Atlantic Hurricane Season Slows to a Crawl

Earlier this year, with so many unusually early tropical storms, it looked as if we might be experiencing another of those Atlantic hurricane seasons with a multitude of named storms extending toward the end of the alphabet.  However, during this past month we've had nary a one...but that situation may be changing in the course of the next week or so.  Out in the eastern Atlantic are two tropical circulation zones, which the folks in the meteorological realm, who have a penchant for giving curious designations to weather patterns, have called "Invest 97-L" and "Invest 96-L".  They are being given around a 30-50 % chance for development and are heading down a westward trajectory that would leave the most advanced one getting to Puerto Rico in as early as five days.  Not that I want a tropical storm, much less a hurricane, to hit us or anyone else, but at least it's a newsworthy item that can serve as a welcome distraction to the extremely annoying election campaign season we're having to undergo...

Music From Youth Evokes Memories

When I surf through my music radio stations here in Gainesville, almost always in my car, it is the norm to encounter music from twenty-five years and older on them.  Whether I'm on 92.5, 98.5, 99.5. or 100.9, I'm more likely to hear a song like Gerry Rafferty's 1978 Baker Street or the Doobie Brothers' 1975 Black Water than I am to hear something more recent...like from this century.  That's not how I would have predicted it back then.  It's really quite astounding, when you think about it.  I thought that many of the hits, when I was listening to them back then, had only transitory "fame value"...yet they're being played nowadays as if the intervening decades had never happened. Not that I'm complaining, for it's been quite some time since I've been particularly interested in what constitutes contemporary popular music on the radio...

I have a theory about why these old hits are still so popular.  It is in how people will associate different songs from their past with memories of times and events they were experiencing when those songs were popular.  For example, I believe it was in 1970 that my sister Anita went to a concert of the pop group The Association.  I was in the car when we picked her up from the concert site to take her home...now, whenever I hear a song of theirs, I'm taken back to that evening drive at that particular place.  Sometimes the connections can get to be a bit strange: for example, the 1977 Manfred Mann hit Blinded By the Light (originally written and recorded by Bruce Springsteen) brings back memories of Nova Elementary School back in 1968.  I asked myself why this was so...and then it hit me.  Toward the end of this song...which I incidentally liked a lot...the piano breaks down into a freaky rendition of Chopsticks...and Chopsticks was played on one of the Bell Science movies we watched endlessly back in the sixth grade in '68.  Or how about Gail Garnett's We'll Sing in the Sunshine or Chad and Jeremy's Summer Song, both from 1964?  With these I'm transported back to sitting on my back porch with my mom and sister...as if I were still seven years old...

Nowadays, even if I do take a liking to a current song on the radio, I am less likely to associate it with life events.  However, since I do carry an MP3 player around and often listen to it while running, I've associated this activity with the music I'm listening to.  So musical acts like Regina Spektor, Radiohead, Gorillaz, Kasabian, Spoon, Beck, and Sufjan Stevens now evoke memories of different times and locations I have been out running during the last six years or so.  But the strongest associations still come with those songs I listened to in my youth and early adulthood.  They are like keys to old, buried memories...

Unhappy With Both Republican and Democratic Conventions

The Democratic National Convention is down to its final two days, and then we'll be finished with the convention season.  And, I say to that, "Good riddance!"  Each party's convention has been largely forgettable, with the numerous speakers and performers there appealing  to the audience's emotions, not their sense of reason or judgment.  The Republicans split up their act last week into three basic themes: one, Hillary Clinton is on trial...two, Donald Trump is a great family man, as expressed by his family onstage...three, the world is a bad place, full of things and people to fear and be angry at: just leave it all to the Donald...he'll make them all an offer they can't refuse.  As for the witch hunt against the Democratic presidential nominee, it was the worst form of hypocrisy that New Jersey governor Chris Christie, implicated in a serious bridge-closing scandal during his own administration a couple of years ago, would preside over it all as the "prosecutor".  As for Trump's family, I hardly think that parading your own family members across the stage to give accolades to yourself makes you any more special then anyone else running for the high office.  And as for the stoking of fear and anger, the solution offered, which is to give this candidate almost dictatorial powers to unilaterally change our alliances, violate others' human rights, discriminate against still others for their religious beliefs, and to start a global economic protectionism war, is totally beyond the pale...

