My Reactions to Yesterday's College Football Playoff Semifinals

Yesterday I watched parts of the college football playoff semifinal games on TV...for some reason they decided to broadcast it on several different channels.  The first contest was the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California, pitting #1 seed Michigan against #4 Alabama, each led by established and successful prima donna coaches.  Before the game I thought 'Bama was the better team, but the Wolverines, especially their incredible, intelligent and aggressive defense, impressed me.  Unfortunately for them, they kept turning the ball over and thus had to come from behind to win an overtime game they should have prevailed in by at least a couple of touchdowns  In the nightcap action, it was Washington vs. Texas in New Orlean's Sugar Bowl...once again one team, namely the Huskies with their high-flying passing offense, should have won going away, but poor time management and questionable offensive calls during the closing minutes of the contest kept the struggling Longhorns in at until the very final play.  So it's Washington against Michigan, at Houston in the championship game.  I'm planning on watching at least some of it, but I don't really have a clear preference.  Sometimes when you watch highly competitive sports like this, it appears that neither side wants to win, what with all their mistakes.  Yet I think that's primarily a symptom of the intensity and skill of the opponents involved, with each side trying their hardest to force errors on the other.  I never bet on sports and always ultimately regard it as a form of entertainment, refusing...unlike in my younger years...to take any of it too seriously.  Still, I'm curious who will win the title, the game to air on Monday evening, January 8th...I plan to be at work, though...

Ran Gainesville's Depot Parkrun 5K This New Year's Morning

This morning Melissa and I got up early on New Year's Day 2024 and drove down to Depot Park, a few blocks south of downtown Gainesville, to participate in the specially scheduled Parkrun for this holiday. It was my 31st Parkrun and Melissa's first, as she walked the 3.1 mile distance with the race-time (7:30) temperature at 35 degrees and 99% humidity.  I ran the whole distance this time without walking breaks since the weather was so conducive to speed.  We both did well...I'm very proud of Melissa and she did better than she had originally thought.  I set a new personal best for the Parkrun at 27:38...you can view the results by clicking HERE. That time may well stand for a while as my personal best as, in future runs, I plan to return to the Galloway run/walk method...the only exceptions will be if it's another cold morning or I do a speed-walk for the race.  In any event, it was fun and we enjoyed a very good breakfast afterwards at Afternoon, a local diner with very good food and service.  Now on to the rest of 2024...

Happy New Year Everybody

I wish you all a most happy New Year in 2024, may your lives be blessed and full of good memories to come!

Looking Forward to '24 with My Running, Walking and Swimming

I hope you are enjoying your New Years Eve today...of course, there are parts of the world right now, as I'm writing this late in the afternoon in Florida, where it's already 2024.  Yesterday I mentioned that in this article I'd discuss some ideas I had about running, walking and swimming for the upcoming year...probably a better topic, although a bit self-indulgent, than politics or war.  Of course, whatever I do (or don't do) in this regard depends on my life circumstances as they arise, chief among them the state of my personal health.  So with the caveat that all is otherwise going well, let's take a gander at some prospective goals.  In 2023, although in mid-year I suffered some temporary back pain and then came down with a mild case of Covid, for the most part I enjoyed a pretty successful year in running for a man in his late sixties two years removed from open heart surgery.  In '24 I'd like to keep the momentum going while dishing in a little more walking and making swimming a regular routine.  I'm already signed up to run a half-marathon on January 15th...it's the Mary Andrews Florida Track Club race I ran a year ago, held in Hawthorne.  FTC, of which I'm a subscribing member, has a full calendar of events including their February Micanopy Ten-Miler race...I plan to run it, too.  Other than participating alternately as runner, walker and volunteer at my local Gainesville weekly Depot Parkrun 5K, I'd like to run more half-marathon races and even try my hand at finishing a 26.2-mile full marathon.  The thought has crossed my mind, as of yet unrealized, of me getting on a plane and flying out to another American city to run such a weekend race and then flying on back in time for work on Monday...I think this is feasible and might be a great adventure.  I plan to continue going to my gym, Gainesville Health and Fitness, to train both on the treadmill with running and walking and in their lap pool as I work through the year to integrate swimming into my permanent routine.  I'm not necessarily a competitive person in sports in that I feel the need to "beat" others, but rather participate in events as a kind of publicly acknowledged accountability statement of my efforts.  In that regard, I'm not sure how I could ever swim in open public events, which for the sport are exceedingly rare.  Oh well, I'll do what I can do, and enjoy the process.  In 2023 I did begin to seriously use the Jeff Galloway (he is a renowned marathon runner) method of running long distances by taking short walking breaks between stretches of running and then repeating the cycle.  The results were very good finishing times for myself and I plan to continue with it next year, although in a crowded, big city race, doing this continual slowing-down and speeding-up could cause some disruption among the rest of the runners around me.  Oh well, I'll cross that bridge when I get to it...

