Yesterday's Internet Shutdown in Gainesville

Late yesterday morning at home, I had the television on, tuned in to C-Span2, the station broadcasting the floor session of the United States Senate.  Republican senator Mike Enzi, from Wyoming, was on the floor rambling on about something or another in his typically boring fashion when he stopped in mid-sentence, his mouth wide open.  And the dude wouldn't move...he was positively frozen!  Of course, I quickly determined that this station had a broadcasting glitch and tried other channels.  I could still get anything on channel 27 or lower, but nothing beyond that.  I then tried to get on the Internet...no dice.  I concluded from this that the problem was due to a modem that my son had procured and installed the previous day, and decided to go out to Starbucks a little later to do my Internet stuff from my laptop there.  But when I sat down in my favorite coffee shop, all comfortable in the air-conditioning with my coffee and open laptop, I discovered that I couldn't get online there, either.  I then heard someone working behind the counter remark to a customer about the loss of the Internet...and I promptly closed up my computer and left...an offline refugee in search of an online homeland...

By that time I had inferred that Cox Communications, which provides my home with both TV cable and Internet service, was experiencing a break in their services...the question was how extensive this problem was.  I decided to go to the far south end of Gainesville, to a McDonald's I frequent near my workplace.  Voilà, everything worked there and I was able to write and publish my blog article about the late David Bowie's musical legacy...

Later, in the news, it came out the service interruption was due to a tree-trimming accident in Ocala that severed a crucial line in their system.  Reportedly the outages were widespread...going out as far as Pensacola in the western Florida panhandle.  The services were supposedly restored in late afternoon.  Of course, if you had a different Internet provider...as that McDonald's apparently did...then you were unaffected by yesterday's hassles.  For the thousands of Cox Communications customers who were affected, though, there was a lot a scrambling around if not weeping and gnashing of teeth...

Compiling List of My Favorite David Bowie Songs

After hearing of David Bowie's death back in January and being startled at the high quality of this incredibly talented musical artist's final album Blackstar, I decided to investigate all of his studio albums, numbering 27 in all...from his eponymous debut release back in 1967 to Blackstar this year.  While listening to them, I naturally came across many familiar old songs of his, such as Space Oddity, Changes, Suffragette City, Rebel Rebel, Young Americans, Golden Years, Ashes to Ashes, Let's Dance, Modern Love, China Girl, and Blue Jean.  I also remembered his singles collaboration with Queen titled Under Pressure, one of my favorites.  While I still like many of these old hits of Bowie's, I discovered some fantastic lesser-known tracks as well...and many of them appeared on albums he made in the late 1990s and during this century, long after he had faded from mainstream rock radio popularity...

I've been noting which tracks on each album are to my liking, and have been compiling a list of them, comparing them to each other.  It's hard to assess the relative value of Bowie's songs this way since they vary greatly by style, mood, instrumentation, and even genre.  Still, I feel at this time that I am in a good position to rank my top 50 favorite songs of his...and rank his albums as well.  That doesn't mean that, upon further listenings, I might not just change my opinion with regard to these rankings.  But now is now, and I know what I like now...I'll just let the future take care of itself...

So, in a few days I'll come out with my list of David Bowie favorites...but first, I think I'll take a break now and listen again to a few of them...

Gainesville's West 34th Street

West 34th Street is an interesting road in Gainesville.  It is my most traveled street, since my workplace is on it at the most southern point of the city...while my subdivision lies at Gainesville's far north.  The distance from my house to my office is eight miles, and in years gone by (from 1989 to 1995) I've ridden my bicycle to and from work on it numerous times.  Although I feel I'm still in good enough shape to resume this activity, I no longer trust other drivers to stay focused on the road and not on their "devices".  Yes, I've recently seen too many instances of cars in front of me veering off the road into the adjacent bike lane and I picture myself getting run over on my bicycle were I there.  Of course, there have always been distracted drivers, and besides, especially when on the road at night, there is always the risk of encountering alcohol-impaired drivers.  But even many drivers who have been drinking, in my opinion, usually don't pose as much of a risk as those who can't stop texting or checking their Facebook page while driving.  Still, it might be fun to get my wheels out again and try the old route every now and then...

Gainesville's West 34th Street is a section of State Route 121, a most curious state route.  Out of Gainesville and going south-southwest, it runs through Williston and eventually out to the Gulf of Mexico.  Northward from our fair city, it passes on into Georgia a few miles west of Jacksonville and then continues on as Georgia State Route 121.  But that's not all: after winding its way through the southeastern part of that state, this road crosses over into South Carolina...and, you guessed it, becomes South Carolina State Route 121!.  I'd like to say that it goes on and on like that, but just south of the border with North Carolina, approaching Charlotte, this very, very long road finally comes to an end...

If you are from out of town, you may have heard of the "Wall" on the east side of SW 34th Street just south of SW 2nd Avenue that various people over the years, mainly students, continually paint messages over...with one exception: the names of the five victims of the student murders in 1990 continue to be permanently displayed and honored on it...and in the street median facing that wall are five trees, each with a sign featuring the name of a victim.  This stretch of road, which is on the slope of a small hill, is also part of the Five Points Marathon/Half-Marathon and I've run down it three times...in 2010, 2014, and 2015...and plan to add to that list next February.  Also, further north lies Westside Park, the site of several races I've run...including the last one, July Fourth's Melon Run.  Going back south of the "Wall", about a half-mile down the road, is the Florida Museum of Natural History and the UF Harn Center for the Performing Arts...which incidentally is the starting and finishing point for those aforementioned Five Points races...

