Tuesday's List: The First Six Florida Constitutional Amendments on the Ballot

A few weeks ago I listed the thirteen amendments to the Florida State Constitution that are up for vote this November 6th...since then Amendment Eight has been withdrawn.  Today I'm discussing...very briefly...each of the first six amendments and my take on them.  For any of these amendments to be accepted in the state's constitution, they need to receive approval of at least 60% of the voters in the election.  I learned a lot about them from the website Be Ready to Vote...click on it to get some needed information, complete with pros and cons for each proposed amendment.  I plan to discuss Amendments Seven through Thirteen next Tuesday...

1 INCREASED HOMESTEAD TAX EXEMPTION
This amendment increases up to a maximum additional $25,000 homestead tax exemption on properties valued at $100,000 or higher.  For those eligible who want to save tax money for themselves, this seems good...but local governments stand to lose an enormous amount of needed revenue should this pass...I'm voting "no".

2 LIMITATIONS ON PROPERTY TAX ASSESSMENTS
This is only for non-homesteaded property and limits to 10% the taxable value increase for such property.  Apartment renters and vacation home owners in particular stand to personally benefit from such an amendment, but as with the first one, this is estimated to cause a serious shortfall in local government revenue.  Again, I'm voting "no".

3 VOTER CONTROL OF GAMBLING IN FLORIDA
This amendment seems to be getting the most media attention, with supporters pointing to other states of differing political orientations that have this amendment in their constitutions...let the people decide if they want a casino or not, right?  But the way I see it, since casinos are a good source of government revenue, I'd rather see people voluntarily fund it playing at them than forced to through more compulsory taxes...and I really don't want to see Florida feel as if it needs to resort to a state income tax. Since voting "yes" will inhibit casinos, I'm voting "no" although I'm personally no fan of gambling...

4 VOTING RESTORATION
This amendment restores full voting rights to convicted felons...excluding murderers or those convicted of sex crimes...once they have completed their sentences and are no longer on probation or parole.  The current state law, which is undergoing a court challenge right now, mandates five years before a felon can even begin a tedious application process to restore voting rights.  I'm voting "yes"...I believe in the restoration of rights (and hope) after criminals have served their punishment, otherwise rehabilitation means nothing...

5 SUPERMAJORITY VOTE REQUIRED TO IMPOSE, AUTHORIZE, OR RAISE STATE TAXES OR FEES
This amendment, pushed by Tea Party Governor Rick Scott, makes it very difficult to raise taxes and may in the end necessitate cuts to important state services, including those to people unable to fend for themselves.  If you're a "never tax" Floridian, vote for it...I'm noting "no"...

6 RIGHTS OF CRIME VICTIMS; JUDGES
While increasing the mandatory retirement age of judges from 70 to 75, this amendment gives emphasis to crime victims.  The website I referred to mentioned that many of this amendment's provisions are already state law.  There is also proposed a further time limitation on convicts' appeals...and eliminates a section already in law that prevents victims' rights from interfering with those of the accused.  I'm fine with letting judges work to 75. About the time limit on appeals I'm unsure...how far does it go?  But what killed this amendment for me was allowing victims' rights to impinge upon those of the accused...as a friend of mine recently remarked: innocent until proven guilty and let nothing unfairly interfere with due process.  This amendment in a revised form might be acceptable to me as I also care about crime victims, but I'm voting "no"...I'm also wary of the distorted TV ads in favor of it that appear to equate suspects with convicts...

One thing about the above amendments, as well as those that follow: the fact that they are on the ballot in the first place, to me, seems to be an indictment against the ability or willingness of a sitting  state government, composed of the governor, the senate, and the house...all controlled by the same party...to govern and pass meaningful legislation.  After all, didn't we elect them to represent us and pass laws? Oh well, as I said, the election is November 6th... 

Just Finished Reading The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas

The Three Musketeers, by French novelist Alexandre Dumas, is one of those books that I probably should have read back in school...better late than never, I say.  Dumas published in it 1844, but this historical novel's theme goes back to the 1620s during the reign of France's Louis XIII and England's Charles I.  The two kingdoms seem to be in a perennial state of conflict, either in war or preparing for it.  The French king has a special guard unit, called the musketeers, that operates independently of other forces, and the Cardinal has his own guard that often battles that of the King's...most particularly those musketeers.  There are special musketeers, called "the inseparables", named Athos, Parthos, and Aramis...hence the book's title.  A young man from Gascony province, d'Artagnan, has arrived seeking to be accepted by the musketeers and trained into their group.  But he gets drawn into a scuffle with a mystery man and loses his father's letter to their leader.  Disappointed, d'Artagnan finds himself first accidentally drawn into duels with the three musketeers and then, united with them, fends off an attack from the Cardinal's guards...in doing so gaining the good graces of the King and resulting in his appointment to the King's guard...

The Three Musketeers is full of "honor" and dueling to the death in its defense, something I'm not very enthusiastic about.  It all seems so immature and pointless as it is near-to-impossible for one man to have a simple conversation with another without it ending in an insult and an invitation to fight it out.  While this nonsense is going on, there is intrigue between the King of France, his wife Anne (who is also Queen of Austria), the Cardinal, and Lord Buckingham of England...the most powerful man there behind King Charles.  Rochefort, the mystery man d'Artagnan earlier encountered and is always seeking for revenge, along with Milady de Winter, one of literature's greatest villainesses, work for Cardinal Richelieu while Constance Bonacieux, working for the Queen, is d'Artagnan's love interest.  The plot gets pretty convoluted, and predictably in this context of international conflict and intrigue, not all survive to the end...