I'd like to be reporting that the Democrats are doing much better, but here, too, we see a different form of emotionalism...and excessive political correctness.  Of course, they have to pay homage to the various "correct" interest groups to show what a "good", inclusive, diverse party they are...as opposed to all those white male Republicans last week...and to continually pile on the emotional assurance that Hillary really does care about others and isn't as corrupt and selfish as her political enemies keep asserting.  And couldn't we have easily done without the ridiculous crowd-baiting of Sarah Silverman as she, standing onstage with Senator Al Franken on the first evening, began berating the numerous Bernie Sanders delegates there for not automatically and obediently flipping their allegiances wholeheartedly to Hillary?  That brilliant move only resulted in a floor-wide shouting match between the two candidates' supporters...so much for unity.  And Paul Simon?  Please, will someone please tell this talented musician that Bridge Over Troubled Waters is a song that demands someone with the vocal range of Art Garfunkel to sing...he should have known better than to attempt it solo since he wrote the damned song in the first place...

I thought the only two speeches that mattered in the Republican convention were delivered by Ted Cruz and Donald Trump and, on the Democratic side, it will also be the main contenders Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton whose oratory will count.  As far as I'm concerned, they could have dispensed with all of the other nonsense and distilled their respective parties' messages into these speeches...and spared the American people a lot of grief, not to mention all of the cancelled regularly televised programming...

Regina Spektor's New Album Out on Sept 30

Russian-American pianist/singer/songwriter Regina Spektor, one of my all-time favorite recording artists, will be issuing her seventh studio album on September 30.  It is titled Remember Us to Life.  Her last album, What We Saw From the Cheap Seats, came out in 2012 and is responsible for my favorite song from that year, the unforgettable Firewood.  I can hardly wait for this new album, as anything new this extraordinary talent comes out with is almost certain to contain some real jewels...

When I first became aware of Regina Spektor in 2010, it was on one of those free music websites that played songs according to the listener's preferred genre...I believe she was in the "Indie" category on it.  I then determined to collect her first five albums, all issued by that time.  The song Us, from her third album Soviet Kitsch, became my favorite song of 2010.  All that summer, whenever I went running long-distance through my neighborhood and points beyond, I would listen to a shuffled mix of her songs from those albums on my MP3 player during my training.  So in time, whenever I subsequently would hear one of those earlier songs, I would associate it with running...funny how that memory association thing works with music...

I think that Regina Spektor's music is much better than all these popular artists like Beyonce and Taylor Swift who keep winning the Grammys year after year.  But for some reason radio stations won't promote and play her music which, in my opinion, is far superior to what they provide in its place...

Late July Evening Sky: Three Small Constellations and the Milky Way

Deborah Byrd, on the EarthSky/Tonight website, wrote about the Summer Triangle of first-magnitude stars Vega in the constellation Lyra, Deneb in Cygnus, and Altair in Aquila.  Her article's focus, though, was the three small and relatively faint constellations found in this region of the sky: Vulpecula (the Fox), Delphinus (the Dolphin), and Sagitta (the Arrow).  Only Sagitta actually resembles what it represents, although there is a pattern of sorts for Delphinus.  I've often been able to find and identify these two tiny constellations...they're situated just to the north (Sagitta) and west (Delphinus) from Altair.  Vulpecula, on the other hand, is an entirely different matter...

I've never identified Vulpecula in the sky, and I wonder how many star-gazers have actually pulled off this challenging feat.  It has no bright stars and is more or less simply a sector cut out of the sky, generally south of Cygnus.  Two of its brightest stars, however, do form a small right triangle with the "head" star of Cygnus (on the other, southern end of the constellation from Deneb).  I'm thinking...if the sky remains clear tonight as it now is...of going out to see if I can make it out, now that I have what I believe to be a good point of reference...

