the next installment: he took 12 years to get around to the last one...    

Piecing Movie Fragments Together

For most of the movies I've seen, I sit down at the beginning and watch them through to the end.  However, there are movies I've experienced piecemeal...I may start off with a clip near the end, then maybe a scene toward the middle or beginning, usually because I encounter them while channel surfing at those particular stages.  After a few "sightings" of such a movie, I'll start to form a picture of it as a whole, with gaps throughout that I haven't yet seen.  Usually a movie like this is one that I feel I would like to watch but for whatever reasons can't seem to find or make the time for it.  In this category, for me, is the latest Star Trek movie: Into Darkness.  I knew there was a real nasty villain in it, played by Benedict Cumberback, with whom Spock had a chase/fight scene.  There was a brutal attack on Federation headquarters early in the film.  Something else about Scotty in a bar somewhere getting drunk with his weird-looking alien buddy when Kirk calls him.  Kirk and McCoy running in hooded robes from a mob of painted aboriginals on a red planet, with a volcano erupting in the background.  A huge black spaceship crashing into the downtown of a large city.  And on and on it went, until...

Until I finally had enough of all the fragments and set out to watch Star Trek: Into Darkness in its entirety.  I checked out my streaming Netflix and, for a change, they actually had the movie I was searching for!  Last night I enjoyed it from start to finish...it was worth it, one of the best Star Trek movies ever made.  The next movie in the series comes out next year.  In the meantime, maybe I should put together some fragments from other movies I've never completely watched...

Gators Manage to Win Sloppy Game vs. East Carolina

After the University of Florida football team breezed by New Mexico State in its first game of the 2015 season 61-13, many fans expected a similar outcome yesterday against their second non-conference opponent, this one being East Carolina.  But the Pirates were a much better team than Florida's first opponent: last year they beat then-seventeenth ranked Virginia Tech 28-17, clobbered North Carolina 70-41 and severely challenged the SEC's South Carolina before finally succumbing 33-23. And then they played the Gators at the very end in the Birmingham Bowl, losing a hard-fought contest 28-20.  So East Carolina was never a second-rate team.  That having been noted, however, it was clear to me that Florida played a very sloppy game yesterday in spite of their ultimate 31-24 victory.  The Gators committed turnovers directly leading to ten East Carolina points, and two crucial penalties cost them dearly...one nullifying an early touchdown and one putting the Pirates in good field position for their last touchdown drive.  Also, Florida was remiss at capitalizing on the many East Carolina fumbles in the first half.  The quarterback play was generally good, but Will Grier threw three passes that should have been intercepted...while the one pick he did throw was a deflection off the receiver...

Florida plays Kentucky in Lexington next Saturday evening.  By all accounts, I think the new Gator head coach Jim McElwain is doing a good job...but man, that dude can really get agitated on the sidelines...        

Just Finished Reading Isaac Asimov's Second Foundation (Again)

As I continue to reread renown science fiction writer Isaac Asimov's celebrated Foundation series, I have just finished Book Three of the five main books, titled Second Foundation.  The story is set tens of thousands of years into the future, as humanity...now inhabiting the entire known galaxy...is recovering from the destruction of the ten thousand year old Empire that once politically, economically, and militarily united them all.  Hari Seldon, the famous psychohistorian/mathematician who had predicted the Empire's demise and had laid out plans for two "Foundations"...one on the planet Terminus at the galaxy's frontier and the other at "Star's End"...has been dead for four hundred years.  His plans were for the two Foundations, the first run by physical scientists and the second governed by psychologists, to preserve and then spread into the galaxy to resurrect human society into another, more benevolent empire and avoid a protracted dark age.  But those preparations have come unraveled: a singular element in the form of psychic mutant named the Mule has conquered much of the galaxy, unanticipated by Seldon and throwing off his equations and predictions.  How the Mule's reign culminates and its ramifications dominate the story of the first part of Second Foundation.  And the Second Foundation becomes forefront in both the confrontation with the Mule and in Part Two of the book...the main questions being (1) where exactly is the Second Foundation located, (2) who are in it, and (3) what exactly is it up to...

