Quote of the Week...from Ursula K. Le Guin

There are no right answers to wrong questions.            ---Ursula K. Le Guin

Fantasy and science fiction writer Ursula K. Le Guin passed away this past Monday at the age of 88.  It seems like there have been more deaths lately than usual...it's most likely because they are of people like Sue Grafton, Ray Thomas...and now Le Guin...all of whom I have come to respect and admire for their imagination and skill at their chosen crafts.  I did read the first three books of Le Guin's Earthsea series back in September of '16 as well as enjoying the '70s television adaption of her novel The Lathe of Heaven...you can explore this blog's archives to read my reactions to Earthsea.  But now it's about the above quote of hers...

The simpler the quote, the more difficult it often is to pinpoint exactly what the individual meant when he or she presented it...and this is a pretty brief one.  I can only offer my own interpretation, which is that most people really aren't disciplined or trained enough to consistently ask questions that aren't either loaded with embedded assumptions and biases or are so vague and general that any answer is necessarily going to be meaningless.  An example of this was the poor journalism practiced when a reporter yelled at President Trump while he was before them, "Are you a racist?"  Whether or not you agree with the assumption embedded within the question...that Trump just might be a racist...posing that question to him in those circumstances was a statement in itself besides being too general, any answer from the president only of secondary importance...so he was right to ignore it.  So what constitutes a "right" question?  If you are trying to collect an informed answer from someone, your question needs to be specific and if there are any assumptions underlying it, you should be candid enough to preface your question with that acknowledgment...simply stating beforehand "Assuming that..." will do in most cases.  After all, by questioning and answering we're supposed to be engaging in communication...and people have their own different values and understandings about what certain words and expressions mean to them...

I have been watching the C-Span channels of late and am usually pleased with the informed way that senators or representatives question people at hearings.  Usually.  When the person being grilled is an official already in office and there is a set subject up for discussion, the quality of questioning is refreshing...and I walk away from the experience feeling that I have learned something.  However, when the hearing is for a nominee by the president, the questions tend to disintegrate into softballs by the president's own party members and loaded questions by the opposition...leading to very little being accomplished.  Would that folks learn to discern better the difference between good and bad questioning and hold those responsible for them more accountable.  Y'know, maybe I'll start to collect instances of poor questioning I hear on TV and regularly lay them out on this blog...no one political party or belief system holds a monopoly on them and journalists who should know better are often the worst offenders...

1/21 Sermon on Philippians, Part 2

Last Sunday at The Family Church here in Gainesville, Florida, our senior pastor Philip Griffin continued his new series about the Bible's New Testament book of Philippians with the second sermon, titled Finding Joy in the Tough Times.  Since Philippians is a letter Paul wrote from a Roman prison, it's pretty clear that he was in the middle of some very tough times when he wrote it, living a harsh existence while constantly chained to a guard of the palace.  Yet the feeling thoughout this epistle is one of abundant joy, a joy he had found through his faith in Christ...

Using the passage Philippians 1:12-26 as his guide (click on the passage's link to read it through Bible Gateway), Philip lists three keys to finding and keeping joy in the midst of difficult times: know that adversity can advance God's kingdom, refuse to be offended, and live knowing what really matters.  In spite of his incarceration, Paul not only wrote letters to churches he had helped to plant, but also was in a position to witness and minister to the many guards he encountered there...advancing God's kingdom in the process. His outlook and behavior inspired other Christians to boldly dare to spread the Gospel in the face of danger and persecution.  As for being offended, in any group of people...even at church...there are folks who do some pretty mean things.  Refusing to be offended means to not respond in kind to their provocations...there are bigger matters at hand.  Speaking of "bigger matters",  living for Christ means to exalt him and not oneself.  And that self-exaltation can lead to all sorts of nasty personal traps.  Pastor Philip added a mnemonic device built upon the word JOY: first comes J for Jesus, second comes O for others (community), and last comes Y for yourself.  Pretty nifty, huh?

The Family Church (2022 SW 122nd Street) meets Sunday mornings with its services at 9 and 10:30. The people here are friendly and easy to talk to...what a great place to make new friends!  Besides the on-spot message, there is a time devoted to worship through inspiring music along with prayer and discipleship opportunities.  And the hospitality center offers coffee and refreshments before and between services.  I'm looking forward to Part 3 of Philip's Philippians series this Sunday.  Oh, if you want to see this most recent sermon, you can view it on the church's YouTube video site...here's a link to it:[link]...

Weekly Short Story: Elsewhen by Robert Heinlein

Twentieth century science fiction writer Robert Heinlein, best known for his novels Stranger in a Strange Land, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, and Starship Troopers, was also responsible for many good short stories.  Early in his career he liked to dabble in the area of time travel as a theme...the 1941 story Elsewhen, which appears in the 1953 collection titled Assignment in Eternity (Baen Books), is one such tale...

Professor Arthur Frost is being arrested, suspected of murdering five of his students at his home and hiding their bodies.  But as the arresting officer momentarily averts his eyes, Frost vanishes into thin air.  What happened? Well, the story then flashbacks to the crucial meeting between the professor and the five students attending his speculative metaphysics class.  The subject? Why, time travel, of course...

Professor Frost claims that he has learned how to travel through time, which he claims is not the one, straight line commonly thought, but rather more like a plane. In his scenario we are still traveling down a line or path, but sometimes there are forks, representing important choices we make...and then there are the crossroads, leading to other realities.  A trained mind, says Frost, can escape the time pattern we are all encased in, and he challenges each of his students to follow him in this quest.  As it turns out, they each have their own unique experiences, tailored to their particular personalities and outlooks.  The rest of the story has a lot of traveling back and forth from one time and place to another...I'll leave all that for you to discover should you want to read it sometime...

