Cornyn Raises Trump's 2016 Election Total in Senate Speech

Yesterday morning I was watching C-Span2 as the United States Senate was in session.  One of the speakers rising to take the floor was the Texas senior senator, Republican John Cornyn, who is known to be a strong defender of the Trump administration and who also is a skilled orator and debater...he's a senator whom I respect and take seriously.  He made an interesting point that the Democratic-controlled House, in its impeachment inquiry against Trump, was not according the President or the Republican side the kind of due process and consideration that the Republicans had displayed toward President Clinton and the Democrats back in 1998 when they were going down the same road.  That may be true, but Cornyn, in accusing the other side of trying to undo the 2016 presidential election, made the erroneous claim that Donald Trump received 65 million votes in that election...let's take a look at the real figures...

If you go to Wikipedia, they report that Trump got 62,984,828 votes and Clinton 65,853,514.  The Associated Press reported Trump at 62,985106 and Clinton at 65,853,625.  And the official tally from the Federal Election Commission has Trump with 62,984,825 votes and Clinton with 65,853,516.  Even with the figures rounded to the next million, Donald Trump received only 63 million votes while Hillary Clinton got 66 million.  Now 63 million votes is nothing to laugh about, but especially considering that his opponent received nearly 3 million more than him, I wouldn't be making such an issue about Trump's popular vote total as Senator Cornyn did.  Of course, Donald Trump has claimed without any substantiated proof that he really did win the popular vote over Hillary Clinton and that there was widespread voter fraud on her behalf.  And if you're one of his idolizers who see everything only through his filters just because he supports you on your pet issues...and I pity you if you do...you most assuredly agree with him on this and just about everything else he puts forth: good luck on convincing me, though. I voted twice for Obama but also criticized the hell out of him when I thought he was wrong on something...

I am a supporter of the electoral college system and despite Trump losing the popular vote total to Clinton, I have always held that he won the 2016 election fair and square through the Constitutionally-mandated electoral college after winning close contests in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Florida.  I remember before the 2000 election between Bush and Gore and polls were hinting that Bush might win the popular vote but lose the electoral college...but the reverse happened and Dubya was sworn in as the 43rd president.  No problem...ever since I was twelve years old and observed the 1968 election returns between Nixon, Humphrey, and Wallace, I knew that it was the electoral college that determined a presidential election's winner. But I wonder how many adults around me are totally clueless with regard to how presidents are legitimately elected to office and what they were being taught...if anything...in middle and high school...

Weekly Short Stories: 1952 Science Fiction, Part 3

I continued reading (again) through the anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 14 (1952), with four more good science fiction tales to review.  Here they are...

DELAY IN TRANSIT by F.L. Wallace
Cassal, an agent in the distant future employed by a for-profit corporation seeking exclusive rights to produce and market an extremely important invention by a scientist living far away near the center of the galaxy...finds himself stranded on a planet on which he discovers many others in the same predicament as himself, not having the proper credentials to board their needed flights.  Cassal, aided by a hidden device providing him detailed data on his surroundings and those around him, discovers a company that offers to get him passage to his destination...at a steep price.  Ultimately, it is this company, not Cassal's mission or predicament, that I came away with as the main message of this story: some businesses will create the very problem that they then turn around and sell solutions for...

GAME FOR BLONDES by John D. MacDonald
A man, in the middle of an angry argument with his wife, has a terrible auto accident that kills her...later he finds himself deep in grief and guilt, staggering half-drunk through the streets when he notices three strangely-dressed and made-up blonde women are following him.  Their eventual meeting takes this brief story in a completely unexpected direction, as well as a remarkable ending...

THE ALTAR AT MIDNIGHT by Cyril Kornbluth
The narrator of this story frequents different bars in town and one evening notices a young man sitting at the end of one of them with extensive broken red veins scarring his entire face, causing a ghastly effect.  He reveals that the scars are from his job: he is a spacer, making a lot of money traveling through space between Venus, Earth, and Mars.  His disfigurement comes from the many flights he has taken in ships equipped with the innovative Bowman Drive...he had meant to "retire" before too much scarring had taken place but couldn't pass up on the money: now on Earth he is ostracized and bitter.  The Bowman Drive also enabled an atomic bomb installation on the moon that now threatens Earth: and just who is this Bowman who made all this possible?  Read on to the story's end...

COMMAND PERFORMANCE by Walter M. Miller, Jr.
A young affluent, married woman with three children has always felt a sense of emptiness within her...something intangible that was missing...in spite of all her material and social success in life.  One day the answer comes suddenly crashing down on her, but instead of being assured from it she retreats into fear and panic.  When I first read this story I thought her behavior was foolish, but after giving it a little thought I'd probably have reacted similarly.  What was the answer, you ask?  No, you'll have to read it for yourself, another story that would play well on Twilight Zone or Night Gallery...

Next I'll continue my look at science fiction short stories from the year 1952...

Just Finished Reading The Dreaming Jewels by Theodore Sturgeon

Theodore Sturgeon (1918-85) is widely known in the science fiction community as an excellent author of short stories...I've read a few of them myself and heartily agree.  The Dreaming Jewels, from 1950, was his first published novel and, having just finished reading it, I naturally have a few things to say about it.  The story concerns itself about Horton Bluett, nicknamed Horty, who at the age of eight has to deal as an orphan with a physically abusive, repulsive stepfather.  Soon after that awful "father" causes him to lose three of his fingers after slamming a closet door on them, Horty runs away and meets up with some members of a traveling carnival...they're all part of the special cast in its freak show, before the time that this sort of designation would be considered offensive and demeaning.  Beautiful Zena, called a "midget" (back in 1950 when it was PC-OK to use this term), takes in Horty and disguises him as a girl midget cast member.  But I must backtrack here: she only does so after she discovers his one treasured possession that he has always had: a broken, old jack-in-the-box, named "Junky", with a hideous looking head but with large, glowing jewels representing its eyes.  After she sees it and notices the effect it has on Horty, that changes everything...which is appropriate, considering the role it subsequently plays in the story's explanation and resolution.  One big problem with this carnival: its leader is a misanthropic, bitter-but-brilliant former doctor who lost his medical license after being falsely convicted of malpractice...now he wants his revenge on all of humanity.  And this man has his own secret, involving something he discovered in the forest...