Second Foundation is a good, fast read...especially for science fiction when sometimes the heavy emphasis some writers place on discussing technical matters, in order to give their works more credence, can bog down the reader.  Instead, Asimov adroitly moves the plot along while presenting sympathetic characters.  As opposed to the beginning of the Foundation series, however, I am finding that some of the themes of the developing story line deal more and more with paranormal, psychic abilities...that, I'm afraid, tends to inject too much uncertainty and too many possibilities into the narrative, making it harder for me to follow and even harder to relate to...

Foundation, Foundation and Empire, and Second Foundation were all published in novel form in the 1950s.  Asimov would wait until the 1980s before capping off this series with Foundation's Edge and Foundation and Earth.  I decided to take a little detour in this series and next read (this one for the first time) his 1980s prequel novel Prelude to Foundation, which purportedly goes back to the earlier years in Hari Seldon's life...

Tomorrow's 9/11 Television Coverage

The terrorist attacks against our country and its people on the morning of September 11, 2001 should never be forgotten or swept under the rug.  I don't know how all of the various news channels and networks on TV plan to cover it...I only know from my TV schedule about the two channels that plan to devote special programs in remembrance of this outrage against America: MSNBC and The History Channel.  Late tonight, at 1 AM Eastern Time, MSNBC will have a one-hour show about 9/11, while tomorrow morning at 8:30 they will rebroadcast, as they do every year, the NBC Today show as events unfolded that tragic morning 14 years ago.  The History Channel has a whole slate of interesting programming scheduled for tomorrow.  But I'm hoping that, although other channels may not be setting aside time for special programs exclusively devoted to 9/11, they will still be giving a considerable amount of air time about it on their regularly scheduled shows...

Just Finished Reading Exit Ghost by Philip Roth

Philip Roth is one of those famous writers whose works have slipped by me over the years.  Stephen King, in his latest book Finders Keepers, dropped Roth's name a few times...prompting me to investigate something he wrote.  I went to my local public library branch and grabbed Exit Ghost off the shelf...it had the added incentive of being relatively short.  Unfortunately, Exit Ghost is apparently the last book in a long series that Roth had been writing concerning the fictional character of Nathan Zuckerman, a famous New York writer.  Since I tend to try to avoid picking up books in mid-series, end-of-series has to be the worst!  Nevertheless, I gamely pressed on with my reading...

The setting of Exit Ghost is New York City of 2004, right at the time of the presidential election between Bush and Kerry.  Zuckerman, who has gone into retreat to woodsy western Massachusetts for more than a decade following death threats emanating from around the New York metropolis, has shed all of the trappings of his former life and has been devoting himself, in rural isolation, to his craft of writing.  Unfortunately, he was diagnosed with cancer a few years earlier and had been compelled to return to the city off and on for treatment of the disease and the complications arising from that treatment (I'll leave the sad details for you, the potential future reader, to find out).  During one of these return trips, at that time I mentioned, he decides to stay in town for a year...and becomes involved in two subplots that intertwine throughout the book.  What they specifically are and what happens I'll leave others to discover for themselves.  Let's just say that there is a lot of introspection here, presented in the first person narrative by Zuckerman...

There are many things I derived from Exit Ghost.  One is that I didn't need to read all of those other Zuckerman books after all...Roth did a masterful job of creating a complete story here without making me feel as if I needed to go back to previous stories to fill in gaps.  Another is the author's Jewish heritage and experiences as he applied them to his characters.  Roth also employed a device that I found intriguing: the playing in Zuckerman's mind, eventually transferred to paper, of imaginary conversations he has with characters...when in the real narrative of the story his communication with them is full of awkwardness and missed moments.  This resonates with me...and probably would with many people...as I've often recreated scenarios from the past with different outcomes if only I had said this or that...of if the person I was talking with was just a little more reasonable or compassionate...