My December 2023 Running/Walking/Swimming Report

This month I finally got around to doing something I had intended for a long time: add swimming to my regimen of exercise. My local gym, of which I have been a member for more than eleven years, has an excellent pool for swimming laps...it's almost inexcusable that I have neglected using it for so long.  But then is then and now is now...for the past two Fridays after work (my official shift ends at 10 PM), I have "taken the plunge", so to speak, and started my laps (25 yards, not the 50-meter Olympic standard).  My swimming form is atrocious, but as I make this more of a habit I'm hoping that practice (along with watching YouTube videos) will make me more effective...my upper body strength and endurance definitely lags far behind that for my running and walking.  Speaking of them, I ran a 15K race in December as well as two 5Ks, employing the Galloway run/walk method in all events to achieve faster finishes than in recent years.  I also speed-walked a 5K, the second time I've done that.  We're blessed here in Gainesville to be a part of the international Parkrun movement, with our Depot Parkrun 5K event, free and volunteer-run, a regular Saturday morning staple since 2018...I've run or walked it 30 times since 2019 and volunteered 3...probably need to help out again soon. I've run (and, naturally, walked) on every day of December, anticipating more of the same tomorrow as the year closes.  I've tried for the most part to get to the gym after work, using the treadmill for running and speed-walking practice.  Speaking of the transition from 2023 to 2024, I thought that for tomorrow's article I would just throw out some ideas about where I might be heading with my running, walking and swimming...

Quote of the Week...from Kurt Cobain

Won't you believe it, it's just my luck (repeat)

No recess (repeat)

You"re in high school again (repeat)           ---Kurt Cobain, from the Nirvana song School

So go the brief, but memory-provoking lyrics, to Kurt Cobain's song School off Nirvana's Bleach album.  Although the late king of grunge rock reportedly had intended to vent his animosity toward high school in general with this piece, which happens to be one of my favorite Nirvana songs, I had a slightly different reaction to it...especially that part about "no recess".  When I was in elementary school, we actually did have recess, which was the break from our academic classes in which we would go outside and play games and sports, more or less informally.  But when I began going to junior high school (for my era in the seventh grade) and on throughout my "senior" years there, recess abruptly transformed itself into something they called "physical education", or phys-ed.  The instructors tended to run their classes...at least for the boys...like military basic training, and the kids would have to smartly shout out during roll call the exact words "Here, Sir, dressed out!"...otherwise they'd better have a note ready to explain why not. Although I was generally athletically inclined and typically competitive, in no way did I see any of it as recess, so Kurt's song rang true in a special way to me.  I remember that in the first grade...probably since we got out of school earlier in the day than the others...we didn't have recess.  But then it occurred to me that from my seventh through twelfth years we didn't either...  

My Top Ten Favorite Songs of 2023

Although there are still a couple of days left in 2023, I think I pretty much have down my top favorite songs of the year, not that much different than what I wrote down a few weeks a ago.  Here they are, each listed entry with the song's title followed by the artist and the album in parentheses...

1 OIL by Gorillaz (Cracker Island)

2 MY COSMOS IS MINE by Depeche Mode (Memento Mori)

3 PEOPLE ARE GOOD by Depeche Mode (Memento Mori)

4 SHIT TALK by Sufjan Stevens (Javelin)

5 BOTTLE EPISODES by The New Pornographers (Continue as a Guest)

6 NEW GOLD by Gorillaz (Cracker Island)

7 WHO WOULD YOU BE FOR ME by Metric (Formentera II)

8 A HAIRDRYER by The Smile (A Light for Attracting Attention)

9 PONTIUS PILATE'S HOME MOVIES by The New Pornographers (Continue as a Guest)

10 MY FAVORITE STRANGER by Depeche Mode (Memento Mori)

Oil has nonsense lyrics although speaking in vague terms of love.  What won it as my "Song of the Year" is its upbeat musical tone, sounding like a cross between alt-rock and Fleetwood Mac...the fact that Stevie Nicks sings on it was brilliant.  Depeche Mode is a British industrial/Goth band that's been around for years...their 2023 album Memento Mori contains some jewels.  My Cosmos is Mine is an assertive expression of identity, reminding me of Tom Petty's I Won't Back Down and Soundgarden's My Wave.  People are Good expresses the opposite from its ironic title: they really aren't so good after all! Sufjan Stevens, a longtime favorite Indie recording artist, came out with the album Javelin this past fall, my favorite track Shit Talk actually a beautiful, emotional 8-minute plus work of art...don't get misled by this one's title, either. I recommend the whole list, naturally, and you can hear them all on YouTube. You know, I just gave Number One another listen and realized that the lyrics aren't nonsensical at all...