What I liked the most about Elsewhen, which struck me as being a bit silly in places, was how Heinlein added to the notion that what we call "now" or "present" is a highly subjective experience to cover the entire fabric...or should I say "plane"...of time.  Once choices are made, time itself moves to accommodate those changes, according to the individual making the choices.  That may sound a little hard to grasp, but I have a gut feeling that there is something significant to it...what do you think?

Tuesday's List: Mass Extinction Events Over the Eras

I was recently discussing astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson with my son Will and noted that he is going into production for another Cosmos television series, which will be aired in 2019.  Can't wait! I mentioned that my favorite episode of Tyson's 2014 series...which was based on the late Carl Sagan's 1980 Cosmos series and updated it...was the episode about the Permian Extinction, which wiped out 96% of all species of Earth.  It got me thinking of looking on the Internet for a good list of the major mass extinction events that have occurred over time.  On worldatlas.com, I found a good list, which you can access through this link: [link]. To this list I added another event: "Snowball Earth", which occurred around 650 million years ago.  And now here's that list of mass extinction events, going from earliest to latest...

SNOWBALL EARTH (650 million years ago)
All life at this time was unicellular and ocean dwelling...the extinction rate thought to be high, but how high is unknown.  The causes of Snowball Earth...scientifically termed "global glaciation"...are in dispute as well as its duration and the extent of the ice covering.  But it was most likely ended through volcanic activity that sent carbon dioxide upward to heat and melt the ice...

ORDIVICIAN-SILURIAN (439 million years ago)
According to the article, 86% of life was obliterated.  The suspected cause of the extinctions was glaciation and falling sea levels.

LATE DEVONIAN (364 million years ago)
75% of life lost.  Occurred possibly over thousands of years as land-based plants released nutrients into ocean, depleting oxygen through resulting algae.

PERMIAN-TRIASSIC  (251 million years ago)
96% of species made extinct when a network of large Siberian supervolcanoes erupted, starting a chain reaction of carbon dioxide...and then methane...release into the atmosphere, overheating it and poisoning the oceans.  Not a good time to be on Earth...

TRIASSIC-JURASSIC (199-214 million years ago)
Various reason, including a possible asteroid collision, are given for this change that occurred over a relatively long stretch of time.  It paved the way for the advent of the dinosaurs...

CRETACEOUS-PALEOGENE (65 million years ago)
You've probably seen the scene portrayed on TV where the Tyrannosaurus Rex suddenly looks up and sees a fiery asteroid plummeting and striking the Earth.  This is the famous event that rendered the large dinosaurs extinct and opened up the Earth's ecosystems for the evolution of mammals.  Thank you, asteroid.  But about 76% of life was destroyed during this extinction...

HOLOCENE (now)
Through human activity and its resulting climate change, the extinction rate has sharply increased.  It's bound to get worse...

Read Good Magazine Article About Fighting Stress

At the excellent Chinese diner next to my workplace they have a free magazine there for the taking.  It's called Natural Awakenings and often has useful articles...this month's issue has one of them, written by Lisa Marshall and titled Dial Down Stress: How to Stay Cool and Calm.  There's an inset in it listing and describing seven ways to combat stress...I think I'll discuss these points...

MULTITASK LESS, MONOTASK MORE: I agree with Lisa here...but only if you're talking about doing two things of a similar nature simultaneously.  However, if the two activities require different types of attention...such as, for example, running while listening to an audiobook...multitasking can serve as a stress reducer, enabling me to accomplish daily tasks more efficiently.  But having the TV on the news while studying?  Not a good idea...

DON'T BE A CHRONIC MEDIA CHECKER: I see it all around me: folks addicted to their smartphones and who cannot resist the temptation to constantly check up on their Facebook and news feeds.  You cannot keep up with the news very well anymore by watching cable news channels like CNN, FoxNews, or MSNBC: more likely than not they have their chosen special topics and are not interested in comprehensive, informative news...that's pretty pathetic, isn't it?  Lisa agrees with the notion of instead scheduling a block of time early and late each day to catch up with things and let it ride in the meantime.  I find that my desktop has a feature in which the news pops up and I can click on whatever story interests me to find out more...I usually do this mornings...

LIMIT CHOICES: being a bit on the extreme side with my daily routines, I already practice this point...I eat pretty much the same things and keep my wardrobe simple.  Some people may find this boring, but it frees me to focus on other things and does reduce stress...

DON'T OVERTHINK: Rehashing past events and "replaying tapes" on how I handled them...complete with the merciless element of hindsight...does nothing to help me deal with my present life, which has enough of its own concerns to occupy me...

DAYDREAM: Not taken to excess, daydreaming is a way to safely disconnect from stressful surroundings while exploring my own values and goals.  It's a way to break the pattern of stressful thinking and to look for alternative ways to solve problems...

MEDITATE: I know a lot of folks out there have detailed, prescribed methods about meditation...I regard it simply as getting into a quiet state without distractions for a few minutes and being still.  It's a good way to relax the body and clear anxiety...

HEIGHTEN SPIRITUALITY: Lisa's article doesn't distinguish between different faith systems, and I won't here either.  But reminding myself that God is in control even amid my greatest personal storms is assuring and helps me get through them.  Attending my church weekly puts me in contact with wise and friendly people who have no other agenda than to spread God's love through them to others...I'll take some of that, thank you, and yes...it helps to "dial down" stress...

All this having been said, stress is important in our lives and helps give it structure and direction.  It's just when the stress on us creates anxiety that problems arise...hopefully some of Lisa Marshall's pointers will help with that...