In Exit Ghost, Philip Roth explored a potential problem that many authors of fiction face as they tend to put much of themselves and their own lives into their characters. Sure, it's "fiction", but can one, by reading a writer's books, conversely work backwards from the fiction and make conclusions about his or her personal life?  I have to admit to believing sometimes that Nathan Zuckerman IS Philip Roth in fictional disguise...but that's probably not the case at all.  Well, maybe Zuckerman does serve as a spokesman for many of Roth's views and they may have some common life experiences, but he is make-believe nonetheless.  The problem is that once I realize that an author is speaking their views and expressing at least some of their own real-life experiences through a particular character, the temptation is to extrapolate that everything that character says and does has a reality to it reflected in the life of the author...

And finally, for the purposes of this particular blog entry at least, there is that recurring theme of mortality and aging that pervades the book.  This probably resonates stronger with someone like me who is close to 59 and who just lost a friend from elementary school to cancer than it would to someone in their twenties or thirties.  How does one deal with the progressive degeneration of their physical and mental abilities?  If this subject bothers you, then perhaps Exit Ghost may not be the book you want to read.  Then again, if such is the case, maybe it's a book you need to read...

Watching Some U.S. Open Tennis Matches

During the last few days I've been watching the U.S. Open tennis tournament, one of the major events in the sports world.  ESPN and ESPN-2 have been showing the various matches, which for both the men and women are now down to the quarterfinals stage.  Right now France's Kristina Mladenovic has her hands full with Italy's Roberta Vinci...both players were unseeded for the tournament.  Tonight will be the much-hyped match between the Williams sisters Serena and Venus, with Serena going for the first calendar-year tennis Grand Slam since 1988.  Yesterday, England's Andy Murray and Switzerland's Roger Federer each had close matches against their respective opponents Kevin Anderson and John Isner to try to qualify for the quarterfinal round.  Murray lost his and Federer won...it was interesting to compare the demeanor and behavior of the two as they were tested like this.  Murray was agitated and cursed while under adversity, while Federer was poised and confident...just as much when his back was against the wall as when he was triumphant.  There's a lesson here: whom do I want to emulate the most in my own personal walk through life??!!

I am by no means a tennis fanatic as my parents were for decades, but I can see how one could get drawn into the sport.  It's not like football, basketball, hockey or soccer where the clock determines the sport's parameters...no, tennis is more like golf or baseball in that, as a player, you can be only one hole or out...or in tennis, just one point...from victory. But that last hole, out, or point MUST be accomplished or ultimately you lose...

Melissa and I Celebrate Our 29th Anniversary

It was 29 years ago on this date, on a Sunday afternoon, that my sweetheart Melissa and I got married in a small southwest Gainesville church.  And now, in 2015, I can say that my love for her has only gotten stronger as we have gone through many seasons in our lives together.  She is a priceless treasure!

Happy Anniversary, my dear Melissa!

Just Finished Reading John Grisham's The Brethren

Last month, Melissa and I went to a retreat in Ocklawaha, on the shores of Lake Weir not far from Ocala.  During it, one night after dinner, we got into a discussion with the others sitting at our table about the books we liked.  When I mentioned John Grisham, a renown author of many law-centered novels, the guy seated on my left suggested his two favorite titles: The Testament and The Brethren.  Having already read three of Grisham's books (The Pelican Brief, The Firm, and The Appeal) and being disappointed in that last one, I was anxious to get a little advance encouragement before taking on another of his works.  With that endorsement in mind, I just finished reading The Brethren.  As it turned out, my new-found friend was right: it was one of Grisham's best...at least with the limited number of his books that I've yet read...