Although West 34th Street is a major city thoroughfare for Gainesville, my city's public transit service, which is continually boasting of all its routes and accessibility, has steadfastly refused over the years to add a route going down this important, well-traveled road.  If they ever did, I would definitely ride it...especially if I could ride home on it late at night after getting off from work...

NBA Great Tim Duncan Announces Retirement

Tim Duncan, one of the greatest National Basketball Association players of our era, has announced his retirement after 19 years with one club, the San Antonio Spurs...amassing five league titles, fifteen all-star team selections, and a Most Valuable Player award.  His unassuming nature continued with this announcement in the off-season: contrast that to media addict Kobe Bryant's highly publicized "farewell tour" last year with the Lakers, probably their worst season ever.  But that's the kind of person Duncan was.  He was a very talented and accomplished power forward...some think that he was the greatest ever in that position...but he treated all of his teammates with the utmost respect and fostered many long-lasting friendships.  Chief among his friends is Gregg Popovich, the only head coach he ever had throughout his NBA career.  Duncan had an outstanding regular season this past year, but he faltered in the playoffs...but I could have said the same about the league's ongoing MVP for the second straight season: Golden State's Stephen Curry.  Along with future Hall of Fame guard Tony Parker and the "Sixth Man" Manu Ginobili, the Spurs relied on Tim's consistency over the years to be perennial contenders.  Sure, Michael Jordan got six championships with the Bulls...but Duncan's five were spread out over an amazingly long span of years, and in every intervening one his team was always deeply in the hunt for another title...

Will we ever again see anyone of the combined talent, character, and consistency of Tim Duncan in the NBA?  My gut instincts tell me no, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed.  He was one of my most admired athletes over the past two decades...

Police Encounters with Suspects: Protocol and Response

In light of what has been going on with the relationship across our country between the police and the black community...especially concerning shooting deaths of blacks by cops when there didn't seem to be a compelling threat present...I have recently come across two interesting social media posts about the topic.  One of these, about which I'll discuss today, was a Facebook repost from a while back and which concerned a young black man pulled over in Tucson, Arizona for a busted taillight.  Upon being asked if he had a weapon, the driver informed the (white) policeman that he was legally carrying a concealed gun, described where he was wearing it...and also mentioned that he was in the National Guard.  The police asked him, in the interests of safety, to follow their stated procedure to carefully disarm him in order to safely attend to the main goal...which was to see his driver's license. This he did without complaint, all went smoothly, and the officer handed him back his gun in a plastic bag without ticketing him, complimenting him on his cooperation.  The message behind this post is clear: if you are aware in advance of police protocol, concerns, and procedure during encounters with civilians suspected of anything, then you shouldn't have anything to worry about the police harming you...regardless of your race or that of the law enforcement officer.  On the other hand, if you aren't...and most of us aren't...privy to all of the ins and outs of the police code...then it's your own fault if you happen to make a move in their presence that they feel justified in answering with a bullet to your body.  I'm not black, I'm white...and the policeman who stopped me for a traffic violation a few years ago wasn't white...he was black...but the situation was similar.  At the end of explaining to me what he saw as my violation of a recently passed, obscurely-stated state law, he thrust a board at me through the window that had my ticket set on top of it, all written out for me to sign.  I naturally...and I thought compliantly...reached to take hold of it to sign and he suddenly went into a near rage, yelling at me not to take it!  I honestly thought at that moment that he would pull a gun on me. Without saying anything, I meekly took the pen he had handed me and, careful not to commit the unpardonable sin of touching anything directly, scribbled my name on the ticket, hoping to God that this madman would then just creep back into his car and leave me alone...

Note that I was subject to a "crisis" moment with a cop that wasn't my fault.  That's the fault of the police, in my opinion, for expecting me to know in advance some arcane aspect of their procedures.  On the other hand, I had the presence of mind and enough respect for the police that I was the entire time consciously trying to cooperate with them...and immediately got myself as meek as possible when I saw that cop go into "combat" mode.  I'm looking at a lot of these tragic cases in the news and I'm seeing suspects engaged with police in heated arguments, wrestling matches, and running away.  None of which should justify being shot and killed...that's on the cops...but those who ultimately were victims of police violence should all have been educated as to how to behave when that crisis moment came in their own encounter with the "long arm of the law".  So what I'm saying, I suppose, regarding that Facebook post is that yes, there is a proper, effective way for citizens to respond to the police when stopped and questioned and that we should all be drilled in it.  But the reality of it all is that very few of us are and the police should know better than to expect everyone to respond perfectly as did that Arizona Guardsman...