Weekly Short Stories: 1994 Science Fiction, Part 7

It's Wednesday, and once again time for my look at years gone by in the realm of short science fiction, specifically 1994 with the source-book being The Year's Best Science Fiction, Twelfth Annual Edition and edited by the late Gardner Dozois, a sci-fi writer in his own right.  One of these days I'm going to have to check out a collection of Dozois' works, seeing that perhaps he might have felt it a bit presumptious to include any of them in his series: I bet some of them are pretty good.  But for now, let's look at the next three stories in the '94 anthology...

ASYLUM by Katherine Kerr

In the near future, a feminist social activist and author is visiting her friend in an England, which is fighting a drastically rising sea level due to global warning, when a right-wing military-backed coup overthrows the American government and institutes martial law.  Sometimes science fiction tries to predict the future and is comically off the mark.  This story, on the other hand, is chilling in its spot-on portrayal of a world beset by climate change (remember, it was written in 1994) and how a core element (which I call the "rabble") of any nation's population sees authoritarian, strong-arm rule as a virtue to support.  And here comes 2024, right around the corner...

RED ELVIS by Walter Jon Williams

This is a brief alternative history tale of the rock n' roll phenomenon Presley...the author takes his birth as the only survivor of identical twins as the premise for sending it into a direction markedly different (and in ways not so different) from what really happened.  In the process the reader gets a sense of what life was like back in the fifties and sixties...

CALIFORNIA DREAMER by Mary Rosenbaum

A cataclysmic earthquake on the American pacific coast has sent large sections of California into the sea...including San Francisco.  A woman survivor, a refugee herself from the carnage a few hundred miles away, is beset with grief as she knows her dear friend of many years is likely one of the casualties.  But then a little girl enters her life, claiming as her own mother a woman whose credentials don't match up right.  This is a psychological story about grief and creating a new personal "reality" to cope with it...

Next week I continue looking at the year 1994 in science fiction...

Tail End of 2023 Here

Now that it's officially past Christmas day, I suppose a lot of people regard the upcoming week preceding New Years Day as the time for refunds and exchanges of gifts not wanted or the wrong shape, size or color.  For me it's a brief period for me to reflect on the year winding down and contemplating ahead to 2024.  If the next calendar year is anything like it was in 2020 when we had the insane presidential election, the Covid crisis outbreak and the nationwide protests following the George Floyd killing, I'd better brace myself.  Yet I have high hopes for my health, self-improvement, fun and adventures as well as for my loved ones. I am optimistically looking forward to 2024, and sensationalism and media manipulation can just take a back seat to my own agendas, thank you very much.  May this week prepare you for what's to come, including bringing a sense of perspective and balance to your own lives...

Merry Christmas

I'd like to wish all of you and yours a very merry and safe Christmas and holiday season.  It's been fun writing this blog for you over the years and I appreciate your readership...let me know if you have a blog or plan to start one!  Again, season's greetings!

Swimming: My Past, Present and Future

Although I grew up in south Florida just a few miles from the beach and visited it numerous times with my family, I didn't learn how to swim until I was twelve years old, and that was only because my high school, in 1968, just had its own swimming pool built.  Before, in the ocean, I would just get out in the waves in water nearly over my head and float on my inner tube...the fact that I couldn't swim didn't seem to bother anybody!  Yet if I got in a swimming pool, I'd be afraid of the water, go figure!  Even after learning to swim, though, I got no practice in my swimming style...I was taught the rudiments of the American freestyle crawl stroke that one time and that was it.  In physical education class in high school, I was always by far the slowest in swimming...that was pretty humiliating.  It was only when my kids were growing up and taking their own swimming lessons that I became more serious about improving my swimming skills...but still I lagged behind.  I did, at the advanced age of 40, finally learn to float on my back, yet I still haven't figured out treading water.  Back in 2011, seeing a friend doing laps at my nearby YMCA pool using the breaststroke, I decided that year to try to develop it on my own.  I seemed to be making some slow progress, but a serious medical diagnosis later that year sidelined this project, and I didn't resume it...until now, some twelve years later.  What I'd like to do is develop most of the basic swimming skills, including at least the crawl, breaststroke, backstroke, and treading water, to the point where I can go for a sustained period performing pool laps.  I've set aside Friday evenings to get pool time at my local gym, and I do have several instructive YouTube videos to draw upon for guidance. It should be a fun adventure of sorts.  What to do with it all?  Just swim more on my own, I guess. Although swimming is regarded as a generally kinder sport on the body than running, it is more limited regarding public racing events in comparison to the latter because of the constraints of providing suitable water venues.  I've been kind of dismayed by this, since this has made the sport a bit more elitist than is running/walking, which has gained a lot of popularity among folks-at-large and allows more participation at slower levels of ability...