The Brethren refers to the informal name given to a trio of ex-judges serving sentences in a low-security federal prison near Jacksonville, Florida.  They come up with a scam extorting money from various men across the country whom they have snared answering their fake ads in magazines for male pen pals.  Concurrently, a presidential campaign is on, and the CIA director, intent on having the country's military budget dramatically increased, has created a candidate out of an obscure Arizona congressman.  How these two subplots ultimately connect determines the flow and outcome of the story.  Grisham kept what could have been a lot of extraneous material and characters out of this novel and made it an easy and quiet suspenseful, enjoyable reading experience.  Naturally, you're going to have to read it for yourself to discover the details and its ending...

If you're inclined to believe in the invisible hand of forces behind the scenes in our politics manipulating politicians and public opinion with their cynical actions, then The Brethren is the book for you.  It was published in 2000, a full year before 9/11 and the "Truther" movement with its "false flag" accusations arising from that tragedy.  It also reaffirmed a sad truth of our times that I've learned from the mistakes of others: never express anything in a letter, the phone, or on the Internet that you aren't fully prepared for the entire world to know...privacy as we grew up expecting as an inalienable right is almost nonexistent anymore, regardless what the written law says...

Now I'm going to get hold of John Grisham's The Testament...well, after I read some other books by other authors, that is...

Preseason Football Rankings 'Rank'le Me

The college football season began this week, culminating today in the first full day of games.  Already there are preseason polls out, ranking not only the top 25 teams in the country but even the most likely prospects to win the Heisman Trophy as player of the year.  To me, these polls are ludicrous as the structure of college sports is very different from that of the pros.  Each year, the seniors leave school...as well as those underclassmen entering the NFL draft early...and the various schools have to essentially overhaul their teams.  Plus, the entering freshmen class of players adds another level of uncertainty to each school's outlook for the upcoming season.  Yet Ohio State is Number One without having played a single game...some media folks are making an issue of the "fact" that Alabama has dropped down to Number Three after several years of being ranked preseason as One or Two.  They have to be kidding...

Well, maybe the rankings do have a certain bearing on things as we go through our first weekend of college football.  Those who gamble on the games need to have something to go by as they lay their money down...even if they don't yet know how good or bad the teams are going to be this year.  If I were a betting man (and I'm not...but I'll leave that for a future blog post), I would wait a little bit into the season before I began to wager any serious money.  On the other hand, Vegas puts its own line out for the individual games...no need after all to follow some mythical rankings chart when no games have yet been played...

Just Finished Reading Sue Grafton's "R" and "S" Mystery Novels

I've been a big fan of mystery writer Sue Grafton, whose claim to fame is her "alphabet mystery" series featuring California private investigator Kinsey Millhone and the titles of which have been published in alphabetical order, with just a couple of "letters" to go until completion.  I'm also going through it in alphabetical order, sometimes running across a book I've already read...but most of them are new reads.  This was the case with my latest: "R" is for Ricochet and "S" is for Silence, published in 2004 and 2005, respectively.  This is significant because Grafton has compressed Kinsey's ongoing sleuthing adventures to the point where the stories themselves are set in the late 1980s...and this can be important when dealing with such things in the stories as telephone access and computers...

Although I've enjoyed reading these books, I have to weigh in on the negative side about these last two.  In "R" is for Ricochet, the character of Kinsey Millhone is made passive and secondary by another character, a young woman named Reba who is the individual our private eye has been hired by Reba's father to guide through her initial stages of parole after imprisonment for embezzlement.  Reba seems to assume all of the spunky and intelligent aspects of Kinsey that I have come to admire...leaving the detective to spend most of the story "tagging along" or dealing with her 87-year old landlord's romantic situation or that of her own...quite separate from the main story line and presenting an annoying distraction for me, the reader.  As for "S" is for Silence, much of the story is presented as a 34-year flashback to a young woman's unsolved disappearance...no Kinsey in sight anywhere.  When she does occasionally make her presence known and finally figures out the case, her method and reasoning for finding the main culprit in the story is unexplained.  I was so frustrated by the ending to this book that I went on the Internet to read others' reactions...and found that many of them agreed with me...