Major Party Presidential Conventions Coming Up Soon

When I was eleven years old, in the summer of 1968, I watched my first presidential nomination conventions for both the Republican and Democratic Parties.  They dragged on for days and usually went deep into the night...and were carried on all three major networks CBS, NBC, and ABC.  In the first one, for the GOP, Richard Nixon won a majority against second-place contender Nelson Rockefeller from the left and third-place Ronald Reagan from the right.  Despite his opposition, Nixon had a pretty easy go of it, once his main threat to the nomination, George Romney, had dropped out of the race months earlier after he claimed he had been "brainwashed" about Vietnam by U.S. officials on a visit there.  It was the Democratic Convention, held in Chicago and the site of the infamous police riot against protesters and innocent bystanders, that gripped my attention.  In the aftermath of the Robert Kennedy assassination, the only sizeable opposition left to establishment candidate and sitting vice-president Hubert Humphrey was Gene McCarthy, whose performance against incumbent president Lyndon Johnson in the New Hampshire Primary had ushered in the latter's withdrawal from the race for his own reelection.  That convention was insanely disorganized, divided, and rancorous...it put Humphrey at a big disadvantage against Nixon in the general election campaign...but it was very interesting to watch...

I also saw the Democratic and Republican Conventions in 1972, both held in Miami Beach.  McGovern withstood a rules challenge from Humphrey to win the Democratic nomination while Nixon won his party's nomination nearly unanimously.  I felt that the Democratic convention was interesting because there was a legitimate contest going on there as well as a wide gulf between various factions...right-winger George Wallace had many delegates there...but on the Republican side it was just a procession of speakers.  Sadly, that's what these presidential conventions have evolved into nowadays: a preplanned, orchestrated public relations program promoting each party's candidate and its platform.  They're very careful now to ensure that the maximum number of TV viewers have access to their respective shows, now carefully contained within prime time hours.  How utterly boring...

I have no desire to watch either convention this year...that's probably just as well since I'll be working every evening they're on the air.  The Republican Convention, held in Cleveland, will be starting a little more than a week from now, on Monday July 18 and last through Thursday the 21st.  The Democrats will follow the Republicans exactly a week later from Philadelphia, also going from  Monday through Thursday.  As for outside demonstrations, there are plans for protests from leftist groups at both convention sites...

Distance Running For Kids: Different Than When I Was Little

When I was in elementary and high school, we had our own annual physical fitness test.  Let's see, there was the 50-yard dash, shuttle run, pull-ups, standing long jump, sit-ups, and softball throw in the elementary years.  When I got to the eighth-grade, they seem to have added a new component to the mix: the 600-yard run.  You see, the idea of actually running a full mile nonstop wasn't something that the "experts" in physical fitness back when I was a kid in the late 1960s and early 1970s thought was worth promoting...later on it became a feature of such tests.  As for me when I was a kid, whenever I ran, it was always full-speed from the start, without any notion of pacing myself.  And it's true that, in elementary and junior high, I was a pretty good sprinter.  But the 600-yard run might have been the 600-mile run for the agony I put myself through running it...basically the "sprint from hell".  Yet I usually did pretty well in whatever race I ran with my fellow students for this distance, most of the time either winning or finishing second. And, yes, in ninth grade phys-ed class we would sometimes run a mile around the track.  The idea of actually training for distance running, though, was something I had never considered nor had it ever been suggested to me...until in my later high school years.  The main point was that running long distances, which now so obviously dominates the sport of running among the general population, was then not at all encouraged for children, me among them.  It wouldn't be until later in high school that I would begin to run long-distance.  In high-school cross country competition, the course was only 2.5 miles long...while in track the longest competition was 2 miles.  Of course, that did not stop us (I participated in track in the 11th grade, in early 1973) from running as many as 10 miles a day in practice...

All these memories come to mind after I just finished yet another "subdued" run in a race, the 3-mile Melon Run this past July Fourth.  I did finish that race...hooray...but a couple of little boys, one seven and the other nine, finished about a half-minute ahead of me.  They had been conditioned by the favorable climate for distance running that permeates these times of ours, something completely lacking when I was their age.  To me back then in the mid-to-late 1960s, running just meant sprinting...I don't even think I knew of the word "sprint"...when you ran, you just ran as fast as you possibly could.  The idea of running even just a mile would have seemed a superhuman performance to me when I was seven.  But nowadays, that paradigm has massively shifted, with youngsters now encouraged to tackle the longer distances...

The Poverty Mindset: Two Opposing Views

Not being someone who is recklessly extravagant with my own personal spending, I have heard the charge directed at me in the past that I had a "poverty mindset".  The rationale supporting this notion is that people who think of themselves with low self-esteem tend to also see themselves as being poor and unworthy of the "good" things in life.  The remedy for this, according to those who think they know better, is to avoid selling yourself short in life and instead live it to its fullest, with gusto...because after all, you only go around once in life!  Sounds a bit like a beer commercial, doesn't it?

Well, it's true that for many years when I was single, I lived by myself on a modest income and was rather frugal about how I managed my money.  I chose to live well enough not to suffer...I had my home, transportation adequate for my purposes, and no want of food, clothing, or entertainment.  However, within each of these areas I made economic choices with my money, realizing that it all came out of the pool of funds that I had amassed from my paychecks.  During this time I never went into debt and actually managed to save a tidy sum of money.  Now I have a much better-paying job and, by most people's standards have a reasonable standard of living in this world of today.  Yet I still believe in making wise spending choices, and I respectfully disagree with anyone saying that this is symptomatic of a poverty mindset.  But I'll gladly let anyone know exactly what I consider to be a poverty mindset...

