Constellation of the Month: Corona Borealis

 

Corona Borealis, although a small constellation, is easy to spot in the June evening sky at northern temperate latitudes...if the skies are clear, that is.  It's situated between Boötes to its west (left) and Hercules to its right (east), with the rough u-shaped crown studded with stars...a very easy pattern to make out.   Easily the brightest star in Corona Borealis is Alphecca (also called Gemma), a binary system about 75 light years from us.  The simplest way to find Corona Borealis in the sky is to first find Arcturus, easily the brightest star in this part of the night sky and go a little up (north) and to the left (east) from it.  Corona Borealis is, in English, the Northern Crown, and it is fun to see as it passes directly overhead: maybe an hour or two before or after it hits the zenith might be the preferred observation time to avoid straining your neck! Now we're officially entering the summertime, and if you can stand the mosquitos, enjoy clear skies and are free of obstructing streetlights, then get hold of a star map and see how many summer constellations you can recognize...Corona Borealis should be one of the more obvious ones to find.  

Next month: another constellation...

Weekly Short Stories: 1991 Science Fiction, Part 7

Here are my reactions to four more short stories appearing in the Gardner Dozois anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Ninth Annual Collection, spotlighting the editor's picks from the year 1991.  In only University of Florida head football coach Steve Spurrier's second year there, with Shane Matthews as quarterback, they won the Southeastern Conference championship in 1991 with a perfect league record, unexpected losses to Syracuse and Notre Dame keeping them from national title hopes that year.  The Gators had "won" the SEC back in 1984 but scandals involving then-coach Charley Pell forced them to vacate the title.  Spurrier would go on to win six total conference championships during his twelve-year tenure at UF...pretty impressive!  But back to those stories...

POGROM by James Patrick Kelly

In a dystopian, decaying near future, society is sharply divided between the fearful and insulated elderly generation and disadvantaged, often violent youth.  Ruth, one of those elderly, embarks on a tense and terrifying trip across the city to visit her friend Matt, a teacher who was recently severely beaten by a young gang.  This story is applicable to many situations today, I'm afraid to say.  Especially when folks overreact in scenarios calling for cool-headedness and restraint...

THE MOAT by Greg Egan

A multi-layered story set in Australia when rising sea levels are submerging entire Pacific islands and sending their inhabitants to Australia as widespread popular sentiment weighs in against accepting them.  Weave this narrative in with the notion of a special, secret human genetic strain that guarantees immortality from disease, and you have a somewhat disjointed tale that points the accusing finger at the superwealthy elite for manipulating the ignorant masses against the refugees...while they have their own genetic "moat" against all of them...

VOICES by Jack Dunn 

This story has more of a Ray Bradbury feel to it as boys in a small town discuss what happens at death and one of them says the dead had spoken to him.  To test this, they sneak into a funeral home where a boy they didn't know from another town was lying.  What happens when they try to reach him...you can read it to find out.  But I've a feeling that the author was presenting his own ideas about death in this very readable and compelling story...

FOAM by Brian W. Aldiss

In the near future, an academic is researching old churches is in Hungary where he is beset by a former colleague who claims that the previous ten years of his memory was wiped clean (FOAM: free of all memory) and that he was going to a Budapest clinic that promised restoration...but would his friend help him out by going to fill in some gaps to the past.  The narrator complies, realizing too late after the fact that this was a setup and that he, too, now had vast memory gaps.  The story mixes this narrative in with ongoing commentary on the decline of organized Christianity and an ongoing war between Russia and the West.  It's all good reading but I couldn't fit these three threads together into a coherent pattern...

Next week I conclude my look at the year 1991 in short science fiction...

