Quote of the Week...from Asha Rangappa

Facebook is primarily a mechanism for bonding, not bridging.  Studies show that in the vast majority of cases, people live in self-made echo chambers on Facebook that reinforce their existing views of the world.                                                                    ---Asha Rangappa

Asha Rangappa is an American lawyer and former FBI agent who has served as commentator on several networks and shows, most prominently CNN.  I chose her above quote because on different levels it totally resonates with what I've grown to think about Facebook over the past eight years that I have been active on it.  Originally when I signed up for my account on that social media site I had set up my profile and then pretty much stayed clear of it...until I perceived that the masses worldwide that were driving the blogging revolution in the first decade of this century had almost totally abandoned their own blogs and turned to Facebook for the sake of convenience...and for that "bonding" with folks they already knew.  So I had a choice to make: continue blogging on my own or post links to my articles on Facebook.  I chose the latter and from 2013 through 2020 I did just that while increasing over time my number of Facebook "friends".  But this site has an insidious algorithm that limits who can access my links on their newsfeed...even "friends"...and my readership wasn't really improving over time.  But since I was checking Facebook to see reactions to articles I posted, I was also observing the behavior of other users...and it's very true like Rangappa said, that people react to others' postings more as a bonding statement than to cross bridges and get to know others more and exchange ideas.  The fact that access is typically confined to a predetermined, insular community doesn't help, either.  Facebook makes it all a popularity contest with their "scores" of how many people liked a posting or commented on it.  I am glad I went through this long-term experiment with Facebook because it solidified in my mind the intransigent and socially fragile states of thinking within people at large.  As long as you're saying something they already agree with, they're okay with you, but even if that's so they have to evaluate what they perceive as your popularity level before they are willing to publicly chime in. I also have been dismayed at reading the marginally insane posts of folks that I know in real life to be rational, functioning adults: are they just assuming different personas in social media, or is the "echo chamber", bubbling-off tendency in Facebook turning their minds over to the dark side?  No, I had enough and stopped linking this blog to that site starting in 2021...interestingly, although I no longer get the sparse instant "likes" from some articles, the anonymous bean counter on my Google account shows no decline in readership, and I'm writing just as freely and happily as ever...

Just Finished Reading The Tin Drum by Günter Grass

I first saw the movie The Tin Drum back in 1981 when HBO had it in their lineup...I was able to see both the English audio version as well as the original German version with English subtitles...the latter seemed more powerful.  It's based on the Günter Grass novel with the same title, first published in 1959 in German with the title Die Blechtrommel and which I finally just got around to reading (the English translation).  Both the author and his protagonist, Oskar Matzerath, grew up in the formerly German city of Danzig (now Polish Gdańsk) in the late 1920s during the Weimar Republic and in the 1930s and 40s while Hitler was in power and experienced World War II from the side of the Germans.  The book conforms in large part to the movie, with a few minor variations, up to the last part (the years after the war) which the movie omitted. In the book version, while in a mental hospital in the 1950s, Oskar narrates his life story, all the way from birth: an important detail since he claims he was born imbued with an adult's thinking and viewpoint of the world.  Like Grass, Oskar distinguishes his national identity using his mother's lineage as Kashubian...neither Pole nor German: like the movie he goes back to relate how his grandmother met his anarchist, arsonist grandfather.  By the time Oskar turns three, he is fed up with the duplicity and hypocrisy of the adult world.  For his birthday his mother gives him a tin drum, to which he quickly bonds.  And then he makes the Peter Pan-like decision to stop growing: he maintains his three-year old height at 3'1" until the war ends in his early adulthood.  Oskar's narration occasionally returns to his mental institution and his keepers and visitors, but he is primarily focused on relating significant events in his earlier life.  His mother has been involved in a long-term romantic triangle between Pole Jan Bronski (whom Oskar considers to be his true father) and her husband, German Alfred Matzerath.  Not to give away all that happens, but in film and book both it turns into a story of attrition, with little Oskar always seeming to be a sort of catalyst in the unfolding tragedies while coming out of them himself unscathed.  He is obsessed with his tin drum, which he beats with fervor and force, constantly wearing out the one he has and needing to replace it.  He also discovers a special talent: he can break glass with his high-pitched, loud shrieks, rendering him virtually immune from discipline.  The film version seemed to make a connection between the rise of Nazism and Oskar's decision to drop out of the growth process, but the book isn't at all clear on this. Grass makes the point, I think, that you can have an adult's perspective without the necessary accompanying knowledge and character: that is certainly the case with Oskar.  And to that extent I identified with this singular fictional character, recalling my own younger years...not that I possessed any magical ability to suspend my own physical growth.  When I first saw the movie I was greatly impressed...it won an Academy Award for best foreign movie and the soundtrack music was hauntingly beautiful.  But a few years later a controversy arose about whether the actor portraying Oskar, David Bennett, a minor at the time, had been improperly used for a sex scene.  After some censorship of the movie, an investigation ensued, the director exonerated...but still there is a shadow hanging over it: regrettable, for while very intense and disturbing in places, I consider The Tin Drum to be one of the greatest films ever made.  Since I already knew pretty much what was going to happen having watched the movie, the book was a bit anticlimactic...although I enjoyed Oskar's intellectual wit and defiance at the world that came out better on paper.  Good book, good movie: take your pick...

Weekly Short Stories: 1970 Science Fiction, Part 4

Today I finish up with my reviews of some of the standout sci-fi short stories from 1970, as they appeared in the anthology World's Best Science Fiction 1971, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Terry Carr and reflecting their choices from the previous year.  As I mentioned before, 1970 was a problematic year for me but there were good elements as well: that summer was great, not because of travel or a big event but rather for being a quiet, peaceful time of reflection and relaxation.  Not that I'm automatically opposed to those other things, but I'm more partial to taking it easy on my vacations.  This was also the first year in the NFL that Don Shula coached the Miami Dolphins, turning around a last place franchise from the year before into a playoff team in December.  Now here are my reactions to those final four tales...