People who, in my opinion, have a true poverty mindset are those whose attitudes and behaviors ensure a chronic condition of debt while any windfall of money that does come their way is quickly spent away on "good living"...which they inevitably see as an important necessity of life.  You know the stories of the lottery winners or young superstar professional athletes and entertainers who spend away their riches and wind up impoverished, if not deeply in debt.  But you don't have to be one of them...if you are constantly dreaming of many things you'd like to experience in life...things that ultimately cost a lot of money...you may find those extra funds you might come across disappearing quickly.  Also, folks living on the financial edge who are susceptible to substance abuse may find, upon getting better-paying employment or a favorable break in their housing situation, that those old addictions have returned, sucking away the extra money that they could have been saving for a better life...

I'm not criticizing anyone for dreaming...I do, too.  But you can't have everything, and simple economics dictates that.  It is normal to have to make choices about money based on what you have and how much things cost.  That is reality, not a "poverty mindset"...

I believe that those with true poverty mindsets are essentially unhappy people who lack a capacity for contentment and appreciation for what they already have in life.  They tend to compare themselves with others...especially with those who seem to have more education, a more prestigious job, a bigger house, a snazzier car, lots of world-hopping travel experiences, and so on...with the conclusion that their own lives are comparatively lacking in meaning.  You cannot satisfy people like this and I doubt that they would ever be content even were they to achieve all of their material and worldly dreams...

Enjoying Watching the Tour de France

Now that there isn't a standout American like disgraced Lance Armstrong competing in the annual Tour de France, the premier bicycle racing event in the world, interest in this championship has diminished in the United States.  Ironically, I have found that not having any particular bicyclist or country to root for has made it more interesting for me, as I have discovered that participating in the Tour involves a lot more than just being in good physical condition, jumping on a good bike, and pedaling your ass off...

For one thing, entrants in the Tour de France must be on one of the allotted 22 nine-bicyclist teams, making a total of 198.  Each team carries the banner of a country, but they are privately owned and sponsored...and countries can be represented by multiple teams.  Within a team, the roles of the various members are manifold: one, to support the "star" bicyclist in his quest for individual glory, two, work to maximize the team's score, and three, to aid individuals in the team to garner points or times for certain categories that the Tour awards...

As for the championships within the Tour de France, the most prestigious is the General, which is the title you usually hear going to the Tour's annual winner.  This is based on cumulative times spread out over the 21-stage, 2,200-mile course that winds its away across France.  There is also a Points championship competition that involves the top placers in each stage...as well as how well they do at each stage's halfway point.  A Mountains award goes to the bicyclist with the best overall time based on how they handle the climbing sections of the races.  A Young Rider prize goes to the entrant who is 25 or younger with the best cumulative time.  And the Team award...well, I suppose that one is self-evident...

I love how the Tour de France is covered on television, here on NBCSports (Gainesville's Cox Cable Channel 33).  I can either watch it live late in the morning (as I did today) or watch the day's racing replayed later at night.  The multiple camera angles of the race are amazing and give the viewer the sense of being there in the middle of it all.  And the almost virtual tour through France is stunningly beautiful as the contestants race through towns, country roads, and across mountains.  The most interesting thing I've been picking up about the Tour de France, though, is the "peloton"...the main group of bicyclists in the race, who ride excruciatingly close to each other and always seem to be on the verge of a domino-like multiple crash...like in one of the early scenes in the James Bond flick Goldeneye.  It gets even more scary when the road leads uphill or becomes much narrower.  The riders find refuge in the peloton in order to cut down on wind drag...by as much as 40%.  In each stage, there is always a small number of racers who go out in front, far ahead of the peloton.  As the race goes on and the end approaches, the leaders usually begin to fall back and the peloton gains on them.  Sometimes it catches up, but sometimes an early leader will gut it out to the end and win the stage.  And in order to avoid catastrophic collisions at the ends of races, all racers within the peloton group are given the same finishing time...as long as there is no intervening gap of a second or more between finishers...

At the start of each successive stage in the Tour de France, the competitor currently leading with the best cumulative time (General competition) wears a yellow jersey.  The one leading the Points competition wears a green jersey.  The leader in the Mountains competition gets a polka-dot jersey.  The Young Rider leader dons a white jersey, while the ongoing leaders in the Team competition get yellow helmets.  They seem to make a great deal about getting to wear these special jerseys and helmets: personally, I don't see the point in it other to cultivate fan interest and lend some temporary prestige to participants who may not stay at the top as the Tour progresses...

The Tour de France has just finished the 5th stage, which involved a more mountainous course than the previous ones.  This time around the peloton didn't catch up with the leaders, making me wonder whether the more challenging terrain had something to do with it.  Well, tomorrow is another day, and I'm confident the course will once again be interesting and distinctly different...