Reconsidering Some Recent Music Recordings

Last year I enthusiastically procured for myself copies of new albums from some of my favorite musical acts, namely Gorillaz, Spoon, Arcade Fire, Kasabian, and Sufjan Stevens (as part of a collaboration).  Back then I was very disappointed in what I heard, abandoning them all and jumping over to the classical music genre for my listening.  Well, lately I've been
going back to these recordings and listening again...they actually do have some good tracks on them, except for the Gorillaz album, that is. And I have to admit to still not listening again to Planetarium.(Sufjan Stevens' collaborative work)..maybe I'll play it when I'm falling asleep...

Spoon's album Hot Thoughts contains some very good tracks: the title song Hot Thoughts, Do I Have to Talk You Into It, Shotgun, and Can I Sit Next to You are the standouts.  Arcade Fire's Everything Now release isn't quite as good as Spoon's, in my opinion...still, the music is listenable with the songs Creature Comfort and Signs of Life being my favorites from it.  Kasabian's album For Crying Out Loud is much better than I had originally thought, and I really like a lot of the tracks: Ill Ray (The King), You're in Love with a Psycho, Twentyfourseven, and Comeback Kid are all pretty solid, well done.  And I just got hold of Beck's new LP Colors, which is loaded with good material like its title song Colors, I'm So Free, Dear Life, Dreams (released as a single in 2015), Wow, Up All Night, and Fix Me...there isn't a song on this album I don't like...

It goes to show you: it's not just the music itself but the attitude I have when listening to it that is important. Sometimes I'm just not in the right frame of mind when I first listen to something...time can go a long way toward easing my critical reaction to new music. I still like my classical music, but I'm a lot happier now with these good musical acts...well, except maybe for Gorillaz, that is...

Just Finished Reading The Scorch Trials and The Death Cure by James Dashner

The Maze Runner, a dystopian series for young adults by James Dashner, is a trilogy...with two bonus prequel novels.  In the first installment...also titled The Maze Runner, teenage boys find themselves with wiped memories and placed in a mysterious place called The Glades, surrounded by high walls beyond which exists an extensive maze haunted by half flesh/half machine murderous monsters called "grievers".  The boys have to figure out how to get beyond the maze...beyond that they do not know why they are there.  Thomas, the series main protagonist, is the latest one to land there and works with the others...mainly Minho, Newt, Alby...and Teresa, the only girl and who arrived a day after Thomas...to try to solve the puzzle.  That's the first book...I'm not one to give away the story, so since books two and three, The Scorch Trials and The Death Cure, necessarily build upon how that first book ends, I'm a bit limited in describing them after reading them in rapid succession.  I will only say that the danger and suspense remain in this series of attrition and mystery: who will survive to the end, and what kind of ending will it be?

One of the things I liked about this series was how the kids talk to each other, especially the repartee between Thomas and Minho, the tough no-nonsense head maze runner.  Their vocabulary is full of original Glades slang, with words like "klunk", "shuck", and "shank" liberally sprinkled throughout their speech...each with its own special meaning.  There is a special comradery here that I found endearing and memorable...much more than the background mystery of the organization with the acronym WICKED and the dire worldwide situation on the outside.  Yes, it was the characters and their relationships with each other that sold this series for me...and that's not an easy thing for an author to accomplish.  Hats off to James Dashner...

The Maze Runner and The Scorch Trials have already been adapted to movie form, and the film version of The Death Cure is due to come out on January 26.  I'm interested in seeing how well the movies stuck with the books, so I'm looking into getting hold of a DVD of The Maze Runner...hope I'm not disappointed after reading this interesting series...

Quote of the Week...from Don Vito Corleone

Never let anyone outside the family know what you're thinking.      ---Don Vito Corleone

Don Corleone, always the patriarch in his male-dominated culture, had another, related saying: I spent my whole life trying not to be careless. Women and children can afford to be careless, but not men. Mind you, he's not real, but rather the product of The Godfather author Mario Puzo's vivid imagination...enhanced by the acting abilities of Marlon Brando, under the direction of Francis Ford Coppola. You might think it a little absurd for me to be quoting an organized crime boss who never existed, but I have a reason.  And it has a lot to do with the current occupant of the White House...

A few days ago President Trump met with lawmakers to discuss how to handle immigration issues, something that has been forefront in the news recently.  According to senator Dick Durbin, the only Democrat present, Trump was very profane and repeatedly referred to African nations as "s...hole countries"...he expressed that it would be better to bring more people in from Europe.  After that revelation was made public, all sorts of charges of racism were levied against Trump.  Although that in itself is worth discussing, I'd like to bring up a different point: is being totally transparent and open with one's feelings all the time and around anyone such a good idea? The Godfather obviously would strongly beg to differ...and so would I...

A little while ago I learned that folks with extraverted personalities tend to mentally process their thoughts differently than do introverts like myself.  One striking difference is that extroverts will often talk out their thoughts and work things out for themselves in conversation with others while introverts will more cautiously consider the impact of anything they might say before opening their mouths.  So it's no surprise that introvert Vito Corleone would sharply admonish his very extroverted son Santino with the above quote about keeping one's thoughts safely within the confines of the family.  Unfortunately, not only doesn't our current president grasp this important principle of developing his thoughts with his most trusted associates and family before presenting the product to others, but he is constantly tweeting out his impulsive reactions to anything he picks up on TV...leaving his own handpicked officials and congressional allies scurrying around trying to figure out where he stands on anything and practicing political damage control.  And, of course, if he's not careful and says something nasty in the presence of a political adversary like Durbin...well, that's just foolish carelessness on his part...