At the beginning of The Dreaming Jewels, the story seemed more of a fantasy involving magic with Horty a special "Harry Potter" type of protagonist: a likable, spunky, and unpretentious little boy, abused by his custodians, who ultimately assumes the role as the indispensable character with special abilities and the implicit assignment of taking on the evil adversary.  Yet Sturgeon, true to his science fiction roots, transforms it all into a plausible tale within that genre and the fantasy and magic recede as the more intriguing explanations reveal themselves.  Reading through The Dreaming Jewels reminded me of a recent movie I've seen, The Greatest Showman, starring Hugh Jackman as a young P.T. Barnum and which also gave a sensitive portrayal to the special people in his circus.  And sensitive is one adjective that applies to just about everything Theodore Sturgeon writes, for while his stories are full of innovative and often strange notions, the ultimate humanity of his characters stands out boldly as their most compelling elements.  This debut novel of his is definitely worth looking into...

Some editions of The Dreaming Jewels came out with the alternate title The Synthetic Man...but it's the same story whichever name appears on the book's cover...

My All-Time Top 500 Favorite Songs: #430-421

This week's slice of my 500 all-time favorite songs is a blast from the distant past: all but the last entry are from the sixties and seventies.  Half are from Britain, half are American acts.  And the opening song below belongs to its own special category: songs with extremely long titles, something I might look into down the line on this blog...

430 EVERYBODY'S GOT SOMETHING TO HIDE EXCEPT FOR ME AND MY MONKEY...the Beatles
Back in the early Beatlemania years they'd come out from time to time with a strong rocker with Lennon screaming his lungs out, songs like Bad Boy, Dizzy Miss Lizzy, Money, Slow Down, Rock n' Roll Music, and Twist and Shout...many of them covers of other artists.  This track from disc two of their 1968 "White Album" would have fit in nicely with those, only 2:25 long but strikingly intense, abruptly following on the album the languid McCartney song Mother Nature's Son.  This would be a good wake-up song on somebody's alarm...

429 LOVES ME LIKE A ROCK...Paul Simon
Recorded with the gospel singing group Dixie Hummingbirds as backup vocals, this song has an evangelistic flavor to it while the ultimate punchline is directed squarely at then-President Nixon, who at the time was thick in the middle of the Watergate scandal.  I associate it with running massive quantities of laps in the early evening on the one-eighth-mile track at Hollywood's Apollo Middle School, very close to my home, in August and September of 1973...it's a very catchy tune that stuck in my mind as a never-ending song while my feet pounded the pavement and around and around I went...

428 I'M A LOSER...the Beatles
My parents were big Beatles fans in the early years and bought nearly all of their albums through Revolver as they came out...this song is from their American-released album Beatles '65 and I've heard it countless times on our phonograph.  It's clearly a song the band worked hard together on, with John singing very compelling lyrics that reveal his own vulnerability..."and I'm not what I appear to be"...as he masks his anguish over a lost love...

427 DON'T BRING ME DOWN...Electric Light Orchestra
In between Electric Light Orchestra's brilliant classical/rock fusings of their earlier years and their ill-advised venture into crass disco hits stands this pure, classic rock song from 1979...no strings or dance beats here.  I wish this was the direction that Jeff Lynne had taken the band...I think their popularity would have endured longer than it did if they had steered away from the disco crap.  Don't Bring Me Down, for some reason, has a Dave Clark Five sound to it that gives me a sense of nostalgia for that simpler, more direct kind of rock from the mid-sixties...

426 KENTUCKY RAIN...Elvis Presley
Kentucky Rain I associate with the spring of 1970...I was only thirteen then but was formulating much of what my personality now constitutes, including a cynical but realistic view of basic human nature... not that I knew this at the time.  Many of the songs from this period are deeply etched within me, and Elvis...no longer the dashing rock n' roll rebel from the fifties and not yet the sickly Las Vegas caricature in years to come...delivered what I believe to be his sweetest and best performance with this single...

425 MR. ROBOTO...Styx
The radio DJs didn't know what to make of this strange song which hit the airwaves in early 1983. Lead singer Dennis DeYoung apparently wanted it to be part of an onstage rock opera that the rest of the group...especially guitarist Tommy Shaw...objected to, leading to the group's breakup for a few years until they later reunited, seeing the Styx trademark as a cash cow they could make a lot of money touring under.  I thought Mr. Roboto was a kind of commentary on the fear then sweeping parts of the country that the Japanese, with their automatized manufacturing techniques, were responsible for the recession and loss of American manufacturing jobs at that time.  Doomo arigatoo, Mr. Roboto...I couldn't get enough of listening to it then and I still like it now...too bad DeYoung couldn't put a brake on the theatrics and keep the group together...

424 DON'T STOP...Fleetwood Mac
When I first moved to Gainesville, Florida in the late summer of 1977 this was the big non-disco song I liked to listen to on the radio.  What a great song of optimism, not so different in character than Florence and the Machine's Dog Days are Over, which appeared earlier on this list. It's also the first Fleetwood Mac song I would take a strong liking to, although it certainly wouldn't be the last...more from this talented band to come...

423 MY SWEET LADY...John Denver
Some artist whose name I can't recall had a minor hit with his cover of John Denver's song during the spring of 1974...I moderately liked it.  But Denver's original version from his 1971 Poems, Prayers and Promises album is by far the better.  It's a tenderly sung, slow love ballad with the closing words "and I swear to you our time has just begun"...

422 ISN'T LIFE STRANGE...the Moody Blues
The Moody Blues were one of those rare groups in which everybody in it had a hand at composing their music.  John Lodge wrote and sang lead on this one, off their 1972 Seventh Sojourn album at the time of its release in the spring of that year. Also, their Nights in White Satin, from back in 1968, was resurgent at the same time and played a lot on the radio...during a very pensive period in my fifteen-year old life, the last half of the tenth grade in high school.  I associate Isn't Life Strange with this time when it never seemed to stop raining, both on the outside and the inside...

421 I WILL WAIT...Mumford and Sons
And here's a song that's much more recent...I picked it as one of my favorite songs of 2014 after hearing it played quite a lot on my local alternative radio station.  My estimation since then has only grown of this song from a British rock band, a piece whose lyrics and singing style might fit on an old Chuck Wagon Gang gospel music album and whose instrumentation, complete with wild banjo picking, would stand up well on the Grand Ole Opry stage in Nashville...yet it was a big alternative rock hit!

Next week: songs #420-411...

Baseball and Football Over the Weekend

Yesterday I enjoyed sitting back and watching the Major League Baseball divisional playoffs on TV.  First the Washington Nationals, on the road in their second game against the St. Louis Cardinals, delivered another exemplary pitching performance, this one from standout starter Max Schermer, as they prevailed again, 3-1.  Then in the evening the New York Yankees got their own great pitching from Masahiro Tanaka against the home team Houston Astros in their American League series opener...young second baseman Gleyber Torres stunned the home crowd with 5 RBIs as the Yanks won, 7-0...