There apparently really was a historical d'Artagnan as well as the three musketeers: Dumas derived much of his material from his knowledge of that era's history as well as another Frenchman's semi-fictional work from 1700.  As it turns out, The Three Musketeers was the first of a series that Alexandre Dumas wrote, and he had a collaborator with these novels: August Maquete.  Probably needless to say, I read an English translation of this work, not the French original.  Did I like this novel?  Once I got past the buffoonery with the incessant dueling, I began to enjoy the different characters as well as learning quite a bit about early 17th century European history...including an important assassination that occurred in 1628...

Comments and Cognitive Reverie

One of the problems, which incidentally is simultaneously a blessing, when I dutifully post in Facebook each of this blog's articles (which are published through Google's Blogger site), is that readers tend to not only know me personally but also know, should they choose to place a comment, that their opinions will be open for all to read and that they will be instantly identified with them.  Sometimes, as mathematician John Nash, while speculating on a win-win mathematical model scenario, once remarked to a friend in the movie A Beautiful Mind, "You have no respect for cognitive reverie", I like to just sit back and look at things from different perspectives.  I want this blog to be more oriented toward open speculation and "cognitive reverie" as well, but I'm afraid that, with a couple of noteworthy exceptions, folks just aren't comfortable with opening up with their thoughts and reactions.  There is a solution to this, though: anyone reading this blog, whether through Facebook or directly on the web, can submit their own comments to me.  I have it set up on my blog to directly take comments (bypassing Facebook) without them immediately appearing. Before I publish any, I need to first review them...my initial primary reason for this was to avoid publishing the numerous spam comments that were beginning to proliferate.  Now, though, pre-screening is useful in that anyone can submit to me his or her comment and then ask me NOT to publish it...I'll comply with any such request.  Also, anonymous comments can be submitted as well...if they don't sound like spam and aren't demeaning or profane, then likewise they'll be published at the end of the article (within the blog).  In any event, I always endeavor to respond to any reasonable comment, regardless whether I agree or disagree with the expressed view, in a respectful and appreciative manner...

Cognitive reverie to me is an activity in which one isn't tied down to any kind of dogma or ideology, instead just taking a particular subject and breaking it down...sometimes coming to conclusions that don't fit the mainstream of socially-promulgated thought.  Therefore it grieves me somewhat when I go down this road and then get a reaction from someone who is an ideologue, forming their opinions on just about everything based on what somebody else wrote or said that fits their "party line"...to me, that is the opposite of what I would call cognitive reverie.  Such people can easily disprove this about themselves by simply revealing to me at least one issue (the more the better) in which they agree with the "other side's" views.  Another way is to make their opinions more personal and to explain how they interact with their own life and experiences...or explain the thinking process that led them to their conclusions. To me, a natural product of thinking for yourself is to sometimes arrive at different conclusions to things that a particular ideology or doctrine espouses.  Thinking for yourself through the vehicle of open speculation and cognitive reverie also makes you more interesting to others instead of sounding like an obvious one-dimensional, unimaginative copycat hack...

This Week's Football Polls Perplexing with LSU, Fla, and Ky

As games across the South are either finished, in progress, or scheduled for later, the two standing college football polls, the Associated Press and USA Today/Coaches, currently have several Southeastern Conference schools in their respective Top 25...no surprise here since it's the premier conference in the sport.  Three 5-1 teams...LSU, Florida, and Kentucky, are ranked in the "teens": LSU is 13th, Florida 14th, and Kentucky 18th in the AP, while with the coaches it's LSU 12th, Florida 16th, and Kentucky 20th.  So all three teams have the same win-loss record.  However, Florida beat LSU...so why are they ranked behind them?  And Kentucky beat Florida...so why are they likewise ranked worse?  This is one of the problems I have with these polls...I remember many years when the Gators would play and defeat Tennessee early in the season...as the season wore on, Florida would play well but usually lose one or two more games, while the Volunteers, ending up with no better a record than Florida, would stack up win after win, ending up ranked higher at the season's end.  Is there a built-in prejudice here? Probably in both cases...nowadays LSU is expected to be highly ranked, Florida hasn't cracked the Top Ten in years, and Kentucky has traditionally been identified with the league's doormats.  But things have changed, and you might think that the sports journalists and coaches would be up-to-date on them, especially which teams won in head-to-head competition...

By the way, at this writing LSU is beating Georgia 16-0 at halftime, Florida came back from a 21-3 deficit to win over Vanderbilt 37-27, and Kentucky has a bye week.  Two weeks from now the Gators face Georgia in Jacksonville...

Quote of the Week...from Stephen King

Get certain. Do your job. Vote.                              ---Stephen King

Often when I present someone's quote on this blog I don't know the context in which he or she is making it.  Gladly, this is not the case with Stephen King's quote: he posted it yesterday on Twitter, with a link to a tweet from USA Today that read, "A new survey found that just 35 percent of Americans ages 18-29 are 'absolutely certain' that they will vote in November."  King wasn't very happy about that number, consequently his admonition.  I, on the other hand, am astounded in a positive sense with it, as I will explain...

