Ummagumma

In my youth, I watched (or listened via radio to) Phil Niekro and Hank Aaron play a lot of baseball games.  When the Braves moved to Atlanta in 1966, my dad took me to my first game.  I was seven years old and can barely remember it.  But my mom was actually the bigger sports fan.  She really sparked my interest in baseball (and insisted that we go as a family to games).   All the way through my years into high school, my parents usually took me to a couple of games each season, sometimes with my friends from school.  Back then not many games were televised so I mostly listened to them play on my radio at night while lying in bed.  A select few games were usually televised on Sunday afternoons.  So I watched the team play then whenever I could.  This was long before Ted Turner bought the team and put their games on Channel 17 every night. When I became old enough to drive, I went to games more frequently with family and friends.  Particularly during my college years and life in Athe

The 2020 United Nations Human Development Report states that humanity is at " an unprecedented moment " in terms of the damage we are doing to the planet.  Although much of our recent attention has been focused on politics and the pandemic, the biggest issue confronting the human race at this time is global warming.  Indeed, one recent study states that we will " blow past " our best climate goals in the next few decades.   Global warming is bad enough, but when you combine it with accelerating biodiversity loss, seemingly insatiable human consumption, and relentless population growth we could have a recipe for " the collapse of civilization as we know it. "  That is the conclusion a team of scientists reached earlier this month.   Among them is Stanford University's Paul R. Ehrlich , a particularly gloomy guy that has said sensational stuff like this forever.  Way back in 1968, Dr. Ehrlich and his wife authored The Population Bomb where he predicted

Note: This Review Contains Spoilers. I wasn't going to risk my life to see Christopher Nolan's newest film, Tenet , when it was released in its spectacular IMAX glory last summer.  Instead, I preordered the Blu-ray edition and watched the film on my television just before Christmas.  Settling into January I watched it again, this time with the subtitles on because Nolan seems to prefer to make his dialog indistinguishable from the music and special effects for clarity.  Several important lines were not discernible to my ears.  According to Nolan, I am “hard of hearing,” the option offered on the Blu-ray menu to select English subtitles. As I've said before, Nolan is my favorite living director so I was excited to see his latest effort. The film opens with a impressive para-military event in, of all places, a large Russian opera house.  The sequence ends with a large explosion immediately seguing into the grizzly death of the leading character ( John David Washington ).

Voters went to the polls near the end of 2020 to elect a new president.  But voting took place under stressed conditions.  The incumbent president was defeated in the popular vote.  Certain groups immediately denounced the election results.  Later, when the vote was certified, violence broke out at the instigation of the former president.  Today that country is in turmoil wondering what comes next after the violent election. That country is the Central African Republic . Meanwhile, in America, former-President Donald J. Trump, proved for the world to see, that he was no better than "professional coup plotter" former-President Francois Bozize .  Having organized a rally of Trumpists from all over the country at the National Mall (promising the event "will be wild!"), Trump was going to counter the certification of the 2020 Electoral College by Congress with impassioned speeches by himself and other delusional speakers before a huge crowd of protestors.   As a warm-