Although during the afternoon I would often check in on various college football games...including that shocking 20-17 South Carolina road upset over Georgia in overtime...I had already decided to deliberately avoid the Florida-at-LSU evening contest.  My reason is that last week, while asked to work on my off day, right near my work station they had a radio blaring out the play-by-play of the Florida-Auburn game and I couldn't get away from the decibel attack...even with my own headphones and music.  I didn't even know how the LSU game turned out until this morning, when I saw on my newsfeed that the Tigers beat the Gators 42-28 after a mostly close and competitive game.  That loss really doesn't matter too much since Florida would have to beat Georgia on November 2nd anyway to win the SEC East and can still make it to the championship playoffs if they win out the rest of the year..  But just winning the division title by itself isn't that big a deal anymore for Gator fans: former coach Jim McElwain accomplished the feat in each of his first two seasons, but had a completely depleted and ineffectual offense at the end of both of them...

Let's see, the Yankees play the Astros again today and the National League playoffs resume tomorrow in Washington.  As for the National Football League, the pitiful Dolphins are up against another winless team...albeit one whose management actually wants them to win: the Washington Redskins.  They just fired their head coach Jay Gruden...let's see how their players respond to his ouster. If I were a Miami Dolphins player, though, in this tanking environment, I would know that rising in stature through effective and skillful play would probably result in me being traded off the team: excellence will not be tolerated by Dolphins management...

Just Finished Reading Space by James A. Michener

I had never read anything before by acclaimed author James A. Michener (1907-97), who wrote many historical novels that opened up the world and the past to readers...I just finished my first Michener book, Space, from 1982: I think I just discovered a "new" author to follow...move over, Stephen King and Agatha Christie.  Space chronicles the lives and experiences of several fictional characters as they pass through real historical events and processes, including the Apollo moon missions of the late sixties and early seventies, and ending following the first successful Space Shuttle flight in 1981.  Michener gives an incredible portrayal of the crucial October, 1944 Battle of Leyte Gulf in the Philippines between the Japanese and American navies...I felt at times I was there in the midst of it all (well, not really).  Further in the story we read how some German scientists and engineers involved with rocketry development...and suspected of heavy water experimentation...escaped to the west at war's end and were picked up by the Americans. Skipping some years, the experiences of American fighter pilots in the Korean War and the later test-flying of new aircraft...nearly as deadly as the war...are described in detail.  Then the author relates how the early Eisenhower administration deliberately prohibited rocketry development and how that president abruptly turned about-face following the Soviets' successful launch into space of their Sputnik satellite in 1957 and instituted NASA.  Then the race is on to send men into space and ultimately to the moon and back.  After success with our Apollo missions, Michener accurately describes the snowballing public disinterest about space travel and a building anti-science movement in the seventies emphasizing the paranormal, UFOs, the New Age movement, and religious fundamentalism...

I've always had an issue with historical fiction, being a history buff myself and wanting to internalize the truths from history.  But if fictional characters are experiencing the real historical events...and even some things that never really happened are depicted in the story as having happened, then I have a task on hand in mentally sorting out what's real and what isn't.  Michener added manned missions that didn't really happen in order to allow his fictional astronauts to play a larger role in his story...but I already knew enough about that part of his narrative to filter out fiction from truth.  But with the naval battle, the escape of the German scientists, Korean dogfighting, test piloting, and the political narrative I'm much fuzzier about distinguishing between historical truth and the author's brilliant imagination.  Then again, I can easily look these topics up on the Internet and read about them or explore more purely historical books that focus on these themes...

At least in this book, James A. Michener wrote in a plain, easy-to-follow style that rewarded my diligence as he revealed his extensive research and preparation and enlightened me as never before about his chosen topic.  My favorite parts of Space were (1) Michener's detailed description of the Battle of Leyte Gulf, (2) young John Pope's fascination with the stars as a boy (I identified strongly with that), and (3) the later heated division among the space community as to the direction of the program: continued manned flights or a concentrated effort to explore the cosmos through unmanned probes.  I'm looking forward to soon starting on another Michener novel after seeing how well he handled this one...

By the way, I just read that Michener's Space was adapted to a TV miniseries in 1985, starring James Garner.  Look it up if you want, but for me I'm happy with the book...

Quote of the Week...from Ellen DeGeneres

I get those fleeting, beautiful moments of inner peace and stillness...and then the other 23 hours and 45 minutes of the day, I'm a human trying to making it through in this world.
                                                                                       ---Ellen DeGeneres

Ellen DeGeneres, as you probably know, is a comedian who has her own weekday television talk show.  She came out during the airing of her nineties comedy series Ellen as to her sexual orientation and received both support and criticism for it...I think she's pretty cool, but not because she practices identity politics (which she doesn't) or overdoes it with the political correctness schtick (which she also doesn't).  No, Ellen is a nice person who understands that we're all different and can disagree and still be friends without demonizing one another...how refreshing.  And she is strongly anti-bullying, an issue about which I feel vehemently as well.  Her above quote is right on target, something I can really understand as it relates to my life.  I know there are sources in our society that tell us to meditate, practice something called "mindfulness", pray, and engage in other activities to strengthen our inner being.  But the day wears on and I have to meet it on its own terms, complete with the frustrations, occasional chaos, setbacks, and difficult encounters it inevitably brings up in my face.  Holding on to a kernel of that inner spiritual peace as I go along is something to value, for it can make the difference in a trying situation between speaking or behaving in a manner that I will later regret and handling it in a constructive and ultimately rewarding way...

Ellen DeGeneres isn't a perfect human being and doesn't claim to be...I'm sure she has her share of personality failings...don't we all...as she herself is perfectly aware.  But she is also a good model to emulate when it comes to listening empathetically and interactively with others, especially with those that she disagrees with.  She believes, as something of an idealist, in the basic commonality of humanity and sincerely tries to see others as fellow travelers on this sometimes very confounding voyage called life...

The First Amendment Needs Defending

New York City has criminalized speech in a recent law, mandating a fine of up to $250,000.00 on anyone convicted of uttering the words "illegal alien" or "illegals" in conjunction with someone's employment or housing, deeming such use to be "discrimination".  I get it...they want to protect families from the fear of being suddenly rounded up and deported or losing their jobs for being here undocumented and to become more confident that their local government...including especially the police...will be there in times of emergency to help them.  Still, if it is a federal crime to be here unauthorized then that is a conflict already in place between different parts of our government, and also to make certain words illegal to me flies directly in the face of our Constitution's crucial First Amendment, which elevates free speech as a fundamental human right.  This does not mean that people should not be held accountable for what they say...it's just that the State...in this case New York City...has no business getting involved as a prosecutorial agent.  If their discrimination laws are being violated, then charge them for that, not for saying certain words. For me, I am for better border security, solving the problems in countries like Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras through the good auspices of our government helping their economies, and normalizing the status of those already here over time. But the people who are here illegally...well, the criminalized terms are accurate even if they may offend some...