If you want to observe the Milky Way in the night sky, this time of the year is optimal if you happen to live in the northern hemisphere.  It is strong in the constellation Sagittarius and goes northward into the midst of that Summer Triangle, concentrating most densely in the constellation Cygnus.  Because I live in the city, I can't make it out very well, but tonight I also plan to look at it, along with Vulpecula, Sagitta, and Delphinus...

The Summer Triangle, during the evening hours in late July, is rising high in the east.  Directly south of it lies Sagittarius, and it is along this line that you should be able to make out the Milky Way, should weather and your local lighting conditions permit.  The moon, now in a gibbous waning phase, might also be an inhibiting factor in trying to observe the fainter stars...

David Bowie's Songs: My Top 50 List

As I wrote a few days ago, I was assembling a list of my favorite music of David Bowie, who sadly passed away this January.  I listened to each and every one of his 27 studio albums, some fantastic, some good...and a very few not-so-good.  From these I picked the best of the best...I think he recorded around 300 songs.  So, any song on this Top 50 list, even if it is near the bottom, is one that I like an awful lot.  I want you, the reader, to have access to the songs on this list, so I also indicated the album each song on it belongs to, following in brackets...just in case you might want to check some of them out for yourself. And the first time an album appears in the list, I indicated its year of release. 

Well, here is my all-time list of David Bowie favorites...

1 BLACKSTAR  [Blackstar] 2016
2 Changes  [Hunky Dory] 1971
3 Space Oddity  [Space Oddity] 1969
4 Queen Bitch  [Hunky Dory]
5 Days  [Reality] 2003
6 Aladdin Sane  [Aladdin Sane] 1973
7 Memory of a Free Festival  [Space Oddity]
8 The Last Thing You Should Do [Earthling] 1997
9 5:15 the Angels Have Gone [Heathen] 2002
10 Station to Station [Station to Station] 1976
11 Under Pressure (with Queen)  [singles release] 1981
12 Tis a Pity She Was a Whore [Blackstar]
13 Looking for Satellites  [Earthling]
14 Hang on to Yourself  [Ziggy Stardust] 1972
15 Oh! You Pretty Things  [Hunky Dory]
16 Ashes to Ashes  [Scary Monsters] 1980
17 Suffragette City  [Ziggy Stardust]
18 Warszawa  [Low] 1977
19 Star  [Ziggy Stardust]
20 Golden Years  [Station to Station]
21 Life on Mars?  [Hunky Dory]
22 Little Wonder  [Earthling]
23 Big Brother/Chant of the Ever-Circling Skeletal Family  [Diamond Dogs] 1974
24 I Took a Trip on a Gemini Spacecraft  [Heathen]
25 A Better Future [Heathen]
26 Starman [Ziggy Stardust]
27 Blue Jean [Tonight] 1984
28 It Ain't Easy [Ziggy Stardust]
29 Fashion  [Scary Monsters]
30 Fall Dog Bombs the Moon  [Reality]
31 An Occasional Dream  [Space Oddity]
32 Heat  [The Next Day] 2013
33 I Can't Give Everything Away  [Blackstar]
34 Outside  [1.Outside] 1995
35 I'd Rather Be High  [The Next Day]
36 Heathen (the Rays)  [Heathen]
37 The Supermen [The Man Who Sold the World] 1970
38 How Does the Grass Grow  [The Next Day]
39 Boys Keep Swinging  [Lodger] 1979
40 China Girl  [Let's Dance] 1983
41 Gun Running Blues  [The Man Who Sold the World]
42 Young Americans  [Young Americans] 1975
43 All the Madmen  [The Man Who Sold the World]
44 Kooks  [Hunky Dory]
45 The Man Who Sold the World [The Man Who Sold the World]
46 Valentine's Day  [The Next Day]
47 Let's Dance  [Let's Dance]
48 Red Sails  [Lodger]
49 Rebel Rebel  [Diamond Dogs]
50 Pablo Picasso  [Reality]

