Quote of the Week...from Neil Gaiman

The one thing that you have that nobody else has is you.  Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision. So write and draw and build and play and dance and live as only you can.          Neil Gaiman

I've read quite a few of Neil Gaiman's novels in past years, although recently I've gotten a little bit away from his fantasy-based genre of fiction writing.  Today is his birthday and I thought I'd drop in on a thought of his that appealed to me...so here's the above quote.  It sounds on the surface self-contradictory to say that we're all the same in that each of us is unique, but there you are: it's true!  Yet with the explosive advent of artificial intelligence permeating so many aspects of our being...impelled by the development of quantum computing...I'm beginning to wonder in fact whether a virtual "myself" couldn't just as easily be created, if not now, then in the not-so-distant future.  But now is now, and in my daily walk through life I want to act out that unique nature of mine, be grateful for it, and appreciate the differences and similarities I see in others. And maybe it's time for me to dig back into some more of ol' Neil's works... 

Podcaster Discusses How to Make Oneself Miserable

If you've been reading this blog for a while, you already know that I am a regular listener to personal development coach Rob Dial's podcast, which can be found on number of sites, including YouTube...it's called Mindset Mentor.  Usually if I write about a specific podcast, I'll have waited a few days beforehand.  But today he presented four mindsets people have which make themselves miserable in life.  The first is trying to control that which I cannot control, be it situations on the other side of the world or the people around me.  To a certain extent I can do my part to make things better by expressing opinions or voting on election day.  And speaking truth in a compassionate way to others is also something I could do more.  But sitting there letting the negativity stew around in my mind helps no one, especially myself.  The second of Dial's points is comparing myself to others, bemoaning the supposed advantages others enjoy that enable them to have or experience a more interesting and bountiful life.  To that he recommends intentionally setting aside time to focus on things that I can be grateful for in my life...and there is definitely a lot to consider here.  That doesn't imply that I shouldn't strive to improve myself and my circumstances, but once again I shouldn't just sit there fuming inside about how unfair life is.  Number Three on Rob Dial's list of things making folks miserable is focusing on the past.  We all live in the present and the past is gone...in spite of all the science fiction stories I've read or watched using the literary gimmick of time travel.  Moping around about past regrets can mess up my present, yet I don't think I should ignore the past either...it's how I learn to better live in the present!  Finally, our host presents the fourth pathway to misery: worrying about the future.  To be sure, that's where we're all heading...but most of the disasters predicted ahead don't materialize.  I am rooted to the present, and only in the now can I act to do my part to bring about a better world.  But once again, I present a caveat: of course, I need to notice danger and problems on the horizon and, if possible, try to effectively deal with them.  But static worry accomplishes nothing to alleviate anything.  If you think I'm getting a little preachy here, rest assured: I wrote this down primarily as a way to reinforce to myself the show's message...which today seemed quite profound...

Weekly Short Stories: 1994 Science Fiction, Part 1

Today I begin a new year in retrospect as I examine some select sci-fi short stories from 1994 as they appeared in the Gardner Dozois-edited anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Twelfth Annual Collection.  This was the year of the gimmicky mid-term elections in our country, where the party opposing the previously elected president comes up with some dumbass slogan to rally their own forces, along with the easily media-manipulated.part of the electorate, to retake Congress. In this election the president was Bill Clinton, and the insurgents were Republicans with Newt Gingrich leading the charge with his "Contract with America"...transformed by opponents into "Contract on America".  The switch in congressional power, sustained in two subsequent elections, would lead to Clinton's eventual politically motivated impeachment in 1999.  But back to those stories from '94...

FORGIVENESS DAY by Ursula K. le Guin

In le Guin's science fiction "universe"...several writers, like Isaac Asimov and Cordwainer Smith, created their own future scenarios in rather great detail. A female envoy from the Ekumens, this story's version of Star Trek's Federation of Planets, is assigned an outlying world that seeks admission to their body.  Only problem is that they have a highly stratified social order, with slavery a prominent element.  The envoy is very annoyed with the standoffish officer provided for her protection...but then all hell breaks loose and it's a case of who is double-crossing who.  It's actually a novella and, as such, tended to drag a bit...but I liked the outcome...