A manager for an NBA team a few days ago simply Tweeted on his own his support for the Hong Kong people and to keep fighting for freedom.  Keep in mind that he an American living in America, not China.  Yet China has responded by canceling within their own country any events or ties with the National Basketball Association, in spite of the fact that the manager had quickly apologized for his Tweet and removed it...and the league itself expressed regret over what I see as a perfectly legitimate original message.  In this situation our First Amendment was never in question of being threatened since it's another country's government, not our own, that is exerting undue pressure and the NBA is a private concern. Now if you can see what China will do against someone who criticizes it...even indirectly...who is a citizen of a different nation, you can imagine the immense persecution that those residing in that vast, important country must be undergoing for speaking up themselves.  A sober reminder that our own First Amendment needs to be held up high and honored for the treasure that it is...

And finally, not exactly a First Amendment issue...at least yet...is the wave of political correctness, much of it retroactive, that is sweeping this country, especially on the political left.  At the Packers-Cowboys football game in Texas the other day, comedian Ellen DeGeneres and former president George W. Bush were seen sitting together and amiably chatting and laughing, two good friends who are able to step outside their political differences and see each other as human beings.  From the negative reactions I have been seeing...all against Ellen associating with Bush...you would have thought she had said something like "Go Hong Kong" or "illegal alien".  Why does she need to explain being friendly and nice with someone?  Is that how bad it's gotten in this country?!

Weekly Short Stories: 1952 Science Fiction, Part 2

Here are my reactions to five more stories from the anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 14 (1952).  They're all pretty good, although the first three pretty much wear out the concept of time travel.  So without further ado, here they are...

THE BUSINESS, AS USUAL by Mack Reynolds
This very brief tale examines the paradoxes built into time travel...that is, travel to the past, not the future.  Once time machines get invented, the author hypothesizes the existence of a jaded future humanity expecting time tourists from the past...and only too ready to fleece them for everything they've got...

A SOUND OF THUNDER by Ray Bradbury
Big game hunters can't wait to take advantage of a time travel company's offer of a prehistoric safari time trip, with nothing other than the terrifying Tyrannosaurus Rex as the targeted prize.  But the company tells the hunters of the restrictions, meticulously constructed in order to avoid influencing anything that might come back through the Butterfly Effect to drastically alter the present.  You know something's bound to go wrong here as soon as the hunters are told in no uncertain terms NOT to stray from the prescribed path...

HOBSON'S CHOICE by Alfred Bester
A future America...and most of the rest of the world, for that matter...devastated by nuclear conflict is still plugging on forward, and an investigator is sent to an area in Kansas hit hardest in the war with little left to speak of but which, for some reason, is reporting a healthy increase in population.  Upon arriving he sees how bad it really is and the area is mostly deserted...except for groups of happy, healthy people who from time to time come out of buildings, get on a bus, and ride off.  He investigates further and discovers the unsettling reason for their presence.  The moral of this story...yet another about time travel...is that people tend to think more fondly of the "good old days" or a more promising future than they do of their present circumstances without taking into consideration the many blessings they are currently enjoying that don't exist in their envisioned past or future.  A good, thought-provoking tale...

YESTERDAY HOUSE by Fritz Leiber
Back in January 1973 I first saw the 1958 Alfred Hitchcock masterpiece Vertigo, starring James Stewart and Kim Novak.  It involves a man's despair over the tragic death of his young love and his fanatical determination to recreate her...in minute detail...in another woman. Yesterday House is a similar tale as a young man working as an assistant on the New England coast to a research biologist discovers a remote island where live an isolated and beautiful young woman with her two eccentric and unpleasant aunts.  As he falls in love with her, our hero discovers a strange connection between the girl and his boss, who has been doing research into the generation of life...you might already see where this is going.  It's a great story idea...and the ending was not at all what I expected...

THE SNOWBALL EFFECT by Katherine MacLean
A college's department head during budgeting time demands that one of the sociology professors justify his own field in order stay employed there.  The response is a project he had been working about the snowball effect in social movements...by analyzing snowballing movements in the past he has discovered how to set up an organization whose effect and power will continue to increase without restraint.  Intrigued, the department head sets up with the professor an experiment: they go to a nearby small town's social sewing club and implement the plan, with unforeseen consequences...

Next week I'll review some more sci-fi short stories from 1952...

Just Finished Reading An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power by Al Gore

Back in 2006 Al Gore released his film/book combo titled An Inconvenient Truth, which presented the basics about the climate change crisis facing the world.  Eleven years later the former American vice-president has authored An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power using the same film/book formats.  I just finished reading it and have my own reactions.  First of all, let me stress that I am not a climatologist or any type of scientist, for that matter.  And if you're not a scientist, I really don't need to hear you or anyone else weighing in on what you think about climate change or whether or not it is a problem...I have a computer and can pull up the same links as you to prop up whatever preconceptions I have on the subject...so don't waste your time and mine going down this fruitless path.  Gore presents, naturally, the view that the vast majority of the scientific community has toward the issue: that human-caused climate change...primarily through the burning of fossil fuels...is adversely changing our climate by warming it through the greenhouse effect of increased concentrations of carbon dioxide, and that a catastrophic level may be reached at some time in the foreseeable future if we don't change how we use energy, as well as in other areas of our economy.  The book shows several examples of the effects that climate change has already had in different areas, but doesn't delve adequately, in my opinion, about the indicators that actually give statistics and hard facts on the subject other than a brief reference on page 42 about the Environmental Protection Agency's 37 indicators of climate change.  And although the book's graphic design of varying fonts, colors, and many pictures makes it more attractive to the general public, there is neither a table of contents nor an index to look up specific points.  The book...and I'm presuming the film...is divided into two parts, the first focusing on the problem and the second a sort of handbook to instruct people-at-large how to engage the issue on different levels such as petitions, town hall meetings, interviews, and so on.  One suggestion the author made was to treat dependence on fossil fuels like smoking and to employ the same kind of ad campaigns that the anti-smoking movement has successfully employed.  Uh, well, only one problem: as the book said in another section, we're still 81% dependent on fossil fuels for our energy needs and last time I checked nicotine isn't the least bit necessary for our survival...big difference!  Also, the book in different sections mentioned that under the 2016 Paris Accords on climate change that Al Gore so highly praises, China, a vast developing economic power dominated by polluting, coal-burning plants, won't have to peak their CO2 emissions until 2030 (meaning they'll be increasing them until then) while elsewhere it's stated that we need to turn around our CO2 emissions by the year 2020 to avoid major negative consequences...say what? Furthermore, the author in the second half of the book has turned fighting manmade climate change...which in the book's first half he stresses has been firmly established to be true by strict scientific research and analysis...into a social cause to be campaigned for along with progressive issues that the Democratic Party has embraced, framing it as a partisan political issue that will dissuade Republicans from engaging in a positive way.  And finally, in that second part of the book, they advise what they call "Climate Reality Leaders" not to inundate people with actual facts on the subject but rather to be more personal about how climate change has affected them in their own lives in order to enhance their presentation's emotional appeal...is that really where we want to go on this?