Walked Gainesville's Depot Parkrun 5K This Morning

When I speed-walked my first 5K (3.1 miles) back in May, I had originally planned to try for at least one walking race per month.  But then I underwent some back issues, followed by a Covid diagnosis...the momentum for this ebbed.  This month I decided to return to my idea and made my way down to Gainesville's pretty Depot Park this morning to walk their weekly, free and volunteer-driven 5K...it's my 30th race there since I started in 2019.  The temperature at race time was 56 with the humidity at 90%...not important factors.  Just as in May, I felt a little weird sticking to a fast walk at the start of the race when all these others were running past me.  But I maintained my speed and at the end beat my May finishing time by nearly three minutes: 42:20. Afterwards I wasn't the least bit tired or winded, and so I went on an "extra" 2.3 mile run in the park's vicinity, including a stretch of the Hawthorne Trail.  I like walking fast like this and have already incorporated it both into my gym workout (treadmill speed-walking on Wednesdays) and my racing Galloway Method of alternating running with walking...with me the latter is always at a quick pace.  Speaking of the gym, I've been a member of Gainesville Health and Fitness for more than ten years, and finally last night I got around to using their wonderful 75 ft. indoor lap pool.  I managed to swim one length doing the American crawl while floating and paddling backwards on the return lap...good start, but I have a long way to go. I've never been a very agile or fast swimmer, but I think I'll use Friday evenings as my "swim night" and see how far I can go with it.  As for today's Depot Parkrun results, you can see them by clicking HERE...

Quote of the Week...from Albert Einstein

Blind belief in authority is the greatest enemy of truth.          ---Albert Einstein

Quotes by the great physicist Albert Einstein have often appeared on this blog...I had to go back to make sure I hadn't yet used this one.  There are many different ways to tackle today's quote: since we're entering a national-level election year in which the next US president will be chosen and the Congress is up for grabs, I thought I might steer that way today. A few years ago, I wrote an article here in which I threw out a challenge for those not only entrenched in their political beliefs but also who felt strongly about a politician or opinion maker, either positively or negatively.  It was simply this: if you're strongly "pro" about a political idea or person, take a few minutes to come up with the other side...the same goes if you're strongly "con".  One of my readers, a strong Trump supporter, answered in a comment that no, he simply could not come up with anything negative to say about his hero.  And that, my friends, is how you go about throwing away the truth, for no one is perfect and no one is above criticism.  If you tailor your news watching/listening to only the stations that espouse your own established predilections, then you are selecting your own authority as well.  Republicans in this vein will go to FoxNews for their "truth" while Democrats tend to file over to MSNBC for their "authoritative" slant on the news.  I will say this: from my perspective, whether you're on the political left or right with your beliefs, you need to step back a bit from the passion and manipulation being perpetrated on you by the media with your consent.  Stand up for what you believe in, sure, but don't automatically demonize the opposition or their views...instead, learn to discern, that is, filter out the valid points from the crap and separate the person from their message.  Not that anything I just wrote will happen: I just see more of this self-deceitful blind belief in authority just ratcheting up in the year to come...and beyond, sad to say... 

Will Florida NFL Teams Make Playoffs

I was looking at the current National Football League standings the other day.  The teams have all played 14 games so far in 2024...I remember the good old days then that was all there was to the regular season, I'm that old! Too bad the season keeps going on for another three games, for right now, "my" three Florida teams...Miami, Jacksonville and Tampa Bay...are each sitting on top of their respective divisions...the last two just barely, with the same win-loss records as rivals Houston, Indianapolis and New Orleans.  I don't hold out too much hope for the Jaguars or Buccaneers making the playoffs, but you never know how the ball is going to bounce in a close game (or how the refs will rule).  And the Dolphins, although two games ahead of Buffalo, lost to the Bills 48-20 earlier in the regular season and close it out with three difficult opponents...including another game with Buffalo.  Sure, I'd like to see Florida well-represented in the playoffs, but I'll manage whether any of them make it or not.  I take each playoff game and decide who to root for. On the other hand, if it's a Buffalo vs. Dallas Super Bowl, I might just boycott it...