THE REMORAS by Robert Reed

This is a brilliant tale that leads to an anticipated conclusion but then veers off to something entirely different...yet had I been more attentive to the beginning I wouldn't have been so surprised.  On a humungous, planet-sized ship in the distant future, people have attained immortality through genetic manipulation.  One such woman lives in luxury with her recent husband...but then a representative of a very deformed subclass of human one day visits her home to demand her husband pay off a debt.  Sympathetic to the visitor although taken aback at his appearance, she goes to the ship's hull where he and others of his kind work on the exterior in space.  One important lesson from this story is that you can't always go by appearances...

NEKROPOLIS by Maureen F. McHugh

In a future society where biologically induced voluntary servitude based on personal bonding, called "jessing", is prevalent, one such servant is having second thoughts about her choice after she is paired up with a young, "manufactured" human male whom she initially regards as no more than an abominable machine.  Soon she discovers he has more human feeling and compassion that the so-called "real" people she works for and around.  A depressing look at a potential future?  I hope not but you can never tell...

Next week I continue reviewing science fiction from 1994...

Just Finished Reading 12 Rules for Life by Jordan Peterson

I just finished reading, on audiobook, Jordan Peterson's 2018 book 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos.  Peterson is a Canadian psychologist who has a podcast which features long shows usually involving interviews.  The tone in this book is very moralistic and on audio his adamancy for his opinions can get to the point of coming across a bit shrill and plaintive...at least that's how he sounds to me. In spite of that, I was a bit blown away by the depth of thought and insight underlying his enunciated principles and felt alternately convicted and affirmed by many of his conclusions about society and how individuals can and should function within it.  It's a tough-love kind of message here, and I believe that not everyone would receive it as well as myself.  I'm planning to go for a reread of this remarkable work in the near future...

 

Here are the rules:

1 Stand up straight with your shoulders back.

2 Treat yourself like someone you're responsible for helping.

3 Make friends with people who want the best for you.

4 Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today.

5 Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them.

6 Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world.

7 Pursue what is meaningful (not what is expedient).

8 Tell the truth...or at least, don't lie.

9 Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you don't.

10 Be precise in your speech.

11 Do not bother children while they are skateboarding.

12 Pet a cat when you encounter one in the street.

Some of the above...especially the final two...are a bit tongue-in-cheek while others have much more expansive interpretations, which the author is quite willing to reveal in each chapter.  This is an idea-packed work, and I don't automatically subscribe to everything Peterson has laid out here...but he did a masterful job of presenting his own thoughtful views about life and how to live it...

Some Comments After the NYC Marathon

I watched some of the day's events at the New York City Marathon yesterday...most of it was through live feeds on YouTube with cameras strategically placed at various points in the race.  I enjoyed the coverage of the leaders...Tamirat Tola of Ethiopia and Hellen Obiri of Kenya won the men's and women's events respectively.  I also dug seeing runners of different degrees of training and speed at places like south Brooklyn (Bay Ridge), north Brooklyn (Williamsburg), and one spot on the southern edge of Central Park on 59th Street, just a mile from the finishing line.  That last viewing I saw of the runners taking three times as long (or more) than the race's winners...they were pooped and most of them were walking.  The guy behind the camera kept yelling out for them to "bring it on home", "you did all the work" and "get your medal"...I wonder how long he was standing there doing that over and over again.  As for me, I'm happy to witness the madness from afar, content as of now with more sedate (and shorter) racing experiences with fewer accompanying hassles.  Tola and Obiri are obviously top-notch athletes...for most of those in this marathon, that clearly wasn't true.  Yet being an athlete per se is more a state of mind than an objective truth...I consider myself to be one, in fact.  There are people who never would run in any public race and only run for their own personal self-fulfillment or exercise to maintain health.  Although these are good motives and I run for those reasons as well, I feel that there's a little more to it all in my case.  I'm looking forward to what the future brings and congratulate those runners and walkers who tackled that difficult course in the Big Apple yesterday...