American Spacecraft Juno Successfully Establishes Jupiter Orbit

Nine days ago, in an article on this blog, I wrote about the impending arrival of the American unmanned spacecraft Juno at Jupiter, to take place on July 4...yesterday.  I also suggested that people wanting to see some reporting about that arrival tune in to one of the cable news channels to get the news.  Well, Juno was scheduled, around 11 pm Eastern Time, to execute a complex maneuver that would establish a stable polar orbit around our largest planet.  It would take only about 30 minutes, and then the mission specialists would know about its success.  Unfortunately, CNN, FoxNews, HLN, and MSNBC all had decided to air non-news programming at the time, so there was no live televised reporting of this significant event in our national space program...unless, of course, you were watching the NASA Channel.  Once the live general news coverage finally resumed, it was reported that the orbit was successfully performed, and quite accurately at that...cause for much celebration for the project's organizers and anyone interested in our space endeavors, as well as for the furtherance of science...especially in the realm of astronomy...

Juno will continue to orbit Jupiter until 2018, when it will be sent to its destruction into the planet...in order, they say, to avoid the potential contamination of any Jovian moons that might be harboring life.  From time to time in the weeks to come, we should be hearing about Juno's various experiments, as well as getting to see some pretty dazzling close-up pictures of Jupiter...

By the way, here is a link to that earlier article [link]...

Ran in Gainesville's Three-Mile Melon Run This Morning

Five years ago, during one of my trips to Hollywood in south Florida to visit my father, I decided to go for a run around my old subdivision of Boulevard Heights.  I had it all mapped out with the mileage I was going to run, using a computer application to accomplish this.  I checked out the local temperature and humidity just before I set out on my run: 80 degrees, 82%.  I ran the unpleasant four miles and, after a few minutes back in the house, regurgitated all of the Gatorade I had drunk.  I felt bad the rest of the day and promised myself never to run when both temperature and humidity were 80 or above...and I never had a similar incident since then.  For when it is both hot and very humid, the body is prevented from cooling itself through perspiration by the intensity of moisture in the air...and can overheat to dangerous levels... 

Fast forward to this morning and Gainesville's annual Fourth of July race, the three-mile Melon Run...organized by the Florida Track Club and held at Westside Park.  I could feel that it was warm and muggy, but not how much so.  Anyway, I was going to take the race easy, running at a comfortable pace for me.  I also knew that the course had a long, challenging upwardly sloping section...well, challenging at least for a lifelong Floridian as myself, used to running on flat surfaces.  What I didn't know, until I was halfway through the race, was that they had drastically changed the racecourse from the times I had run it in 2010 and 2012.  Instead of having sections of it going east down NW 8th Avenue, cutting northward through Loblolly Woods Park, and then returning to the park via NW 16th Avenue, the organizers simply repeated the first half of the course...which meant having to trudge back up that torturous stretch of gradually ascending pavement northward along NW 31st Drive a second time. Ugh...

I won't mince words: it was an ordeal for me to finish what should have been a simple jog...especially with my final time (by my own watch) of 28:22, just a 9:27 per mile pace.  Of course, the relative hilliness of the terrain was a factor in my difficulty, but it wasn't until I got hold of my cellphone and checked the current weather readings that I fully understood what had happened: 80 degrees, 89% humidity! The conditions ended up being substantially more hazardous than what I had experienced before in south Florida...

After all of this, I have to come away from my experience this morning feeling that I'm in better shape than I initially had thought, having successfully withstood some very challenging circumstances with no adverse effects to show for it all.  Now to begin working to return to a higher level of running endurance...

Remembering Old UF Economics Profs Denslow & Rush

I was browsing through my Sunday morning Gainesville Sun newspaper, looking for any interesting articles, when I came upon David Denslow's column.  Denslow is a retired University of Florida economics professor who has recently taken up speaking out on the issues of the day.  Today's article was about Brexit, a.k.a. Britain's vote to exit the European Community...which Denslow says is going to be bad for them.  Well, I don't have to be an economics professor to discern that, but it also helps to have some strong statistics to back up your argument.  And the good professor has always been on top of his facts...although his presentation of them can seem a bit dry and hurried...

Back in the year 2000, when I was in the middle of finishing up my Bachelor's program at the University of Florida after a hiatus of about twenty years, I was taking two summer introductory economics courses to fulfill my basic course distribution requirements for the degree.  They were Macroeconomics and Microeconomics and were "TV" courses that were broadcast over a local public service channel.  The lectures were also available over the Internet, about which I was then rather challenged (and still am to a degree), so I kept to the televised lessons.  Our aforementioned Dr. David Denslow taught the macroeconomics class and Dr. Mark Rush taught microeconomics.  Both topics were interesting to me, but in the end it seemed that I got lost and confused on the "macro" level while attaining a reasonable degree of understanding on the "micro".  That might have been due to the nature of the material itself...or it might have been the result of the professors and how they taught their courses...