You're entitled to believe whatever you want on the subject, but I happen to think that climate change is for real.  Does that mean that burning fossil fuels is the primary cause? The late Michael Crichton in his novel State of Fear posited that deforestation may be more of a factor and that the scientists have made a false correlation.  Whatever the cause, I want our planet and our life on it to be more sustainable and it makes sense to cut our dependence on non-renewal sources of energy, anyway.  Like a lot of us, though, I think that it's foolish for me to be oh-so-concerned about my personal "carbon footprint" while on the other side of the Pacific Ocean China is churning out the carbon into the atmosphere without any compunction...if this is what "globalism" means then I don't care for it, sorry Al Gore...

My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #440-431

It's Monday once again, time for me to list the next ten songs, in ascending order, from my personal all-time top 500 list.  Here they are...

440 AROUND THE WORLD...the Red Hot Chili Peppers
Red Hot Chili Peppers frontman Anthony Kiedis and his old friend, bass guitarist Michael "Flea" Balzary, to me have always seemed like a couple of jerks, especially the latter who used to be a lowlife high school bully... a category of subhuman that I have little tolerance for.  Still, after filtering out my personal animosity I have to admit that this is a superb rock n' roll band that has done a masterful job over the years fusing different musical styles. In Around the World, from 1998, we get a mixture of rap, ballad, and hard rock that works well...and I dug their video, too: they are excellent showmen as well as accomplished musical artists...

439 THE CRUNGE...Led Zeppelin
A few years ago I ranked Led Zeppelin's songs from top to bottom on this blog and a dear old friend from high school strongly objected to The Crunge being so high on it.  I answered that it was a tribute to James Brown, the late "Godfather of Soul"...and a worthy one in my estimation, with Robert Plant delivering one of his best singing performances.  It's from their 1973 Houses of the Holy, one of my favorite rock albums ever. My only problem with this song was its confused ending about finding "the bridge", which really wasn't all that funny as it was intended to be...

438 DOG DAYS ARE OVER...Florence and the Machine
Although their original version of this song came out in 2010, I didn't hear it until 2014 after my local alternative radio station, WHHZ/100.5 "The Buzz" returned to actually playing alternative rock...enough of Nickelback, thank you.  Besides Florence's powerful singing, the overwhelmingly optimistic mood of this song...celebrating the end of a personal storm and a return to better times...is infectious.  Give it a listen and see if it doesn't raise your spirits...

437 NOBODY TOLD ME...John Lennon
Nobody Told Me came out as a singles release from John Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono's Milk and Honey album more than three years after his murder in December, 1980...it was recorded shortly before that tragic event.  I've since read that Lennon wrote it for Ringo Starr but he didn't use it after his former Beatles bandmate's death...Yoko completed work on John's 1980 recording and it was released early in '84 along with a video showing compelling clips of John and Yoko. That's the backstory to this song, but I liked it for both its catchy music and the lyrics, displaying Lennon's often perplexed and witty take on what was going on in the world around him...as he sang, "strange days indeed, most peculiar, Mama"...

436 ONLY IN YOUR HEART...America
I associate this especially good song from the band America with going through an introspective and uncertain period in my life late during my junior year in high school in May, 1973.  Watergate was going full force with the televised Senate Judiciary hearings chaired by Sam Ervin, it looked as if we had given up on ever going back to the moon (which turned out to be true), and I had my own issues to deal with at the time...and here comes yet another song that transports me back to a special time and place whenever I hear it.  It's a sweet song of an offered hand of compassion to someone with their own seemingly insurmountable problems...

435 MY MATHEMATICAL MIND...Spoon
The title of this deep track from Texas alternative band Spoon's 2005 Gimme Fiction album intrigued me enough, and then I listened to this jazzy singular song with lyrics of someone who has caught on to all the self-deception and manipulation going on from people around him and has something to say about what he's going to do about it.  Pretty blunt words without adornment...like he has a "mathematical mind" that is "gonna see mistakes" and no longer sugarcoat life.  Are any of us that strong? An interesting message and great music...

434 GIVE IT TO ME...the J. Geils Band
A lengthy song with two vastly different-sounding sections, it's another one that hit the airwaves...mainly on album rock radio...in the spring of 1973.  Part 1, as singer Peter Wolf cajoles for some romance, has a catchy reggae sound while Part 2 springs into a long, savage instrumental jam session.  Back in '73 I would only listen to the singing/reggae part, but now I prefer the insanity at the end...I'm not sure what that says about me.  To me this was the J. Geils Band's best song, years before they achieved pop celebrity with hits like Centerfold and Freeze Frame...

433 SLEDGEHAMMER...Peter Gabriel
This is one of those songs that defy my ability to explain exactly why I like it.  Originally I would always hear it while watching the extraordinary 1986 video with Gabriel in claymation settings and photographic trickery...that scene at the end with the dancing chicken carcasses forever changed how I view grocery shopping in the meat department.  The song stands well on its own merits, though...I simply like Peter Gabriel's vocal style and the song's generally happy, bouncy...and funny...ambiance.  And yet I can't get my mind away from that video, one of the best of all time...

432 SUFFER WELL...Depeche Mode
I can't say I've liked everything this often dreary-sounding band from England has produced over the decades, but some of their stuff is pretty fantastic.  They've been around nearly forty years now, although here in the United States few know of them other than minor 1980s hit singles like People are People and Enjoy the Silence...they are much more popular across the Atlantic.  Suffer Well was played often on my local alternative radio station 100.5/"The Buzz" in 2005-06, and I think it's one of this band's better songs.  David Gahan is the morose singer and Martin Gore composes most of their music...although he didn't with this one.  Expect to see more from Depeche Mode on this list...