As I showed in my Tuesday article this week, the percentage of registered voters aged 18-29 has been utterly dismal for off-year general elections, i.e. elections in even-numbered years when the presidency wasn't being voted on (like 2018).  Their voting turnout for 2002, 2006, 2010, and 2014 was 18.2%, 20.3%, 20.3%, and 16.3%, respectively.  So for registered voters in this age range to rise up to 35% for this coming election is certainly encouraging...but that's not all.  The USA Today report expressed 35% of Americans 18-29, not just registered Americans in that group!  Maybe they misreported this part, but if even if they did, we may be looking at a lot of surprises on election night, November 6th...

10/7 Sermon on Miracles, Part 5

This past Sunday at The Family Church here in Gainesville, senior pastor Philip Griffin discussed the fifth of seven signs, or miracles, performed by Jesus as revealed in the New Testament Gospel of John.  This miracle, in which Jesus revealed himself as "Lord of the Storm" when he walked on water and calmed that storm, is described in John 6: 16-21...click on the passage to read it via Bible Gateway.  In introducing this message, Pastor Philip reminded us that these miracles served the purpose of pointing to who Jesus is and what he does...

The severe and dire storm that the disciples endured on their boat in the Sea of Galilee connects with the storms that we experience nowadays in our lives: Jesus is instrumental in both.  For storms, as Pastor Philip related, are unavoidable, Jesus comes to us in our storms, and he wants us to trust him to get us through them.  Not only weren't the disciples spared from their storm, but Jesus had in fact sent them into it. Pastor Philip speculated that the disciples, during their long ordeal fighting the storm, may have grumbled "this isn't fair" or "why did Jesus lead us here", but at the darkest hour of the night he came to meet them. Jesus likewise comes the closest to us in our own darkest hours. Philip noted that when Jesus reached where the boat was, he began to pass them by...why? Jesus wanted them to call out to him and invite him into their boat and into their situation...this way letting him be Lord of the Storm for them.  God's greatest desire is for us to depend on him and trust in him.  A lot of us are mad at Jesus and are unwilling to ask him into our boat for different reasons...here are four that our pastor mentioned: "I don't believe he can do anything about the storm", "I'm mad at Jesus for allowing the storm", "I'm proud, so I won't ask for help, and "I think Jesus has given up on me". But on that night on the Sea of Galilee, as Pastor Philip concluded, Jesus changed everything, calming both the storm and his disciples...his presence calms us as well in our storms...

You can watch this week's sermon by clicking on the following link to the church's YouTube video website: [TFC Videos].  The Family Church meets each Sunday morning for the weekly message, praise and worship music, prayer, and fellowship.  The people are friendly and there's free coffee offered in the hospitality room before and between services.  The series on miracles continues this Sunday...

Weekly Short Stories: '39 Sci-Fi, Part 2

This week I continued reading through the science fiction short story anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 1 (1939), which DAW published in paperback in 1979, as I read two more stories: Cloak of Aesir by Don A. Stuart and The Day is Done by Lester del Rey.  The former is about humanity's fate in a distant future under the yoke of alien conquerors while the latter goes thousands of years into the past as modern humans witness the end of the Neanderthals, which they supplanted...

Cloak of Aesir is the longest story in the book and may also be the one most loaded down with technical details...it might help you if you're adept at the intricacies of subatomic physics...I'm not.  Don A. Stuart is the pen name for John W. Campbell, Jr., the noted long-time editor of the magazine Astounding Science Fiction.  The story revolves around an uprising of humans against the planet-wide despotic-but-relatively benevolent rule by the Sarn, a humanoid-like race that conquered Earth in a very destructive war some four thousand years earlier in our late twentieth century.  One man has invented a cloak...hence the story's title...that not only shields him from any weapon the Sarn can throw at him, but can also produce its own effects on the occupying enemy through the concept of "negative energy" (referring back to my aforementioned suggestion about subatomic physics).  The Sarn leader, a virtually immortal woman (their society is strictly matriarchal), is wise both in tactics of rule both over the humans and her own power-hungry rivals, but four thousand years is a very long time in which her foes can develop their own brilliant secret strategies.  How the story develops and ends...well, I'm not going to spoil it for you.  I will say this: the ending is worth plowing through all the technical details, much of which was over my head...

Much shorter and more to my liking is Lester del Rey's The Day is Done.  This is the writer who, three years later in 1942, would write Nerves, a story about a nuclear reactor meltdown, thirteen years before there was ever such a thing as a nuclear reactor!  Del Rey goes back in time and speculates about Hwoogh, the last Neanderthal on Earth.  Marginalized and ridiculed but still cared for by the band of Cro-Magnons he lives with, this is what I call a tear-jerker of a tale.  Hwoogh has his own memories of life with his kind, and how his world drastically changed with the advent of the "Talkers", which he called the Cro-Magnons.  Although it deals with the distant past, there are applications to this story in today's world, in any setting in which people find themselves marginalized and often demeaned and abused by others due to their disability, disfigurement...or even just looking different.  I strongly recommend The Day is Done, but you might want to keep a box of Kleenex handy should the tears start flowing...

And onward I march through this book: five stories down, fifteen to go...

Tuesday's List: National Voter Turnout Since 2000

I have often berated registered voters for skipping off-year elections, i.e. the general elections in which the presidency is not at stake.  Still, the entire U.S. House of Representatives is elected in each of those years as well as one third of the Senate and a high percentage of state governorships...not to mention the many state and local political seats.  Your president is not the king: there's a lot more to our republic with its elected representatives on several levels...but if you won't vote in these elections, don't then turn around and complain about the politicians that you allowed OTHERS to elect.  I say this in particular to the younger voters, who are notorious as a group for only voting in presidential elections.  I'm not picking on today's millennials, either...this apathy among the 18-29 age group consistently goes back many years...