THE SHAKER REVIVAL by Gerald Jonas

Set "way off in the future" in 1995, a journalist sends letters to various pertinent parties regarding the New Shakers, an exploding religious movement focusing on young people that he fears his own son may have joined.  They practice the "Four Noes": no hate, no war, no money, no sex...and live together in insulated communes while practicing a kind of music called "jag rock".  The races in this dystopian tale are segregated and blacks are severely discriminated against, literally confined to walled ghettoes resembling those which the Jews suffered through under Hitler's tyranny.  The New Shaker movement appears to have arisen in response to an official societal emphasis the previous two decades on hedonism.  Reading this made me think that Buddha would have had an issue with all the sides in this story: how about some moderation in everything instead of, like in a centrifuge, separating and pulling apart the extremes? Just saying... 

DEAR AUNT ANNIE by Gordon Eklund

Like the previous entry, this is another earthbound tale about the near future, this time about how a wildly popular advice columnist in advanced old age has her identity and sentient memories placed in an enduring robot exactly duplicating her appearance, duping even her erratic, violence-prone and erratic son to believing she's still alive.  Soon all society is under her sway and people are forced to attend special sessions that, with the aid of injections, have them work out and eliminate their violent tendencies.  But now it seems some are immune to the therapy and Aunt Annie has a decision to make.  A lot of science fiction tales paint a picture of a more totalitarian society in store for us...with all this political correctness/woke/cancel-culture going on around us it may not be "fiction" for much longer...

CONFESSIONS by Ron Goulart

Confessions is a funny little fictional stew of science fiction, murder mystery, and humor that works well as a professional  freelance ghost writer (Silvera) chasers down a delinquent client (Scribbeley) for his fee.  Complicating his task is that the client skirts about the world in a flying house...kind of hard to catch!  But Silvera finally gets his man by sneaking in to one of  Scribbely's parties with his friend Kohinoor...but the latter is discovered murdered and a police detective teams up with Silvera to find the perpetrator.  There's also a little Robert Louis Stevenson in this story: read it to find out what I mean...

GONE ARE THE LUPO by H.B. Hickey

A hard to decipher tale, this is written from the viewpoint of a Moomie, the indigenous intelligent life on another world that a few humans of the game-hunting variety had settled and brutally exploited...they've already made one lifeform, the Lupo, extinct, and now they use Moomies as menial labor, servants, and objects of entertainment by making them dance.  The settlers have human visitors from other worlds and they ridicule the Moomie who is dancing for them.  But in such a story as this, you know there is going to be a payback at the end...

Next week I begin my look at science fiction short stories from 1971...

Game of the Week: Solitaire

 

Solitaire is a family of card games that, as its name suggests, are to be played by one person alone.  I tend to forego all the varieties and stick with the standard version, as pictured above using a deck of cards I got from the Hampton Inn (see the picture on their back).  After shuffling the cards, they are dealt in rows, first card turned up, with each succeeding row beginning one card shorter from the above one...until the last row is a single upturned card. The object is to fill each suit with cards, going in order from Ace to King, before the game's rules prohibit any advancement in play.  I've played it so many times, going back to childhood, and still play it on my phone app...which of course is much more convenient without cards to shuffle or a needed surface to play on.  Since I don't "win" most games, I keep score by playing games until I lose five, counting the number of cards "on top" for each one...since it's Solitaire, everyone can play it the way they like.  Like most card games, there is a mixture of luck and strategy in it...my strategy is so automatic now that I spend almost no time between moves.  I tend to play it more on my work breaks or when I'm tired...very little intellectual or physical effort required here...

Our Brief Stay at Daytona Beach

 

Melissa and I have been enjoying our stay at Daytona Beach, which began yesterday afternoon and will end tomorrow. Not that many people are around here, happy to say...we're staying at one of our favorite hotels about a mile north of the Boardwalk.  The weather's been very cooperative, too. It's always fun to have a little change of scenery as well as getting some time off from work...

Great Old TV Episodes...from the Bell Science Series

 

THE STRANGE CASE OF THE COSMIC RAYS is one of the eight hour-long episodes in the Bell Science series of television specials spaced out over the late 1950s and 1960s...later they were all transferred to film and projected on the walls of elementary schools across the nation, including mine, Nova Elementary.  I saw all of them in the fourth through sixth grades (1965-68) and thought so much of them that I would even skip my own class to sneak in on a showing down the hall in another.  Frank Capra directed the first four episodes, including this one from 1957, featuring (pictured) narrator Dr. Frank Baxter (a fixture for all of them) and actor/screenwriter Richard Carlson as they try to win the detective mystery award for the latter part of the twentieth century (with puppets of Dickens, Poe and Dostoevsky serving as judges).  Their story is that of the mysterious cosmic rays that blanket the Earth and how electrons are ripped away from atoms in the process.  By creating an animated analogy using Fagin, Dickens' thief from his Oliver Twist novel, they explain that it's the atoms broken up by the invading rays...i.e. Fagin's "henchmen" that register on all the devices and these subatomic particles are many in number, including protons, neutrons, electrons, positron, mu mesons, and pi mesons...the latter of which Japanese physicist Hideki Yukawa in 1935 predicted as an instrumental factor in the yet-unexplained nuclear force.  But what was Fagin, the original cosmic ray?  Naked atoms of all types, stripped of their electrons after being emitted by stars and accelerated to near-light speeds by nebulae across the cosmos...oops, I gave it away.  But of course, it's science and not fiction...

