Saturday, May 31, 2008

This might seem like a copout, but I ended up spending a lot of time hauling art up and down stairs last night, which made me pretty tired this morning, so I'm giving myself credit for 1 mile yesterday plus the 2.5 miles I made it today, so for the month I'm only 49.5 (so close!) and for 2008 I'm at 132.5.

I wanted to think about the Plato books and find something more to comment on, but I've got nothing. Excellent style, and probably even more notable given the time, but I don't like the philosophy or the methodology. I'll be curious to see if Republic engages me more. For now, though, good new scifi is most excellent.

Sounds like they reached a compromise today in Florida and Michigan - all delegates seated with only half a vote, and Obama gets the uncommitted votes in Michigan (where Hillary was the only candidate who didn't withdraw her name as promised). It pleases the states and gives Hillary something to feel OK about without threatening Obama's still-solid lead. I would've even let the uncommitted's from Michigan decide who to vote for, but I think the leadership really wants this to end, and that could encourage her too much to stay in until Denver. There is no good answer in most of politics, but I think this worked pretty well. Naturally, after winning most of her points, Hillary's campaign is complaining they were robbed - I suppose being handed the keys to the White House is the only thing she'd settle for. Here's hoping issues occasionally raise their head as this goes on.
posted by Unknown 9:03 PM | 0 comments

Friday, May 30, 2008

2.5 miles yesterday plus 1.5 today (had to get to work early on the bus) makes 46 on the month, 129 on the year. Reasonable chance I'll hit 50 for May, but I'll need 60 in June to have a shot at my goal. One trouble I'm running into is how I can both walk 2.5+ miles in the morning when my 10-minute-away gym opens at 5:30 and still make it to the bus stop by 7:30, including having a decent breakfast. I'll keep working on it.

Alas the Spurs are out of the playoffs. They played well, the Lakers are just actually playing better. I can live with that - can't win the championship every year.

Finished Apology and Crito without any further appreciation of Plato/Socrates. Maybe it's just stylistic - while he's using clever phrases and making opponents look bad, it just seems to me like bright shiny distractions rather than really praising the truth. I understand his respect for law is more of a law vs tyrant distinction than law vs individual rights - maybe I can appreciate that. Still just haven't found much in there.

Before the next reading (from Aristophanes I believe) I'm taking a break for a sci fi novel by CS Friedman - This Alien Shore. Loved her Coldfire trilogy, and so far this one is fun too.
posted by Unknown 1:26 PM | 0 comments

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Oh yeah records are shattered. 2.5 miles today brings the 2008 total to 125, and May to 42 (yep 1/3 of the miles this month, 1/3 January, and the other three months hang their heads in shame). That was a Slurpee milestone I tell you. I now need 15 miles a week for the July 4th deadline - not sure how that jives with my estimates from yesterday but it works. At some point I may have miscalculated. Feel free to double-check me.

I present you with 2 quotes:

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I'm just a caveman. I fell on some ice
and later got thawed out by some of your scientists. Your world frightens and
confuses me! Sometimes the honking horns of your traffic make me want to get out
of my BMW.. and run off into the hills, or wherever.. Sometimes when I get a
message on my fax machine, I wonder: "Did little demons get inside and type it?"
I don't know! My primitive mind can't grasp these concepts.

For I am more than seventy years of age, and appearing now for the first
time in a court of law, I am quite a stranger to the language of the place; and
therefore I would have you regard me as if I were really a stranger, whom you
would excuse if he spoke in his native tongue, and after the fashion of his
country...

Given a choice between Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer and Socrates, you can probably guess who said which, but Plato's Apology is not a comedy - it's a philosophical treatise in which Socrates is defending himself in court. This book bothers me - Socrates seems more interested in scoring points on his opponent and using sophistry to declaim sophistry. It's clever, probably exceedingly clever for the time, but it doesn't seem to offer anything besides how to be clever if your audience is 2500-year-old Greeks. There could be some interesting points about wisdom and humility and knowledge, but they're indistinguishable from this desperate cleverness. I know some of my readers are better read than me - I'm open to any explanation. Keeping reading through the Apology and Crito, but I'm just not a Plato fan at this point.
posted by Unknown 9:24 PM | 0 comments

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

2 miles today, bringing May to 39.5 and 2008 to 122.5. May is now tied with January for most miles, and I plan on shattering that tomorrow. Missing Sunday has me a bit behind schedule on the July 4th deadline - I need to average 2.4 miles a day between now and then (or 2.7 miles per likely-to-walk day if I take one day off a week), so I think some extra distance on the weekends will be required.