I compiled a list of national voter turnout for general elections in even-numbered years since 2000.  With each year I have listed the national voter turnout percentage, the percentage for voters 60 and older, and then the percentage for that group of 18-29.  If you're wondering about the voters in the 30-59 age group, their percentages are consistently between the oldest and youngest groups.  Florida usually has a higher turnout than the national average by a few percentage points, understandable since it also has a higher percentage of seniors in its population.  Here's my list, with the data derived from the United States Election Project website. To make my point as clear as possible, 2000, 2004, 2008, 2012, and 2016 were presidential election years while 2002, 2006, 2010, and 2014 were off-year elections.  Need I say to my younger friends that the upcoming 2018 general election beckons you to buck the trend and get to the polls this time around?  Well, I'm saying it anyway: VOTE!

YEAR  NATIONAL  60+   18-29
2000         55.3           67.3    34.5
2002         40.5           57.1    18.2
2004         60.7           69.7    45.0
2006         41.3           57.6    20.3
2008         62.2           71.0    48.4
2010         41.8           59.0    20.3
2012         58.6           71.2    40.9
2014         36.7           54.9    16.3
2016         60.1           71.4    43.4
2018         ????           ????    ????

Just Finished Reading The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum

Last year when I visited my sister in Austin, Texas, she had on one of her bookshelves the entire collection of L. Frank Baum's Oz series of children's books.  Intrigued by them, I resolved to read through them some day: after all, the 1939 The Wizard of Oz, for most of my childhood, reigned supreme by far as my favorite, must-see movie.  LibriVox is a free site that provides audiobooks for works that have fallen into the public domain, as is the case for Baum's series.  I was able to listen to the first book from 1902, appropriately titled The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, through LibriVox via YouTube...pretty cool!  The book story differed in a number of ways from the movie, most strikingly in that while the film version with Judy Garland as Dorothy and Margaret Hamilton as the very scary Wicked Witch of the West can be pretty frightening for little children, Baum in his preface to this book wrote that he deliberately set out with this series to provide a set of modern fairy tales that weren't as scary as older, more traditional ones.  Also, in the movie it's all a dream in the end: not the case in the book.  There are numerous other differences between the two versions as well (e.g. Dorothy's ruby slippers from the movie are silver in the book)...all in all I enjoyed the book, and the person recording it did a good job...much better than I would have done.  Now I'm moving on to book #2, titled The Marvelous Land of Oz...

After Confirmation, My Take on Brett Kavanaugh

For a while after President Trump had nominated federal appeals judge Brett Kavanaugh to replace retiring associate justice Anthony Kennedy on the United States Supreme Court, I would from time to time weigh in here on this blog about Kavanaugh, usually expressing my approval...in spite of me being generally of a more liberal political orientation.  To me, it was obvious that we were going to get a conservative justice from this conservative administration: this nominee struck me as conscientious and scrupulous in his view of the law, most likely better than others Trump might have selected.  When I watched and listened to the confirmation hearings, I was dismayed at the numerous heckling disruptions, the unwarranted interruptions by Democratic senators, and the generally rude and cold line of questioning they imposed on Kavanaugh...I thought the nominee acquitted himself very well and weathered this storm of opposition.  And then came the allegation from an anonymous source, a woman claiming that Kavanaugh had attempted sexual assault on her back in the early 1980s when they were both in their teens while attending a party.  The accuser stepped forward as a California college professor, Christine Ford, and she ended up testifying before an extended meeting of the Judiciary Committee.  After a very limited FBI investigation of her claims and those of others, the Senate ended up confirming Kavanaugh to the Court, with the final vote being 50-48, Joe Manchin of West Virginia being the only Democrat voting for him.  Friday the confirmation hung in the balance until "moderate" Republican senator Susan Collins of Maine announced her support of Kavanaugh...Manchin closely followed her, saying that he believed Ford's testimony in spite of his support for the nominee.  I said that I would wait until I could compare the testimonies of Ford and Kavanaugh before I would say where I stood on the nomination.  Now it's over...at least the part leading to Kavanaugh's seating on the high bench...so I'll say it: I believe Christine Ford's account, I think Kavanaugh lied about his past, and I would have consequently voted "no" had the honor been accorded me...

I have recently been on jury duty, something that you probably already know if you've read this blog any amount of time.  There was the defendant, who was charged with attempted sexual battery, and the prosecution presented a very detailed case involving witness testimony and physical evidence of the crime.  The Kavanaugh confirmation process was by its intended nature a political one, and the same criteria for making decisions as a jurist did not apply here.  After all, they were considering someone for a very powerful, lifetime seat that could affect the lives of untold numbers of people in this country for decades to come.  Given the fact that, had Kavanaugh's nomination gone down to defeat, Trump would have picked another equally-or-more conservative person as the new nominee, it makes no sense for any senator who, after stating that they believed the accuser...meaning by direct implication that Kavanaugh did attempt to rape her...to vote Kavanaugh into such a high position of honor, responsibility, and trust.  And had he been voted down, he still would have retained his lifetime position as a federal appeals court judge...something I'm not so keen on either.  So for Senator Manchin to state that he believed Ford while voting for Kavanaugh is cynical politics at its worst: he's running for reelection next month as a Democratic senator in staunchly pro-Trump West Virginia...I'm now hoping that he gets his ass kicked...