Just Finished Rereading Carrie by Stephen King

Carrie, from 1974, was Stephen King's first published novel, paving the way to his close identification with the horror genre in fiction.  I first read it before 2007 when I began this blog...hence, no review until today, after I have just reread it.  It's not my favorite King book by a longshot, but it does touch upon a theme that the author and I both seem to have sensitivity toward: teenage bullying and the often-indifferent attitude that adults witnessing it take, as if the victim were the culprit, not the aggressor.  Carrie White, the title character, is a shy girl, dominated by her nearly insane religiously fanatical mother as she unsuccessfully tries to socially fit in her high school, in the small fictional Maine town of Chamberlain.  Susan Snell sympathizes with Carrie and asks her own boyfriend Tommie to ask Carrie to the senior prom.  But other classmates, bent on revenge for their punishment after mocking Carrie's onset of menstruation in the girls' shower...a very traumatic event for her...have their own ideas concerning Carrie for the prom.  What results is very definitely horror, with telekinesis (the ability to move objects with one's mind) a major factor.  The 1976 Carrie movie starring Sissy Spacek as Carrie presents the narrative chronologically, but the book treats the events from a future date looking back, as an assemblage of investigative articles and analyses...King then inserts key narrative passages in between these to present an interesting collage where the reader knows what ultimately happens early on while the movie viewer experiences more building suspense to the climactic scene.  Like I said earlier, Carrie is not one of my favorite King novels, but since I'm going back to his longer works that I hadn't yet discussed, this seemed to be a good opportunity.  But I think he's come out with a lot better stuff than this although his depiction of the psychological makeup of bullies in this story was right on target...

Pain is Here, But Blog Goes On

It's been a while since I missed a daily entry in this blog...this past weekend I skipped both Saturday and Sunday.  The reason's simple: I'm riding out a period of constant and recurring physical pain, a type of which I've experienced in the past and which I'm hoping and praying will end soon...yes, I'm seeing a doctor.  But life goes on, and so does this blog, which I've always defined for myself as a writing exercise and discipline. It's also a good way to work out various issues in my mind, be they personal, societal, or news items. Sometimes I'll sit down to address a topic and find myself changing my point of view as I write, the process itself aiding me in my reasoning.  For that reason, along with many others, I encourage you to start a blog of your own...tailoring it to your own special interests, of course.  Back during the decade before Facebook came along, personal blogs were the rage on the Internet...I loved randomly going through others' blogs and reading their stuff, especially the ones whose writers shared my interests.  But personal blogging diminished significantly after mega-social media sites sucked in so many people that they became the places to go on the Web...and many blogs ended or were never started.  I plan to keep on with my blog as long as I am able and Google keeps it going...hope you enjoy it...

Quote of the Week...from Oscar Wilde

There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.

                                                              ---Oscar Wilde

Late nineteenth century Irish novelist and playwright Oscar Wilde is probably best known for his book The Picture of Dorian Gray, and he has a lot of witty things to say about this thing and that.  As for the above quote, I'm assuming I'm not to take it literally for I can come up with a lot of things in life worse than being talked about.  But I get what Wilde is trying to say here...let me expand upon it a bit.  It seems that in today's world, more than ever before, people at large are letting themselves get caught up in two seemingly diametrically opposite offenses. On one hand they are obsessed with privacy about their personal lives and while in public are sensitive to anyone passing their low threshold of what constitutes undue attention.  But on the other hand, they want to be known by others...in a good sense, of course...with their sense of self-worth tied in to how attractive their appearance and personality shows in public...and being ignored is offensive.  I just saw a social media post laying out a number of ways someone can determine whether another is stalking them in their gym...then saw an ad for my own gym that emphasizes how one can use it to make their bodies look like those of professional models, an obvious appeal for those prospective customers wanting to turn others' eyes toward them.  Social media is kind of peculiar in this regard, too, with the clamor for privacy always a major beef among various sites' users...yet they're using the sites to come out into the public arena, aren't they?  I have come to believe that while privacy is a legitimate and major concern for people to have, the fear of a future in which everyone has forgotten them becomes worse...as Mr. Wilde so eloquently stated.  I think people in general are unrealistic in that they want to control who pays attention to them and talk about them, while if they are realistic about it they will acknowledge that there's always going to be some unwelcome reactions to their presence and message  Still, there's a limit to what I'll put up with on this blog with some past trolls...you don't have to agree with me but you also don't have to be a jerk about it...   