Unlike the other seven Bell Science shows, The Strange Case of the Cosmic Rays was difficult at the time for me to follow...I'm guessing that other kids had the same problem: physics is hard enough without throwing nineteenth-century English literature into the mix: it probably didn't help that the first time I saw it was halfway through the film, after I slipped into the back of the room unnoticed.  I was mystified by it all and impressed by how Baxter and Carlson presented the scientists making the important discoveries in such a favorable light...I imagine a lot of young students back then were inspired to go into science and engineering from watching this and other Bell Science movies.  They have all these movies on YouTube...I recently saw this particular episode and noted the discontinuity between the heavy science being taught and the use of puppetry and funny cartoons to explain it.  I was in my first year of life when this show first aired on TV and viewed it some ten years later in school...the science since has dated and even Yakuwa's theory about the nuclear force has been challenged.  But of course now we have quarks, hadrons, and string theory to use as models and frameworks.  Maybe some of today's dry scientific papers with all that mathematics could use some puppets and cartoons, too...and bring back good ol' Dr. Baxter or a reasonable facsimile thereof to help us poor goofs to understand it all better...

Just Finished Reading Summer Bird Blue by Akemi Dawn Bowman

Summer Bird Blue is a 2018 young adult novel by Akemi Dawn Bowman.  Rumi Seto loves her little sister Lea, as they grow up in Washington, D.C. with their mother after their selfish father left them following Lea's birth.  The two teenage girls are avid musicians, Rumi on the piano and Lea with the guitar...and are heavily into writing their own songs, both music and lyrics...they have a technique by which they call out three words randomly and use that as a basis for a new song: the latest one is "summer", "bird", "blue". But one day while they're all together in the car there is an accident and Lea dies from it.  Left without her very best friend, Rumi sinks further into despair and anger when she discovers that she is being shipped out to live with her aunt in Hawaii...how could her mother abandon her like this? Most of the book is about how Rumi deals with her grief and anger...she gets to know her neighbors on either side of her temporary new home: teenager/surfer boy Kai and the elderly, gruff Mr. Watanabe.  In all her interactions with others Rumi is blunt and critical, both of them and herself...and she cannot experience anything without being reminded of her dead sister.  During the course of this grief period she has memory flashbacks of the two of them, including their conflicts and Rumi's jealousy of Lea's popularity and her mother's perceived favoritism toward her sister.  Rumi has promised her departed sister that she will finish writing that final song Summer Bird Blue, but in her current state she finds herself blocked.  Along with the main story line is Rumi's examination of her own attitudes toward sexuality as well as the ethnically diverse composition of the characters...the latter is interesting and welcome but the relationships and personalities here are universals that could easily transfer to other settings.  If you can put up with the adolescent self-absorption and explosive rage that Rumi displays throughout the book, I think you, like myself, will find it a difficult, but enlightening look at what the loss of a very close person in one's life can bring out.  I was touched by the grace shown by those around Rumi as she went through her pain...

Quote of the Week...from C.S. Lewis

You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.                  ---C.S. Lewis

C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) was a renowned British author of novels and books with Christian themes...perhaps his most famous work was the seven-volume children's series The Chronicles of Narnia, which I've read a number of times and was sadly a bit overblown in its movie adaptation.  Although he died at age 64 on November 22nd, the same day as John F. Kennedy's assassination, I think this quote of Lewis has a lot of merit...in spite of the fact that I am also 64.  I think the converse is true as well: you are never too young to set another goal or to dream a new dream...this principle applies throughout one's life span.  Do you have goals that involve working for their attainment over a span of years into the future?  At my age one might argue that doing this isn't realistic...but I recently saw on the news a woman who was a groundbreaking pilot during World War II and just turned 100, and she's still happily enjoying her life.  I don't know enough about what's going to happen in my life tomorrow, much less ten or twenty years from now.  But wisdom dictates that I continue involving myself in interesting and challenging endeavors that project well into that future, regardless whether I am there to completely fulfill them.  Either one grows or withers away, and you grow by embracing struggle for self-betterment...C.S Lewis was obviously a wise man...

Enjoying Sitting Outside My Favorite Gainesville Starbucks

 

There are two Starbucks coffee shops near my home.  The more distant...and the oldest...is at Magnolia Parke off NW 39th Avenue near Buchholz High School, while the other is on NW 43rd Street near the WCJB Channel 20 studios, across the street just down the road from Talbot Elementary.  I used to prefer the latter because of its proximity, and before the COVID pandemic closed its indoor seating I enjoyed a large room to sit in.  This facility used to be at the north end of the adjacent Publix shopping center with a rather cramped indoor seating area, but they built a larger store to install a drive-through...which to me as an exclusively on-site customer has pretty much destroyed my use of it.  For one, the cars in the drive-through tend to back up...even into the street like they do at the Starbucks on NW 13th Street just north of 16th Avenue...to the point where I can't even use that way to enter or leave the parking lot. But even when I phone in my mobile order and go inside, they are so backed up with the drive-through orders that they often don't have mine (or other customers') ready...or if they do nobody wants to acknowledge my existence and hand it to me: I'm not criticizing the hard-working employees there...their system could stand a little tweaking, that's all.  Today I'm sitting outside at Magnolia Parke Starbucks...from the above picture you can see how nicely they've provided spaced, outdoor seating.  And when I order a drink by phone, it's ready for me: no drive-through! But although sitting here is pleasant, I long for the day when once again I'll be able to sit indoors and enjoy a brew with my handy-dandy word processor in front of me...  