So what do I think now about Brett Kavanaugh?  Well, there's a small sliver of hope that I hold out for our latest Supreme Court justice...let me explain.  In looking over this individual's life-span, two personality traits have come out about him as I see it.  One, whatever he happened to be involved in, be it studying hard in school, assisting an independent prosecutor in trying to take down a sitting president, assisting another sitting president in his various policy matters, marrying and raising a family, serving as an appeals court judge...and, yes, as a youth partaking in the rowdy, drunken party scene...involving the degradation of women...with his fellow rich, privileged classmates, Brett Kavanaugh has jumped into it with focused enthusiasm while at the same time compartmentalizing each area, acting fuzzy with his memory whenever it suits his interests.  The other is that he has insisted on being the "Alpha Dog", the "head-honcho" in all of these, quite content with being the leader.  Now that he's going to be on the Supreme Court, will he fully commit himself to this institution, trying to excel to his best while assuming the role of a consensus-forming leader?  Who knows, I'd like to hope this will happen, but I have serious doubts.  Oh, by the way: this morning Stephen King tweeted, "When Al Franken was accused of sexual impropriety, Susan Collins demanded he resign. Without a hearing." What a difference political expediency makes with one's so-called "principles"...

One footnote to all this is the extensive protesting that I'm seeing about Kavanaugh.  I wonder how utterly misguided people can be when all they have to do is get off their collective butts and vote in each and every election...but instead seem to believe that demonstrating like this defines their democratic experience!  You can stomp around with your signs and yell to your hearts' content: it won't throw out a single bum...but voting will...

Just Finished Reading The Door Into Summer by Robert Heinlein

The Door Into Summer, besides being the title of a good 1967 Monkees song (with Michael Nesmith on vocals), is also a 1957 science fiction novel by Robert Heinlein.  In this story, Heinlein reverted back to his old love, which was writing about time travel and speculating about interesting scenarios that can arise from it.  Dan Davis is a talented inventor of robots living in 1970...the future from the author's perspective...and has just survived a limited nuclear war and the end of communism.  His future looks bright with his fledgling company and engagement to pretty Belle Darkin.  But Davis's business partner Miles Gentry and Belle conspire to take over the company and boot him out, leaving him with his only real friend left...his pugnacious cat Pete.  But Davis hasn't thrown in the towel: he makes financial preparations and takes advantage of the burgeoning market in "cold sleep", i.e. suspended animation, ending up awakening in the year 2000...way off there in the future.  There are all sorts of plot manipulations that happen...this is where I leave you, the potential reader, to discover what ensues.  But the bottom line is that Dan Davis uses both cold sleep and time travel to change his life and that of others, much in the same fashion that Harry Potter and Hermione Granger pulled it off in J.K. Rowling's third Harry Potter book, The Prisoner of Askaban...after reading Heinlein's book, Rowling didn't seem quite as ingenious to me as before...

The Door Into Summer has a humorous undertone throughout, and it's a book for cat lovers as the author most likely was one as well.  What stood out to me, besides the usual missed predictions about the future, was one that was eerily on target: Heinlein's (remember he's writing this in 1957) relating of the Stock Market Panic of 1987...which actually happened!  Another thing that made an impact on me was that the author, himself of no religious persuasion, seemed to be acknowledging the presence of a guiding intelligent force in the universe, one that enabled the time-travelling protagonist to avoid committing paradoxes by altering outcomes ever-so-slightly.  I enjoyed this book, but in all honesty prefer some of Heinlein's others...

Quote of the Week...from Neil deGrasse Tyson

Knowing how to think empowers you far beyond those who know only what to think. 
                                                                               ---Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Noted American astrophysicist and popularizer of science Neil deGrasse Tyson, one of my favorite public figures (run for president, Neil!), has a birthday today, turning 60, almost exactly two years younger than me.  Whenever he's on as a talk show guest on TV, he brings a sense of decorum and reason to the table...even when the host happens to be an ultra-partisan, embarrassing, and tactless annoyance.  As for his above comment, I'm not clear on the "empowers" part, but I know that it's far too common for people to be content with allowing those in the media to spoon-feed them opinions...and then spout them back out almost verbatim to others, often in the form of creepy rants.  Or even, in our social media/internet society, bypassing that by simply inserting links to "their" information sources when encountering a differing argument (that's happened to me with comments on this blog).  Whenever I encounter someone who talks like a clone copy of some opiniated media figure, I wonder to myself where does this veneer come off and where do individuals like this begin to think for themselves?  I've heard just about every sort of opinion and narrative about various topics and issues...somebody who just repeats the same tired old crap isn't going to sway me in the least.  But if they instead were to open up a little about themselves and how they came to their way of thinking, along with the values that they prioritize the most highly...well, that's a sign that they do know how to think, as well as effectively communicate.  But a lot of us, while real adept on the attack and copying and pasting pithy slogans, are suddenly reticent when it comes to coming clean about ourselves and what motivates us philosophically and politically.  I respect and appreciate an expressed opinion...even when I vehemently disagree with it...when the person promoting it lays out his or her thought processes in arriving at it.  If I just wanted someone to inject finished viewpoints directly into my consciousness, conspiracy theories and doomsday scenarios included, well...there are plenty of overpaid fools on TV and radio more than willing to oblige me, and I'd be the bigger fool for letting them...