Just Finished Reading Talking to Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell

Talking to Strangers, from 2019, is the third book I've read by journalist Malcom Gladwell...the other two are Blink and The Tipping Point: click on the titles to read my reviews from this blog.   I first became aware of Talking to Strangers a couple of weeks ago when Melissa and I were browsing through a now-rare local used bookstore...Book Gallery West if you must know.  Stepping up to the cashier for our purchases, the customer at the counter was purchasing just the book I'm reviewing today: I stepped out of character and had a pleasant chat with him and the cashier, thinking that Gladwell would be happy to see me "talking to strangers".  But after I checked out his book on Libby and began to read it, it became soon clear that this was no "overcome social awkwardness" how-to book.  Gladwell's major premise is that there are embedded biases in human interaction that, while they tend to ensure a more orderly and peaceful flow of social discourse, from time to time they also create some serious problems.  One is what he calls "default to truth" whereby there is a bias toward believing in someone's honesty, often in spite of the objective outside evidence...Neville Chamberlain's belief in Adolf Hitler concerning Czechoslovakia in 1938, the many flimflammed by con investor Bernie Madoff just a few years ago, and the difficulty some American intelligence professionals had in concluding that a woman working for them was a double agent for Castro's Cuba are just three of the examples he presents of this bias going terribly wrong.  Then Gladwell goes on to discuss another bias, that of "transparency" whereby society has constructed standards of outward social behavior that supposedly tell when someone is being honest or not...he uses an episode of the TV sitcom Friends to illustrate when people are acting transparent...and thus presumably believable.  He then claims that many, however, while still being honest, do not necessarily abide by the sometimes-arbitrary rules of transparency, citing as an example the case of Amanda Knox, a young American woman falsely accused and convicted...later released...for the murder of her roommate in Italy after many thought her demeanor was untransparent and therefore suspicious.  Finally, the tragic case of Sandra Bland, who was arrested after a spurious traffic stop in Texas and later committed suicide in jail, ties together the author's thesis regarding defaulting to truth and transparency.  This time, he claims the policeman on duty should have defaulted to truth with her and not allowed his perception that she wasn't being transparent influence his judgment, which created an escalating conflict leading to the unnecessary arrest.  I, on the other hand, have a different take on it: the dude was a complete @$$hole, full of his own sense of power and dominance.  I clearly get where Malcolm Gladwell is going in this book...I see folks strangely following and believing every word of scoundrels like Putin and Trump nowadays and wonder when they decided to flush their critical thinking abilities down the toilet.  But the same people don't "default to truth" when they regard Zelensky or Biden, so I think this is more the case of them being prideful and stubborn with their own viewpoints.  What I'd like to see is a book where Gladwell takes his earlier "Blink" and "Tipping Point" theses and integrates them thoroughly with the ones he propounds in this book.  Talking to Strangers was interesting, but I don't always agree with the author's conclusions...

Weekly Short Stories: 1991 Science Fiction, Part 6

And so once again I am discussing some short fiction from 1991 as it appeared in the Gardener Dozois anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Ninth Annual Collection.  My life that year was dominated by work and family.  With work, my employer that year opened the floodgates for overtime...at least for those requesting it, and I was among the ones on the list.  With family, it was Melissa, me, and our infant son Will...and four if you include our little poodle Taffy.  Life was sometimes tiring, sometimes trying, but ultimately rewarding.  But enough about my life, let's talk about the lives of people who never existed except in their authors' imagination...

A WALK IN THE SUN by Geoffrey A. Landis

This is a great "old school" hard science fiction story, reminiscent of Robert Heinlein's classics, dealing with an emergency on the moon.  An astronaut is the only survivor of her craft's crash landing there, and to beat the odds with her dwindling supplies and the setting sun threatening her solar powered energy supply, Trish sets out in the moon's low gravity to keep up with it...the "ultra" in ultra-long racing, both to keep up with the sun and last until her rescuers can reach her...

FRAGMENTS OF AN ANALYSIS OF A CASE OF HYSTERIA by Ian McDonald

The title does little to explain this harrowing tale of a young Jewish woman who meets a young pre-World War I Hitler, undergoes a "ratty" experience at a mysterious Vienna nightclub and ultimately hides with her family from the Nazi persecution.  Very compelling and historically interesting...