If these last two books of Sue Grafton that I just read happened to be the first ones for me as well, I might have decided to abandon reading any more of her books.  As it is, however, I know that she is much more capable of producing a good result...after all, I've now gone all the way through book #19.  I'm looking forward to a better story with the next Millhone novel, which I discovered is titled "T" is for Trespass...

CNN Amends Debate Rules to Let Fiorina In

CNN has just recently amended its rules for which candidates qualified for its Republican presidential debate, which will take place on September 16.  Last month's Fox News main debate limited participants to ten while relegating the seven other "major" candidates to its secondary "happy hour" debate.  The criteria for who got in for the prime time debate was the average of several public opinion polls taken beforehand...fair enough, I suppose.  California former business executive Carly Fiorina finished low in those early polls...most likely due to lack of name recognition outside her home state...but performed very well in the debate provided for her and jumped markedly in the polls held afterward.  Unfortunately, most of the polls CNN used to determine their lineup for the upcoming debate were those done before those two Fox debates...so Fiorina once again didn't make their cut of ten.  Recognizing this flaw, one that essentially nullifies the performances of the candidates in the first debates, CNN slightly adjusted their rule to allow Fiorina in as the "eleventh" candidate.  But this is also, in my opinion, not enough...she has jumped in the polls far beyond any "eleventh" place and by no means should be regarded as an "extra" candidate.  The fault for her initial omission is with CNN for having placed too much weight on early polls.  Their excuse is that not enough more recent polls had been taken...that strikes me as being a bit disingenuous, especially when all I see when I watch cable news channels on TV is public opinion poll after public opinion poll...

Just Finished Reading Madeleine L'Engle's A Swiftly Tilting Planet

I've been reading, off and on, Madeleine L'Engle's science fiction series for children called the Time Quintet.  I just finished reading the third book, titled A Swiftly Tilting Planet.  In it, we once again find the Murray and O'Keefe families, featuring main characters Meg and Charles Wallace.  But several years have passed between books two and three, and Meg has just married her old friend Calvin O'Keefe while the precocious Charles Wallace has by now turned fifteen.  A new crisis presents itself at the story's beginning: a South American dictator has gotten hold of the atomic bomb and is threatening a nuclear holocaust if his near-impossible demands are not met.  Meg's father, a physicist who has direct access to the White House, tells the grim news to his family.  Meg's mother-in-law, who is present at this moment, places a charge on Charles Wallace to set things right...and presents him with a "rune"...which takes the form of a prayer to heaven to influence the various forces on earth to rescue the speaker during a dire crisis.  Charles Wallace, with Meg psychically tuning in through a process called "kything", then travels back through time with the help of a nifty unicorn and tries, by subtly entering the minds of different people (and with the help of that rune), to influence events enough to change the present and alleviate the nuclear crisis...

First of all, let me just say that I "get it": this is a children's story, and fantasy and implausibility are lathered on thick here.  That being said, I have to object to the idea expressed within it that there is such a thing as an evil ancestral line any more than there is a benevolent one.  But part of the project that Charles Wallace is engaged in is just with that in mind: change the line of descent to the present so that the genetic makeup of the current ruler in that South American country is "good" instead of "evil".  Maybe I'm making too much of this, but it bothered me nonetheless...

So now I've finished three of these books, with two more to go.  But wait, I just found out that the author had also written another series parallel to this one...a series featuring the O'Keefe family and the eventual children of Meg and Calvin.  Maybe I'll just wait a few more years, Lord willing, before I start on that one...

My August 2015 Running Report

Although I accumulated mileage during August, my running ultimately was unsatisfactory as at the end, I suffered an injury of sorts on my right foot between the arch and heel.  As such, I've missed five days running for the month, and this will continue substantially into September.  Instead, I have been riding my bicycle more...that is, when it isn't torrentially raining outside...and using my portable stepper exercising machine.  I plan to continue with these while my foot recovers, and add the use of my gym's elliptical cross-trainer.  As for August's total, I ran 259 miles...