For the most part, I liked both professors' classes...hey, I got "A" in both of them!  But whereas Denslow went a mile a minute with his teaching, Rush paced his lectures with humorous breaks that helped us poor unenlightened students to catch up with him.  One of his devices was to use the show's "Director" as a fall guy, and they were forever trading barbs with one another.  Another was Rush's use of his frequent trips to Leonardo's Pizza on University Avenue to illustrate microeconomic principles.  Maybe poor Denslow just couldn't compete with that approach and unfairly suffered by comparison.  Besides, had I been teaching introductory college economics classes, I probably would have resembled Dave more than Mark...although certainly I would have fared badly in comparison to either of them...they both were very competent, good teachers who sparked interest in their respective subjects...

One sidelight to all this: I used to go out to a coffee shop and study there before my tests in these classes, which basically consisted of mid-terms and finals.  And just which coffee shop was this? Why, the old Magnolia Parke Starbucks, where I am sitting right now writing this article.  Except that, back then in mid-2000, it had just opened its doors for the first time.  Since then, over the years, I've seen Dr. Rush as a customer here.  Were I to make a list of my favorite school teachers, from elementary school all the way to the end of college, he would be right up there on it. As far as I know, he is still teaching microeconomics at UF.  And, of course, we now know where to find Dr. Denslow on a Sunday morning...

Looking at Prospective Half-Marathons Late in 2016

Each and every year since 2010, I have run a half-marathon.  Until now in 2016, that is.  During the first few months of this year, I was either sick, injured, had schedule conflicts...or the weather was unusually stormy whenever an opportunity arose to participate in a 13.1 mile race.  Now we're in the "dog days" of summer and there simply aren't any such available races in my region...it won't be until October when I'll have any chances.  But for the last three months of the year, there should be several races from which I could choose to run: after all, just one entered-and-completed half-marathon is all it takes to keep my streak of consecutive years intact...

In October, Saturday the 8th is the Marine Corps Half-Marathon in Jacksonville.  Since I'll be coming off a work day ending at midnight a few hours earlier, I would prefer a Sunday race.  And there are those as well: two on the 23rd, in Cocoa Beach and Apalachicola.  I've been thinking about that annual Apalachicola race since 2010!  And the 30th of October features a half-marathon in Port Orange.  In November, the opportunities continue.  My Gainesville has its Tom Walker Memorial Half-Marathon on Saturday, the 5th, a race I've already run a couple of times before.  I may or may not be in town at that time, though, since I'll then be on vacation.  On Sunday November 13th, St. Augustine will be hosting a race...that sounds like my favorite of all of them so far.  And in December, on Sunday the 18th, a half-marathon will take place in Mount Dora...

So I should have a few chances to run a half-marathon this calendar year of 2016.  The question I need to ask myself...and appropriately answer...is will I be ready for it when the day comes...

My June 2016 Running Report

For the month of June I ran a total of 153 miles with me running on every day, usually multiple times per day.  My longest single run was for 4.5 miles.  I would say that June was a "maintenance" month for me: I'm not getting any better, but if I am slipping any with my running, it isn't by very much.  Being more careful with my eating and losing a few pounds would doubtless work wonders with my running progress...other than continuing with my running maintenance, it's my top priority during this uncomfortably hot and humid summer here in northern Florida...

I didn't participate in any races in June...there weren't many offered and for the ones that were, they were too far away and/or in conflict with my schedule.  But next month, in the morning on the Fourth (this coming Monday), the Florida Track Club will be holding its annual three-mile Melon Run at Westside Park.  I've run it a couple of times before and it may be my only opportunity to enter a public running event for some time.  My plan is to run the race as a training run without concerning myself about my speed...but all bets are off when I make that last turn in the road and the finish line draws near, especially since the end of this racecourse is basically downhill...

The Scripts of the Former Central Asian Soviet Republics

Although the hegemony of the Russian Empire had long extended over central Asian territory with Turkic and Persian Islamic populations and languages, it wasn't until the Soviet Union took over in the early twentieth century that an interest grew in that region's languages and scripts.  Azerbaijani, Turkmen, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Uzbek, and Tajik, the languages of the respective republics with similar names, had all been based on the Arabic script since their populations were Muslim.  In order to separate these peoples from their Islamic roots...as well as encourage literacy by having the script more accurately reflect the spoken word, the authorities in the U.S.S.R. around 1928 decreed a change to the Latin script for these languages.  About ten years later, though, another change was enacted when they were all forced to change once more...this time to the Russian Cyrillic script.  The rationale behind this draconian move was to bring the various diverse republics together closer to Russia.  I remember checking out a book from my public library during the seventies...it was The Languages of the World by Kenneth Katzner...and seeing  the samples Katzner provided of these languages presented in their then-official Cyrillic script.  Since I was then just beginning to learn Russian and its Cyrillic writing system, I found these languages, whose vocabulary and grammars were alien to Russian, very intriguing...

After the Soviet breakup in 1991, the various former republics each went their own way regarding how to write in their own language.  Tajikistan, the one Persian, non-Turkic former republic from central Asia, briefly considered re-adopting Iran's Arabic script but instead decided to remain with the Cyrillic.  Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan likewise stayed with their Soviet-era writing system. But after independence, motivated partially to separate themselves from their dominated past and partially to make their languages easier to learn and read by the rest of the world, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan went back to using the Latin script.  I can understand them changing back over to Latin, but I can also see the advantage in sticking with Cyrillic writing in order to keep continuity with the past.  After all, these countries, which have undergone script changes every few years, must have large collections of books and material written in scripts few can now read, with sections of their histories linguistically cut off...that must seriously interfere with a nation's development.  However, maybe in our digital age that won't be as much of a problem as it might have been before.  The question, though, is which books and material written in obsolete scripts get to be published in the current one, and which are left in obscurity...and who gets to decide?