This idea of a closed or even secret meeting in which the participants are mum to the public about what was said and the independent press is barred is not only a bad idea when it involves our elected officials...it's actually ILLEGAL in my home state of Florida, which has a "Government in the Sunshine" law prohibiting any such closed meetings...even down to the local government level.  But when Trump or Obama or Bush or Clinton,...or our U.S. senators and/or representatives...want to do this, that's somehow okay?  I don't think so.  Sure, there are sometimes issues of national security that involve classified matters: I get that, but I think that one of the problems with our national government...and why people at large trust it so little...is that too many powerful people are operating under hidden agendas and that their loyalties are not directed at serving the American people but rather special interests: closed meetings only intensify that perception...

1/14 Sermon on Philippians, Part 1

At The Family Church here in Gainesville, senior pastor Philip Griffin began his series covering the New Testament book of Philippians, which is a letter that Paul sent...from prison...to the Christian community there several years after he had first visited and lived among them.  Back then Paul had been persecuted, beaten, whipped, and imprisoned for doing no more than healing, through the power of Christ, a fortune teller who was demon-possessed.  One might think that he would be resentful of his earlier treatment there, but instead he was filled with joy...and that is where Pastor Philip began, as he discussed the meaning of Philippians 1:1-11 in this message he titled Joy in Relationships.  You can click on the following link to read it for yourself through Bible Gateway: [link]...

Speaking of joy, what steals from it?  Pastor Philip listed four ways: resentment, a critical spirit, walling off our heart, and looking for joy in our circumstances and not from God. The act of forgiveness plays a crucial role in fighting off these counterproductive attitudes. Philip brought up a very good point: when you forgive others for how they treated you in the past, you still remember...but without the pain: that's a good way of assessing whether or not you actually did forgive.  So forgiving combats resentfulness...as for the rest, Philip noted that a critical spirit cannot dwell in you if you see people for who they can become instead of who you think they are or were.  The impulse to wall myself off is the toxic "joy thief" that pertains most to me: letting people in is the antidote.  And as our pastor had stressed in earlier weeks, you find temporary happiness in your circumstances...but joy comes from focusing on God and letting him enter your heart, regardless of what's happening around you...

You can view this sermon using this [link] to the church's YouTube video site. The Family Church meets for its weekly Sunday morning services at 9 and 10:30.  Besides the illuminating message, there is beautiful, inspirational praise music, very friendly people, prayer and discipleship opportunities, and a warm hospitality center...with that complimentary good-tasting coffee...

Weekly Short Story: Scanners Live in Vain by Cordwainer Smith

Paul Linebarger, whose pseudonym was Cordwainer Smith, was a science fiction writer of the mid-twentieth century whose stories stand out for their incredible imagination as to what different scenarios for space travel would be like...and how we would adapt ourselves to be able to withstand it.  Last May I reviewed another of his many short stories: The Game of Rat and Dragon, which you can read by simply clicking on the title.  Scanners Live in Vain came out in 1948 and is one of Smith's most celebrated and widely read tales, appearing in the collection The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume I (edited by Robert Silverberg, Avon Books, 1970)...

So what exactly is a scanner, anyway?  At my workplace...and at many, many others in today's world...a scanner is a device that reads bar codes or optical characters in order to quickly process information pertinent to the business or organization.  In that technical sense, the scanners in Scanners Live in Vain play a similar role to a small extent, but it goes well beyond collecting data.  In Cordwainer Smith's very imaginative view of the future, travel in deep space is only possible with humans surgically disconnected from all but their visual sense...making them "Scanners" if they are volunteers and "habermans" if they are drafted from the criminally condemned.  They thus escape the mind-destroying "Great Pain" caused by space travel, running the ships while the "normal" travelers sleep through the experience. To compensate for their loss in senses, the Scanners each carry a complex computer on them that their brain interfaces with...making them a bit like that character in Robocop, but with their original identities still very much intact.  In fact, Martel, the protagonist, is a Scanner who at the start of the story gets "cranched", i.e. uses a special winding wire to temporarily restore his other senses to him and render him "human" again.  You can see a little here the extent to which the author has created a crazy-sounding future for us...

Word has gotten around the Scanners that a man has invented a process by which future space travelers will be insulated and protected from the Great Pain, making Scanners and habermans obsolete.  They meet and decide to assassinate the inventor...Martel, still cranched and thus more human, strongly opposes this and visits the inventor to warn him of the danger.  You can read it yourself to see what happens: here's a link to the story on Internet Archive: [link]...

Obsolescence is a natural byproduct of technological advance.  While outdated things and processes can be disposed of, people cannot...ultimately, those responsible for the change need to recognize this and consider the human consequences of their actions.  In societies where rapid change is a fact of life, there must be an infrastructure that retrains and gives opportunities for displaced workers to adjust to their bygone employment and prepare for their new future...otherwise there will be a great deal of social and political upheaval, either at the ballot box or on the streets...nobody likes having the rug pulled out from under them...

Tuesday's List: My Favorite Songs of the Late Ray Thomas

Just who was Ray Thomas, you might ask.  He was one of the founding members of the English rock band The Moody Blues whose specialty was the flute...and who wrote and performed some of the group's most beautiful and memorable songs.  Some of these are commonly known, but most remain hidden as "deep tracks" on their albums.  With the arrival of singer/songwriters Justin Haywood and John Lodge in the late sixties, the Moody Blues reinvented themselves as one of the early progressive rock bands, steering away from their earlier more blues-orientation.  Although Haywood and Lodge penned most of the music, the band encouraged everyone to contribute...and that included Thomas.  Like the Beatles' George Harrison on their many albums, he was allotted one or two songs.  Usually, they had either a psychedelic or whimsical mood to them...or a curious mixture of the two.  The first Ray Thomas song I heard was Legend of a Mind, which got a lot of album rock radio station airplay around 1968-71...you might recognize it better from the repeated refrain "Timothy Leary's dead".  Another Thomas song popularized on the radio was For My Lady, from the 1972 Seventh Sojourn album...sometimes stations played it together with the more known Isn't Life Strange...