Hopefully, this running layoff won't last too long...but I have to give myself time to heal...

My NFL Favorites in Each Division This 2015 Season

It's getting closer to the start of the National Football League regular season this year, with the opening game between Pittsburgh and New England on Thursday, September 10 less than two weeks away.  So, as I usually do this time of year, I'm going through each division and picking my favorite teams.  No, I'm not predicting which ones will win each division...I'm strictly going by personal preference.  And since I'm doing this blog basically as an ongoing writing exercise, I'll explain the reasons for my picks...

AMERICAN CONFERENCE

East Division: MIAMI DOLPHINS-The Dolphins have been my team of choice since 1968, their third season of existence in the then-American Football League and when I was eleven going on twelve.  I suffered through two sub-par, typical expansion team seasons...and then Don Shula came over from Baltimore to coach them.  They won two Super Bowls under his direction and appeared in five...but more incredibly, during Shula's 26-year tenure there, they had only two losing seasons.  His successor Jimmy Johnson enjoyed some moderate success in his four years there, but from 2004 through 2015 Miami has enjoyed only two winning seasons.  And their last playoff appearance was in 2008.  They've frustrated me to no end the last two years because in each one they were in an excellent position to make the playoffs...only to choke up instead.  Will they be any better this year?  Guess we'll find out before too long...

South Division: JACKSONVILLE JAGUARS-Until 1977, I lived in South Florida.  But ever since the Jacksonville franchise came into existence I've lived the closest to that city.  I've always rooted for them unless they were playing Miami...although in recent years their mediocrity has made it often an exercise in futility.  If they finish higher than last, I'll be surprised.

North Division: BALTIMORE RAVENS-I've always admired the swarming defense of the Ravens...it reminds me of that of the Dolphins during their "No-Name Defense" era of early '70s  Super Bowl glory and the "Killer B's" of the 1982 season when they made another Super Bowl appearance.  I also feel a bit of gratitude to Baltimore for having been so kind as lose to Miami late in the 2007 regular season, giving them their only win and keeping them from going 0-16.  The Ravens are by far my favorite in this division.

West Division: SAN DIEGO CHARGERS-I can't root for Denver after it abandoned Tim Tebow right after he got them into the playoffs in 2011 for the first time in years.  I've always despised Oakland and feel neutral about Kansas City.  But I like the Chargers for their quarterback Phil Rivers.  Unfortunately, the management of this franchise has been remiss about retaining the talent around him.  Still, I'm going to pull for them when they're not playing a Florida team or the New York Giants...and I believe they have a good shot at making the playoffs this year.

NATIONAL CONFERENCE

East Division: NEW YORK GIANTS-When the Giants upset the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl capping the 2007 season...ruining the Dolphins' bitter divisional rivals' quest for a perfect record...I vowed to myself that I would begin to support them on a regular basis.  And, what do you know, they repeated the feat in 2011 against the same villains! Let's see, another four years have passed...do the Giants still have it in them? Probably not, but my gratitude hasn't diminished.  Besides, I admire their quarterback Eli Manning, and head coach Tom Coughlin has my respect going back to the Jaguars' old glory days when he led them into the playoffs soon after their inception into the league.

South Division: TAMPA BAY BUCCANEERS-This is a team that should have done much better last year than 2-14...so I have high expectations for them this time around, especially after getting what could eventually be a Hall of Fame quarterback in Jameis Winston.  But high hopes abound easily before the first game is played.  They're going to have to figure out ways to keep their composure in close games in order to pull some victories "out of the hat".  Fortunately, Winston has plenty of experience in this area and seems to be a natural leader on the field.  The Bucs have the potential to be the turnaround team of the year.  Of course, I root for them primarily for one reason: they are a Florida team...and for the first 18 years I lived in Gainesville, the nearest one to me...