Weekly Short Stories: 1970 Science Fiction, Part 3

Below are my reviews of the next four 1970 sci-fi short stories as they appeared in the book World's Best Science Fiction 1971, presenting the editors' choices from the previous year. I remember that I read a lot in '70...some books I enjoyed then were The City Boy by Herman Wouk (an English class assignment), Nightmares and Geezenstacks by Fredric Brown (a science fiction short story anthology), Lost Horizon and Random Harvest by James Hilton and Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings by Charles Hapgood...all published years earlier.  I also thought this was a great year musically, dominated by the Beatles' swan song album release Let It Be and Lennon, McCartney, and Harrison's solo efforts (Instant Karma, Maybe I'm Amazed, and My Sweet Lord among them).  But there were a lot of other musical acts that produced some great, memorable songs that year...maybe my personal life wasn't all that hot in 1970, but reading and music rocked!  And now here's my take on those four stories...

NOBODY LIVES ON BURTON STREET by Gregory Benford

Implicit within this brief tale is the notion, which I believe to be erroneous, that if people were allowed to just "let off steam" and physically act out their frustrations in controlled violence then society would remain peaceful and folks would be happier.  On Burton Street in the future, an angry mob approaches the peacekeeper force...but it's all contrived: the rioters have been preselected by psychological analysis and the police are really android robots with fake blood: it's all a charade.  To me, the more a person reacts with violence to their problems the more they will use it in the future...but not according to the pop psychology used in this story...

WHATEVER BECAME OF THE MCGOWANS? by Michael G. Coney

On a beautiful, newly settled planet with only plant life (other than the human settlers), Richard and his pregnant wife Sandra begin to experience time lapses and curious phenomena concerning their own bodies.  And they wonder whatever happened to their neighbors the McGowan family, who seemed to have abandoned their large estate, which is always visible to them with its small clump of trees in front.  I could see where this story was going early on, but I had not anticipated the ending...which had an interesting "scientific" explanation for it all...

THE LAST TIME AROUND by Arthur Sellings

This is a tale about the contrasting differences in aging between spacemen traveling close to the speed of light and those remaining on Earth.  Such an astronaut has made a career of going on missions to the stars...although from his own vantage point he is living a normally-aging life, those on Earth and the surrounding Solar System settlements see him as more than 200 years old.  This has always complicated romantic relationships for him, until one woman comes up with "the solution", something I take strong issue with in the same way that I've always thought the Star Trek device of "beaming" people around was very faulty in conception...but you'll have to read the story to know where I'm going on this...

GREYSPUN'S GIFT by Neal Barrett, Jr.

A quirky, funny young woman with her tolerant husband and little son finds a very tall, obviously alien man sitting on a bench outside their New York apartment.  He is clearly awkward and out of place on Earth, since he is, after all, a visiting alien.  Helping him further to make him stand out less to others...and that's difficult since he has eight arms and legs and no discernible facial features...she takes Greyspun, as he calls himself, into their home where he asks them "What do humans do?"  You see, his species' role in the universe, i.e. what they "do", is just what he is doing: discerning and understanding in an empathetic way the other intelligent life forms around him.  His hosts don't know how to answer him, but the woman takes him on a tour of the city.  Sadly, Greyspun finds the answer to his question, leading to a sudden, somber ending for what had been a lighthearted tale, with tragic consequences...

Next week I finish my look back at 1970's science fiction short stories...

Game of the Week: Basketball

Of the "big three" traditional American team sports of baseball, football, and basketball, it's basketball that I have always most personally identified with.  No, my daddy wasn't a professional basketball coach and I had neither the dribbling and shooting talent nor the height needed to pursue the sport at a higher level...not even in high school.  And surprise, surprise...my elementary and high school physical education "teachers" never once gave any instruction on how to better play the game (at least when I was around).  Still, I managed to pick up on the rules pretty well by the time I was in the sixth grade and for a while my hustle and enthusiasm...especially on defense...made up for my many other shortcomings in the game.  One crucial element of basketball, from both personal experience as well as later observing my own children play it in their respective leagues and watching college and pro hoops, is passing the ball around quickly and accurately. Except for one almost magical game my makeshift team played in 9th grade P.E. class when we worked as a completely unselfish unit (with a lot of passing) and demolished our opponent, I had to continually suffer through games playing with self-appointed ball hogs...whenever I did find myself in possession of the ball from time to time those hogs would instantly yell at me to throw it to them...as if all of life in the universe hinged in the balance as to whether we won the stupid game or not.  I remember the movie Ordinary People in which a kid grieving over the loss of his brother isn't into his swimming team workouts...his coach comes up to him and says...I'm paraphrasing here...you gotta have fun, it's no good if you're not having fun.  And for some reason, the kids I played basketball with in school for the most part didn't know how to have fun with it (or any other sport for that matter).  Now as an adult I have lots of fun watching others play the sport...I enjoyed the recent NCAA tournament and follow the NBA as well.  It's been a while...let's see, about 7 years...since I just went to a court and threw baskets and did some one-on-one playing.  My local gym has a court on which games spontaneously spring up (at least before the pandemic, that is)...players come and go and practice their dribbling, passing, shooting and defense: I think that's pretty cool and they, unlike that kid in the movie and my former classmates, seem to be having a lot of fun (well, at least they were before COVID).  As for the spectator aspect of the sport, the greatest moments for me came when the University of Florida won the NCAA national championship tournaments in 2006 and 2007...I also vividly remember following the American Basketball Association's Miami Floridians on the radio (1450/WOCN) during their rollercoaster 1968-69 debut season.  And the year the Jacksonville Dolphins with their high scoring fast break strategy and standout Artis Gilmore got to the NCAA finale against UCLA in 1970: that was something to behold. When Jim Valvano's North Carolina State team came from nowhere to win the national championship in 1983...that was special, too.  More recently in the NBA I followed Steve Nash and his Phoenix Suns, later switching my allegiance to Gregg Popovich's San Antonio Spurs with its trio of stars Tim Duncan, Tony Parker, and Manu Ginóbili...right now, other than pulling for Jimmy Butler's Miami Heat, I'm not partial to any particular team...