You may wonder why I'm picking this time to list my favorite songs written and performed by Ray Thomas.  Sadly, he died on January 4th at the age of 76, after a long bout with cancer.  He did live to hear of his longtime group's selection to enter the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but not to experience their induction, coming up this March.  I will miss Ray and always treasure the wonderful music he has given us.  And now, I rank my favorite songs of his, each entry followed by its album and year of release. Ray Thomas collaborated on some of his songs with other members, and I included their names following those songs...

1 FOR MY LADY...................Seventh Sojourn (1972)
2 LAZY DAY..........................On the Threshold of a Dream (1969)
3 LEGEND OF A MIND.........In Search of the Lost Chord (1968)
4 FLOATING...........................To Our Children's Children's Children (1969)
5 ARE YOU SITTING COMFORTABLY? (with Justin Haywood)....On the Threshold of a Dream (1969)
6 CELTIC SONANT................Keys of the Kingdom (1991)
7 VISIONS OF PARADISE (with Justin Haywood)...In Search of the Lost Chord (1968)
8 NICE TO BE HERE..............Every Good Boy Deserves Favour (1971)
9 AND THE TIDE RUSHES IN .....A Question of Balance (1970)
10 MY LITTLE LOVELY.......Strange Times (1999)
11 ANOTHER MORNING......Days of Future Passed (1967)
12 ETERNITY ROAD.............To Our Children's Children's Children (1969)
13 WATCHING AND WAITING (with Justin Haywood)...To Our Children's Children's Children (1969)
14 DR. LIVINGSTONE, I PRESUME...In Search of the Lost Chord (1969)
15 TWILIGHT TIME...............Days of Future Passed (1967)
16 DEAR DIARY.....................On the Threshold of a Dream (1969)
17 THE BALANCE (with Graeme Edge).....A Question of Balance (1970)
18 SORRY................................The Present (1983)
19 I AM.....................................The Present (1983)
20 UNDER MOONSHINE.......Octave (1977)

Still Baffled Why Republican Voters Chose Trump over Better Candidates

My president is Donald J. Trump, like it or not.  I tend to vote Democratic, and I probably would have voted for either Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders over any from the large field of Republican candidates had one of them...all much more qualified to be president than Trump...had been nominated.  That having been said, I don't think that Republican primary season voters have ever had so many different, good candidates to choose from.  Sure, if Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio...even Jeb Bush...had been elected president in 2016, you would still be hearing all sorts of media criticism of them...some of it predictably personal.  But instead of these fine politicians, the GOP voters chose this Archie Bunker wannabe as their standard bearer...apparently because he talks down to their level...

I was always under the assumption that in a representative republic as we are privileged to enjoy in the United States of America, the population at large, cognizant of the fact that they all couldn't possibly be experts in the many different crucial decisions that have to be made at the national level, would instead elect a president, senators of their own states, and representatives from their home districts to do their bidding for them.  You might think that they would want these politicians to be operating at a relatively knowledgeable level while displaying the tact and benevolence for the society whose interests they are there to advance.  Instead, we have a stumblebum who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, coddled from infancy and indoctrinated with the erroneous notion that he was put on Earth to lord himself over others...and then expect everyone to meekly submit to him.  This was widely known public knowledge about Donald Trump for years...yet conservative Republicans chose him because they thought they could identify with him.  Had Cruz been elected, he would be pushing a lot of the same agenda that Trump is doing, yet he wouldn't be trying to shut down the opposition media, making racist statements, and poisoning our international relations.  No, I probably wouldn't be happy with him in there, either...but it wouldn't have been this constant daily flow of melodramatics.  Sure, I can understand why, in the general election to decide whether a Republican or Democratic should be our next president, conservative voters might opt for a nominee from their own party.  But during the primary process, to select this joker over so many good people makes no sense whatsoever to me...

Recently Saw The Greatest Showman Movie

The Greatest Showman, starring Hugh Jackman as American history's "greatest showman" P.T. Barnum, is a musical taking excerpts and people from that figure's illustrious life in the mid-to-late 1800s, simplifying things considerably and ignoring others...culminating in a sympathetic portrayal of Barnum as a good-natured and ambitious family man who gets sidetracked by that ambition.  The dancing and songs look and sound more like they belong in High School Musical, in which Zac Efron, who's plays Barnum's associate, also starred (and danced).  If you are seriously into movies like Hairspray and High School Musical, I think you'll really like The Greatest Showman for the same general kind of dancing here...unfortunately, that genre never has sat too well with me...

Fortunately, my usually almost-allergic reaction to seeing the kind of choreography reminiscent of Michael Jackson's Thriller video, with everyone moving their arms and legs in sync and en masse, isn't all that The Greatest Showman is about.  For one, it does touch upon the events of Barnum's life...including his recruitment of "freaks" for his museum (a controversial matter with today's extreme political correctness as it is), the visit...along with "Tom Thumb"...to then-young Queen Victoria in England, the promotion and touring of Swedish singing star Jerry Lind, and the burning down of his New York headquarters, to name a few.  Also, I picked up very clearly that the "bad guys" in this movie tended to belong to one of two groups: the elitist snobs who were excessively conscious of their own "place" in society and the intolerant, uneducated rabble, who seemed to think that their main purpose in life was to angrily go around in mobs holding torches and railing and fighting against people not like themselves.  The protagonists, of course, were normal, reasonable people like ourselves in 2018, and with the same enlightened contemporary views on class, gender, and race...I doubt that the real historical folks were so PC back then...