North Division: GREEN BAY PACKERS-I like the Packers not only for their outstanding quarterback Aaron Rodgers, but also for their tremendous fans.  I especially like the custom at Packer home games for Green Bay players, upon scoring touchdowns for their team, to go jumping into the stadium to be mass-hugged by their supporters.  It's nice to root for a team with a great shot at the championship, and the Pack fills the bill here.

West Division: SEATTLE SEAHAWKS-I followed Seattle from time to time as they were first getting used to their then-new head coach Pete Carroll.  I was impressed by Carroll's exuberance and positive attitude.  This guy has a lot of fun out there coaching his team, and his expressiveness is infectious.  So when they won their first Super Bowl a couple of years ago, I was already all aboard with the Seahawks.  They have, I believe, what it takes to make a third consecutive Super Bowl appearance...if Green Bay or Dallas don't prevent them.

As for the teams I oppose the most, let's just say that I dislike, in order of intensity: New England, Buffalo, New York Jets, New Orleans, Indianapolis, Pittsburgh, Denver, Oakland, Houston, and Dallas...

Just Finished Reading Isaac Asimov's Foundation and Empire

Foundation and Empire is the second book  in the late science fiction writer Isaac Asimov's Foundation series.  Originally a part of the Foundation "trilogy" back in the 1950s, Asimov wrote two more books in it during the 1980s and then added two prequels. After his death in 1992, three other sci-fi writers wrote authorized Foundation novels as well...bringing the total so far as I know it to be ten books. I happen to possess all of these books.  Unfortunately, they are buried in the  deep recesses of my garage, which I desperately need to declutter and organize.  But even if one reads all of the Foundation books, in order to understand the full context of Asimov's futuristic imaginary universe it is necessary to go through the four "Robot" (or "Spacer") novels as well as the three-part Empire series.  This begins to become apparent toward the end of the Foundation series...and although I haven't as yet read the two prequel Foundation novels, I understand that this is true for them as well...

As for Foundation and Empire,  there is little I can tell any prospective  reader without giving away the first book in the series, also titled Foundation.  In very general terms, I will say that this second book deals with the Foundation...and with the Empire...as if that wasn't obviously self-evident.  But for more than half of the book, another element enters the story...and it is this part I found to be the most compelling...especially its chief antagonist and the sly manner in which Asimov wrote him into the story.   As for the first part, I did pick up an important theme expressed within it that I myself have learned over the course of my lifetime:  if you are working for an organization, individual, or cause and are so committed and excellent with the results of your efforts that you begin to be recognized for that excellence, then your biggest opposition...as well as your eventual downfall...most likely will come from among those for whom you are so diligently striving as they will begin to perceive you as a threat to themselves.  Sounds cynical, but it has been borne out with my own experiences time and time again, sad to say...

My Running Detoured by Foot Pain

Although I would like to train up to be able to run in the upcoming half-marathon races (even possibly marathons) this fall, I have developed a nagging pain in my right foot that may just derail any substantial running for a while.  I am looking for ways to get around this problem, which involves pain that only occurs at impact, neither existing at rest nor with simple muscular exertion.  So right now I'm working at alternative forms of exercise, including getting my old dilapidated cheap-o bicycle out of the shed and riding it around the neighborhood.  I also have a portable stepper exercise contraption that I can use as a "no-impact" exercise...not to mention that I can do modified push-ups using it that serve as an alternative to abdominal crunch exercises.  And then there is also the elliptical cross-trainer machine at my local 24/7 gym.  In any event, I have to give my foot enough time to heal while avoiding aggravating whatever problem currently exists.  I haven't given up on my race plans...well, at least not in a general sense: the upcoming October events may not be feasible for me, but toward the end of the year I see no reason not to resume competition...which for me, isn't against any other runners, but rather to simply finish with reasonable times...