9/30 Sermon on Miracles, Part 4

At The Family Church here in Gainesville, Florida, senior pastor Philip Griffin continued his examination of seven signs, or miracles, that Jesus performed and which are related in the New Testament's Gospel of John.  The specific sign for this day was the feeding of the thousands, described in John 6:1-14, 30-35: click on the passage to read the entire chapter via Bible Gateway. The overriding theme, as Pastor Griffin stated, is that Jesus is the Bread of Life, satisfying the hunger of our souls...

Pastor Griffin broke his message down into four parts: Jesus leads us into a life of compassion, trust, satisfaction, and evangelism.  When Jesus was ministering throughout the land, he was exhausted, hungry, and discouraged...he sought solitude to seek and receive solace and strength from his heavenly father.  But the crowds, many of whom saw in Jesus a political figure who could overthrow the Romans and reestablish an independent Jewish kingdom, pursued him and his disciples.  Jesus's reaction to them was counterintuitive, but in line with God's love for us: he felt and demonstrated compassion toward them, in so doing pointing to us the role that compassion has in ministry and that it is a sign that we are truly following him.  With trust, Jesus tested Philip, one of his disciples, to point him to trusting in him and not his own knowledge.  No, the numbers did not add up: they had five pieces of bread and two fish, and to feed the five thousand men (and many more women and children who were there) the financial cost would be staggering.  But while it is good to be responsible with one's resources, the ultimate authority over them all is God.  Our pastor continued, noting that if we put what little we have in God's hands, he will provide abundantly for us: God's provision will never run out and his love will never run dry.  But the people wanted a political solution to their physical problems...but as Pastor Philip said, this sign pointed not only to a physical level of hunger, but also a spiritual one.  And with evangelism, Philip related a definition that he had heard from a Sri Lankan evangelist: "it is one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread"...in the end we're all beggars and the bread is the Bread of Life: Jesus Christ...

You can watch this message on the church's YouTube video website through the following link: [TFC Videos].  The Family Church, at 2022 SW 122nd Street, holds its weekly services on Sunday morning at 9 and 10:30. Along with the sermon is praise and worship music, prayer, fellowship, and opportunities for learning and discipleship.  Free coffee is available in the hospitality room...the series continues this Sunday...

Weekly Short Story Review: '39 Sci-Fi, Part 1

Although I'm still devoting Wednesdays to discussing short stories I've read, this week I'm going in a different direction.  I own the entire collection, covering the years 1939-63, of the anthology series Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories.  I am now going through each book, starting with #1, covering the science fiction stories that editors Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg deemed the best in short science fiction literature for 1939.  Starting it off were three stories...

I, ROBOT...by Eando Binder
The name "I, Robot" has come to be identified either with a questionable movie starring Will Smith or a collection of stories written by Isaac Asimov.  The original is a 1939 short story by Eando Binder, the pen name of a two-brothers writing team.  It is told from the perspective of the robot, created by a kindly tinkerer/scientist, and delves into emerging self-awareness as well as how sadly human nature will turn anyone appearing "different" and out of the ordinary as being evil monsters.  A very endearing but unsettling tale...

THE STRANGE FLIGHT OF RICHARD CLAYTON...by Robert Bloch
Robert Bloch, a name you're probably unfamiliar with, later wrote Psycho, the horror thriller that Alfred Hitchcock turned into a blockbuster movie.  In '39 he produced this little story about a man, the title character, who singlehandedly designed and built over a span of years a rocket ship to take him to Mars and back.  But as his spaceship takes off, he unexpectedly loses control and contact...fortunately, as he sees it, the controls have already been set to automatic.  But in the meantime Richard Clayton is completely cut off from others, even unable to mark the passage of time.  The ending reminded me of Carl Sagan's movie Contact...

TROUBLE WITH WATER...by H.L. Gold
This to me was more of a fantasy story than science fiction, especially since one of the characters is a water gnome who swims with his ears! Greenberg, the protagonist, has offended this little man and now must pay the consequences: henceforth water will steer away from him...he no longer can drink it or bathe with it.  The comedic implications play out in this funny yarn, but since the human body is about 6o% water with the percentage dramatically rising to 92% with blood, wouldn't Greenberg have imploded in a horrible instant?  Well, as I said, Trouble with Water was more fantasy than science fiction...

The best science fiction short stories from 1939 continue next week...

Tuesday's List: Historic Landmark US Supreme Court Decisions

Depending on what your area of interest is, what constitutes a "landmark" United State Supreme Court decision will vary from person to person.  On the below list, I'm sure I left out some important cases...I took a course on the history of Court rulings back in 2002 at the University of Florida.  My two sources for this list, which I merged, rearranged, and modified, were USA Today and Constitution Facts, which you can access buy clicking on their names.  I wanted to demonstrate by presenting my list how divided the U.S. Supreme Court has become in recent decades: 10 out of 11 of the most recent listed decisions have been by single-vote 5-4 majorities (the exception being 6-3), while out of the first 25 decisions below, only 5 were decided that narrowly.  It's true: once a deliberative body of consensus-building and a push for unity, the Court has deteriorated into two camps of opposing ideologies...which accounts for the fury (or with the recent case of Merrick Garland, stonewalling) unleashed on nominees nowadays whenever that precarious"balance" seems threatened for one "side" or the other...