I liked The Greatest Showman for the compelling characterization that Hugh Jackman gave to his protagonist, and the acting of Efron, Michelle Williams, and Zendaya in supporting roles was excellent.  I brushed aside the historical inaccuracies and treated it as a compelling, personal story...maybe others would enjoy it more if they did the same...

Just Finished Rereading Otherland: River of Blue Fire by Tad Williams

One of the problems with reading drawn-out series is that many times, the novelty that characterizes the first book has long disappeared with subsequent volumes and the reader has to go on faith that the author will eventually get around to explaining everything by the time it's all over.  In the meantime, there is a danger of readers having to "slug it out" book by tedious book...this was a major problem with Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time and Terry Goodkind's The Sword of Truth fantasy series.  Although Tad Williams, normally a fantasy writer as well, wrote his four-volume Otherland as a provocative science fiction series about the possibilities and perils of virtual reality...a subject that greatly interests me...the same problem exists here.  I know, I've read it before...

In River of Blue Fire, the second volume in the Otherland series, we see the same list of characters struggling through the virtual reality multiverse: they are trapped there and unable to return to the real world.  Renie Sulaweyo, a young South African IT expert living a hundred years in the future, is searching to find what happened to her little brother Stephen, who is in a coma after visiting a virtual reality site.  There are others with her, each with his or her own quest/agenda...not all of them benevolent: one of Renie's group is an imposter, working for the sinister Grail Brotherhood of ultra-wealthy elites who seem to by trying to achieve a sort of digitally-based immortality through their virtual reality creations.  The protagonists go from one exotic location to another, each of which Williams describes in intricate detail and which presents its own unique challenges.  Yet, after I finished this rather long book, I didn't feel that the story had progressed that much...something of a disappointment.  I know that some very interesting things happen in the next book, but as I said before, it won't be until the very end of book number four that it all begins to come together.  Oh well, I started it and I'm gonna finish it...

There's a rumor that the Otherland series might be adapted to movie or television...I think that would be fantastic.  What would be much better, though, would be for virtual reality to finally take off and become the established, dominant next stage in the evolution of the Internet.  They'd better hurry, though: I'm not getting any younger...

Quote of the Week....from Martin Luther King, Jr.

All progress is precarious, and the solution of one problem brings us face to face with another problem.                                                               ---Martin Luther King, Jr.

When I read this quote by Martin Luther King, Jr., whose birthday is this coming Monday, it struck me as having a profound meaning on different levels.  I'm not sure exactly what he was thinking about when he made this comment, but I can see some its ramifications.  Look at the advance in technology over the past two centuries: a higher standard of living on one hand, but at great cost to the environment on the other.  Or how it seems that progress in science and engineering tends to be applied by the military in its never-ending campaign to be able to wage war in a more deadly fashion.  But there's even more to Dr. King's statement when you consider how society wraps itself around innovations to the point where being deprived of them becomes a matter of social injustice...

We live in an exciting age as we note, in just a few years, how much medicine and information technology have progressed.  I just read a novel set in 1989 where the protagonist is struggling to get to a pay phone to make an important call...only 29 years ago.  Now having a cell phone seems like a necessity rather than a convenience or luxury...we've integrated this innovation into our society to the point where those not possessing one are at a marked disadvantage in their lives.  The same goes for the great advances in medicine, both in its important preventative practices and in diagnosing and treating diverse ailments and injuries.  But this progress carries with it a steep price tag, and the way health care is meted out...at least in this country, even if Obamacare stays in effect...puts those in less favorable economic situations in potentially fatal circumstances should they become seriously ill or injured even when the technology and medicine exist to save them.  And the blessing of the Internet, which almost instantly connects the world with us, has all sorts of problems, including criminal fraud, the enabling of terrorism, international hacking to interfere with elections, and many others.  When I went back to college to take some history courses just 15 years ago, there was the Internet, but the classes were still primarily book-based.  By the time my son entered college six years later, owning a laptop and having Internet access had become absolute requirements.  Those in our society without computers and Internet service are being left behind, not just because these products are intrinsically indispensable, but also because our social institutions are increasingly mandating their use...

When I described "progress", I was discussing technological progress.  But Martin Luther King, Jr. may have also been thinking of progressive social movements as well.  Progress in any form is change, and when change happens, it causes instability.  And that can be very unsettling to many people and cause them to lash back...even when that change is clearly for the better...

1/7 Sermon Titled "He Said What?"

A week before beginning his series on the New Testament book of Philippians, The Family Church's senior pastor Philip Griffin delivered a sermon, titled "He Said What?", about an often troubling passage from the Gospel of Luke...specifically Luke 14:25-33, which you can read via Bible Gateway by clicking on the provided link.  Jesus is addressing large crowds and saying some pretty controversial-sounding things to them, such as that they have to hate all of their families...and even their own lives...in order to be his disciples. 

Pastor Philip listed four features of being a disciple of Jesus: choosing Christ over the crowd, rejecting the idolatry of family, counting the cost, and putting Christ before possessions.  In addressing the crowd, Jesus always spoke differently to them...often in hard to understand terms...and he would later explain the meaning of his words to his disciples.  In rejecting the idolatry of family, Jesus, as our pastor pointed out, is speaking to people for whom family is everything...well, idolatry by definition is the act of putting anything ahead of God. Jesus wants those seeking to be his disciples to realize the costs to their lives that this will entail.  As for possession, giving all to Jesus is cutting a covenant with him who supplies in turn everything we truly need in great abundance. 

Philip gave five characteristics of the crowds in Jesus' time that distinguished them from his disciples: (1) they were admirers of Jesus but not converts, (2) they needed their faith to be swayed by signs and wonders, (3) they were bent on using Jesus as a tool for what they wanted, (4) they sought in Jesus a political solution for a spiritual problem, and (5) they wanted a savior, but only on their terms.