NYC Marathon Taking Place Today

Of all the marathons that I have NOT run...and the now-extinct Ocala Marathon is the only one I have...it's the New York City Marathon, held on the first weekend in November, that captures my imagination the most.  On YouTube I've been able to get a runner's-eye-view of the race on three very different videos: one from 2019 features a Chinese-speaking entrant who is relatively fast and the other two are from last year, one filmed by Alex, who has made numerous other race videos in the area and ran an average (for me) race and the other by a novice who ended up walking much of the distance.  In all three I got a great sense of the geography of the city's five boroughs, in this order of the race: Staten Island (at the beginning), Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, Bronx, and then Manhattan again at the end.  If these three videos showed all there was to running the NYC Marathon, I'd say "Sign me up and stick me on a plane."  But after viewing other videos of the event, it seems most of the effort goes not into actually running it, but rather first getting approved to enter it over all the other aspirants through either their February lottery or by joining with a charity and generating a lot of money.  Also, since we're talking more than 50,000 runners clogging the streets of New York, every time anything is considered, be it making hotel or restaurant reservations, picking up bibs at the required exposition at the Jacob Javits Center, checking in a post-race bag in Central Park, just getting to the starting line (no subway access to Staten Island) and going through the security check there after which there are hours of standing around before the race actually starts, we're talking endless lines and waits...ugh!  Yet those who speak of this event think it's a great thing and keep wanting to return next year.  I think that if I could escape somehow all that extraneous tedious b.s. and just start it like in all those racing videos, I'd think it worthwhile as well.  But if someday I do run a big-city marathon or, more likely, a half-marathon, then it will probably be in another place.  I wrote about it this morning because right now that same New York City Marathon is ongoing, to last throughout the day as they have staggered the massive number of runners into five waves and subdivided them further. It's a bit cooler there and windier than last year's race...a lot of the runners also seem to underestimate the fluctuations in altitude throughout this not-so-flat city: NYC does have some badass hills as well as a lot of extended upward and downward sloping!  I think a TV channel is covering the event, but most likely it will focus on the top finishers.  Funny that for someone as enthusiastic about running as myself that I am so clueless about the top athletes in this sport...

Ran Gainesville's Depot Parkrun This Morning

Today's Depot Parkrun 5K would be more appropriately named the "Darkrun" since, after all, this is the Saturday just before the clocks go back an hour from Daylight Savings Time to good old Standard Time. It was slightly chilly before the race at 58°, with just 69% humidity.  There didn't seem as many folks here at Depot Park, a few blocks south of Gainesville, as last week...suits me fine!  As usual, I ran the 5K as an exercise in establishing a comfortable but brisk pace.  I went slow the first lap but finished strong, at 30:14...you can view the results by clicking HERE.  After I finished, I waited about ten minutes, then did an extra run, involving both the park and the adjacent Hawthorne Trail, for 2.4 miles, with this one alternating five-minute runs with a minute of fast walking.  Next week I'll once again run in the Florida Track Club's Tom Walker Memorial Half-Marathon, to take place on the same Hawthorne Trail, but further south and east from where I ran today, beginning and ending at Boulware Springs Park.  Because that race happens on Sunday the 12th, I can still participate in next Saturday morning's Depot Parkrun, either (or both) as a runner/walker or volunteer...I'll have to see how I feel in a day or two.  After leaving the park I noticed the local traffic was unusually heavy for a Saturday morning. Of course, I should have known: there's a Gator home football game starting at noon...

Quote of the Week...from Mark Twain

It usually takes me more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.     ---Mark Twain

For me the king of monologues has to be the late Jean Shepherd, author and narrator of the famous television movie A Christmas Story and a legend on New York's talk radio station WOR for his show that lasted for decades in the last century.  From 1974 to 1976 I would avidly listen to rebroadcasts on my local Miami station WKAT/1360 and marvel at Jean's ability to maintain an ongoing monologue for around a half hour.  Of course, even back then (I was 18-20 years old) I knew that he would most probably enter the studio with at least a rough outline as to what he would sit there and discuss (with himself) for any set program.  But it's also obvious that he was speaking very conversationally and was spontaneous, not reading something straight from a prompt as so many politicians and media jocks do today.  Being someone interested in beginning a podcast, I'd like to emulate Jean Shepherd's style...and that's where Mark Twain's above quote kicks in.  I don't know whether the famed author was referring to writing a detailed outline or a script to be memorized, but it seems that regardless, it seems that some kind of preparation is in order before a final podcast monologue can be recorded.  Right now, I'm just practicing (without recording) listening to myself (try to) tackle various preset topics verbally in my car to establish the skill of maintaining a smooth, viable narrative.  But after seeing on YouTube how much podcasters edit their product, a lot of that smoothness you hear and see is often artificially produced in hindsight, after the initial recording.  Well, recording artists remix and mess with their music as well, and few complain about the final polished product.  I imagine my own final product, which I want to sound impromptu, will also...as with Twain...demand some foresight and organization requiring extra time and effort... 