1803 MARBURY v. MADISON (4-0)
1809 MCCULLOCH v. MARYLAND (7-0)
1824 GIBBONS v. OGDEN (7-0)
1837 CHARLES RIVER BRIDGE v. WARREN BRIDGE (5-2)
1857 DRED SCOTT v. SANDFORD (7-2)
1877 MUNN v. ILLINOIS (7-2)
1896 PLESSY v. FERGUSON (7-1)
1905 LOCHNER v. NEW YORK (5-4)
1918 SCHENCK v. UNITED STATES (9-0)
1931 NEAR v. MINNESOTA (5-4)
1937 WEST COAST HOTEL v. PARRISH (5-4)
1944 KOREMATSU v. UNITED STATES (6-3)
1954 BROWN v. BOARD OF EDUCATION (9-0)
1961 MAPP v. OHIO (6-3)
1962 BAKER v. CARR (6-2)
1962 ENGEL v. VITALE (6-1)
1963 GIDEON v. WAINWRIGHT (9-0)
1964 NEW YORK TIMES v. SULLIVAN (9-0)
1965 GRISWOLD v. CONNECTICUT (7-2)
1966 MIRANDA v. ARIZONA (5-4)
1967 LOVING v. VIRGINIA (9-0)
1969 TINKER v. DES MOINES (7-2)
1973 SAN ANTONIO INDEPENDENT SCHOOL DISTRICT v. RODRIGUEZ (5-4)
1973 ROE v. WADE (7-2)
1974 UNITED STATES v. NIXON (8-0)
1978 REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA v. BAKKE (5-4)
1989 TEXAS v. JOHNSON (5-4)
1990 CRUZAN v. MISSOURI DEPT. OF HEALTH (5-4)
2000 BUSH v. GORE (5-4)
2003 LAWRENCE v. TEXAS (6-3)
2008 DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA v. HELLER (5-4)
2010 CITIZENS UNITED v. FEDERAL ELECTIONS COMMISSION (5-4)
2012 NATIONAL FEDERATION OF INDEPENDENT BUSINESS v. SEBELIUS (5-4)
2013 SHLEBY COUNTY v. HOLDER (5-4)
2013 UNITED STATES v. WINDSOR (5-4)
2014 OBERGEFELL v. HODGES (5-4)

Just Finished Reading The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) was one of those authors against whom I used to feel an unreasonable kind of bias, almost exclusively as a negative reaction to the kind of "instruction" I received throughout my high school English class years.  I do remember reading The Old Man and the Sea in 1971 as a reading assignment in the ninth grade and thought then that it was okay, but didn't get around to reading any of his other more famous works until recent years, when I went through For Whom the Bell Tolls (my favorite Hemingway novel) and A Farewell to Arms.  Well, I finally got around to reading one of his earlier books, The Sun Also Rises from 1926.  As for my following reaction, English teachers are welcome to read it but so are truck drivers, construction workers, policemen, and anyone else: their opinions are equally valid and authoritiative, as far as I'm concerned...

During the 1920s there was a very large American and British expatriate community residing in Paris, France, partially due to the more liberal social environment there, partially due to many having fallen in love with the place from their World War I experiences, and partially due to the fact that, while in the States Prohibition was a Constitutionally-mandated law at the time, overseas the American ex-pats could openly drink to their hearts' content.   Ernest Hemingway was one of these folks and decided to write a story that reflected the expatriate lifestyle, in the process reportedly drawing upon his own experiences and those of friends and acquaintances.  The result, The Sun Also Rises, is something that, were it to appear in some form of media today, would probably most closely resemble a TV reality show like Jersey Shore, The Shahs of Sunset, or the numerous Housewives series.  I say that because Hemingway's characters are continually going around from café to restaurant to hotel while getting themselves "tight", i.e. drunk.  Their lives seem to be in a state of stagnation, just drifting from one thing to the next.  At the same time these people (first person narrator/protagonist Jake Barnes, his "love" Brett Ashley, Mike Campbell, Bill Gorton, and Robert Cohn as the main characters) practice a kind of social insulation separating themselves from the people they encounter. I'll have to admit that some of these characters remind me in various ways of people I've personally known over the years, especially that tendency to insulate themselves as a "group apart"...or as Hemingway referred to it, the "gang".  They hobnob around in Paris, go fishing in French Basque country, and end up watching the bullfights in Pamplona, Spain. If you're looking for anything substantial happening in this story, forget it: more than anything this is a character study as well as a detailed description of 20s' Paris and the sport/tradition of bullfighting.  Hemingway's writing style was stark and plain, using short sentences and making dialogue the preeminent feature.  I can't say that I disliked The Sun Also Rises once I felt that I understood where the author was going with it...I'm just not sure that he would have appreciated the generally unfavorable reactions that I felt about his characters and their lifestyles, which I suspect he might have been promoting and defending...

My September 2018 Running Report

In September I ran for a total of 66 miles...not much.  I did extend my longest single run to 4.6 miles and ran on every day of the month.  Two factors interfering with my running were the extremely hot and humid weather we've been experiencing all month here in northern Florida and my own situation at work: lots and lots of overtime, which often impinged on the time I would normally spend late in the morning on runs.  I'm looking forward to cooler conditions in October, but the overtime...well, it's sporadic.  I'm still thinking of running a half-marathon in November...now I've heard that Gainesville is holding two of them, on consecutive weekends.  Also, there is a new free weekly 5K race that takes place Saturday mornings at Gainesville's Depot Park: I need to preregister online for it.  Yesterday Melissa went with me to the Fit2Run store at the Oak's Mall where the manager tested my running to fit it to appropriate shoes. She also gave me some needed advice on avoiding plantar fasciitis in the future.  So now I'm training with new shoes...next month should be an adventure as I try to ratchet up my running distance...