Just who decides who is in the crowd and who is a disciple?  A lot of folks out there think that they somehow have the authority to pronounce this judgment, but in truth Jesus is the one who sees into each of our hearts. As a believer, the Holy Spirit works within me to affect my own behavior and grow me in Christ, not for me to spend my time and efforts measuring others' faith.  It's a mistake to automatically assume that if one doesn't dot all the "i's" and cross all the "t's" according to a prescribed formula, then he or she is not following Christ.  This would lead to the same trap of convention and ritual instead of faith that Jesus strongly spoke against when he walked the Earth...

You can watch Pastor Philip's message on the church's YouTube video website through the following link: [link]. The Family Church holds its Sunday morning services at 9 and 10:30 with the sermon, inspiring music, fellowship, prayer, opportunities for further learning and discipleship, and friendly people.  Definitely a nice place to spend your Sunday morning...

Weekly Short Story: The Feeling of Power by Isaac Asimov

In many science fiction stories from the mid-twentieth century, interstellar travel is presented as a  certainty, but computers are also pictured as filling up entire rooms, completely failing to anticipate microtechnology and how much it would pervade nearly every aspect of our lives.  A notable exception to this misjudgment of the future is Isaac Asimov's 1958 short story The Feeling of Power, appearing in the anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 20 (1958) (DAW Books). 

The Feeling of Power is only eleven pages long but it packs a big punch, with great application to what's going on today.  It is in the future and space travel has humanity going to the stars, settling there, trading...and, sadly, going to war among themselves.  The computer technology has developed to the point where scientists and engineers just push buttons...the machines themselves come up with new innovations.  A lowly clerk has discovered how to mentally multiply numbers, which he demonstrates to the skeptical top brass by quickly answering 9 x 7 = 63.  That gets their attention...but then he amazingly demonstrates that he can multiply any two numbers ON PAPER with a system of his...of course, this is stuff we (well, at least my generation) learned in early elementary school.  The generals and officials are flabbergasted...eventually one of them realizes that this could be the breakthrough to free themselves from the total dependence on computers that have placed both sides in an interstellar war into a stalemate.  The story's ending, which you can read for yourself, is not a happy one...

When I read about the clerk's arithmetical demonstration, I had to chuckle...but there's some profound truth here.  There's no doubt that having sophisticated computers and software has lightened the mental burden of computing that heretofore was tedious but necessary, either mentally, on paper, or by slide rule.  But now we have incredibly powerful machines that do the tough work for us, be it arithmetic, correcting our shoddy grammar and spelling, instantly translating other languages to our own (no need to learn a new one, right?), telling us where we are by GPS without us ever having to orient ourselves through maps, and just about any other area where people went to school to learn certain skills.  With this super-technology we may be falling into a trap of collectively losing old skills after they have been deemed "obsolete"...there was even a push in schools to eliminate the teaching of writing in cursive!  As our digital gadgets make us appear to be smarter, without them to supply all the right answers we're becoming a society of dunces.  Maybe we should take a moment to reassess where we're going with all this...

Tuesday's List: Pseudo-Countries of the World

After noting over the years the number of "nations" represented as such in the Olympic Games that aren't really independent sovereign states and then seeing various separatist "states" being carved out of others, I realized that it might be a good idea to compose a list of all these "pseudo-countries".  As it is, the quiz website sporcle.com has a list of most of them, thanks to a contributor named varndler who made a capital cities quiz of it...here's a link to that list: [link].  I used it, rearranging the entries and adding a few more.  So, by geographical region, I have listed below the world's current pseudo-countries, broken down by geographical area with the "real" country they are part of list next to them in parenthesis.  Since being a "pseudo-country" isn't a cut-and-dry kind of thing, you might have a few of your own to add to the list.  Oh, by the way, by including certain names on this list I am in no way whatsoever making any sort of commentary on their "national" legitimacy or otherwise...

****THE AMERICAS & THE CARIBBEAN****
ANGUILLA (United Kingdom)
ARUBA (Netherlands)
BRITISH VIRGIN ISLANDS (United Kingdom)
CAYMAN ISLANDS (United Kingdom)
CURACAO (Netherlands)
FRENCH GUINEA (France)
GUADELOUPE (France)
MARTINIQUE (France)
MONTSERRAT (United Kingdom)
NETHERLANDS ANTILLES (Netherlands)
PUERTO RICO (United States)
SAINT MARTIN (France)
SINT MAARTEN (Netherlands)
ST. BARTHELEMY (France)
ST. PIERRE AND MIQUELON (France)
TURKS AND CAICOS ISLANDS (United Kingdom)
US VIRGIN ISLANDS (United States)

******ATLANTIC OCEAN*******
ASCENSION ISLAND (United Kingdom)
BERMUDA (United Kingdom)
FAEROE ISLANDS (Denmark)
FALKLAND ISLANDS (United Kingdom)
GREENLAND (Denmark)
ST. HELENA (United Kingdom)
SOUTH GEORGIA (United Kingdom)
TRISTAN DA CUNHA (United Kingdom)

*********EUROPE***********
CATALONIA (Spain)
ENGLAND (United Kingdom)
GIBRALTAR (United Kingdom)
GUERNSEY (United Kingdom)
ISLE OF MAN (United Kingdom)
JERSEY (United Kingdom)
NORTHERN CYPRUS (Cyprus)
NORTHERN IRELAND (United Kingdom)
SCOTLAND (United Kingdom)
SVALBARD (Norway...in Arctic Ocean)
WALES (United Kingdom)