431 CAPTAIN JACK...Billy Joel
Captain Jack was Billy Joel's breakthrough song that first catapulted him to radio play and ultimate fame after his debut album Cold Spring Harbor was mixed wrong and came out as a disaster...his second LP, Piano Man, was a blockbuster hit in 1974...I didn't hear the entire album, including Captain Jack as the closing track, until four years later, though.  Joel speaks through most of the song to an unnamed spoiled young man whose narcissism, hedonism and immaturity obviously disgust him as he bluntly lays out what he has let his life degenerate into...the line "well, you're 21 and still your mother makes your bed, and that's too long" pretty much says it all.  This song is anti-drugs (although Joel himself partook of them) and an "in-your-face" plea for people to stand up and take responsibility for their own lives...about as intense as it gets...

Next week: #430-421...

Look at How Better the Miami Dolphins are Getting

Week #1 in the 2019 NFL regular season, "my" Miami Dolphins were defeated by 49 points by the Baltimore Ravens.  The following week defending Super Bowl champions New England Patriots beat them by only 43 points...hey, I see some improvement here.  So the following weeks I had my hopes high and wasn't disappointed: the Dallas Cowboys next won over my Dolphins by only 25 points...and it only gets better: last week they played the San Diego Los Angeles Clippers Chargers and were whupped by just 20 points...can you believe how good they're getting?

I'm sure glad that Miami got a bye week off from playing this weekend after improving so much from week to week: they need the well-deserved rest from their accomplishments...at this rate they'll probably be losing their games at season's end by only a touchdown or even less...

Florida Gators Play Homecoming Game vs. Auburn Today

It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood...as good old Mister Rogers used to sing on his wonderful children's TV show...but alas, today I have to leave my neighborhood to go to work on my day off.  And why is that, you may ask...simple: one, I signed the overtime-desired-list, and two, some of the regular Saturday crew are apparently going to the Florida-Auburn homecoming football game, taking place just down the road from where I'm sitting at a Starbucks writing this.  I'm proud of my Gators this year under head coach Dan Mullen, whose team has shown a lot of character in a couple of games they normally would have lost but instead pulled it all together late on to win.  As a consequence, they're 5-0 and ranked nationally in the top ten.  But starting today they will be playing three other top ten teams and will most likely be underdogs in all of them: Auburn, Louisiana State, and Georgia.  They may well come out of these games with a 5-3 record, but the way I see it, if they play their best and still fall short then I'm satisfied.  And that's how I treat all the teams I follow, no matter what the sport.  Back when Urban Meyer coached Florida to two national championships I think many in the Gator Nation became blasé and expected a national championship every year...in this sense I pity the Alabama fans who regard any non-championship year to be a failure.  No, I just want my team to enthusiastically go out there, cut back on foolish mistakes, and give a consistently good effort from game to game...

In today's contest against the Auburn Tigers, who are three and a half point favorites, the  Gators will have to contend with one of the country's best defenses, although their own is pretty good, too.  Kyle Trask, who has done very well so far replacing injured starting quarterback Feleipe Franks in the last three games, will be severely tested...how fast will he be able to react to oncoming Auburn rushers and their excellent pass coverage?  And if Florida can't get their running game going at all, then that will present a problem as well.  One the other side, I think Auburn's offense and Florida's defense are well-matched...if the Gators can get some turnovers and well-timed sacks, then I say they have a good chance to pull off the victory, we'll see...

Well, I guess it's getting close to work time, so until then, GO GATORS!

----LATER...Florida played an inspired game and beat Auburn, 24-13.  Next week they travel to Baton Rouge to play a tough road game against LSU...

Quote of the Week...from Al Gore

The day I made that statement about inventing the Internet, I was tired because I'd been up all night inventing the Camcorder.                                       ---Al Gore

Al Gore, our vice-president during the Clinton presidency from 1993-2001, has for several years been one of the acknowledged leaders in promoting education and action to combat human-induced carbon emissions into the atmosphere that may cause potentially catastrophic global warning in the decades to come.  In 2006 he came out with the film An Inconvenient Truth with its accompanying book...I just finished reading his 2017 An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power, which accompanied another film of the same title.  This book merits more than just one brief review, and I plan to discuss it in future articles.  For now, back to Al Gore...

His above quote is a humorous response to the ridicule he received from having said, "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiate in creating the Internet".  Note that he never really claimed to have invented the Internet, yet did he go into an angry fit and start screaming "fake news" and personally attacking his detractors?  No, he made a pretty funny self-deprecating joke instead.  It's sad to presently have as my national leader someone for whom such a capacity for humor...as well as humility...is completely alien and unattainable.  And he seems to attract, as likeminded souls, people with a similar deficit in their own personality makeup, not that all Trump supporters are like that...but I think a few definitely are.  Still, Al Gore has shown his own degree of pomposity at times, and it has been at his worst moments in this regard when he has made statements whose silliness resembles comments that the baseball great Yogi Berra used to say, statements like If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure or A zebra does not change its spots or A low voter turnout is an indicator of fewer people going to the polls.  Still, I feel that Gore,  for whom I did not vote in 2000 (and regret that decision), would have beaten George W. Bush in 2004 had he thrown his hat into the ring during that election...I would have voted for him then.  But I think by then Al had already taken on this climate change issue as a personal commitment...I do have a few reservations about how he is promoting it all, though, and will mention these in a future article...

About the Baseball Wild Card Playoffs

I was watching the bottom eighth inning of the Milwaukee Brewers/Washington Nationals National League Wild Card Playoff Game Tuesday night after missing most of the contest because I was at work.  The Brewers had a 3-1 lead that they had been nursing for a few innings and were trying to ride out the rest of the game with only six outs to go against the Nationals, who were playing at home and were up at bat.  The Milwaukee closing pitcher Josh Hader quickly began to experience control issues, often throwing wildly and once even hitting the Washington batter on his wrist with a terribly inside pitch.  Aside from being frustrated that after 162 games in the regular season these two excellent teams would depend on just one game to decide their playoff future, I couldn't figure out why the Brewers manager Craig Counsell kept Hader in the game in spite of the fact that he obviously couldn't properly place his pitches.  But kept him in he did, which ultimately resulted in the Nationals scoring three runs in that inning and eventually winning the game 4-3 to advance to the series against the Los Angeles Dodgers...

Before deciding to keep his pitcher on the mound despite it being clear that he didn't have his "stuff", there was one of those meetings on the field in which I'm sure Josh Hader insisted that he was good to stay in there...but if you're a manager you should know that just about all of the pitchers will talk like that.  I've seen this happen in other games over the years, as well as the opposite: a manager, apparently thinking that he's some kind of genius, will pull a relief pitcher who is doing very well just because the next opposing batter bats from the other side of the plate, or some other factor...I can't count how many games were blown this way when the new, incoming pitcher turns out completely ineffective...