Constellation of the Month: Ursa Major

Ursa Major, a large northern constellation, contains perhaps the most famous "non-constellation" within itself: the asterism Big Dipper.  Ursa Major is Latin for "big bear" and it shares the far northern skies with its smaller companion Ursa Minor (or "Little Dipper"), which owns the celestial north pole with its star Polaris.  The Big Dipper...and the rest of Ursa Major (which is comprised of fainter stars) reaches its highest point in the sky...in the contiguous United States in the northern section at the meridian, around 10 in the evening during the month of April; the Big Dipper appears upside-down in this position.  I always link it with Leo, another major springtime constellation, which is at the same celestial longitude and just south with the tiny and faint Leo Minor inserting itself between the two giants.  As a kid I quickly learned the "basics" about the Big Dipper: if you set it "upright" and point its two front stars upward, they point to Polaris, while if you follow the curved path of the handle, that way ends up at the very bright Arcturus of the constellation Boötes.  And the next-to-last star in the handle from the end, Mizar, is a sort of eye test, for it is really a double star that is separable by the naked eye into itself and its fainter companion Alcor.  All of Ursa Major's brightest stars are in the Big Dipper, predominantly of the 2nd magnitude.  That asterism has always been something that I searched out on clear twilights as the brighter stars of the night sky begin to make their presence known amid the darkening, fleeing blue.  This constellation is also the site of a couple of annual meteor showers, although I've yet to observe them myself.  I'm gradually getting better at using my new reflector telescope...Ursa Major has some deep-space objects worth looking at: the galaxies M81, M82, and M101...and the Owl Nebula, M97: wish me luck in finding them...

Great Old TV Episodes...from the Ed Sullivan Show

 

On the FEBRUARY 9, 1964 episode of the multi-decade CBS Sunday evening variety tradition The Ed Sullivan Show the upstart British rock band the Beatles made their debut American television appearance in spectacular fashion, attracting some 73 million viewers, performing five of their songs, and driving the largely female audience into a hysterical screaming frenzy.  As a seven year old kid I was used to sitting around our TV with the rest of my family on Sunday evening at 8 for another "rilly big shew" as the program's iconic host would say with his funny drawl (he'd say "Mia-muh" instead of Miami, too).  For example, just the previous December I was blown away by the Singing Nun's rendition of Dominique, which was a unique radio hit at the time.  But almost up to that early February episode I was completely unaware of the Beatles' existence, even though they had already become big superstars in their home country.  It was my sister Anita...then 11...who gave me the "heads up" on what was to come: I remember taking care to get my evening bath out of the way before the show so as to see what the big fuss was all about.  I liked the Beatles from the beginning, and my geographic sense of things froze them into their positions on stage, with Paul always in front on the left playing his guitar backward, George in the middle (but closer to Paul, especially on harmonies), John standing alone on the right, and of course Ringo grinning back there on the drums...on all subsequent performances I sharply noted whenever they diverged from this arrangement.  I remember nothing about the rest of that night's show, which supposedly featured Mitzi Gaynor, Frank Gorshin, and a troupe of Oliver! performers that purportedly included future Monkee Davy Jones.  My parents reacted to the show by instantly becoming stalwart Beatles fans, subsequently going down to W.T. Grant and buying their first two albums along with some singles.  For years I would memorize on each new Beatles album each song and its order.  The Beatles would appear several times in subsequent Ed Sullivan episodes, the most memorable being their double videos three years later of Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields Forever, the latter of which soured my mom and dad on the Fab Four and bugged me at the time because they all had moustaches.  The Beatles' appearance launched a flood of other musical bands from both Britain and America.  Along with the great music, I also got a kick out of the standup comedy acts of the era, although in retrospect I wonder whether I actually got their jokes or was just laughing along with my parents and the studio audience...

About Republican Election Reform and Voter Participation

The push by Republican-controlled state legislatures to change election laws has caused alarm and accusations of suppression and discrimination against minorities in order to ensure their own party's victories in future elections. I understand the concerns, especially the cynicism involved in the timing, following so closely in the aftermath of the 2020 elections in which the presidency and U.S. Senate switched to Democratic control...high minority turnout spelled the difference.  There's only one problem I see with the criticisms, though. From where I stand, the act of voting is not only a right, but a civic duty that should require some active engagement and discipline on the part of the voter...and that means to be consistent about participating in whatever elections that come up, not just the "sexy" ones with a charismatic candidate or one that evokes strong negative feelings.  Barack Obama was elected in 2008...and reelected in 2012...with fervent, emotional support from the black community: I supported him twice myself.  Yet in the off-year elections in 2010 and 2014 that followed these Democratic victories, voter turnout from this group plummeted...with the same election laws in place, and the Republicans not only won back the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate, but also many state legislatures and governorships...including that of some so-called "blue" states.  But I NEVER hear this in the mass media...how could Florida go for liberal Obama and then for a right-winger like Rick Scott for governor in the intervening years? The answer is simple: much of the electorate DELIBERATELY chose to sit on their hands and let the conservatives win those off-year elections...it had nothing to do with voting suppression on the part of the Republicans.  In 2022 if the Republicans win back control of the Senate and/or the House...as well as keep control of "blue state" legislatures...it will be not because Democratic voters were denied their rights, but rather because they refused to get off their collective butts and vote.  Case in point: in my home town of Gainesville we had two city commission races in March, one by district and one at-large...so the whole city was involved.  As per last year's presidential election, mail-in ballots were sent out...I imagine the same amount as last year. But even with all this incredible convenience...not even postage required for the ballots...only 11% of the eligible voters took part!  So please don't talk to me about voter suppression...if you live in Gainesville you're most likely one of those who passed up on your precious "right" last month: really, how much effort does it take to fill in a bubble or two, stick the ballot in the envelope, sign and seal it, and then stick it in the mailbox??!!