******FORMER SOVIET UNION******
ABKHAZIA (Georgia)
CHECHNYA (Russia)
DONETSK (Ukraine)
LUZHANSK (Ukraine)
NAGORNO-KARABAKH (Azerbaijan)
SOUTH OSSETIA (Georgia)
TRANSNISTRIA (Moldova)

******AFRICA & MIDDLE EAST******
CABINDA (Angola)
PALESTINE (Israel)
SOMALILAND (Somalia)
WESTERN SAHARA (Morocco)

*******EAST ASIA & THE PACIFIC******
COCOS (KEELING) ISLANDS (Australia)
COOK ISLANDS (Australia)
EASTER ISLAND (Chile)
FRENCH POLYNESIA (France)
GUAM (United States)
NEW CALEDONIA (France)
NIUE (New Zealand)
NORFOLK ISLAND (Australia)
NORTHERN MARIANA ISLANDS (United States)
PITCAIRN ISLANDS (United Kingdom)
TIBET (China)
TOKELAU (New Zealand)
WALLIS AND FUTUNA (France)

*******INDIAN OCEAN******
BRITISH INDIAN OCEAN TERRITORY (United Kingdom)
MAYOTTE (France)
REUNION (France)

Just Finished Reading Y is for Yesterday by Sue Grafton

It had been a while since I read one of Sue Grafton's "alphabet mystery" books featuring spunky and independent California private eye Kinsey Millhone...once I caught up with the author's series I found myself having to wait until the next book came out.  Sadly, Sue Grafton passed away just eleven days ago after fighting cancer for two years...this will be the final book in the series: no "Z". I enjoyed Y is for Yesterday...although I've found myself enjoying her novels when the focus is entirely on Kinsey instead of those that have several flashbacks interspersed throughout the narrative. This particular story keeps hopping back and forth between my favorite detective's investigation in 1989 and the crucial events that transpired ten years earlier...

In 1979 in the city of San Teresa there are a bunch of spoiled rotten high school brats attending a private school.  One of the students, Austin,  is a manipulate bully who blackmails his "friends" into obediently following him.  One classmate who stands up to him is Sloan, a girl who Austin falsely accuses of snitching on a couple of students for cheating on a standardized test.  Sloan is shunned by everyone until she gets hold of a damaging sex video that Austin and others made, consequently demanding that Austin "call off" the shunning.  She ends up murdered...the boy who shot her is now (in 1989) just released from imprisonment and finds himself and his parents being blackmailed by someone who threatens to send that tape to the police.  Not wanting their son to go back to jail, the parents hire Kinsey to discover the identity of the blackmailer, eventually involving herself with mysteries surrounding the events of 1979.  There are other subplots taking place in Kinsey's life, most notably an escaped serial killer who is trying to kill her...

Remember the feared bully Scut Farkas and his toady sidekick Grover Dill from the movie A Christmas Story?  In that tale, the "bad guys" are socially isolated with the rest of the kids basically shunning them.  But with Y is for Yesterday, Sue Grafton much more accurately depicts what usually happens with bullies: they poison the social environment around them, with those who won't kowtow made into scapegoats and shunned: I know, I experienced this in high school at my bus stop and expect that those bullies who have survived to this date are probably just as degenerate and manipulative as they were back then...sad.

I recommend Y is for Yesterday, but if you haven't read anything by Sue Grafton you probably would be better off beginning with the first book A is for Alibi.  That's because although the main mystery in each book is usually independent of the others in the series, Kinsey's personal life progressively develops as the reader "goes through the alphabet"...

Just Finished Reading Nemesis by Isaac Asimov

One of prolific science fiction writer Isaac Asimov's final novels was Nemesis, which was released in 1989, three years before the author's death in 1992.  Set early in the twenty-third century, Earth is an overpopulated and seriously polluted planet with all sorts of environmental and social problems (no surprise here).  A number of Settlements, as they are called, have gone out into the Solar System...these are large, self-contained systems populated by thousands, many of whom are the product of generations living completely away from the original home world.  Rotor, one such settlement, has perfected the ability to travel at approximately the speed of light and, under the direction of its leader Janus Pitt, who is cynical and contemptuous of Earth, has decided to secretly depart to a hidden star system only recently discovered by one its astronomers, Eugenia Insignia.  She takes along her teenage daughter Marlene...who has the intuitive gift of intimately discerning others' hidden motives through their speech and body language...while sending her estranged husband Criles Fisher (and Marlene's father) back to Earth.  She does not know that Criles had been working as a spy for Earth to discern Rotor's intentions, and he is soon enlisted in the effort first to find the missing Settlement with the aid of the invention of superluminal (faster than the speed of light) travel by his new partner, Tessa Wendel.  Making it all a very urgent matter is the discovery that Nemesis, a red dwarf star only two light-years from Earth, is headed in the Solar System's general direction and, upon its passing, will disturb Earth's gravity enough to move its orbit and make it uninhabitable in just a few thousand years.  Is there a habitable world around Nemesis...and what happened to Rotor?  Young Marlene figures greatly in all of this, and her gift contributes immeasurably to the story's resolution.  Naturally, I'm not the one to spill the beans...you'll have to read it for yourself to find out what happens...

Breaking the light barrier in space travel has been a common theme in much science fiction literature, with it being supposed by many writers that humanity will eventually devise a means to bypass Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, which sets an absolute limit on motion at the speed of light.  In reality, good luck with that project...sounds unfeasible to me...but it does open up the universe for stories and speculation.  Other themes that Nemesis incorporates are how to deal with life forms so exotic that they may be completely overlooked at first, as well as how they might communicate with us and see themselves and their environment.  Good stuff to muse upon, and this novel also presents some compelling characters with strong personalities and worldviews.  It also has a great epilogue, expressing the forebodings of Janus Pitt.  I found it to be one of Isaac Asimov's better works, and I've read a lot of them...