ANGELS IN LOVE by Kathe Koja

More of the genre of horror short fiction I would expect from Stephen King, a woman hears strange sounds coming from the apartment next door...she thinks it's lovemaking with something mysterious but whatever, it's keeping her awake when she's already having trouble sleeping at night.  One day she has an opportunity to see what's really going on...not for the squeamish...

EYEWALL by Rick Shelley

On a distant planet dominated by mostly ocean with very frequent super-hurricanes, a meteorologist and his team are sent from an Earth recently devastated by a strong series of hurricanes to test methods of controlling them, using this planet's storms as test subjects.  The people stationed there, including a Japanese staffer strongly against ever using atomic explosions for any reason, are cold to their presence...especially when they discover that the researchers' plan to detonate a fusion hydrogen bomb in the eye of one hurricane.  To discuss the ethics of this adequately I would need to take up more writing space, but let's just say that I'm not totally on board with where the author was leading here...

Next week: more sci-fi from '91...

Podcaster Gives His Feelings about Money

Podcaster Rob Dial, on his show Mindset Mentor, recently gave his own take about the meaning of money for him...and naturally extended his conclusions to what attitudes each of us should have about the subject.  This in itself raises little warning alarms within me, for in our diverse society based in large part on economic freedom, that is, the liberty to decide what you do with your money, widely differing decisions folks make have combined to create the most prosperous economic culture in history.  Dial presents his own experiences...he makes no secret of the fact that he is one of those travel addicts, especially enamored with Italy.  I have no problem with this except that he seems to think we should all follow his footsteps in this regard, promoting his conclusions like a true evangelist.  The truth is that he found in his life a nice little money-making strategy for himself, worked very hard to achieve his goals and has become financially independent: good for him, nothing wrong with that!  I don't think, though, that his experiences are completely translatable to the population at large, even the much smaller body that tunes in to his podcasts.  Dial says that while being responsible about how we manage our money, we shouldn't be like Scrooge in treating it like wealth itself...by itself money is valueless, useful only in what it can bring us.  And to Rob Dial, whose financial blessings in his life have pretty much guaranteed him an easy retirement with plenty of moolah to fuel his every desire, he apparently interprets being careful with finances, to the extent that most of us are with more limited incomes and resources as we plan for our later years, as a mistake.  At least that's how I see it.  I travel, too, but I don't just pick up whenever I want and spend weeks somewhere across the world...if that's what you like to do and you have the resources to do it, then be like Rob Dial and do that: I'm happy for you.  This fits in with what I had earlier termed "our diverse society based in large part on economic freedom".  And I know of several people who have limited incomes and means and must be very careful about their finances.  So, although I deeply understand the "you can't take it with you" mentality of Dial's podcast about money, I felt he was a bit flippant and insensitive about the wide range of circumstances people find themselves in regarding it...

Subscribed to Steve Kaufmann's LingQ Language Learning Site

Steve Kaufmann, as I have written in a recent article, is a polyglot (speaker of several languages) whose views about language learning pretty much line up with those I've embraced over the years.  He strongly stresses passive vocabulary amassment through reading and listening over the traditionally taught emphasis on perfect pronunciation and grammar, areas that are also worth studying but are secondary to the main goal: comprehension.  He has a company, LingQ (pronounced "link") whose website offers detailed instruction and practice in many languages.  After discovering that its free version gave few benefits, yesterday I finally decided to sign up for the premium, which provides all of Steve's touted advantages to language learning that appeals to me...it's only about nine bucks a month.  Last night I started out with basic lessons in six different languages...but the user can skip around to any level so desired.  There's also a feature in which I can import material from outside the site...I'll get around to figuring that out, I'm sure.  In any event, I needed something like this that offered quick, effective translation to what I'm reading and/hearing so that I can learn new words faster without slowing down my studying.  From time to time, I plan to write about how I'm doing here...should be an adventure of sorts...