My Progress So Far on Budding Podcasting Efforts

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about considering starting my own podcast, with the same basic goal as my writing except that it would be speaking instead.  Again, I want to instill a regular, disciplined habit of publicly available expression, this time making it verbal.  I mentioned that preliminary to starting an actual podcast I would make unrecorded monologues about preset topics during my drives to and from work.  Well, that was an eye opener for me, with me stumbling about tongue-tied for the most part, more a stream of disconnected consciousness coming from my mouth than a coherent narrative...is that really how I think? I do think I've improved a bit, and I've decided to alter the strategy with my "carcasts", as I call them, to do a "rough draft monologue" on the drive to work, let the results simmer in my mind for a few hours, and then on the drive home revisit the topic, hopefully in a more structured and comprehendible (to others) way.  I get that most of your regular podcasters develop outlines, some detailed, beforehand of what they will discuss om a podcast.  I'm not yet at that point, preferring right now to make the experience more extemporaneous.  Yesterday, for example, I set out to discuss the University of Florida campus as I remember it and as it is today.  During the first monologue I felt I was awkwardly groping about to find something to say while in the second, I felt more organized and with more knowledge at quick recall.  Now let's see what my carcast topic for today will be... 

Weekly Short Stories: 1993 Science Fiction, Part 8

Today's the final installment of my review of 1993 "short" science fiction from the Gardner Dozois anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Eleventh Annual Collection.  In all fairness, Dozois doesn't use the word "short" in his series title, and for good reason: some of the stories are novellas and, in, say, books of decades past could have passed for full-blown novels.  Such is the case with this book...and its final story, discussed below.  So why don't we close out this year with the last two tales...

WHISPERS by Maureen F. McHugh and David B. Kisor

A plague has beset the world, and an American woman, while not technically a "doctor", is essentially performing the same duties in rural Shandong, China, treating disease victims.  One patient is a young man who seems to be withering away and dying...but this is a new strain of the plague, and he seems to be defying all expectations by returning to general health...although he still looks withered.  To make it all creepier (remember this was published in 1993), the story takes place in 2018. I've always thought that evolutionarily speaking, it wasn't an enduring strategy for a disease to kill its hosts...eventually it would need to evolve to keep them alive and in a state of equilibrium together: that's the case here, although the author ends up making this particular plague into something that makes me wonder about the nature of identity as it applies to microorganisms, especially those causing pandemics... 

WALL, STONE, CRAFT by Walter Jon Williams

The only "science fiction" in this alternative history novella is that it is an alternative history.  With Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein in "our" time, as the chief protagonist...with her eventual husband Percy Bysshe Shelley and sister Claire, she is still single for most of the story, retaining her maiden name Wollstonecraft (hence this story's title).  The three of them are traveling through France immediately following Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo in 1815, a British victory largely engineered by Lord George Byron, in "our" world a famed poet while in theirs a cavalry leader.  The often-antagonistic exchanges between populist Mary and aristocratic George mark this story as they together cross France and then meet up again in Switzerland...roughly retracing their travels in both real and alternative worlds.  In our world Percy and George are good friends...in theirs it's more distant but still amicable.  I did learn a bit about these famous writers, but as is the case with alternative histories, sometimes it's difficult to filter out truth from the author's creativity.  Frankenstein, which I read not too long ago, did come up at the story's end, but since this is alternative history, you might correctly infer that it wasn't spared from a little alteration as well...

Next week I begin my look at the year 1994 in short science fiction...