My main concern with this new legislation is that some of it was drafted and passed by lawmakers whom I regard as fascistic...that is, those who denied the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election amid false claims of fraud and were in favor of overturning it to keep loser/fascist Trump in power.  The voters' verdict at the polls should never be subject to the whims of partisan legislators afterwards...a part of Georgia's bill did just that, though.  That having been said, there are other criticisms to the reform efforts in that state that I think are a bit overblown.  For example, the number of mail-in drop boxes was drastically reduced from last year, which was the COVID-19 pandemic emergency...in case you've already forgotten...but not from previous levels.  That a picture ID is required for mail-in voting is somehow being depicted as Jim Crow in nature...what's that all about? They added a measure to it banning outside groups from providing water to voters in line at the polling places...although politically foolish of them to include this provision I wonder if we've really come to this ridiculously passive, victimized level of thinking where we act like we're plants that have to depend on others to water us: just fill up an old bottle with tap water and take it with you, for crying out loud!  And the notion that voting was banned after 5 pm was a flat-out lie, sadly echoed by President Biden...who has long had a penchant for sticking his foot in his mouth when off-script.  Hey, I'm a Democrat but I think the outrage over much of this Republican-generated reform legislation is a little uneven: just stick to the fascist-leaning parts that truly threaten our representative democracy and cut it with the BS, please.  And if you're a Democrat with an axe to grind about voter suppression, how about you stop cherry-picking which elections you feel like participating in?

Quote of the Week...from Stephen King in 11/22/63

Humans were built to look back; that's why they have that swivel joint in their necks.

                                                            ---Stephen King, from his novel 11/22/63

Stephen King's 2011 novel 11/22/63 is my favorite of his...one of my all-time favorite books.  I just finished reading it for the fifth time...seems that I can't stay away from it too long. The premise here is something worked over a number of times in fiction: the desire to go into the past at pivotal moments of history and change that history.  You might have already guessed...if you haven't yet read the novel yourself...that in this story it's the John F. Kennedy assassination that is the targeted outcome.  The opportunity for time travel presents itself through what Maine diner owner Al Templeton calls a "rabbit hole" he discovered in the pantry of his newly relocated establishment, a portal taking him back in time from 2011 to 1958 that offers him the convenience of also returning to the present.  Originally blown away by the novelty of escaping into the past, Al hits upon the idea of buying ground beef cheap back in 1958 and bringing it back to 2011, thereby seriously underselling all his competitors in the area with his business's delicious, cheap hamburgers.  But eventually he realizes that 1958 isn't that far off from 1963, and he sets out to prevent JFK's assassination.  Unable to fulfill his task due to declining health, he returns to the present and passes his cause on to Jake Epping, a divorced writer who is the first-person narrator and the novel's protagonist.  The above quote is one of the book's many musings, aimed at our tendency to become obsessed with the past.  I've discussed this novel repeatedly on this blog...today I'd like to look at the notion of regret and people's desires to go back at a specific time in their lives and change how they went about doing things, thinking from the benefit of hindsight that by so doing the entire rest of their life would change substantially for the better.  But as King laid out in this story, once you go back in the past and alter something, all bets are off as to what will then ensue...for a completely new future will then follow, one that the time traveler has no notion of how to cope with.  You go back and make one thing better, but the result causes a cascade of unintended consequences that can be much worse than the original regret.  Better to see one's past failures...as well as those historical tragedies of bygone years...as necessary, essential parts of the great tapestry that today defines who we are individually and collectively. On the other hand, I find imaginary time travel a useful mental self-improvement tool.  Say for example I wish that I had studied in high school more assiduously and maintained a disciplined regimen of homework, setting up "shop" at our dining room table going through certain established daily routines.  I can't go back to 1971, but I can still incorporate those thoughts into the present in other areas of my life... 

Puzzled by the FDA's Pause of Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 Vaccinations