Just Finished Reading The Blinding Knife by Brent Weeks

The Blinding Knife, by Brent Weeks, is the second book in his ongoing Lightbringer fantasy series.  On this imaginary world, colors and certain people's abilities to turn them into a tangible substance called "luxin" determine the social and political order and power structure.  The author went into agonizing detail explaining it all in the first book...he was more merciful in this one, thankfully.  Kip Guile is a boy with special abilities concerning all the known colors, but neither he nor others know the full extent of his powers.  His presumed father, Gavin Guile (or is it his brother Dazen) is the Prism, charged with the burdensome task of ensuring that all the colors of the world remain in a state of balance...otherwise the color gods will rise up and divide and plunge the world into chaos and destruction.  But Gavin has been stabbed with a special white dagger and so has begun to lose his ability to control colors...yes, it all sounds a bit silly the way I describe it, doesn't it?  In the meantime his new nemesis, Lord Omnichrome, is leading a war of rebellion against the Chromeria, Gavin's group.  There are lots of other characters and subplots involved here, but I'm just not going to list them.  One reason is that describing books within series like this can inadvertently involve giving away some of what happened in previous volumes and I don't want to be a plot spoiler.  I will say this much: the various characters, many in dire opposition to each other, often are related...sometimes closely...with some of them ignorant of this. It's all very convoluted on many levels, something I find a bit distasteful.  I understand that the author intends to extend this Lightbringer series to several books, making me wonder why I started reading it in the first place.  After all, I really don't want to be in my late seventies or early eighties, wondering when Book Number Nine or Ten is going to come out. I've read long fantasy series, notably Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time and Terry Goodkind's The Sword of Truth.  But I began these projects knowing that the authors had already completed writing them and that I could read them in rapid succession...

Quote of the Week...from J.D. Salinger

I'll read my books and I'll drink coffee and I'll listen to music and I'll bolt the door.
                                                           ---J.D. Salinger

J.D. Salinger is the author of the great 1951 literary anthem to teenage angst and alienation, The Catcher in the Rye. I can identify with his above quote in that I know the things I want to do and it immensely frustrates me when the world around me seems to conspire to prevent me from doing them.  I also like books, coffee, music...and bolted doors: I'm about to start Robert Heinlein's 1957 science fiction novel The Door into Summer, I have a cup of hazelnut-flavored coffee in front of me, I'm a fan of classical music, classic rock, alternative/indie rock, and heavy metal...and my doors are bolted and locked.  My personality leads me to be a recluse, and I have to fight each day to resist the temptation to completely shut out the world from my life...with mixed results, some days being better than others.  But I'm blessed to have a wonderful wife who helps keep me connected, as well as a pretty doggone good job to go to with some fantastic people.  I also try to get outside and run...not just for exercise or personal achievement, but also to be a part of that world that I'm inclined to shun.  This blog has been very helpful to me as well, establishing a mostly daily habit of writing and engaging others with my thoughts on a variety of topics.  And sometimes (not tonight) I'll deliberately go out to a Starbucks to write or study, just to be in a social setting...plus I like their coffee, of course. It's good to get out among others...and it's also good to be at home around oneself...

9/23 Sermon on Miracles, Part 3

At The Family Church here in Gainesville, senior pastor Philip Griffin continued his series on the seven signs, or miracles, that Jesus gave in the Bible's New Testament book of John.  The passage of focus, concerning the healing at the pool, is John 5:1-18...click on it to read it via Bible Gateway.  Pastor Philip's message contained two important areas: how we can get ourselves "unstuck" and healed physically, emotionally, relationally, and spiritually...and the true meaning of the Sabbath.  To this effect he posed three questions: do I want to get well, am I receiving everything God wants to give me, and do I find in God my true Sabbath rest?  Philip noted that the man at the pool had identified himself with his illness and the sick people at the pool.  He had a misplaced hope that an angel would stir up the healing waters for him and, instead of trusting in Jesus as his Lord, gave him instructions to help him into the pool.  None of these false notions helped this man...only through the love and power of Jesus did he get physically healed.  Yet the man did not allow himself spiritual healing, for he and others turned on Jesus for this healing on a Sabbath day...our pastor wondered how people could be so legalistic to concentrate on that point after someone stricken for nearly forty years was suddenly, wonderfully healed of his affliction.  But the true Sabbath, as Pastor Philip concluded, is based on God's work in the creation...he did not rest on the seventh day because he was tired or the "rules" mandated it, but rather because his work was done.  It's because, he said, of Jesus's work that we can rest from our work.  We find our Sabbath rest in Jesus, not in ourselves. At the end of this message, Philip read James 5:14-16, which is about prayer within the church body, and invited anyone from the congregation with a need for healing to come forward for prayer with church elders and pastors...

This sermon is available for you to watch through the church's YouTube video website...click to the following link: [TFC Videos].  The Family Church is located at 2022 SW 122nd Street and holds its Sunday morning services at 9 and 10:30.  There's the weekly message, praise and worship music, prayer, great fellowship, and all sorts of group and learning activities to participate in.  And the hospitality room features free coffee and treats before and between services, always a destination for me when I arrive.  Looking forward to this Sunday at the church...