Well, after last night's Tampa Bay Rays 5-1 American League Wild Gard game victory at Oakland...in which the Rays relief pitching was spectacular (zero bases-on-balls and eight strikeouts)...we're finally down to real multi-game playoff series instead of these one-game all-or-nothing fiascos.  In the American League Tampa Bay is going up against Houston while the New York Yankees square off against Minnesota.  As mentioned before, in the National League, Washington will now once again try their hand against the favored Los Angeles Dodgers...Atlanta and St. Louis will play the remaining series, each one best-of-five.  They should all be entertaining, predictably foolish pitching decisions by the managers notwithstanding...

Weekly Short Stories: 1952 Science Fiction, Part 1

I've started rereading science fiction short stories from way back in 1952 as they appeared in the anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 14 (1952).  The U.S. was still fighting the Chinese and North Koreans, Harry Truman was in his final year as president, and Dwight "I Like Ike" Eisenhower would run and be elected.  My dear, wonderful sister Anita was born in 1952, which more than anything else makes it an important year to me.  Here are my reactions to the first five stories appearing in the book...

THE PEDESTRIAN by Ray Bradbury
In November 2017 I wrote a review of this very significant four-page short story...here's a link to it: [Pedestrian]. In that article I wrote about vehicles stopping or driving by very slowly when I would be out running...it still happens, the last time just this past Saturday and with illegally tinted windows masking the driver.  It appears that some people have nothing better to do than to drive around slowly, scrutinize pedestrians and act creepily toward them. Sadly, I think there are plenty of people around us who are so screwed up in the head that they believe...as was the case in the story...that no one has any legitimate business being on the streets without a vehicle...

THE MOON IS GREEN by Fritz Leiber
In Leiber's story a young woman is stuck...apparently for years...in her stuffy, ugly, and restrictive bomb-shelter of a home with her verbally-abusive, domineering husband as she imagines that the world outside isn't really loaded with deathly radiation following a full worldwide nuclear exchange.  She sneaks a peak through the fortified window and sees that the moon is green...beautiful, she thinks, without considering why it appears that way.  This story goes on to illustrate how people, faced with unpleasant circumstances, can talk themselves into a narrative (while selectively accepting supporting input from others) that denies the legitimate reasons for their undesirable situation...

LOST MEMORY by Peter Phillips
A very well-written story, presented from the perspective of a robot news reporter on a completely machine-"inhabited" planet, set many years in the future.  A man-piloted spaceship soft-crashes on this world and the robots, completely unaware of their ancient origins as human creations, regard the ship itself as the life form, completely ignoring the significance of the carbon-based "insulation" inside...

WHAT HAVE I DONE? by Mark Clifton
A consulting psychologist for employers who has interviewed thousands encounters a young man who seems to emanate no discernible personality.  Later he reveals that he is of an alien race seeking to infiltrate and ultimately conquer Earth by adopting human form and gradually easing us out of existence.  The psychologist is horrified at the thought...but given the choice between this technologically extremely advanced race simply annihilating humanity in a flash and giving us some time to work with, he agrees to teach the invaders...now numbering around 30...how to act and appear more human, especially with regard to their emotional demeanor.  Our hero then thinks up a strategy that in the end depends upon the sad fact that people tend to despise and persecute the best and most idealistic among them...

FAST FALLS THE EVENTIDE by Eric Frank Russell
It is eons into the future, our sun is dying out, and Earth is on its final legs with oxygen seeping away and life dwindling to a few.  But humanity has staked its future on a workable survival strategy as it has become the educator of the cosmos, sending out on ships teachers to all sorts of alien worlds.  Melisande, the story's protagonist, has chosen a remote world that has never encountered humans.  What will be her fate?  Russell paints a optimistic picture of humankind outlasting its own planet, not by conquering and transforming other worlds, but rather fitting within the framework of the universe as it already exists.  What a prescient story, clearly ahead of its time...and there's a twist to the ending...

Next week: more notable sci-fi short stories from 1952...

My September 2019 Running Report

In September my running picked up as I worked to increase my single run mileage, looking ahead to entering a local half-marathon race in November.  I amassed a total of 104 miles for the month and missed on running for only two days...my longest single run was 10 miles, done just this past Saturday on a convoluted course up and down the streets of my neighborhood and the adjacent one in the heat of the afternoon (mid-to-upper 8os).  My pattern of running involves a long Saturday run, a mid-length mid-week run, usually on Wednesday, and primarily indoor training the rest of the days...seems to be working out so far.  I'm also building up my distance by taking short walking breaks interspersed throughout the run...when I get to half-marathon distance, hopefully in the next week or two, I'll start to diminish those walking breaks.  I've also been going on some increasingly lengthy weekend evening walks with Melissa...this will further my progress as well...

The weather's finally beginning to at least marginally get a little cooler...although the forecast is for low-90s today.  That will help with my running, too...if I can keep away from injury or sickness it should be an interesting, fun time from November through early next year as I try this time to achieve and maintain half-marathon readiness year-round...

My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #450-441

Here are the next ten songs on my personal list of all-time favorites.  The years of these selections span from 1967 to 2015...a pretty wide range, although most of them are more from my youth than recent years.  Still, I'm not averse to noticing when something new and special comes out...#448 is one such example.  Well, here they are...

450 THEY JUST CAN'T STOP IT (GAMES PEOPLE PLAY)...the Spinners

This was a radio hit in the second half of 1975 with the Spinners, a real classy act with a string of successful singles in the early-to mid 1970s performing what I believe to be their best song of all...I loved it at the time of its popularity. Its lyrics portray the up-and-down emotional trials of a man who first thinks it's all over between him and his love...and then at the end of the day sees that all of his suffering was for naught: turns out she's still with him after all, go figure...

449 WHITE RABBIT...Jefferson Airplane

San Francisco sixties psychedelic band Jefferson Airplane's lead singer Grace Slick has always maintained that this song's lyrics, which include references to taking some kind of mushroom, are anti-drug.  But at the time of its fame I doubt many listeners heard it that way.  I didn't dig the drug references, but Grace's powerful singing and the way White Rabbit builds up to its final crescendo was breathtaking...to me it's another great piece of music with cryptic lyrics, this time alluding to Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland...

448 HOLLOW MOON (BAD WOLF)...Awolnation
Hollow Moon is a powerful rocker from 2015 by Awolnation, an alternative band that has made a name for itself recently within that genre.  Its lyrics make very little sense to me, but the mood is one of optimistic defiance in the face of whatever kind of persecution the singer seems to be experiencing.  I loved how the song would transition from one musical theme to another...and bring it all back together at the end.  There's a lot screaming in Hollow Moon near the end and this makes it both interesting and funny...and a little bit crazy...