My October 2023 Running and Walking Report

In October '23 I ran a total of 306 recorded miles...I don't keep track of the walking mileage although this may change in the future.  I also ran on every day of the month, with my general state of fitness seeming reasonably good.  As far as public races (or "runs", as one event likes to call them), I did three: the Florida Track Club's Tom Walker Preview 10K along the Hawthorne Trail on the 14th and two Depot Parkrun 5Ks, on the 21st and 28th, all Gainesville events taking place on Saturday morning: you can read about them by scrolling back to the specified date on this blog. I missed racing on the weekend of the 7th since Melissa and I had a higher mission: relaxing on the beach!  I have been hitting my local gym (Gainesville Health and Fitness, if you must know) after work usually once or twice a week, and always used their treadmills.  They have a feature you can choose while running called Virtual Active.  It presents continuous videos, each one about five minutes long, showing virtual runs in various scenic parts of the world: it's helped me a lot with my training there! I also run in my house and in my grassy backyard...not too much neighborhood road running these days.  In November they are holding two races I'm interested in: on Sunday the 12th will be another addition of the Tom Walker Memorial Half-Marathon on that Hawthorne Trail, originating from Boulware Springs Park in the SE part of town.  Then, on Thanksgiving Day the 23rd Lloyd Clarke Sports is hosting a 5K/10K Turkey Trot race being held at Critter Creek Farm Sanctuary north of Gainesville off County Road 231.  Of course, the Saturday morning Depot Parkruns will continue...I just attained one of their milestones of 25 finishes: going for 50 now! I also began this month what I hope to be a new tradition, running a little bit further after races are completed. Oh, there is also a strange event called the Cupcake Run held at a section of the Hawthorne Trail on the 19th (10K, half-marathon and full marathon offered), originating from Hawthorne near their high school.  But that's a longshot dark horse, as far as my own participation is concerned...seems they can't properly post their race results online...

Does AI Pose a Future Threat to Us?

In a 1950s futuristic series of novels and short stories, science fiction author Isaac Asimov wrote that robots were specifically designed with the imprinted program to never intentionally harm humans or to passively allow such harm to befall them.  In spite of this, in his version of our future, society became suspicious of them and eventually banned them from fear of being dominated by what we now would call artificial intelligence, or AI.  In subsequent decades, though, as computer systems...as opposed to individual units called robots...were more quickly and highly developed in the real world, science fiction turned its attention to supercomputers and the imagined threats they might pose to humanity.  In particular, with regard to my own television viewing experiences as a kid, the original Star Trek series episode The Ultimate Computer, in which a sophisticated computer imprinted with a human personality is installed and independently steers the Enterprise into war, was an early exposure to real fears developing about digital technology running amuck.  Then there was the 1970 TV movie Colossus: The Forbin Project...based on a 1966 novel by D.F. Jones...in which an American supercomputer, designed to defend the country and prevent nuclear war, itself takes over the world and uses the arsenals to establish its power.  Several other movies would ensue, to me the most notables being The Terminator and The Matrix, presenting nightmare scenarios as human beings fight for their very right to exist in the face of uncontrolled AI dominating the planet.  Returning to reality in 2023, it seems to me that only within the last few months have we seen an exponential development of artificial intelligence, and the internet connects it all together.  Major software and internet corporations like Google and Facebook liberally use AI to run their algorithms...I believe one of these erroneously booted a recent compliant post of mine off the latter as no real person would have made such a decision.  I recently checked out YouTube and there are a number of folks raising the alarm about AI being out of control, with a bleak future ahead for us all.  I just checked out a book on my library's Libby app by one of those voices, Mo Gawdat...I'll share some of my insights after I've read it.  Is all this negativity about artificial intelligence like the unfounded public fears expressed in Asimov's earlier novels, or do we have a much more ominous future in store that reflects scenarios like Colossus, Terminator or Matrix?  I don't know yet...maybe I never will...but my gut feeling tells me that the answer lies somewhere in the middle...

Just Finished Reading Make It Stick by Peter C. Brown, Henry L. Roediger III and Mark A. McDaniel

Make It Stick...a 2014 book I just read by Peter C. Brown, Henry L. Roediger III and Mark A. McDaniel, has as its co-title The Science of Successful Learning.  I heard about it from a podcast of Steve Kaufmann, a polyglot who had also just read it and endorsed many of its points.  The premise of the book is that learning is more effective when approaching it in some ways that our traditional educational system tends to avoid.  Instead of learning material in blocks and regurgitating it on tests, the authors emphasize techniques such as expanding on the material as it is presented...sometimes even before the teacher lays it out in class.  Interleaving the material with other assignments also accomplishes the goal of spacing it more, with the result that, although it seems to be counterintuitive to memory retention and permanent learning, the opposite in fact happens, with the subject matter better learned.  Although I was interested in the book's topic and sympathetic to the authors' viewpoints, it was still...albeit probably necessary...rather bathed in academic language and something of a slog to get through.  One thing brought up struck me personally: the notion that if you pick certain specific settings to consistently do your learning, then recalling those same settings can be a great aid in recalling what was learned.  It's the first time I have heard anyone affirm this truth that I have known for decades.  There's plenty to digest in Make It Stick...I probably should have assiduously followed its own suggestions in reading it...