I was watching the Food and Drug Administration give their recommendation Tuesday morning in favor of pausing the administration of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine against COVID-19, based on the documented occurrence of six cases, one fatal and one in critical condition, of women age 18-48 suffering blood clotting out of over 7 million vaccinations of the product overall.  As Jim Sciutto on CNN pointed out, what kind of math are these people doing in this regard?  There are already more than 31 million documented cases of COVID in America in a little more than a year, during the same time in which 564,000 people DIED from it...so far.  And another wave with a virulent strain has hit the country, focusing on the Midwest with hospitals in some localities filling up.  How many deaths will result, I wonder, from this "pause" where vaccine shortages will keep people from getting the protection they would have otherwise received?  Having witnessed something similar recently in Europe with their interruption of that region's predominant AstraZeneca vaccine in the midst of a serious upsurge in infections, it completely escapes me as to why the authorities would take such a step, other than just to cover themselves in the event of a future backlash of hindsight criticism.  They say it's to review the clotting cases and formulate an improved policy of administering the J & J vaccine only to those groups less susceptible to the clotting side effect, but really, how much time do they need to take to figure this out and why stop the process at all?  Problems and emergencies arise in life and there are snags...I get it...but the consequences of delay can be catastrophic: what if the folks at NASA had displayed the same attitude around this time 51 years ago during the Apollo 13 mission when an onboard explosion threatened the lives of its crew?  Well, "we just need to 'pause' it all and conduct a review" would have been rightly considered absurd under the circumstances back then! If you say that one woman's death is one too many (and I agree that any death is tragic), then I return again to the math: how does that make the deaths of many more less important if the vaccine is withheld? The FDA claims that there will be enough Pfizer and Moderna vaccines to fill the gap left by the absence of expected Johnson & Johnson vaccines, but to me it seems there is a logistical problem here, especially when you consider that J & J was strategically being used to reach places where the other two, with their more stringent refrigeration requirements, were less feasible and accessible.  Of course in Europe with AstraZeneca they had no backup vaccine brands to fall back on, making their earlier decision to hold up vaccinations even that much worse in effect on the suffering population.  All I've been hearing on the news is how we're in a dire race against time to to get to "herd immunity" before this pandemic can sprout variations against which the vaccines won't work.  But now suddenly...at least in this case...that doesn't seem to matter, go figure.  At last report Dr. Fauci says the pause will last days, not months...but it's still a real-time problem with the clock ticking and people's lives at stake, with the mathematics going against that decision to pause.  Do your review if you think it's necessary...but don't disrupt the vaccination efforts with big public fanfare while empowering the anti-vaxxers. When Johnson & Johnson is resumed and they get their production back in order, how many will pass on it because of this decision when they would have otherwise been vaccinated...

Weekly Short Stories: 1970 Science Fiction, Part 2

Today I'm continuing my review of 1970 science fiction short stories as they appearing in the book World's Best Science Fiction 1971, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Terry Carr and focusing on what they saw as the elite tales from the previous year.   For me 1970 was a seriously challenging year, to put it diplomatically.  No, let me put it bluntly: it was categorically the worst year of my life...partially due to the circumstances I was living through (13-14 years old with a specifically hostile academic and social environment) and partially due to my reaction to those circumstances.  If you're confronted with difficulties and personal storms, there's nothing worse than the sinking feeling that you are helpless in dealing with them...and that's how I generally felt back then, being expected by many to confront adversity with my hands tied behind my back.  But in the tapestry that is my cumulative life with all its experiences and lessons, that troublesome year was instructive and invaluable...in retrospect I feel myself blessed and enriched by having lived through it: after all, everybody's got a "worst year ever" and if '70 was my worst then I must have done pretty well.  And now my reviews of three more sci-fi stories from 1970...

WATERCLAP by Isaac Asimov

On Earth of the not-too-distant future (from 1970's perspective) the moon has been settled and people born and raised there...on our overcrowded planet the ocean's deeps are also being explored and settled.  Space and the sea bottom are competing for government funding amid a dulled and apathetic population, turned inward on itself...hey, kind of like the way it is nowadays!  Sensing that his lunar settlements are being threatened by the promotion of oceanic development, a Lunar man goes deep in a bathyscaphe to visit one of those ocean floor installations, ostensibly as a safety expert but really to sabotage the operations there.  This story gives a pretty reasonable picture of what such an undersea settlement might look like and how it would operate.  When we finally get to the point where they are built and house populations, I wonder if the scientists and engineers will draw upon Asimov's old tale from over fifty years ago...

CONTINUED ON NEXT ROCK by R.A. Lafferty

The reader needs to take care approaching this story, which is more a cryptic puzzle than an actual flowing narrative.  Six people working on a archaeological dig site progressively uncover newer relics on the chimney rock formation...opposite of what should be as lower finds are supposed to be further in the past.  They keep digging up inscriptions that use graphically gross and violent language in the context of "love".  And the workers themselves are problematic, each one also a puzzle, especially the psychic young woman Magdalen and the mysteriously appearing man Anteros.  But the professional archaeologists themselves display peculiar behavior as the dig site seems to be working profound changes on them.  I have a problem with stories like this that seem to be deliberately written to confuse me...other readers for some reason think they're the pinnacle of art, though...

THE THING IN THE STONE by Clifford Simak

Following a devastating car accident three years earlier in which a man lost his wife and daughter...and suffered a brain injury...he has been living in isolation on his Wisconsin farm, caring for his livestock and having to deal with a very contemptuous (and contemptible) neighbor to keep him. He has discovered...probably due to that injury...that from time to time he not only can picture the surrounding countryside as it existed eons earlier, but can also listen to the stars.  But more than any of this, from a cave embedded within a cliff on his property he can hear the thoughts of a strange intelligent being trapped in the stone hundreds of feet below.  Aside from how this all is resolved at the end, my main take from this story by my favorite science fiction writer is the juxtaposition of two clashing philosophies: the contemplative, contented and guileless protagonist and his materialistic, jealous and scheming neighbor.  It reminded me of a novel I think I first read back in 1970: James Hilton's Lost Horizon, which presented a similar philosophical contrast between two key characters...

Next week: more from the year 1970 in short science fiction...