447 LOVE ROLLERCOASTER...Ohio Players
I was a moderate radio listener in the mid-seventies when the soul band Ohio Players, which had been together for years, finally hit the big national scene, first with the single Skin Tight (which I liked) and then with Fire (which I didn't).  And then this brilliant song of theirs came out...the music itself sounds like a rollercoaster ride.  In the nineties the Red Hot Chili Peppers covered Love Rollercoaster reasonably well, but there's nothing like the original...

446 PRIVATE EYES...Hall and Oates

This duo had been around for years until they seemed to reach a higher level in the early 1980s...Private Eyes represented the time period I think they peaked.  It's a real catchy, upbeat-sounding song...during a largely upbeat time in my life (the fall of 1981)...but with sinister lyrics: "Private eyes are watching you, they see your every move" sounds a bit creepy, doesn't it? 

445 RECKONER...Radiohead
Of all the Radiohead songs that might have translated into mainstream singles success, Reckoner stands out to me...singer Thom Yorke delivers one of his best vocal performances in a tune that Marvin Gaye should have liked...it seemed to be his style.  It's from their 2007 In Rainbows album and was a part of my "Radiohead running mix" that I would shuffle on my mp3 player and listen to during long distance training runs a few years ago.  Reckoner is one of those tunes that I find myself unconsciously snapping my fingers to...  

444 DAYS...David Bowie
After David Bowie's shocking death from cancer in January 2016 just two days following his acclaimed Blackstar album release (as well as his 69th birthday), I decided to explore his catalogue of recorded music...all 27 studio albums spanning nearly 50 years.  From Bowie's 2003 Reality album comes Days, a Beatlesque song that expresses his personal humility to his love...a real sweet, compelling song that I now see as one of his best.  Like Radiohead's Reckoner, this song would have done well as a singles release, in my opinion...

443 LOVIN' YOU...Minnie Riperton
Nowadays it's common for singers to show off their vocal range, but none have ever remotely approached 1970s artist Minnie Riperton for combining that multi-octave skill with such intense feeling.  When I first heard Lovin' You on the radio in the spring of 1975 I couldn't believe what I was hearing, as if a whole new type of music had just been created.  Basically a happy love song, some of the lyrics are a little suggestive...but I think my favorite line is simply "La la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la do do do do do a-a-a-a-h".  Sadly, early in 1976 Minnie was diagnosed with terminal breast cancer and passed away at the decade's end while only in her early thirties...what a tragic loss...

442 TENNESSEE FLAT TOP BOX...Rosanne Cash

When I first worked at the post office in the late 1980s they would let us listen to radio headphones...I started out with a cheap model that could only pick up the strong local country and western station.  My luck: that's how I heard this great cover by Rosanne Cash of her father Johnny's hit song from the early 1960s.  To me this is country music at its best, and the lyrics tell a great story of how a little backwoods country boy, through his own persistence and skill, is able to achieve his dream of success...

441 WHILE MY GUITAR GENTLY WEEPS...the Beatles
The Beatles' White Album...actually officially simply titled The Beatles...was released in 1968 but I didn't get around to listening to this double-LP in its entirety until the fall of 1972, when a friend lent me his copy and then I went out and bought my own.  Many of the tracks on it were cathartic to me as then I was in the middle of what I can now only conclude was a moderately severe depression...listening to this album helped me get though it all.  One of the best of its songs was While My Guitar Gently Weeps, composed and sung by George Harrison and enlisting the help of his friend Eric Clapton on guitar...

Next week I'll cover numbers #440-431...

Lost: One Atlantic Tropical Storm

It's become a common practice in the morning for me to flick on the Weather Channel and hear what they have to say about the tropical weather, focusing on any real or potential tropical disturbances that might have an impact on Florida down the line.  Last week they were discussing Tropical Storm Karen, which had dumped a lot of rain on the Puerto Rico/US Virgin Islands area before entering the Atlantic east of the Bahamas and traveling northbound.  The forecasters then showed computer models that had it slowing down over the weekend and then dramatically shifting westward...directly toward my dear homeland of Florida and with a projected wind strength of 60 mph.  Well, I've heard that song before when just a few weeks earlier they had Dorian going through the Bahamas at the same intensity...before it actually strengthened to 185 mph and devastated the area!  So I was interested yesterday morning as to what was going on with Karen when I tuned in...NOTHING!  They were discussing Hurricane Lorenzo, much further east in the Atlantic and posing no threat to anyone but shipping, but where this "Karen" was supposed to be as a tropical storm and getting ready to turn toward us: nothing but empty space on the map.  And I didn't hear the announcers even refer to it having ever existed.  So I'm putting out an all-points bulletin: if you happen to be out and about and notice a confused-looking tropical storm hovering over you, let the authorities know your location so they can put it back on the weather map...

Just Finished Reading The Mystery of the Blue Train by Agatha Christie

Mild-mannered, psychologically-perceptive Belgian detective Hercule Poirot is the featured sleuth in the Agatha Christie novel I just read, The Mystery of the Blue Train, from 1928.  It involves the mystery of the strangulation murder of young Ruth Ketterling, a rich American heiress, on the French Blue Train while destined for the country's southeastern Riviera.  Aside from Poirot, who conveniently happened to be one of the train's passengers at the time of the crime, the main character is Katherine Grey, a young level-headed Englishwoman who has just inherited a tidy sum of money from an elderly woman for whom she had been a caretaker for several years.  Poirot enlists Katherine's help in solving the case, a mystery I had partially figured out early on in the story.  After all, I do like puzzles like Sudoku, Kakuro, Crosswords, Wordscapes, etc,, and once I know the game's pattern I can better infer the solutions.  Mystery stories are like puzzles, with their own pattern: it's important to introduce the culprit early on while highlighting a number of obviously suspicious characters to distract the reader...but since I'm "hip" to the author's strategy I tend to dismiss the early suspects outright.  Also, the mystery writer will often insert a seemingly irrelevant bit of information that doesn't seem to fit the ongoing flow of the story, and that worked for me as well here when the revelation that the victim's personal maid had disembarked in Paris struck me as being a bit random...

Aside from Katherine Grey, I thought that Derek Ketterling, the victim's estranged husband and a prime suspect, was the most interesting character as he was sympathetic and candid about himself and his admittedly heavily flawed lifestyle of gambling and hedonism.  I think you'll like this story if you're into mystery fiction...I found it to be one of Agatha Christie's better stories that I've read so far...