Just Finished Reading (for the 3rd Time) 'Salem's Lot by Stephen King

I've been slowly plodding back through the collected works of my favorite author, Stephen King...a few days ago I reviewed on of his early stories, The Long Walk, that he wrote under the pseudonym Richard Bachman.  While waiting for his first published novel, Carrie, to be available on my library's audiobook for checkout, I decided to go ahead and reread the next one he did, titled Salem's Lot.  I first read it about twenty years ago or so, and then reread it in 2017...click HERE for my review article back then.  I don't want to just repeat what I wrote back then, so I encourage you to first read that six-year-old article.  Salem's Lot, published in 1975,  is about vampires...a clear tribute on the part of King to Bram Stoker's classic 1897 novel Dracula.  Here, two sinister figures from Europe arrive in the sleepy Maine town of Jerusalem's Lot...Straker and Barlow...ostensibly to set up an antique furniture shop.  But fiction writer Ben Mears suspects something bad going on in the old Barlow House that looms over the town where they have moved...Mears in his childhood experienced a life-changing, horrible vision when he went inside this "haunted house" on a dare.  As people in 'Salem's Lot begin to disappear one by one, Mears and others like his new girlfriend Susan Orton, precocious young Mark Petrie, physician Jim Cody, English teacher Mark Burke and Catholic priest Father Callahan join up to investigate, increasingly suspecting, against common sense skepticism, the existence of vampires around them.  Everything I love about Stephen King novels is here, including excellent development of the characters that reveals their deeper motives and emotions as well as a building climax that is wonderfully suspenseful.  And his ending leaves a tantalizing bit to the reader's imagination, another of his literary talents I've come to enjoy.  Father Callahan would go on to appear in King's Dark Tower series...his travails in 'Salem's Lot revealed this story's God as coldly righteous, devoted to shutting out the unclean in spirit...very "Old Testament".  This novel isn't very long and is readily available both from public libraries...the audiobook version free through the Libby's service...and bookstores or Amazon, preferably used.  Now, on to Carrie...

Ran Gainesville's Depot Park 5K Run This Morning

On a warm and humid June morning following a day loaded with rain and thunder (and work), I managed to get down to Gainesville's pleasant Depot Park...a few blocks south of downtown...home of the "gator in the pond" and full of birds singing away, chief among them red-winged blackbirds and mourning doves.  Saturday mornings at 7:30 they hold 5K (3.1 mile) races, free of charge and supported by volunteers...I did just that, checking the course before the race.  I had a choice during the event: either run the whole distance, walk the whole distance, or split it up between running and walking...I chose running, but taking it easy on the first (of four laps) and building up my speed to finish at 33:48: not my best, but during this time of year I'm going for covering the distance, not doing it fast.  Click HERE to see the results.  Next week, instead of the Depot Parkrun, they will be staging the Juneteenth-themed Freedom Walk...also 5K (but not a timed race), starting and ending from this park and going through various historic neighborhoods in the vicinity.  Then on the 24th the parkrun resumes...I might just walk that one if my plans work out...

Quote of the Week...from Groucho Marx

I find television very educating.  Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.   

     ---Groucho Marx

Facebook is a peculiar social media website, but like others it employs AI algorithms to guess and then present unsolicited material that supposedly resonates with my interests. One result is that I'm getting a lot of stuff about the Beatles...no problem with that.  I also like another site, called Goodwill Librarian, that promotes books and reading and has all sorts of funny and pithy posts.  The other day they showed the above quote by comedy legend Groucho Marx, who also said, "I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member" and "Why, a four-year child could understand this report.  Run out and find me a four-year-old child.  I can't make head nor tail of it." In his day, though, television gave its viewers few options beyond the three major networks, public television and an occasional independent channel.  Now, though, although you can still get brain-wasted sitting in a stupor watching inane programming, television offers a variety of opportunities for educational experiences...especially if you use Roku or something similar to access YouTube.  That channel can teach you just about anything on Earth...just do a search on your topic and see what happens.  Earlier this year...although I've gotten away from it more recently...I was learning college mathematics in different on-line lectures on YouTube.  Nowadays I've been stuck on the Kendra listening practice in the five languages I'm studying...it's a great way to both get used to the spoken language and fill in my vocabulary with new words.  There's also a lot of "how-to" maintenance and repair stuff there...go ahead, give it a try.  You can even run a virtual marathon if you like...or follow a number of great classical music pieces with the written music on screen tracing the audio.  And on and on...yep, I wonder what kind of savvy, hilarious quip my old friend Groucho would have to say about all that... 