Ups and Downs of TV This Morning

When I turned on my TV this morning, while running a few minutes in place in my living room and waiting for my coffee to finish brewing, I first caught sight of Donald Trump...on the morning following his supposedly watershed nomination speech...going back to what he does best: flinging mud at others.  His target today was one of his favorites: Ted Cruz.  I switched the channel, but all of the news stations seem to think that any time this guy wants to rant about anything or anyone, they are somehow obligated to give him all the free publicity he wants.  Then I remembered that the Tour de France was still going on, and I changed the channel to watch it.  Today it was in the 19th of its 21 stages, and the course was severe, going up and down mountains with steep slopes and tight curves.  On top of that, it was raining heavily, and cyclists were skidding and falling everywhere...including Tour leader Chris Froome.  Fortunately for him, immediately after his fall and loss of his own bike, a teammate who was right there gave him his own...Froome did not suffer much in the end in terms of his lead.  But his yellow jersey had gaping holes where he had hit the pavement, and you could see a lot of bruising over his body.  What a game, courageous performance this competitor gave today!

Later on, after the Donald was safely off the air, President Obama and Mexican President Nieto gave a joint press conference after their meeting with each other.  The calm, assured demeanor of Obama contrasted sharply with the often maniacal rantings of Trump.  Later on, I've heard, Hillary Clinton is supposed to announce her VP running mate, with the news pundits leaning toward Virginia senator Tim Kaine as the pick.  We'll see if they were right...

No, television wasn't all that great this morning unless you happen to be into bicycle racing or political mudslinging, but then again I didn't spend a lot of time going up and down the dial.  I did try out the Andy Griffith Show on TVLand, but alas, they were showing one of those inferior later color episodes without Don Knotts playing his famous role of Barney Fife.  And without ol' Barney to muddle things up, it just wasn't the same series anymore...

Ted Cruz Continues to Impress Me

I am not a conservative Republican, although there are some important issues about which we stand together in agreement.  One is that we need a strong national defense and a strong system of international alliances in order to keep the peace.  Another is that trade, without the burden of overbearing tariffs, should be free-flowing between countries.  These are two vastly important areas...national defense and the economy...incidentally, they are also two areas in which nominee Donald Trump has departed from the conservative mold, if, that is, he was ever there in the first place.  On the other hand, his chief challenger for the Republican presidential nomination, Texas senator Ted Cruz, clearly is on the "right" side in those crucial areas...

Trump has recently said that, if he were president and one or more NATO countries were attacked...presumably by Putin's Russia...then he might not assist them as the alliance demands.  Wow, that's a very dangerous road to go down, and it should make all of us feel much less secure.  And his idea of bringing jobs back to America is to impose exorbitantly high tariffs on countries like China and penalizing American companies that outsource abroad with high penalty taxes.  Wow, that's a surefire way to bring us and the world spiraling downward into a depression.  Ted Cruz is against Trump on both accounts...ironically, it is the presumptive Democratic Party nominee, Hillary Clinton, with whom the conservative Cruz is closer on at least these two important issues than the Republican nominee...

Ted Cruz and I differ a bit on several other issues, but I have been pleasantly surprised and impressed by how dignified and focused of a campaign he conducted.  In spite of that, Donald Trump repeatedly questioned his citizenship and qualifications to be president, continually referred to him in his campaign as "Lyin' Ted", openly insulted his wife's looks, and accused his father of being part of the "conspiracy" to assassinate John F. Kennedy.  Cruz, along with the other sixteen G.O.P. candidates, earlier pledged to support the eventual party nominee...but both he and I agree that Trump's disgusting and offensive personal attacks on him and his family annul any such commitment.  After all, it was Trump, following that pledge that he himself also made, who said that his own fulfillment of it depended on whether or not he was treated fairly...