Wife got me my birthday present early on Saturday - 6 courses from The Teaching Company: Augustine: Philosopher and Saint; From Yao to Mao: 5000 Years of Chinese History; Great Debate: Advocates and Opponents of the American Constitution; Particle Physics for Non-Physicists: A Tour of the Microcosmos; Reason & Faith: Philosophy in the Middle Ages; War, Peace, and Power: Diplomatic History of Europe, 1500–2000. Should be fun commutes for several months as that's 70 hours of CD lectures for lil ole me. Woohoo Wife!

As I continue More Than Human, it's surprising me how much the direction he feels bionics will move us in matches up with the more-evolutionary plotline of the Julian May series I just read - towards a mental sharing and near-unity. I have to admit I can see that, although I'm too cynical to use the possibility as justification. I'm 100% in favor of research for cures, for improving to normalcy, but I still don't like the societal pressures and increasing socioeconomic gap enhancement would bring. Almost done with it, though, and I definitely recommend it for anyone interested in this area. Next up I'm gonna try to tackle Plato's Apology and Crito and see if I can actually start progressing through the Great Books' 10 Year Reading Plan.

And lest my tower appear with too ivory a sheen, every series of the NBA playoffs this year has had memorable games and great performances. Rooting for Celtics-Spurs, I think, but I just want seven games in every series as everyone is peaking at the right time. Antonio McDyess with over 20 points in 2008? Crazy it is, just crazy.
posted by Unknown 8:59 AM | 0 comments

Sunday, May 25, 2008

2.5 miles Thursday, and 5 miles Saturday brings me to totals of 37.5 for the month and 120.5 for the year. I've now doubled my miles since April 10, and am on pretty solid ground for getting the 100 miles by July 4. Missing today (too much else to do) combined with the gym being closed tomorrow brings me a little back to earth, but still good progress.

Finished God's Politics - nothing really hit me beyond what I wrote before. Now reading More than Human, about the potential for genetic enhancement of humans. Definitely not my cup of tea philosophically, but if proven safe, I don't know if I could object to others using them. The problem then becomes what of the people who don't want to use it but can't compete? The author actually mentions the attention-focusing benefits of Ritalin for non-ADD people, and I've had students ask me if they should take it to keep up on SAT scores. There is a marked benefit, and I don't know if people who don't want to take a drug should be effectively penalized. Sorry I do know - they shouldn't. Still, it's a well-thought-out, well-researched book that's enjoyable reading. Kinda the opposite of God's Politics where I liked the direction but not the writer.
posted by Unknown 4:16 PM | 0 comments

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

2.5 more miles brings the May total to 30 and 2008 to 113. Since I play too much with numbers in my head, I'm going to see if writing gets them out. 42 more days until July 4 to cover 87 miles, so need to average about 2.1 per day. I'll probably walk (at most) 36 of them so that brings me to just over 2.4 miles every day I walk, which is OK seeing as how I'm almost always walking at least that far. But little room for slippage.

Some of you readers are more conservative than me, so I'm curious on feedback. What about a major national program to improve infrastructure? We desperately need to fix/maintain roads and bridges, so we could start by adding jobs that are impossible to outsource for the most urgent needs. Some money would also go into research to reduce costs for bridge engineering, road materials, and even tire materials - anything that makes the national infrastructure easier to sustain will pay back hundredsfold, and could help the environment. It might be worth investigating bundling other infrastructure needs (water/sewage, telecommunications) into the research and construction as well. Yes it will cost money, but it would seem to improve many lives and impact almost all taxpayers by improving the daily transportation experience, and I can't imagine enough progress ever being made piecemeal. Oh and we might avoid needless disasters like the Minneapolis and Tulsa bridges - that's always nice too. In all fairness, I got this basic idea in a Newsweek column, although I'm not sure who wrote it, and built on it a very little bit.
posted by Unknown 11:18 AM | 1 comments

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Too tired to write much, but another 2.5 miles this morning to get to 27.5/110.5.
posted by Unknown 11:03 PM | 0 comments

Monday, May 19, 2008

2.5 miles this morning for totals of 25/108. I think I'm going to count on taking either Sunday or Monday off every week - even if I trusted my willpower it's still a bit much to do it between 1 and 6PM Sunday, and then again Monday morning before 7. So that will be a good day of rest.