Weekly Short Stories: 1994 Science Fiction, Part 6

Today I look at two 1994 stories from the Gardner Dozois-edited anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Twelfth Annual Collection.  I have been doing this weekly review of science fiction short stories on Wednesdays since October 2018, when I began with an anthology covering the year 1939...and have been gradually making my way forward in time since.  I found the stories from back then much more readable, as the authors didn't seem hung up on making a literary statement for themselves as too many by 1994 seem to be doing...I shudder thinking what it's going to be like when I finally catch up to the present time! Case in point: the following two stories, both of which I had an unpleasant time muddling through...

THE MATTER OF SEGGRI by Ursula K. Le Guin

Le Guin had already made a name for herself with her exploration of sexual roles and identity within society, using science fiction as the vehicle.  This story is a part of her already established Hainish fictional universe. It consists of an extended study, based on some articles spaced over time, of a peculiar planet on which the women dominate the society, including the arts and sciences, while the men...pampered in childhood...are eventually isolated behind locked doors in "castles", only let out to perform...how should I put it..."stud" duty.  The galactic authorities want the society reformed, but change takes time.  All right, I figured out this novella early on, and it frankly dragged and I felt the author was trying to "teach" me something instead of telling a story...

YLEM by Eliot Fintushel

This is an annoying stream-of-consciousness short story (thank God it's short) told by a man...or woman...or another man...as their separate identities don't seem to matter. He/she/they are alternately sitting in a run-down house or climbing a mountain or avoiding being shot with poisonous darts from zeppelins or exploring first-hand the origin of the universe at the time of the Big Bang.  I'm more than a little bit put off whenever an author gets so hung up on his or her style that they deliberately make it harder for the reader to discern whatever the hell it is they're trying to say, as if they all want to be seen as the next James Joyce...

Next week I continue this series, looking at science fiction from the year 1994 and hoping for some better reviews as well...

Closing In On Christmas

Today is just six days until Christmas...it's been a long time since I was caught up in the Holiday spirit to the degree that so many of my fellow humans are.  It's a consumer/marketing onslaught as the malls and stores...along with the streets connecting them...are clogged with frantic shoppers.  I'll probably end up as one of them before it's over: "yikes" is all I can say. I can't pinpoint the exact year when I became disenchanted with all this materialistic push, but I do know that I was still a child at the time the big swing happened. It doesn't make sense...we're celebrating the birth of the one individual standing strong as the antithesis of materialism while using the concept of mutual generosity to cover up our mutual covetousness and greed.  Oops...is that the Goth part of me seeping out, getting negative on humanity?  On the other hand, I positively dig the coming together of my family, both close and extended, as we shop with and for one another...going to the Oaks Mall the other day with Melissa was precious, something I value deeply.  So, I guess it's all a mixed bag...if I were just some cranky, crochety old hermit, I might say "Bah humbug" and be done with it. Instead, I still say that old Scrooge line but realize there's also some love to accompany the "stuff" ...

Tired of Running Race Promoters' Sloppiness with Posting Past Results

The other day, when I updated my cumulative running race record, which has links to the articles I wrote on this blog about each race right after I ran them, I took the time to read a few of them...and then click on the links I provided to the posted results.  Most of them...especially the older ones...had expired and presented error pages.  Now there are sites that specialize in collecting race results and repost them...for them I am grateful: all is not lost!  My main beef nowadays are the race site home pages that offer past results but either don't post them or do so in an incomplete manner, omitting some sections.  To me that is just callous sloppiness and disregard for the runners who most likely have shelled out some good money to have their finishing times recorded and publicly posted.  After all, I can design any length of course around my own neighborhood and then run and time myself for my own personal use...but in the end it's just my word that I ran that distance in that time.  The value of a publicly held race for me is largely in that public record of my results...I think it's a sort of breach of contract between me and the race organizers for them to promise and have electronic chip timing and then fail to properly post the results.  Lately, I have been making decisions as to whether I will enter races based on how I see the organizers treat past results on their own websites...and in Gainesville it hasn't been pretty.  No, change that: it's been pretty all right...pretty slaphappy...