After Ted Cruz was elected senator in 2012 and began serving there the following year, I quickly came to despise him...as apparently did many of his Senate colleagues, even within his own party.  He had an uncompromising way of doing things and his speeches just grated on me.  But the biggest surprise for me in this 2016 presidential campaign has been how tough, humorous, and eloquent he can be...especially under pressure and even adversity.  Last night he delivered the greatest speech of his career at the Republican Convention...and was roundly booed at its end by the Trump fanatics there for not endorsing the admirer of Putin and Mussolini.  I say to Ted, "Way to go, bro'!"

Ongoing Narratives Need to be Viewed Critically

Many years ago I came across a paperback book titled: The Bermuda Triangle Mystery--Solved, by Larry Kusche...published in 1972.  Being a young adolescent geek of a kid back then...long before the word "geek" came into general use...I had been interested in all sorts of weird topics at the time, chief among them ancient astronauts, maps of ancient seafarers...and this topic of the Bermuda Triangle, a general region in the western North Atlantic Ocean in which many mysterious unexplained disappearances of boats and planes are alleged to have occurred over the years.  I heard the narrative of the believers in this phenomenon which took each incident and explained it in a way that pointed to a nefarious force inhabiting the region.  When I got hold of Kusche's book, I was anxious to arm myself with the facts about this intriguing subject...

The Bermuda Triangle Mystery--Solved is basically an item-by-item presentation of the chief disappearances that have been assembled over time to create this narrative of a sinister area where the laws of nature seem to drastically change.  And Kusche was in a good position to accomplish this, since he was by profession a research librarian who knew how to comb through old newspapers and government archives to obtain his information on the events in question.  But first, the author wrote out the Bermuda Triangle narrative as it has been usually presented, from the viewpoint of the true believer.  After the narrative presented several seemingly impossible-to-refute examples of strange disappearances, it went on to postulate why they may have occurred.  Is there an undersea civilization out there doing all this, or maybe there is some special physical weather phenomenon responsible.  The important thing about the narrative's conclusions, though, is that the reader (or listener)  is expected to have already accepted the initial facts given within the narrative about the disappearances...

As Kusche went on in his book, he took each Triangle incident and clearly demonstrated what was really known to have happened... and in every instance the truth varied greatly from the "narrative".  After finishing this book, I no longer believed in any such thing as the Bermuda Triangle...not that this story hasn't continued to stay alive and strong in some quarters to this very day...

The point I want to make about the Bermuda Triangle and the resulting popular narrative is that such narratives are pervasive in human society.  As a matter of fact, if you ever follow the news, then the opinions expressed about various issues and events, as well as how they are presented, are almost always designed to fit a particular narrative or another that a group of people hold dear to themselves.  Take the issue of police killings of blacks, for example.  When such a tragic event occurs anywhere in the country, almost instantaneously now it is examined as to whether or not it fits the narrative that the police are discriminately persecuting blacks.  The entirety of the facts about an incident, even though still under official investigation, may go unrevealed while various politicians and media figures, as well as community activists and, ultimately, masses of protesters are already staging demonstrations and condemning law enforcement.  If there are conflicting accounts of the event, then the one that fits the narrative being followed will be accepted and the others rejected.  To show I'm not just picking on one side of this divisive issue, I also recognize that there is a "the police are always right" narrative that filters events and their accounts to fit that point of view...

As a matter of fact, as long as people coalesce into groups, there will be a collective narrative about the things that bind them together.  They will filter out things that contradict a cherished narrative while often uncritically accepting that which reinforces it. It's often much easier to allow oneself to be sucked into a narrative than to take each new piece of news and look at it dispassionately and on its own terms...which might go a long way toward explaining some of the nonsense I've been seeing on TV lately...