Follow-Up on Tuesday's Political Article

I thought I'd follow up on Tuesday's venture into politics on this blog to clarify where I stand in an area that causes so much confusion, fear and rage among some folks.  For one, I neither campaign for nor "endorse" any candidate or referendum issue stance...you're all big boys and girls, figure it out for yourselves.  But this blog IS a major outlet of free speech in which I can lay out my views on this thing or that...politics just happens to be a (minor) facet of my life and what I'm interested in.  As for my leanings, I tend to be an "old school" Democrat...albeit currently registered as Republican...who believes in equal opportunity for all regardless of whatever demographic category happens to be hung on them...but I'm also averse to people getting carried away by identity politics and the various "groups" they see themselves belonging to.  I am very skeptical of the media as it stands today, with the figures both in front of and behind the camera and microphone often with hidden (and some brazenly clear) agendas and biases. My preferences tend to be in the political center...conservative with national defense and security and liberal with civil rights and social safety nets like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.  I believe that there is a strong role for government to play when it concerns public health (including pandemics), the environment, and the building and maintenance of transportation and communications infrastructures.  But government should do whatever it can to encourage the development of a free-market economy...sometimes the best way for that is to back off and do little.  I used to watch a lot of the floor debates of the US Senate in recent years, and whenever a speaker (from either party) enunciated the above points, I have agreed with them.  Two days ago, I wrote that I was supporting Tim Scott for the Republican presidential nomination, but here again another factor comes into play: for all practical purposes, Senator Scott is a stranger although I like his demeanor and positive attitude...I still could be totally wrong about him.  Well, I guess I could string this article along further about politics, but I'm sure I'll get plenty of chances in the upcoming weeks and months as the 2024 presidential election approaches...  

Weekly Short Stories: 1991 Science Fiction, Part 5

It's Wednesday, so here I am again, slowly going through yet another Gardner Dozois anthology, his ninth annual collection of his series titled The Year's Best Science Fiction and focusing on stories published in the year 1991.  These books of his are very, very huge...not like the previous two different series I reviewed, edited respectively by Isaac Asimov and Donald A. Wollheim.  Yet I do appreciate the stories, by and large, that Dozois selected: today's three subjects are no exceptions.  If you're wondering when I get around to reading these tales for my weekly articles, the answer is simple: on my breaks at work!  And now, without further ado, here are my reactions to these tales as they appeared in the book...

A HISTORY OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, WITH ILLUSTRATIONS by Kim Stanley Robinson

A writer is commissioned to write a history book about the twentieth century...but at every turn he is confronted with its horrible wars and bloodshed.  Finally, he drives to a far, distant place in the north to get away from it all and repeats for the next century the rosy, optimistic scenario that another writer a hundred years before had predicted for the twentieth.  After all, as bad as it was, you have to look ahead with hope...

GENE WARS by Paul J. McAuley

A short, frenetically paced story about a young gene design entrepreneur written at the time when the whole controversy about owning trademarks to aspects of biology was just getting started.  McAuley brutally takes this emerging industry and trends to their logical...and very extreme and disturbing...conclusion...

THE GALLERY OF HIS DREAMS by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

This is a very tender, sensitive story of the great American Civil War photographer Mathew Brady and an examination both of the fickle nature of public fame and the horrors of war.  I'm guessing that the author drew on a lot of truth about Brady's life and his beloved wife Julia...and then turned it into a science fiction time travel yarn that somehow worked well.  Highly recommended...

Next week: still more from the year 1991 in short science fiction...