Just Finished Reading The Storyteller by Dave Grohl

Foo Fighters creator, songwriter and front man Dave Grohl, formally the drummer for the grunge rock trio Nirvana, wrote his autobiography The Storyteller, published in 2021. I just finished reading the audio version, narrated by Grohl himself.  He recounts his childhood, largely praising his supportive mother while castigating his negative father...I guess he had to get his "digs" in. Grohl made the point throughout this book that he pretty much led a bold, sometimes wild life, while pursuing his passion of music with extreme dedication and self-discipline.  He very strongly emphasizes the importance of both family and friends, while completely omitting any reference to Nirvana front man Kurt Cobain's widow Courtney Love, with whom Grohl has had a very long, contentious feud over a number of issues. I like reading recounts like this one, in which the author for the most part assumes responsibility for his own life, while at the same time expressing gratitude for those who had helped him along his way.  I mentioned the other day, in connection with this book, that for so many successful musicians, they learned their instruments on their own, not with formal lessons but rather through extensive practice.  They listened repeatedly to their favorite artists' recordings and imitated them, developing a strong musical sense by listening and discerning patterns while training their dexterity on their chosen instruments.  I thought Dave Grohl's life story was compelling and interesting, and although I generally preferred his former band Nirvana to the Foo Fighters, I admire his perseverance and do number some of the latter's songs among my favorites, among them I'll Stick Around, Everlong, Headwires and, my "top song" from 2014, Something from Nothing... 

Ran Gainesville's Depot Parkrun 5K This Morning

Amidst a cool (56 degrees), humid 93% morning with overcast, dark skies and gusty winds, I somehow sprang up out of bed at six this morning to once again tackle the free, volunteer-driven Depot Parkrun 5K here in Gainesville just a few blocks south of downtown.  I had been working out at my local gym after work and knew I was getting into better running shape, but I hadn't anticipated...even with my Galloway Method of interspersing short walking breaks with my running...of annihilating my Parkrun personal best, finishing at 28:57...my best 5K result since 2016.  Immediately following the run I covered another 1.8 miles along SE 4th Street, 10th Avenue, the Hawthorne Trail and then back on Depot Road to my parking lot.  Total for the run: 4.9 miles, 47:15.  Now I'm sitting (for the first time) at the Starbucks near University Avenue on NW 13th Street which is really an extension of the Publix store there...it's instantly become my favorite Starbucks!  Yesterday I had been considering getting up even earlier today and driving down to Ocala to run their Baseline Trailhead Park race, but the enrollment had been capped off...maybe another time.  As for the Parkrun extension I did this morning, I'd like to make that a regular Saturday morning feature while making some adjustments in my route.  As for today's race, click HERE for the results.  As for my cumulative running record posting on December 10th, I decided to add each subsequent race I do to it...

Quote of the Week...from René Descartes

I only speak one language really, mathematics, but I dabble in others like English just enough to answer questions and buy groceries.        ---René Descartes

René Descartes (1596-1650) was a famous French philosopher and mathematician...we have him to thank for the Cartesian coordinate system named after him.  I encountered his above quote through a cryptogram I solved the other day, from a mixed puzzle magazine I bought at Publix while, incidentally, buying groceries. Being an amateur, dabbling student in foreign languages, I was intrigued by his likening of mathematics as a language in its own right. Also, I just finished reading Foo Fighters creator and front man Dave Grohl's autobiography The Storyteller and derived from his experiences with music that it, too, is a sort of language.  So, is learning the languages of mathematics and music essentially different in nature from learning Chinese, Russian, German, English...or any other tongue?  I wonder...maybe Steve Kaufmann's advocacy of attaining passive comprehension in them works similarly to what he promotes with foreign language acquisition.  After all, he says that the human brain is naturally wired to pick up languages and that we should focus ourselves on reading and listening on a grand scale, discerning the linguistic patterns as we go along on a deliberate journey of learning that necessarily takes patience with the results we first achieve.  I want to become "proficient" in both math and music, although with the former I scored a perfect 800 on my SAT and with the latter I have a mental library of thousands of songs and pieces I've heard over the years...albeit without the detailed analytical music theory behind them or musical skill with instruments or voice.  I'd written before on this blog that I'd like to be able to play a guitar or keyboard, if for no other reason other than to be able to share some of that music I already mentally possess with others.  Yes, I wonder whether the linguistic theory of "comprehensible input" can apply to those two areas as well...I'll bet Descartes knew the answer...