Just Finished Reading Henry Kuttner's Clash by Night

The novella Clash by Night is widely considered a classic story in mid-twentieth century science fiction.  Published in March of 1943 (a significant year, considering its content) and written by established sci-fi/horror/fantasy writer Henry Kuttner, it takes an imaginative look deep into the future at human life on the planet Venus.  No, back in the '40s we didn't yet know that Venus was an unihabitable planet of sulphuric acid, extreme heat, supervolcano eruptions, and a runaway greenhouse effect.  Instead, Kuttner envisioned it as did many in his time: covered largely like Earth with oceans, with the land being impenetrable masses of dense jungle with extraordinarily hostile native life forms.  In Clash by Night, humanity lives in communities called "keeps", under large domes on the sea floor.  Each keep represents something like a city-state, and they are constantly at war with the other keeps on the planet for resources and power.  To this end they employ mercenary navies to fight their battles while the civilians under the domes maintain their own safety and continuity of civilization.  Brian Scott, the story's protagonist, is an officer in one of these mercenary groups and is currently employed by the Montana Keep.  There is an impending attack from another navy representing a different keep, and Scott must prepare for it.  One big rule that everyone follows: no atomic weaponry is allowed, something that is universally understood.  For, you see, in Earth's past its leaders destroyed the home planet through atomic warfare.  Uh-h-h, wait a minute, now...

Remember how I said that Clash by Night was published in 1943?  Well, during that time we were in the middle of World War II (which might explain this big war story of Kuttner's).  America's Manhattan Project to develop an atomic bomb was top-secret, but our author not only foresaw its successful development, but he also went down the logical path of inferring nuclear holocaust as a result...despite the fact that the first A-bomb would not even be successfully built and exploded for more than two years in the future.  Amazing...

As you might guess from the story's title and what I've written so far about it, Clash by Night ultimately concerns itself with a climactic military battle.  But the story is more than who wins and who loses.  It explores the vast gulf between being a soldier...especially during a war...and being a civilian: two very disparate kinds of life and worldview.  Scott is continually in a state of inner conflict about how he defines himself and how he should spend his future.  Wow, that sounds like what a lot of folks are going through nowadays...

2016 Wimbledon Tennis Championships Have Begun

The 2016 Wimbledon tennis championships have begun today and will go on until July 10.  Played on a grass surface, it is the oldest of the four Grand Slam tournaments (the others are the Australian, French, and U.S. Opens) and the third to be played this year.  Although it is composed of several competitions...including one on wheelchairs...the chief focus is always the men's and women's singles.  Except, I should say, that they refer to them as the "gentlemen's" and "ladies'"...

The defending men and women champions are Novak Djokovic and Serena Williams...also respectively seeded and ranked #1.  Their losing opponents in last year's finals, Roger Federer and Garbiñe Muguruza, are seeded and ranked #2.  So if all goes according to "plan", we'll see a couple of rematches this year...but don't count on it.  There are always some surprises over the course of the tournament.  And Andy Murray on the men's side and Angelique Kerber or Agnieska Radwanska on the women's could potentially walk away with the title.  Missing in Wimbledon this year are Rafael Nadal, Victoria Azarenka, and Maria Sharapova.  Nadal and Azarenka have injuries while Sharapova is suspended because of performance-enhancing drug use...

Djokovic has already won this year's Australian and French Opens.  He is trying to win all four majors in one year, a feat that has been remarkably elusive over the years...especially considering the relative lack of parity at this sport's highest levels.  Williams, on the other hand, is trying to recover her winning ways, having lost in the Australian finale to Kerber and in the French to Muguruza...

I won't be sitting there glued to the TV watching Wimbledon.  However, since due to the time zone difference between England and the eastern U.S. many of the matches will be shown live on TV in the morning hours, it will be very convenient for me to watch some of them at that time of day.  But as is the case with baseball, it can get to be a bit tedious just sitting there watching tennis matches without interruption.  No problem...I have other things to do while Wimbledon is on...

American Spacecraft Juno Soon to Arrive at Jupiter

The American unmanned spacecraft Juno, launched in August 2011, is scheduled to arrive at the planet Jupiter, its destination, on July 4th...eight days from now.  Loaded with scientific instruments and experiments designed to gather information about our largest planet, it will then go into an elliptical polar orbit (designed to escape most of the effects of Jupiter's radiation) for several months.  Some of the project's main objectives are to determine the planet's water composition and the nature of its core.  Also, Jupiter's gravitational and magnetic fields will be studied...the former should reveal the distribution of mass in the planet while the latter may enlighten researchers about the general nature of magnetic fields in some planets and how they originate...