Finished Julian May's series, and I enjoyed it much more this time. The only problem was that I forgot specific details from the first subseries that came to light towards the end of the last book. Still it rocked. Now back to God's Politics - we're past Iraq, and while I think the author is still self-righteous and as open to dramatic interpretation and exaggeration as his foes on the Religious Right, I'm finding good nuggets out of this.

I saw Prince Caspian this weekend. The overdone Spanish accents kept me thinking of Inigo Montoya. It was better than I expected, and I'm still trying to decide if I liked it. Acting was terrible, and some lines made me laugh out loud (a few even intentionally!), as did some effects. So if you like Narnia and/or the last movie, give it a shot.
posted by Unknown 5:28 PM | 0 comments

Saturday, May 17, 2008

2.5 miles yesterday and 3 miles today, bringing me to 22.5 for May and 105.5 for 2008. I think I'm going to aim to knock out the next 100 miles before July 4. It's requiring a little over 2 miles a day, so might be a little too ambitious, but I'll give it a shot. Unfortunately, I also found out the Rec Center doesn't have 13 of my miles, so I won't get my 100 Miles star until (hopefully) Monday, and I'll have to make it 513 miles for the 500 Miles star - at that point my name goes on a plaque - but if I can make 394.5 miles in the rest of the year, 407.5 shouldn't be too much more. I think if I ended up at 505 and showed them the blog records, they'd work with me. I'd hope.
posted by Unknown 12:49 PM | 0 comments

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Ladies and Gentlemen, 100 Miles for 2008.

(It is not a goal of quiet desperation!)
posted by Unknown 9:39 AM | 2 comments

Monday, May 12, 2008

2.5 miles yesterday and 2 miles today, for 14.5 miles in May and 97.5 in 2008. That's also 38 miles in 33 days since I returned to the gym April 10. My previous spurt was 39 miles in 27 days in January, so I haven't matched that pace, but hey gotta have something to aim for. If I hit 100 miles as expected tomorrow, I'm thinking a large Coke Slurpee for breakfast. (Yes, large Coke Slurpee is the only Slurpee worth drinking, but I added the adjectives to allow less-enlightened disciples to visualize my joy tomorrow morning.)

I saw Forbidden Kingdom last night, starring Jackie Chan and Jet Li. It was actually a lot of fun, after the first 20 minutes that will make you miss the dialogue and acting of Karate Kid 3. And it answers so many late-night dorm conversations along the lines of who would win in a fight between Drunken Master and Crouching Tiger dude - that's right, they're not just the actors, they're basically the same roles. It's probably best just to ignore any dialogue or shot with the white guy who's the "star."
posted by Unknown 8:50 AM | 0 comments

Saturday, May 10, 2008

Before all else, a heavy dose of congratulations to Cap'n Mike, who today became Master Mike when he graduated with his Degree in Family Counseling - I may have the degree wrong, but it's graduate level, he's prepared to do the work he wants to do, and he's done, which is all the important stuff. Congratulations good sir - you are neither a loser nor a chump!

3 miles today for totals of 10 and 93. It felt good, too - I'm hoping I can get into a regular habit of 2+ miles almost every day. I actually worked out a schedule to try to get specific amounts of Newsweek and ScienceNews read each day - it's the first Content-Based Workout Plan! Newsweek gets split into first half, third quarter, and final quarter. For my next issue, that comes out to 19, 14, and 12 pages once ads and letters and other stuff are taken out. And those 19 are pretty sparse with lots of photos so it's close to equal. ScienceNews just changed its format so I'll have to try it out to figure out numbers.

I like to calculate too much. You all know this.

I've been watching Battlestar Galactica 4th season (no spoilers - just generalities that grow from the first three seasons), and my main concern storywise is where are they going with all the religion/metaphysics storylines? Is one religion true and the other complete snake oil? Will we snarkily dismiss all unobservationally verifiable beliefs? It's confusing and seems to slow down the main story rather than advance it. Of course I've thought this about other plots and they've worked out well - I will trust the writers' magic for now.

Saw a sign for a "Pfabulous Sale!" this morning. Yep, I'm a pfloser.