Ran Gainesville's Depot Park 5K This Morning

Once again, I managed to drag my sleepy body out of bed on a Saturday morning around six and got myself ready to drive down to Gainesville's pretty Depot Park, where the international, England-based non-profit organization Parkrun has been holding its free weekly, volunteer-run event at 7:30 since late 2018.  I began the Depot Parkrun in January 2019 and, today, managed to finish my 25th run...they don't like to call them races, although they do post the finishes online with participants' names and times.  I did speed-walk one race (I at least call them races) this past spring but haven't done one since, in spite of my intentions.  This morning I ran the course again, finishing the 5K (3.1 mile) distance in 30:38: you can view the overall posted results by clicking HERE.  Parkrun, which is now held in 1,913 different locations worldwide, has a system of rewarding regular participants with Milestone recognition at 25, 50, 100, and 250 cumulative runs.  Since I just got to 25, I was able to order a t-shirt recognizing that accomplishment.  I have to say that this event has been a blessing in my life, adding an element of discipline to my running and a healthy pressure to regularly run in a more social environment.  I didn't feel quite as up to the run this morning as last week...as Winnie the Pooh would say, I had a "rumbly in my tumbly"...and the humidity was an unpleasant 92% although it was a nice 64 degrees at race time.  I had planned afterward to go explore the Hawthorne Trail a little further, but there seemed to me a large number of walkers clogging the pathway and, as I said, I was probably physically better off going on home anyway.  Later on in the day I ran another 4.2 miles...slowly...so it was a good day in that regard.  Oh, one other thing...some of the people there were dressed up for Halloween in role-playing costumes: that was cute...

Quote of the Week...from Jimmy Buffett

Go fast enough to get there, but slow enough to see.            ---Jimmy Buffett

Although Jimmy Buffett, who sadly passed away two months ago, is known for his style of rock that emphasized tropical, southern living, my first exposure to his wonderful music came during the summer of 1974 when he sang of wanting to leave Los Angeles and return to the mountains of Montana in the song Come Monday.  Four years later I heard Cheeseburger in Paradise which pretty much said everything essential about this American delicacy...those are my two favorite songs of his.  Buffett's above quote also stirred me and reminded me of the time a few years ago when Melissa and I visited Kanapaha Botanical Gardens southwest of Gainesville during their Moonlight Walk.  The two of us took our time slowly strolling down the pathway looking at the plants, while for the entire walk people would be speedily passing us saying stuff like "excuse me, sorry, excuse us" in their great rush to get through the experience.  I thought that was kind of weird, and maybe you do, too.  Yet consider that with anything we do, short-term or long, there is a goal or destination, which to attain we need to undergo a time-consuming process.  You want to get there in a reasonably timely manner...yet that which involves the endeavor is also worthwhile, and sometimes it dwarfs the outcome.  That's the way I see running races...not so much the finishing and aftermath, but the race itself with the variables involving distance, location, course terrain, weather, my body's state, people, and other factors I'm dealing with that mix together into an experiential stew.  But I could also say that about a drive to work, reading a book, buying groceries, mowing my lawn, cleaning out my garage, traveling to anywhere, even going to the dentist!  Somebody once said to stop and smell the roses, but if you're not into that stuff then there's plenty else to enjoy, and who says you have to stop...

Constellation of the Month: Aquarius (the Water-Carrier)

Aquarius is one of the twelve Zodiac constellations, marking the pathway along our Solar System's plane where you can see the Sun, Moon and planets in their celestial wanderings...with a corresponding astrological sign for those born between January 20th and February 18th.  It's also the name of my "song of the year" from 1969, by the Fifth Dimension, which signaled the advent of a new astrological age...but I digress: back to astronomy and reality.  Aquarius is a constellation a stargazer would see crossing the meridian (the imaginary line running across the sky from the northern horizon to the southern) during mid-evening during the month of October...hence it's my chosen constellation of this month.  Brighter than Pisces, the Zodiac constellation to its east, and dimmer than Capricornus, to its west (and south), the fact remains that all three aren't exactly easy to spot in the sky, especially if you're hindered by city lights as I am here in Gainesville.  I first encountered Aquarius at age seven looking at a star map in the Herbert S. Zim Golden Guide to the Stars handbook, but it was drawn completely omitting the constellation's western half, including its brightest stars.  Aquarius has been drawn a number of ways...I kind of freelanced the above version.  If you're new to reading star maps, take note that Greek letters are used to designate stars and, generally speaking with a number of exceptions, their relative brightness diminishes as you go down the alphabet. There are three deep-sky Messier objects in its western half: M2, M72 and M73, all globular star clusters.  The best way I know to locate Aquarius in the night sky is to find the first magnitude star Fomalhaut in Piscis Austrinus, which lies south of Aquarius, and go north a bit (upward in latitudes north of the Equator), but not so far as much more prominent Pegasus.  Good luck with that...Aquarius is hard to spot under my conditions, but at least it's not one of those dinky, insignificant constellations I've referred to recently in this monthly feature.  I guess I'll keep doing it until I run out of constellations, possibly combining some of the tinier ones...