Melania Trump and Her Convention Speech

In her address in front of yesterday's Republican Convention in Cleveland, Donald Trump's wife Melania, a Slovenian immigrant who still expresses herself tentatively in her adopted English language, delivered a speech after being introduced onstage by her husband.  By all accounts, Melania is very likeable and presents the kind of charm that Jackie Kennedy added to JFK's presidential candidacy in 1960.  Mrs. Trump, however, possesses very little of the verbal eloquence that Jackie had...but no one really expected her to, did they?  Melania obviously did not write the speech she delivered, although she most probably did sit down with the actual writer and laid out some of the points she wanted to make.  It's also obvious to me that she was very uncomfortable being onstage giving that speech...essentially before the world...and that she nonetheless performed her role admirably.  Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for Melania's speechwriter, who lifted almost verbatim entire passages of a speech that Michelle Obama (you know, Trump's "enemy" Barack's wife) gave eight years earlier at the Democratic Convention.  Of course, the next morning  Donald Trump's campaign chairman Paul Manafort called the plagiarism allegations "absurd"...what's absurd is that anyone should ever believe what this spin artist says about anything hereafter...

No reasonable person should believe that Melania Trump would herself write such a speech, copying text from a so-prominent address from the recent past.  My opinion of her as a supportive spouse to a very ambitious...even ruthless...individual hasn't changed: I wish she were a little more strong-willed about asserting her own opinions...but then again, maybe if that were that the case, the Republican Party's role model for what they consider to be presidential material probably would never have married her in the first place.  That doesn't mean that I think poorly of Melania...if anything, her gracious nature is in stark contrast to her rude and mean-spirited husband...

Three Books I'm Currently Reading

There are three books I'm in the middle of reading right now...and there seems to be no end in sight for any of them.  I have been slowly muddling through William Makepeace Thackeray's classic novel of English high society of the early nineteenth century, titled Vanity Fair...I'm a little past halfway through it.  I've also begun a non-fiction book, The Gene: An Intimate History, by Siddhartha Mukherjee.   The language in this history of modern genetics is quite well-written and simplified for the non-scientist layman, but there are places where it still gets a bit too technical for me...I suppose there was no way of avoiding that, though.  The third book is Two-Handed Engine, that old science fiction short story collection of Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore's works from the mid-twentieth century that I've been working on for an extended time.  I'm nowhere close to finishing that one, either...

I have nothing in particular against Vanity Fair other than I don't like any of its characters and am tired of reading about highly stratified European society from the nineteenth century.  Enough, already: I've resolved to take a break from this type of fiction once I'm done with this book.  I have a more favorable opinion so far of Mukherjee's exposition...I like how he tells his story and makes it personal and much more gripping than just dry science.  As for Kuttner and Moore, I'd probably have already finished their story collection had I not kept adding books to my reading regimen (like Vanity Fair and The Gene)...

Mexican Premier League Soccer Back in Full Swing

I was pleasantly surprised yesterday to discover, while channel surfing my television, that Mexican premier league soccer has resumed, with its 2016 Apertura summer/fall season opening this weekend.  So far, I've been able to see matches between Monterrey and Puebla, Jaguares de Chiapas and Club America, and Pumas de UNAM and Guadalajara.  The curious thing about all of these games is that I haven't taken sides in them, instead taking in the flow of the games and the teams' strategies and skill levels in them...along with the officials and their propensity to blow the whistle and call fouls (and some players' propensities to fake them).  I also enjoy the exuberant Spanish-language commentary in the background on Univision (Gainesville Cox Cable's Channel 40), much more so then the tepid announcers on English-language soccer television...especially those showing our own Major League Soccer here in the USA and Canada.  I love it when a goal is scored and an announcer yells "G-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-L!!!" or when the first half or game is over: "LA PELOTA NO RUEDA MAS!!!" (the ball no longer rolls)...or when a penalty kick is called: "PENAL! PENAL! PENAL!".  I wish we had that kind of excitement with American sports...the old Monday Night Football of the 1970s with Howard Cosell and Don Meredith is the only example I can recall even remotely approaching this level of enthusiasm in live play-by-play TV sports broadcasting ...