Just Finished Reading Sue Grafton's "P" and "Q" Mystery Novels

As I continue along with the so-called "Alphabet Mysteries" of writer Sue Grafton from "A" to "X" (her latest "letter"), I just finished reading a couple: "P" is for Peril and "Q" is for Quarry.  I was happy to discover that I hadn't read either before...sometimes I forget which books in the series I've already gone through...

In "P" is for Peril, protagonist private investigator Kinsey Millhone, a single mid-thirties California ex-cop, is hired to look into the disappearance of a woman's ex, a physician working at a senior care center.  There are all sorts of subplots involved, especially an ongoing Medicare fraud investigation at the center, the missing man's marital relationships, and his wayward daughter.  A second story in the book, intertwined with the main mystery, is Kinsey's new landlord for her office: a couple of brothers...and she has started to become romantic with the younger one.  But with them as well, a mysterious and sinister past is revealed.  Plenty of suspects to go around with this story.  I thought the ending was quite intriguing...

In "Q" is for Quarry, the panoply of suspicious characters continues as Kinsey is hired by an old police associate to team up with another ex-cop...this one retired...to investigate a cold (long unsolved) murder case: a 1969 "Jane Doe" killing involving a dumped unidentified young female corpse in a remote area.  Subplots in the story include the dire medical problems of Kinsey's police partners, as well as new information regarding her own clouded family past. At the conclusion of the book, it is revealed that author Sue Grafton had based her story on an actual cold case involving very similar circumstances...

Now I'm working on her next novel in the series, "R" is for Ricochet...

Light 2015 Atlantic Hurricane Season Entering Most Intense Phase

The 2015 Atlantic hurricane season, which has been predicted to be very light with few named storms due to cooler Atlantic waters, has so far vindicated the prognosticators.  Until just recently, there have been only three named storms, none of which have made much of an impact although two struck the U.S. mainland.  This past week, Danny followed the common Africa-to-West-Indies trans-Atlantic path, strengthening to hurricane level. But then, as it approached the Leeward Islands, it weakened and was sheared into nothing more than a rainy low pressure area.  Following Danny westward across the Atlantic, close to its path, is Erika, a much larger storm in area.  Although Erika is only a minimal tropical storm at this writing with maximum sustained winds of 45 mph, forecast models have it passing safely between two shear zones as it passes just north of the Leewards, Puerto Rico, and Hispaniola and enters the warm waters of the Bahamas.  According to the current projected path, slow-moving Erika may be approaching the east coast of Florida as a minimal hurricane by this Sunday.  Still, right now there is a huge shear zone covering the eastern Gulf of Mexico and most of the Florida peninsula that, should it remain in place, would weaken Erika if the potential hurricane makes a Floridian landfall...

I'm not too concerned about Erika possibly hitting Gainesville in north-central Florida, especially as it looks right now as if it will only make it to weak hurricane status and then probably weaken again.  But the media will probably amplify the coverage, since the tropical storms this year have been too few and far between and Erika might be the first full-fledged Atlantic hurricane in 2015 to threaten the U.S. mainland (tropical storms Ana and Bill earlier hit the Carolinas and Texas, respectively)...

Stock Market's Ten-Minute Thousand-Point Plunge This Morning

Wall Street's Dow Jones Average shocked the news world this morning as it went into a ten-minute free fall, finally leveling at a thousand points lower and scaring the bejesus (or dickens...or choose your own epithet) out of everybody. This is after Friday's loss of 531 points and right on the heels of a massive selloff in the Chinese stock market.  The prices rose back up to around down a little more that 100 points...but over the course of the afternoon, the average has crept back downward...it's 350 points at this writing.  The White House laid much of the blame for this fall at the doors of Congress, which it claims is dragging its feet at passing important fiscal legislation.  But what seems to be powering it all to me is the bursting of China's financial bubble...and their government's reevaluation of their currency...

It is too early right now to see whether this drop in the stock market is only a temporary scare like those in 1987 and 2010...or the sign of a traumatic economic downturn, as in 2008.  But the market suddenly has MY attention...