Weekly Short Stories: 1993 Science Fiction, Part 7

Not quite finished with the year 1993 in sci-fi short stories...but approaching it...I continue today with some more from Garder Dozois' anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Eleventh Annual Collection.  As with a long span during this era, I was involved with making long lists of things and memorizing them, later reviewing and expanding upon them.  The fact that I had an on-the-surface tedious job in which I could go for long stretches of time in personal reflection made this feasible...I think this exercise strengthened me in later years.  But as I like to say, back to those stories... 

LIESERL by Stephen Baxter

This story starts from the end and then presents the narrative leading up to it as a young woman finds herself comfortably deep beneath the sun's surface, genetically modified to withstand the extreme conditions.  Sounds impossible, but the author somehow makes you believe it anyway...today's scientific advances in this area may not end up so accomplished, but they're getting to the point of being scary...

FLASHBACK by Dan Simmons

I'm currently reading Stephen King's 2011 novel 11/22/63 for the umpteenth time, and this novella from eighteen years earlier, set in a dystopian 2018 America quite different from the way it turned out, presents a dual-interesting perspective on looking back in the time, and also trying to project the future.  In Flashback, flashbacks are addictive, digitally directed drugs that send the user to a specific moment in the past for a set...usually brief...period of time, and then back again.  One elederly man keeps reliving up close the final minutes as a Secret Service agent before the John F. Kennedy assassination 55 years earlier, trying in vain to change the outcome as time ironically, repeatedly, keeps running out on him.  Similar dramas with flashback are going on with his daughter and her teenage son.  What kind of digital drugs are we addicted to in our time? A worthwhile reading...I've read Simmons before, and he's one of the better writers of our time...

A CHILD'S CHRISTMAS IN FLORIDA by William Browning Spencer

A brief tale of how a dysfunctional, native rural Floridian family spends their Christmas time with their own traditions, straight out of the Stephen King playbook.  A retired elderly couple from the colder north like the Florida warmth but miss the holiday ambiance associated with their former harsher winters.  The wife misreads a nearby family's celebration of Christmas, imputing innocent good will to very sinister goings-on.  Sad, and in a way, funny, too...

Next week I conclude my look at 1993 in "short" science fiction with two stories, one of them a rather lengthy novella...

Podcaster Says to Stop Doing These Nine Things

In yesterday's article I was critical of Daniel Amen using his professional title as a doctor of psychiatry to present a comprehensive bible of life and how to live it, noting that were he only to present himself as a fellow traveler through life without all the self-aggrandizing hoopla, I would have been more receptive to his message.  In a similar vein, I tend more to relate to podcaster Rob Dial on his Mindset Mentor show.  Dial to me has just as much insight into "life"...however you might frame it...as "doctor" Amen, but he doesn't hide behind professional titles in giving his views.  Even so, sometimes I agree with Dial and sometimes I don't...that, I'm sure, would suit him quite well as he is no stickler for perfection (read numbers 4 and 6 below).  The other day he listed nine things that he insists each of us stop...nip it in the bud, as Barney Fife would say.  Here they are...

STOP

1) making excuses...rarely does anyone regret not having made them

2) playing the victim...takes control of life away from self, better to take responsibility

3) complaining...use "1-3-1" method: identify 1 problem, come up with 3 solutions, pick 1 to start with

4) being afraid of failure...failure is the best teacher, you want to fail soon and often

5) procrastinating...too much planning, instead "ready, fire, aim", aka take action and then adjust

6) being so hard on yourself...you're doing the best you can, let it go-especially past regrets

7) trying to control everything...we're all pretty insignificant in the grand scheme of things

8) giving up on yourself...follow up, go through with what you've started

9) settling for just an "OK" life...we have the capacity for an incredible life, which we get one shot at

To all the above the "Goth" part of me would like to add "easier said than done".  But then again, life is a journey, not a destination...let's just take things one micro-habit at a time...