Now that I have my Mexican Liga MX soccer back again, it's only about a month more to wait until the 2016-17 English (Barclay's) Premier League season begins.  Defending champion Leicester City is once again considered to be a longshot to win the title...although I doubt that the odds-makers are putting up 5000-1 odds against them this time around as they did a year ago.  Right now, the so-called "experts" seem to feel that Manchester United and Manchester City will vie for this coming season's title...we'll see.  I'm also curious to see whether Fox Sports will continue to show Germany's premier Bundesliga this coming season, as they did last year.  I very much appreciate the high level of play in both the English and German leagues...I only wish I could also get the Spanish premier league, called "La Liga", as well...and see Ronaldo and Messi play more often.  On the other hand, there's only just so much soccer I can watch anyway...

Spectators Out of Control at the Tour de France

One of the charming aspects of the Tour de France, the ongoing 21-stage championship bicycle tour that covers this beautiful country, is the presence of the fans along the roadway, urging on the contestants.  At each stage's final mile or so, the concentration of roadside spectators is naturally the thickest...and here is where we're seeing some serious problems.  In just about every race I've watched...the Tour is broadcast on NBCSports (Gainesville Cox Channel 33)...there are segments in which the crowd impinges on the roadway where the cyclists are racing, sometimes reaching out to touch them or running extremely close beside them.  This type of interference makes me cringe when I see it, and I wonder why those organizing these races have allowed it to go on.  Once I even saw one such spectator, ludicrously dressed up like a chicken, reach over at a cyclist...and then receive a harsh punch in the face from said cyclist, making him stagger backwards in a daze.  I did a fist-pump in the air when I saw that, feeling only slightly ashamed at taking such vicarious pleasure in an act of violence against another...albeit one justified by the circumstances.  But as bad as that incidence was, the fan interference level reached an intolerable stage a few days ago when three cyclists, including current tour leader Chris Froome...only one kilometer away from their stage's finish line...suffered a collision with a camera-equipped motorcycle when the crowds closed in on them, allowing only single-line riding and no passing on an already narrow, uphill road.  Froome got up from his fall and, seeing his bicycle damaged and unrideable, then began to run uphill toward the finish.  Eventually, a workable bicycle was provided and he finished the race...only after a later review did the Tour authorities restore his lead, which he had lost due to this inexcusable interference...

I don't know why people feel the need to get in the middle of the road and obstruct the bicycle race.  It is difficult enough for the competitors to try to figure out how to outmaneuver each other for an advantage without foolish spectators jumping into their path.  But will those running the Tour de France do anything to restrain them in the future?  Probably not.  Sigh...

Out Running at Noon in the Summer Heat

In spite of warnings I've been hearing during service talks at work about heat stress outside during these very hot summer months and the necessary steps one needs to take in order to avoid it, I have decided to step up my outdoor running...and deliberately around noon-time.  Let me explain...

In the early-to-mid-mornings here in northern Florida this time of year, the temperature can be in the 80s...and the humidity is at an even higher percentage...a formula for the heat stress that we're being advised against.  The trick is to wait until around noon when the temperature, to be sure, has risen...but more importantly, the humidity has fallen to a manageable level.  That's important because a combination of both hot temperature and high humidity can overheat the body...and then the body cannot cool itself through perspiration, which is blocked by the moisture in the air working against its release.  Also, I'm not running during mid-to-late afternoon when it gets the hottest.  This is about the best I'm going to be able to do running outside in the summer.  Oh, by the way, I'm always pre-hydrating myself before runs with water and/or Gatorade (or Powerade)...and carry a little bottle with me while running for ongoing hydration.  And having short walking breaks regularly interspersed throughout the run is a wise measure as well (look up Jeff Galloway for the benefits of doing this)...

I've done this sort of thing in the past, anyway, and to a much great extent...commonly running 7 or more miles when the temperature was 90+ degrees.  My goal this summer is much more modest: daily run my preset 3.3-mile looping course through my subdivision and the adjacent one...a course I've run so many times before it's become second nature to me.  I think by doing this I'll be in a much better position to train for longer distances this fall as the temperature gradually begins to cool down...

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...