According to the election results I was able to find, 2 of 3 bond propositions in Pflugerville failed (pfailed?) today. The library will be expanded, but the new City Hall was nixed (although the board's already approved necessity bond funding if the election didn't work out so the vote was irrelevant), and the new Rec Center down the street from me was voted down. I really wanted that new Center - walking distance is almost as good to me as lots of improved facilities. If people generally didn't want to spend tax money on it, that's fine, but I'm afraid a negative campaign by someone who'd gotten investments to build an overpriced private center swayed the voters. If so, that's sad, because people will now have the "option" of paying $42/month instead of an average of $10 at the new Rec Center - no wonder they expect lower turnout than the current Rec Center (which costs $6/month) gets. I hope this individual's investment goes belly-up in spectacular fashion, which I'm betting it will, as he apparently didn't know the city was planning a new expanded Rec Center. Frackin idiot.

On a side note, the word frackin' might by itself justify the entire Battlestar Galactica series. It's that cool.

I've been working on designing a contacts database for UrbanConnection - it's fun trying to think of all the possible uses for and protections of contact, demographic, and skill/interest data. I'm probably overdesigning it, but as long as I also write the code modules or stored procs to populate/query them, I figure it's my own grave I'm digging. For those afraid I'm going to be supporting junk mail, I'm getting promises from the group that all communications will be opt-in and all data will be securely protected from any user who doesn't need it. Now I just have to make sure that's how the product works. If anyone has suggestions for how to build a data entry/simple reporting interface to this MySQL database (there's no funding for this project so it needs to be free or pretty cheap), I'm all ears. It's for fairly few users, and the data scale will be very moderate.

On the book front, Jack the Bodiless has given way to Diamond Mask, and I'm enjoying this series more every bit I move through it. An excellent description of man's intellectual and social evolution tying into God's revelation to a select people and then through incarnation makes a lot of sense - I get the feeling I might enjoy more Jesuit literature, which seems to be one source of inspiration for this series. Sadly only 2 books left - I will have to try Julian May's other series, and see if this was a one-shot chef d'oeuvre, or indicative of her overall talent.
posted by Unknown 10:55 PM | 0 comments

Tuesday, May 06, 2008

posted by Unknown 10:06 PM | 0 comments

Saturday, May 03, 2008

1/3 of the year down (technically slightly less as this is the fewest days of any 4 months, but still), so figured I'd sum up the progress. January 39, February 14, March 6.5, April 23.5 brings us to 83 for 2008. Way behind what I'd hoped, but 83 deliberate miles better than any of my first 31 years.

4 miles today, making the 2008 total 87 - I could pass 90 tomorrow. Woot woot. There was a league tournament (men, not kids) on the court below me this morning, so I didn't get as much reading done as usual. It was interesting to watch how intense people get over a Saturday morning game - hard fouls, constant whining at the refs. Yay sports. Or something.

To track one additional thing from the beginning of the year, I think I have solidly beat Mike into the ground in our blogging challenge. Yeah yeah 2 kids, getting a Master's, all kinds of excuses. I still win.

I love watching the Spurs. Everyone always says they can't win cuz they're old and they shouldn't cuz they're boring, and they just keep destroying other teams. And somehow not having players accused of crimes related to alcohol, drugs, strip clubs, and/or firearms. Wonder if those are connected. (Side note: I know individuals who enjoy each of those without harm to others or public spectacle - good for all of you. Combining almost any 2 on that list is pretty much asking for it.)

Metaconcert was great. The next Julian May book - Jack the Bodiless - is maintaining the greatness. Since her narrator owns a sci-fi bookstore, I've picked up several excellent recommendations from this reading as well. Haven't seen many movies recently, although I'm eager to see Iron Man. Saw Varsity Blues on cable today, and it was impressively cheesy.

While walking today, I read an old Newsweek article on Obama's foreign policy - he's holding out his time actually living abroad as sufficient experience and possibly even superior to McCain's and Clinton's political experience. Dunno about that comparison, but he's also getting slammed for saying he'd be willing for the country to talk to any other country/government. I don't see any problem with that - not for anyone who calls to get to talk to the President, but why wouldn't we have someone out of the thousands in the administration listen to what another country has to say? Often it might not help, but why not be open to the chance that a country is willing to make concrete improvements if we can talk to them, and agree to reward good behavior? Seems like it could also help resolve our hyperpower hubris, at least in image.

See I'm not just beating Mike because I'll blog my number of walking laps. I have something to say at least occasionally.
posted by Unknown 10:50 PM | 1 comments