Further Reflections on GOP Presidential Politics

It's sad for me to see my state's governor sink so low in pandering to his constituency's base of hate as he seeks to out-bully his only major rival for his party's presidential nomination for 2024.  I had written in an earlier article how I would support DeSantis over Trump after the latter sought with every means possible...including urging a swing state's secretary of state to manufacture more than eleven thousand nonexistent votes for him...to overturn a free and fair election he closely lost.  But with the Florida governor's recent antics, I'm afraid that he's lost my primary vote...instead I'm strongly leaning to South Carolina senator Tim Scott, a decent and likeable conservative who recently threw his hat into the ring.  Ronald Reagan, considered by many on the political right to be the greatest president of our era, in 1976 ran unsuccessfully as an ideologue, pushing the hot-button issues for his base in similar manner to what DeSantis has been doing.  But in 1980 he drastically changed his approach, presenting himself as an effective leader who wanted to bring the country together, make the economy strong again and protect it from outside adversaries.  And he was wildly successful, trouncing incumbent Jimmy Carter in that year's general election.  Well, I'm only one individual but I thought I'd set the record straight about who I support and who I don't.  I may or may not vote for Senator Scott were he to (improbably) win the Republican nomination next year, but at least I can see him as a thoughtful president who respects our Constitution and shows responsibility for the nation as a whole, not just one fraction of it...

Podcaster Promotes Reading...My Motivations Differ

Today's topic on personal development coach Rob Dial's Mindset Mentor podcast is one he's covered in the past: how to read faster and more effectively.  I may have already covered a few of his points in an earlier blog article, but I couldn't find it...so here goes.  Dial cites some kind of study from a year ago in which it stated that only 33% of high school graduates have ever read a single book after finishing school...the figure isn't much better for college graduates: 42 %! Additionally, some 80% of American households have never bought a book...I'm presuming that doesn't count the times kids in school have to buy stuff for reading assignments.  On the other side, the "average" CEO of a corporation reads some 60 books a year: if I were Archie Bunker, I'd say so much reading is why they're average...but I get Dial's point: reading a lot can help make you smarter and more successful in life.  He then expands upon his own reading habits, which although he tends to prefer paper books, have evolved into using several available features of the digital Kindle and Audible services.  He's a big fan of highlighting sections of text and saving them for future viewing...that tells me that he is primarily a non-fiction reader.  Dial likes to combine buying Kindle books...which he can read on his computer, iPad or iPhone, along with the audio text component when that is available.  For me, although I use Kindle, primarily for my Gardner Dozois science fiction anthology series, I've never used audio with it...and that series doesn't offer it anyway.  I do use my public library's free Libby service to check out audiobooks that I can read on my phone, often at work during appropriate times. Although reading books may indeed help with intelligence, knowledge and worldly success, that's not why I like to read.  I like to read because it's fun...I don't think Rob Dial ever got around to mentioning that...

Enjoyed Golf on TV Today for a Change of Pace

I was relaxing this afternoon and, after starting to surf the available TV channels, fell upon live coverage of the final round of the Memorial Tournament in Dublin, Ohio...hosted by legendary golfer Jack Nicklaus.  I didn't even know it was going on until I tuned in, and then decided to stick with it a while after recognizing familiar names like Scottie Scheffler, Viktor Hovland and Roy McIlroy at the top of the leaderboard.  But an unfamiliar name, that of Danny McCarthy, was leading everyone, usually by a couple of strokes, as the afternoon wore on.  He had never won a PGA tour before but this time around it looked as if he would finally succeed as the normally clutch pros around him kept stumbling through hole after hole.  Finally, McCarthy, who hadn't bogeyed a single hole today, did just that on the 18th while Hovland had sunk an incredible long birdie putt on the difficult 17th...this forced a playoff which Hovland won on the first sudden-death hole.  Never having played as much as a single hole of golf in my lifetime...I don't count miniature golf, which I think I'm adequate at...it is interesting to see these trained players at the top of the game struggle with their swings to keep the ball on the fairway and out of the tall grass, woods, sand traps and water.  I do understand that the putting greens are often deliberately designed to be treacherous with their deceptive slopes that the golfers often must spend enormous concentration trying to figure out...after all, that's all that miniature golf is: putting.  Sitting back and placidly watching the tournament approach the conclusion was fun, but you know, I highly doubt that I'll be doing the same thing next week...maybe once every month or two sounds about right...