Juno is the first deep space probe that is solar-powered.  It initially travelled beyond the orbit of Mars in 2012 and whipped back past Earth the following year to gain the necessary velocity to get to Jupiter.  I'm not sure about any spectacular pictures coming out of this expedition...only common sense would tell the project organizers that this would be a no-brainer, as our space program needs all the promotion it can get...remember the unbelievable shots of Pluto from last year's New Horizons probe?

I was wondering which news media outlet would first let on about Juno's impending arrival at Jupiter.  Others may have covered it first, but it was FoxNews that first broke the news to me yesterday.  Kudos to them, my other reservations about this channel notwithstanding...

So this coming Independence Day, turn on the news and see what's going on deep in space, high above our Jupiter.  By the way, you can see Jupiter in the evening if you look up at the western sky...you'll recognize it because it will easily be the brightest "star" out there... 

Just Finished Reading Jane Austen's Emma

Jane Austen is one of England's most famous and beloved novelists, having written her works in the early nineteenth century.  I had read only one of her books, Pride and Prejudice, which also happens to be her most well-known.  Here is my December 2014 review of it [link].  Although I liked that 1813 story of hers, I didn't get around to reading anything else by her until I just read her 1815 novel Emma...also widely acclaimed.  And once again, Austen's protagonist is a strong-willed young woman in the midst of that highly stratified English society way back then...

Emma Woodhouse, although young, attractive, rich, and well-placed in her society according to class, has no intention of falling in love, much less ever getting married.  That doesn't prevent her, though, from playing the matchmaker with other couples.  She has taken under her wings Harriet, a young woman who Emma believes is in danger of allowing herself to become engaged to a man beneath her station in life.  So our meddling protagonist encourages her friend to break off their relationship while promoting one with a "higher-class" Mr. Elton.  All signs seem to indicate that they will become a couple until it comes out that this man's attentions are directed at Emma, not Harriet.  And no, I'm not going to tell you everything that happens in this story.  Suffice to say that it all becomes a web of intrigues between a small number of characters who are continually letting themselves be deceived by misdirected romantic signals, be they directed by them or to them.  The question of who loves whom becomes paramount, and the assumptions that the characters make in this regard are usually comically wrong...

Emma, although on the surface a serious story, to me ends up being more of a comedy.  The plot is driven overwhelmingly by dialogue, and Jane Austen is a master at it, revealing all of the nuances of each character's personality by what they choose to talk about and how they say it.  My favorite character is Miss Bates, a friend of Emma's family who is a non-stop talker going on and on about all sorts of topics, most of them inane and irrelevant.  Just imagine Edith Bunker...on steroids.  Very funny she is, along with the cascading misunderstandings of the characters about each other...

There's not a lot of action in Emma: it is a tale about relationships set in a culture that would be hard to recognize or understand in our twenty-first century America.  I don't buy into all that old nonsense about social class, and I bet you probably don't, either.  Still, the story demands, as most all do, that the reader temporarily suspend his or her notions about some things in order to more deeply follow it.  Well, I'm done reading it and can now go back to my more egalitarian views on society.  I recommend Emma, although I feel that Pride and Prejudice was better...

United Kingdom Votes to Leave European Union

I read somewhere that British Prime Minister David Cameron didn't need to schedule yesterday's vote for his country to decide whether or not to remain a member of the European Union but did so thinking that he would safely win the referendum.  Was he ever wrong: the vote, at a 72% turnout rate, went 52-48% for leaving the E.U.  Other than London, urbanized areas along the Thames, and the western area around Liverpool, the electorate in England and Wales opted for exit.  But Scotland, which not too long ago voted to reject independence and instead remain in the United Kingdom, overwhelmingly voted to remain in the European Union...as did Northern Ireland and Gibraltar...

Cameron today announced his resignation and will leave office sometime this fall.  President Obama had gone over there and urged Britons to vote to stay in the European Union...I wonder whether that had a backlash effect.  I do know that there is much concern there about terrorism and open borders with Europe...and a feeling that they had lost control over much of their own country.  That may or may not be more a matter of perception than reality, but it seemed that many of the votes for exiting the E.U. were anti-Cameron, anti-Conservative Party protest votes.  Also, the right wing is rising throughout Europe, and there is much rhetoric going around promoting nationalism and security.  So it shouldn't have come as any surprise that Donald Trump, while promoting the opening of a new golf course of his in Scotland, would quickly come out in favor of Britain's exit...claiming that they were taking their country back.  The irony of this vote, however, is that Scotland, and possibly even Northern Ireland, may well hold another independence referendum...and the results this time around are almost certain to be different.  And Spain will probably renew their pressure to regain control over Gibraltar.  So "independence" may end up leading to "disintegration" as far as the United Kingdom is concerned...

I don't live over there like the good folks who voted their convictions and hopes about their country's future, so I therefore have not been sharing their experiences as to what has been going on for the last few years.  If there is a big problem concerning how the European Union governs and its relationships among member nations, then maybe this action on the part of the U.K. will give it more of a sense of accountability.  I don't see this happening, though: instead, the media seems to be putting out the idea that it's all because right-wing extremist parties are dramatically rising in Europe.  I suspect there's a bit more to the problem than that, although larger segments of the population there are suffering fears about terrorism and unrestrained immigration from the Middle East, doubtless leading them straight into the arms of these nationalist parties and their political agenda...