Game of the Week: Jumanji

 

I first became aware of the 1995 adventure movie Jumanji...based on the same-titled 1981 children's book by Chris Van Allsburg...while shopping in the late 90s at my local Sam's Club store, then on NW 13th Street.  They were promoting their big-screen television sets and were playing it on DVD...I was impressed with the movie's special effects, especially the stampeding wild animals, to the point that I wasn't all that into shopping that day.  Later on I got to see the entire movie, which starred Robin Williams as a boy from 1969 stuck within a sinister, supernatural board game for 27 years, finally rescued from his dangerous jungle confinement when two other kids hit upon the game and begin playing it in 1996.  Jumanji, one of my favorites, had its spinoffs and remakes, all of which I have consciously avoided; I have also stayed clear of recent versions of classics like The Day the Earth Stood Still, War of the Worlds, and Total Recall...to name a few.  But I did go back and read Allsburg's original book, 35 pages long and about half of which are full-page pictures.  His story is simpler as a brother and sister take home the Jumanji game they found under a tree in their nearby park and play it when their parents go out...it wreaks havoc in the house as each roll of the dice brings forth dangerous animals and manifestations, threatening them and wrecking the house: but like Doctor Seuss's classic The Cat in the Hat, all is made well before mom and dad get back home.  The movie version is more complicated with subplots abounding, both in the 1969 and 1996 time settings.  It was well-acted, funny, suspenseful, intriguing, and compelling...a great mix.  Since this blog feature is about games, this may be the weirdest entry since Jumanji cannot, by dint of being magical in nature, be a real game.  But it takes the outward form of one of those board games (like Parcheesi, for example), where the contestants advance their tokens along the path on the board with each roll of the dice and deal with the consequences of where they land, until the ultimate winner gets to the center of the board, representing the golden city of Jumanji, and chants that name, ending the game and reversing all the mayhem.  Then the players, thereafter understandably wary of this traumatic game, bind it up and get rid of it...but of course Jumanji eventually makes its convoluted way to another set of players.  Jumanji, although very, very problematic while being played, nevertheless served as a great catalyst for transforming the lives of its players and directing them to what should be their priorities...the best games will do that, though I think I'll take a pass on the lions, giant mosquitoes, stampedes, bats, murderous hunters, spiders, predatory plants, crazy monkeys, floods and earthquakes, thank you...

Life is Sometimes Like Being on Jury Duty in a Never-Ending Trial

The current televised murder trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin over the death-in-custody of black resident George Floyd last April has brought back memories of the times I was drafted into jury duty over the past few years.  I detest serving on juries so much that I studiously avoid watching these public trials and always avoid those annoying "Judge Bozo" types of programs...heck, I won't even watch Perry Mason!  I never was on a jury detail when either my workplace or the court's clerical staff didn't make my jury duty documentation difficult for me to return to work afterwards...so many times have I sat there in the courtroom or stood outside in the hallway in a state of anxiety wondering if I was getting into trouble for doing something I was required by law to do...instead of actually paying my full attention to the proceedings.  The uncertainty and open-endedness involved in jury selection is very problematic as well...I go there with no clue as to what my future will be for the rest of the week and possibly further on.  The attorneys arguing both sides of the case in question never cease to irritate me with their self-importance...they remind me of an old classmate of mine in high school who used his debate skills to intimidate others (including me).  And I have never to date deliberated as a juror on a case in which there was an obvious witness or crucial piece of evidence that wasn't deliberately withheld from the jurors' consideration...so as a result the verdict probably didn't reflect what the judge, lawyers, defendant and probably a few witnesses actually knew to be true about the case.  Also, in every jury experience I've had there was always a pain-in-the-ass fellow juror trying to prod everyone else into giving a quick verdict...as if the rest of us had nowhere else we'd rather be.  But even though it's been more than two years since I was last subjected to this humiliation, I have noticed that in some ways just going through my day-to-day experiences in life mirrors some things about serving on juries.  I don't think there is a social institution I've ever been involved with in which important information hasn't been withheld from me...yet I am held accountable nonetheless to exhibit proper judgment in my actions and speech.  The entire legal/law-enforcement environment prevalent in the courthouse is designed to humble people...just as so many other institutions seek to control people like herded sheep.  The behavior of the opposing attorneys toward witnesses, depending on whether they support or oppose their case, hits me hard: if a witness agrees with the questioning attorney then they are honest and decent...if they offer testimony running counter to the "agenda" then they are cast as liars and...well, maybe deluded or confused.  Isn't this how the hosts on TV opinion shows and talk radio treat people of different political persuasions?  So no, I'm not too keen on jury duty, and I'm more than a little cynical about the way our society seems to be structured to manipulate and control me in ways similar to being a drafted juror...then again I've always been pretty much a solitary type anyway and naturally suspicious of those trying to put their hooks in me...

Great Old TV Episodes...from Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey

                                  

THE LOST WORLDS OF PLANET EARTH is Episode #9 of the thirteen-part 2014 television series Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey.  Narrated by astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, this series resurrected the spirit of the original Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, from 1980 and featuring the late astronomer Carl Sagan.  The Cosmos series are an excellent introduction to science and the history of scientific discoveries and those who made them...this particular episode is no exception.  It focuses upon a subject that has always fascinated me: Earth's cataclysmic mass extinctions, of which the Permian Extinction was the most severe.  It occurred about 250 million years ago, wiping out some 90% of the world's species and caused by massive supervolcano eruptions over the course of hundreds of thousands of years in what is now Siberia and their toxic interaction with masses of underground coal deposits and undersea methane stores.  This episode also goes into the late Cretaceous meteor strike that caused another mass extinction including that of the dinosaurs, the development of the theory of plate tectonics that explained continental drift, and how gravitational effects from other planets may have influenced our past ice ages.  Tyson, like his predecessor Sagan, is a compelling and effective communicator: I highly recommend both the 1980 and 2014 series. Last year a third Cosmos series (subtitled Possible Worlds) also aired, but I have yet to see any of its episodes, again hosted by Tyson.  When I was a kid in elementary school, we had a film series presented by Bell Science with Dr. Frank Baxter as its host, produced in the late 1950s and early 60s for television.  I feel that Cosmos is the continuation of a great tradition of popularizing science that these old programs began...