Ran Gainesville's Depot Parkrun 5K This Morning

Last Saturday morning was unusually pleasant for this time of year, with the temperature dipping to the upper 50s with low humidity...today it returned to warm and humid: 69 degrees and 94% humidity at race time at Gainesville's free, volunteer-run weekly 5K event, the Depot Parkrun.  Depot Park is a few blocks south of downtown, accessible from both Main Street and Depot Road.  I had thought of volunteering for today's event, but it looked as if they had plenty of folks already signed up.  No problem: I ran it instead! It's always a bit challenging at the start of these runs since so many people are crowded together in such a small space, with establishing a workable, steady running pace next to impossible.  Since this "race" (they don't like to call it that for some reason) involves four laps around the park, I was able to get split times called out by one of those blessed volunteers.  As is usually the case, I had negative splits, with my fastest one by far being that final lap.  I finished with an improved time of 31:22, far from my best but a good effort anyway.  The good people running this show meet after the race at 9 in a nearby coffee shop (Opus Coffee on SW 4th Avenue) and invite anyone to join them...I'd like to go but not all hot and sweaty: maybe later in June when I walk the course again.  As for today's posted results, you can see them by clicking HERE...    

Quote of the Week...from Steve Kaufmann

The best way to learn a language is to massively ingest it, by listening and reading.  Listening and reading are so powerful.  If you can read the books, you know the language.  To get to know a language takes a lot of time and a lot of interacting with it...and a lot of that time has to be on your own.  I think it's better to work on comprehension and vocabulary without pressure to reproduce the language (by speaking). 

                                                                               ---Steve Kaufmann

Steve Kaufmann is a 77-year-old Canadian polyglot...that is, someone who speaks more than two languages...in his case, twenty to varying degrees.  He has spent his lifespan traveling and living abroad, investing years in his country's foreign service.  I've seen him on YouTube and he really does know his field, able to switch at a moment's notice from one language to another.  The above quote, which I lifted verbatim from the Wikipedia article about him, sums up his philosophy about learning languages. I have long felt that my formal academic education in foreign languages, from elementary school through high school and even college, totally got it wrong when emphasizing sometimes arcane grammar concepts, perfect pronunciation, and grading students on the "correctness" of their speech instead of doing what they should have been doing, which was to stress building vocabulary and increasing listening and reading comprehension.  My life experience has been very different from Kaufmann's although I have entertained a long-time interest in foreign languages...I've yet to set foot on another country's soil.  Yet in today's world of near-instant communication and vast resources through the Internet I find it easy to access material in any language I want to pursue...of course, Wikipedia is a great starting place, along with an instant translation program or app.  I can also translate this blog and then note the new vocabulary and structure in the target language...pretty cool!  Steve Kaufmann has his own podcasts and a language-learning company called "LingQ"...I've heard that it's of limited use in its free version and that the premium version, for about ten bucks a month, opens up a lot of links and vocabulary-building features in a number of languages.  But for now, I'm listening to Steve's podcasts and working on my listening and reading.  The languages I'm focusing on, all of which I already have a reasonable...but to me, pretty inadequate...degree of understanding, are Spanish, French, German, Russian and Chinese...

My May 2023 Running and Walking Report

In May I kept up my pace of running training, adding to it a regimen of incremental speed walking.  On the 6th and 20th I ran the Saturday morning Depot Parkrun 5K here in Gainesville, and on the 27th I walked the course.  I've also been paying regular visits late night after work to my local 24/7 gym, where I have been gradually increasing my walking speed on their treadmill...now up to 4.6 mph (13:02/mile) for a mile's duration.  I'd like to develop a good mix in the future for half-marathons...and possibly even marathons...of a steady running pace regularly interrupted with fast walking breaks: in other words, the Galloway Method perfected by marathoner Jeff Galloway.  In June I plan to do more of the same with my training and sticking to that Parkrun for public races...although they're PC about calling them "runs" and not "races".  I've also done a lot of my running in my own nicely air-conditioned house while listening to podcasts and watching race videos on YouTube...lots of fun and pretty convenient, too.  Hope you're doing well with whatever you may be training on...