Just Finished Reading You, Happier by Daniel G. Amen

Daniel Gregory Amen is an American psychiatrist who has become popular with his notion of brain types, as revealed by what he calls SPECT (single-photon emission computed tomography), that is, brain scans, that he liberally uses at his clinics to determine his clients' brain types and then offer treatment and programs that purportedly match the determined type.  And he has identified 16 types: 5 primary and 11 secondary, which are derived from the primary.  Since this book of his I just finished reading, You, Happier, bases a lot of his advice on which particular brain type I supposedly have, I decided to take his online survey that he claims to approximate the correct brain type.  The primary types are (1) Balanced, (2) Spontaneous, (3) Persistent, (4) Sensitive, and (5) Cautious.  Balanced is what it claims to be, a measured combination of 2,3 and 4.  After I took the "test", they gave me my type: Number (8), which curiously ALSO claims to be a combination of brain types 2,3, and 4!  Only, I guess, with me the combination isn't so balanced...or maybe they don't know what the hell they're doing, always a possibility.  With books like this by pop physicians who use a hook or gimmick to lure in the reader (and prospective customer of their inevitable product line), Amen expanded You, Happier to become a bible of living, smoothly stepping out of his area of medical expertise to give dietary advice, labeling some foods and drink (like pizza, ice cream, hamburgers and coffee, you know, the stuff I like) as "sad" and others (green vegetables, nuts, fruits...all organic, of course) as "happy".  If it sounds as if I am being unduly critical of the good doctor, then it's only because I feel that he is trading off his medical credentials in order to build a lucrative business and loyal following while making dubious connections between the study of the human brain and popular psychology.  Had he written his suggestions and advice from the perspective of a fellow traveler through life such as myself, I would have had no doubt a more positive reaction. Also, these brain scans Daniel Amen bases his theories on dosing the brain with radiation for those scans, and he's been criticized for this as well.  In closing, I have to admit to cringing a bit whenever my local public television station is undergoing a fund drive, and they have people like Amen or Steven Gundry on the air lecturing the gullible, nodding audience on their particular quirky notions about what is good and what isn't.  But why stop with this review...why not simply check out You, Happier and see (or hear if you do the audio version) for yourself?  I thought there was some good stuff in it, but I had to filter it out from the author's personal biases...

Looking (and Laughing) at Ridiculous Trends of the Past...and the Present

Sometimes people post old pictures of themselves and their buddies on my high school nostalgia website.  Everyone...especially the boys...has long, long hair that's screaming for professional style haircuts.  And those sad omnipresent bell-bottom jeans: give me a break! I don't know of anyone back then in the early seventies who deliberately preferred, on their own initiative, this style of clothing.  No, it was something that the fashion industry imposed on the population and one day, that's all people had to choose from...at least that's the way I remember it.  In any event, I think everyone looks kind of dopey in those old pics, and it's largely because they were following the herd mentality in trying to fit in and look like everyone else.  Don't think that I'm letting our present time off the hook.  Nowadays the "in" public appearance revolves around carrying one's cell smartphone in the hand, spending inordinate time looking down at it instead of paying attention to their ongoing surroundings and situations.  I know this because I regularly drive to work here in Gainesville down US-441 past the University of Florida, midday when the students are flooding the sidewalks with their presence.  Students who walking in couples or groups don't stare at the phones, but a large percentage of the "singletons" just go walking down the sidewalks...even crossing busy streets...with their eyes glued to their object, even when the sun is glaring down on them making actually seeing anything at least theoretically impossible.  I couldn't do that simply because I'm afraid I'd trip on something and fall on my ass...these kids must have an inner gyroscope guiding their motions!  I'm speaking from 1973 to 2023 here, but what will be it like fifty more years in the future, in 2073, when these very students are old fogies like me and are themselves observers of the passing scene: how will the inevitable changes manifest themselves?  I don't see this smartphone culture as static in the least.  Cyber technology will become more internalized and private, to the point I think that folks from the future will be laughing at images of these people stuck on their phones today.  In that sense I'm already way ahead of my own time.  On the other hand, those 2073 folks may be laughing at stuff they see from 2023 that I think is perfectly normal...